Killzone 2 Not All That & A Bag Of Chips

After spending a few hours with Killzone 2 I'm just not impressed. To tell you the truth I'm not even driven to play it anymore. I have a few problems with the game. First off I'm playing on the medium difficulty and it's barely a challenge. I'm actually finding that it's incredibly easy to not shoot enemies and just walk up and melee them in the face. It's also a bitch to aim with the reticle. I have the sensitivity way up in the options and it's still not helping. When you use the right analog stick to aim it kinda hesitates and pauses. This is annoying as hell. If the controls were better the game would probably be really fun. I'm not thrilled with the weapons either. I've ended up using the one shot rifle because the other guns have so much kickback when you shoot them that you end up shooting way above the head of your enemy. I have a feeling I'll be sending this back to GameFly either tomorrow or Monday. It's a mediocre shooter with some issues. When I play a FPS I want precision from my weapons. I don't want to have to fight with accuracy. I've played C grade shooters on the Xbox 360 that handle better than KZ2. What a shame. I thought I had finally found an exclusive game on the PS3 worth playing. I was wrong. I hope INFAMOUS ends up being that game...

Motrin...What A Joke

For the past two weeks I've been having some terrible headaches. Monday I had the worst headache of my life. I haven't really felt like doing much of anything and that includes playing video games or blogging. I've managed to play a few games when my head isn't pounding and my brain isn't trying to escape from my head...at least that what it feels like. I've been playing The Bourne Conspiracy on the 360 and Killzone 2 on the PS3. TBC has a ton of quick time events, but I'm finding that it doesn't bother me like I thought it would. So far it's a much better game that I expected. It's far from being perfect, but it doesn't suck either. Killzone 2 is better than average so far. I've played a lot of shooters. KZ2 isn't showing me anything I haven't already seen before. It's good. Too bad it's not great.

Karma must have really caught up with Earl this time. My Name Is Earl has been cancelled. It's one of the few scrpted sitcoms that I actually enjoy watching these days. I don't even watch it regliously or anything, but I watch the episodes that my wife dvr's. She'll be bummed that it got cancelled. I just like it because it makes fun of rednecks.

My Mustang search is still on. I have my eye on one that was just reduced by almost 1K. It's a 2005 with just under 24K miles. I'm not to thrilled with the color. It's sonic metallic blue with white racing stripes. I may go test drive it on Saturday if my head cooperates.

50 Cent, Matt Hazzard, Killzone 2, Infamous, & Ford Mustangs

50 Cent Blood On The Sand had been on my GameFly GameQ since it was released. Gamefly never shipped it to me, so I went to my local Hollywood Video and rented it. Sometimes I wonder why the hell I bother with Gamefly. I had heard nothing but good things about Blood On The Sand. Mostly I had heard and read that it was fun. Having fun is the reason to play games. Am I right? So far it's been a blast. It's a lot like Gears Of War, but better. Yeah, that's right. It's better.
Any game where you click on the left stick to swear err taunt your enemies is a good thing in my book. HaHa no not really. If I was 12 it would rule the world though. The dialogue in this game alone is enough to crack you up. The story is just bad, but that makes the game even more fun. All the cheezy dialogue and story aside this game is a really good shooter. I'm just glad I had the option of turning the background music off.

I also rented Eat Lead: The Return Of Matt Hazzard. I purposely started playing this first because I figured it would be pretty bad. It is pretty bad, but something made me keep playing it. It was probably all of those achievement points that kept popping up. You know those achievement points that I said I didn't care about. This could have been a good game. Maybe if they had spent more time on some of the control issues like getting into cover it would have been a lot better. I stopped playing it after a while to play the 50 Cent game, and I'm glad I did. I may spend more time with this though...eventually.

It looks like my PS3 will actually get some use. I'm getting KILLZONE 2 from Gamefly and I may even go buy INFAMOUS. Man, that game just looks incredible. I watched Greg Miller's video review for INFAMOUS and not only does it look amazing, but it also looks like a hell of a lot of fun as well. Right now it's my MUST play game. It looks CrackDownish as well becuse you can climb a city of buildings. Right now the average score is a 9 on gamerankings.com

So far my search for a Ford Mustang is going slow. I'm not seeing that Mustang that is perfect for me. I'm scouring the pages of Autotrader.com. I'm seeing cars that are missing one or two options that I want that aren't there. For example I'll see a bad ass car then I'll see that the interior isn't leather. It will be cloth. I'm also finding a lot of Mustangs that are sweet, but have manual transmissions. I can drive a stick, but I don't want one here in suburbia. I need to see that Mustang that makes want to run out the door and go test drive it. I'll just keep looking at Mustangs online impatiently I guess.

VACATION TIME!!!

Well, I just started my first week of vacation! I get four more after this one plus I have some Fridays in July scheduled as well. My plans are to go pay off my car and truck loan and then go shopping for a slightly used Ford Mustang or MAYBE a new Mustang. It all depends on what I find and which one floats my boat. I'm not jumping on the first one I see though. It's gonna have to give me chills or I'm not buying it. Some may say I'm crazy to pay off both vechiles only to get another car loan, but you only live once and I want a Mustang so bad it hurts.

I've been playing a lot of FALLOUT 3 lately. I finished the main quest in BROKEN STEEL and now I'm blazing through THE PITT. BROKEN STEEL added about 17 hours of gameplay and I still have some other things I can do in that expansion. I could go on playing in this world for as long as Bethesda wants to release new expansions. I really hope they do!

