Nothing, yet.

Still no baby, dangit.

Posted by LynnyrdSkynyrd @ 10:14 am EDT | Permalink | 0 Comments

ASS Effect

I'd like to give my off-the-top-of-the-dome review of Mass Effect... Now this is purely my opinion. I'm not telling anyone that they shouldn't buy it, that they shouldn't like it, or that they're idiots if they love the game. I understand from reading other reviews that it's got a good shot at winning Game of the Year. But, folks, if there is one place where I can spew my own unadulterated opinions, I'd hope that a gaming blog would be the place. So, without further ado, here is my review/opinion of Mass Effect...

I CANNOT STAND IT. Nay, I FUCKING HATE IT.

I borrowed it over the weekend, played it for two nights, and came remarkably quickly to the realization that I hate Mass Effect for a number of reasons that, I'm sure, if given the patience to continue to play the game, would grow far beyond what I have the time or patience to comment about on this blog. I can just sum it up: Fuck Mass Effect... or Ass Effect as I like to call it.

However, trying to be diplomatic about it all, I shall start with a comment in it's defense, or rather in the defense of BioWare and their style of gameplay... which, again, I find lacking any semblence of intuitive gameplay at all. I remember borrowing Knights of the Republic a few months ago and not being able to play it for more than a couple of hours because I got so unbelievably frustrated with it's unrealistic and unnecessarioy complicated gameplay. So, I will fully accept that my personal experience with Mass Effect is largely based on my unfamiliarity with how BioWare makes games. The simple fact is that if it's made by BioWare, I'm probably not gonna like it.

On to the review:

First of all, while I appreciate the 'choose your own adventure' style of cut scene communication, I was constantly disappointed by the misleading choices I was given. Yes, I know that in each conversation, the typical responses are Positive (at the top), Neutral (in the middle) and Negative (at the bottom). But I found a few times that even if I went for Neutral, the response was what, if I were on the receiving end, I would have called the response of a" total dick." I'd hate John Shepard if I was on his command. Which brings me to another character: Joker. Now, I think Robot Chicken is hilarious. I think Austin Powers is funny. But Seth Green is not a great actor. He's an ok cult-actor, at best. And believe you me, I'm all for actors getting work, especially in the video game world. I find that alot of game VO sucks... and Seth Green's Joker is no exception. I'm curious: How much did BioWare pay for Seth Green to come into their studio and recite these emotionless lines as if he was talking to an AT&T representative on the phone. Jesus. I'd be complimenting the performance if I said it was faked. I felt that a) the VO was anything but authentic to the environment, the time period, the game structure, or the tone of the rest of the game. It just felt totally out of place. And 2) Seth Green's smarmy 20-something voice in no way whatsoever fits with the look of Joker the character. Of course, that could be just because I couldn't get the image of Seth Green out of my head, or perhaps it's because here's this smart-mouthed asshole flying this space-bohemoth while sitting next to a subordinate "lessor character" with this "COMING TO A THEATER NEAR YOU" voice that completely did not fit. Hell, my Apple computer gives more inflection in the Text Speech function. But this all brings me to another point: Character Design.

Who the fuck approved the final renderings of the design of the Turians? They look like fucking Jim Carrey in the Mask - like talk oaffy white dudes in shitty Halloween masks. There is nothing remotely intimidating or sci-fi about them.  Plus, they are bisymmetrical, bipedal humanoids. Jesus fuck! It's not only a science fiction game, but it's a 3d rendering of, well, WHATEVER THE FUCK THE DESIGNERS COULD HAVE WANTED! So, why come up with something that, for real, looks like a lanky dude in a mask? What a waste of creative imagination. I just could not get past how stupid they looked from the beginning. The lack of suspended disbelief ruined the game for me from the beginning.

And speaking of suspended disbelief, one of the only proven successful ways of convincing your audience that what they're watching is believeable is by MAKING IT AS REAL AS POSSIBLE! EVEN IN FUCKING SCIENCE FICTION! My god! Why is it that Stanley Kubrick was the only artist in the world to make a science fiction story that respects known laws of astrophysics - THERE IS NO AIR IN SPACE, THEREFORE THERE IS NO SOUND OF FUCKING SPACESHIPS ZOOMING PAST PLANETS, OR SOUNDS OF EXPLOSIONS OR LASER GUNS! Goddamn, sci-fi game creaters - do a little bit of research. It's out there. And it's not fucking theory... it's LAW. Do yourself a favor, and rent 2001: A Space Odyssey. Do you remember the silence? The silence in that film was, and I challenge anyone to disagree, THEE most ominous aspect of that film. It was crippling with its ability to make YOU, the watcher, feel completely isolated, helpless, lonely, terrified, and agoraphobic. If everytime Kubrick used a shot of the HAL9000 zooming through space with a WHOOSH, I guarantee you'd never have the same emotions.

