High School or Lower

I haven’t done a review of an old album yet, so I’ll start with Genesis’s Trespass.  It’s from 1970, I actually didn’t know who Genesis was until a friend introduced me to them and told  me to listen to this one.  It’s pretty good, they’re an old prog band a la Yes or Rush, but they have their own distinct sound.  This album has 6 songs, all clocking in at over 6 minutes except one, and it’s a good listen.  I like to keep this short and sweet, so I’ll give this a 7/10.  It might not become your favorite album ever but regardless it is a good listen.  Check it out on Amazon or iTunes, or however you get your music. Enjoy!

P.S.  If you are donating money to Haiti anytime in the near future, I recommend Doctors Without Borders (http://doctorswithoutborders.org/)  Most of the money donated to Red Cross helps dig them out of their $200 million+ debt.

www.thisoneisonus.org

I posted about this earlier in the year, but I’ll post it again, any NIN fans out there might be interested in knowing that a fully fan produced tour dvd from last years LITS tour is out now, at the website I posted above.  It used the 400 GB of tour data that was given as a gift from NIN themselves to the fans, and it looks amazing, and is available in different formats, and on youtube.  The largest you can get right now is a dual layer DVD at ~8GB, but there are other formats available.  GO GET IT!

Modern Warfare 2

I’m very torn over the Call of Duty series.  I’m a big fan of the early games, but the newest ones are a little off to me.  Everyone always complains, “I’m sick of World War II games.” I don’t really know what to tell them.  There hasn’t been as many of them as people think.  In recent history, I can think of maybe 2 or 3 that I’ve played in the last two years.  But this isn’t about the WWII CoD games, this is about the new one.

Modern Warfare 2 is hard to review.  Obviously being the most anticipated game of the last year, I should just say everything is great and end this, but it’s not that simple.  I’m going to review it section by section of the game.

Campaign:

The campaign is strong.  It picks up five years after the first, and is full of plenty of action and crazy sights.  It’s definitely good, but there are a few things I didn’t like.  First of all, the loading screens.  They are almost all the same.  Just a bunch of soldiers talking about the mission.  Some of the things they say don’t even pertain to what you are doing, but are just said out of the blue.  Also, it looks the same, just a map of the world that examines different parts of the globe depending on what the mission is.  Also, in I believe two different missions, there are parts where the only way to get past is to run, as the enemies respawn forever.  That’s a bad move against people who would rather make their way slowly through the enemies than run past them.  The story isn’t bad, there are some plot holes but nothing major.  The length is pretty bad as well, only 4-5 hours.  I give the campaign a 7/10.

Spec Ops:

This is probably the best part of the game, spec ops are seperate missions that, while they contain some of the stuff you do in the campaign, are like a stand alone challenge meant for multiplayer.  You basically need to complete a goal, sometimes with a time limit, then you get 1,2, or 3 stars depending on how well you did.  It’s very fun, and very engaging, if you are bored of the campaign or don’t want to play straight up multiplayer.  I give the spec ops section of MW2 a 9/10, only detracting from the score because of the occasional impossible mission.

Multiplayer:

Well, the multiplayer, obviously the most appealing part of the game, was a disappointment.  First of all, the engine is the exact same as CoD4, with a few minute changes.  Personally, I don’t like this, and while most sequels do run on the same engine due to demand, something as big as this should have been reworked.  The rest of the multiplayer is extremely similar to CoD4, the classes have some new guns and attachments, the perks have been switched up, etc.  Some of the changes are fantastic, and some are more subjective.  For example, the addition of deathstreaks, which is where you die enough in a row and get a small boost to help you out, are absolutely fantastic, while some of the additions, like the tactical nuke, are god-awful.

Let me rant a bit about the tactical nuke and the 10+ killstreaks you now have available.  the killstreak system has always annoyed me, if you get enough in a row, it’s really just impossible to stop you.  I believe that once you have gotten enough kills to get something that you enter, such as a chopper gunner or an AC130, then there’s nothing stopping you from getting higher and higher.  The tactical nuke is rewarded to you if you get 25 kills in a row while you have it enabled.  That sounds unbelievably hard, but with the way the killstreak system works, it happens more often than you would think.  About one in five matches I enter have ended in a tactical nuke.  This nuke does exactly what it sounds like, a countdown timer appears and then everyone dies.

