And now on a lighter note...
After that big long rant against Capcom (that only friends can see), I figured it's been a while since I've updated with just random junk. So here it goes.
I updated my LJ, obviously, with a new color scheme, new theme, new picture, new title, the works. The new title is a quote from the new Neko Case album, which is awesome. The picture is one of the new characters in Sly 3, a series I historically love and a game that is really impressing me. (More on that in a moment). I also discovered I can subscribe to this thinger while playing around in my options, so if anyone else is an RSS junkie like I am and didn't know you could do that, my address is feed://stevencwatts.livejournal.com/data/rss. Since I tend to catch all my friends' entries through the modules in LJ itself, this is fairly useless to me except as a nifty little feature, unless I can figure out how to add certain other people's blogs to my RSS like my brother's Xanga. But looking around the site, I saw no such method, so I guess I'll have to wait until someome smarter finds a way.
Anyway, on Sly 3. The game is really impressing me. The first game gave you a nice feeling of accomplishment when you completed levels, because you had new powers as a tangible benefit. The second game replaced that with an upgrade-purchase system, which was nice, but didn't really give you any "can't wait till I finish this level" feeling. It did, however, give you nice sprawling maps with a home base, which was a good touch, and more characters. The third game combines both of these, giving us characters as the benefit for completing levels. It also has a nice heist story feel to it, being episodic in each chapter but still building up to "the big job." I'll probably have a more complete review of it when I finish it in a couple weeks or whatever.
I switched my Netflix account to 1-at-a-time Unlimited, and I seem to be getting my movies slower. Either this is just a hiccup, or they've decided that for 2 bucks less per month they're not going to prioritize my flix, which would be an annoyance. I would probably just jump the shark and go up to the 2-at-a-time Unlimited and see if that fixed the problem, so I suppose that means their evil scheme would work, having me pay more ultimately anyway.
I have a few new albums floating around that I've been meaning to review: (1) Rosanne Cash, famous daughter of that dude they made a movie about, put out a country album that I've not gotten all the way through; (2) I invested in the new album by Kate Rusby, a Celtic folk singer I've been getting into, but I've only listened to the album once thus far; (3) and I used an iTunes gift card from Nina to get an earlier album from one of my favorite artists, Vienna Teng (which unlike Cash and Rusby's, I have listened to, several times). I also recently got KT Tunstall's "Eye to the Telescope" and AC Newman's "The Slow Wonder" from my broheim today, so I have plenty to keep me busy for a while.
And finally on a side-note, I've been watching season 2 of The Adventures of Pete & Pete, and wow. Just wow. I try not to let nostalgia enter my judgment too much, but this show is genius. Some of the acting is a little off (they're kids, after all), and the production is obviously low, but the show itself is razor sharp. The jokes hold up, and the episodes deliver such vibrant messages with such subtle grace that I can't even express how advanced the series was for some little show on Nickelodeon. Of the few things that IGN gets right, I think its review of this was spot-on. To quote: "Another classic, 'Time Tunnel,' ... packed a really subtle emotional punch while still retaining the quirky humor of the previous seasons. Even the departure of Artie ... was represented in a poignant story arc about Little Pete's imaginative childhood coming to a close." Preach it.
I updated my LJ, obviously, with a new color scheme, new theme, new picture, new title, the works. The new title is a quote from the new Neko Case album, which is awesome. The picture is one of the new characters in Sly 3, a series I historically love and a game that is really impressing me. (More on that in a moment). I also discovered I can subscribe to this thinger while playing around in my options, so if anyone else is an RSS junkie like I am and didn't know you could do that, my address is feed://stevencwatts.livejournal.com/data/rss. Since I tend to catch all my friends' entries through the modules in LJ itself, this is fairly useless to me except as a nifty little feature, unless I can figure out how to add certain other people's blogs to my RSS like my brother's Xanga. But looking around the site, I saw no such method, so I guess I'll have to wait until someome smarter finds a way.
Anyway, on Sly 3. The game is really impressing me. The first game gave you a nice feeling of accomplishment when you completed levels, because you had new powers as a tangible benefit. The second game replaced that with an upgrade-purchase system, which was nice, but didn't really give you any "can't wait till I finish this level" feeling. It did, however, give you nice sprawling maps with a home base, which was a good touch, and more characters. The third game combines both of these, giving us characters as the benefit for completing levels. It also has a nice heist story feel to it, being episodic in each chapter but still building up to "the big job." I'll probably have a more complete review of it when I finish it in a couple weeks or whatever.
I switched my Netflix account to 1-at-a-time Unlimited, and I seem to be getting my movies slower. Either this is just a hiccup, or they've decided that for 2 bucks less per month they're not going to prioritize my flix, which would be an annoyance. I would probably just jump the shark and go up to the 2-at-a-time Unlimited and see if that fixed the problem, so I suppose that means their evil scheme would work, having me pay more ultimately anyway.
I have a few new albums floating around that I've been meaning to review: (1) Rosanne Cash, famous daughter of that dude they made a movie about, put out a country album that I've not gotten all the way through; (2) I invested in the new album by Kate Rusby, a Celtic folk singer I've been getting into, but I've only listened to the album once thus far; (3) and I used an iTunes gift card from Nina to get an earlier album from one of my favorite artists, Vienna Teng (which unlike Cash and Rusby's, I have listened to, several times). I also recently got KT Tunstall's "Eye to the Telescope" and AC Newman's "The Slow Wonder" from my broheim today, so I have plenty to keep me busy for a while.
And finally on a side-note, I've been watching season 2 of The Adventures of Pete & Pete, and wow. Just wow. I try not to let nostalgia enter my judgment too much, but this show is genius. Some of the acting is a little off (they're kids, after all), and the production is obviously low, but the show itself is razor sharp. The jokes hold up, and the episodes deliver such vibrant messages with such subtle grace that I can't even express how advanced the series was for some little show on Nickelodeon. Of the few things that IGN gets right, I think its review of this was spot-on. To quote: "Another classic, 'Time Tunnel,' ... packed a really subtle emotional punch while still retaining the quirky humor of the previous seasons. Even the departure of Artie ... was represented in a poignant story arc about Little Pete's imaginative childhood coming to a close." Preach it.