2007-09-20

Moving, Moving, Moving... AiYa!

Rollergrrl Vki and I were in the right place at the right time this year and the upshot of it all is we were able to buy a place. A nice, semi-detached townhouse on the ridge

Most of our crap is in storage as the Grrl is determined to get every room painted before anything else is done. All I can do is steam in my own stress juices and wait for the other shoe to fall. The Grrl is convinced that there will be no shoe, but I am less than optimistic.

Things just aren’t moving fast enough for my ass. Every second I wait in the basement wondering if someone is going to knock on the door and kick my ass out of the place, telling me I don’t belong, that the world has no use for Children dressed like Adults playing house.

But we’re not playing are we. We actually bought a place. In this artificially over inflated real estate market we managed to get lucky.

I still can’t stop worrying. The stress and panic creeping into my guts when I pull out the key to a place that until recently belonged to the Grrlz sister.


Ah well… I’m sure someday I’ll get over it…







eventually.




AiYa!

2007-09-06

Prepare To Be Reviewed

He's serving up the hard cheese and doesn't care who knows, it's Jaeger and his review of

TRANSFORMERS THE GAME – Cybertron Edition
Activision
X-BOX 360

As a general rule, video games based on films either suck, or blow. Sometimes they even do both. Is this game the exception to the rule? Read on to find out.

For years in North America we have been stuck with Transformers games that have been mediocre at best, and though it might pain some to hear it, this game is no different.

I wanted to love this game, I really did! And considering the hype surrounding it I expected so much more.

Lets begin with the positives; the game is gorgeous, it looks truly next-gen from the character design of the Robots in Disguise themselves to the buildings, the sky, you name it, it looks sweet. The Transformation sequences are slick and quick allowing the gamer to zip back and forth from robot to vehicle and back in a flash, which is handy for levels of the game where you’re up against a timer. The environments are almost 100% destructible, which is fun because as we all know, blowing shit up, wrecking stuff, and hucking cars at enemy robots always makes for a good time.

Now for the not-so good points. The city is pretty big and fun to explore when not locked in a mission, but I still seemed to constantly be running my robot into the “invisible walls” that surround the environ. The driving controls for the vehicle mode Autobots are mushy and unresponsive at the best of times, and hideously floaty at worst. It’s almost as if so much time was spent making the game look beautiful, that some essential game play elements ended up slipping through the cracks. The robots in the game can do almost anything, from jumping, to climbing, and in some cases flying. They also have heavy and light projectile weapons at their disposal, but it really doesn’t matter, because EVERY TIME you use a ranged weapon, the enemy activate an impenetrable shield and you end up having to button mash your way through yet another melee battle.

The Cybertron Edition of the game costs about ten bucks more than the standard version and comes with a copy of the Transformers Movie Prequel comic book, codes for two extra levels that only work once you have finished either the Autobot or Decepticon campaigns and an extra disc containing movie trailers, some very short interviews with the voice actors including Shia LeBeouf, Megan Fox, and Peter Cullen. There is less material on the second disc than one sees on most single disc DVDs as far as extras go, and to be honest if I had known there would be so little I wouldn’t have bothered with the two disc edition.

For game play that too simple, and crappy extras on the bonus disc, Transformers the Game- Cybertron Edition gets a Two out of Five.

Reviews From The Chesterfield

Ghost in the Shell Directed by Rupert Sanders Based on the manga by Shirow Masamune In the near future, the cyberneticly enhan...