I also finished QUANTUM OF SOLACE which was much more enjoyable than I thought it would be. Now I'm playing Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. Which isn't great, but it isn't terrible. I'm also gonna dive into 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand pretty soon. I'd talk about my irritation with GameFly, but I just don't feel like it.

Soft Drinks With Real Sugar!

Many of you probably already know that you can get a few soft drinks without corn syrup right now. Pepsi has released Mountain Dew Throwback as well as Pepsi Throwback. You can get both in plastic bottles or in cans. I've only seen them in plastic bottles so far, and have purchased both. Dr.Pepper has also released a few drinks with pure cane sugar and no corn syrup. The Dr.Pepper bottling company has totally done it right though. Their drinks come in 12oz glass bottles.

Being the nostalgic pop culture junkie that I am I just had to try these. Let me just tell you that soft drinks without corn syrup are incredibly delicious. Yes, you CAN taste the difference. Not since the early 80's has Mountain Dew tasted so damn good! I don't even drink many regular soft drinks these days. If I do I generally drink diet. Once in a while I'll drink a regular Coke. I gotta say though if Dr Pepper and Pepsi keep making drinks minus the corn syrup I'll be drinking more of it on a weekly basis. Cavities and a growing waistline be damned!

Out of the pure sugar drinks I've had regular Dr.Pepper, A&W Root Beer, and Mountain Dew. I have a couple bottles of Pepsi still in my fridge. The thing that I like about these old school soft drinks is that you aren't overwhelmed by sweetness. You actually notice the fizz more than anything because it seems like there's more fizz than in the corn syrup variety. It's just a much better taste as well. Drinking the Mountain Dew brought me back to when Mountain Dew tasted great. Once upon a time it was all I drank. It's too bad Pepsi didn't release it in glass bottles though. Either way I'm just glad soft drink companies are ditching corn syrup even if it for a short time. Hopefully enough people will buy these and corn syrup will be a thing of the past. I don't expect that to happen, but at the very least they could make both...oh and how long before Coke follows suit?

Broken Steel Is Broken

I get home tonight looking forward to downloading the new BROKEN STEEL DLC for FALLOUT 3. I decide to look around the net for impressions and possible reviews. After cehecking out a few game blogs and message boards all I see are news stories and complaints about broken DLC. Apparently achievements aren't unlocking for the Xbox 360 DLC and PC users get the following message when they install the DLC "Not a cryptographic message or the cryptographic message is not formatted correctly. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8009200D)".

To say this news sucks is an understatement. FALLOUT 3 is my game of the year for 2008. I spent 106 hours playing it. For Christ's sake Betheseda get your goddamn act together. Bethesda had issues with DLC for The Pitt as well. Looks like I'll have to wait to play Broken Steel now, and I'm not happy about it!

Rock Band Not So Bad

OK, Rock Band is actually a fun game WHEN YOU PLAY WITH OTHER PEOPLE. Me and my daughter played Rock Band today for like five hours. I played bass. She played guitar. We kicked a bit of ass. I was struggling to come up with a band name so of course I picked parts of three death metal bands that I enjoy. Our band name is Napalm Angel Corpse, and we DESTROOOOOOY! I'm irritated that my band member's name can't be shown on Xbox Live though. What's wrong with Jack Azz? This is Rock Band for piss sake. Maybe I should have went with Corpse Fucker instead.

I also stopped by my local GameStop today to pick up a guitar. I couldn't believe how many used guitars they had there. I wasn't about to buy one though. Who knows how many little boogery fingers were on those guitars or how many hours they were used. I opted to go to Sam's Club and buy yet another copy of Guitar Hero 3 w/guitar. That means I have a new copy of GH3 that I'll need to get rid of. Sac, if you're reading this and you're interested in this game at all just let me know and it's yours for free.

Rock Band Impressions

I realize this game isn't new, but after playing Guitar Hero 1 and 2 on the PS2 when they were released I was beyond tired of music games. Rock band is definitely a better game than any of the Guitar Hero gamnes I've played, but the track list is just crap in my opinion. I know music is in the ear of the beholder, but man these songs just aren't fun to play. At least the modern songs aren't. I'm going through the solo career on vocals right now and I have to say that I'm really not having fun with most of these songs. It's no wonder there's a ton of DLC. There would have to be for anyone to wants to keep playing Rock Band. I'd have say that I don't care about 85% of the songs included on the disc. I'm guessing it would be more fun playing with other people even if you're playing a song that you don't like. For me to enjoy Rock Band I'm pretty sure I'd have to shell out a ton of cash for DLC. As tempting as buying Judas Priest's 'Screaming For Vengeance' is I can't bring myself to do it because I don't plan on buying Rock Band. At this point it's just a rental from GameFly. If I owned it I would definitely buy 'Screaming For Vengeance' complete because it's one of my favorite albums ever. I'd also pick up Megadeth's 'Peace Sells...But Who's Buying'. That's yet another one of my favorite albums.

The best thing about Rock Band vs Guitar Hero is that you don't fail out of a song when you're royally screwing the pooch. I definitely like that aspect of the game. On the flip side I'll take Guitar Hero for the songs. The GH games just seem to be more suited to my musical tastes. Which reminds me that I need to put Guitar Hero Aerosmith on my GameFly GameQ...

For me Rock Bands fails only because I don't like most of the songs on the disc. When Bon Jovi's 'Wanted Dead Or Alive' is a welcome song to sing vs most of the songs you know there's a problem.