NewSc2

New Toys:
(left - Monomachine)  (right - Machinedrum)

,

New Song:

|||||<<<<< 4am >>>>>|||||

(click to play)

(No effects or compression added — everything was recorded straight off the Machinedrum and Monomachine. It’s 4:30am, so I couldn’t turn up my speakers to hear anything properly. I’m sure the levels aren’t very balanced. And take into consideration the fact that I’ve only had about 2 hours to learn the Monomachine. It’s doing the bassline for this track.)

EDIT: omg. the levels. all fuxed up. treble’s a little too high, and louds too loud. sorry. i’ll see what i can balance out tomorrow.

I’ve been watching a few of the Laker games this year. Even though they’re 13-1, I don’t feel any emotion from the fans. I remember last year’s tumultuous run — Kobe came out bashing Bynum, Buss saying he’d entertain trades for Kobe during training camp, Bynum’s resurgence, Bynum’s subsequence injury, and the Kwah-May Brown?! for Pau Gasol trade (you gotta put on your Stephen A. Smith accent for Kwame).

I guess this really is a Hollywood team. We had Shaq v. Kobe, we had Airball Kobe the Rookie, and now we have, the perfect team? Meh, wake me up when the playoffs are here. Or when the Lakers pull off 32 wins in a row, and are at Win #69.

By the way, did anybody catch today’s game? The Lakers are in serious need of chemistry between their bigs and between the bigs and the smalls. It seemed like every play would call for Bynum or Gasol to camp the key, whether it be on offense or defense. There was no ball movement, everything was done in traffic, save for the occassional 3.

And don’t even get me started on the Lakers’ defense. Berea? Who the heck is that?! Put a man on him!

One of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. It’s pretty much a full replica of the ride, down to the sound bytes, the holograms, the scenes, and the music. Even the ending is pretty much spot on — Beware.. of hitchhiking ghosts!!!

So. Fucking. Awesome.

Checking my e-mail has suddenly become a lot more epic. I feel like legendary sci-fi music should be playing in the background.

srsly?

Inspired (and angered) by a post on the SlickDeals forums, where Oblivion is currently selling for $30 for 360 and $20 for PC…

TravisOwens: I put 90hrs into this game on my Xbox 360. I don’t even play RPG games (well it’s heavy adventure too), this game is amazing, if you haven’t played it, buy it, you won’t regret it.

I’ve never met a person who didn’t like this game

…I decided to reply (and rant):

I’ve never met a person who liked the game.

I bought this game a few months after it came out. I love RPG’s (Diablo, WoW, Zelda) and JRPG’s (Squaresoft). I even kinda liked Lost Odyssey, and tolerated Fable.

I’ve had discussions with my some of my friends, and while we disagree over almost everything under the gaming sun (Halo vs. other FPS’s, Madden, JRPGs, music games, WoW, etc.) we all were in agreement on this game. It sucks and it’s a chore to play. I think I made it furthest in the world, putting about 8-9 hours into the game before finally giving up.

I HATED Oblivion. It never felt natural, and I hated the first-person aspect of it. It felt like a very bad FPS with fantasy elements thrown in, but with no guns, very bad controls, and a completely unintuitive world. It’s like an incredibly bad version of Half-Life 2, except HL2 had a story, had tight controls, had… well… okay Oblivion isn’t even worthy of comparison to HL2. Calling Oblivion an RPG would be like calling Ninja Gaiden an RPG. And Ninja Gaiden is way more fun.

There really is no story to make you feel connected to the world. Half the time you’re trying to figure out what you’re supposed to do, because somebody mentioned it in passing and you have no idea what they really meant. I don’t like looking up GameFAQs, but I was forced to because I honestly had no idea what I was supposed to do almost the whole time in this game. I’d visit an area, rescue some soldiers, and then I’d have to look up GameFAQs otherwise I’d wander around forever.

