Whoo Hoo More Rush

Working Man was one of the new songs available for purchase today. We also recently found out that–in a situation I never could have imagined when I was living in Edmonton–Rush will be giving a “hometown” concert here in Toronto in a few months.

Wow. Seeing Rush as a “local act.” Never thought I’d be able to do that. Life is weird…

More To The Pile

The Wife was in one of her “Let’s go to both ends of the spectrum” sort of moods, and so a trip to Eaton Center for a little shopping (and a pre-order payment for October’s LittleBigPlanet) resulted in the picking up of two distinctly at odds Blu-Rays to add to our collection:

The Wife is pretty much a documentary nut.  High-Definition has merely ignited this interest to orbital capable proportions now that everything looks so damn gorgeous.  So after the BBC pretty much knocked it out of the park with what is probably the most beautiful documentary in existence right now, Planet Earth, it was only natural that more favor would be bestowed on further High-Def outings.  Galapagos is it.

I don’t really have much in the way of a burning desire to ever visit these islands off Ecuador, but after watching the first episode of this three part series, I almost feel like I’ve been there myself anyway.  The photography is truly amazing, and you really have to wonder just how long those crazy bastards huddled around in tents hoping to get some of these shots, or whether they nearly died getting the imagery of live volcanoes spewing magma into the air.  Whatever the case, this is a gorgeous series.

This on the other hand, continues the Wife’s continuing need to revisit the simplicity of 80′s movies.  We talk about this on and off, and it seems like one of her chief complaints about current film making is the need to make movies, cinematography, characterization and plotting dark, gritty and complex.  The 80′s, on the other hand, simply tried to emulate a Nagel album cover and if that was achieved visually, it was more or less considered mission accomplished and the fun continued without a care for deep n’ profound plotting that might just net an unconventional Oscar nomination.  Despite all this, however, she has never actually seen The Lost Boys, which I personally associate with a lot of Goth Girls mooning over Kiefer Sutherland and endlessly replaying Cry Little Sister by Gerard McMann.  I haven’t seen this movie in years, so I’m curious to see if it’s actually going to hold up to a post-millenial revisitation.

Another Boring Wednesday

Some gaming, some reading, some writing. That’s it.

And Now I Weep

96% on Green Grass & High Tides before the crazy triplet sequence at the end annihilated me. So… damn… close…

I probably won’t hit that percentage again for another two months…

Oh. My. God.

It looks like Harmonix has managed to snag the Beatles for Rock Band 2.  There’s already confirmation from the Wallstreet Journal no less.  Part of me is happy because it’s the Beatles, and part of me is happy because it’s not Neversoft or Activision who have been killing my former beloved franchise since they got it.  At least with this, there’s the guarantee that the songs won’t be needlessly overcharted with phantom notes for the sake of difficulty, since Harmonix cares more about the music than they do about leaderboard competition and bragging rights.  This is great news to go along with the fact that Guitar Hero:  World Tour seems to fare badly in reviews even in comparison to the original Rock Band, with bizarre design choices such as the fact that songs you unlock with a single instrument are confined to that instrument.  In other words, if you’ve unlocked every song on guitar, you STILL can’t go into band mode and play all those songs, you have to go into band mode and play all the songs AGAIN to unlock them, UNLESS you’ve got an exclusive cheat from a game retail pre-order offer that unlocks all the songs for you.  Otherwise, legit players will have to play through once to unlock all the songs on guitar/bass, play through again to unlock them for drums, play through a third time to unlock vocals and play through a final time to unlock them on Band Mode.  This, apparently, is how hardcore gamers do it, and since Neversoft is all about the gamer achievements and doesn’t actually give a crap about music or enjoyment, this is the way they’ve done it, versus the Harmonix way of one instrument unlocking the songs immediately for access in band mode.  On top of that, the music creator mode in Guitar Hero:  World Tour is getting a lot of knocks for a) being too complicated, and b) offering bad quality MIDI sound. It doesn’t help that the Neversoft director Brian Bright has been doing horrible PR for the game, coming off as rude, arrogant, and constantly bashing Harmonix and Rock Band while Harmonix itself has tried to be as diplomatic as possible when it comes to discussing their competitors.  It’s nice to see that the jock/bully in this equation is actually getting some karmic justice while the nerdy kid gets rewarded for being passionate about his interests rather than worrying about popularity, greed or ambition.  I hope this is a black eye for Activision, Neversoft and Red Octane that they don’t soon recover from, bullies like that deserve a beat down once in a while to remind them they’re not God.

First Big Feature

It took a while, but today, IGN finally put the first of a two part feature on their Insider section that I wrote. Whoo hoo, not an interview, not a news piece, but an honest to gosh old fashioned Gamer’s Rant by yours truly. Hopefully this won’t be the last. Unfortunately, no one can read it unless they have a subscription to IGN Insider, but here’s the introductory link.

Evil Cute Games

I THOUGHT this game was going to be a nice, relaxing, stress free experience that would make a slow-paced, change of gaming styles when I bought it and downloaded it off the Playstation Store. That assumption couldn’t be further from the truth than a belief in weapons of mass destruction cached away in Iraq. Pixel Junk Monsters belies its cute exterior with one of the most rapid and pulse pounding kinds of gameplay, the likes of which I haven’t experienced since my younger arcade years, frantically trying to avoid being eaten by Sinistar. The simple premise of protect your cute little house from advancing waves of monsters by creating towers to kill them goes all out in testing your reflexes, timing, strategic and tactical thinking all at a pace that can only be described as “As quickly as the human brain will allow.” In minutes I went from “Aw, what a cute looking game,” to, “I’m going to have a stroke.” HOLY HELL, IS THIS GAME HARD…

New Toy

Surprisingly, most of today was spent watching the Wife come to grips with the creator mode of LittleBigPlanet .  In retrospect I should not have found this so unexpected, but it’s still gleefully weird to see her being so hardcore about wanting to create her own levels.

No Boxing For Us

Although I did spend some time trying out the co-op mode with a friend one of the new gifts.

Errands On Saturday

Just another weekend in Toronto. Galleries were visited, art supplies purchased, Chinese food consumed and sore feet all ’round by the time the visits to Queen Street West, Kensington and Chinatown were all done.