I guess everybody knows that BioShock is awesome by now. If not… Get on the fuckin’ train man. I’m not really into shooters, but there’s so much to love about BioShock that there’s no way I could skip it. The funny thing is that for the longest time I just kept ignoring the hype around it, and a week before the thing launched I decided to give the demo a shot. It kind of goes without saying that the demo really sold me on it.
Oh! And also make sure to grab the soundtrack as well. It’s free!
I have uploaded a new article for your reading pleasure. Well, actually it’s more about the pictures than the words, so it’s classified under Pseudo-Articles. There’s another one like that coming soon, so stay tuned, I guess. As for now, I’ve got a comic to draw and a BioShock to play, so I’m out.
(Also, incase anyone got the wrong impression, that last post ended in a joke.)
Last Friday, it was revealed (sort of) that Princess Peach would be returning for the next Super Smash Bros game. That was kind of obvious, but there is a more interesting topic here!
Will her panties be remodeled as nicely too?
Now, I know that in the spirit of choosing a band I like for each Band of the Month feature, I generally end up recommending the band at the end. I guess this time it’s a bit different. I want to invest all my energies into recommending the Pink Spiders right now, before I type anything else. Seriously. Here’s their MySpace page, go there and listen to “Easy Way Out” and tell me you didn’t get up and start air guitaring like the world was going to end. But yeah. Now go out and buy Teenage Graffiti because it’s like the single best album ever… released in 2006. It’s amazing though.
The first time the Spiders and I came in contact was on a regular ol’ day. It was like a week before (the now totally lame) Pandora started denying their service to Canadians. I was just listening to it in the background, and suddenly “Easy Way Out” came on and I practically jumped on the computer desk wailing on my air guitar and singing along even though I had no idea what the words were.
I may be exaggerating a bit, but that’s of little importance.
The thing to note is that right then and there I knew I had to listen to more of The Pink Spiders, and wasn’t I pleasantly surprised to find that they were good for more than one balls-to-the-wall rockout song. Their eponymous first album was easy enough to get my hands on, and I wasn’t going to complain about it, because it’s a pretty slick package. Plenty of great songs, mostly powerpop with some great rock ‘n’ roll influence, and most of them are good driving songs too. Their second album, Teenage Graffiti was a lot harder to secure, and when I did notice it, I was hesitant to pay the asking price because a third of the disc is recycled from the first album. Big mistake. All the retreads are cleaned up and rerecorded, and sound even better than ever. The fresh songs are completely kickass too. Most notable are “Adalae” which I want to describe as vaudevillian, even though I’m not sure if it’s the right word to use, and “Hey Jane” which is right near the top of my list of greatest ballads ever.
But seriously. I cannot see how anyone couldn’t like this band. The songs are just so damn catchy, and practically demand that you sing along. You’ve gotta be pretty closed off to not be able to enjoy what is pure ecstacy condensed into musical form. Again with the exaggerating, but I really want to sell this band, man! If even one presons starts listening to the Pink Spiders because I told them to, then the world will be a better place.
I was playing Crackdown into the wee hours of the morning last night, and it was probably the best thing I’ve done all week. Near the end, I decided to go to the marketplace to snag some additional game content, and then when I was done playing, I revisited because it was Wednesday and new things come in on Wednesday. Now I don’t usually keep up with Marketplace updates, but this was a great day to check it out for two very important reasons.
The first thing I saw was new junk for Guitar Hero 2. Another new song pack from the first game? NO! Better! Three completely new songs! Now THIS is why I shelled out the $90+ dollars for the 360 version of the game. And they’re great songs too! …Well, I like them. They’re all songs from My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade. “Teenagers” and “Famous Last Words” are two of my favourite songs from the album, but they’re second-set songs at best (read: eeeeasy). “This Is How I Disappear” on the other hand, is respectably difficult, and while I personally would have rather had “House of Wolves” it’s still a fantastic track for Guitar Hero. In summation, if you hate MCR and love Guitar Hero, you’re boned. Har har har. Good times for me.
Less in keeping with the good times, but still significant to me, we finally get a Beautiful Katamari demo. I’ve watched the trailer like… well, just the one time I guess, but I’ve still been itichin’ to get my hand on summa dat Beautiful Katamoori. On the downside, it’s a pretty short, bare-bones demo. Oh well, at least it’s something to quell the itch to roll until November or whenever the game is supposed to come out. Or, you know, I could go back and actually finish the other three games, but the PS2 games are both just collection headaches now, and the PSP Katamari is annoying, so I don’t think so.
Oh, and something about Metroid Prime 3… Uh… that Aurora video is cool, but I guess the entire rest of the internet came to the same conclusion like two days ago. Prime 3 is going to kick some serious ass though. And it’s coming soon! Hooray!
