That’s right, in honor of being asked to make a Crappy MS Paint Comic, I shall now actually write a post. So lately I’ve been playing a lot of Rockband. It’s a very social game, and it provides a nice structure for hanging out with people, and having a good time. Usually this is less painful the next day than our normal, unstructured good time.

I was first exposed to rhythm-action games in the guise of the now venerable Dance Dance Revolution, AKA “That game that makes you look like an ass when you play it.” If you couldn’t tell from my less than approving choice of descriptors, I didn’t like it very much.

My second (and more pleasant) exposure to the rhythm-action genre was via the not-as-venerable-but-getting-there Frequency. A game with music I liked! Unfortunately, I was kinda bad at it. No rhythm, you see. Yeah, kinda a must-have for a game based on it.

Eventually, I got my hands on Guitar Hero II. A game I liked mostly because it featured one of the greatest songs of all time. As it turns out, through the guitar metaphor I could actually simulate having some sort of rhythm. I really enjoyed most of the song selection in both Guitar Hero II and Frequency, and as it turned out, they were both produced by the same company; Harmonix. Naturally, when Harmonix sold the license for the GH series of games to Activision, I was a bit disappointed. Well, disappointed until I found out they were producing Rockband, which is Guitar Hero + the rest of the band. Naturally, being both a fan of Harmonix and of the GH franchise, I ended up purchasing both Guitar Hero III and Rockband. I’ve beaten the hell out of Rockband. I still kinda suck at it. Can’t really play past easy on drums, still working on hard for guitar/bass, Pretty much plateaued at medium for singing, and I have to switch to easy for the harder stuff. I still play it though. Pretty much every time I have friends over, somebody wants some Rockband action. You may have noticed this is all about Rockband so far. Well, there’s a reason. I haven’t gotten past the first tier of songs in GH III. Not because they’re hard, but because they… well… they suck. I’m quite glad I received GH III as a gift, because I would feel kinda bad if I had payed money for it. The track selection is all over the place, most of the music is rather crappy. Much like the time I played Elite Beat Agents and got stuck for two months because I refused to play an Avril Lavigne song, I am stuck on the first tier of songs in Guitar Hero III, and probably will never go beyond. To be honest, I don’t even remember what it was that caused me to sort of half-puke, and then throw the guitar shaped controller down in disgust, barely restraining myself from aping Pete Townsend and ramming the thing through the TV. All I remember is vowing to never open the GH III case again, and sealing it with fel magics and a tungsten casing, for I could not trade it in, subjecting some poor, unsuspecting dupe to the foul… whatever it was.

So, to get to the point… I’m buying Rockband 2. GH IV be damned, create-a-song feature and better controllers included. If I’m buying a rhythm-action game, a game primarily based on music, I want it to contain MUSIC, not a rapid succession of button presses which will allow the music to continue playing in the background. Cause that’s all I felt out of Guitar Hero III.

Phil, your picture utterly scares me. Worse than Bloody Mary and Freddy Kreuger combined. It scared me when Gerry was editing it and showing us ‘drafts.’ Each and every time I saw a new link, it scared me. To the point that I didn’t want to click on the draft links for the fear that it would scare me some more.

Children beware, do not, I repeat, do NOT look at his picture for too long. He will come EAT YOU!!! RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As per a special request from The Chad, it is now Fairytale Time™.

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a boy named Xygzyz’tkt. He was constantly mocked for his name. I mean look at that. That shit’s completely unpronounceable. There’s not even a damn vowel unless you wanna count Y and, honestly, who does. What the flying Voltron Jesus is this. Yes, Voltron Jesus. He is composed of mecha-lion Abraham, Joseph, Moses, and John the Baptist, with King David as the head. He’s so awesome. Absolves you of your sins, and then slices a Robeast in half with His sword.

Well, little captain unpronounceable went through his childhood under the cursed aegis of his name. He was unable to attend school since he was always marked absent by teachers who could not pronounce Xygzyz’tkt, and therefore dispensed with even attempting to determine his presence. He took up a career in scrubbing the grout between tiles on bathroom floors to make enough money to get by. He lived a mostly uninteresting life. His most entertaining story consisted of him once receiving an extra farthing’s worth of change at his local Ye Olde Generale Store-e. He died of name cancer in his bed at the age of 47, and his body was burned by the local community to keep the “name taint” from spreading.

Moral of the story? Don’t name your kid something bizarre and unpronounceable. Please. Even crazy spellings of normal names are out. It’s Mary, not Mayree, or Maari, or any other thing like that. All you’re doing is ensuring your kid gets mocked, and that nobody is ever able to spell their name right for the rest of their life, unless they get fed up and legally change it to the normal spelling.

–P

So yeah. A blog of some sorts? I construe I could construct a cacophony of concepts concocted by my cranial cavity here. Alliteration also, as I adore it. Essentially, I am the evil one. Every problem I encounter, my first thought is whether or not I can apply force to solve it.

Door stuck? Smash it. Sleeve caught on something? Rip it. You would not believe how short the lifespan of a pair of my pants is. This doesn’t mean I’m stupid; It’s just that I lack patience. If required, I can use tactics, strategy, guile, or any other Street Fighter character. Yes, that was a horrible Street Fighter pun. I don’t apologize. You can blame my father for that kind of thing.
That’s not to say I’m all bad. I hold rules in very high esteem. They keep us restrained. In check. They provide a structure and a set of guidelines for us to base our behavior around. I don’t refrain from committing crimes because my sense of morality tells me not to. I refrain from committing crimes because it is against the law, and there are definite consequences for such actions.
Around here, you’ll often see me posting about things that have pissed me off. Or not. To be honest, as this is the first blog-type-thing I’ve been involved in, I’m not sure how I will react. Perhaps I shall wax poetic about the virtues of having a fresh herb garden, with a weekly update on my latest aquisitions? Perhaps I shall bang out a manifesto on how ineffective an overly lenient criminal justice system is? Only time will tell.

— P