But enough about Stanley Kubrick's brilliance... let me continue tearing ASS EFFECT a new one.

I seriously can't think of anything that didn't piss me off about the gameplay. Just about anything I wanted John Shepard to do... it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to do it. And why is it that the Left Trigger aiming function only worked once in a while? Not to mention the fact that the fucking guns suck! I personally don't have the patience to get killed a million times (AND START BACK AT THE BEGINNING EVERY FUCKING TIME, EVEN IF I'VE PROGRESSED THROUGH HALF OF THE MISSION!!!) until I can finally get 'trained' to use a fucking machine gun! My god! I've been given my own fucking ship to head into the known universe to search for Jim Carrey in a stupid mask, but god help me if I can shoot a fucking sniper rifle. Fuck'n A.

I swear, the most fun thing about this game was the fucking Mini-Game. And you know what? That shit sucked, too! You fuck up once... and you're done. At least in BioShock, if you fuck up the manual override, you still have Plan B: Kill a small handful of annoying flying bots that shoot at you. A pain in the ass? Sure. But at least you can still get what you were intended to get in the first place; a First Aid kit or whatever. But with Ass Effect, if you fuck up that stupid mini-game which, by the way, NEVER TELLS YOU HOW TO PLAY, you're fucked. And whatever was in that random locker is totally unachieveable. I swear, this game is a dick.

How 'bout the stupid excuse for a tutorial during the first mission to the dig site? What a fucking joke. Press A to run? Uh... no, Press A to have the camera angle shift and fuck you up for a second... but you ain't gonna run any faster. And then what's with the Press X to go into some sort of combat/hide behind a rock (but you better press the left stick to duck, too, otherwise hiding behind a rock aint gonna do shit when you get taken out with a headshot or a grenade)? I love how... i mean, I hate how during that tutorial thing, it tells you to press X and when you do, it plays some sort of extra hip-hop sound effect music thing? Like, what the shit is that? "Congratulations on finding the X button, you reprobate. Here's .5 seconds of shitty production music for you to shake your man-boobs at. Eat a dick, soldier." Stupid.

Furthermore, when John Shepard is promoted to Spectre (for which I did nothing, absolutely nothing, and got an achievement.... Uh, thanks?) and he's told to find some rando on some rando planet in some rando solar system (mind you, there is NO hint as to where the fuck it is) - I have to search 5 stars, each with 6 or so planets, with no clue as to where this rando mission needs me to go. Goddamn, they might as well call this mission "the needle in the haystack, aka you're fucked" mission. Jesus. So, I FINALLY find a planet that I can actually land on, (no idea if this is the right planet, by the way... oh and... it's not) I drop some 20 ton 6-wheeled land rover thing (that looks about as interesting as a fucking corndog) from miles above the surface and it just bounces a couple of times. I'm surprised John Shepard doesn't have 8 shattered vertebrae, but oh wait... it's science fiction... so, Earthborn Shepard (if you chose that, as I did) is immune to the laws of physics and it's relation to human anatomy. Of course, silly me. Fuck. So, I'm on this fucking planet, driving a vehicle that is only slightly more navigable than the fucking Warthog in Halo2 (I said 2, mind you). If I don't fall into the sea of lava, the truck gets destroyed by a barrage of bullets by two measely badguys that I cannot shoot - cause the fucking aiming function is for shit! Not to mention that even the weakest of bad guys takes 100 shots to finally kill the fucker? Goddamn! And where is the armor on this vehicle? This 20-ton vehicle that can survive a fall from 1000 feet can't handle 100 shots from some pistol wielding ass-bot? Fuck you! And, if the truck does blow up... guess who dies too? Yup. EVERYONE. And guess where I have to respawn after this dick of a game tells me CRITICAL MISSION FAILED (keep in mind, by the way, that I'm not even sure if I'm on a fucking mission - critical mission??? why don't you tell me where to go if it's so fucking critical! 'This is a critical mission, Shepard. Your next step is... uh, well, somewhere in the entire fucking universe. Good luck finding it, asshole!') - anyway, Guess where you end up respawning? YEA, BACK AT THE BEGINNING OF THE FUCKING LEVEL/MISSION THING! Like, in this particular scenario, I'm on this planet, right? There are, for arguments sake, 3 places (let's call them A, B, and C - intuitive, right?) that I have to go to, in linear fashion. A first, then B, then C. Well, folks, if you get through A and B, and then die before getting to C... guess what? YOU START BACK AT A. Fuck you and the time you spent trying to get to C. Fuck you. Start over. Pshaw.

Fuck Mass Effect. Fuck BioWare.
You want an RPG? Hell, I'll take Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion any fucking day of the week.

Ugh. I'm getting myself all worked up now. I need some Dandelion Root Tea.

Posted by LynnyrdSkynyrd @ 11:40 am EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

False Labor?

