The lights, the pyrotechnics, the screaming fans, who doesn’t want to be a rock star? Frets on Fire is a game from the Finnish developer Unreal Voodoo that lets the PC user to become just that - giving him the chance to play the role of the guitarist or bass player from his favorite bands. While games like this have just recently been appearing on consoles, and been a long time staple of the Japanese arcade, the PC has been deprived of such experience.
Howdy, this is my first “entry” I guess you could say. I’m Mason a friend of Fullforce, who is a dick, gave me the ability to make posts on his blog. I suppose he did this because after he would make a complaint or a valid point I would shoot back with the phrase “Why don’t you blog about it.” So here I am.
Anyway.
If you watched Generation Kill you’d know, it’s finally came to an end. And how sad I am to see it go. This short little series was amazing and probably the best thing on since The Sopranos. If you haven’t watched the I’ll quote IMDB’s Summary and expand on it.
Generation Kill follows Rolling Stone reporter, embedded with The 1st Recon Marines chronicles his experiences during the first wave of the American-led assault on Baghdad in 2003. That reporter’s name was Evan Wright. After his experiences with the Battalion he returned home to write a book called “Generation Kill.” Which was turned into an HBO Mini-Series.
I can’t really put the show entirely into words due to the amount of epic that it spews. The ending really left me wanting more, not so much wanting more of an ending but more of the show. I wanted to hear more about these Marines and their lives. I wanted to hear more of their banter and how they adapt to eachother.
I can’t say much more except if you haven’t seen it you need to.
I stumbled across this list of the highest budget Video Games ever made.
The #1 slot is obvious, GTAIV was a huge undertaking. Halo 3, as well, doesn’t surprise at #5. Same for MGS4 (#4).
But Shenmue 2 at #2? I know Shenmue was a big game, and was very popular, but $70mil? That’s a lot. Especially back at the dawn of the new millenium, that must have been a huge risk on the part of the Shenmue 2 creators to spend so much. It didn’t pay off though, selling “only 1.2 million copies” and that every Dreamcast player would need to buy 2 copies of the game for it to be profitable. Woops! Looks like a gamble like that didn’t pay off, or someone didn’t do their sums.
Too Human, as well, at #3 is a worrying position to be. Too Human isn’t bad. It isn’t great, either. But it’s certainly not worth $80mil. (Wait, shouldn’t Too Human be at #2?) I appreciate they had to buy Unreal Engine 3 and then make their own engine (Because apparently UE3 isn’t a ‘working game engine‘ but who knows.) which would inevitably drive up costs. I feel sorry for them, I really do - I don’t expect Too Human to sell well at all. It’s a shame some of those megabucks weren’t spent on good advertising.
Halo 3 is interesting. $30mil was spent on advertising alone, with the other $30mil spent on the game, which probably makes it the most-spent-on-marketing game ever.
Killzone 2, as well, is fairly expected at the $40mil count. That will no doubt go higher when it comes to advertising, but as it’s PS3’s next big thing the $40mil count seems pretty standard.
Also, in other news, I got a stiffy over these awesome Fallout 3 videos. Possible spoilers ahead, mind. But it looks awesome.
I got my MSI Wind this Monday. Or rather, the rebranded (read: Cheaper) Advent 4211. It’s hot.
It’s so small too, so light. It’s going to be great for university. Typing on the diddy keyboard is still taking some getting used to but I’m forcing myself to use IRC on it so I get used to it as quickly as possible.
My only other gripe is that sometimes my thumb brushes on the touchpad when I’m typing, making bad things happen as I type somewhere I don’t want to, or some bind is pushed. Luckily though there’s a button to turn off the touchpad, which is nice.
The webcam is great, too. 1.3 Megapixels isn’t huge, but it’s got a great refresh rate (or whatever it’s called) and copes well in good light. And the in-built microphone is great, too.
I plan on buying the 6-cell battery when it comes out, but as it is, with 3 cells, i’ve had no problems with the battery life.
In terms of performance, it’s great as long as you don’t expect too much of it. I put Adobe Photoshop CS2 on as test and that kind of killed it a little bit. But for word processing, web browsing? It’s great. It’s also great watching videos on it.
Wow, what a weekend! I apologise in advance for the terrible pictures that I got of Alphabeat and Scouting for Girls. I didn’t have a camera on Saturday but on Sunday all I had was a crappy 2megapixel thing that was only cool in 2002. I’ll see what I can get from my sister’s phone later.
Day 1 (Saturday)
Arrived in good time to Hyland’s Park, lined up, etc, got right in. We headed right towards the main V stage to see Michael Franti and Spearhead, who were really awesome, especially considering the relatively small crowd.
After, we saw The Futureheads, one of my favourite bands. They were brilliant, especially towards the end. Really good stuff!
We saw Lostprophets next, and they were really good too. Got the crowd all involved, and sounded brilliant too.
Maximo Park were up next on the main stage, and they were pretty good too. Some sound issues marred the performance, as they sounded a bit weak, but they were still great.
Next we moved over to the 4Music stage to see The Hoosiers who were damn awesome, and put on a great performance.
Right after, we stayed for Newton Faulkner who was downright awesome, spending much of the time on the stage completely alone and being a one man band, turning his acoustic guitar into a drumset all on it’s own. We even got treated to a “You spin me right round” cover. But he was awesome.
It was getting late once Faulkner was done, so we headed towards Stereophonics on the main stage, which was packed. We tried to get forward but simply couldn’t. Hundreds of thousands of people were there and it was crazy. Stereophonics were great, too. I’m not a huge fan of theirs but I recognised some of their singles. Very enjoyable, even if being crushed to death wasn’t.
Muse were the headline act for the night, and we moved forward in the gap between the two bands to get as close as we could. And it was worth it - Muse were phenomenal. They were downright amazing. Easily the best live act I’ve ever seen and they were just awesome.
Day 2 (Sunday)
I started the day off by heading to the main stage to see The Stranglers who were pretty good. Right after, I headed over to the EA setup thing to see if I could wrangle a go on Mercenaries 2, but it wasn’t there, contrary to what I had read. Shame.
As I wandered around, I caught a bit of Squeeze on the main stage and The Rifles on 4Music. Both sounded great.
I headed to the JJB Tent-thing to see Gabriella Cilmi, who was pretty good. But I wanted to be in there early for Alphabeat who were on right after. And they were brilliant! Really really fun to see, they were incredibly loud too. Great fun and great seeing them live. The one word to describe Alphabeat would be ‘Electric’.
We headed over to 4Music to see OneRepublic who were pretty damn good - very slick, very well performed.
Scouting for Girls were without doubt the highlight - they were downright amazing, with thousands and thousands of people turning up to see them. They had such a command of the audience it was crazy, and it felt like everyone was behind them and it was astounding. The sheer energy in their performance drove the audience crazy.
I decided to call it a day after that. Although some more cool acts were coming up later (Kaiser Chiefs for one) I didn’t feel like staying for much longer. Overall the weekend was awesome, though. Truly amazing.
