Kevin's Musings

I believe it was my brother (not Cory) who, years ago, turned me on to Ottmar Liebert. The missus and I have seen him at least twice (once at the Sandia Casino Ampitheater in Albuquerque, NM – which is a fantastic venue), but recently saw him again at BB Kings Bar and Grill. He put on, as usual, a fantastic show – really great music. If you don’t know his music, it is sort of flamenco guitar, all instrumental – great stuff. You can listen to samples on his web site.

Today I finished up BioShock on the 360. It was really an amazing game.  I really cannot think of anything I would change about it. Just the right difficulty to stay fun throughout but not be “easy” (but not be frustratingly difficult) – if you are persistent you can get past any of it. The graphics and sound were absolutely top notch. A great story with twists I didn’t see coming but added very nicely to the game. I can easily imagine this will be “game of the year” – Halo 3 should be quaking in its yet-to-be-released boots, I just cannot imagine it will be better. After finishing about 90% of the game I went back through the earlier levels to get most of the remaining achievements (finding some things I had not picked up earlier, etc.) then I finished the game with the “nice-guy ending”. I think loaded a slightly earlier game save, got one more achievement, then finished the game again to get the “bad-guy ending”. My only remaining achievement is to play the game all the way through on the Hard difficulty setting. I think I’ll put it aside for a bit before trying that.

We went to brgr, a newish NYC burger place. If you’ve visited us in NYC, we probably took you to the Burger Joint, which is my favorite burger in the city, but I like to try new places. brgr did make a tasty burger, the prices aren’t cheap but they aren’t outrageous. It was amusing that they ask you how you want it cooked, but then they seem to ignore that and make them all the same. Their menu is pretty simple, burgers, veggie burgers, fries, sweet potato fries, “onion hay” (think incredibly thin onion rings, battered, fried), two kinds of beer, soda, lemonade, maybe some shakes. We had a brgr, a veggie brgr, fries, sodas, and onion hay. The missus enjoyed the veggie brgr, I enjoyed the brgr (but it isn’t as good as the Burger Joint burger). The fries were good (similar to the Burger Joint). The onion hay was really very tasty both by itself and on the burger. So, the verdict? In general we did like it, but if you just want a great burger, go to the Burger Joint. If you want a slightly wider menu (including veggie burgers and TWO kinds of beer), a larger seating area, and find yourself in Chelsea, go to brgr.

I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while (but it appears the missus beat me to it)… we went to the Jekyll and Hyde Club a few weeks ago and wanted to get the word out – if you had some idea of going on your next NYC visit, just skip it. The food is expensive and mediocre (and I think mediocre is being generous), the place seems like it is run by college kids (or high school kids?). It isn’t terribly entertaining. We did visit each of the four floors, we really wanted to enjoy it – but it really boils down to if you aren’t an eight year old boy with an overactive imagination it really isn’t that interesting. The displays they have might have seemed cutting edge in the 1970’s, but now they just seem sad and cheap and they hardly ever activate, so unless you are sitting there having dinner you won’t seem the displays running. It is really designed to get people to visit once, get them in, take their money, send them on their way. I’m not sure who would visit and return.

The missus and I decided to have a road trip weekend and went up to Syracuse for the New York State Fair. We’ve both done various state and county fairs and we thought it would be interesting to see how NY State did it. In short, we had a really good time – it was very well run, lots of “interesting folks” to see, lots of interesting activities (many hands on) and lots of animals (dang, cows get really, really big). We took lots of pictures. Our recent fair experiences have been at the NM State Fair and we both thought that this is a much nicer fair in every respect. While there was the expected “farmer” and “rancher” presence, the “hick” and “skank” presence was very, very low – which is noticeably different from NM State and most other fairs we’ve attended. We took the “scenic”, leisurely route back, spending the night near Scranton, PA (as an homage to The Office). Very nice weekend.

After hearing all the buzz and review, I went ahead and pre-ordered Bioshock (the Limited Edition) – I rarely get Limited Edition versions, but the Big Daddy figurine was just too cool. I picked it up on my way into work on Tuesday – happily the Gamestop in Herald Square opens at like 8:30am. I am now (almost) two levels into the game and I must say it is really pretty fantastic – definitely a Game of the Year contender. I got it for the 360 and after reading about system requirements (and some crashing issues) I am glad I got the 360 version.

I played the EA demo for skate last night (again on the 360). Game control is vastly different from games like Tony Hawk – only time will tell but this really is the first game that has a chance of dethroning the Hawk – we’ll just see if people still care… I am not sure I am really interested in another skateboarding game.

I picked up Picross for the DS last week which is a lot of fun, been playing with the missus. It provides electronic versions of Pic-a-Pix puzzles which I had seen before but never played – they are a lot of fun, try some out (on paper with a pencil).

Oh, one more thing… I “finished” Crackdown, 1250 out of 1250 achievement points (on the 360). This game was fantastic… a real time eater but a lot of fun.

Took the missus to see The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, a fun documentary about the trials and tribulations of a Donkey Kong player trying to dethrone the Donkey Kong high score holder (who established the high score in 1982). It was very interesting and proved that truth is stranger (funnier) than fiction. If you like Christopher Guest movies but want the real-life version (and you like video games) you should see this movie when it comes to your town – it is currently in very limited release. The NYC (Times Square) crowd on Friday night were obviously video game fans. Billy Mitchell might or might not have gotten the raw end of the stick in this film, but no publicity is bad publicity -right?

Interestingly, we also watched a short show about the Pac Man (2007) world championships which took place a couple months ago in NYC. Billy Mitchell showed up in this tournament but got his butt handed to him – which was fun after the Donkey Kong movie.

Coming out on Tuesday is BioShock for the 360 (and PC) and I am really looking forward to playing this. To prepare, I finished (100%, 1250 gamerscore) Crackdown – with some end-game help from a co-worker (two of the achievements require co-op play). This game was great. It was fantastic. I think it was just about the most fun I have had with a video game. I would hate to tally up the total number of hours I spent playing this game and collecting the various achievements, but, I finally achieved the 1250 gamerscore. The hardest part was undoubtedly the Street Races – although the orb hunting might have taken more raw time. I think I am now done with the game unless friends need help with some of the co-op bits.

We’re planning on doing a road trip from New Rochelle, NY to the Atlanta, GA area (and back) sometime in September – probably stopping through DC, the Carolina’s etc. If you know great things to do, see, or eat in those areas please do share them with me. The rough outline of the trip can be seen by clicking here but we’re flexible on the route to do, see, or eat something amazing. I think I have figured out (using TripMaster) how to use my TomTom One to help me geocode my pictures so when I post them to Flickr I can see where (on a map) the picture was taken – which would be very cool.

Since we last spoke, I have completed (200 out of 200 achievement points, woot!) Cloning Clyde for the 360 – lots of fun… I got it when it first came out, played most of it but then forgot about it. I am really glad I went back to it, what a great game. I am 3 (very difficult) songs from completing the Guitar Hero 2 “Hard” level. I have completed about half the songs on “Set 5” (of 8) on the “Expert” level (which I am very proud of) – but I’m not sure how much more I will be able to complete. It’s fun to realize that playing “Medium” songs feel incredibly slow and I wonder how I had problems with those songs just weeks ago.

We saw the movie Hot Rod.  It was stupid but funny. We laughed a lot but it won’t even be considered for a single award, but it wasn’t the worst movie of its kind by a long shot. If you like goofy, dumb movies go see it. If you find such movies a waste of time, you’ll find this one to be a waste of time, too.

During my initial Crackdown playing I got “most” of the Agility orbs and about half of the Hidden orbs. Back in May I got “serious” about Orb hunting and found all 300 Hidden orbs (with, admittedly, some map help). At that same time I got 499 of the 500 Agility orbs. I have been hunting, on and off, for the 500th orb since them. I “knew” it was in Shai Gen (for no good reason) but couldn’t find it after hunting and hunting. Tonight I FINALLY found it. YAY! Crack(down) the champagne. If you are hunting for your 500th orb, look in the southwest of Shai Gen on top of the “Epcot Globe”. After I found it I did some Google’ing and this is, apparently, the last orb for lots of people.

In the meantime I have made some continued strides on Guitar Hero 2 (almost finished Hard, about half way through Expert), finished Halo 2, and started Call of Duty 2. How I just need to finish Call of Duty 2, Rainbow Six Vegas, and GRAW2 so I don’t feel TOO guilty starting Bioshock toward the end of August 😉