So at the zero hour of this PS3 exclusive, Sony has pulled it back because of the GRIM discovery that "one of the background music tracks licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Qur'an." That's a quote from SCEE about it. They go on to say "We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologize for any offense that this may have caused." Wait a minute. WHAT THE FUCK? What's the problem here? And why are they so apologetic about it? A billion people sing the Qur'an literally every day, and SCEE is acting like it's the goddamned Necronomicon. It kinda reminds me of how Obama gets "accused" of being a Muslim. And of course, he denies it vehemently. So what if he was? I mean, I guess this is a tired point to anyone with half a brain, but again (sigh), Muslims aren't evil people, Satan doesn't live within the pages of the Islamic holy book. Though it would be kinda cool if he did. Satan rocks. Praise Mohammad.
UPDATE 10/22/08 - So it looks like Penny Arcade went ahead and did a comic about just this. I still don't get what the big deal is.
So here are some awesome punk names, basically from the top of my head. I previously put this list on my Twitter in a fit of serial tweeting. But this is the innanet and things must be repeated. Especially lists. Lists are readable. So here's my top five. A countdown in order of awesomeness.
5. Land Phil This dude is the bass player for "thrash revivalists," Municipal Waste. Punk rock name wise, it's pretty basic. Just a good ol' pun. But hey, I do love me a good pun. PUNishment aside, Land Phil is worth noting here basically because of how fucking awesome Municipal Waste is. These guys shred way too hard to have fully visible hands. I saw the Waste in July, opening for AT THE GATES, which was among the best shows I've ever been to. Their shreddiness aside, Municipal Waste have a real knack for punk punz. Here are a few or their awesome song titles: Substitute Creature, Abusement Park, The Thrashin' of the Christ and my personal favorite, Beer Pressure.
4. Ross Sewage
So the place I'm posting from right now is pretty loud and I can't hear anything from my computer, but I guess this is ol' Ross drunk, talking about dog shit or something. He plays bass in Impaled and Ludicra. I've seen Ludicra a few times - they like to play Portland and the Northwest and stuff. They've played Ground Kontrol twice, which were among our biggest nights ever. Just a pretty good name. A slightly more artful pun than Land Phil, I think.
3. Park Bench So I can't find any pictures of this guy. He plays a tiny role with no dialogue in American Psycho. An "artist" named "Stash." But c'mon. Park Bench. That's genius.
2. Skip School Same as Park Bench - no picture. In fact, I've looked all over the innanet and can't find any mention of this mythical punk unicorn. I only know about Skip School because my friend Jakob mentions him in this pun-name conversation. For the life of him, Jakob can't remember what bank Skip is from. Which leads me to believe that Mr. School is beyond made up, and is errant PUN from the mist planet JOKE, manifested in Jakob's brain where he can enter our world under the guise of, I dunno, probably a bass player in a band that probably sounds a lot like Fear.
1. Frank Discussion I know. It's genius. I think that is the most hilarious thing I've ever heard. The guys calls himself Frank. Discussion. Just let that sink in for a bit. Anyway, he's the singer for domestic terrorists anti-establishment punks, Feederz. Those guys are pretty gnarly. Can't say I've seen them or even heard one of their records, but I'd like to. If they're half as good as their naming skills, these guys have to be nothing short of amazing.
JUDAS PRIEST - FREEWHEEL BURNING Who knew that one of my favorite Judas priest songs also looks like a typical day at work for me. Especially the dudes just totally headbanging as they're playing cabinets. Those dudes are my friends.
This chick makes time lapse photos of Tempest. That rules. Some of her other art is ok, too. Rosemarie Fiore
FUCK YES!! I'm flying missions next weekend! Got them shits preordered and pre payed-for suckas! Dear skies: next weekend, I'm going to be all up in you. Love, Daniel Ace Combat 6 wiki And here's the trailer. Oh man, I fucking love Ace Combat.