WTF? I feel totally duped. Ha ha! I guess this just goes to show that babies are definitely NOT predictable. The wife has been experiencing the Braxton-Hicks false labor for months now - random tensing up of all abdominal muscles as an involuntary preparation for labor contractions. But this was something entirely different altogether. I promise.

So the story is this: In order to keep her blood pressure down, my wife has been drinking Dandelion Root Tea (yea, that's what I said...). And while she has kept her BP low, the Dandelion Root tea has a side effect... it, well, it's a bit of a laxative. And we all know what that means. The stomach pains and indigestion eventually mounted to the point where my wife had crippling tummy aches that got so bad that they actually induced pre-labor contractions. Damn you, Dandelions! So, do me a favor... if you see a dandelion growing... kick it for me, please. Thanks.

A few months ago, I bought my wife a package of 10 prenatal massages (buying them in a package did two things: 1) they ended up being cheaper, like $75 for 90 minute massages that would normally be $90 or so, and b) a gift like this gets me and my arthritic drummer hands off the hook. ha ha). Anyway, so, the wife had one of her last sessions the morning after our pre-labor night. The masseuse had good and bad news.

The good news: My wife's body showed signs to the masseuse of preparedness. Her spine and pelvis is very relaxed and loose. These are good signs for getting ready for labor. Her body was very responsive to the massage work. The masseuse found very little traces of toxins, or the "knots" that we typically would find in an otherwise not relaxed person's body. So, that's good. She said, "you are DEFINITELY ready to have this baby, but..."

The bad news: The masseuse said she really picked up on the energy of this baby, er, fetus. And above anything else, could sense that this baby, for all intensive purposes, is NOT ready to come out... yet.

Ha ha! Gosh-darn stubborn little Saggitarius! Man, are we in for it or what?

So, if you're a Saggitarius, let me know what we're in for. Thanks.

Posted by LynnyrdSkynyrd @ 10:29 am EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

Early labor

My wife started what we feel is early labor last night. Well, actually, the heavy contractions started late Thursday night. They lasted throughout the night and into the next day. By the time I got home from work on Friday, they were pretty strong and pretty frequent.

By 11pm, I had drawn her a bath, put on some soft music, turned off the cell phones, and just altogether quieted down. Her contractions were debilitating. But once she got into the tub, she was able to handle them a lot better. I called our midwife at around midnight just to say 'keep your schedule open tomorrow and sunday'. The midwife asked some questions to get a better idea of how things were progressing.

I told her that my wife couldn't talk through the contractions, but she could definitely communicate when they started and when they stopped, making it a lot easier for me to time them. While they were 7-10 minutes apart (from the start of one to the start of the next), each contraction was lasting a good 5-6 minutes. I didn't really know what to say, but I felt it was important to help her to realized, inbetween contractions, that they would only get a lot worse, and that what she was experiencing was early labor, aka the easy stuff. Thank god she was ok with hearing that. Ha ha. Otherwise, I'd be typing in a much higher voice.... does that even make sense? I digress.

When the contractions began to slow down, or increase length between stops of one and starts of the next, we got her out of the tub and into bed. I told her that I absolutely HAD to crash or I'd be fucked tomorrow. She was ok with that.... and I was out. Ha ha. She said that she had 2 more contractions that night before she finally fell asleep, at about 4:30am.

Today, everything is seemingly back to normal. We both feel great, are well rested (for the most part) and are attempting to live normal days. She's got a massage at 3pm, we're gonna get some late lunch, and I was gonna stop by my sister's place to help her get her webcam set up. I suppose that for most folks that deliver at hospitals (as opposed to us, who are sans narcotics and delivering in the comfort of our own homes - a real rarity in Chicago), last night would have been reason to rush to hospital, get jacked up with Pitocin and induce labor. But not us. We're riding this fucker out!

So, with fingers crossed, tonight (or tomorrow) will be the big day.
Wish us luck!

Posted by LynnyrdSkynyrd @ 3:14 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

Evel Knievel dies at 69

Evel Knievel, the hard-living motorcycle daredevil whose jumps over Greyhound buses, live sharks and Idaho's Snake River Canyon made him an international icon in the 1970s, died Friday. He was 69.

Knievel's death was confirmed by his granddaughter, Krysten Knievel. He had been in failing health for years, suffering from diabetes and pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable condition that scarred his lungs. Knievel had undergone a liver transplant in 1999 after nearly dying of hepatitis C, likely contracted through a blood transfusion after one of his bone-shattering spills.

Immortalized in the Washington's Smithsonian Institution as "America's Legendary Daredevil," Knievel was best known for a failed 1974 attempt to jump Snake River Canyon on a rocket-powered cycle and a spectacular crash at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. He suffered nearly 40 broken bones before he retired in 1980.



Posted by LynnyrdSkynyrd @ 6:12 pm EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments