So I got it. Yeah. I did. It's true. Really. Even though I don't own the console to play it on (seem familiar?). I bought RE5 today. Best $60 I ever spent on a game (and the only $60--freaking next-gen consoles). I really can't be too objective since I just played it for about 4 hours. I got through 2-3. I can describe it pretty well in two words:

unbelievably badass

It's freaking awesome. I think that GS kind of screwed up their review. The only real issues that I found were that sometimes the camera gets kind of clunky and your partner can kind of get in the way. The other thing is that you can only hold 50 handgun rounds in one stack. That's kind of irritating. The other thing is that Chris' biceps are bigger than Vanguard Ike's (Olimar should get that one). They're just too freaking big. Shiva's pretty awesome, too. Game isn't scary at all but there are some pretty creepy and intense times like the pitch black cave where one of you has to hold a flashlight that's bigger than your gun. The other thing is that the second player cannot do anything related to upgrading. The visuals are amazing--textures are perfect and you really get the sense that you're about to get wasted by a bunch of crazy villagers. The knife was nerfed, which is bizarre. Plus, you get to meet people who ARE STILL ALIVE. Good times. The final thing that made me kind of mad is now there is a sort of strafe. It's really more of a side-step but you can step to the left and right. That's annoying, believe it or not. Gameplay is sweet. You don't even understand...it's AWESOME. And it's Resident Evil 5.

Also, I played more than just the demo of Dead Space today. Wow! It's awesome (lowercase)! The game isn't scary. I may have jumped once when I took a corner too quickly and got killed by an awkward camera angle and inability to see the quick-time button. Much better than my first impression. It'll go into my collection.

I'm going to order my 360 tomorrow most likely. Have a good break!

This is going to be the closest I can come to a legit blog for spring break. That's not because I'm in some fantastically awesome place like Cancun or wherever most "cool kids" go on their break. I much rather spend the time doing something...productive? This will hopefully be the high point--save for another thing I'll bring up later. I've got a lot of ground to cover so I'll move on.

First of all, Resident Evil 5. To the few of you who know me in real life, you know my love for Resident Evil. I've brought this up a number of times but my love came from 8 long years of nightmares. I memorized the initial game in those crappy times. The point is, I'm really really excited to have a chance to play it soon. A buddy of mine who got his license taken away needs a ride to get his copy. And then I'm gonna play it. And it's gonna be awesome.

Secondly, Resident Evil 5. If it got a 3 out of 10 I would play it. I'm also a believer that if it has "Resident Evil" in the title, then it's a Resident Evil game, so don't let me hear any of that crap about it not being an RE game. I won't stand for that.

What else? Hmm...OH. I play trombone. I consider myself to be somewhat talented. I am first and foremost a jazz player but I've played in concert bands all my life. I also play in a few groups with my father: one is a worship band, one is a Beatles tribute band, and one is a classic rock cover band. Don't judge me on the worship band, the music is fun to play and I don't really pay attention to the lyrics since the music is particularly difficult. So on Saturday and Sunday, I participated for the second time in the Clark Terry Jazz Festival at the University of New Hampshire. Clark Terry is elderly and took ill before the festival and was unable to make it. We did manage to get Jimmy Heath, Skepko Gut, and Antonio Hart on Tenor Sax, Trumpet, and Alto Sax, respectively for the festival.

We played a Gregory Yazinitsky arrangement of what I think is a Thelonious Monk chart, Picadilly Lilly, which was awesome. It was a five-trombone part chart and was a lot of fun to play. The rest of the charts were Jimmy Heath originals or arrangements. It was a good time. If you can stomach jazz, check out Jimmy Heath and Antonio Hart (I'm not sure if Skepko has recorded anything but I should assume he has).

I had paella for the first time tonight. My dad made it while I watched four hours of NCIS. NCIS stands for naval criminal investigative service and is essentially a really overacted Law and Order. It's really corny and filled with really, really bad acting. The catch is I CAN'T STOP WATCHING IT. But the paella...

