• 29Dec 09

  Top 10 Albums of the Decade

  I lied! It's actually thirteen! I can justify this in celebration of the next decade since FFXIII is coming out! Yeah, that doesn't really make a lot of sense at all, whatever. Uhhh I got this list down to thirteen albums and instead of trying to eliminate three of them I'm just gonna list 'em all. Close enough, right?

  I. Agalloch - The Mantle (2002)

  

  1. A Celebration for the Death of Man...
  2. In the Shadow of Our Pale Companion
  3. Odal
  4. I Am the Wooden Doors
  5. The Lodge
  6. You Were But a Ghost in My Arms
  7. The Hawthorne Passage
  8. ...and the Great Cold Death of the Earth
  9. A Desolation Song

  The Lodge

  II. The American Dollar - The American Dollar (2006)

  

  1. War on Christmas
  2. Glow
  3. Cambian
  4. Somnambulance
  5. Long March
  6. Separate But Equal
  7. Peterson
  8. Thompson
  9. Twelve Days Awake
  10. Everyone Gets Shot

  War on Christmas

  III. Converge - Jane Doe (2001)

  

  1. Concubine
  2. Fault and Fracture
  3. Distance and Meaning
  4. Hell to Pay
  5. Homewrecker
  6. The Broken Vow
  7. Bitter and Then Some
  8. Heaven in Her Arms
  9. Phoenix in Flight
  10. Phoenix in Flames
  11. Thaw
  12. Jane Doe

  Heaven in Her Arms

  IV. Envy - Insomniac Doze (2006)

  

  1. Further Ahead of Warp
  2. Shield of Selflessness
  3. Scene
  4. Crystallize
  5. The Unknown Glow
  6. Night in Winter
  7. A Warm Room

  Scene

  V. Explosions in the Sky - The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place (2003)

  

  1. First Breath After Coma
  2. The Only Moment We Were Alone
  3. Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean
  4. Memorial
  5. Your Hand in Mine

  First Breath After Coma

  VI. Jesu - Jesu (2004)

  

  1. Your Path to Divinity
  2. Friends Are Evil
  3. Tired of Me
  4. We All Faulter
  5. Walk on Water
  6. Sun Day
  7. Man/Woman
  8. Guardian Angel

  Friends Are Evil

  VII. Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American (2001)

  

  1. Bleed American
  2. A Praise Chorus
  3. The Middle
  4. Your House
  5. Sweetness
  6. Hear You Me
  7. If You Don't, Don't
  8. Get It Faster
  9. Cautioners
  10. The Authority Song
  11. My Sundown

  Cautioners

  VIII. Matthew Good - Avalanche (2003)

  

  1. Pledge of Allegiance
  2. Lullaby for the New World Order
  3. Weapon
  4. In a World Called Catastrophe
  5. Avalanche
  6. 21st Century Living
  7. While We Were Hunting Rabbits
  8. Bright End of Nowhere
  9. Near Fantastica
  10. Song for the Girl
  11. Double Life
  12. A Long Way Down
  13. House of Smoke & Mirrors

  In a World Called Catastrophe

  IX. Moving Mountains - Pneuma (2007)

  

  1. Aphelion
  2. Cover the Roots, Lower the Stems
  3. Alastika
  4. Fourth
  5. 8105
  6. Bottom Feeder
  7. Sol Solis
  8. Grow On, Grow Up, Grow Out
  9. The Earth and the Sun
  10. Ode We Will Bury Ourselves

  8105

  X. OLIVIA - The Lost Lolli (2004)

  

  1. Alone in our Castle
  2. Fake Flowers
  3. Blind Unicorn
  4. Devil's in me
  5. Celestial Delinquent
  6. Space Halo
  7. SpidERSpins
  8. 026unconscious333
  9. Under Your Waves
  10. Dreamcamp
  11. Denial
  12. Sea me
  13. Into the Stars

  Into the Stars

  XI. Our Lady Peace - Spiritual Machines (2000)

  

  1. R.K. Intro
  2. Right Behind You (Mafia)
  3. R.K. 2029
  4. In Repair
  5. Life
  6. Middle of Yesterday
  7. Are You Sad?
  8. R.K. 2029 (Pt. 2)
  9. Made to Heal
  10. R.K. 1949-97
  11. Everyone's a Junkie
  12. R.K. on Death
  13. All My Friends
  14. If You Believe
  15. The Wonderful Future

  In Repair

  XII. Owen - Owen (2001)

  

  1. That Which Wasn't Said
  2. Most Days and
  3. Most Nights
  4. Accidentally
  5. Declaration of Incompetence
  6. You Should Do It Now While It's On Your Mind
  7. Dead Men Don't Lie
  8. Places to Go
  9. Think About It

  Most Days and

  XIII. Sigur Rós - ( ) (2002)

  

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  untitled 3

  • Posted Dec 29, 2009 7:34 pm GMT
  • Category: Music
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• 27Dec 09

  You got rust on my iron first.

  Prior to Namco Bandai's release of Soulcalibur for the Xbox 360, they had originally ported Tekken 5 to the PlayStation 3. In a strange turn of events, it seems that Namco got it right the first time with Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection, as the Soulcalibur port was less than ideal. Despite the superior effort, Tekken 5's appearance is nowhere near a flawless one.
  
