Kermit's Blog

Intentional typo in the title, btw.

So yeah…It’s March now, I’ve not blogged for 8 days.  Although I thought it was longer until I remembered that February is a lazy month that only puts in a 28day effort.  March is an alright month though, technically Spring starts this month, so maybe the sun will come out of hibernation and eliminate the need to wear thick jackets all the time.  Also I’m wondering if “Mars” chocolate bars are called the same thing in France, cause “Mars” means “March” in French, and a chocolate bar named after a random month of the year is just not as ‘hip’ as being named after a planet…If you ask me that is (which you probably didn’t).

  It’s just dawned on me that I don’t actually have anything to write about today, I’m merely blogging for the sake of it.  I’m sure if I just “wing it” I’ll manage to type some passable stuff up though :\.  Right now I’m just in the uni library, on a chilly Friday morning… a Friday morning that was covered in fog (like a scooby doo episode), popped into uni this morning to speak to my tutor man about my current project, gave me some stuff to be doing over today and the weekend, joy! [sarcasm].  I also need to actually use the library for the old fashioned “take out a book” service too.  Usually I’m here just to print stuff out, or waste time on the internet…kinda like what I’m doing now.
Another thing I’ve realised is that this is the 2nd week in a row I’ve worn this Sonic the Hedgehog t-shirt I have on a Friday.  Any onlookers who saw me in the library last Friday may recognise me and think I’m always in the same clothes or something…like a cartoon character.

  Did anyone used to have those Funfax folders when you was a kid?…I’ve spontaneously just remembered them.  I went through a phase were I thought they were cool.  They were like these little ring binder folders you could get, and there’d be like a few little books in a series to collect and fill your ring binder with.  I remember having one on some basic scietific crap (one of those “lets make science fun for kids” type thing), and I had another one on how to be a spy, I had some others too that have escaped my memory.  As a kid they were pretty much the only time I’d ever get excited to go into Waterstones (book shop), cause they were the place to go to get hold of the stuff.  Waterstones also reminds me of my early years when I had the full collection of Mr Men books, and how I’d get to put them on a shelf in order and see the text that all the spines together would spell out, although it was kind of lame as the printing of those things was all over the place so it’d only just about line up.
Remember how Power Ranger figures had like a regular generic model, and a “deluxe” model?  …having like a big deluxe Megazord figure was like the childhood equivalent of owning a Ferrari, for reals.

  Anyway…moving on from random childhood memories, and back to today.  My days as a 23 year old student.  A tired guy, who got told he had 6 hours and 14minutes until his alarm went off when I put the alarm on my phone last night.  I’m currently sipping on a Berry Relentless, which IMO is the tastiest of all energy drinks (flavour wise), but I think I’ve become immune to the stuff.  I wish that the library here could have like a capsule hotel as one of it’s facilities.
If I’ve lost you with “capsule hotel” [they're big in Japan] then check the ‘>wikipedia page<’ or alternatively check this >YouTube video<, they’re basically sort of like how they store bodies in a morgue, except not so morbid and metallic looking, just a bunch of stacked mattresses for a convenient quick rest and no need for like a full hotel room or anything.
It’d be awesome to just pay like £5 or something and have like a 2 hour nap in one of those right now.

I bought myself a scratch card when I picked up a Berry Relentless earlier, and it turns out I have won £10 on it :), and with that I’m definitely postively having Subway for lunch.  That’ll energise me up for the afternoon at least.

I watched 2 movie films last night too.  First up was “The Lovely Bones”, which I thought was pretty decent, it wasn’t on my radar of films I was particularly interested in, but it started off quite well…letting you know “shit was gonna happen” from pretty much the get go, which got me interested, then it just strolled along at a decent pace with bits of suspense, surreal-ness, and mystery.  Kept my attention till the end, and it’s a film I would watch again in a couple of years after enough time has passed, which is saying something cause most films of this kind of genre tend to be a “one time watch” for me.
The other film I watched was “The Invention of Lying”.  Firstly I was skeptical about watching this from the start, mainly as I just don’t really like “Ricky Gervais”, I feel as though he thinks too highly of himself and find him kinda arrogant and annoying, so due to that I just don’t usually enjoy his stuff.  I know a lot of people differ from that opinion, and love the guy…but each to there own etc.  Anyway, the film itself wasn’t all bad, it has some nice cameo’s and some good comedy set ups, but all in all I felt as though it dragged on a bit, and that the films main hook wasn’t really executed as good as it perhaps could have been.  …just my 2 cent’s on them both.

I do believe I’ll have to wrap up this blog now.  Go look for a book in the library that can aid me with my drawings I need to do for my uni project, wander around the city centre for a bit free as a bird, get Subway for lunch, get my walk on home (whilst catching up on podcasts), then when I get home I need to call Student Finance to see what’s up! what’s up! with my student loan maintenance grant majiggy, catch up on some video gaming (Heavy Rain [PS3] and some Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing [360]) and then put some time into my uni project so that I don’t end up with all the pressure on me to do it being left until Sunday night.

