Don't Bore Us, Get To The Chorus

On @highlinenyc with @hillbillyor @oottoot &...

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 23:12:56 -0400

On @highlinenyc with @hillbillyor @oottoot & @delectabledoyle. Too many @’s? #nyc (Taken with Instagram)

Bronx. (Taken with instagram)

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:12:00 -0500

Bronx. (Taken with instagram)

Game over, man!

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:32:00 -0500

Game over, man!

Top Films of Fall/Winter 2011

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:26:20 -0500

1. 50/50

2. Moneyball

3.The Muppets

4. The Ides of March

The Future Is Unwritten.

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 23:11:44 -0500

The Future Is Unwritten.

Rage - Review

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 02:04:00 -0500

Rage (id Software)

Great artists have prolific periods in their career when they produce their best work. They also have the “fall from grace” period, when they lose their way and struggle to reclaim the magic of their past work.

id Software had their prolific period in the 1990s, inventing the first person shooter, revolutionizing the gaming industry and producing Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake.

Sadly, id is in their “fall from grace” period. Rage, while a competent and beautiful post-apocalyptic shooter, doesn’t live up to the legend of id, and shows a development house struggling to adapt to a modern era.

Loved:

- Side of Wings Please!

Rage features all the weapons you’d expect in a first person shooter. Pistol, shotgun, sub-machine gun, machine gun and rocket launcher. What gives Rage some jazz and differentiates itself from the crowded FPS market, is the side weapons.

The most effective of these weapons is the wingstick. Wingsticks are boomerangs from hell, allowing you to decapitate any mutant, bandit or solider that crosses you in the wastelands of Rage. If you time and aim correctly, your wingstick is returned and resources aren’t wasted. You can also fire your primary weapon AND throw wingsticks, as they are controlled by the left trigger on your controller. Throwing these suckers around and seeing heads explode was one of Rage’s highlights.

- DeathKart 64

The dark horse gameplay of Rage is the vehicular combat and racing. Rage is a partially open world game, and there are two main towns you inhabit: Wellspring and Subway Town. The only way to get around is a vehicle. You start out with an lowly ATV, but you acquire upgradeable vehicles as Rage progresses.

Wellspring and Subway Town have races that you enter to win certificates to upgrade your vehicles. There are several different types of races: Time Attack, Racing, Rocket Racing and Pulse Racing. The vehicles handle very well and the vehicular combat is excellent. There’s been a real dearth of car combat games for Xbox and Rage fills the void nicely.

- Reality TV

Rage’s best sequence comes in Wellspring. To complete an early story mission, you need a Cuprino, one of the vehicles in Rage. To get a Cuprino, you must win a race. But in order to race, you need a corporate sponsor. Sounds like American electoral politics, right?

You find your corporate sponsor at Mutant Bash TV. It’s a reality show where the participant, you guessed it, kills a bunch of mutants. To win the Mutant Bash TV sponsorship, you must star and survive an episode.

Rage’s pacing is slow and follows one formula throughout the game. You get a mission from a lifeless character then you travel to the destination. You kill a bunch of enemies, walk, kill some more enemies, walk some more, kill a few more enemies, pick something up and drive back.

Mutant Bash TV was the only mission with kinetic energy. It was an exciting level! There were brights lights and constant action! I played another episode after I won the sponsorship just for kicks. Mutant Bash TV was essentially several monster closet levels that culminated in fighting a giant mutant squid hybrid, but it was fun! I wasn’t bored playing Rage, but I wish id brought the same level of pace and excitement to the rest of the campaign.

- AI That’s Actually Intelligent

Rage features the best artificial intelligence I’ve seen. Mutants dart across your line of sight and climb on ceilings to avoid fire. Bandits and soldiers do a great job of getting behind cover and using the environment. Enemies never walk in a straight line or leave themselves vulnerable for a kill shot.

Most publishers like to market their in game AI, but very rarely do they deliver on their promises, i.e. Crysis 2. id Software has cracked the code for realistic enemy artificial intelligence. Hopefully, they can incorporate this fantastic technology in Doom 4.