  Right off the bat you'll notice that there are two versions of Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection that you can buy. There's a twenty dollar version and a thirty dollar version. What's the difference you ask? The twenty dollar version is the original release of Dark Resurrection, and it comes with a bare-bones selection of modes. The thirty dollar version is an upgrade to the original release which includes online play, survival mode, and a practice mode. Yes, you read that right, the basic release of Dark Resurrection doesn't even come with a practice mode. The patch which included the much-needed modes was released separately several months after the original game was launched, and went for the price of ten dollars. It makes you wonder why they didn't just wait to release a fully-featured game instead of ultimately releasing two different versions.
  
  So depending on how much you're willing to pay, your experience and mileage may vary. What is there however, is a highly competent fighting game that's a lot of fun to play. The main modes you get are arcade, ghost battle, and versus. Arcade is your standard fighting game arcade mode which has you fight against a series of challengers until you eventually get to a boss fight. Unfortunately there is absolutely no story mode whatsoever to Dark Resurrection, so the arcade mode is pretty basic, which can either be a good thing or a bad thing. It's good if you just want to fight a series of opponents, but if you're looking for something with some substance to sink your teeth into it probably won't hold your attention for very long.
  
  Unless you have some human competition to go up against in versus mode, ghost battle is most likely going to be where you're going to spend the majority of your time. Ghost battle attempts to mimic human players by giving them unique appearances through the game's customization feature, as well as making them all have different play styIes. They'll even have a win/loss ratio which helps make them feel like more than just mindless A.I., but they're still nothing compared to the real thing.
  
  Tekken's battle system is pretty easy to just pick up and play, but it's also something that's incredibly difficult to master. It works by having each of the four buttons on the controller controlling one of your character's four limbs, and combining them in different ways will allow you to perform a variety of different moves. Learning and mastering combos is definitely an extremely important part of any fighting game, but successfully pulling off a powerful combo in Tekken can nearly instantly end a battle. That's perhaps the biggest complaint that can be had with Tekken, once you get sucked into a combo there's almost nothing you can do aside from watching yourself get pummeled into the ground. This can lead to a lot of frustration for newer players, so learning the proper timing for blocking and evading attacks is something you'll want to focus on very early.
  
  Visually Dark Resurrection looks like a PlayStation 2 game running in HD, so it looks pretty good on the PlayStation 3 despite its aged appearance. The widescreen support definitely helps, and it makes you wonder why they were too lazy to add this to the Soulcalibur port on the Xbox 360. There's a lot of variety to the arenas that you'll fight in too, and the fighters all animate well, as you'd expect.
  
  Tekken 5's soundtrack is also solid, with a pretty nice mixture of different types of music, ranging from upbeat techno tracks to fast-paced songs with a harder rock edge. The sound effects are somewhat mixed though; there's a very distinct sound effect you'll hear whenever you land a successful blow that comes complete with the trademark Tekken 'explosion' graphical effect, but there also seems to be a bit of a lack of variety when it comes to character sound effects; characters will often make the same sounds over and over without much variety when attacking, as well as when being hit.
  
  Despite the fact that it's an older game, Tekken 5 still has quite a bit of value for the full thirty dollars. Unfortunately this has been diminished over time with the release of newer games, especially since you can actually get quite a few of them for a cheaper price. So while Dark Resurrection does have a somewhat questionable value, as well as a hurting lack of mode variety, there's still enough to do here if you go for the full thirty dollar version of the game. You'll earn money as you play which will allow you to customize your characters if you want to, and there's also a few new fighters in Dark Resurrection that haven't appeared in any earlier versions. The roster is absolutely massive, so you can spend quite a bit of time simply trying out and learning how to use many of the game's different characters. Dark Resurrection is also a PlayStation Network title, so it has the convenience of being downloaded from your living room, as well as nonexistent load times when playing the actual game.
  
  Despite all of the great things that can be said about Dark Resurrection, it's hard to justify a purchase at this point in time when you consider what's already available. The full game goes for thirty dollars, and at its current price point in conjunction with the fact that there's a lot of other options out there including Tekken 6 itself, Dark Resurrection might have a hard time holding your attention for very long outside of a few hours.

  Score.

  • Posted Dec 27, 2009 7:59 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
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• 26Dec 09

  Obligatory Christmas Blog

  In order to not feel like I'm being a complete scrooge I feel as if I should post some sort of blog mentioning the holiday season.

  Without getting into detail the last several days have not been exactly what I'd call an ideal Christmas. On top of a lot on unfortunate on-going inner-family issues that I won't get into for obvious reasons, i have been pretty sick for nearly a week now and it hasn't been fun. This is the first time I've been sick in about a year, so I guess I had it coming. I've always been pretty good that way, rarely getting sick.

  Anyway, I didn't receive anything too terribly interesting to report about this year on the gaming side of things, but I did get an EB Games/GameStop gift card... so if you guys are feeling up to it, check out my owned games list and see if you spot any glaring omissions that I could correct next time I'm out.

  There's a lot of games from 2009 that I didn't play, but your recommendations don't need to be strictly newer games. As long as I own the system it's for, anything is fair game. However, I am contemplating saving it for either Bayonetta, BioShock 2, or maybe even Final Fantasy XIII.

  That's pretty much all I have to say for now, not feeling too well.

  Hope you guys are having a great time with your family/friends.

  Happy holidays everyone.

  • Posted Dec 26, 2009 8:18 pm GMT
  • Category: Other
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