Ryan is back! Oh, right. I went on vacation for the long weekend. I have many items and foods and other stuff to talk about! Maybe I’ll sum them all up at once in… an article? Naw. I never write those things anymore. We’ll see.
The best thing of all, is that this morning I woke up to a pulsing blue light. It was my Wii, and Nintendo was informing me of a firmware update. It didn’t seem to do much, but by gum it’s awesome!
I’m just curious why it didn’t do this from the beginning. It seems kind of obvious. Anyway, even though I’ve got like three clocks in my room (I like to know the time), I’ve been pining for a clock on the Wii since I got the damn thing, so this makes me happy. Also, they redid the Wii Shop, and it’s a little prettier and somewhat more functional now. There’s still room for improvement *coughXboxLiveMarketplacecough* but I guess it’s pretty good for what it is. No good Virtual Console games this week though, which is a bummer. But it’s okay, I don’t need any new VC games, as I’m still not even halfway through Paper Mario.
Okay, so Picross DS came out yesterday. Ummm, you can pretty much consider me dead now, because after this post, I think that’s probably what I’m going to be doing until I die of Picross overdose.
But seriously, it’s… decent. Playing against people online is a blast, and the fact that they’re going to be offering downloadable puzzles each week (Free no less. Take a hint, Guitar Hero) is killer. As for the game itself? Well, frankly the touch screen is fun for a bit, but ends up being more annoying than anything, so it’s good that they didn’t remove the ability to play with the buttons. The fact that you have to tap an icon to switch between your chisel and X marker is a pain, and zooming is annoying as all fuck, so yeah, playing with buttons is the way to go. I really enjoy the board themes though, those make me happy. There’s an apple theme, and instead of just poking squares, it’s like you’re exploding little square apples, and it even makes an appropriate noise. I also enjoy the grass theme. If I could carve a picross into my front yard, I would probably demand to mow the lawn.
So all in all, it’s a great game, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes logic puzzle games. It’s simple, but incredibly fun. The only real downside is that there’s no time limit on the regular stages like I’m used to (I’ve played through Mario’s Super Picross alone like 4 times), so you can’t actually lose a puzzle. It’s probably a plus for some people, but I like the thrill of working against the clock, as opposed to just trying to get the best time possible.
In other news: A Tales of Symphonia sequel? On Wii? You may remember that I think quite highly of Tales of Symphonia, so you can imagine that this might be very big news for me. In fact, it is. I’m crapping my pants in sheer excitement right now.
I’m a very happy Ryan today, as my copies of the Okami and Kingdom Hearts 2 soundtracks arrived this morning. Both are spectacular soundtracks, and I highly recommend both.
Yoko Shimomura’s Kingdom Hearts soundtracks have been one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed the games so much; as fun as the gameplay is, and as much as I love the grinding/collecting/creating aspect of the synth systems, most of that joy would be moot if there wasn’t a wonderful soundtrack to go with it. A lot of the music is comprised of remixed Disney tunes, but you know what? They’re often so good that that barely matters to me, and the quality of the original work is so high that the soundtrack is worth owning even if you dislike the Disney tunes. This being the soundtrack to the second game, it seems to me that there’s a lot more original stuff to, because there were so many more original environments in Kingdom Hearts 2 than there were in the original. At least, I think so. Taking actual numbers may prove the amounts are equal or at least really close, but I’m going to stick with my assumption. In any case, totally worth owning, and even moreso beause it was on sale when I bought it. Not so much anymore though. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, I can’t wait to see what Ms. Shimomura contributes to the Smash Bros Brawl soundtrack. If her work on Kingdom Hearts (not to mention Super Mario RPG and the Mario & Luigi series) is any indication, it’s going to be awesome.
Now the Okami soundtrack, that’s a completely different beast (ha!). I didn’t realize when I bought it (though I really should have, because nearly all Capcom soundtracks have similar “issues”), but it’s five discs long. Why? Because along with the basic themes and BGMs, Capcom likes to add every little jingle and sting in the game on their soundtrack CDs. I’m not complaining or anything, but it makes it a little hard to quickly find the track you’re looking for, especially when everything – even the MP3 tags – are in Japanese. But hey, it’s totally worth it, because Okami has one of the best game soundtracks ever. Maybe you won’t like it because it’s all very medieval Japanesey, but I love it because it’s so enjoyable and relaxing. It’s the kind of soundtrack you can just turn on and do whatever to. Great for ambient music while cleaning, typing, browsing the internet, reading, whatever. Also I like that fact that nothing in my music collection (even the digital half of it) even comes close to resembling it. I can’t really recommend it to everyone, but Okami is my favourite PS2 game, and that should say enough.