But, alas, the multiplayer is still a great fusion of RPG and FPS, but not as good as a game that has focused around it, a la Borderlands.  I give the multiplayer a 6/10.  The worst part of the game?  Yes, in my opinion.  But it’s also the longest lasting.

Overall, averaging out the scores, this game gets a 7.3/10.  Worth a buy if you’re a CoD fan, but if you’re looking for a new game to play that isn’t hyped to all hell, you should avoid this.

From Cream to Audioslave, supergroups most of the time do not dissappoint.  This is no exception, Them Crooked Vultures is the newest trio of musicians to form a supergroup, and they don’t screw around.  John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin, Dave Grohl from Foo Fighters and Nirvana, and Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age and Kyuss.  The album was released not too long ago, and you can find it from the link at the top.  The tracks are solid and keep you entertained, my personal favorite is “Mind Eraser, No Chaser” But some other key tracks include “New Fang” and ”Elephants”.  The album is hard and has a don’t-mess-around attitude throughout, and really all I can say besides that is that you will not be dissppointed.  I give it a 9/10.

Maybe it’s just me, but music videos are getting more and more weird, even in bands that aren’t on the level of fame as Lady Gaga.  remember the video for the Yeah yeah yeahs “Heads Will Roll”?  Most likely not, but it had their lead singer singing the ending while decapitated.  Also this video features her famous boob spark machine things, her fucked up outfits, and, well, you get my drift.  Just watch it.

Oh, there’s also product placement, but that’s expected.

Ever wanted to customize your own tracks in Rock Band? Now you can. Harmonix had released software tools, so you would be able to insert your own songs into the game. More about it, click here.

Crash Course Poster

Crash course is an add-on for Valve fantastic FPS, Left 4 Dead.  It came out today, and after playing through it I have to say it’s more than I expected.  The campaign is not full-length, it’s about a good 40 minutes or so of gameplay, about half the length of a normal playthrough on any other campaign.  But boy, is it fun.  It’s really just like the others, hordes of zombies at you, special infected everywhere, but I did notice it seemed a bit mroe difficult than the others.  But really, if you have the game the pack is free.  It’s quite overpriced on the 360, at 560 points which is around 7 bucks.  But if you have the extra coin or are a die-hard L4D fan you will pick this up.  7/10 only because of the length and the price on xbox.

And now, the funniest part of Crash Course:

http://www.reddit.com/

Don’t go there unless javascript is disabled!!!

Around an hour ago, something was unleased onto reddit, either a java exploit or a virus or something, but the orangered envelope should NOT be clicked! It will only spread. It’s spreading quite fast, and here’s the catch, it’s triggered by not only going into the comments, but even by hovering on a comment will spread it. So just as a PSA, don’t go to reddit without disabling javascript. You can do this in Firefox with options > content > Javascript. Watch out.

BlazBlue

BlazBlue is a 2-D fighter for Xbox.  It came out in Late June / Early July, and since then many people have claimed it’s the best fighter to come out so far this year.  Well, considering the only other real competition is SF4, I would agree with that.  Blazblue is an unbelievably well done game.  I really didn’t think that a 2-D fighter could have as much depth and detail as Blazblue does.

It’s really fun, probably the only fighter where losing isn’t really all that punishing.  The combos aren’t a ridiculous length, and the specials don’t stomp in the face of the opponent.  Arc system Works really took their time to make this game stand out on the fighter scene, and it does that.  Definitely pick up Blazblue if  you are a fighter fan.  I give it a 8/10, only because the replayability relies solely on how much you want to play online.  That’s all for now.

I’ve been looking up a bunch of different companies’ logos and finding all the little illusions they hide in them, so I decided to list a few here.

There is an arrow, a spoon, and two wheels in this picture.

Fedex is famous for this logo, most notably the arrow between the E and the X.  I’ve found a few more, but they are arguable.  There’s a spoon in the e and there are wheels on the bottom of the e and the d.  Crazy, right?

They're the same, just colored differently.

This one is famous.  Just look at the clouds and the bushes.

Sunkist logo

A lot of people don’t get this one right away.  There’s something wrong with the “u” in the Sunkist logo.  See it?  It’s combined with the “n”, making the name of the soda “sinkist”.  Just without a dot on the first i.

Know any others?  Leave them in the comments.