Hey, my 600th post! Kinda. Technically it’s #575, since the first twenty five were simply test entries Jason made while integrating WordPress into the rest of the site. But who really cares, right? Anyway, even thought it’s not like #500 (ah, Japan) or anything like that, I still wanted to do something to mark the occasion, and the original plan was to finally have a podcast for public consumption.
Last Thursday I went over to Mike’s for our third recording session and unfortunately, though somewhat par for the course at this point, there were some technical issues. Something wrong with my mic I believe. But in the end, I didn’t mind too much, since I personally didn’t think it turned out all that hot; it just felt, I dunno, forced? Over thinking will kill anything, especially when it’s as insignificant and stupid as a podcast, but after so many false starts, I just began to feel like it would never happen and therefore became some kind of monkey on my back. I believe it clearly shows that I just wanted to get it done and over with, hence why I was almost relieved to hear the technical issues, since it would justify yet another do-over, despite being annoyed with all the previous aborted attempts. But in the end, Mike was actually able to repair the audio file, so for anyone who is indeed curious can simply head on over to the forums.
I guess me being too lazy to link to it directly is indicative of the quality of the recording, or my opinion of it. Also not helping is how the general topic, E3, was pretty boring to begin with and didn’t leave much room for exciting discussion. Though I will say it does get pretty good near the end, when Mike goes off on Heath Ledger. Anyhow, with one finally done and over with, I’m confident the next one will be much better, and not just because I’m going to actually make a concerted effort to avoid rookie mistakes, like going “ummm” every five seconds. Hey, it’s been a while since I was on the air… granted, it was only college radio, but it still counts!
Anyhow, back on topic: I’ve also been thinking of possible changes to bring forth, including one that I used to be quite resistant towards, but have recently had a change of heart about it. The previously mentioned shortening of posts, which in turn would lead to more frequent updates. Why now? This blog was originally conceived as a place to bring forth information and discussion centering on all the stuff I liked for all my friends (as well as complete strangers eventually), primarily those who don’t have the time nor the wherewithal to find “the good stuff” themselves. But often or not, in my effort to deliver something for everybody, valuable bits and pieces often get lost in the shuffle; sometimes a film fanatic might miss something important because of all the video game chit-chat that comes before it, for example, and the addition of sub-headers hasn’t helped all that much. Plus, in this day and age where there’s a billion other blogs online new sources to check out, even I don’t have time for my own 30,000 soliloquies, so I must adjust accordingly. I’m hoping that separating things according to subject matter might help, along with the addition of tags, which is now supported with the latest version of WordPress that’s just been installed. I’m also wondering if I should go back to doing weekly news round ups, which used to be sorta popular, though I have since let the forums take that role. Yet I’m also still trying figure out what role the fort90forums will play in the grand scheme of things. I guess at this point, I figure what is the point, since I’m not IGN and one can find all the breaking stuff elsewhere, but as I’ve discovered time and time again, most recently via my game reviews (which is yet another new thing I’m going to try and do regularly) that folks sometimes just want to know what your two cents, no matter how “old” the subject matter is.
… Okay, does anyone even care about anything I’ve had to say thus far? At the very least, I am asked on a very regular basis by those who want to get into “the biz” all sorts of questions about “the process”, so maybe this is relevant to them. Or perhaps I’m just filling space because I ultimately have not much to talk about this time around?
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Been kinda slow since my last update; this past weekend was fairly low-key, yet rather eventful, and not because of the Siren Music Fest in Coney Island on Saturday. The day before, Katie and I was supposed to check out some French restaurant for lunch, but it was just too damn hot inside, certainly not much different from the outside, which as everyone in NYC can tell you was beyond oppressive (I guess it was the first day of our current heat wave). Ended up at some Houston Street eatery that had decent food at somewhat ridiculous prices, along with shitty service…. just like most Houston Street resturants! Then we did a little bit of shopping, at least as much as the heat would allow, though I personally was not that bothered by it because I knew there were two ACs at home, keeping the fort cool for our arrival (Katie has noted how much more pleasant I’ve become since the homestead as become completely air conditioned). I forget if we had plans later that evening…. if we did, they were totally tossed aside once we came home, which was nice and chilly and offered little incentive to go back outside. Besides, and I know this sounds incredibly gay, but Friday night has become my fave night to stay in and watch television, because of the stupendous combo of pro wrestling and cable access!
