Rise Against quality!!!! Roar!!!!

So, for the third time in my life, I just saw...

LIVE!!!!!

(Totally the best picture I could find)

Now, the first time I saw Rise Against live, I wasn't very impressed, but did I blame Rise Against? No, I blamed My Chemical Romance because only a band that crappy would have such a zetta bad manager that he'd plan a show in a venue with such zetta terrible sound quality that you can't tell octaves apart without some sort of ultra-epic hearing aid. The second time, I was much impressed musically, but I also couldn't think of a band with a worse performance than Rise Against. Going blind folded wouldn't have been detrimental to the experience, and, with the exception of a single inspirational quote, everything Tim Mcllrath said in between songs was BORING! Like you!

Now, before I go on to how good Rise Against was this time, I'd just like to say that Rancid and Riverboat Gamblers are both okay live, but suck at engaging the crowd. So maybe Rise Against is just like every other punk rock band in that aspect.

Back when I reviewed Appeal to Reason, I still gave out scores, and Appeal to Reason got a 5/6. But, after seeing Rise Against live with their new album out and such, I have decided that it only deserved a 3/6. Collapse made for a worse intro than Drones, just to start off my complaints, and pretty much every song but Re-education Through Labor off of Appeal to Reason wasn't that good. The songs they did play from The Sufferer and the Witness as well as Siren Song of the Counter Culture were factoring amazing, but I really think that Appeal to Reason decreased the musical quality of their liveness.

As for their engagination of the crowd, Rise Against improved. Slightly. I wouldn't say they did all that great; it felt like fans complained about how dry it is to be in the crowd so they went to some concerts and ripped off other bands, y'know? MAKE NOISE! MAKE NOISE! I bet every other lead singer in the world has done that so much they're all at risk of getting bored to death if they say it another time. Still better than the other two times they did it, but who cares? i don't judge bands relative to themselves, that would be silly. I judge them relative to Slipknot, particularly their drummers, and that's why they all fail when it comes to what they do onstage-their drummers all assume they can stay on solid land the whole time.

So, see Rise Against live, but their's no shame in bringing a blind fold and taking a nap between songs. Quite honestly, if you didn't see them live before Appeal to Reason came out, you are missing out on some the most zetta awesome awesomeness I have heard in my life. But consider this the next best thing and everything will be okay. It's a perfect concert on a perfect day. And yes, you shoudl feel factored with if you read that sentence with a tinge of deja vu.

Funny, one of the bosses in zone six is called nostalgia

After trying out the patch so big in flash game terms it's an expansion for Sonny 2, I suddenly started doubting myself. What if Sonny 2 ain't as zetta average as you think? What if you just expected something epicly epic? What if it's all nostalgia? So I played the original Sonny again. No, it's not nostalgia. I thought Sonny wouldn't be as fun since I've beaten it with all four classes, but it still is. But, however, I do have to give Krin props for what the added content to Sonny 2 has done. It's so much of a change that I do feel the need to dignify it with a whole extra review.

In Sonny, the lack of a cost to respeccing your character made experimentation fun, especially against evil bosses like the Baron that used INNOVATION (what the factor does that mean?), but Sonny 2 said, "Fun? FUN? Who the factor do you think we are? Death to fun! Die! DIE!" If you wanted to try out a new build, you didn't have to get sleep, you had to waste valuable money on it. This would scale with your level, but you never had the option to get rid of a certain number of skill points or just your skill points and not your stat points in order to reduce the cost, making the system as zetta stupid as it could possibly be. Furthermore, none of the bosses were that innovative. Clemons would attack you and use subversion at the same time, the mayor regenerated health passively, and the secret final boss Krin would cast uber bore on you to stun you for 12 turns while the arbitrary timer expires, enraging your character so he is more likely to become hit due to frustration.

