Excuse me, Unlce Sam?

You want HOW much money to help these fools keep London Bridge from falling down? Uncle Sam, would you like to explain to me and 300,000,000 of my dear fellow Americans why we should keep London Bridge up? Because you haven't done a very good job of that. It seems to us like you and your friends are the only people that really use it. I certainly don't understand why we should be spending $700,000,000,000 to build a giant golden support beam that you say your friends aren't going to steal bits and pieces of a few months down the road because you'll watch it, but don't you have other more important problems to look at Uncle Sam? Aren't there some disaster victims in the south, some kids failing school and a myriad of other problems you need to watch but haven't really been doing a good job of? Oh, and isn't their that scuffle going on in a far away land that we need to watch, and couldn't this money support that since apparently we're supporting it anyway? Thinking on it, couldn't we basically buy enough food to feed everyone in the US, heck the world for a week or longer? Or couldn't we pay tuition costs for just about every student in the US? Couldn't we do a lot of things that make sense to those of us who don't walk up on London Bridge? Oh, sorry, that tastes a little like Socialism doesn't it? I thought it was just a "bailout" for more people or some sort of super-sized "stimulus package". My mistake.

Coincidentally....

So I realize that I usually change the picture every time I talk about a new media item and therefore I should have put up a picture about Spore. BUT Fallout 3 is coming out in like... 3 weeks and I think it would great if I just left the picture from a month ago up there until it came out because it should be just that good. Of course it won't be because the gameplay demos always show just a snapshot and you don't ever get to the point with them where you're wishing they would skip dialogue because you've heard the same person 4 times, but it was from 4 different people (If you take my meaning) or when you get tired raiding the same cave or ancient shrine that looks like its made up of remarkably similar pieces to the last cave or ancient temple you came through, just in different order. Oh yeah, there's that same gate. Oh the same glowing pedastel in the center of the room. Oh, more wraiths, didn't see that coming. What I'm referring to are some of the problems with the generally remarkable game "Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion". This is a great game, BUT when you play it for well over 100 hours like I did you stop talking to average citizens because they all have the same talking points, you stop exploring caves because they all have mediocre equipment strapped to skeletons guarded by giant rats and trolls, and you only go into the ancient temples because they have those shiny artifacts that the one elf looking guy wants and getting them all earns you an achievement.

I guess what I'm getting at is, I hope they got this sort of feedback from other people and were able to take the past nearly 3 years to change it so that I'm not hearing the exact same person in 5 towns across a post-apocalyptic ex-metropolis. The game will definitely be good for the short term, the first play through I reckon will resemble how I felt on my first two play throughs of Mass Effect (On the third one you start to see where your decisions do and don't matter, and that a lot more really don't) but we'll see how the long term gameplay holds out... At least until Fable 2 comes out 2 weeks after.

Argh...

Man I hate not having my own computer, its so inconvenient when you can't just download and upload whatever you want. Had I previously mentioned that my laptop died? Well, not died, but entered a state that using it was far more trouble than it was worth. So thats why whoever reads this thing has not been blessed with a new post in quite some time.

I got Spore, and its really quite excellent. Unfortunately I have to run it on a pretty old computer and so not only do I have to run it at minimum graphics settings (Which actually don't look to bad) but in the space mode things have a tendency to slow to a crawl or stop at really bad times. Yeah, being in the middle of a space battle where fast clicking is key and then suddenly your computer starts running 1 frame per 2 seconds.... Yeah, thats a problem. Especially when you're surrounded by 5 tiny agile ships that are constantly shooting you up! The only other gripes I have are minor: The tribal and civilization phase don't matter very much and are really only useful for obtaining some powers for the space stage, and the frequency that your own and other planets whine to you about being attacked gets old pretty quick, especially when you're in the middle of terraforming or something. Of course the true star of the game is the creature creator in which you can create a nigh infinite number of creatures. There are also several building and vehicle creators, but I don't find these as interesting as yet, because usually you're so busy playing the game to get your creature through to the space age that you don't feel like taking out the time to design 3 different buildings and 2 or 3 different vehicles. But in the future, after I've effectively conquered the space age, I may return and simply create some vehicles and buildings for fun.

But I definitely recommend it, though if you doubt its greatness you can always download the free creature creator demo at www.spore.com.

A dream?

Was it a dream? Or was it a terrible truth? No, I think it was a dream.