Ok. So if I should have written anything during my long absence from this blog, it should have been PAX. It took place August 24-26. In Seattle. It's a convention like none other. E3 has all the Japanese game debuts and stuff- announcements and so forth- but PAX is special in that it's a celebration of games and gamer community. It also isn't just for video games, it also covers tabletop and and card games. And Jenga, apparently. We headed up on Friday, the 24th. I stayed the whole time and left on Monday, the 27th, though some of my party left earlier. During this time I stayed at the glamorous Travel Lodge by the Space Needle. Next time you're in Seattle, I highly recommend their free parking and rough-around-the-edges charm. Plus you can't beat the ancient Zenith television that nearly exploded when I hooked my Wii up to it.
Friday - Wil Wheaton Keynote We started early. I had to round up some people down at Backspace. Once we had the whole party together there were five of us, packin it up from Portland to Seattle. I borrowed my dad's truck. Anyway, after checking in at the hotel and getting my badge and everything, we were kind of whisked away into the Wil Wheaton keynote speech at PAX. We hadn't been there five minutes and just went into herd mode. The herd was heading into the main exhibition hall where Wil Wheaton, yeah that one dude that played Wesley Crusher in Next Generation, was speaking. Apparently he keeps a pretty popular blog about video games. I think this might be it. I dunno, I've never read it. So his speech was okay. First off, I have to tell you there were about 5,000 people listening. The hall was packed, with people standing and everything. Mostly, he just stuck to the general gaming topics. He could be accused of crowd pandering, because at one point he was just spouting out phrases from video games for people to cheer at. He said "BEWARE, I LIVE" from Sinistar, and I was among the enthusiastic few who cheered at that one. "YOU HAVE DIED OF DYSENTERY" got a huge round of applause, but us Sinistar geeks are few and far between. So yeah, he reminisced a lot to former game generations waxed nostalgic of the arcade scene. A big point he made was that people should start arcades back up and revive arcade culture. That part was kind of frustrating for me. I wanted to stand up on my chair and scream "FUCK! JUST- AH! COME TO GROUND KONTROL!!!" As I type this I'm tending bar on a slow night here at the beer-soaked arcade I work at. All the crazy enthusiasm Wheaton's arcade love was met with just made me wish all those people came to Ground Kontrol. So yeah. He also get into the controversial stuff and addressed the gaming violence and the social aspects of gaming and yadda yadda yadda. Lots of Jack Thompson hating. Overall it was a lot of preaching to the converted and pretty much just saying what we were all thinking, but I guess that's the point of a keynote address. Here's a clip. No, I didn't film it and of course not, that isn't me talking to Wil at the end. It's just some dude that lives in YouTubeopolis.
SATURDAY I didn't go to PAX on Saturday. Instead, I went to my friends Garek and Christine's house and ate some delicious food. Then I slept on their couch. Then I walked over to Seahawks Stadium and attended their preseason home opener, where they handily defeated the Minnesota Vikings 30-13. With the awesome hookup from some awesome friends and the good folks at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I had the best seats I've ever had at an NFL game. 9 rows back from the 50 yard line. Which was pretty incredible. Saturday ended quietly with dinner at Cyclops and a chill night at the hotel with Flight of the Concords watching and YTMND viewing. Particularly the ones where people yell things, ala Metal Gear Solid. That shit is hilarious.
SUNDAY I woke up Sunday determined to attend PAX all I could. I showed up shortly after opening and went to this lame-ass Family Feud game trivia thing. It was sort of the sequel of the one I attended on Friday, but much bigger and much more lame. I didn't even stay for the whole thing. Instead, I milled around the show floor and played everything I wanted while collecting swag. I still have the giant swag bag in my apartment. I haven't really gone through it yet. What am I gonna do, proudly display the Lara Croft poster on my wall? Actually, maybe that's a good idea. I should put it in the bathroom. Wait a minute, probably not. My friend Connor told me that my bathroom reminds him of BioShock. That's an ambiance I wouldn't want to ruin. ANYWAY, we ended up getting hungry and went down to Pike place to eat, which ate precious PAX time. By the time we got back to the expo, it was pretty much closing up. And it was getting windy. Everyone left and I retreated back to the good ol' Travel Lodge by my lonesome. Having the hotel to myself meant ordering a strange Seattle pizza and going for a swim in a really dingy pool. With dried out chlorine skin, I drank Jim Beam and played Excite Truck and Ace Combat 5. Then my friend Drew came over. My night remained the same even with Drew there. Jim Beam, Ace Combat 5 and strange Seattle pizza.