Paella is a Spanish (Spain Spanish) dish made with Saffron (a really expensive spice/herb, also a city in the original Pokemon world), rice, some other seasonings, and either chicken, beef, or seafood. My father is a vegetarian who only eats seafood for meat so we had seafood. The finished product was saffron and other spices, rice, peas, corn, shrimp, fish, and scallops. It was fantastic. Plus, for dessert, we had Girl Scout Cookie flavored ice cream. It's good. Pick up some at the store next time you get there.

Taken was a good movie. Liam Neilson was really good in it. Go see it if you didn't. Also, go see the WKUK movie. If you don't know the WKUK, find out. It's good. The movie won't be but it'll be funny.

The biggish news...yeah. Remember my console troubles? I decided to go with the x360. I will probably be the only owner of a 360 to never own a Halo game but you know all about that, right? Had to do with the release of Halo 2 overshadowing the far superior Half-Life 2. Freeman FTW. I spent nearly 6 hours researching warranty information on their consoles. There is suprisingly little information on warranties of xbox consoles. So I'm going to be turning to the dark side of Microsoft. I've got a console picked out but I can't fork over the full money for a new console so I've chosen a refurbished console from last year. Comes with a 1 year warranty from Microsoft and a 6 month or so warranty from the seller. First purchase: RE5.

So, in conclusion:

1. RE5--I'm gonna get it

2. Jazz--you need more sophisticatioin; listen to jazz

3. Paella--the Spanish won on this one

4. Taken--see it

5. 360--I'm gonna get one. Soon.

Enjoy the remaining portion of spring break!

Cool people put up Xbox Live account information on their GS page even though they don't have a console...:D (Working on that, though).

THE TOP FANTASTICALLY AWFUL RE LINES! Some you've heard, some are just hilarious! Here we go!

1. "You were almost a Jill-Sandwhich!"

2. "Jill! I found a weapon for you!" Barry hands you AMMO

3. "Hey, Hey! Easy, chica! I'm just a hired gun!"

4. "Wait, your right hand comes off?!"

5. "ALFRED!! YOU CROSS-DRESSING FREAK!"

6. "It's time to end this!"

7. "It's time to end this nightmare."

and my personal favorite...

"Chris (Or Jill)...oh...you're still...alive?"

"Yeah, I was going to say the same thing..."

RE5 TOMORROW! Have fun, everyone!

BEST IDEA EVER.

_dubel_07

As this uber blog I've promised becomes more and more like a running gag (I'll get to it eventually just too much to talk about) I find myself playing more and more Team Fortress 2. As many of you know I enjoy the shenanigans that you can have blowing the crap out of someone on the other team. I was always a fan of the medic since he got the most points and everyone loves you when you heal them. My second favorite was the spy. The spy, for those of you who don't know TF2 or TF:Cla ssic (and the like) is armed with 125 health-- the lowest in the game, a six-shooter that does some pretty decent damage, a "sapper" which drains the health of machinery put up by the engineer, a disguise kit that lets them disguise as anything but a spy of the same color, and a knife (I'll gripe about that in a minute--it's the point of this "uber" blog (HAH! A JOKE!). The spy is also able to go completely invisible for up to ten seconds on a standard charge of their cloaking device where they are completely invisible to the enemy. The catch to the cloak is they are not able to do anything in terms of attacking or defending other than just getting in everyone's way--but it's remarkably useful for moving around incognito. NAO TO THE POINT. Recently, Valve released an update for the scout. It was annoying. Really annoying. As annoying as it would be if you were reading this and I began to ramble on and on and on about how annoying it was. You get the point. In addition to that they nerfed the spy. If you are unfamiliar with the term "nerf"...look it up--it's parent safe so don't worry if you're not "of the age". Essentially, the spy got made waaaaaaaaaaay weaker and harder to use (in a specific way). Before I begin my complaining, I need to explain the mechanics of an attacking spy.

