It's been a while since I have posted a blog so... ta-da!
 
Of course I have been keeping up with my non-stop Rock Band-age lately. I like to call it Rock Bandito, but that's neither here nor there. I recently bought Pearl Jam's Backspacer DLC album and it's pretty awesome. Some of those songs are a lot harder on drums than I would have expected. Also, "Just Breathe" on guitar is really tough for me. I'll get a review up on that soon I suppose. 
 
The other game I have been spending time with recently is Torchlight. The forums have been ablaze lately (ablaze I say!) with topics about this game. Bottom line is I think the game is awesome. It really surprised me how much it feels like Diablo. I know the old Diablo guys worked on it and all but dude... it is SOO Diablo. I think anything I could say about it has already been said many times before so I'll just leave it at that. If you like dungeon crawlers, play this game. It's not without a couple faults but overall it's very worthwhile.
 
Here's a video I made of my first hour or so of playing. It already has over 7,000 views on Youtube in just a few days, which is awesome! Most views on one of my videos to date.
   
 
  
Until next time... Wakka wakka?

Over 2,000 forum posts!

 I got home from my trip to Vegas a while ago but have been being lazy in blog writing as usual. Well I have wanted to blog about other things so I thought I better get this one out of the way.
 
The road was long... with many winding turns (stupid song reference). But yeah, the road was long and very boring for the majority of the ride. At times there were some nice mountains and things but the majority was just open desert terrain. Total drive time was about 17 hours one way. 
 
But after arriving, the trip was pretty awesome. The reason I went was to see my cousin get married which was pretty awesome. The actual wedding took place in Caesars Palace and then the reception was in a huge rented house a few miles off of the strip. There was an enormous pool in the backyard of this house that included a pool-side bar type thing that was pretty awesome. You could just swim right over to the bar area and get a drink if you wanted. It also had a basketball court and a batting cage in the back yard, so everyone had a lot of fun. 
 
Besides the wedding though, I was able to walk down most of the strip which was pretty cool. I got to see all the big hotel/casinos. I gotta say, Caesars Palace and The Bellagio are side by side, and together they are probably the most impressive section of the strip as far as hotels go. They are both massive and very nice. If you go into the forum shops in Caesars Palace, there is nothing but the most high-end shops. It's kinda crazy. The thing that struck me as I took all this in was the fact that I was essentially in the middle of a desert. It must be a hassle getting all the water and supplies needed to keep this town going. Really, Vegas has to be one of the most environmentally unfriendly cities on earth. They have billboard trucks driving around at all times of the day. Basically their only function is to advertise. They must waste a ton of gas doing that. There is also a never ending supply of people trying to hand out flyers for strippers all of the way down the strip. It's pretty ridiculous when you come up on a pack of like ten of them on each side of you all in your face trying to give you stripper flyers. But all in all it was a great trip. If anyone hasn't been to Vegas, I recommend going at least once. It's definitely an amazing experience. On the way out of town I stopped at an In-N-Out Burger to try it for the first time. Gotta say, it was pretty good. I don't eat a lot of burgers so I don't have a lot to compare to but I would eat there again for sure.
 
So now I'm back and getting ready to go back to college. It starts this Monday and I'm actually fairly excited about it. I'm not dreading it at least. Well, here's a few more pictures of my trip in case anyone wants to see:
Oh and just FYI, I took that "Welcome To Vegas" sign picture as the car was driving by, through the rear windshield. Yeah, I got camera skills.    :P

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. At least that's what I'm told.
 
This will be my first trip to Vegas so I'm pretty excited. I'm going down for a wedding so time to mess around will be fairly slim, but I'll make some time. There's a lot to do there though so I doubt i will see everything I want to. I'm driving down from Oregon, so that kinda sucks. The drive will be long and it will just get hotter and hotter the further south I go. Expected high temperature in Vegas is suppose to be over 100 every day I'll be there. This may be brutal. Anyways I guess I'll take some pictures so they may or may not be posted here on my blog sometime in the future. I've yet to decide whether or not I want to keep what happens in Vegas... in Vegas. I'm guessing the hotel I'm staying at will have wi-fi but I may not have time to log on. I'll be back hitting up the forums on Tuesday for sure though.
 
Anyways, enough about that because I just 5-starred "The Perfect Drug" on Rock Band 2 drums like a half hour ago. For anyone that doesn't play Rock Band, that song on drums is one of the toughest in the game. A lot of super hard songs have been released as DLC since "The Perfect Drug" came out but it's still a hell of a drum song and very hard to keep a multiplier on. It is probably the only song that I have been consistently going for 5 stars on and never quite getting it. Here's a screen shot I snapped for... some purpose I have yet to discover. It's for this blog! There now it has a purpose. Now, said picture:


That 5 star is a pretty big Rock Band accomplishment for me. Now I can finally shake those nightmares where I get sooo close but can never get the 5 stars. Just to be clear I don't really have dreams about Rock Band. That would be a little creepy. But if I did, Alex Navarro would totally be playing drums in my virtual dream band. I should start a real band and name it "Virtual Dream Band". Or maybe just "Virtual Dream". OK, I'm getting wildly off topic and since this isn't the Bombcast, I'm gonna wrap this up. 
 
I'll miss you while in Vegas, Giant Bomb. If anyone actually wasted a chunk of their ever so precious life by reading this, you are now stupider for it. But you're also now my best buddy for it. Oh and please find the time to leave me the most random PM you can think of for absolutely no reason while I'm gone. I want that inbox full when I get back!    :P
 
 END

By the way, I have the first post attached to the Las Vegas "location" on the site. That rocks.
 
(OK, actually) END

 Well I just was given an Xbox Live account from my friend that has lots of Rock Band DLC and XBLA games on it that I can now play, so I thought I would write about it. 
 
Basically my friend is selling his Xbox 360 and all his games and accessories. So instead of wasting all the DLC and everything he has spent points on, he just gave it to me. Officially the coolest thing ever. Anyways, after downloading all the DLC tracks that I didn't already have I now own 500 Rock Band songs. Technically like 498 but I'm callin it 500. This got me thinking about exactly how much that is. About 380 of the songs are DLC, subtract the 20 free songs and I have about 360 songs that either my friend or I paid $2 a piece for. That would come to around $720 worth of DLC. Of course a handful of the songs were either free downloads or they were only $1. But I would say 95% or more were $2. So I think I can safely make the claim that I have at least $700 worth of Rock Band DLC. Is that too much? lol. 
 
Anyways besides the DLC I also downloaded all the XBLA games purchased on the account. There were a couple I already owned, but the new ones are (in alphabetical order): Castle Crashers, Duke Nukem 3D, Galaga, Geometry Wars, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Mega Man 9, Portal: Still Alive, Smash TV, Sonic The Hedgehog, Street Fighter 2 HF, and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3. Whew, that is quite a list now that I see it. So yeah, I got some gaming to do. It was super awesome of my friend to give me all this. If anyone actually reads this and wants to play any of those fighting games via LIVE, give me a shout. My gamertag is the same as my name on this site btw if anyone wants to just send me a friend request. Just so you know beforehand, I suck ass at most fighting games.
 
On another note, I will also be buying my friend's old ION Drum Rocker from him for $153 (don't ask about the extra $3, lol). The ION kit will come with the--count 'em--2 Rock Pedals that he has bought for the IONs as well as like 3 sets of drum sticks. The pads are a bit worn, but maybe I can swap them around and spread the beating amongst all the pads as the red one is by far the most worn. Anyways I was looking at the website for the ION Drum Rocker and found these sweet light-up drum sticks: 
 

  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
I'm not necessarily going to buy those but they look freakin awesome none the less. Although after writing about them, I'm really considering buyin them... 
What do you guys think? Should I blow $25 on a set of mad awesome drum sticks?
 
Anyways, until next time.
 
PEACE