I checked out Monday morning and drove back rather groggily. Ended up staying the night in Olympia with my old friends JP and Alison, which was really nice. We half-assedly watched the Monday night game and I ate food smothered in Dave's insanity sauce. JP has turned his garage into a bar, with a pool table and bar lights and stuff. It's rad. He also has this high powered pellet gun and we played of a few rounds of What Can We Shoot With This Surprisingly Powerful Gun? Then I watched some movies and fell asleep while their three dogs and four cats provided a gentle woofing and meowing white noise. That was a nice night.
This entry is no longer about PAX, and was too long several paragraphs ago. To learn more about PAX, here is their official site, and some Flikrs of the whole scene can be found here and here.
Sup. I haven't touched this blog since April. This is the obligatory "I haven't touched this blog in a long time" post. Just about every blog at this level has these posts. Not that there's been a shortage of things for me to write about, mind you. During the months that have passed with no entries I attended three gaming conventions, acquired an Xbox 360, Wii & PSP, and just generally continued my exceedingly interesting life that's often about video games. I could have written about any number of things that would fit in well for a blog that's mostly about video games, and I do intend to catch up. So why didn't I keep up these pages? Was there something that kept me utterly blocked and afraid to update a blog with no readers? Meh, not really. I just didn't feel like it. Plus my internet connection sucks.
Sup. I was at Fred Meyer yesterday and picked up a ten-dollar copy of Pinball Hall of Fame for the Gamecube. It was either that or get started on the Star Wars DVD set. Y'know, the limited edition ones with both the original theatrical AND the fucked up douchified versions? For some reason I've been putting off buying those. Seems like I would have had them already, considering my at times pathological love of Star Wars. That's kind of been in remission the past few years, though. ANYWAY, I made what may or may not have been the wrong choice and got Pinball Hall of Fame. It's kind of nice to have in my collection, but- well, here. Just read my review.
Crave really did try here. They did! And to be honest, they pulled off a perfectly admirable job. This game is made with care and dedication and is far more than a thrown together nostalgia cash in. From the simulated glass glare to the realistic background din of the arcade, all the extras are here in a reasonable sheen of developer polish. The goal of this game is a great idea, too. Reproducing actual tables for home consoles is something that I myself have never seen before this title, and it seems a great way to celebrate pinball's history and bring gamers into a different or perhaps reminiscent experience. Of particular merit is the choice to include such a diverse array of tables. Machines from every era (excluding the very recent) are present here. BUT- and you knew that was coming- Pinball Hall of Fame falls into the very basic and fundamental error of all pinball video games: pinball just isn't any fun with a controller! The very core of pinball and its appeal is the kinetic and physical activity of the real table, that of gamer vs. gravity. Despite the myriad attempts throughout the years- some better than others- a perfectly "valid" pinball video game has yet to be made. Metroid Prime Pinball comes closest, with it's creative worlds and modes, and the Space Cadet pinball that came with your copy of Windows is entertaining in its own quirky way, but to truly replicate the feel and experience of pinball has proven to be a futile effort. Crave's Pinball Hall of Fame is an admirable effort in its obvious love of its subject, but when the novelty wears off, which doesn't take long, all the gamer is left with is a nice little history lesson in the form of bad gameplay. Nice try, though.
I wrote that review for the GameFly user reviews section. I just started a membership with GameFly. We'll see how that goes.
Behold the billowing fog of a blog that no one reads. The dusty unyielding lack of posts. The eponymous Neurosis lyrics, misinterpreted. World Breaker. A fate worse than death, the icy fingers clawing your back.
World Breaker. The violent serpent that knows neither mercy or satiety, but is actually just a blog that's mostly about video games. No longer apologizing for lack of posts.
So at the zero hour of this PS3 exclusive, Sony has pulled it back because of the GRIM discovery that "one of the background music tracks licensed from a record label for use in the game contains two expressions that can be found in the Qur'an." That's a quote from SCEE about it. They go on to say "We have taken immediate action to rectify this and we sincerely apologize for any offense that this may have caused."
