Music Review: Def Leppard, Night Ranger, Rush, Soul Doctor, Top Gun Cowboy, and Munk

Good stuff from Rush, Night Ranger and Def Leppard.

I have reviewed the Oban anime series for BNN.

According to an article in the Harvard Business Review, you could be modeling the coming wave in leadership styles. The lengthy, multi-page piece is definitely worth a read, but here are a few snippets…

Just like being a game-master in a pen & paper rpg can do wonders for your creative mind this is not exactly a revelation for many of us. Hone your leadership skills in a virtual world then take it to the street.

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Warning: Music and sound effects. There doesn’t seem to be any way to mute them at the site, so turn down your speakers beforehand if that’s going to be a problem. Link, or click the photo to start.

the blog quebecois

I’m the Mekuri Master, the Skirt-Flip King. The name isn’t their idea… It’s mine. I’m a man who was born to lift skirts. You think any so-called “rules” are gonna stop me? When classes get out, I race through the corridors like a fearsome wind, flipping, flipping, flipping up girls’ skirts and letting the whole world know that I am the Mekuri Master!

Only in Japan, you say? (Or possibly Scotland.)

At any rate, click and drag the girls’ skirts upwards as the “Mekuri Master” passes by. There’s more explanation of the scoring, bonus rounds, etc. on the page—scroll down to see it. Or you could watch this YouTube clip. Click here or on the picture to start. (If you want to play again after finishing the game, just click on the ending screen.)

Warning: Apart from the content (no nudity, but doubtlessly offensive to some), there’s music and sound effects, both of which you can mute with buttons at the bottom right (marked with a speaker cone and the letters “BSG” respectively).

the blog québécois

Even though Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is essentially just a feature-rich game demo is it still worth the money? Read the review to find out.

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I am playing this right, thanks Rob, and I have to say that its rather good fun. The only thing that rather annoys me is the high priced cars you have to buy in order to complete the game. You have to do lots of races to pay for em’; this can get a bit dull at times. You will find yourself very fond of Daytona by the end. Peddle to the metal turn right and win a decent amount of dosh.

Here’s something new, at least to me. Flash characters superimposed on real-world scenes. You shoot them with your finger and a left mouse click. (Hey, if they can invade my world, my finger can be a gun. It’s only fair.)

The picture shows what’s coming at you after your second kill. Suffice it to say that things get a bit hectic after that. It took me about ten tries to get the screencap.

Warning: Music and sound effects, which you can mute with the M and A keys, respectively.

the blog québécois

Yet another Tower Defence game, but very well done, with ten different maps of varying difficulty; and waves of creeps disguised as, among other things, pumpkins and open-face sandwiches (I think). You have to register with the site to upload your high scores, but that’s about the only inconvenience.

Warning: Music and sound effects, which you can mute with buttons at the top right.

the blog québécois

Are you ready to take on Mother Nature? In commem- oration of last year’s snowed-out home opener, The Plain Dealer presents Snowball!, a game where you’re the grounds crew, struggling to roll out the tarp before storms turn the field to mush.

Leave the tarp out too long, though, and time will run out before the Indians can get in a complete game. There are three levels, plus a hidden level you get to only if you can conquer the toughest challenge.

The “toughest challenge” is undoubtably staying awake long enough to see it, in what must surely be the lamest game of this year, or any other.

Warning: Sound, but you can mute it on the right. Use the up/down arrow keys to play.

the blog québécois

An amusing little game of rock, paper, scissors.

An aside: what is the hell is Madonna doing in the Rock & Roll hall of fame? I mean she is about as rock as Liberace. What are the schmucks in charge thinking of when it comes to rock. Madonna is pop not rock you dimwits. What next Britney Spears gets in too?

I have a new piece over at Free Society called Video games: government threatens to play hard ball. Its not just your wallet and car you have to worry about with Brown’s lot but that game in your console as well.

Speaking of games remind yourself why the US end of the industry loathes Spitzer.

I have a written a review of The Official Handbook of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

I have reviewed the web-game, as it stands so far, for BNN. Its shaping up to be quite an interesting historical point & click adventure.

