2009 in Music. 1. Brand New Eyes, Paramore. 2. Cosmic Egg, Wolfmother. 3. Backspacer, Pearl Jam. 4. Vancouver, Matthew Good. 5. Throwing Bricks Instead of Kisses, Inward Eye. 6. Fantasies, Metric. 7. Black Gives Way to Blue, Alice in Chains. 8. Its Blitz!, Yeah Yeah Yeahs. 9. The Resistance, Muse. 10. Incredibad, The Lonely Island.
2009 in Film. 1. Star Trek. 2. District 9. 3. Inglorious Bastards. 4. The Hangover. 5. The Hurt Locker. 6. Observe and Report. 7. Zombieland. 8. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. 9. Law Abiding Citizen. 10. Watchmen.
On July.21.09 the Kings of Leon track pack 1 will be released. The following songs have been confirmed for release: Crawl Molly's Chambers Sex on Fire Read More...
Confirmed songs include Blur's "Song 2", Carl Douglas' "Kung Fu Fighting", Europe's "The Final Countdown", Good Charlotte's "Boys and Girls", and Pink's "So What". The game will be available for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii. Backbone Entertainment will be handling the DS version. All versions are set for release this holiday season.
Axl Rose is bringing the rest of Chinese Democracy to the music video game Rock Band on April 14th as a new batch of downloadable content. Thirteen tracks off Chinese Democracy — Rock Band is assuming you’ve already beat enough challenges to add “Shackler’s Revenge” to the in-game track list — will be available both in bulk and as individual tracks for Playstation 3 and XBox 360, while the Wii will only sell CD as individual tracks.
1. Chinese Democracy 2. Shackler's Revenge (already on Rock Band 2's main setlist) 3. Better 4. Street of Dreams 5. If The World 6. There Was A Time 7. Catcher In The Rye 8. Scraped 9. Riad N' The Bedouins 10. Sorry 11. I.R.S 12. Madagascar 13. I Love This 14. Prostitute Read More...
Fantasies is the name of the fourth album to be released by the Canadian indie rock band Metric. It was released on April 7, 2009. The first single which will appear on the album, "Help, I'm Alive", was added to the iTunes Store on December 23, 2008 in Canada.According to exclaim.ca, the album's leak has caused Metric to push the release date of the album forward one week to April 7. The website also reports that the band has a "special surprise" planned for Canada in promotion for its release. The album was released on iTunes on March 31st, 2009.
It's Blitz! is the third full-length studio album by New York band Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The album was released on March 31st. The first single "Zero" was released on February 24, 2009. NME wrote that "It’s Blitz!'s heartfelt love letter to the transcendent possibilities of the dancefloor is an unexpectedly emphatic reassertion of why Yeah Yeah Yeahs are one of the most exciting bands of this decade", while Spin said that it is " the alternative pop album of the decade—one that imbues The Killers' Hot Fuss and MGMT's Oracular Spectacular with a remarkable emotional depth and finesse". The video for the song "Zero" is below:
Nothing has been posted for a month so I thought I would type a album review. Enjoy. In 2004 Lamb of God released Ashes of the Wake one of the must brutal and pure metal albums to come out in a very long time. Nobody could think that it could be beaten, but in 2006 Sacrament was released and there was once again a new stronger, better sounding Lamb of God then before. 2009 rolls around and Wrath is released. Our review after the jump.
Wrath is not really progressing that much further, the band has done in previous albums and has taken a left turn for a new surprising twist on what we know of previous work. This time the band is looking for a more gritty, garage band like album.(Not that is sounds anything like a 'Garage Band", But it is definitely not as "Epic" as their previous album Sacrament. I will say that there are times where the album goes into a mesmerizing climax into pure metal heaven...or should I say hell, but It also has the catchy sing-a-long single Set to Fail just like Sacrament has its Redneck.
