Salutations, followers!

I guess this is for anyone who actually cares to read my usual Cloudy with A Chance of Gaming blog. There’s likely not many of you, but even so, I feel like I should write up this post if only for future reference as to why I missed blogs.

Last week’s blog was never written. That was mostly because I was lazy. Or maybe I wasn’t so lazy, because the main reason for that was that I didn’t play many video games at all that week. That doesn’t necessarily mean I was productive, but that’s what I’ll claim regardless. It’s not like missing a blog was a huge deal; I mostly do them for myself anyway. But I’m also going to be missing next Sunday’s as well. I have a super legitimate excuse for that one though: I’m going out of town to celebrate my birthday. That’s right, I’m driving from Oregon all of the way down to Los Angeles to be part of the live audience for an episode of Conan! That’s Conan O’Brien for all of you uncool people. I kid; you’re all cool. So I’m going to drive down Saturday and the show’s Monday, the 16th. That will obviously be right in my blog window. I suppose the upside to this is that I’ll have plenty to blog about the following week.

I’m super excited to go see Conan live, though. I’ve been a pretty big fan since his Late Night show. I think the first memory I have of the show, he was doing a fake interview with baseball player John Rocker. An LCD TV would drop down and there would be a static image of John Rocker, but of course then the mouth was cut out and an actor would talk as if he were John Rocker. I was fairly young at the time, but I found that to be HILARIOUS! He went on to do that with other celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger as well. As I’m sure everyone knows, he moved on from Late Night to the Tonight Show and was quickly forced back out when Jay Leno wanted his job back. Pretty shitty, Jay. But of course this has all lead to the new and improved “Conan” show on TBS. He’s able to do practically whatever he wants, which is great. I think this all worked out for the best for Conan. Anyway, if you’ve ever seen the show, you’d know how rabid Conan fans are. People are constantly doing things like knitting Conan beards to wear to the show, making crazy signs, and it wouldn’t be a proper Conan show if a fan didn’t let out a loud “Woo!” at the most inappropriate time. It seems like being in that audience would be a lot of fun, so I’m looking forward to that experience. You all can look for me on the May 16th show. I’ll be the guy that’s being escorted out after a relentless attempt to get Conan’s attention.

What else to talk about? Oh yeah, I totally went to Gamestop a couple of days ago just to browse. That’s never a great idea, but whatever. I ended up coming away with The Beatles Rock Band, as well as Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. Beatles RB was priced at just $8, so you know, couldn’t really pass that up considering I’m a huge RB fan and that’s the only core game I didn’t own yet. Assassin’s Creed was $35, which wasn’t bad I figured. Also, I was in love with ACII, so another no-brainer purchase for me. But the most exciting part of the story was my purchase of a banana Fanta flavored Slurpee from 7/11 on the way home. Mmm. I don’t drink nearly enough Slurpees. The cashier asked me as I was checking out why I was getting a Slurpee on such a cold day. I had no answer for him. Why should the weather come into play when deciding to buy a Slurpee? That’s madness!

I really didn’t think this blog would ramble on so much, but then again, it’s me we’re talking about. May as well keep it going.

So I’ve already beaten The Beatles Rock Band. Probably not a shocker; it’s not a long game. It really is a fantastic package though. It really is. I wish there were more videos, but it’s kinda understandable considering the time period. All of the unlockable photos are great though. There are just so many little touches that make all of the difference. For example, the stage noise that played before a song on the loading screens. That stuff was great. You can hear them each tuning up their instruments and getting ready to play the coming song. Of course all of the animated time-period transition videos are great. That opening cutscene is probably one of the best I’ve ever seen in any game. I love it. Sadly, the one part of the game I’m not absolutely loving is the act of playing some of the songs. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of fun to be had, but there’s just too many tracks that--even on expert guitar--are just boring. I understand that The Beatles aren’t a heavy metal band, so maybe I can’t hold this against the game too much. It’s just a fact of their music though. Not the most exciting in the world. Of course just listening to the songs usually makes up for that though. I don’t mean to blow anyone’s mind here, but yo, the Beatles have some good songs. My favorite in the game is probably Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band/With A Little Help From My Friends. Maybe that’s unfair because it’s two awesome tracks made into one, but whatever. It’s a lot of fun to play. I’m gonna keep playing it for a few achievement here and there, but I’ve beaten the story and don’t have a ton of motivation to go back to it more than every now and then. Great game though. Great package. Can’t really beat it for just $8.

As for the second game, I started Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood just earlier today. That game starts off with a pretty serious bang. It gives a quick recap of the previous events, and then just throws you right back into the end of ACII. It’s kinda nuts. But the real bang comes about a half-hour in when your Villa gets bombed to hell. That sequence is super crazy. I haven’t gotten too far into things story-wise though. I’m Desmond and I’m back in the Villa in present time. I’ve just seen a shadow of Ezio, before I decided to take a break and try the multiplayer. Now I get what Ryan was talking about on the last bombcast with the shadows. Seems like it could be interesting. Really looking forward to playing through that story and maybe even S-ranking it like I did with ACII. Jeez, I played way too much ACII. Jumping into the multiplayer though was pretty fun. It started with me downloading a couple of free DLC packs, so I had to do some waiting. After that though, it was basically what I’ve seen via Giant Bomb coverage. I jumped into a free-for-all match first, and I actually did OK. Well, alright, I finished nearly last, but I got a lot of points. As has been discussed to death, it’s a super interesting take on multiplayer, and I’m looking forward to leveling up and unlocking some cool things. I don’t know how long it’ll hold my attention, but I guess we’ll see.

Oh, last thing, I’m a Whiskey subscriber now! I was one initially, but that was a monthly membership that expired all-too-quickly. Why it took so long to sign up again is unknown, but I’m happy to be a supporter of the best set of websites on the internet, yet again. I’ve already gone back to watch a few previous Happy Hours, and my eyes have appreciated the HD video. Can’t forget the mobile sites either. Those are still slick. I actually really like Tested’s color scheme on the mobile sites. It’s a clean white. Ah, and the Theater Mode thing for videos is interesting. That’s something I never got to mess around with. I don’t like that the Theater Mode UI pops up whenever I have a Tweetdeck notification though, so I’m not sure how often I’ll use that. But yeah, cool stuff. I’ll be getting my shirt at some point. I actually got an email about it earlier today. So excited about that. I just hope it doesn’t arrive while I’m away in California. It’s nice to have that gold medal around Rich Gallup’s two-dimensional neck.  :)

I really don’t want this to be any longer, so let’s wrap it up here, shall we? My next blog will be May the 22nd. That’s a Sunday, folks! I’ll tell you all about my trip to L.A. and what Conan looks like in real life. It’ll be grand. Until next time.

<3
--JJ