Kalamaf Drackonsbane

ENGOBI, the company responsible for the first caffeine infused snack chip, is having a Guitar Hero contest. Announcing the Engobi “Don’t be a Piano Hero” contest! Make a video of you and your friends rocking out with your plastic guitars and upload them to Engobi. The winner will get this awesome XBox 360 customized Fender Stratocaster along with some Engobi swag and other cool items.

Engobi snacks currently come in two flavors; Lemon Lift and Cinnamon Surge. I haven’t had a chance to try either of them, I don’t think they’ve made their way into this little town yet. Looks like a good alternative to the slew of energy drinks already on the market.

I rented GTA IV yesterday and so far I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It’s dark, it’s a bitch to control, the camera angles suck ass when driving around corners. Maybe I should dump the story and just run around jacking cars for a while, it might be more interesting that way. Control and camera aside though it’s a pretty sweet game, but it’s not as fun as GTA Vice City was, so far.

Yahtzee nails it right on in his hilarious (as always) review (NSFW due to swearing of course):

I’ve never been too big on anime, I’ve seen a few of course but it’s not something I normally go out of my way for. However, a live action movie based on the anime series DeathNote is coming to select theaters on May 20th and 21st, two days only! The basic story is that a student finds a book called The Death Note. Anyone who’s name appears in the book will die. He decides to become a force for good by writing the names of criminals in the book, which of course causes them to die mysteriously. It sounds interesting but unfortunately it won’t be coming to a theater near me so I guess I’ll have to wait for a DVD release.

What a disappointing ending, and I finished it 3 times before I realized the game was really over. I got near the end and fought the big demon guy, that was cool and took a couple minutes to do. Then I went through the gate and started this chat with Gandohar, I didn’t feel like reading it all so I just skipped through quickly. A bunch of paladins attacked me so I killed them off. A little challenging since there were 5 of them, after which a cut-scene started. It was pretty short but when it finished it just returned to the game main menu. WTF was that? I asked myself.

I reloaded my last save game, skipped the cut scenes again, killed the paladins and again, back to the main menu. No credits, no achievement, nothing. So I went online to see if it’s a bug or something, but it turns out that really was the end. The bad ending though, in order to get the good ending I had to choose a different dialog option when talking to Gandohar. I redid it, chose the other option and a fight with Gandy started. He was pathetic, killed him in 3 hits, got my 370 gamer points, a different ending and then back to the main menu. Wow, 25 hours of gaming for such a crappy ending. I still have 4 uncompleted achievements but I don’t know if I’ll bother since it entails uncovering the rest of the map, which is huge, to discover all the locations. I think I’d rather start on a new game instead.

Rambo is back and more violent than ever with part 4 being released on DVD at the end of this month. To celebrate his return they will be showing the original Rambo First Blood movie at a number of theaters on May 15, 2008 for one night only. Now is your chance to see the film that started it all, on the big screen the way it was intended, complete with an alternate ending which has never been in theaters. It’s a great opportunity for those who were too young, or not even born yet, the first time it came around. There’s a trailer up on the website and a quiz to go along with it.

I’m much better at drumming than singing apparently, I borrowed a set from a friend of mine who currently has no time to play. Since I had played a few songs on medium back in January I decided to continue on from there. It still takes some getting used to, and my leg still gets tired pretty quickly, but I’ve done the first 3 sets so far and gotten 80 to 85% on each song. I haven’t gotten 5 stars on any yet but I’m sure I could on a second run through after knowing what beats to expect.

It’s one thing to be able to use a GPS to see where something has been, but it’s even cooler to be able to tell where something is. Right now. In real time. There are so many uses for a live gps tracking system in today’s world. Find your stolen car, make sure your delivery drivers aren’t goofing off or keep an eye on your teenagers, anytime anywhere.

The Xbox 360 I have at work has been acting a bit strange for the last couple of days. First it started crashing on Two Worlds, but that’s a rather buggy game anyway. It got so bad that it wouldn’t load at all though, so I popped in Rock Band, a recently repaired copy that had been working perfectly up until this point. During the intro video there was a lot of glitching and artifacting going on, and the sound wasn’t quite right at times. My first thought was over-heating, or possibly a dirty lens.