If there’s one thing I absolutely live for when it comes to pro wrestling, it’s weddings. Because they almost always take place in the ring itself, you’re guaranteed a bunch of goofy fights leading up to the ceremony, often taking place in the middle of the wedding isle, which is actually the ramp that leads into the ring, and usually between the bridesmaids. But the real drama is between the groom and bride to be; either it’s a couple madly in love or some bad guy marrying some good guy’s girlfriend against her will because her man lost a match beforehand. So when the priest goes ?If anyone has any objection as to why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, please speak now or forever hold your peace?, you just know there’s gonna be a fight, either to set things right or fuck things up, and if you’re lucky, someone gets tossed right into the big, super expensive looking wedding cake. Yet this time around, on WWE Smackdown, the ceremony took place before the show started, so the actual program was the wedding reception, which is quite the change in form! Both the new husband and wife were the two main bad people of the program, so for two hours they had the people they hate the most get beat-up in assorted matches. Things ended with the brand new husband’s PPV opponent showing a video the night before the wedding of him fucking the wedding planner. It was awesome.
Afterwards was this one nervous, nerdy dude that has a call-in show that talks about comic books and new age junk. I managed to get on the air and asked him what he thought Batman would do if there were a shock jock radio personality in Gotham similar to Michael Savage and if he said the same things about children with autism. That didn’t get much of an answer, so I then asked, if there was an All-Star game in Gotham, similar to what we just had in NYC, which Batman villain would try to do something, and what would he or she do. And later one was the angry, black psychic dude, but I didn’t even bother to try calling him; he’s just way too popular.
Saturday was once again the Siren Fest, which I’ve been going to since it first started, I think eight years ago? And each year I catch less and less of the event (because each year it’s less and less interesting), though this time I managed to COMPLETELY avoid the whole thing. Instead. I simply hung out with Joe Simko, June, and Joe’s buddy from back home John on the beach, where we tossed the frisbee around. Most exciting part? When some asshole tried to jack our shit (we were some ways away from out spot and the crowds, since we didn’t want anyone to get hit by an errand flying disc). Dude dropped his towel or something onto our stuff, to give him an excuse to bend over and check out what we hand to nick, but thankfully June spotted him in time for Joe to scare away.
Because last year was supposedly the last one for Coney Island, before all the long proposed development finally went underway, I was expecting the place to be all torn up and completely different, but that wasn’t exactly the case. In fact, it was for the most part, exactly how it always is… in fact, there was a couple of extra rides, which is neat. Though overall, the place was just as grimy as usual, perhaps more so. The bathrooms in particular let out a nasty combined smell of marijuana and piss. And the boardwalk food was just as shitty as always; because the line at Nathan’s was so long, I had to deal with two lukewarm hot dogs and six soggy little fries for $9 from some shit shack, and was even more pissed when I came across some guidos selling fucking awesome dogs, two for just $3, across the street from the freakshow. Don’t even get me started with how overpriced the corndogs were. Which in the end, made not reaching 100,000 in Ms Pac Man not such a bad thing overall. Oh, I guess the other highlight was the dude who you could dunk into a tank if you could hit the target with the ball. Had to pass that like ten times, and each time he kept calling out for me: “HEY FOUR EYES! WITH THE YELLOW SHIRT! YEAH, YOU!!!” During our final pass, Joe and I both pointed and screaming at him, like at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatcher (which I’m especially adept at… just ask Katie), which the dunk tank guy and his handlers got a real kick out of. But yeah, because it was so hot, even for Coney Island, we had to jet around 6, way earlier than usual.