The newest patch for Sonny 2 attempted to change all that not by removing stupid features but by adding. I still hate the timer, it is zetta annoying that you can't respec for free, but Krin made the right move with what he did to a point. The enemies in zone six aren't that interesting, both zones six and seven have dissapointing end bosses, but but the north and south guardians were slightly interesting, thus I have mercy. The only interesting fights in all of Sonny 2 feel like rehashes of fights in Sonny 1 except for this fight and the time bomb, so some credit is due. But what I liked about this patch wasn't the new content; it was the achievements. I liked the achievements that applied to specific bosses more; fight him by yourself so you can't rely on Veradux to heal you; fight him as a healer instead of a damage dealer, etc, etc, but these achievements also could have been elaborated on.

But what really takes center stage is the legend run. Beat the game on heroic without using any training fights or repeating boss fights. It sounds about as hard as it is. I actually found myself respeccing my character, and, unfortunately, starting the whole factoring ordeal over and over again when I ran out of moneyz. This, Krin, is a bad thing. A very zetta bad thing. But, after you've come up with a build to beat that impossible fight against two mages and a knight, it starts to become a fun little challenge.

A few things annoyed me along the way. The first was how zetta slow you have to go. Fighting higher level enemies on the hardest difficulty is just insane in terms of time. If you're going to do this legend run, you better be prepared to spend some time on it. Also, there were all too many fights where I wouldn't get a turn. This isn't very zetta bad, it is so factoring annoying that Krin is going to go to factoring hell just for this one evil deed! They need to make a new word for fail this stupid! Bad, bad Krin!

All in all, if you thought you hated Sonny 2, give it anothet try now that the new patch is out. Be patient, and you may find yourself actually having fun.

That title is definetely selling out... (and some misanthropy)

I have a fable to present to all of ye: A person (who will hereby be referred to in the second person because I assume you would all do the exact same thing in this situation, you inverse idiots) logs onto facebook early in the morning (about half an hour before I publish this post) on June six. You see that it is your friend's birthday. You're smart, and you know that June isn't the six month, and you're friend doesn't like death metal and never sings Slipknot's The Heretic Anthem during study hall the way I most definitely don't. So, instead of checking to see if his age is some ridiculous number like 103, you post on his wall: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHO!" Said friend opens his inbox to see that he has gotten far too many messages from facebook saying his wall has been posted on. After remembering what date it is, said friend is depressed to the point of cutting himself because his already small faith in humanity has just been completely obliterated by OJ Simpson, who now thinks that he can't get arrested for murder because the jury is composed of IDIOTS like you factoring hectopascals that that can't go "6-6... hmmmm..." the way any reasonable person (officially an endangered species) would!

FACTOR YOU ALL! YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO CALL YOURSELVES SENTIENT!

Anyways, now I'll talk about a human being I respect: Bobby Crosby. No, not the baseball player, the author of Dreamless, my current favorite webcomic. I looked under the comment section, and Crosby's name appeared to be a link. I clicked on it, read five pages into Marry Me and concluded that Crosby didn't write both Dreamless and Marry Me. After doing a wiki search and discovering that Robert Crosby is also the name of a baseball player and the webcomic artist isn't significant enough to be listed on wikipedia, I assumed that there were two webcomic artists named Robert Crosby and the author of Dreamless somehow found that funny enough to make a link to Marry Me. Nevertheless, I continued to read Marry Me just for the hell of it.

Did you read Two Kinds and think to yourself, "This webcomic is so zetta bad it's good!"? Then you should read Marry Me. The story about a moody popstar who hates the dating process so much she thinks arranged marriages would be a suitable solution and eventually arranges a marriage at one of her concerts is, well, CRAP! ZETTA CRAP! That's one of the ways I know Marry Me and Dreamless are written by different authors; Dreamless had a good storyline and a "so good it's good" appeal. A lot of the minor happenings are also rather... I don't want to talk about them, actually. Just don't read Marry Me and expect a good plot.

