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Malik (11/30/09)

Well, the Seahawks won. However, even for the crap-tastic Seahawks, a loss to the Rams is still an unexpected thing. However, it still is obvious that this is not a quality team in the least. I mean the only thing going for Seattle is sadness and depression since they will not even secure a good draft position due to beating the crap teams that do line the Seahawks schedule.

The one good news is that it looks like Tim Ruskell may be on his way out. Considering it takes a GM a few years to make a good team, and the same is true about a few years being needed to destroy a good team, it's pretty safe to say that Ruskell holds a lot of blame for the current roster woes. I mean he took over GM duties from Mike Holmgren about half a decade back and the team has been in rapid decline for the last few years. Hopefully, Holmgren would be happy to play GM for Seattle again once this season ends and Ruskell leaves...and Holmgren comes back from his year off.

I didn't just spend my weekend watching football, even though the UW/WSU game was pretty good fun for UW fans. I mean UW destroyed the overly pathetic WSU squad like they were a peewee team.

I tried to spend some time this weekend finishing Ratchet and Clank 2. That came to a lame end when I had to give up on the game. For some reason, my game didn't want to load one of the final planets. I was, according to some game walk throughs I read, about three planets from the end. However, my game loaded nothing when I tried to go to one of the two final places before the games final location. I should say, I saw nothing but the load screen, which is Ratchet and Clank flying their space ship through a never ending cosmos as they seem to be unable to find another planet.

The worst part of this, beyond even the lameness of quitting a game so close to finishing it, is that the game autosaves when you head to a new planet. This means that I cannot try to see if something else (like leaving from a world that will load correctly) will correct the issue. I can't even load my saved game from the last planet that would load and have some fun just shooting stuff for a bit and finding any missing gold bolts. Instead, as soon as my auto-saved game loads, I am stuck in a never ending load screen. Plus, I sure as hell don't want to use one of my few back-up saves...since they all fall about five hours (and one majorly difficult and long boss battle) earlier. So, I had to, prematurely, start R&C: Up Your Arsenal. While it's fun to move on to that finely polished gem of a game, I still feel like I'm missing something...something like the end to a game I put a lot of effort and time into.

Anyway, I've gone 15 days with a break from work and am starting to lose any sense of reality. So, instead oc continue to ramble, I'll just trail off about now...

Malik

Malik (12/2/09)

For a second week in a row, I've skipped out on Rock Band DLC. There is some stuff, both last week and from yesterday, that I'd like to download. However, with Christmas around the corner, as well as some birthdays and other money devouring holidays, it just seems unrealistic, this year, to spend much money on DLC. Anyway, it's not like I am left wanting for a diversion or two.

I'm still playing Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal. It's a pretty solid game, from the ~50% I've played through. I mean the weapons seem like more fun than any of the other PS2 era R&C titles. In fact, I think it'd be possible to argue that R&C:UYA has the best weapon library available in the first 50% of the game. Especially since, unlike Going Commando (R&C2), the returning weapons were improved upon and not nerfed. Add in the five great Going Commando weapons, the one or two returning R&C1 weapons, and a whole batch of new stuff, and you have a very fun game. Plus, the game was better streamlined by replacing the dynamo from Going Commando with another use for the swingshot (making one gadget out of two less frequently used ones).

I think my only real complaint with this game is that it's not the final few planets of Going Commando. I only say that, however, since my copy and save for Going Commando got ruined somehow and I never could finish the damned game.

On that note, I'm glad to have some stuff to eat up my free time since I'm not feeling impressed with the lineup of games due out in the next couple of months. I know there are some titles to get excited about, for most people, but I'm not feeling it.

For example, Mass Effect let me down way too much but failing on Bioware's hype machine (and by having so many lame side quests), so I'm not looking forward to ME2. Maybe I'll pick it up at a discount in the future (wait for a greatest hits version), but I'll not even do that until some damned good reviews come along and show me that it's not the same game I already hated.

I also can't see myself getting excited for Final Fantasy XIII for the same reason. Square Enix used to be the one company I could look forward to. That was until FFX, which just had too much of a boring plot and was too damned linear for the bulk of the game. Then came FFX-2, or Pretty Pretty Dress Up: The RPG, which was nothing I'd get hyped over. Then came FFXII, which seems to show the world exactly what .Hack also showed; an MMORPG that's not MMO is just pretty dull. At least .Hack didn't devour nearly as much time as an MMO as you ran slowly across the world to farm crap. Maybe if a demo for FFXIII came along, I'd give it a shot. However, since FFXIII is coming to the 360 and PS3 in the US, it seems like a demo is pretty unlikely since the demo in Japan was for the PS3 and on a blu-ray disc. Plus, I'm just missing the idea of a RPG in a fantasy setting and not some variation of future/sci-fi/steam-punk. I miss fighting with a mage in my party and not something like a "techno-mancer" or whatever. I like suits of armor and not arm bands or bracers. I like swords and bows, instead of guns and guns with blades on them.

Maybe I'm just not feeling the RPG love since I'm looking in the wrong place. I need to stop looking forward to new RPGs and to build a time machine so I can play the impossible to find gems I missed out on when younger (like Panzer Dragoon Saga...). Or maybe I am just screwed and can only expect a few good RPGs each generation, usually from Namco.

Malik

Malik (12/4/09)

To get the obvious out of the way right away, the next Rock Band DLC has been announced. All I see is a bunch of stuff that doesn't interest me...wait...is that...no...Simon & Garfunkel!? Now that is something I can get behind. Definitely more so than the Slipknot stuff. Also, definitely more than another set of Green Day DLC only from their newest album.

I love Green Day, but I also feel strongly about a certain principal they seem to live by. Each album alternates from good to bad (with the exception of their awesome first three albums). Since American Idiot was great, it only follows that I wouldn't dig their newest stuff.

On a different note, I'm glad to see some future for the Seahawks. Tim Ruskell, the GM, has stepped down before his contract ended and wouldn't be renewed at the end of this season. This is great news since I have felt, for a long time, that Ruskell was a poor person to be in charge of drafting and trading. After he took over GM duties, the Seahawks have been lackluster at the draft and the team has constantly gone down hill. I just hope the next GM is able to see the obvious needs of the team. In particular, we need a GM who understands that an offense is doomed without an offensive line to protect the QB and to open holes for the running game.

Of course, with a new GM, it means there will be rebuilding years to come. Next year, in all likelihood, will be another miserable time unless the Cards start to falter and collapse as Kurt Warner ages. If that doesn't happen, then Seattle will need at least a couple of years to build a solid team to come back into being a division leader of such a weak division.

Malik

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