I downloaded a couple of demos and they ran flawlessly so that’s a good sign, at least it’s not an RRoD issue and points more strongly at a dirty DVD drive. I charged up the air compressor and blasted the console from all angles, very little dust came out of it. I tried Rock Band it was still glitchy so I put in a couple other games and they worked fine. After running RB through the repair machine again it’s working fine also, which leaves me wondering why Two Worlds runs so horribly at work when I can play it for a few hours at home with no problems. Oh well, at least I don’t have to send it to M$ yet.

I just crashed that party again and saw the halfling prince I’m supposed to kill and holy crap that thing is fat. Since when is a halfling bigger than a troll? Maybe I can stuff some diet pills down it’s throat while my minions tear his limbs off. Then the musician caused my early demise yet again. Grr.

I love the way they harvest the sheep for me, watching a little devil jump on a sheeps back and ride it while smacking it on the head with an axe is pretty damn funny.

Got some games laying around gathering dust? Sign up with Goozex and you can trade them in for points which can then be used to get new (to you) games that you want. It’s a pretty simple system really, you get 100 bonus points and a $1 trade credit for signing up. There are thousands of games available for 100 points. Even the most ‘expensive’ games in the system are only 1000 points. Points can be purchased for cash as well so if you’re just a little short you can top it up with a credit card.

Enter the games you want to get rid of and when a match is available you simply stick it in an envelop and mail it out. When they receive the game and leave a positive feedback, the points will be put into your account and can be used immediately to request games. As long as you ship in the right size bubble envelope (not shipping boxes) then it will only cost a couple bucks in mailing fees.

Argh! This game needs a map of some kind. I keep running in circles trying to figure out where I’m supposed to go next. They give directions from time to time such as ‘go east and kill this’, but since the view rotates when you move, which way is east?!

Aside from that though I’ve been having fun slaughtering sheep and halflings and next I’ve been told to find my way into the elven forest, presumably so I can go slaughter some of them too. Running through the halfling house, breaking all their furniture and killing them in their platform beds while they slept was fun. I got stuck last night at the party though, when I crash the party there’s a guy playing music and all my imps just stand around dancing. They wouldn’t respond to my orders so I tried to kill the musician but I died in the process. It was getting late though so I only tried once, I’ll figure it out tonight.

Someone brought in a used Rock Band to sell yesterday, but the disc had a bunch of bad circular scratches in it and wouldn’t cause some songs to crash the game. It was fixable though, but mint condition games are always easier to re-sell than ones that have been repaired. Scratched games is a pretty common problem with the XBox 360 due to the fact that the DVD drive doesn’t have any padding above the disc. Also, pretty much any advertising I’ve ever seen shows the 360 in a vertical position, so that’s how most people end up using it at home as well. It’s not exactly ‘bad’ to use your system vertically, but it’s so much easier to get knocked over. If it gets knocked over while you’re playing a game, say goodbye to your disc. I highly recommend leaving the 360 laying down, it’s much safer this way.

When my mother used to go play poker with the family they always played for real money, just with quarters though, no high stakes. The most anyone typically won or lost was around $40. I almost got bit by the gambling bug one night and lost $600 on roulette before I cut myself off. Since then I try to stay away from real money games and just stick to using poker chips. Not to say you can’t use the chips to represent real money, it’s just my preference not too.

The local stores around here just have small sets made of cheap plastic. Buying online from pokerchest.com provides a much better selection, I like this particular set of chips but there’s a lot more to choose from. They’re all customizable and can be ordered in any quantity, so you can get your initials printed on them, the values of each chip and so on. Very cool.

I can’t believe I did this but I finally broke down and rented from Movie Gallery. Oh well, I’ve been wanting to play this game ever since I first tried the demo last December, but I haven’t seen any used copies around here, or new ones for that matter, not that I want to spend full price on any game if I can help it. So I rented it. And it’s fun. I only played for a half hour or so last night, cleared the first two missions and then went to bed. It reminds me a lot of Pikmin that was on Game Cube, except instead of cute little plant-like aliens you have little demon imps to do your bidding. You make them kill things for you, move objects, harvest sheep for their lifeforce and so on.

The controls are a little weird to get used to at first though because instead of your right analog stick being for looking around, it controls where your minions go. You get to fight as well, with a big axe and magic spells, so your minions don’t get to have all the fun.