A Temple In The Sky

Well, moving is all complete and the internet has been set up today. Done with AT&T and trying out RCN now. Speeds are much better for the same price, hopefully customer service is to. Moving was exhausting as was unpacking (as was expected). But it’s pretty much all done with now and while I didn’t have internet for several days I spent a lot of time using my iPhone and browsing the App Store for new things to play with. I’d like to write about a lot more of them in depth, but I’ll touch on what I’ve found right now.

First off, the app store itself is awesome. Anyone who has the new phone will have it automatically as it came with the 2.0 firmware, but anyone with pre 2.0 needs to upgrade immediately so that they have this. The app store features several sections including: ‘Featured’, ‘Categories’, ‘Top 25’, and a search.

These are all very handy as you can find the newest and most popular apps in ‘Featured’. You can just browse by the many categories in, ‘Categories’. And you can find the top downloaded free or paid apps in ‘Top 25’. My favorite thing is to browse the top 25 free apps and the new apps in Featured. That’s where I’ve found most of mine. The search is also great to because it searches as you type so sometimes you start to search for one thing and it pops up something similar and I decide that sounds like fun and check it out. With so many free apps it’s easy to get something, try it out and delete it if it’s no good.

Like I said, I’d like to write more on some of these later, but here’s a list of apps I’ve downloaded and enjoyed:
[useful apps]
+ Twitterific
+ Movies
+ Jobs (CareerBuilder)
+ Pocketpedia
+ WhitePages
+ iWant
+ Units
+ Pick & Choose
+ Tipulator

[games]
+ Trism
+ Sol Free
+ reMovem free
+ Cube Runner
+ Tris
+ Galcon
+ Frotz
+ BreakClassic
+ Othello
+ SudokuFree

Not all these were free mind you, but most of them were. Definitely pick up ‘Tris’ if you are a Tetris fan because it works well, looks nice and EA is charging $10 for their version whereas ‘Tris’ is free. ‘Movies’ is an awesome app to that utilizes the GPS to find movie theaters around you and let’s you browse the movies that are there, times they are playing and buy tickets. Like I said, I’ll write about some more of them in depth later, but I give all these my recommendation as of now.

Moving day has finally arrived. Been packing up for the last few days and now it’s time to move across Chicago in a 10’ Uhaul. Not the most exciting experience ever. Expect a lack of updates as I rearrange all my life belongings and have no internet until Thursday. But in the meantime check out Bionic Commando: Rearmed on XBLA, go back and play Dead Rising again if you never got to level 50 and played it for the achievements and lastly let’s cross our fingers that the new Galaga will be fun Wednesday!

Braid released last week on Xbox Live Arcade and I picked up the demo to find a quite interesting game. But the steep ($15) price tag for an arcade game made me question whether I would actually buy it or not. It wasn’t until earlier this week when I heard from some friends how great it was that I jumped on it and trust me it was amazing. I actually meant to write this up yesterday because that’s when I finished it, but I got caught up in working on some of those Dead Rising achievements I never acquired before. Back to Braid though.

This game is truly one of the most interesting, innovative, mind bending mix of puzzle and platformer elements I have ever experience. To be honest, it’s probably one of the best ever made. The concept is simple (at first), you can run and jump as any platformer, plus you have the ability to rewind time (think Prince of Persia, but infinite). However, some items in the game aren’t affected by the rewind, these are represented by a glowing green aura. These can be enemies, items or anything else in the world.

In the later levels it gets even more interesting as you have to mess with some wacky keys, interact with your own shadow and gain the power to slow down time in a certain spot only. I refuse to give any examples because solving the puzzles is the beauty of the game and I don’t want to give any away. Trust me those, these elements are enough to confuse you beyond belief, but the sense of accomplishment when you figure them out is awesome.

The game has a quite touching story about a young boy named Tim searching for a princess. It throws back to many old school games which is a cool twist. For example, a level called “Jumpman” that looks like Donkey Kong. As you go through each level you’ll be collecting puzzle pieces and putting together puzzles. You could technically run through each stage in minutes if you don’t collect any puzzle pieces, but then you won’t really be playing the game. Just looking at the scenery.

By the way, the scenery is gorgeous. It’s all hand done and it shows. Someone put some serious time and care in to every little thing which is nice to see. It’s very unique and impressive.

