Leo!!

Tomorrow I'm going to some Leonardo exhibition, not the ninja turtle but some other guy who is apparently famous for painting a picture of someone smiling, which is not all that special a thing. I'm pretty sure that heaps of people have been pictured smiling, even me. My mum saw that picture and she said it was small. Who am I to judge tho? Someone paid like $8000000 for The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, which I am pretty sure is just an embalmed shark.





In my science room in high school there was a bunch of jars filled with embalmed snakes and the like. If I knew they were worth millions of dollars I probably would have stolen them, been rich and content and gone to hell .





Leo, as he likes to called by friends, features prominently in this game Assassin's Creed 2. Ass Creed 2, as it likes to be called by friends, unsurprisingly features lots of killing (or assassinating). You, the player, play the role of “Guy in hood and half cloak” (GIHAHC) and go around killing people because they killed your family. That's pretty much the plot of Star Wars but I'm not accusing anyone of stealing. Especially as my millions were obtained through the illicit sale of embalmed science room stuff. Oh wait that never happened, leaving me desperately poor and lonely. Curses...

Anyway, Leo spends the whole game hanging around his workshop, building implements of death for GIHAHC, who in turn massacres everyone in Italy, then kills the pope. (Ha! Spoiled the ending for you, you kill the pope at the end. Not the current pope but some ye olde one.) It kind of bothers me that Leo hangs around with someone like GIHAHC. He always seemed like such a stand up guy. Or perhaps I am confusing the real guy with Leonard of Quirm. I think the exhibition has all sorts of models built of his stuff, like the ENNOGEHT. I've written previously of my likenessness of things that look like things but are small, so hopefully it will be good.

Marvel!

I purchased this game called Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (MUA2). It is, to use a 90's adjective, rad. I've been reading comics on and off pretty much since before I could read but haven't really for the last six years or so. I'll occasionaly see some comic related movie and want to start collecting them again, but then remember how desperatly poor and handsome I am and think the better of it. Anyway...

MUA2 is rad, like you can be thor and smash shit up with your hammer, then switch to spiderman and web stuff, then change to gambit and throw cards at people, laser things as iron man, etc etc. Total nerdgasm type stuff. Zap, web, punch, smash. Words cannot describe.. well I guess they can as that is what I am trying to do here, I'm sleepy and can only think in cliches, sorry. Well not really. Ummm so yea.

It was so much fun it somehow it tricked me into subscribing to marvels digital comic service. It lets you read old comics that have been scanned on line. I've spent the weeking reading the ultimates, moon knight, ms marvel, silver surfer. It's been... good? I'm out of words, sorry. Oh yea, MUA2 doesn't have silver surfer in it, or the punisher, or magneto, so it's pretty much missing heaps of good characters. Also there are new ones in it who I had never heard of. It insults me that marvel dare invent new characters rather than use the same ones they've been using for the past 50 years.

I didn't even spellcheck this post, aren't you lucky

nxe

NXE! That's 'New Xbox Experience' not 'Naughty Extraterrestrials Everywhere', which would really be NEE not NXE, but I couldn't think of another X word. I can't think of any way to describe the NXE excepted as an updated UI. (That's User Interface for all you non-nerds. I took an e-commerce course at uni last year and at least half of the content was just learning acronyms. What's with that? I don't think it's that hard to just write stuff out in full or perhaps IDTITHTJWTOIF.) As it was updating I decided to take some pictures in order to write this entry that you are reading now, but I am typing now.

I'll call this the 'Update in Progress Screen'. The 'Update in Progress Screen' informs you the approximate time remaining for the update to be applied. The green bar at the bottom displays graphically the approximate fraction completed. Exciting stuff! When the green bar gets to the end a new screen displays.

Looking at the time at the top right it is exactly 5 minutes since the last picture, which is the time the Xbox guessed was remaining. Lucky guess Mr/Mrs Xbox. Pressing 'A' to continue makes the following video play.