Hated:

- What’s In A Name? (Everything)

Your character doesn’t have a name. As Rage begins, you awaken from an Ark after an asteroid collided with Earth. You are then rescued by Dan, voiced by Walter Shoback. But you are never told who you are, your back story or anything to make you personally invested in the character.

There’s also a government army you fight in the second half of the game. Their name? The Authority. Later, you join up with some rebels in Subway Town to take on The Authority. Their name? The Resistance. I guess The Empire and Rebel Alliance were taken.

It comes off lazy and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Rage has been in development for seven years and they couldn’t hire a writer with more imagination?

- Waiting to be Saved

Rage’s game saving process is completely broken. The game only auto-saves as you leave a destination. The dungeons you fight in are long and are filled with enemies.

It seems logical that id would place save points throughout them, right? Unfortunately, id didn’t see that logic. To save your progress, you have to pause the game and go to the save menu. It doesn’t sound like much, but doing that 15 times during a session is clumsy and ruins any pacing Rage had.

- Take the Power Back

Rage is a first person shooter and developed by the people who invented the genre. Rage has problems, but you wouldn’t expect shooting to be one of them, right?

Sadly, no.

Save for the rocket launcher, the guns in Rage are criminally underpowered. I routinely had to pump 20+ rounds into enemies to kill them. Several pointblank shotgun blasts were needed to take bandits and Authority soldiers down. I’m all for making games more challenging, but the whole point of shooters is having powerful weapons, right?

- Really, that’s it?

Rage’s final level is poorly designed and executed. Next to Crysis 2 and Bulletstorm, it might be the most anticlimactic finish to a game this year. It consists of traveling to Capital Prime, The Authority’s base, and fighting mutant/Authority hybrids. That’s what Rage had been building up to: a hybrid of two enemies you fight. After you kill the hybrids, you press a button.

That’s it.

No final boss fight, no epic finish.

You press a button and the game ends.

Recently, developers either get lazy or run out of money to properly finish games. Crysis 2, Bulletstorm and now Rage have concluded with weak sauce endings. It’s an awful trend, and I hope this is the last I see of it.

81/100

This is a video my friend made about our trip to Occupy Wall...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:59:00 -0400

This is a video my friend made about our trip to Occupy Wall Street.

There’s a lot of disinformation out there about the occupation and I hope videos like this will help clear some of that up.

I admire what the occupiers are doing. I wish I had the courage of convictions they have. It takes a lot to take to the streets like they have.

Gears of War 3 - Review

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 22:20:00 -0400

Gears of War 3 (Epic Games)

Expectations are everything. If you expect greatness and greatness is not what you get, you are disappointed. If your expectations are low, and your experiences exceeds them, you are pleasantly surprised.

I had high expectations for Gears of War 3. Besides the Halo HD remake, this was the only Xbox exclusive coming out in the crucial holiday season. Gears 3 was also delayed 6 months from the original April release date just for marketing purposes. I expected big things! This was it! This was the final game in the storyline, I expected an epic conclusion.

While the game has impressive multiplayer options, Gears of War 3 was a letdown. Instead of going out with a bang, Gears 3 ends in a whimper.

Loved:

- I’m Glad I Have Live

I’m not a multiplayer guy. The only game I buy for mulitplayer is Halo. Most people treat games as a competitive, interactive sport. The reason I play games is for the campaign. I treat games more like interactive reading. An engrossing and lengthy campaign is what I want out of my neon green cases.

Gears 3 has a bevy of multiplayer options that would keep even a gamer like me satisfied. Gears 3 comes with competitive multiplayer and campaign score attack options. I didn’t play the campaign score attack, but the competitive player is a fun option for players turned off by the rapid and repetitive Call of Duties of the world. Gears 3 also features Beast mode, which puts you in the massive boots of the Locusts as you take on a COG camp. You start out as a lowly Ticker, but you make your way up to the massive Bersker. I played and beat the 12 waves of Beast Mode. It’s fun and a nice change of pace, but it won’t hold most gamers’ attention.