The problem with Wrath is that is has a lot of potential, but is fails to put it all together in a Complete absorbing metal album. That’s not say it's not good. It's hard to compare it to other Lamb of God albums, but to compare with other "metal" albums it's a great head banging achievement. A new twist to Wrath is its acoustic parts to songs. Not included on every track but definitely used some of the time. Much like Metallica's Black Album, Lamb of God decided to experiment. They used the acoustic bits in a very good way not making a whole song unplugged, but adding it to beginnings and endings of songs then starting the mayhem with Electric guitar, drums, screaming,etc... It makes a great buildup to songs and makes the rest of the track sound extra heavy.
Some parts of the album definitely have taken some material from the old school days of Burn the Priest and by mixing it with current sounding Lamb of God makes it a really amazing hybrid of Brutally heavy Burn the Priest and the melodic precision from Lamb of God.
I could go on and on about the album, but if your a metal head reading this review you probably stopped reading around the first paragraph and are just interested in a score so that’s a wrap.
Skateboarding has always been one of my interests. Although not really capable of doing it in real life, I have been following the culture including the big names, competitions, and skatevids. I have played virtually every skate game ever, and unfortunately that included all of the games in the tired Tony Hawk series. Naturally, I was excited last year when EA entered the scene with Skate. This game revolutionized the action-sport genre with its innovative Flickit controls, and realistic gameplay and level design. With Skate being so revolutionary it is a tough act to follow, and follow they did with Skate 2. My thoughts and review after the jump.
First, lets discuss some of the new gameplay features of the game. In this years game there were not any changes in the basic design of the gameplay, rather it is an extension of last years system. All of the flickit controls that you have learned to love all work exactly the same. Now, though, you have the ability to take your feet of the board. On the 360 the X or A button will take off one of your feet once in the air. This allows for tricks like footplants, bonelesses, no complies, ollie norths/souths, judos, etc. You can now also totally get off your board with a press of the Y button and walk/jump/run. You can grab things with the left button when off your board giving you much control. You can skitch, move objects for new lines, and do handplants on halfpipes. These simple extensions allow for a slew of new tricks or as the team at Blackbox said, they "doubled the bag of tricks". They also added hall of meat mode where you can fling your body around in the air and get points for doing the most things in the air and breaking the most bones.
All these features work fairly well except the walking and moving objects. You cannot for example walk backwards, but instead you actually have to turn like your on a board (sometimes very slowly too). It feels kind of awkward, along with moving objects. There are some glitches like your character randomly falling, letting go of an object unexpectedly, and objects spinning out of control. Sometimes these glitches come in handy if you need to get an object somewhere it is not supposed to be, but they are for the most part annoying. Thats really my only gripe in gameplay, now lets look at the career mode.
In the original Skate, the career mode did not have much of a story. Basically, you followed the old story of amateur to pro. Along the way you did a bunch of challenges, and ended up on the covers of magazines, and participated in the X-Games. Thats pretty much it. In Skate 2 there is a story, that is carried over from Skate It (the DS and Wii version of skate). The story is that an earthquake rocked San Vanelona. For some reason (explained in skate it) you are sent to jail. When you get out, the whole city has be redesigned, and a company called MongoCorp(awesome name if you know anything about the hatred of the mongo stance) has made it difficult to skate with increased security and rail blockers. Now you have to regain your pro cred with the skate community. Along the way you help Rob Derdyk fundraise for a new skatepark, and complete many challenges, video and photo shoots, and competitions.
Other than the story the career mode is essentially the same. All of the challenges haven’t really changed, and it still follows the basic model of try, fail and repeat. I did like how the video challenges were more specific and weren’t just about points. They were also more realistic. In general the career mode is better, but not that much of a change. The story still could have been more in-depth, but honestly the career mode isn’t that big for most people. Most people are more interested in the creative aspects and online.
User created content was a huge success for skate. and the same goes for this game. The replay editor has been improved with a tripod cam and a new follow cam. For both you can choose the exact angle you want to be looking from unlike the restrictive 6 views from skate 1. You can also slow clips down to 10% instead of just 25%. The uploading has been changed to allow an unlimited number of clips with a combined length of 90 seconds. You can also buy a dlc pack that allows you to have more control over the exact movement of the camera(with blended keyframes!) and increases the total clip length to 5 minutes. This is great for all those people creating skate videos. They also added a graphics creator to put in custom decks and shirt designs. They also added the ability to upload/download other peoples spots they created, and have leaderboards for those spots.
I felt the improvements were really good in this area, but I do have a problem with the dlc. The camera angles in the filmer pack really should have been included in the game, and easily could have been. For me it is a must need, but 800 Microsoft Points is a bit much for most.
There were also good improvements in online too. Now you can start freeskate sessions from from career mode or local freeskate. There are small activities you can do with friends (not unlike Burnout Paradise) also. I haven’t had a chance to try those yet, but it seems like fun little challenges to do when you just want to chill with some friends. I have played best trick, hall of meat and jam competitions online, and everything is good and smooth for the most part. The improvements may not seem that big, but they are there and I think they handled online well.
As for graphics and sound, this game covers that well. The graphics are really well done, and the sound is just as good as last years (which was award winning). The graphics have improved especially with the characters, and for the most part, 60 frames per second. Also the lighting is really good and has the addition of some cool looking light flare effects. The soundtrack appeals a bit more to the general audience, but most people use custom soundtracks anyways. Sound effects are also top notch.
In the end, I think Blackbox really developed the best skateboard experience in gaming ever! (ya take that Activision, and oldmanknoops [please don't delete stuff from my post, damn!]) It would be really hard for me to go back to skate 1 now. It offers solid gameplay(local and online), really good user created content features, and awesome online features. A smooth buttery frame rate, along with the amazing graphics and sound are just icing on the cake. There are some glitches and the game could have been better (even without dlc) so its not perfect. Overall its a great game that I recommend anyone interested in action-sports to purchase. I am giving Skate 2 a rating of 9/10.
The Fray is the second full-length studio album from Denver-based band The Fray. This self-titled album released on February 3, 2009.
The band finished recording their self-titled second album at the end of July 2008 for a February 3, 2009 release. The Fray managed to debut at number 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 selling 179,000 copies.The single "You Found Me" hit number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Also, songs "Absolute", "Never Say Never" and "Syndicate" got 70th, 103rd, and 109th respectively, merely being downloaded enough on iTunes and other music services to chart. The Fray filmed a music video in Chicago, for their first single, "You Found Me," directed by Josh Forbes, and it debuted on the VH1 website on December 9, 2008. Here is the song used for the season 5 promo of Lost.
Very rough copy of my favourite albums from 1991-2008. Can't figure anything out for some years. 1991 Nevermind (Nirvana) 1992 Dirt (Alice in Chains) 1993 Siamese Dream (Smashing Pumpkins) 1994 Weezer (Weezer) 1995 Whats the Story Morning Glory (Oasis) 1996 Pinkerton (Weezer) 1997 The Colour and the Shape (Foo Fighters) 1998 Yield (Pearl Jam) 1999 Beautiful Midnight (Matthew Good Band) 2000 Parachtues (Coldplay) 2001 White Blood Cells (The White Stripes) 2002 Songs for the Deaf (Queens of the Stone Age) 2003 Elephant (The White Stripes) 2004 Hot Fuss (The Killers) 2005 Late Registration (Kanye West) 2006 Wolfmother (Wolfmother) 2007 Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace (Foo Fighters) 2008 Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends (Coldplay)
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8. Resident Evil 4 Out of Ammo: I went almost half of this game on ten pistol bullets and was finally forced to start over due to lack of ammo because apparently you can't beat those giants with a knife.
7. Diddy Kong Racing Wizpig: The N64 version was so imposible, no matter what we tried we could not beat the stupid pig.
6. Twilight Princess Glitch: After having to start over, twenty hours into this game I now always keep two save files.
5. Toy Story: If I find this game from my childhood again I'm going to beat it and than smash it.
4. F-Zero GX: Lost the same race by fractions of a second over and over...hardest racing game ever.
3. Guitar Hero Bark at the Moon: I literally failed on the final note. I played this song soooo many times and than I thought I had beat it but I missed the final note, my guitar somehow survived and I ended up beating the song.
2. Kingdom Hearts Ansem: My knee took months to recover form hitting it one hundred times after my epic fails with this game.
1. Guitar Hero 2 Jordan: Ahh never beat that stupid ass song, i now hold a permanent grudge against Guitar Hero and Buckethead.