On top of that, there were way too many actions and the graphics are pretty subpar for how graphically intensive the PC version seems to be. There were many times I’d be walking around caves and getting hit from nowhere because I couldn’t see anything. I have the same complaint with Halo (some rooms you just keep walking around until you find the exit door you thought you already passed by) but there’s actual drive in that game. You know what you’re supposed to do — Cortana’s blurting it out to you or you’re getting radio calls.

It seems like most people preface their love for this game with “I don’t usually play RPG’s, but…” so maybe I’m looking at it from a jaded point of view. Like Yahtzee (Zero Punctuation), I never felt immersed into the game, and not really from the people’s blank stares or the stupid dialogue, but because I’d played the game for a week and I still had to look up the manual or read GameFAQs to figure out how to do certain things.

The game turned me off enough not to even consider Fallout 3, which I’ve heard better things about.

EDIT: God, I could go on and on. Bad memories are coming back. The inventory system is very crippled, and there’s no easing into the game — right after the intro sequence I had the most horrible time trying to kill an enemy at some monastery. There’s no tutorial, there’s just a click and hopefully you’ll hit something. It’s like trying to beat HL2 with only a crowbar. And then there was stealing, which I never got the hang of, and conversation, which I tried to avoid as much as possible because of the pointlessness of it all.

To be honest, my complaints above aren’t true for the entire game. There were a few times when yes, I did know that I was supposed to teleport here (even though I had a horse) and kill the boss, but I did it begrudgingly and didn’t really care or feel like the time I wasted dying and using potions and trying to kill flying things was worth it.

In the end, I’d sum up the game as a huge chore. I must admit I don’t finish most of my games because they hit that chore point towards the end (when you need to grind or when you know what the ending is anyway) but this game was a chore from the beginning and I always had to force myself to play (because of all the good reviews, and the comments saying the game needed a few hours to fully appreciate).

[Video Placeholder]

Ugh, for some reason the video above isn’t working. I don’t have enough time at work to figure it out, so here’s the link: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/75-Oblivion

Five Dollar Footloooooooonnnngg…

I hate you, referee. I hate you, hula dancers. I hate you, Mo-Town dancers.

And most of all, I hate you Subway. The jingle is catchy, I’ll give you that, but it’s really really annoying. Almost as annoying as the “Saaaaved byyyyy the zeeeroooooo” Toyota commercials.

Let’s see if this sounds better:
machinedrumjamtake2 <– click to play

Read my previous Machinedrum post (two posts down) for more info. 

Everything’s sequenced in Pattern Mode on the Machinedrum. Sounds are all from Machinedrum SPS-1 (non-UW) and Access Virus Indigo (the lead, it’s a Minimoog patch). Recorded into Logic, the lead has an amp simulator and reverb plugin added, and I added a Noise Gate on the master to clean up some of the clicks and whatnots.

Teddy usually sleeps around midnight (after the 4th nap of the day… his late-night nap from 9-11pm), but I found him wandering aimlessly around the hallway at 2am. His tummy was grumbling.

Poor little boy. All he knows is that his bowl is empty. He doesn’t even know why (I forgot to stop by Petsmart today).

Thank goodness I found an old can of dog food.

Silly Teddy! You can’t cook… You’re not a hunting doggy, either. What would you do without me…

My Elektron Machinedrum

Techno (not by me)

IDM/glitch/whatever you wanna call it (not by me either)

I have an earlier version of this machine.

It doesn’t have the sampling capability, so it’s like… half of what the above two videos show. Still, it’s not bad.
Really easy to use.

My only complaint is that it sounds a bit… thin. Though after messing with it more — I got some decent sounds out of it.

Anyway, I dug mine out yesterday, and I’ve been playing around with it. Recorded some horrible stuff, some crappy stuff, and some whatever stuff.

Here is one of the whatevers: (the only decent one I played forgot to record)
machinedrumjam <– click to play

Trying to figure out what to do with it. I want to add a warbly, resonating lead sound, similar in texture to the bass, but a few octaves higher, and probably a bit sharper and more percussive. I’m not getting any success in synthesizing that sound.

11-11-08