Dreaming of Warhammer.

Is it odd to be dreaming about an MMORPG that is yet to be released? I'm not even on the Beta!

I can't wait for this game to be released. My destiny is chosen.. literally. I am choosing Chosen. Haha, I crack myself up..

Anyway, there are some great Beta reviews I have been watching on youtube by a guy called br3ntbr0 - should go and check him out. I recommend him purely because he's had alot of experience with MMOs and so he pretty much knows what he's talking about and looking for within an MMO. Although I am a cynic when it comes to reviews, I think we can trust him! His blog can be found here.

CHOSEN RAWR!

I just feel like playing something masculine and powerful for a change.

So, not much else to update. Once Warhammer is released I am definately going to be doing more blogging on that.. for the time being I am catching up on the Lore using wikipedia and such. I have been playing a bit of Phantasy Star Universe and Lost Odyssey for the 360. PSU is an MMO for the 360, but I can't afford to subscribe at the moment so just playing through the single player campaign. It's quite sweet, music is fun, anime style characters and hack and slash elements to it. The controls feel slightly stiff to me for some reason, but I guess I will get used to that.

Lost Odyssey has a beautiful story behind it; classic, magical and quite tragic. The Skill Link ability within the combat element of the game is unique and allows you to be a bit more creative with your characters which is something I love doing the most within RPGs. I think it is important to reach out beyond the box of the typical "tank, spank and heal" structure to truly get what you want from your characters and be initiative. The combat is turn-based but allows you to get more involved physically with the combat with melee characters when you are made to judge how well a melee attack will hit by a 'target-ring' system. When it's the character's turn to give a melee attack a ring appears that you control to make it hit the 'bullseye'. When it hits the bullseye spot on you will get a perfect attack and the attack will hit for a little more than 'Bad' or 'Good'. I usually screw up and only get 'Good' attacks though! Practise makes Perfect eh..

Trock On!

Thanks to Alex Day who has created a whole new genre of music inspired by Wrock (Wizard Rock (Harry Potter fan-music)) called..

Trock

Trock stands for Time-Lord Rock! Can you guess what kind of songs are played in this genre of music? Doctor Who related songs (as Doctor Who is a time-lord). The movement began the end of July (officially) and it's already attracted loads of Doctor Who fans to the forum which can be found here.

The type of music I've heard so far only hits typical rock (acoustic/electric guitar/drums) but as the genre is still young and though many bands have bloomed in this genre, its still very new. The song lyrics by all the bands are based on situations, relationships, characters and places within the Doctor Who universe. People are coming up with some amazing lyrics all the time and some really great band names inspired by Doctor Who. Here are just a few:

• The Bad Wolves
• Chameleon Circuit (the band that started it all..)
• It's a Sonic Screwdriver
• Paradox
• Time and Relative Dimensions in Rock
• The Medusa Cascade
• Companion
• Torchwood Institute
  

More can be found at the forum, so go sign up :) It's a fantastic community and there are always talks on Classic/New Doctor Who episodes, spin-offs such as Torchwood/Sarah Jane Chronicles and then random discussions on Pandas.

There are many videos of the songs already up on youtube and myspace, so either sign up on the forum and check out the Songs forum or go to youtube and type in 'trock' - should hopefully find all of them (if they're smart enough they would have tagged the videos with 'trock' at least). If you're a Doctor Who fan this will definately be your cup of tea!

As for me, I have my own one man band called Torchwood Institute which I haven't created anything for just yet, a few lyrics here and there but I really need to sit down and have a think where I want to go with it. Torchwood > Doctor Who! Hehe.

J-Rock.

Something I used to be much more interested in than I am these days. The days when I got excited to think about watching anime when I got home from school/college. This post is a dedication to all the awesome j-rock bands there are out there, and some of my favourite animes. While I wait for my Dad to bugger off to bed so I can watch Matchstick Men :3 It may also spark my motivation to watch some more anime again.

Japanese rock is certainly a genre that is yet to reach the mainstream rock scene - I can see why it's not.. obviously it's in a totally different language, but the style is a mix of nu-wave, pop.. infact you can't really class it.. it just has that 'sound' that you know 'hey! this is a j-rock song!'. The fact they sing in Japanese often helps. I wish it was in the mainstream rock scene though, its always great to dance to, the singers are almost always hot, their voices are awesome and they're usually very talented musicians with great melodics. Some of the best Japanese musicians aren't j-rock, including Yoko Kanno.. but maybe I'll make another post on j-pop/anime soundtrack style stuff another time.

Abingdon Boys School
oo diddly foo! This is a j-rock band that frequents my Winamp playlist with some amazing melodic metal stylee songs such as 'Down To You', 'Lost Reason' (my favourite) and 'Howling'. What makes this band different to other j-rock get ups is they actually sing in English (quite poorly, but kudos for trying.. japanese accent fails at English sadly). There are a couple of songs in Japanese, but the majority is in English. From what I can tell, these boys are fairly youngish and a kind of new band. But nice, go check them out.

