What's the Deal with Adele?

This is a bit slow and behind the times, but that's how I work. After tons of comments and hearsay about this supposed musical goddess, I caved and gave her a listen. An honest to god chance. So I listened to "Someone Like You" (this version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qemWRToNYJY)
And here were my thoughts.
First off, she gets some rather unwarranted bonus points from me because the guy who introduced her is a fantastic actor by the name of James Corden. But that has nothing to do with Adele herself, so I had to get over my fanaticism and listen.
The first part of the song, the introduction so to speak, is a standard I III VI IV chord progression in A Major, given in a simple arpeggio at about 120 BPM. This put me off a bit, because this is a formulaic pop song opening, and nothing groundbreaking. Nothing beautiful about it either. The music for the song comes off as very superficial, cheesy, and obnoxious. Just like The Scientist, by Coldplay. An annoying overblown pop song.
But I had heard about her singing. Maybe her musical composition was over blown, but perhaps her singing was truly something to appreciate.
I was wrong. Starting off, her voice sounded simply average. Your basic slightly southern sounding drawl accompanied with that sort of huskiness that so many women add to their voices so as not to sound empty. Accompanied with the expected voice cracks, creaks, and squeals, something that supposedly makes a woman's voice sound sultry (think late night radio adverts), but makes her sound rather sloppy to me.
Then the breaking point. She started to screech like some sort of exotic bird. In humans, however, I would never call it exotic in humans. It's just bad singing to me.
My girlfriend claimed to me that it was the lyrical content of the songs that made her music so great.
Except, not at all. Simple rhyme schemes, bland subject matter, etc. All the songs seem to be about some one guy that broke up with her, and she doesn't take any perspective other than the heartbroken ex-girlfriend.
The verdict: Adele is just any other pop star that used the pop music formula to gain popularity. Her somewhat out of the ordinary nature, i.e. not 100% typical, nature led her to be successful in that musical venture, which is what happens to the other successful pop artists.

I would personally like some actual substance to music that got popular, dealing with philosophy or psychology or perhaps history or even mathematics or science. But no, we get songs about sex, and heartbreak. Isn't that wonderful?

Card Wars

I, like many other denizens of the Internet, have oft found myself playing games, watching videos, and skimming my Facebook feed with no real sense of purpose, usually each activity is short lived and pointless.
But every now and then we all find the diamond in the rough.
Today, I have made one of these discoveries.
It's a little game called Card Wars, published by GangOfGamers and GeneralVimes, and it's even more addicting than Pandemic 2.
The game is a lot like Risk, except with playing cards and power-ups instead of dice and figurines.
The last game I played lasted over 50 turns, not one of which was uneventful.
The game has wonderful AI, and the game rules are so simple to learn it's almost ridiculous (but not quite ridiculous).  Further, the game actually has a way of letting you know how well you are doing.
The BGM of the game will change based on the type of situation you are in.  If you have a big advantage, the game will play a relaxed reggae beach tune.  If the game is relatively balanced, then the game will play a sort of medieval/renaissance sounding piece.  If you're really in a dire situation you get a sort of battle song playing.
It's really quite helpful, as well as entertaining.


This game is easily worth the time to play, guaranteed to grant good times if you are a fan of strategy games of any kind.

Damaged, Album Review

Henry Rollins’ first album performed with Black Flag is like an emotional typhoon.  From ,“Six Pack” and “TV Party”, the humorously sarcastic critiques of the American slacker, to the self-loathing journal entries that make up the entirety of the second side of the album, Damaged is a lo-fi thrash of angst and anger.  The guitars are played as if just being learned: with feedback and wrong notes played constantly. The drums are beat with speed and with no regard for accuracy or technique. The entire album is composed completely faithful to the punk ethic. Using that which was available to them, Black Flag played in an aggressively amateur style, making it the perfect kind of album for confused youths. Anyone who has felt rage at themselves, or the police, or the world, or anything, can relate to Damaged.  The yelped vocal delivery of Henry Rollins makes it quite evident that all of the songs are genuine.  Take the opening lyrics of “Damaged I” for instance: “My name's Henry and you're here with me now! My life, it’s a song, it’s so you won’t even let it happen. You won’t, you won’t let…” These are the rantings of a mentally unstable young adult struggling with depression and the pressures of society. This makes a lot of sense when you consider that Rollins was only 20 at the release of Damaged. Eerily, these themes would pop up again ten years later with another group with a similar sound; the dark lyrics and the noise-driven guitars were clearly influential on Kurt Cobain.  Damaged is the quintessential hardcore album of the ‘80s, yet it remains one of the most notable albums released in the past 40 years.

Melee Man?