The main attraction of Gears 3’s multiplayer is the Horde mode. The replay value and length of this could’ve been it’s own game. The basics are that your 1 of 4 COG soldiers and you must survive 50 waves of Locust attacks. Each 10th wave features an increasingly challenging boss fight. You continually level up your character by building fortifications, helping downed soldiers and slaughtering Locusts. I reached wave 40 and I loved every minute of the 3+ hours it took me to get there.

If Rage and Arkham City weren’t out now, I’d still be playing Horde now.

- Use Your Pallet

Gears of War and Gears of War 2 were great games but had the typical brown and grey color pallet that have dominated this generation of games.

Epic Games thankfully used all the colors of the rainbows in Gears 3. There are beautiful mountaintop vistas, lush greens and vast oceans throughout the campaign. Most of the game takes places in daylight, which makes the violence look even more gruesome.

- Hop on Board

Gears 3 has a couple exciting on-rails segments to break up the stop and pop gameplay. There’s one fantastic sequence on a dilapidated highway as you pilot a machine gun on the back of a speeding truck. Locusts attack you from the front and the rear and it plays similarly to the highway scenes in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

The next sequence can only be described as taking command of a giant pig zeppelin and getting in a dog fight with some airborne Locusts. It’s thrilling and easily one of the more memorable sequences of the campaign.

- Should We Fire Onto The Civilian Population?

Your primary enemy in Gears 3 is the Lambent, which is essentially a zombified Locust that has been infected by Imulsion (Sera’s natural resource). It’s a nice change of pace, as the Lambent and Locust are no fans of each other either.

Towards the middle of the game, your COG team enters an abandoned city. Right from the outset, you can sense something is wrong. Soon, you realize the humans that inhabited the city have been infected by Imulsion. They are no match for your firepower, and it’s always fun to fight an underpowered enemy.

Hated:

- Let’s Go Under

I’ve always loved dinosaurs. They were a favorite of mine growing up and my fondness for them hasn’t diminished over time. I’ve also always loved sharks. Jaws was my favorite film growing up and my love for sharks hasn’t abated.

Recently, I’ve come to love prehistoric sea monsters, as it combines two of my favorite animals: the savage nature of a dinosaur and the stealth of a shark.

I knew going into Gears of War 3 there was an underwater sequence and I couldn’t wait to dive into waters of Sera. Surely, Epic Games would waken the child within me as I battled a giant sea monster in the waters of Sera.

Right?

Sadly, no.

The underwater sequence of Gears 3 is a letdown. It’s relatively short, which is surprising as the buildup to it is strong. It mainly consists of piloting a torpedo turret as kamikaze fish (Yes, I said that correctly) mines and a giant fish you have already killed twice in the series attack your submarine. The underwater sequence is poorly executed and the campaign never recovers from it.

- Martin’s Story

Like the previous games in the series, Gears 3’s story is a cobbled together mess. It’s completely incoherent and I had no idea why I was searching for guy X or why I was marching my way to destination Z. The action movie one liners throughout the campaign don’t help the proceedings either.

Epic makes an ill-advised trek into Pulp Fiction territory during the first act of the campaign, as the player takes control of Augustus Cole, another COG solider. It doesn’t make sense thematically, as Marcus Fenix is the only soldier to you play as throughout the rest of the game. Marcus is the only soldier you play as in the first two games as well. It’s a jarring change, and it took me out of the story. It seemed like Epic was scrounging for content, as the main focus of playing as Cole was fighting a boss you defeated as Marcus.

I guess I shouldn’t complain too much. Most people don’t play Gears of War for the story. Gamers plunk down $60 bones every three years to chainsaw Locusts in half. In this respect, Gears of War is The Transformers of video games. Graphically, both are state of the art. But cinematically, they are both disasters.

It’s a shame too, because the trailers for Gears 3 made me think Epic was going to be bold. The trailers hinted that all the characters you came to know and not care about were going to die in epic fashion. Sadly, only Dom dies and his death is hardly a surprise.

