Fuck video games

I could not rage harder if I tried.

They released Devil May Cry but WACKY and with this instead of Dante.

BRB, crying forever.

A Tangental Review of DJ Hero from Someone Who Only Played It at a Demo Station in Toys R Us pt. 2

We've established that in this story I am presently located in Toys R Us and it's something like 9:30. Ok? Cool.

Never having touched a turn table in respect to DJing and because fake plastic instruments cause me to drop on all fours and start barking like a dog, I decided my best course of action would be to try the tutorial mode before playing the 3-song playlist.

My journey's beginning was an epic. The almost grandfatherly voice of Grandmaster Flash greeted me, affirming that he would help learn me some DJ skills to begin my journey to DJ Hero celebrity (a process easily summarized in the DJ Hero track "DJ Hero vs. Jukebox Hero"). The Grandmaster guided me through the various features of the turntable, including the 3 colored stream buttons and crossfader. To help matters along, Flash apparently precognated my love of the "Another One Bites the Dust vs. Da Funk" mix. Using this mix and a brief rundown of what each function of the table did and a following test of your new skills, verbal pats on the back were aplenty. I went for the real game's only song set of 3 for the demo station.

Both very afraid of the fickle looseness of the crossfader and unsure of how deep my skills at fake plastic DJing were, I set my sights on "easy" mode (as using my pinky on Guitar Hero's guitar actually causes me mental trauma). Easy mode limits your turntable interaction to stream buttons and scratches. Button presses run simultaneous with scratches, making the movement process only slightly more involved than your average Guitar Hero song.

Some of the scratches are very (read as: very) short and choppy and I don't think the actual scratching process recorded some of my back scratches -- not used to the process, I used short forward-reverse wrist motions, but apparently broke a number of cut's chains, simultaneously ending my note streak and dropping my score modifier considerably.

I am not sure if the turntable's crossfader is naturally limber or if disease ridden children's hands had fiddled with the device so often that it became looser than (insert obvious misogynistic joke here), but it made the process of cross fading and almost immediately disastrous process. Maybe I was too jittery, hoping to impress my adopted Grand-father-master, and just slipped a bit, but the crossfader -- a straight line lever requiring movement left or right to focus music on one or both songs -- easily broke my chains due to overshooting where the lever would need to be. I'm sure I just need practice and that many of you already playing expert are having a good laugh at my expense.

Anyway, playing "I Heard it Through the Grapevine vs. Feel Good Inc.," "Hollaback Girl vs. Give it to Me, Girl" and "Satisfaction vs. Boom Boom Pow" is probably the most fun I've had without violently beating others with foam and plastic swords down toy store aisles. Also because my ears were leaking precum.

Long story short, DJ Hero is pretty good, I guess. If you like "that kind" of music, I would highly recommend the game. One of my friends with more arrogant musical tastes in her club music actually greatly enjoyed many of the remixes I forwarded her after finding a torrent of ALL songs (thanks anonymous YouTube channeler!) and sending her a select favorite batch. Even if you don't, I would at least try the demo station or do a search for songs online. I've been met with shock and surprise when I admitted my addiction to the soundtrack, as apparently I don't seem the type to get a massive erection over egregious affronts to more classic songs being piledriven into techno and other electronic songs and then injected into my aural cavities, but then again I also really like a Notorious BIG/Miley Cirus mashup, so there's also that.

A Tangental Review of DJ Hero from Someone Who Only Played It at a Demo Station in Toys R Us pt. 1

DJ Hero is the latest installment of Activision's "Expensive Plastic Instrument Peripheral" Hero line of electronic entertainment medium. How does this make you feel?

I first became interested in DJ Hero not through being excited about the game (because what kind of guy actually LIKES video games?) but through a late night advertisement for the game starring digital avatars of the techno pair Daft Punk playing the most skull bustingly fantastic remix of personal favorite song "Around the World" mixed with "Television Rules the Nation" (which, at the time, I could not identify what the drop-out song was). Then the magic of television showed me I was not to expect some new godsend of a cd, but something possibly even more awe-inspiring: a video game.

For a few weeks or maybe a month, I basically ignored DJ Hero, only regaining interest when the Tee Vee would spam messages asking me to buy this game that wasn't out yet. "Thanks, TV, but this game doesn't exist yet!" I clamored, "Also I just really like these songs and don't want to actually work to have to hear them. Also I imagine carrying my PS3 (or my bricked Wii... or Xbox I don't own) around to listen to music I enjoy would be quite cumbersome!"

Well, sometime shortly after the game release, that same heart-on Daft Punk mix got stuck in my head, so I traveled to the last bastion of people who have no idea where to find audio files online go, YouTube.

DJ Hero had its own channel, sporting only bite-sized clips of the game's track list, a paltry selection, not even complete. A further search lead me to some game music connoisseur's YouTube channel (no link to save him from the lambasting of Activision - more on this in a second) to find THE MOST ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS COMBINATIONS OF SONGS I NEVER ASKED FOR BUT SUDDENLY HAD PIPED DIRECTLY INTO MY EARS CAPSLOCK. I spent the entire afternoon at work looping mixes while reformatting a spreadsheet I'd created and played "Around the World vs. Bust a Move" no less than 20 times.