But where Marry Me and Two Kinds differ is that when Two Kinds tries to reject it's so bad it's good appeal, the quality of the comic seems to have dissociative identity disorder, rapidly switching from being okay to being suck. And not the good kind of zetta suckiness, either. But when Marry Me attempts to be good, it, well, it is good. I actually found myself liking the character of the moody popstar and wanting to marry her because the character development is just that good. Some other characters were also interesting (except for Parker), making the whole writing thing actually interesting and stuff. This whole good writing thing is probably the only area of similarity where the comic has stuff in common with Dreamless, but the big difference is that dreamless did a good job on the delivery of plot elements while Marry Me did a good job with characters.

Mr. Crosby said Marry Me was open to sequel ideas, which I like the sound of because he's proven with Dreamless that he can indeed make a good plotline, while the characters of Marry Me are vastly superior to Dreamless' characters. This is one of the longer blog posts I've made, isn't it? I better stop before I die from writing too much or something. Adios, inverse idiots who say happy birthday on June (6) sixth!

yes you!

in the words of machine head,

F*** YOU ALL! F*** YOU ALL!

F*** YOU ALLLLLLLLL! KILL YOUR MOTHER, CUT YOUR EARS OFF AND LIGHT YOU ON FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I WILL DESTROY ALL OF YOU WITH MY LIGHTNING!!!!!!!!!!!

sorry, my pills just kicked in.......

anyway, let me tell you about a company that was one of the founding industries of the video game world who, without them, we would still be playing custers revenge (don't ask). yes one of the great founders of the industry only known as color dreams......HA! no, but seriously I'm talking about activision. AND WHY THEY ARE EEEVIL!!!!!!!

sorry, activision has been on almost every console to date which is pretty remarkable by to days standards. and whats really interesting is that they are still going strong. strong and incredibly STUPID.

now let me tell you a little about myself. one of my favorite games of all times is a little gem known as psychonauts, a game were you play a student in a day camp for psychics.

now what the flying f*ck do these two things have in common. well to start, psychonauts was created by the tim burton of video games, tim shaffer (spooky) who has made many games that was designed to mess with your Psyche. and i have beaten them all. the only ones i liked/remember was a game were you play as a biker gang of wimps (full throttle). a game were you play as the grim reapers travel agent (grim fandango). and psychonauts. so 3..... just 3.

but they were 3 of the smartest, cleverest, mount Everest and well written games iv ever played.and tim shaffers newest release had me foaming at the mouth like a squirrel. a game that combined two of my favorite things, video games and metal :} i am of course talking about brutal legends. a game so awesome could not be maintained by my own Psyche (i have been using that word a lot). a game featuring the voices of jack black (cool), lemmie something from motorhead (as the evil basses), lita ford from poison (?),robb flynn the singer of machine head (i think) and last but not least ozzy osbourne. ozzy f*cking osboune. in a video game. as a boss......

my head just asploded.

so a great game with a great developer with a great voice cast. that's just great. so why am i linking all this together?, and why am i bashing activision? and why is jennifer anniston so fat? well i can answer two of those. you see activision was the company reasponsable for brutal legends, but they started losing money after a share trading incident and had to drop brutal legends like a hooker of a bridge. but than a shining light from the heavens known as EA GAMES picked up the downtrodden game and gave it the recognition it deserved. and they did. the e3 trailer for the game was so cool it brought hordes of gamers to its knees with its gameplay, story and characters. it looked like smooth sailing from there, but then guess who returned............

ACTIVISION!!!! {GASPS!}

a few days after the trailer had aired activision had contacted ea and said, get this..... they were suing them.

(silent stupid break)

yes suing them. for what?they claim ea stole the game from them. they threw it away, they said they did not want it anymore. WTF is wrong with them? if someone threw away a piece of gold covered in dog excrement and i dug it out of the bin a few days later, cleaned it up and tried to sell it, you don't sue me for finding something you did not want. that's what children who lose at kick ball do. grow up activision! you were the ones who messed up, not ea. and its not like activision dont have any money, hell, they have call of duty4 mod.2 the biggest game of the year so why are they gripping over a game made by a developer no one ever heard of. its so childish its funny. someone on the gamespot forum said "its like if a man dumped his wife, then sued her when she got remarried" that's not the way the world works! goddamn you activision you have lost all my respect.

but to be fair, i dont think there is much they can do. not even the judge from the anna nichole smith trial would side with them. so it looks like the game will still arrive with all its glory OCTOBER 13. remember that day so i can personally kick your a*s waiting in line for it.

i mainly did this post to show that the video game industry is a bunch of spoiled brats with nothing better to do than say "he stole my idea" and piss themselves in a corner. that's all for now.

also i was going to review infamous, but it is a long game, so it wont be for a wile.

also how can activision be losing money when the last time i went fye and reserved c.o.d 4 mod 2 they gave me a free activision shirt (which i am wearing right now). and that's it.

remember.... F*CK YOU ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!

(Yes, I fixed the spelling in this one (except for mispelling schafer shaffer), but it wasn't worth it considering I don't get paid. Maybe $500 is too much, but how about $10 so I can buy sklillet's comatose? Please? Pretty Please?)

I'll call you DEAD! FACTORING DEAD, MARIA!

Recently (and recently is a zetta long time when you're as lazy as me), I saw on my serious radio that In This Moment covered a factoring blondie song! Factor you, Maria Brinks and whatever your guitarist is named! Aren't you male? How could you do that to your dignity! So I came up with a zetta awesome revenge plan: I'm going to review In This Moment's debut album and say all sorts of mean things about it! This will be so zetta fun!

A lot of people think that metalcore is much wussier than normal metal, and all I can think about is how someone can be such a brain-dead hectopascal. They've clearly never heard any Silent Civilian songs or downloaded a God Forbid album in their life, and they must think System of a Down doesn't exist. They must only listen to metalcore bands like HORSE the Band, Atreyu, Drowning Pool, and, of course, In This Moment! Yeah, that's right! I could you wussies, you who would dare to cover, of all things, factoring cover, a factoring Blondie song! Named Call Me! How do you sleep at night?

I've also got some issues with the lyrics. If you read them without hearing the song, you'd think, "Why the factor is Sho complainging?" and that's because they are goo- I MEAN you're taste in lyrics sucks, any band that would cover a Blondie song must have terrible lyrics everywhere! Definetely. No doubt about it. But, in context, the emphasis is put on all the wrong parts. Let's take the chorus of the best song on the album: Daddy's Falling Angel.

In my dreams last night I saw your face
You held me and washed away my tears
Then I woke to realize you're gone
I'm drowning in solitude again

What's wrong with these lyrics? Well, let me re-write them so it looks more liek what you'd hear in the song..

In my dreams last night I saw your face
You held meeeeeeeeeeeee (YOU HELD ME!) and washed away my tears...
Then I woke to realize you're goneeee (REALIZE!)
I'm drowninggggggggggg in solitoode again

And that's that. Zetta fail. Just repeat the line you held me 100 times and you'll see why I take issue with the lyrics.

And then there's the singing. The melodic singing's good, erm, for a band that covers Blondie, but the screaming, it sucks, really. I adjusted a little after listening to the album a few times, but it still feels like a waste to not have Maria Brinks doing her melodic singing. And, uh, this album sucks, cause uh, erm...

Okay, okay, okay, I'll get to the praise. Any album that can put pop and metalcore in the same song and still have smooth transitions multiple times deserve at least a little praise for getting in more variety than Rise Against does, what with Swing Life Away and State of the Union being on the same album. As far as vocalists go, when she's not screaming, Maria is one of the better ones. Their guitar playing isn't perfect, and their drumming is quite lacking when compared to bands like Silent Civilian, but they've got a unique sound for a metalcore band, and, wussies they may be, the relaxing melodic parts are a nice change of pace from even bands like Drowning Pool. If you're into metalcore and like trying new things, buy Beautiful Tragedy, but otherwise, don't. It's not the best album ever, but it's a good album, even if it is by a band that covered Blondie. No, I won't shut up about that, don't bother asking.