I wish more storytellers would take risks like the ones Epic hinted they might have taken in the trailers for Gears 3. My guess is they had an ending where all the COG soldiers died, but a boardroom decision was made to keep everyone alive for the inevitable sequel. That’s sad, as the best game of this generation, Red Dead Redemption, ended with the main character’s death. Instead, we get a cliched war movie ending, with characters celebrating and a blonde placing her hand over Marcus’s.

82/100

My Best Man Speech

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 09:08:00 -0400

I was a best man at my friend Dan’s wedding a week or two ago. Dan’s one of my roommates from school. It was my first time doing something like that. I felt like a grown up and it was a great night out.

As a best man, you are required to give a speech. Who started this tradition and why, I don’t know. Due to a healthy combination of alcohol, nerves and self-involvement, my speech was shorter than originally planned. But here it is, in it’s unedited glory:

“Ally, you look beautiful. As usual.
I’d like to The Timeks for a wonderful reception.

I’ve had a lot of fun tonight.

I met Dan about 7 years ago, we met through mutual friends.
Dan’s one of my best friends. I had four of the best of years of my life at Fordham and Dan was a big reason why.

He can be a difficult person to get hold of, but I’m thankful we became friends and spent so much time together. I couldn’t be happier for you guys. Congratulations and Ally, I’m going to be borrowing Dan once a year to watch The Big Lebowski. Take her easy dude..”

Smiles in Rock & Roll

Thu, 29 Sep 2011 23:29:00 -0400

I caught the Band of Horses gig at the Hammerstein Ballroom in August. It was a last minute show. The band had been opening for Kings of Leon but that tour had been cancelled due to Caleb Followills’ drinking problem. I’ve wanted to see Band of Horses for awhile, but I couldn’t bring myself to see them open for a band I despised. I also didn’t want to be surrounded by 10,000 Kings of Leons fans and have my hard earned (it’s not) money support such a dreadful band. I did that previously when I bought tickets to see Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains) open for Nickelback. I went through a big grunge phase in high school and I was desperate to hear some Seattle music live. It still bothers me that $80.00 Garville dollars went to Chad Kroeger.

So, the Band of Horses show… it was fun. My friend almost went toes up and fainted. But he got it together and we enjoyed the rest of the show. The crowd could’ve been extras in Pleasantville, not a very rock & roll crowd. I own all their albums, but I’m not 100% familiar with the Band of Horses catalog. Some of the songs I didn’t recognize, but what I noticed was how much fun the band had playing. Rock & Roll is supposed to be fun, and Band of Horses understood that. Ben Bridwell, the lead singer, and Ryan Monroe, the keyboardist, both were thoroughly enjoying themselves.

More often than not you don’t see too many smiles on stage. I noticed that when I saw Arctic Monkeys earlier this year. If you just watched their guitarist, Jaime Cook, you would’ve thought he was watching an Apartheid musical. I don’t know why that is. I think you can be serious about your work and still have fun at the same time.

We miss you, Kurt.

Top Films of Summer 2011

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 02:01:39 -0400

1. Midnight in Paris

2. Rise of the Planet of the Apes

3. X-Men: First Class

This is my dog Hooper. He doesn’t like poor people.

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 22:21:39 -0400

This is my dog Hooper.

He doesn’t like poor people.

Red Faction: Armageddon - Review

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 23:34:00 -0400

Red Faction: Armageddon (Volition, Inc.)

I didn’t think I was going to like the latest (and sadly final) entry to the Red Faction series, Red Faction: Armageddon. I thought it was going to be mildly entertaining, passable entertainment at best and the last game I played before the fall game season started.

I was wrong.

Red Faction: Armageddon was thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. It was an exciting and action packed adventure through the caverns and surface of Mars. While not without it’s problems, Red Faction: Armageddon is a worthy sequel to 2009’s Red Faction: Guerrilla.

Loved:

- Rebuild What Was Lost

One of Armageddon’s main and completely unique gameplay mechanics is the ability to the rebuild the environment around you. Some games feature destructible environments, the Red Faction series has always excelled in this field, but they have upped the ante in Armageddon. You can now rebuild the structures around you that you have just destroyed. This is all possible because of the nano-forge, a device strapped on the wrist of Darius Mason, the game’s protagonist. It’s pretty awesome to run across a bridge as it’s being reconstructed.