Oh, and because it’s way too late to bother now, just consider this the replacement for the Band of the Month.
Needless to say, Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80’s is fantastic. I mean, essentially, it is no different than any other Guitar Hero, but the fact that the soundtrack seems tailored specifically for me is very nice. Only 30 songs may seem like a gyp, but they’re wicked awesome songs. And hard as hell too. Some of the solos on these bad boys will murder even the most seasoned GH vet, and some, particularly “What I Like About You”, are just rough all the way through. It may lead you to believe that my life up until this point has been completely inconsequential, but playing “No One Like You” is probably the greatest thrill I’ve ever experienced. “Radar Love”, despite being the inferior White Lion version, also makes me go crazy. I almost feel bad that I’m butchering songs I hold so close to my heart. Oh well!
Other news? Spent the morning and afternoon with my car. Its muffler has been blown out for a couple weeks now, and today I went to get that repaired, and coupled with the oil change it got on Sunday, I’m assuming it’s a happy car. Also went and gave it a good wash down for the first time in months, so that’s good too. The little guy really pulls his weight around here, and I think he totally deserves the best treatment. Ergo, perhaps I’m not the best owner for it.
Ummmm… elsewise I’ve been hooked on Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology. It’s kind of like an MMO, just without the massive or the multiplayer, and less online. But the idea is to take missions, and form parties, and while it’s quite simplisitc, it’s really engrossing. Probably has a lot to do wiht the historically aweome battle system. And the fact that I can have Reid, Lloyd and Senel all in my party at one time. It’s a fangirl’s dream come true!
Lastly, I rented Transformers: the Game today. I’ll tell you how that goes later. Having loved the movie like a son, I’m hoping it’ll be decent.
It would seem that the Toys ‘R’ Us “radio” is slowly turning into a bastion of horrible, horrible cover songs. First it was 900 bad versions of every Christmas carol back in November and December, but I guess those are to be expected. But once the Christmas garbage went away, things didn’t get a whole lot better. At first, it was a Godawful version of Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed”, and that was enough to get me riled up, because nobody can sing that song as well as Paul. Nobody. Lately, it seems that a new offender has snuck onto the playlist, in the form of a mockery of U2’s “Pride”. And you know it’s gotta be bad, because I’ve never really liked U2 to begin with.
I can’t imagine that these bad covers will go away, and I know that more will amass in time, which leads me to my topic today: Women should not cover songs originally by men.
I know it sounds a little bit sexist, and it is, but you’ve got to respect that I actually have a somewhat valid point here. Beyond the two songs I’ve mentioned up there (which I forgot to explicitly explain were done by women), let’s take another example that hits pretty close to home. A while ago, Damone released a video of a cover of Billy Squier’s “Everybody Wants You“. Now, I love the original song, and as those who pay attention know, I generally like Damone. This is a problem because their cover sucks ass. Watch the video clip. Or better yet, just turn it on in another tab and keep reading this, because the video is even worse than the song. “But Ryan,” you say “It sounds exactly like the original!” You’re right, but that’s why it blows. There’s no inspiration here! They pretty much play the song note for note, and I cannot respect this type of cover. Even worse is that Noelle’s singing sounds so forced and disinterested, which is totally uncharacteristic of her. Half the reason I like Damone is because they have a vocalist who really seems to love what she does, but that doesn’t show at all here.
You could argue that this doesn’t fall into “covers by women” because the rest of the band is dudes, but it’s still kind of there. In fact, I bet if I hadn’t pointed that out, half of you would never have thought of it. Anyway, the point here is that in my experience, cover songs by women are sad husks of the songs they once were. I mean, it’s not like no women have any musical talent, but historically, men have been far more successful at crafting fine music, and when women try to emulate that music, it generally ends up as a garbled mess.
I actually had a lot more to say, with points and counterpoints and everything, but it turns out that if you want to say something and not look like a complete dumbass, you either have to know a lot about what you’re talking about, or do a lot of research. I have a pretty fair knowledge of music (taste being no factor), but I didn’t really feel like going the extra mile to make it really good. I hate research, unless I’m doing it for fun, and I don’t file “blogging” under “fun”. The really sad part about it all is that I was going to turn it around and get to the point where I would be discussing how the women who are really good at making music are overshadowed by prepackaged pop idol garbage, and my apparent sexual bias would be defeated, but no such luck. So let’s just say that any woman who’s achieved any degree of mainstream success in music sucks (except the girls from Heart), and that all the good ones are underground.
Also, uness you’re Paul McCartney, do the world a favour and don’t sing “Maybe I’m Amazed”.