The spy usually attacks from a distance with their revolver unless they are mentally challenged--in which case they use their face and have it promptly removed from their head. The revolver does a medium amont of damage at most ranges and is relatively good. It seems to be the most accurate handgun in the game though that is up for debate--but not with me. I'm too mad to debate with you. The sapper is really self explainitory--you put it on things like you would put syrup on dry pancakes--just keep putting it on--because a smart engineer--and they sure as heck will be after this nerf--note the cunning use of hyphens to show you how excited I am that I am finally voicing my problem somewhere outside of the game itself where 12 year olds seem to dominate the voice com--they will smack you in the face with a cast iron wrench killing you almost instantly. At closer distances, you'd pull your knife out with the awesome flipping animation and swing away for a meager amout of damage. The real awesome power is the backstab. You've all had it done to you if you snipe in TF2 and it scares the crap out of you. Depicted below is the cool animation for when you instakill with a backstab.

Well, it won't work since the TF2 wiki is being testy but take my word for it it is extremely satisfying when you instakill several people in a row.

There were many things that made it slightly more intuitive to play as the spy. The spy used a lag correction on the backstab animation that compensated for any lag--essentially you had a bit of a radius to stab them. The term side stab will be used for the duration of this...voicing of my concern for the spy's awesomeness. The back stab used to have a decent radius behind it--approximately 180 degrees behind the character. This let the spy go to either end of that spectrum and perform a back stab--killing them instantly. This was good. This let the spy kill people. This let the spy go into a group of people and actually have a small chance. Now, my complaint.

Valve made the side stab impossible now. They also removed trick stabs (aka top-down stabs which were the only hope for a spy to take out an entrenched engineer--look that one up if you don't know). The spy now needs to be almost directly behind his target to perform the once reasonably difficult (now just annoyingly hard) backstab that made it one of the least played clas sess in the game; and, yet it was one of the most rewarding and exciting to play. What is bizarre is that now there are no side stabs I'm an amazing spy. I consistently rank in the top 10 percent of matches which, for servers I play on, is really quite good. My first day after the update I got 38 backstabs in 3 rounds with a positive kill-death-ratio. Normally, I play medic but now that the scout update was released I play almost exclusively spy as a sort of revenge thing. It doesn't make much sense but that's what I keep telling myself. I also consistently curse when I kill someone as it makes me feel much better. It's a good time---BUT GIMME BACK MY SIDE STABS. Ahhhhhnnnnng! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEEG!

Anyways, thanks for listening...here's a fun picture I hope you enjoy.

_dubel_07

Can't blog. Working on overcoming the tremendous odds that are the scout update. Valve nerfed the Spy so I'm playing Spy. More later. Killing scouts. MMMmmm.

Too mad for that legit blog I promised you. Lots of homework and more importantly, I played Left 4 Dead today for 6 hours. I did Dead Air on Expert. So...we got to the finale...and the server crashed. I swore more times than I killed zombies. I'm so mad that I'm going to do homework now. And Physical Chemistry homework at that. Have a good weekend, everyone.

Hey! Happy Single Awareness Day! If you're single and didn't know it, NOW YOU DO. Be aware.

Legit blog to come in the next week or so. Lots of work but no physical chemistry lab (5 hour lab on Monday nights) so maybe on Monday. Have a good weekend everyone!

This has nothing to do with the title. This is in fact the part 2 of my last blog. There's a new one in development but I've not had time to work on it due to homework and just general laziness. I found video ofthe concert I went to featuring Reel Big Fish and Streetlight Manifesto. Check the videos out if you have time. And I'll work on a serious blog. And "Avatar" is the word of the day on my page-a-day calander.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SsKO4n2Vtw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaaAV2jxKRA&feature=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6u9l1BKvqM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJZmglDKUz8&feature=related