Our attempts at Public Assembly were dismal at best, due in part by Chris’ lack of having played a RE game before, let alone the one that would probably help most RE4. He commented a few times on how he was less than pleased about the having to stop and aim – but as I told him, “it adds to the tension and keeps it from being Halo with t-virus infected las plagas victims” to which he responded “huh?” Kids.

Anyway, I’m going to try and get a few other friends to load up with me in the next few days and see if we can’t get both “Public Assembly” and “Shanty Town”, neither of which Chris and I were able to get through last night.

Finally today I beat the chainsaw ganado (not sure what to call it, but I think the term still applies) that ends the level and I have to say it’s much more difficult doing that with two characters whose asses you have to watch and make sure don’t die. As to be expected in the solo campaign ammo conservation is freaking time consuming, with the new inventory system, and frustrating, because your idiot partner decides she needs all the ammo – tell you what, chickie, how about I pick up the ammo and give you some if I think you need it, otherwise stay out of my way and try not to catch a chainsaw to your head.

-Tyler

The way Chris Redfield (yes, Resident Evil’s Chris Redfield) runs and moves feels a little more clunky than Leon did in RE:4 and I can’t tell exactly why. The controls feel out of place on the 360′s controller and the sense of longing for the GameCube’s controller constantly bashes me over the head as I think “man… I remember maneuvering much easier in 4.” Another thought is that possibly they’ve slowed Chris down a bit because he is a bit bulkier than Leon was – in fact, he’s not just a bit bulkier, he’s HUMONGOUS. The guy has shoulders so large no wonder Sheva has a problem standing next to him, he’s too damn big. Not functional.

Hopefully the control complaints will be silenced later tonight when I’m hoping to hook up with my friend Sweet D on XBL for some co-op action if I can find my old headset.

More to come.

-Tyler

Resident Evil 5 website

RE5 link on XBL: download the demo!

The story is pretty much the standard for the Resident Evil franchise – something has gone horribly wrong, the T-Virus is let loose and someone we have played in previous games is there to fix it all.

Glenn, Miller and Kennedy

This time it’s Claire Redfield and Leon S. Kennedy, seemingly right out of Resident Evil 4. The movie is like one long RE cutscene, which isn’t bad I just felt like I should have a controller in my hand for some of those awesome contextual button presses we all know so well from RE4. Paul Mercier and Salli Saffioti are back voicing Leon and Hunnigan (respectively) as well as Alyson Court as Claire Redfield, not having voiced the character since Code: Veronica in 2000.

All in all, the movie is fun and set in a universe I love (but am not all that familiar with, having only played about 3 of the titles) and should be given a shot – I wouldn’t say it’s a buy, unless you’re completely obsessed. But if you are completely obsessed you would have already bought it when it was released December 27th! Otherwise just pick it up at your local video store (if they’re cool enough to have a copy and the rest of your city/town/area is lame enough to leave it on the shelf for more than 5 minutes.)

-Tyler

garfield minus garfield – Jim Davis/Dan Walsh (5 days a week)

What happens when you take Garfield out of the Garfield strips? You see a very manic depressive Jon Arbuckle. And it’s hilarious. The strips artwork are the classic Jim Davis Garfield strips with Garfield edited out (hence g-g.) Not much to say other than I get quite a few kicks out of reading this comic, every day it posts I range from a hearty chuckle to almost falling out of my chair laughing.

Ctrl + Alt + Del – Tim Buckley (3 days a week)

I’ve been reading CAD for a few years and I really love it, and it’s been a love-love relationship. I love the stories and humor Tim weaves. There’s a few different characters and plot threads, there’s the main story – that has Ethan, a gamer who is not too bright sometimes, his friend/roommate Lucas, also a gamer, the smarter of the pair, also Lilah, a girl gamer. There’s a larger cast than that, and they even have an animated series! The characters are lovable and genuine. Check it out.

-Tyler

Now the cool thing about webcomics is that they’re comics… free on the web. I read quite a few on a regular basis and I’m going to break them down, on regularity of updates. I won’t be grading them or anything, as anything I read is already so freaking awesome it’d be off any pre-established ranking system thus meaning I would be forced to create a new one – and I’m lazy.

The Devils Panties – Jennie Breeden (6 days a week, Sunday nude drawing class pictures)

I’ve been reading this comic almost as long as I’ve been reading webcomics and I love it. Jennie’s art style is pleasing, she’s very talented but where the comic really shines is the writing – she takes stuff that has happened to her, or around her in her real life and just translated it to a 3-5 panel comic that always proves to be utterly hilarious. She’s a cool person, her webcomic deserves a little more attention, she’s got an actual book she puts out (something up with publishing lately, I think) that also warrants some attention. In addition to all that, if she wasn’t overworked enough, Jennie stopped doing her blog but started a vlog on youtube that is great – she’s so cute when she geeks out!

PvP – Scott Kurtz (5 days a week)

Kurtz is a funny man and it’s been great seeing his art progress. Every time his comic updates it’s like a little Christmas for me, they’re always funny and the art is great with crisp, clean lines and no colors (that doesn’t bother me at all, infact, I actually prefer it as just inked lines.) I recently mentioned Scott along with Mike & Jerry aka. Gabe & Tycho respectively, a few months back in a post about D&D and apparently they’re going to be recording a new session with Wil Wheaton – yes, THAT Wil Wheaton. I can’t say enough about PvP; it’s a great comic, I love how easily followed the continuity is and watching Kurtz’s art style evolve over the years.