Like any good user of the internet, I immediately made it my life's work to rip and iPod-ify this music, a task which spanned mere minutes after a YouTube MP3 ripping service created the equivalent of aural diarrhea out of the song and an immediate move to the /rs/ board of 4chan brought me in contact with some "new friends." The rest of Halloween weekend was me drunk off of song and actual drink induced euphoria.

Ok, so I'm pretty much the farthest into a blog entry and I haven't touched the game. Well, sorry.

Before the weekend ended, Activision started deleting videos uploaded by "my new internet best friend" on his YouTube. I was out so many songs, many of which did not appear in the RS files I'd found. Way to share love for your product, Activision.

However, this turn of events and potential incoming suicide-over-music-withdrawal led me to Toys R Us with a friend where I heard a very familiar mash up of Daft Punk songs playing in the not so distant background. A station was set up with DJ Hero. Now comes the part where I actually play the game.

...and we're back

Trust me, you don't want to know.

Let's Talk About: ZENDIKAR

Oh, I like Magic cards and stuff. Yeah.

Zendikar is the newest set, coming soon to a store near you the week after this weekend, which is the Prerelease for said set.

I'll be dressing up like a butler and greeting people at the New York Anime Fest, so you can imagine my disappointment that the two events are co-scheduled for the same weekend. Also, I want to win cards for being good at a game and make free money. Frown town.

Here's my primer for you guys on Zendikar Limited without cracking a single pack of the set, so take this with you to your local prerelease, release, or events immediately leading up to people who are professionals define what is or isn't good in Limited.

To start, check the spoiler on MTGSalvation, which is still about 40 cards shy of complete at the time of writing, but I've been scanning it for months now so you can clearly trust everything I have to say.

The first thing you want to note about Zendikar is that it's VERY similar (in a bare-bones kind of way) to M10 Limited: you're dealing with a slower format that requires you to build up a board and drop big dudes that are better than your opponent's big bomby dudes to win. Being really aggressive with anything aside from building up your board to support dropping your big, bomby dude is not as strong (but still a possible) strategy as, say, playing defensive guys early until you have 5-9 lands in play and dropping Iona or some other crazy stuff.

This also applies for most aggressive strategies in this format: aggressive Landfall-centric decks need a steady flow of land in play to make your 1R for a 1/1 First-Striker into 1R for a 9/9 turn 3. The other thing you should note is that relying entirely on dropping one or multiple lands every turn is not a good idea unless you decide to play 20 lands. This is also probably not good.

You need to get a balance out of your cards that rely on Landfall and let your "cards that cost more than them" do the rest. A good example of this is in UG - Windrider Eel is fine as a 2/2 for 4 that flies, but then gets huge with a land and becomes impossible with Harrow or something similar.

Another thing that carries over from M10 is that Blue looks like it will be horribly underdrafted. Although Blue lacks Divination and Ponder coupled with Merfolk Looter (though all three effects can be found in the set, lawl), blue has a solid early defense plan backed by a plethora of fliers, the only counterspell in the set, and extremely playable bounce. UG or UW look to be solid combinations archetype wise.

Black is also pretty good, as the "Vampire Theme Deck" of limited seems to recommend, but Black also lacks the sheer number of removal cards and life-cushioning effects it had in M10 (see Tendrils of Despair, Consume Spirit, Child of the Night). It still has retarded-good removal and its creatures are mostly all pretty good, but there is a decent want for a larger guy who won't get eaten by more defensive late drops or white and greens' "We're 2/3s for 2" men.

Red seems like a self-sustainable color this set, as well. This is probably more an on-paper than in-practice notion, but I'm ok with being wrong since I only ever splash red in M10 for Fireball and Lightning Bolt.

Allies also are pretty much all good on their own, except for several of the "Comes into play, effect happens" ones, like in Red and Black. They're GREAT when you have a deck with several Allies, but you need to really bunker down and draft them to make them worth the 5+ mana they cost. Also the Rare allies are fine on their own and bonkers with multiple Allies in play. Obvobv.

Until the spoiler is finished, this is my assessment of Zendikar limited. Top 15 picks will come when the spoiler is over.

Sup dawg I heard you like news updates so I put a news update in your news update so you can learn while you learn.

Getting hit with inspiration for a new entry while coming in and updating my tumblr. That's something to start your morning.

While raiding a drug dealer/chop-shop owner's home the other day, cops were playing Wii Bowling on the dealer's TV.

Personally, I think this is awesome (read the story, if you can follow up on the story, there are pictures of stills from the surveillance footage) and that cops should be caught trolling people they're busting more often. I don't really know if this is good or bad for the police, unless it drew out the investigation they were conducting (gotta get that spare in before you dust for prints, bro), I just think it's The Best that they give such a shit about the dealer that they're playing his Wii.

A 24 year-old lv. 14 buddhist monk (editor's note: there is no D&D style leveling system in buddhism) plays the vidya. Also, he suggests it's a good method of emotional output and a great relaxifier. Sweet deal. Worldly attachments are ok if they're vidya related (I will stand by this theory forever).

Oh, uh, video games aren't diverse enough for people who play them and they suck and are dumb and someone should make a good game or something, I don't know whatever.

HRRRRNNNNNNNNNNNN

More No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle News & Previews