So there's this game on Newgrounds.com called Melee Man, which is essentially a Mega Man clone.  The graphics were set to the resolution to the Gameboy Color, which gives the game a cute retro feel.

(play the game here http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/582797)

The game was pretty solid, but I have a few issues with it.

First off, the signs were WAY too annoying. I'm not dumb, I can figure out that spikes hurt when I step on them, I would have figured out that killing baddies would reveal keys (I'm not going to leave an enemy un-blasted). I didn't need the arrows to tell me where to go. The level design was nice enough that I didn't need any signs. Maybe one or two explaining the controls, but that's the absolute most.

Second, the levels were too easy. I had no trouble getting through all the non-boss levels.  They weren't full of mind bending puzzles, or tons of enemies swarming around me.  They were simple levels that required no thought or skill.  I had no emotional connection to the game except for the fact that I wanted to complete it to analyze it.

Which brings me to my final issue. The boss battles had a significantly higher difficulty than the rest of the game. The first boss was hard, but not too hard, the difficulty for the preceding levels could have simply been upped a bit. But that final boss... Jeez. It wasn't impossible, and I suck at this game and was able to beat him... after literally 5 hours of gameplay! The only reason I kept with the game was that I wanted to be able to give a fair review. Even with only 8 hit points, it was like a Castlevania boss. It would have felt more fair if the levels weren't so damn easy. And I hardly felt rewarded at the end. I would have liked some kind of "Conglaturation" sceen at least.

In the end, I give this game a 7/10

Free to Play, Microtransactions, and Virtual Billboards

So as I'm sure many of you are aware, DC Universe has gone F2P (free to play for all of you anti-acronym freaks).  The change in business model has given the game a HUGE surge of new players.  Over 120,000 people signed up overnight to play DC Universe.  Now their servers are crashing due to the overwhelming demand for the game.  No doubt SOE is throwing an office parade in celebration, but now is no time to stop working.

If SOE isn't careful, the entire game could be ruined by F2P, as many games have been.  Such a huge name like DC would make that much harder to do, that is certain, but it can still happen (don't forget we once had a Matrix MMO).

At this moment, they have multiple tiers of accounts and already a DLC pack for bonus powers.  Player's could in the future begin to complain about buying your way to power (although in a game where Lex Luthor is a futuristic bionic cyborg hero/villain, that seems oddly fitting).  But SOE could lower the price of some of the microtransactions greatly with advertisements.

Now before I hear (well read) anyone say "What? I don't want commercials and banners in my game," listen to what I have to say first.  We live in an ad filled world, and sometimes it's enjoyable.  The highway has billboards ALL over the place, but no one really cares THAT much, unless they danger the wildlife (which is extremely rare).  I propose that DC Universe does the same.  Many games on consoles do this occasionally, but they don't have the huge pool of consumers that MMOs have.  In a "modern-ish" setting, like what DC Universe offers, advertisements would not only fit in the game, but would be rather GOOD to have in game.  I could see myself being immersed further in a world that connects so seamlessly to the real world.

Anyway, I was one of the 120,000 that joined up to play DC Universe, but since the servers have been down I haven't had a chance to play.  I am rather excited for it, though.

Retro Consoles

So I was cruising eBay last night, and I got the great idea, "Hey, lets check out some old things to bring nostalgia upon myself."  One thing led to another and I began looking up NES consoles.  By the end of the night I ordered a NES and a copy of the original Final Fantasy game.  The game and console should be here in just over a week, and when they arrive I'll write-up an article about those.

Final Fantasy I was a great game, but emulators aren't the same as a NES concole (I had a NES once, but I lent it to someone and never got it back.  It had my gold copy of The Legend of Zelda too...)
Anyway, that classic crispy sound of Matoya's Cave playing through my TV sounds wonderful to me.
I've got a couple games at home too, including Pro Wrestling, famous for the wonderfully grammatic line: "A WINNER IS YOU"  Never got to playing that one, but it's good as a collector's item.

Anyway, I'm interested in hearing about your favorite retro consoles/games or maybe your good finds on eBay.

The Terrible Autosave Feature on Blogger

So I was going to write a wonderful article on the return to "8-bit" art and retro sounding music, but a simple accidental keystroke deleted all of it.

Now that wouldn't be a problem, except for one feature.

The autosave feature, which supposedly protects the user's documents in case the browser crashes, decided to kick in right at that moment.

So all of the work that I had done was overwritten as a blank document.  Seriously... What?
The autosave shouldn't be so "stupid" that it overwrites in that situation.
I would suggest there be a failsafe for that, and as far as I am aware, there isn't.

So, I guess this entry is a complaining rant.