L'arc En Ciel
Probably the reason I got into j-rock in the first place. I found out about them a couple of years back I think.. it was Ready Steady Go from the Full Metal Alchemist series, and then after some youtubing I found Stay Away which became my favourite song by them for a while (mainly because of the awesome dancing at the end of the video HAH!)and then after much downloading and listening to how much discography they have (they go back something stupid) I fell in love. L'arc En Ciel have a deep background with many different styles and 'spin offs' such as Hyde's solo album etc. I would say they are my favourite j-rock band. And they do kick-ass concerts, which I badly want to go to.

L'arc En Ciel

Dir En Grey
Another band with a huge discography, literally huge. I'm inclined to believe this is one of the first j-rock movements with some interesting electro and experimental style music in the early days of their career. I never listened to them properly, I have all their music though. Not exactly my cup of tea to be honest though. However they inspired alot of the music I love, so I have to give them a chance right?

Miyavi
Strange man, extremely talented!

Gackt
I like Gackt - he has some slow songs and some really hardcore songs that are again, great to dance to. Some songs are a little mainstream and others a bit weirder. He has a really cool voice too.

Some others I discovered on Last.fm:

Flow
After listening to a few of their songs, they're not really 'rock' they actually have a really cool soul/jazz/electro sound. I would recommend them for sure, something I could listen to easily when working and bob my head to!

Luna Sea
Luna Sea were one of the major forces in visual rock throughout the 1990s. From what I can hear, I'm a little hit and miss with some of their songs, but dunno maybe you will like it.

Glay
Really nice style similar to the other jrock bands. And seem to have quite a large fan-base and discography!

Will keep on the look out for anymore, and give those last few bands a proper listen. My favourite is still L'arc en Ciel, with a huge range of styles and amazing talent and the best live shows I have ever seen..

Check out youtube/Last.fm for these bands!

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved², Woah!

Alan downloaded Geometry Wars 2 the day it was released on Thursday of last week (31/08/08) for the xbox360 and paid I think 600 credits for it, iirc. All I have to say is it is worth it - the graphics have improved slightly since the first Geometry Wars and as Alan put it "they have put some damn nice shaders on there". It's alot shinier - it helps to have just bought a HD 37" TV for it to play on, too!

SHINYNESS!!!

I am one of those people who tend to get bored with games quickly if I have to repetitively try something because I keep dying, but in GW2 I will keep going all damn day if I have to, its so much fun. My favourite mode on there is Pacifism. It's a fully defensive mode where you get only one life, no attack and a boat load of blue squares chasing after you (which is amusing in multiplayer mode, but will talk about that in a second) and a load of gates which spawn in random places. It's fine to go through the middle of the gates because not only does that kill the gate but it kills any blue squares close to it too. It is one of the few games which makes me feel like my heart is about to jump out and where I will actually scream out loud over things.. its quite hilarious. The things chasing after you are so damn quick and you know that if you don't react quick enough you're going to go 'PLOP' and thats it.. annoying unsympathetic squares of doom.

ALSO, the new multiplayer implementation; gosh this was such a good idea. We had four of us playing the other night - Ozz, Mike, Alan and myself - and we played for about an hour which is good going for an arcade game if you ask me. You get the choice of the six game modes that you get in single player, but you can either go competitive or co-operative. We tried both; competitive is hilarious because not only do you lose track of your ship amongst everyone elses and the millions of other shapes and swirly colours on screen but you're also at the same time trying to be tactical and getting the other guys confused and killed. Co-operative is damn fun too, as your all not trying to get each other killed or stealing kills but you're just shooting in any direction and trying to get the highest score possible. Again; losing your ship amongst the frenzy will happen unless you are some kind of cyborg. It was amusing because Alan being already good at this game and the other three of us being kinda noobish kept dying within the first 30 seconds and losing the entire teams life but Alan would keep going alone and got a high score of like 19 million or something, so we ended up trying to distract him while he played without us, haa. On Pacifism, multiplayer is amusing. The poor sod who gets the blue ship will get confused with the blue squares and most likely die first.. or at least, I did.

I have to mention aswell the amazing music. In the Evolved game mode it has music from the original GW so that was fun to dance around to because as we know, its teh best arcade game music evar. But there's new mixes in the other game modes which aren't as awesome as the Evolved music but still really cool. When I find somewhere you can download, I will post it up.

So all in all a fantastic game, great for multiplayer especially if you're all slightly drunk (forget the drugs, its an acid trip just playing that game) and it will create a scenario of laughs and then very serious concentration faces, and then.. WTF WHERES MY SHIP GONE? faces.