The original plan afterwards was to have Katie join up with us (who didn’t go to Coney Island in favor of working on comics, and staying cool) and catch a movie, but because the subways were so goddamn fucked that day, it just couldn’t come together. Instead, we would stop by Joe and June’s and then head over to the Columbia University area for some dinner…. that was until their cat began to act very strange. At one point it began to meow very loudly, began to breathe heavily, and collapsed. It was a scene of utter panic, as Joe and June desperately tried to figure out how to attend to their poor kitty. Not helping was how it was Saturday evening and all the pet care numbers they had were not in service. On my end, I called the few folks that I knew that were experts when it came to helping animals, specifically Mike, whose sister is a vet, and Hilary, who has taken care of sick animals quite a bit in her time. In the end, the cat was okay… simply a victim of a heat stroke. But since leaving her alone was such an ordeal was simply not an option, we instead ordered Japanese and watched the Warriors on DVD, which John had never seen, plus a rather appropriate choice, given the day. And best of all, it was the non-director’s cut, without all those retarded comic book segues.
Can’t say much went down on Sunday. Again, because of the heat, Katie and I decided to stay indoors exclusively. We had plans to see Dark Knight… I was almost shocked to discover in the afternoon that some showings later in the evening were not sold out at that point… but passed. We’ll probably see it sometime this week; I hear it’s good, but for whatever reason, I’ve never been super excited to see it, and the current Bat-mania hasn’t really increased my interest level to be honest (I’m still more interested in catching Hellboy 2). I’m sure DK will be awesome, though when people say that Heath Ledger’s performance is Oscar worthy, I can’t help but roll my eyes. I guess I’ll have to see it for myself.
Instead, I decided to give the old Xbox 360 a spin, primarily the demo for Too Human, a game which I was only interested in checking out due to its creator, Denis Dyack’s clashes with NeoGAF. So how is it?
REVIEW: Too Human DEMO (Xbox 360)
It sucks. Not totally, but mostly. It’s basically a combination dungeon crawler and beat-em up that takes place in the future. In the demo you land on some hostile planet and attempt to explore and secure some ruins, but come face to face with a bunch of bad guy robots/creatures/somethings. There’s a few good things about the game, like how the dominant religion for your character’s world is the Norse mythology and not Christianity; given that it’s just a demo, there’s not too much backstory to judge, but there’s some definite potential there. And the bad things look really cool. But that’s where the highlights end.
First off, combat sucks. It’s a combination of melee attacks via a sword-type weapon, and long-range attacks via guns. Shooting is done with the shoulder buttons, which is just fine, but you swing the right stick to swing the blade, which always sounds great on paper but is rarely enjoyable in execution. Though what hurts things the most is the super awkward animations of everything. Too Human also suffers from too much shit going on; you are awarded experience points based on stuff you do, and can use them to strengthen various attributes, but I personally had no clue how to use them, nor what anything did. The menu system is a total mess, and its also annoying how one has to pause the game quite a bit to check stuff, but the whole process is SLOW. Graphics are okay I guess…. again, there’s the wonky animation, and the environments looks kinda okay, but also kinda incomplete. As noted, bad guys look cool, but there’s not enough variety (though I’ll let it pass since its only a demo). Though I can’t let the absolutely retarded enemy AI slide; for the most part, they just stand there like total idiots. Controls are strange; there’s a point where you click the right stick and the camera immediately zooms in and rotates around your character’s face. Okay…. Speaking of the camera, there was a point where I initiated some sequence where I jumped on some huge bad guy’s back and had ZERO idea what to do. It felt like some shitty attempt at doing a God of War moment, but instead of getting instructions on what buttons to press to fell a beat, you just stand there, on its shoulders, like an idiot. Even the audio is annoying; there’s all this annoying gibberish between your team, which is supposed to be immersive, but all it does is drive home how retarded your men are, who constantly bicker at each other or just “OH SHIT!” over and over again. Speaking of your retarded crew, and back to the shitty AI, they are of little help. Oh, and there’s a move called the groin ripper. And the all the female models in the game makes one wonder if anyone at Silicon Knights, the team behind the game, has ever encountered a woman in real life. Everyone looks like a prostitute, with WAY too much make-up applied.
… Since Katie noted that she had heard that AI in Dead Rising was pretty decent, and a whole lot cooler sounding that the one featured in Too Human, I decided to pop that one in, since it’s been a while. And all I can say is awesome game! Too bad I can’t tell what the fuck is going on due to it totally not giving a shit about standard definition gamers. Which is why I’m actually looking forward to the Wii version! But I’ll save the rest of the video game speak for my next post (kinda reneged on my keeping topics separate mantra already… oops).
