Sunday, June 21, 2009

Gaming Moms

Why is it that most moms are drawn to pretty games with jewels and matching? I'm talking about games like Tetris, Columns, Hexic HD, Bejewled, etc. I can't even touch my xbox 360 right now because my mom has it locked down on Columns right now. I mean I have some fun with these games. I can play like one round before the repetiveness kills it for me. How do these moms keep on playing.

If a your reading this and your a gaming mom please explain this to me in the comments section.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Distance

I have a ton of friends from church camp. The only problem about this is that I generally only see them at church camp, which is once a year. What's even more frustrating is that some people only come certain years meaning it's nearly 2 years before I see a friend again.

Generally I turn to social networking sites like myspace and facebook to talk to these people. I also text them too, but it's just not the same as a real life encounter. There's no body language and no ability to see reactions. It just feels so disconnected. If you do want to hang out in person it's often a bother. Some of my friends live hours away, some in different states. Of course driving an hour isn't much of a cost to see a friend, but when gas prices are high and you have very little income, it's tough. Meeting halfway doesn't help much either because you rarely know what interesting things you can do in that town.

I'm just venting in this post and I really ran out of steam so I'll just leave it at that.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection

As a child I owned a Sega Genesis. I loved that thing so much I even bought a 32X for it. Yeah, I know ridiculous. So when I found Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection on gamefly my jaw dropped. 50 Sega Genesis games on one disk! I have never been more excited for a gamefly game to arrive. I AM FRICKEN PUMPED! It even has local 2 player. IS THAT NOT AWESOME! I'm gonna buy it as soon as I get it. Oh geez. I've worked myself into a frenzy. I'm going to go check the mail!

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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Bass Guitar

So I've started taking bass lessons at the local guitar shop. I really need them because I'm planning on playing for my school's choir this coming fall. After my bass lessons I went to my show choir back up band practice. Wow, talk about a wake up call. All these kids were improvising a ton of things and playing what they heard on cd perfectly. I pretty much stood in the corner the whole time. Basically I need a ton of practice. Hopefully I can get enough in before the beginning of the school year. Wish me luck!

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Chronicles of Riddick Game

I have gamefly so I get a bunch of random games in the mail. I was really looking forward to getting Red Faction: Guerrilla, but they ran out of copies so I had to settle for Riddick instead. I was really surprised when I got the game. It not only had the new 360 game, but also the original Xbox game. Unfortunately both games only included a total of about 15 hours of gameplay. That's 15 hours to beat both games, not 15 hours each.

The game wasn't very story orientated. Both games came down to "Riddick is trapped, help him escape." Surprisingly enough the original Xbox game was modified to be graphically equal to the 360 game. Gunplay in the game was pretty solid, but nothing spectacular. The melee combat is what really excited me. Each punch felt like it had power behind it. The game forced you into these mech sections where you piloted a robot. These sections were a lot easier than the rest of the game which was almost painfully hard at times even on easy difficulty.

All in all the game was actually pretty fun. I'd reccommend it if you're a fan of shooters, but don't buy it. It's too short to justify purchasing it unless you're a hardcore Riddick fan.

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Monday, June 15, 2009

Mowing the Lawn

So it's summer time and that means that the grass grows a lot and needs mowing a lot. I have a relatively small yard, it's about an acre, but it's still a chore to push mow. My riding tractor broke last year so this year has been all about push mowing and it takes about 2 hours. I guess some people find some sort of zen property to mowing. My 80-something year old neighbor mows his lawn everyday. EVERYDAY. I'm dead fricken serious. Like clockwork, 3p.m. to 4:30p.m. everyday. I don't get the whole obsessive lawn care. Sure it's nice to have a pretty nice looking yard, but to obsess over it is ridiculous. I'm not even sure where I'm going with this blog, so I'm just going to stop procrastinating and mow the lawn.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Story Games

I'm sure that anyone whose ever played a video game realizes that some games have more than just repetitive gameplay. Some games actually have stories. Unfortunately a majority of them are bad, but there are some shining examples. The game Mass Effect is one of these. As far as gameplay goes, Mass Effect is mostly about conversation and story with some gunplay thrown inbetween. Mass Effect has a damn good story. The entire universe of the game is indepth and highly detailed. Some people don't understand this though, which brings me to the purpose of this blog.

My niece hates Mass Effect. She doesn't understand that Mass Effect is like a book. She whines and complains her way through important story parts of the game without paying attention. Because of this she ends up with a mediocre shooter instead of a massively awesome epic story. In a game like Mass Effect it's important to pay attention to the dialog and the journal entries and the data disks, otherwise you miss the narrative hook. THE NARRATIVE HOOK! That's the part that draws you into the story and makes the game world your world. That's how you play a game.

The moral of this story is to play games right damn it! It's acceptable to just run around shoot things in some World War II game because we all know how that ended. However, when you sit down to Mass Effect if you ever do, remember my words. Pay attention to the story and listen closely, you'll have a much better experience.

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Ugh. If someone can show me how to make images less pixely I'll be really happy.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Name Change

So I've changed the name of the blog because there was already a very successful blog with the name Everything and Anything. Hopefully I don't offend anyone with this name change, not like anyone even reads my blog =[.

Summer

I'm fairly sure that almost everyone is currently aware of the fact that it is now summer. Summer is a grand time of frolicking through meadows and swimming in lakes. However, I've heard some people say they are already bored of summer! Most of these people are highschool students that were begging for the end of school 1 month ago. These people don't seem to understand the concept of summer. Summer shouldn't be planned out. If you plan your entire summer shame on you. You're doing it wrong. The fun part of summer is that sometimes you don't know what to do. Because you don't know what to do you can choose from pretty much anything. Why would you ruin that by making plans? The rest of the year is for being confined to a system. There's a reason summer is isolated from the rest of the year. I think I'll go ahead and go partake in a unplanned, spontaneous summer activity.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

The Sims 2

Last night me and a friend were playing The Sims 2 for computer. Throughout my sim's life I managed to fulfill his lifetime want and max out all his skills. He's been married twice and never liked that much and he's got more money than God. So what do I do with a man that has everything? Usually he would just die of old age, but I have a special item that makes me live forever if I choose so. I've decided to come up with a poll for the masses (who seem to be nonexistent at the moment). I will fulfill whichever option gets the most votes.

A. Set him and his home on fire having him go out in a fiery blaze.
B. Drown him in the pool.
C. Let him die of old age.
D. Make him live forever, become a sim-vampire and destroy all other sims.
E. Other (Specify what you want him to do).

Musical Taste

There's something you should know about me. I used to be a metal head through and through. I always listened to the local metal station. My iPod, a 4th generation 16g nano who I love very much, was full of metal. I listened to All That Remains, Avenged Sevenfold, Killswitch Engage, etc. However, I've recently been getting into some Indie stuff mostly because of a little webcomic called Questionable Content. I highly recommend bands like Explosions in the Sky and The Flaming Lips.

So now I'm pretty much open to all types of music (except for rap), and I don't know what to call myself. I'm not a metal head anymore because I listen to Indie, but I'm not a Indie kid because I listen to metal. Dillemma! The person that comes up with the best classification for my musical taste will get mentioned in a future blog and maybe even have an awesome picture drawn for them =]!

Welcome!

Alright, so here we go. My name is Ryan. I decided to make this blog just because it's summer and I'm bored as hell. Anyway, welcome to Mental Damage. I'm basically going to try to update this blog at least once a day and most updates should be about either music, video games, or movies, but my mind tends to wander so don't be suprised if I go off on a tangent. Now that the introduction is out of the way, go forth and have fun reading my blog =].