(Trial) game on… again

Just a quick mention here that volleyball season has started up again and the seven of us once again made the team (one can’t be to picky when only seven show up and more are needed for a team) so we have six players on the court and another player off.

First game of the season is always a trial game but since we have no players to trial, we always show with our final team. This weekend it was only six of us because one of the guys couldn’t make it. Our opponents had at least 14 players but thankfully, not all of them were very good.

After we had finished (nothing remotely exciting, pretty standard game) we won 2 sets too 1.  The actual test will be next week when the real games begin.

Until then, the swimming carnival is on Wednesday which means that for at least one day this week I can’t be given any homework.

Mass Effect 2

It has been 3 years since Bioware first released Mass Effect, which is hailed as the greatest 360 game of all time.

That was quite an achievement considering that ME had some of the worst texture popping, slow down, boring side quests and poorly organised menu’s to be seen for a while.

What it did deliver, was a captivating Sci-Fi story, that lets you choose how it unfolds. Depending on whether you intimidate someone as a Renegade or reason with them as  a Paragon, makes a big difference to the overall story.

Bioware listened to the fans for Mass Effect 2 and have fixed all the problems the first game had. No longer do you have to put up with lag and slow down during combat , it is now as smooth as a 3rd person shooter.

The game picks up almost right after the first one, with the Normandy and it’s crew hunting the Geth. After an insane opening sequence you have the chance to create your own personal look, choose a class (6 in total), sex, first name and back story. If you choose to import your save from ME, you still have the option to change your appearance and your class.

Once the intro is done, Bioware doesn’t joke around, you get plunged straight into the action which provides some intense, fast paced, squad based skirmishes. From grenade launchers to biotic powers, you will be able to dominate the battle field in ME2 is a much more enjoyable way than the before.

Gameplay wise, ME2 is more action with RPG elements than a traditional RPG. The whole weapons upgrade system is simpler as you don’t buy new weapons, just upgrades that affect your entire squad, the same goes for armour. Shepard’s armour can be customized though by mixing and matching various pieces to give it a different over all bonus’, as well as changing the colour, pattern, trim and material of it to create a personalized look while you are kicking ass.

If you want to bring the pain to all manners of thugs, mercs, aliens and monsters you will need to fly there first. Exploring planets by “probing” them earns you minerals that can be used for ship/armour/gun upgrades. Sometimes you will be able to land on a planet for a side quest or choose a planet that is already inhabited to buy new equipment and receive main quests as well as more small ones.

When you aren’t out in the field fighting and recruiting new members to join your elite squad (to save the galaxy from impending doom by embarking on a “suicide mission” I might add) you can explore the ship and talk to all of your squad members. They will provide ideas for ship upgrades, expand on their back stories, make jokes and give you loyalty missions. These allow you to gain their trust, which in turn means they are more likely to survive the suicide mission.

That may sound too bleak for some of you but fear not, you may also woo a member of the opposite sex. It wouldn’t be a Sci-Fi without that would it? This can lead to some hilarious conversations but also adds a nice, personal touch to the game. Now would be a good time to mention that your 12 year old son should not be playing this game, not only is it rude (F-bombs and other swear words included), the sheer volume of things to do would just be too overwhelming.

ME had superb graphics back in 2007 and ME2 is once again raising the bar for how games should look. It is a beautiful game. Everything from the character models to the environments are top notch.

Not only are the graphics brilliant, ME2 has some of the best voice acting I have heard in a game, ever. Martin Sheen, Seth Green, Keith Davids and Yvonne Strahovski (they also modeled her character, Miranda Lawson, after her) are some of the big names that star in this game.

Of course, the music is excellent. It just puts you in the mood for saving the galaxy.

Mass Effect 2, is sitting right on the edge of perfect, it has almost everything you could want and what it does have it way ahead of any other game. Story, gameplay, graphics, replay value etc. Bioware has created a sensational game that is a definite contender for Game of the Year, selling 2 million copies in the first week.

Fire up the Mass Relays because this is not a game you can afford to miss!

School is back

It was the first day of being in Grade 10 today and hopefully the rest of the year is as easy as it was today. I really doubt that since all we did was some thinking strategies workshop (the exact same as grade 9) and watched Budweiser Wassup ads on Youtube.

The first reason today was good is that I did not need to get a haircut which was a first for me and considering teachers are cracking down on appearance, I’m lucky.