- Tools of the Trade

The majority of the enemies you face in Armageddon are aliens that live beneath the surface of Mars. Think the xenomophs from Aliens crossed with necromorphs from Dead Space. Their design isn’t particularly inspired, but the boys at Volition, give you more than enough weaponry to take the creatures down. There’s the standard sub-machine gun, shot gun and rocket launcher. The shotgun is a fantastic weapon in your arsenal and the reload animation harkens back to Terminator 2, as I felt like the T-800 riding a Harley with John Connor. The nano-forge also has offensive abilities, including a blast impact that launches nearby enemies into walls and a dead-eye mode which makes you bulletproof and have unlimited ammo for a short period of time. The game’s finest weapon is the magnet gun, which allows you to fire enemies into each other, take debris and fire it at an enemy or fire an enemy into an unforgiving Martian wall. Really, the magnet gun’s killing possibilities are limitless.

- No Let Down

Armageddon is buoyed by a strong third act, which features an on rails segment and several vehicle segments. During the final third of the game, I would complete an awesome segment and think, “Wow, that was awesome. That’s a great way finish.” But the game kept going, and building on its momentum. There’s a great sequence when you’re in a mining cart being pursued by Adam Hale, the game’s antagonist, whose piloting a giant mechanized spider. You then get to pilot your own giant spider, along with a jet and standard video game mech suit. All of these segments break up the campaign nicely and keep Armageddon from becoming stale.

Hated

- Who wrote this?

Armageddon’s script and story are laughably bad. The game was co-published by SyFy Games, and you can expect a script that mirror’s a SyFy Movie’s in cheese. The game is ridden with action game cliches: standard tough black guy best friend, busty love interest and a female cyborg guide. Sample line delivered without a hint of irony: “We lost a lot of good man out there.”

- The Terrorists Win

Red Faction: Guerrilla had a great political element to the game’s story. You were a terrorist and lead an uprising against an oppressive government regime, the Earth Defense Force. Game progress was gauged on how many structures of the EDF you could destroy. Now, because the game took place on Mars and the main character was white, you didn’t see any outrage from right wing ideologues protesting a game that was training our nation’s youth to become terrorists. Most video games steer clear of politics, but Guerilla did a great job of incorporating politics and current events into the game’s story. Blowing up buildings meant something. Sadly, Armageddon drops this element completely.

- I’ve Already Seen This

The majority of Armageddon takes place beneath the surface of Mars, and there’s no distinguishing any of the game’s environments. You just go from red cave to blue cave, which makes the campaign seem even more linear than it is. The game would’ve benefited from different environments and more trips to Mars’ surface.

86/100

I wish all subways had mosaics like this.

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:03:00 -0400

I wish all subways had mosaics like this.

Quotes

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:39:00 -0400

“Relationships form when you start having memories with someone.”

-Matt Garville, 2010.

Quotes

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 03:14:00 -0400

“Life’s successes and failures are determined by how well one adapts to change.”

-Matt Garville, 2010.

Shadows of the Damned - Review

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:02:00 -0400

Shadows of the Damned (Grasshopper Manufacture)

Shadows of the Damned is the most complete and satisfying game I’ve played this year. It features a lengthy 11 hour campaign, solid upgradeable weapons, a striking original art style, visceral combat, towering boss fights and a fantastic script.

The game tells the story of Garcia Fucking Hotspur (Yes, that’s his full name), a Mexican demon hunter whose girlfriend Paula has been abducted by Flemming (Satan) and taken to the depths of Hell. Yes, this sounds pretty similar to Dante’s Inferno. While Dante’s script was a liability, Shadows’ script shines. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, poking fun at the absurdity of the grind house influenced plot.