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OK, so my favorite games my 11 favorite games cause 10 is for maggots!
11: Sims 2 Genghis Khan and Hitler don't like each other much, maybe cause Khan is having an affair with Hitlers wife 10: Call Of Duty 2 The first game which I played completely through in one sitting. 9: Company Of Heroes Get it, Play it. 8: Gears of War Made me feel like a real big man. 7: Half-life 2 (Including Ep 1 and 2) Crowbar and Gravgun, who could want more 6: Pokemon Red (Only the best!) My childhood Heroin 5: Medieval 2 Total War Ima taking Europe for the motherland 4: Golden Eye First FPS I played. Made James bond look like a bad ass 3: Fallout 3 Galaxy Radio is my super mutant killing anthem 2: Perfect Dark Took GoldenEye and added Aliens! 1: Team Fortress 2 THE best online game from THE best Developer
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On Monday(Jan 26th) the playable demo of Resident Evil 5 hit the Xbox Live Marketplace, and I thought I would check it out. The demo includes 2 levels, playable in single player, and co-op (both offline and online). So far I have no tried out the co-operative play, but I have done both levels in single player. The visuals were spectacular, even for a demo! They gameplay was fun, but it felt a little bit clunky, which hopefully they will improve upon. I had loads of fun blasting away zombies with the pistol and shotgun in the first level, but i couldn't help but notice that almost all of the zombies flew back the exact same way when I hit them with the shotgun. (Hopefully they will improve that too, but bear with it, it's only a demo :] ) For once, the AI wasn't incompetent (not naming any names... *ahem Ashley * She actually supplied me with ammo, saved me a couple times, and even killed a couple zombies for me. Anyways, the demo seemed amazing, so if you haven't checked it out, I definitely reccommend downloading it. Oh, but only if you're old enough. In other news, just random, but Capcom announced special boxart for the 360 version, woot! I look forward to seeing Chris and Sheva on March 13 when it hits store shelves
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Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is Franz Ferdinand's third album. It was released through Domino Records yesterday. First thoughts and more about this new album after the jump!
Franz Ferdinand began working on their third studio album in early 2007. The band planned to write and record the album in Glasgow. Although having written about eight songs while on tour in 2005, Alex Kapranos decided to write new tunes because he wanted the album to be "...quite new, to be quite different sounding from everything we've ever done before." Despite having recorded their sophomore album in a blitz, Kapranos stressed that the band wanted to take their time. He voices, "This time we wanted to spend more time developing, and also, I suppose, allowing songs and sounds to evolve more before we ended up writing an album, and absorbing more music and ideas and, I suppose, life itself. And when I say life, I mean life off the road, because I wouldn't classify life on the road as real life."
The album has reportedly been inspired by the "heavy dub sound of Jamaican reggae stars." Alex Kapranos also stated the album has a "streak of electronica" but is still a mix of influences. He also commented it has "..the heavy bass and space echo you would find on a dub mix." In a Rolling Stone interview, Kapranos stated the album is more of a dance than a rock record. In an interview with Billboard.com, Kapranos said "It's the opposite of punk/pop, which took something that was wonderful and removed all the dirt." The album also has somewhat of an African influence according to an XFM article in which Alex reeled, "We're one of these bands that are always gonna sound the same no matter what we do, but there are other influences there. I guess the drums are a little different, Paul has been listening to a lot of African stuff so that's gonna come through."
Seriously, we promise no more after this. We added another author to the blog. His name is ZombieC, and he is a good friend of all of us. He is into all of the same sort of stuff as all of us, and we all welcome him in as an author. He also tends to be funny in a random way, which fits us fine. Now with six people working on writing, we can keep this blog going strong.
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Free and open source software has really been catching on lately. With the advances of Ubuntu, Firefox and many other free software packages it is becoming more of a viable choice for customers. The software is getting user friendly enough that normal computer users can use it. This is great and all, but what if you are into games? A look into this after the jump.
The state of free and open source games is just in its beginnings. Most of the games you see are 2d games, mainly puzzle games and arcade side scrollers. Are these the games that hardcore gamers want? No. These are more for the casual gamers. But what about full on 3d shooters, and action/adventure games?