Basically, you can’t go wrong with braid. It’s worth so much more than $15 just because it’s put together so well and it’s really quite perfect in every way. There is absolutely no reason to miss this game, so don’t!

I picked up two new games for my PS3 the other day because the girlfriend is busying away on the 360 with Dead Rising so I had to find something else to play in the mean time. I contemplated whether I was going to write up about Heavenly Sword or PixelJunk Monsters first and as you can see by the title, I chose Monsters. I’ve probably put more time and effort into it anyways.

It’s not a new game, so you probably already know about it, but if you don’t it’s a Tower Defense game. Desktop Tower Defense is probably the most notable TD game ever made, but this one is quite different actually. For one, there are different levels with set paths for the enemies; secondly, you can only build towers on top of trees; lastly, you control a character that has to run around to pick up money, gems and plant towers. So, unfortunately for you Desktop Tower Defense experts, your skills won’t really transfer over.

But PixelJunk Monsters is really quite interesting. It took me a few plays to really get into, but each level truly requires a different strategy. Because you are limited to where there are already trees to place down new pieces, you have to be clever with what you place down and what you upgrade. It will surely take several attempts just to clear some levels, let alone perfect them.

The fact that you are controlling a character instead of able to just place wherever you want at any given time changes things up a lot to. It takes you time to get to a new place to put down a tower so you have to plan where you’re going to put what. You also have to be watching the enemies your towers are defeating because if you want to pick up the money/gems they drop you have to physically be there.

The gems are another thing I’m not quite sold on. As you get gems you can use them to level up towers (which can also be done by dancing on towers for extended periods of time) or to buy new tower types. Once you’ve bought a new tower type you are then able to place that tower down just like any other (which all cost money to place of course).

In the early levels you’ll find yourself thinking it’s impossible to buy new towers because you just don’t get that many gems. So you have to really plan out one tower to buy and use the rest of the gems for upgrading. But as the levels go on you’ll find yourself with more and more gems so it makes more sense to buy new towers to help stop the onslaught of enemies.

My biggest complaint is controlling the guy. He is so freakin slow it can be really painful at times as you watch yourself miss things. In fact, the whole game moves really slow. The time between towers firing shots seems like forever when there’s one guy about to kill your people and your tower that’s right there just won’t shoot. But life goes on. It’s really a quite good game and pretty addicting. It gives you that feeling of always being able to do better which is what keeps you coming back. I hesitated to drop $10 on it, but I’ve spent $10 on much less worthy titles on XBL so I say go for it.

As a long time Norma Jean (and Luti-Kriss) fan I’m always excited for anything Norma Jean. As any follower knows they’ve gone through some big changes since Josh left in both the members and their sound. Some may say it’s progressed, some may think it’s digressed. Well, I still love ‘Bless the Martyr, Kiss the Child’ more than any of the following cd’s, but I’ve been on board with the changes up until now.

‘The Anti-Mother’ doesn’t even sound like Norma Jean anymore. Some songs are close to the sound that ‘The Redeemer’ brought. But only a handful. One of these is the first song (Vipers, Snakes, and Actors) which gives you high hopes for the CD. However, it goes downhill fast when you start hearing a lot of Cory singing and more melodic beats than dirty breakdowns. Maybe it’s the type of sound that has to grow on you? Personally, that’s no excuse for a band of Norma Jean’s caliber.

Aside from Cory breaking out into singing way more than I’d like him to there is a new drummer. The old drummer was a one of a kind man. His beats were always amazing in this weird off tempo sort of way. I think he was a big part of the Norma Jean sound just because his drumming style was very unique and I always thought his drums had a unique sound as well; they were almost empty sounding, but still nicely solid. With our new guy though you’ll get a lot of standard beats and steady flow.

Now, I will give them the benefit of the doubt that their first CD with Cory (O’ God, The Aftermath) was not as good as the Redeemer and I definitely understand that it takes time to get used to a new guy and get in the flow of how you were. But I’ve also seen Norma Jean change so much over the years that I think this may be what they want. I don’t think it’s the right way to go especially with the huge fan base they’ve acquired. But at the same time 75% of these people will probably follow like sheep just because (not trying to insult their fanbase, but that’s how people are).

I say, sorry Norma Jean, but this is the beginning of the end of our friendship. I’ll surely give it a few more listens to see if it does grow on me. But when I got to the last 2 songs I didn’t even care to be listening to it anymore. So, it’s not looking good.