I’ll post more later, this is all I had time for before class only 3 more days left!

-Tyler

Music I listened to while writing this post: ▼

With Dr. Horrible I wanted to wait until I had seen all three episodes before I said anything about the series – I imagine most people have already seen this, but if you have not do it now!

There’s also a primer comic introducing you to Captain Hammer on myspace of all places, written by Joss’ brother Zack and put out by Dark Horse. Read that as well.

Short review because I’m tired:

Let me just say that this is possibly the funniest, and saddest, musicals I have ever seen – the first two acts are extremely funny (I would say the bulk of the fun songs are in the second act) and the third has the darker sense of humor I relate to the 7th season of Buffy. Neil Patrick Harris is absolutely amazing as a super-villain and Felicia Day is amazingly expressive. Nathan Fillion also plays a awesome stupid/stuck-on-himself superhero.

–

How great this mini-series was makes it more difficult to have to decide between it and the Ghostbusters panel on Friday at Comic-Con, sadly I think I’m going to have to go to the Ghostbusters panel – it’s the main reason I got everything set up for SDCC in the first place.

Hopefully there is a Dr. Horrible or Mutant Enemy booth and I will be able to get a copy of the DVD (signed by the main cast?) while at the con.

-Tyler

The show kicked off with a short introduction and went right into “Piece Of My Heart” (which is a little overplayed, but still fucking rocked.) There were two girls who played Janis Joplin, one was a narrator of her writing and the other was the singer – who also ended up helping out in the narration, and who also served as a visual show of the duality of Janis Joplin’s personality, she was the on stage personality. I wish I had found out the name of the singer because her voice was… amazing to say the least.

At a lot of the shows my buddy Kevin and I go to we end up being either the youngest or close to the youngest – we saw the Kingston Trio in Carmel-by-the-Sea a few years ago we were almost the youngest people in the crowd, save for a 7 year old that we were informed looked “none too happy to be there”, but because of that and a woman we met there (who ended up being the fiancée of one of the Trio) we got to meet the guys after the show. Of course, I really thought Janis was far from exclusive to the older crowd that these kind of events seem to generate. It was a very well put together show, with great narration and excellent singing.

Best musical I’ve ever seen.

-Tyler

First: Overall I thought this was an okay movie, but it certainly could have been better. This movie suffered from what I like to call the “King Arthur” syndrome – the movie would have been a fucking awesome movie if it didn’t have anything else to do with King Arthur. Just like King Arthur, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” could only have only benefitted with having nothing to do with the Indiana Jones series – the story was compelling enough, and fun (but a little too over the top in a couple scenes, but I’ll get to those later (there will be spoilers, beware), the fact that they got Karen Allen back to reprise her role from “Raiders” is commendable.

Recasting characters is one of my biggest pet peeves with movies, case and point: “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” or as I affectionately refer to it “Terminator 3: The One That Doesn’t Exist”. In T3 I really think Edward Furlong should have been back to play the role of John Connor; he was the right age, and HE’S JOHN FUCKING CONNOR!

Anyway, there were a few scenes that would have been entirely beyond belief for me had I not been on my way to drunk and I will list them here as obscurely as possible for people who have seen the film and to not ruin anything for those people that haven’t seen it yet: the fridge, waterfalls, “George of the Jungle”. At those points my mind just kind of checked out and it left a foul taste in my mouth, one I would much rather have not tasted. It wasn’t vomit from too much booze.

There certainly are other things that both me- the main story didn’t bother me, but the resolution of it bothered me. I have thought about why these things bother me, and I came to one conclusion; George Lucas only makes sequels to his movies to put a giant buttplug in his fans asses. He likes to see them squirm, when he does these things he thinks “what would really make them uncomfortable? Oh, right! Something uncharacteristic of my previous attempts at this franchise! And IcyHot as lube for when I put this ungodly huge thing up their asses.”I’d say the final verdict is that if you’re dead set on seeing this movie in theatres then do so, but just realize that there are true evils that lie within the celluloid and they make fansboys cringe and attempt to hang themselves with their limited edition Indiana Jones bullwhips.

-Tyler

NIN: The Slip

NIN’s first full free album, The Slip, was released a couple of days ago and I’m just getting around to listening to it for about the 3rd or 4th time so I figured I’d give it a short review.

Here goes, this is what I was expecting from Ghosts. Now, don’t get me wrong- I really enjoyed Ghosts I-IV, and I didn’t mind paying for $5 for II-IV. Hell, I wouldn’t have minded $15 or even $20 for Ghosts. It was just an instrumental album, which isn’t what I was looking for in the Ghosts release, however, it makes a wonderful background soundtrack for when I need to study.

When I hear about a new nine inch nails release I don’t expect an album like The Downward Spiral, or The Fragile, because I know Trent Reznor is a guy who likes to make something then to move on and not sit and dwell on the past. The guy has put out some amazing frickin’ albums, my favorite of which is The Fragile. I expect something innovative, original, and beautiful, from them every time the make a release- which I feel we got from BOTH Ghosts I-IV and The Slip.

-Tyler