So not only did I not have to go bald, but I once again managed to get Locker 122, the same one I have had since Grade 8. Thankfully most of the Grade 8’s are told to take the bottom lockers, mine sits snugly in the middle towards the end of the row.

Only one downside came from today, (two if you count assembly) was the extreme heat. You could easily cook some eggs on the wall near B block, it was hot enough that we held a competition to see who could last the longest. I won by seconds and when we went to wet our hands, you could see steam coming off. Crazy stuff.

Another fantastic bonus happened today. My school now has Windows 7 installed on all the computers. It’s a truly marvellous thing, even if are user names are a random assortment of numbers, it’s worth it for the glass toolbars and arty wallpapers.

So until the work starts to pile up, and I think it will considering I have three SOSE subjects one after the other… after the other, things are looking up for this year and it’s a good sign.

Bandslam

When I first saw the ad for Bandlsam, I thought it was going to be an average “Disney Channel” type of movie that lacked a decent plot and would be fairly generic.

This is actually a pretty good movie music and plot wise. That was a nice surprise beause the only reason I wanted to see this movie at first was for Vanessa Hudgens (who plays Sa5m).

Basically, the story follows a junior in High School called Will Burton. He moves to  a new school and is introduced to “Bandslam” by a senior named Charlotte Banks.

She’s much cooler than Will but they become friends as she discovers that Will has vast musical knowledge and he becomes her band manager for Bandslam. A competition where the winner takes home a record deal.

The side story to their road to greatness is his relationship between him and Sa5m (The 5 is silent). She’s an interesting girl who think emotion is overrated and loves to read. Things become complicated when Will does something really stupid, so stupid I wanted to jump through the screen and slap him upside the head.

Adding to the plot is the assortment of very old music (Everything I Own by Bread ring any bells?) and Will’s diary entries to David Bowie, his musical hero. Even though he never writes back Will doesn’t loose hope and thinks he will write back someday.

Some of the jokes are pretty familiar, there’s nothing to original here. A couple of good one liners are pulled out every now and then but for the most part it’s standard teen movie jokes.

If you weren’t a fan of Camp Rock, or High School Musical than this may be the light hearted music movie for you with the right amount of everything, minus the usual cheesiness of typical romances.

Band Together!

Game of the Year

Every year, IGN will announce the best game of the year. The game must have fanatastic graphics, great story, gameplay, possibly good multiplayer and so on.

For 2009 it was no great surprise to find out that not only did the PS3 win console of the year again, but Uncharted 2: Among Thieves took out the prize. I could talk about how good this game looks but IGN made a video that says so much about this game, whatever I say wouldn’t do it justice.

Just hanging out

Since a friend of mine is going to the beach for five days soon, he thought it would be a good idea to just go to Southbank and do nothing particular with a group of people.

This was a pretty awesome idea and it started off with us running for the train to make sure we didn’t miss it. When we were safely on board everyone else started to pile on at other stations. Almost like a block party in a train carriage.

To kick off getting to Southbank quite a few of us bought super large slurpees and seemed to finish them within about five minutes. Next came a place to sit and the only logical place was the rock pools, where we reused the same 20 cent coin so each of us could make a wish.

Of course, since there’s a “beach” we went swimming which means shoulder wars. A sport so hardcore most people don’t bother with it. Everyone has one person on their shoulders, then tries to ram the others off. We hadn’t really attracted any attention until my friend screamed “MADNESS? THIS IS SOUTHBANK”! It was almost like everyone in the area turned to look. Not long after that we left.

By this time, we felt like lunch so me and a friend decided that we should have a three course meal. Foot long sub, Chips and then ice-cream to finish it off. That was too far.

What was hilarious however, eas the fact my friend has a plate and while he was eating placed it on his Subway rubbish. He forgot about it and now that plate is resting in the bottom of a bin somewhere. His excuse was to say I accidently stepped on it.

Feeling bloated we trudged to the markets to the badge shop! The best stall in the whole markets. Zac Efron badges, Astroboy, Jane (from Daria) and a huge assortment of other badges were bought between all of us. I bought an “I ♥ Alice Cullen” and Cullen Crest badge. The lady who owns the stall looked at me funny. She thought I was funnier though when I asked if a shirt that said “Give Blood. Date a Cullen” came in mens. Sadly it didn’t.

The rest of the afternoon consisted of taking photos which did look pretty cool if I do say so myself.

Such a great day, just talking and walking around, not doing anything in particular.