I did try to take photos while the video was playing, but of the 10 or so I took none were in focus. Don't bother actually watching the video, it is boring. Trust me, I watched it. Actually, I could have just linked to a video of the whole process, which makes this entry pretty redundant. After the video you have to make an 'Avatar', which is a digital representation of you that lives in your Xbox. I've you've seen the Wii's Miis, then Avatars are pretty much the same thing, only not as good. Here's me:

I don't think it looks much like me at all, especially when compared with my Mii. Looking around at other peoples creations, they all look pretty much the same and are all just very bland. It's not there is only a few choices when you are making them, it's more that all the choices are pretty much the same. For example, there is like 20 different noses but they are all very similar. I did give myself elf ears tho. The clothes were disappointing as well, you can't even change any of the colours which has really been the most basic part of character customisation from the time it began, way back whenever that was. Once your avatar is made you exit into the main screen, which is called the 'dashboard' for some reason.

I may have lied there, I might have seen this screen first but I can't really remember. I guess you need to know what the old version looked like but this is significantly different.

Well wasn't that fun?

Honey is that ok?

I’ve been playing gears of war a fair bit over the last couple of weeks. I’m pretty sure it’s the most manly thing I have ever done. Here is a picture to prove it.

Well, it doesn’t prove I’ve been playing it, perhaps I wasn’t, but you won’t know that. It does prove the manliness tho. Everyone on your team is a really big muscleman. The guns are big and have a chainsaw on the end for some reason. Their personalities are well fleshed out, I mean one has a bandana, one a beard, etc. They all sound tough too. “I’m really tough” they say, but in a really tough way. I don’t know how to write in tough, but they know how to speak in tough.

You spend most of the time in the game shooting aliens. Most of the aliens look like people with dry skin. None of your squad have dry skin, maybe that is why all the aliens are trying to kill them. I’m just making that up, I don’t know what the real plot is but I think mine is better anyway. There are also these birds that kill you if you enter anywhere dark during the night. It reminds me of the X-files episode “darkness falls” where Mulder and Scully are out in the wilderness and there are these bugs that kill people who leave the light. Anyway..

The sequel is out soon, which will feature lots of sweaty hugging, revealing shower scenes and just friends spooning, which is the only logical follow up to the first game. Oh, while I’m stealing lines from Futurama, the guy who does the voice of Bender does the voice of the main guy in the game. It’s pretty fun to imagine bender being in the game, or it would be if I had ever done that before just now. If I wasn’t so lazy the game would encourage random acts of manliness in real life. If there were any trees to fell in the forest or heavy items to carry I would totally do that.

Outrageous

The library keeps sending me overdue notices for books I have out. It's really annoying as they used to send reminder notices, which meant I never got fines. I think it is all part of a big cash generating conspiracy.

I've been writing a boring report all weekend. It's nearly finished but I think I've done it wrong and will be over the word count. It's annoying.

My xbox broke as well, so I had to exchange it. I lost all my saved games so I'll 'have' to play it some more to get them back.

Also it's hot and I have a blister on my foot.

Woe is me...

Xbox 360

I picked up an xbox 360 yesterday, and have been playing a bit since then. I went for the 'elite' model which is black and has a larger hard dick then the normal model. It came in some pack thing with a couple of games. Halo 3 and Gears of War, in case you were wondering. The gears case was broken and the disc wouldn’t run, so I had to exchange it this morning. Despite the broken game, I was pleased with the level of packaging. Overall there was relatively less than that of the Wii, with the majority being cardboard.

I played halo for a bit and it didn't really seem anything special, I'll probably give it another go during the holidays. Gears is fun, and will be more so when I rope some sucker in to play co-op with me. As repeatedly killing people can get old I bought Skate today as well (as well as what? I don't know, it's late and I'm sleepy). It is also fun. You just ride around doing tricks, not much to it really. The control scheme is different to all the other skating games I’ve played (ie the tony hawk series), so I still need some time to develop appropriate psychomotor skills (eg making the little guy jump over things, not go faster and crash into them, which happens quite a lot). Did that paragraph make sense? I don’t think it did.