Loved

- We Cut Off Your Johnson

Traveling with you on this exhilarating adventure is Johnson. He’s a former demon and acts as your guide to hell. More importantly, Johnson transforms to various weapons to help you ward off the countless demons you encounter. He starts out as a torch, but Johnson upgrades to a pistol, shotgun and machine gun. Johnson is voiced by British actor Greg Elis, and brings a great levity and sense of humor to the game. He sounds like Stephen Merchant and is the best game companion I’ve had in recent memory. I found myself laughing at Johnson’s musings throughout my play through. Too often than not, games are way too serious for their own good. I hope developers take a cue from titles like this and Bulletstorm and bring some humor to their next titles.

- See The World

Suda 51’s version of hell is an original take and it’s not something I had seen before. It’s unfortunate, but many shooters tend to blend together. You start seeing similar levels and environments and your experience suffers. I did not feel this way with Shadows’ hell. This version of hell begins in an eastern European city and continues on through caverns, grave yards, libraries and a red light district where you traverse a gigantic, climaxing Paula.

Hated

- Sign on Aim

Although each weapon Garcia Fucking Hotspur (I’m going to say his name as much possible in this review!) has a laser sight on it, aiming and shooting demons is surprisingly difficult. It doesn’t hamper the game play too much where you want to throw your controller down and give up, but something is definitely off with the shooting mechanics. There were several occasions when I had my shotgun drawn and a demon was directly in front of me and my bullets flew right past the intended target. It can be a real issue during the boss fights which require you to fire at a vulnerable red vessel on the boss.

- Repeat Your Delivery

Shadows of the Damned has numerous boss fights and a decent amount of demons to keep you busy during your stay in hell. Unfortunately, you face the majority of those bosses MULTIPLE times throughout the game. Now, I don’t mind facing a boss more than once. I understand games are expensive to develop and we gamers cannot expect to face 20 different enemies in a single game. However, when you face the same boss 3 or 4 times, taking that boss down again and again becomes more of a chore than an exciting battle. X-Men: Origins Wolverine suffered from this as well, as you faced the same two bosses several times.

87/100

Top 6 Records

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:41:00 -0400

Oasis - Definitely Maybe

Nine Inch Nails - Year Zero

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

Nirvana - Nevermind

Soundgarden - Superunknown

The Clash - London Calling

Brett Easton Ellis

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 20:36:00 -0400

I finished Brett Easton Ellis’ last novel, Imperial Bedrooms. It’s a sequel to his first novel, Less Than Zero and is a blend of that and his last novel, Lunar Park. Expect disillusioned characters in sunglasses doing drugs, hooking up and a sinister undertone. It didn’t enthrall me like American Psycho, Rules of Attraction or Lunar Park did. However, Ellis can still capture the brutality humans are capable of.

U2

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:39:00 -0400

I caught the Philadelphia stop of the mammoth U2 360° tour last week. A friend from school had an extra ticket and I was happy to take him up on the offer.

I’m a fan of U2, not the biggest, but I do like them. I think they’re sincere and try their best each time out, whether that’s on record or on stage. That’s all you can ask from a rock & roll band.

Interpol opened the show, I wasn’t expecting much but they weren’t bad. I’ve heard mixed things about their live show, but they were good. It could’ve been due to the new keyboardist and vocalist, Brandon Curtis. Their sound had considerable muscle.

Onto the headliner, the band of the moment, and arguably the last 25 years, U2. The theme of this tour is space. The stage setup was the most elaborate one I’ve ever witnessed. It looks like a giant space ship with four legs. As the houselights went down, video of the band walking to the stage like astronauts projected onto the massive LED screen. Nice touch, guys.

The lights and visuals were exceptional. The LED screen descended and expanded into a spectacular multi-colored cone.

The set list was exceptional, too. Most of the tracks were from Achtung Baby, The Joshua Tree and All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Sadly, they played “Get On Your Boots”, perhaps the worst song U2 has recorded. They did however, play “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me”, the standout track from the Batman Forever soundtrack.

Perhaps, the band’s biggest feat, was making the gig feel intimate. And this wasn’t just another stop in the biggest tour in music history. Bono, The Edge, Larry and Adam accomplished that. They made everyone at Lincoln Financial Field feel that this was the most important gig of their career and nothing else mattered.