Yeah, sometimes less planning is better.

Mr. Fox

If you’ve seen ads for this movie than you’re probably thinking that Mr. Fox is sly as a fox and able to talk his way out of any situation.

Mr. Fox is like this, because he is voiced by George Clooney and truth be told, this movie is basically a children’s version of Ocean’s 11 (the remake with Brad Pitt).

Mr. Fox is Danny Ocean.
Mrs. Fox is Tess.
Ash is Linus.
Kristofferson is Yen.
Kylie is Rusty.
Badger is Basher.
Mole is Livingston.

The list just goes on. You could easily find a character match up for everyone. They should have gone for more of that feel because there wasn’t really a lot of humour. It was basically just straight from the book with nothing else added to it.

That being said, it wasn’t that bad to watch, it did have some moments that were funny, but not exactly laugh out loud funny. I only got to the smiling stage.

The story is fairly simple. Mr. Fox likes to steal farmers produce and when he moves next door to the three meanest farmers their side of the river, Boggis, Bunce and Bean, he decides to pull a heist and steal from all of them. Naturally, things spiral out of control and become an all out war between the animals and the farmers.

While this would be a guaranteed hit with younger children, I would recommend that if you are over the age of 10, see something else.

Minimal

It’s funny that we always want to have more things and as humans, we get attached to a lot of useless junk that is accumulated over time and stored in some dark corner never to be looked at again.

When you actually think about it though, you don’t need it and it’s just taking up sapce that could be used to hold absolutely nothing. After seeing pictures of our house when we first moved in, we had gone from having almost nothing, to clutter occupying a great deal of the house.

There’s a certain happiness that is had by cleaning out old things, cleaning then leaving nothing there. My Dad recently just painted my room a sort of cream colour (it was blue previously), not only does that make the small room look much bigger it gave me an exucse to do away with all my old things.

Posters were taken off the walls and will be replaced with two pictures frames soon enough, my desk was cleaned up, now only two speakers sit on the top. Many of my old books from when I was younger are to be given away, making my bookshelf look empty, but neat and tidy.

Certainly having less junk in small rooms works, not only to brighten them up, but to make them look bigger. When the shutters are installed it will look fantastic.

You are then left with an overwhelming sense of joy and thinking how you ever needed the rest beforehand.

“Perfection is not when nothing else needs to be added, it’s when nothing else needs to be taken away”

Holmes

There’s a few things that I know about the original Sherlock Holmes. He wore a funny tweed suit and hat, he said “elementary my dear Watson” and as far as I know, he couldn’t bust up the bad guys with crazy fighting skill.

Forget the original Sherlock.

Robrt Downey Jr. and Jude Law take investigating to a level that has never been seen before. Forget NCIS, Holmes would know who did it and where they were without even leaving his house.

Their chemistry is great on scene and you will laugh almost as many times as Holmes lights his pipe.

I won’t spoil it for you but while they are in prison, Watson has a hilarious rant at Holmes that involves things like “playing your violin at three in the morning”.

The other thing that’s great about this movie is the way Holmes knows absolutely everything. He notices every detail, every smell, marking and he could probably tell you what you ate for breakfast that morning.

It’s a good thing the pair are so tough, observant and clever because the man they are hunting is supposedly a master of the dark arts and must be stopped before his horrible murders continue.

Anything else I will tell you will spoil it.  I’ll just leave it by saying that this movie was so action packed, intense and suspenseful, I was expecting Downey Jr. to break out the Iron Man suit and blow everyone away.

A fantastic movie on all counts.

New x2

Yes today is the last day of what I would call a mighty fine year and the last day of the decade. It’s hard to believe I’m almost half way to 30. If I had my way, I would stop aging at 17.

This year I have accomplished many exciting things such as, um… ah. Ok so I haven’t really done anything that interesting but I feel like I socialised more in the last six months than I have in my short 14 years of life.

That brings up the fact that I will finally 15 years old next year and will no longer need to try and sneak into MA 15+ movies.  I will also be 15 before a great deal of my friends so the movie groups will be very small until around August.

As for the New Year, apart from getting a few more things here and there, it’s really just another day tomorrow and just makes me feel like school is creeping up on me like a lion hunting it’s prey. Before I know it, the lion will pounce and force me to learn maths.

Like I said though, the New Year does have some positives and this song says them perfectly. Sure it may be 10 years old, but it still holds true, for the most part.

Happy New Year!