Well right now there aren't many. I wonder though why? The graphics api that is used on the ps3 and wii is readily available for all platforms, and is ready for open source development. If you are into xbox games, and windows games, microsoft's directx is available, along with their xna development software. Many physics engines are available such as ODE, Bullet and Newton to be used in these projects.
I think that the main problem is, is that not enough teams of people have worked together to create these games like the larger open source software projects like ubuntu, openoffice, firefox. For a project like this, a good community is the key. Games need bug testers, programmers, project managers, and a good plan for development, just like any other application. More people need to get involved in this area of programming.
The problem is that a lot of people want to create games, they all want to know how to make the next Halo or World of Warcraft right from the start. They try for something to large to begin with, and then get scared away from creating games, because it is too hard. Most times people start off these large projects by themselves. The truth is is that a lot of these people just worked together, they could get something done by splitting everything up.
A good example of this is a game called the Monkey Game Project. It started out on the blenderartists form with a bunch of self-professed noobs. It was basically a community game project. Each individual person may not know much about everything you need to make a full game, but together they had enough knowledge to create a game. Now this game may not be the best game ever, or have good graphics or anything, but it proves with a good community spirit can give you results.
This idea has recently been used to create another game called Yo Frankie!. This time it was a bit different. These developers were not noobs of any sort. A group of the best developers and artists from the Blender3D and CrystalSpace3D projects came together to create this game. With all of that combined talent, they managed to create a very good looking game, with good gameplay. Everything was thought out well, and they did finish the whole project. Everything was done with free software. This game is also not perfect, especially performance wise (due to inefficient code in blender's game engine), but the two goals were accomplished. It was shown that it is possible create a high quality game with free software, and it also helped both software projects with new features, and better performance.
The point is, if more groups of talented people (or even not so talented) got together, used a optimized graphics and physics engine, the quality of games will increase. I just hope that one day, one of these games will be competing with the likes of Halo, Call of Duty, MSG and others, just like Linux and Windows, OpenOffice and Microsoft Word and Firefox and Internet Explorer. It will be good all around, as the commercial companies will have more competition, and the quality of open source projects will increase. We already have some good examples sprouting like Frets on Fire, and some other MMORPGs, and hopefully more come into the scene. Well thats it for my insight into free and open source games. If you have something to say, please comment, or check out our Facebook groups discussion board. Read More...
I would officially like to welcome both blendermf and oldmanknoops to the Forest of Illusions team. Hopefully with five members we can keep the blog updated and new content will be constantly added to the site. Blendermf has done a great job on updating the site's look as well. Also we have added a discussion board, hosted on our Forest of Illusions group on Facebook, with the link on the side of the page, a Twitter acount has also been set up. So overall expect more blogs, more reviews (album and movie reviews now, along with game reviews), random top tens, and more from the Forest of Illusions team!
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Hey everyone, some of you may have never seen me here, i'm new. My names Matt(aka blendermf or on xbl, blendermfskate). I am also a friend of everyone here, and joined to work on the design of the blog, and post when I feel like it.
Anyways I may post review sometime soon, probably of Skate 2. (yes Rikzor it counts as a real game), but first I have to get my stupid xbox back from microsoft, that they sent to someone in mississauga with my name. Now I have to wait for them to finish investigating and its taking forever.
Maybe I should say a bit about my interests in gaming. First of all I like to program and work on games. I keep fairly up to date in the game development scene, and like creating my own games. I am also really into free and open source things, including games. I am not in to fps games as much as everyone else here, but enjoy rythm games, some sports games, racing games, action games, and the occasional shooter (but mainly on the PC(I like the mouse better(maybe I should stop nesting brackets(okay i'll stop now))). With that in mind that will be what I mainly post about, and general gaming of course. Look out for more blogging from the crew soon.
10. Foo Fighters 9. Pearl Jam 8. Oasis 7. Guns N' Roses 6. Kings of Leon 5. Matthew Good 4. Weezer 3. Nirvana 2. The Doors 1. Led Zeppelin
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from the 