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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Beta Rocks Live

Betasim recently picked up a guitar-only pack of Guitar Hero: World Tour (meaning, game and guitar only; no drums or mic). She recently beat the tour, and has since grown tired of breaking her own high scores. Therefore, she has taken her game online, to see where she stands.

Now, let it be known that Beta does not have an Xbox Live account, let alone a Gold one. I, however, do, so last night there was a chick rocker online with the name Alphasim, besting comers left and right. She played versus for awhile, including four or so times against one guy, who she about doubled the score of while on normal difficulty, with him on easy. She eventually went to hard to try and even things out, but it didn’t help. She also played a few team matches, and one guy she played with was fantastic. He was hitting almost all his notes on expert… I was impressed. Finally she joined an impromptu band. She played three songs with them (another guitarist and a singer) when her turn came to pick the song. I suggested she pick something hard to sing, just to be mean, and lo and behold, she did. Hell, the song she picked wasn’t even in English! She picked Escuela de Calor, and it was to no ones surprise that the singer quit mid way through the song. Beta commented that she felt terrible. I think she did, anyway… she was laughing so hard it was difficult to tell what she was saying.

She joined another band and played a round with them, until they sat at the ‘post gig’ screen for over four minutes. She bailed on them to go try the battle mode. Neither of us knew anything about this so she was going in blind. She lasted all of about two and a half minutes before she was blitzed to death by her opponent. Finally she wrapped up her night playing one more gig with some random schmoe who picked a Tool song, which makes her happy all the live-long day. Swear words were uttered by her through most of the song (all of which were directed at her opponent), after which she called it a night. I think that this was karma getting back at her for Escuela de Calor, personally.

Here’s the part that worries me. Beta played for over an hour, and did pretty well. I, however, am pathetic. I struggle to complete most songs on easy, and can’t even think of going to normal. I’m worried that the people she played against and with are going to want to play again, only they’re going to come to me looking for competition. I want nothing to do with playing this thing online, but now it looks like I do.

*sigh* I’ve got to get Beta her own Live account.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

News and Notes: 5/7/09

It’s been awhile since my last post, so here’s what’s up.

  • I’m still hyping Unreal Tournament III to anyone who’ll listen now that it’s been upgraded with patch 2.0 (and now 2.1), as well as the Titan Pack. This is what Epic intended the game to be, I believe, and I love it.
  • MLB 2K9 for PC got patched a while back, and more then anything it seems to have all but fixed the first baseman bug. That was far and away my biggest complaint, but it wasn’t everything. I still want to see the other fielding gaffes fixed as well as the Quick Play mode expanded to allow changing the other team’s starting lineup and pitcher (although that may be out of the realm of a normal patch).
  • Would it make sense for me to review World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, now that everyone who will buy it has had it for months? I’m not sure. I’ll give it some thought.
  • I’m toying with in-game browsers like PLAYXPERT, XFire and Steam’s in-game browser, and so far I like XFire’s the best. Steam’s works very well, but obviously only works on game’s that run through Steam. XFire, on the other hand, seems to work with most anything, and the in-game app includes taking video and pictures as well. PLAYXPERT seems to take too much in the way of system resources so it’s not running 98% of the time on my rig. Naturally,I go by Alphasim on XFire (as seen at the bottom of this page). Look me up.
  • I bought a new cell phone recently, a Motorola Krave, and I love it. The interface is slick and it works like a charm. My only potential complaint is the flip-up plastic screen that protects the touch screen when not in use is a hindrance when using the touch screen QWERTY keyboard. Other then that, no complaints. I definitely recommend it.
  • Betasim graduates from the University of Illinois at Chicago this weekend. Congrats, Beta! Now you can get back to work on the site…  I mean, relax and take it easy! lol You know which one I really mean.
  • I recently re-installed and patched back up TESIV: Oblivion. I installed a couple item mods to expand the gear and loot tables, primarily Armamentarium and it’s related mods. It works great and I’m enjoying the game again. My big complaint when I uninstalled it was that I’d seen no new gear in 30+ hours, and now that’s been fixed. I’m looking to install  a couple graphical overhaul mods to improve the slightly aging visuals now that I’ve got two more gigs of RAM since I last played, plus and that GeForce 8800 GT I reviewed back in September of ‘08.

I’ll post more later. I’ve got allot of minor updates to post here that don’t warrant a site update, so look forward to that.