In a blatant show of attention-grabbing, Fox News blames video games for child’s death, above irresponsible parenting.

Then again considering what Obama is saying about gamers are we surprised? I wonder if anyone has told these people that the video game industry makes more money than Hollywood. For every bunch of idiots that does something stupid as above; there are people who learn to think creatively and strategically via playing computer games. There are those who start by writing fan fiction for a game or writing MODs and go on to work in the creative industries.

Its a fairly simple thing really. What is better? Sitting in front of the idiot box or actively using your brain to play a video game?

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As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around… per the Watcher’s instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.

Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.

And its free as well. The game is based on ITV’s gritty and mostly good City of Vice drama. CoV depicts the trials and tribulations of the Bow Street Runners. The game is “historically acccurate” and thus as gritty as the show from which it was spawned. I shall report here on the game once I give it a go. As its a web-game non-broadband users probably might want to steer clear.

Age of Conan hasn’t even come out just yet, but for certain people FunCom’s next project is the focal point. There has yet to be a massively game with a modern (alternate Earth-style) setting, where Lovecraftian horrors threaten to disembowel unprepared players.

This sounds rather interesting indeed.

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The DT reports that Gordon Brown has tapped a TV shrink to advise him on video games.

Its good to see that the DT requires its writers to do some research about their pieces. This is so out of date its pathetic. Games are played by people of all ages and the average game player is in his late 20s not late teens. Has he not heard of the Wii?

I wonder how many games this TV numbnut has actually played. I have watched some of these TV prattle on about video games and generally they are about as incompetent as this piece.

Now one could be rather cynical and suggest the reason TV “experts” are so anti-video game is that those who are playing video games aren’t watching the tripe that doubles as TV content these days. But it would be wrong of me to suggest that TV pundits are self-serving right?

There is a good piece by Tateru Nino on Massively about the msm and gaming.

I probably made a mistake by recently completing Call of Duty 4, a bona-fide classic, then playing Turok.

Turok is bloody awful. The controls are rubbish and imprecise. Its jumpy and jolty. The graphics are nothing special. The gameplay is just so bad its hard to describe. What a waste of the PS3’s power.

In 2008 controls as bad as this just doesn’t cut it.

I am not the only one

On February 1, multi-Platinum rockers Journey will release their new Virtual Island in Second Life. A grand opening party is planned inside Second Life at the “Journey Rock Band” sim and will feature a meet and greet with band members. Live DJs will be spinning many of Journeys classic hits, recorded studio and live performances, as well as lots of other great music for fans to party to! The grand opening party is scheduled to start at 10:00am ET/PT. The Journey Island region in Second Life is named Journey Rock Band. Learn more at Second Life.

Journey has long been known for innovations in stage sets, so creating a Second Life Island for fans to enjoy was an easy decision. The Island features dedicated areas for each album along with audio and video presentations. There are also two venues on the island, the Escape Club and the Captured Amphitheater, where live SL events can be held.

New singer and new virtual island is Second Life; it looks as if 2008 will be an interesting year for Journey.

Line Golfer is a variant of the popular Line Rider. Instead of drawing slopes for your little sledder to traverse, you design a golf hole to play (it doesn’t seem to have the capacity yet to link holes together to build a course but I expect it soon will). It’s more like miniature golf in that you can set up tunnels, etc., to channel the ball. If you don’t want to bother building your own, there are plenty of other designs you can load and play.

Note: If the game doesn’t seem to do anything, close the window and load it again. Second time’s usually the charm.

the blog québécois

Someone French has made a version of Missile Command that has you defending the Twin Towers. Now its upset O’Reily, who is paranoid about the internet anyway, and probably some other people. I don’t think its that offensive. It would be offensive if you were supposed to blow up the towers not defend them. Head over and see what you think.

And as a result they are planning a rally in World of Warcraft. Now you would expect this sort of thing in Second Life; but not the fantasy mmorpg WoW. It seems they are marching from one of the major strongholds on the “good” side. They are not Horde which is a shame. I am sure there will be shots of this rally online. It will be most amusing to see.

Here is the video of the event.

Some nutter in the Wisconsin State Senate wants to tax video games to pay for 17 year old criminals in the adult criminal justice system. This cretin wants to charge law-abiding children (well he thinks that children are the only ones who play games) to pay for the evil ones. Go read the whole thing and wonder how drunk this dolt was when he came up with the idea.

And promptly loses any support I might have had for him. It seems he wants to deny adults the right to play the video games they want and wants to jail those who sell games and videos he disapproves of. As Allahpundit rightly points out any of these idiotic proposals will not stand up in court; however its disappointing to see Romney going down the crypto-fascist route. He is still better than the happy-clappy loon Huckebee; but he is losing his edge quite rapidly.

Update: It seems Clinton is not so liberal either in her views on this subject.

It seems the State of Florida realises what a boon the game industry is to the state and moving to disbar one of the cultural fascists who constantly sues game companies.

My, well Marty’s, review of a “learning” game has been mentioned on IMG. I hope to have a MMM column done today or tomorrow.

Oh yes and there is always my normal column over at Blogcritics.com.

Music Review: Gary Hughes, Seven Tears, Glyder, Vengeance, Helloween and Tarja
Marty’s Musical Meltdown brings you more metal and hard rock reviews.

A simple, if frustrating puzzle. Click on any of the green dots, and the cat will move to any free adjoining dot. Your task is to prevent it from escaping from the board.

the blog québécois

This bit of news I found over at Massively makes for good reading for we capitalists. Liberatarians, capitalists (in all their ilks) and cyberpunks have always seen communities as a way of getting the message across without boring the dickens out of people. Another fascinating bit of news is that there is a Constitutional movement ongoing on EVE Online.

Sometime soon I should be reviewing EVE online. Right now, when not under sedation and in the hospital I rather like Pirates of Carribean Online.

I have just been playing Counter-Strike Condition Zero; which is not a big deal really. However the big deal is that I was playing the game on my Intel Mac. I was using Crossover and its so damn simple its pretty amazing. Install the software; then get a Windows app and install it. Then run it…simple. Not perfect mind as I had some problems getting out but pretty cool nonetheless.

Appleinsider is reporting that Bungie is leaving Microsoft because MS is dominating the company. Well that was obviously always going to happen; we all knew it when Bungie sold out the Mac became part of Gates’ empire. We shall see if Bungie will renew its interest in the Mac…wonder how they will bribe us to take them back…an updated modern Marathon mb?

Are they just completely incompetent or do they just not care? I summited a query why Need for Speed: Carbon crashes more that Lindsey Lohan behind the wheel of her car and got no response. What was ironic is that I was sent a satisfaction survey by them after they failed to do anything about my query. As far as I can tell EA could give a damn about the Mac and are just popping stuff out for the platform for a laugh.

Games are getting a hammering on Apple.com as well; except for the inevitable fan boys giving it a 5 to jones up the rating. My initial impressions are NFS: Carbon is a buggy mess, Battlefield has a high learning curve (no tutorial for instance) that gets dull quickly and C&C:3 (after update) is by far the best of the three.

Update: NFS: Carbon is one of the few programs that hard crashes OSX that is really some achievement.

Well this is the game for you…its called World in Conflict but its basically Red Dawn the game. You get to kill commies who have invaded the US. And, no doubt, you will be shouting, if you are a certain age “Wolverines!” No word on a Mac release but they do seem to awknowledge our existence on the site.

I still have yet to make it to Japan in my travels which is quite odd considering my love of cyberpunk and computer games. Gone are the days when the only thing Japan was famous for was Samurai Swords; now we think Japan when we think of Sushi, odd computer games, anime and, of course, obscene handling cars that look incredibly plain (ie Skyline GTR & the new Subaru SVX). It a place of many contrasts and somewhere I want to visit soon. I do want to make sure to be able to pay for two business class seats before I go. It is one bloody long flight from London that is for sure.