Soggy review.

So I mentioned that I rented “Wet”. Yeah, the demo may have reeled me in, but the over all game was not quite as reeling as I expected. The “bullet time” (ala Max Payne) or “tequila time” (John Woo’s Stranglehold), or whatever you want to call it, is pretty frikin’ (hah hah… my spell check suggests firkin’) awesome; but… It gets really old, really fast. I like the game. I just wouldn’t put it at the top of my “loved it” list. The graphics were very well done, and I’m extremely impressed with the soundtrack. To be honest, if there were actually a CD Soundtrack for the game, I’d buy it. The thing I was most impressed with is that the game plays out like an actual movie. This is a concept I haven’t seen much of in quite a while. My best example is “7th Guest” era and that one that came out for the Playstation (that’s PSOne, for you younglings) in its early days (“D” or something like that). I’m not talking a movie adaption game here, either. This is a story exclusive to the game… I could even see this becoming a movie someday (hell, Max Payne did it). Well, so long as Ewe Boll doesn’t direct it. To be honest, he’s not a bad B-Movie director, but that’s for a-whole-nother rant (and I do mean rant). The characters are well developed. Even Eliza Dushku voices the main character, Rubi. Eliza made her breakout in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” as well as rolls in miscellaneous movies along with more recent TV series like “Tru Calling” and, the currently running, ”Dollhouse”. She seems to work with Joss Whedon a lot. ;) Whoa… according to IMDB, her starlet debut was a voiceover part in 2 episodes of the the “Jem” cartoon series in 1986. Now that takes me back. :p~

So overall? Not a bad renter for solo players, like myself. The gameplay gets monotonous pretty fast, but if you can keep interested with the storyline, you’re good till the end. Unfortunately, I lost interest after two levels. Probably because I had just finished Batman before this (it is now on my “to buy” list). I rated “Wet” 6 out of 10 at Gamefly. It has an average rating of 6.5.

“Borderlands” is next on the list, but the availability is low so we’ll see what comes next. I still haven’t picked up “Halo: ODST”, yet. What is wrong with me?!? I’m not that broke.

 

l8rz.

A thankful day, and a reminder…

Yes. Like most everyone else, I’m going to post my Thankful Day givings and what I’m reminded of this one day out of the year. I find it completely tacky that it takes a simple holiday celebrating the founding of my Country to remind me of all the things I’m grateful for. This is something we should all do on a daily basis; however, we get so wrapped up in our societal misgivings and day to day transgressions. This wholeheartedly sucks, but it’s better than not remembering at all…

I can never make myself fully appreciate the love of my immediate family. They have supported, assisted and encouraged my trip through life in more ways than I can ever repay. Along with the creation of a family of my own, I have recently been adopted by a new “family” that has also accepted me (thanks to the love of my life) as a new member over the last year. You have all shown the unconditional respect and caring that I can only hope to return at some point in my life (if I haven’t already tried).

Even as I grow more irritated with the political stupidity of the masses that I must coexist around, I can still never fully express the respect I have for our militia and public service (law enforcement, fire department, emergency medical technicians, etc): the young and old of our men and women that give or have given their lives to unconditionally serving country and community (whether I fully agree with the reasoning or not). Your service has provided me with the ability to sit here and rant, celebrate, and/or complain about whatever I want without restriction. THANK YOU for doing what I’m not sure I could nor would do!

Last, I am thankful for video games. Without you I would be a completely unmanageable ball of stress that my love would never be able to handle. You provide me with a virtual release to mutilate enemies, rescue those in distress (mostly, damsels), and explore worlds I can only barely imagine. I am also thankful for computers. Without you, I would not have a career, a form of income for which to afford my video game addictions, nor this blog. ;)

 

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

l8rz.

Time for a little catch up.

After a loooong day of fixing computer issues, I’ve plopped me arse in a stool at Taco Mac. Nothing beats TM for their beer selections and TMI wings. The ultimate “come down” after a hard day at the office. I don’t know how long my battery will last, so let’s go with it.

Yeah, considering this is the “Ramblings of an IT” yadda, yadda, I’ve never actually posted anything relating to computers. Mostly gaming stuff. I spent an exuberant amount of time today trying to find a way to parse through a txt file, remove all the “newline” (EOL, CRLF, \n, etc) entries, and replace them with a space to put all the text on one line. I thought this would have been an easy task with sed or awk (I’ve been scripting in UNIX waaay too much lately), but it didn’t turn out as simple as I thought. If anyone has any insight on this, please fill me in. Also, I’m psyching myself up for learning PowerShell, WinRM, and WMI scripting for remote management of Server 2008 Core systems. Unfortunately, the other rigormaroo of day to day tasks just keeps getting in the way. As I find simpler ways to script things, I’m might be so inclined to start posting them here… if the answer isn’t already all over the interweb via Google. I will fill you in on a little secret. My newest Windows command line tool friend is ‘dsquery’. You can pull all kinds of info out of AD (that’s Microsoft Active Directory, for the computer illiterate) with this thing. And fast, too. Must faster than using the Active Directory Users and Computers MMC (dsa.msc) plug-in.

Ok, ‘nuff ‘puter talk. On to games (as usual). I’ve been moving through my Gamefly queue a little more now that life has settled down (sic stat: the new house is in a livable state). Don’t kill me on this one, but I actually rented Onechanbara. Yes. It was completely horrible; hence, the reason I added it to my rent queue instead of buying it. Graphics, soundtrack, cut scenes: it all sucked. The only plus? Gore. Tons and tons of bloody zombie splatter. I like to call it “stress relief”. Next! “Batman Arkham Asylum”. Now this one does not sux0rz. I’ll admit the Riddler challenges are annoying, but once you get used to how they are presented, they get pretty predictable and easy. If there weren’t so many, it’d be a Joke. Ha! Get it? Joke? … Nevermind. Just play the game. The voice actors do an astounding job (including Steven Blum, aka, Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Beebop). The graphics are schweet. Play control is… eh… But over all? R0x0rz! Oh, and Harley… H O T!! I have “Wet” as well, but it’s been sitting on the TV until I finish the Batman story mode. The demo was awesome. It was a little to reminiscent of Max Payne, but I’ll give more detail after I’ve played the full game.

Oh, and Gordon Biersch Marzen for the win! w00+!!

 

l8rz.