Anyway, I had a dream about some weird sort of cross over episode of Bleach and DBZ where Goku was attacking the Soul Society for some reason. I think maybe they had captured someone, or it could simply be because in my dream they were actually a group of bandits. Anyway, Goku was caught off guard and his powers were largely taken away along with his memories and made manifest into this weird man-wolf creature that was somehow more incompetent than Goku, but utterly loyal to this one member of the Soul Society. Goku meanwhile was put in with some of the lowly banditry, and it seemed like Goku still held some innate inkling that he was greater than he seemed, or at the very least he didn't act like the other bandits he was with. Then a scene opens on an underground store room and one of the higher up people is coming to check on the supply of "SPAM" or "Stuff Processed as Meat". Before he shows up though we cut to a scene of bandits in the store room counting food stuffs: "Er, we got some Bacon" "Thats SPAM" "And some Ribs" "SPAM" etc. etc. but off to the side Goku has found a pile of fresh produce and cold cuts and is making himself a sandwhich. And he's like "Hey guys, why are we eating that gross meat stuff? I'm making a great sandwhich right here!" And they're all like "What?! Hey, you can't do that!" And I guess they didn't get much water because next he was like "You know, once I was on an airplane, and this guy asked me something." All the bandits stop and ask "Eh, what was it?" Goku stands up and starts to break into a musical number like "Heeee asked me is I'd like some Waaater-" At which point the higher up bandit shows up and grabs Goku telling him to shut up. The bandit then takes Goku's sandwhich, takes a quick look around and leaves. And unfortunately my dream ended then but I'm guessing it then would have gone to some shot of the real guy in charge, who would be ironically short but unclichedly cool, and he would be thinking something like "Hmmm, looks like driving the Goku-ness out of him will be harder than I though...."

It was really great because it seemed like something Goku would have actually done in that situation... Not that any of my readers would know *Oh woe is me*.

Oh, and I leave you with a video that I also posted to Facebook which is probably the funniest thing ever created by The Daily Show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3JR_Fvpy9o

Gomen!

Sorry its been so long since my last post, but my laptop kind of died and so I don't have my trusty favorites list to remind me to post on here.

A lot has happened since the Dark Knight came out (Seriously, that was last post). Lets see... I started playing Civilization 4, My brother got married, E3 came and went, Tarik got married, Nick Crew came to visit, Maureen got married, Georgia was invaded by Russia a little and there was that Olympics thing.

So, obviously I'm not going to talk about all of them, so of those I will touch on in order of importance...... I started getting back to Civ 4 with the Tutorial- .........

..............

........................................

Okay, so the internet has failed me by not providing me easy access to the kind of comedic image I wanted to post after that *Siiiiiigh* I'll make up for it at the end with an amusing video link.

Anyway, obviously the most important event was my brother's wedding, but I think all the people who read my blog were either there or have already seen the photos on Facebook that I put up and while it was fun I'll just rundown the highlights in Haiku: Aisle Dancing fun::Chocolate Fountain Tasty::Karaoke laugh. There you go.

So then, getting back Civ 4- What? E3? Well, I guess it is slightly more important. I personally think that the most important announcements came from the Microsoft press conference such as: New format for Xbox Live featuring Mii like avatars, the ability to stream Netflix over Xbox Live, AND Final Fantasy XIII will have an Xbox release! Now, at the time I said that that news took away 70% of my incentive to buy a PS3. However I then watched the Sony Press Conference and changed that number to 40% because I was reminded of games like "LittleBig
Planet", other releases related to Final Fantasy XIII and other various games like a network game called "Flower" that looks really interesting. However it still doesn't have anything that would make me want to put down money BEFORE Final Fantasy XIII comes out, or mid-2009 to those who don't follow a Final Fantasy release based calendar system (We're almost in the 2nd year of the 11th era by the canonical calendar which I just made up). Xbox 360 on the other hand has a grand release schedule before this year is over: Fable 2 is the big exclusive gun they're packing this fall (I'd equate it to an AK-47 or the Shotgun Mel Gibson uses in The Road Warrior in terms of potency) with an exclusive coming through Square Enix from a notoriously good company (Amongst those in the know) called Tri-Ace called Infinite Undiscovery. Now, the Square Enix brand name and shiny graphics might get some people, but honestly its exclusivity potency is like sticking a dagger on the tip of the AK-47 (Meaning it might hit a few people, but not enough to make it significant). Now if they had some how gotten console exclusivity of Fallout 3 (Which they may have limited exclusivity of, I forget) that would have been like M16 with grenade launcher attachment (Which might be a gun in the game...). Imagine if you will: Elder Scroll IV type gameplay, but they've had 2 1/2 years to make it better. Add guns, explosions, radiation mutants, the ancestry of a PC RPG legend, and set it in Post-apocalyptic Washington DC. Now, add to that some sweet innovative gameplay elements and some nice n' bloody cinematic kill shots = Fallout 3. Like I said, M16 with a Grenade launcher attachment. So yeah, pretty much all my gaming dollars go towards 360 this fall... Well except for Spore of course.

Hmmm, besides that the Olympics have been good, and I think that Georgia-Russia thing is starting to be resolved before I even got to join the thousands of paranoid bloggers thinking it would bring about WW3.

Alright, now about Civilization 4, in earliest times of man's- What, we're out of time? B-but, Civ 4! They aren't interested?! -_-.......

Oh well, I found this amusing video. Apparently there's this thing on YouTube about "Starfox Vs. Link" because someone hacked the N64 Zelda game and stuck an Arwing in it that Link destroys with a boomerang. Anyway, this is a Pokemon battle based on that which is somewhat predictable at the beginning but gets better:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B474p34-OxA