  Till the next one…
…Adios Amigo’s
 Kermit

—

Kermit is Currently/ Recently:

Watching:

• How I Met Your Mother – Catching up on Season 5…lovin it.
• Big Bang Theory – <3 this too, glad it’s back from it’s little break.
• Band of Brothers – Amazing, own it on Blu-Ray and can’t wait to watch my next ep.  Some of the best HBO programming of all time.
• WWE Raw – Building up to Wrestlemania, quite exciting as far as wrestling feuds in recent years go.
• One Tree Hill – Catchin up on Season 6, quite a decent season so far.
• Lovely Bones -[comments in blog]
• Invention of Lying -[comments in blog]

Playing:

• Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing [360] – Enjoying it, should do a mini-review on Currently Playing I think.
• Halo 3 ODST [360] - Had a few matches online the other day, usual Halo multiplayer fun
• Left4Dead2 [360] – Finally got round to playing this this week, really really enjoyed myself, just a shame it was local co-op (split screen), this game works best full screen with headsets.
• Matt Hazard: Bloodbath and Beyond [XBLA] – Had some good local co-op on this in recent weeks, decent little XBLA game that throws back to the 90’s side scroller action games nicely.
• Super Monkey Ball Step & Roll [Wii] – Had fun with it, played using balance board which was nice to do as I personally find the balance board is a fun way to play some games.
• House of the Dead Overkill [Wii] – Love the cheesy B-movie vibe, classic House of the Dead gameplay.  Sweet arcade fun, especially with a friend by your side.
• Burnout Paradise [PS3] – One of my favourite racing games of recent years, looks great, and love the arcade ‘Burnout’ gameplay.  Like I said…I own this game twice (for 360 and PS3) I like it that much.

Mood:

• Quite happy that I’m sort of upto speed in a sense with Uni after falling a bit behind.  That aside I’ve had some positive times recently (even with a lack of monies) so I ’spose I should show it with a smile. 

Hey, sup?

So right now at time of typing it’s 10:18am on Thursday the 25th of February.  Nearly done with another month of 2010 (although February doesn’t really make an effort like the other months do…28 days pfft).  Coming from my point of view February’s been pretty crud…haven’t got anything really to show for what I’ve done this month, just feels as though I’ve spent the last few weeks feeling negative, mostly due to having lagged behind with uni, I’m hoping from today on I’ll be on the path to sorting that out, so I’ll see how that turns out I guess.  …Roll on March, and fingers crossed it will be a better month.

  Anyway, that’s it for any emo’y “wah wah” type talk in this blog, as there are better things to talk about.
First up!  Unintentional Ignorance!  Does anyone else feel as though they do this a lot?  Let me elaborate further….  Not all of you know this but I’m short sighted, for my day to day out and about life I don’t wear my glasses (“me readers” as Grandads would say), the only thing I really struggle with without my glasses is small details, for instance, if I’m in Subway or Burger King I generally have to squint to make out small text on the menu’s, if I’m driving I’d need glasses to make out text on road signs from a safe distance, and if I’m at home playing something like a First Person Shooter on the XBOX then I’d need my glasses to be able to have a crisp vision of what’s going on and be any use, otherwise I’m shot dead generally before I had chance to react or see an enemy.
So!…When I’m out and about in the city, or pretty much anywhere really, I’m generally in a world of my own, I mostly walk about with my iPod feeding my ears some music or podcast goodness, so I can’t hear people calling my name, but the worst thing is…I generally can’t spot people I know either, unless I’m fairly close to them.  I’ve lost count on the number of times I’ve embarassed myself by thinking I saw someone I knew and have waved at them or something, or vice versa when I see someone waving in my direction and my head is quickly like “is that to me?…who is that?…someone I know?”.  I guarantee there will be many a times someone has waved to me, or even maybe said “hey” and I’ve just totally cold shouldered them .  I’m not too bothered if I accidentally do it to someone I’m really close with, as they’ll probably know that I’m just a bit of a lameo like that, but like those people I rarely see, or don’t know too well, I can’t help but think they may think I’m intentionally blanking them, as if they don’t matter.   :\  …if anyone so happens to read this that I’ve done this to, then I apologise, in future if I’m doing this to you, it’s by accident, so find a stick, or your favourite finger, and poke me, ok?

"...smile once in a while"

  Anywho, so last night I finally watched my copy of Terminator 2: Skynet edition on Blu-Ray.  Terminator 2 has got to be within my top 5 films of all time, sure it has it’s flaws as a film on the whole, but the film just has soo much sentimental value to my childhood, and it’s just so bad ass and amazing!  <3!!  Anyway, you really do owe it to yourself if you can to watch the “Skynet Edition” on Blu-Ray, it is the definitive HD quality version of Terminator 2, and naturally it looks and sounds amazing!
1 of the most impressing things though is the fact that the film was made in what?…1991? 92? and yet they’ve made it look so amazing in blu-ray, yet I know there are some other old films on Blu-Ray, such as Ghostbusters which are basically just the same quality as the DVD version.  Naturally you’d expect the latest hollywood blockbusters to be in HD on Blu-Ray, but with some of the classic films I would’ve thought theres only so much they can do to make an old film look visually crisp etc.
I noticed for the first time last night (with the HD quality and all) that when Sarah Connor is being interviewed in the mental institute she’s at that the people interviewing her have Subway.  *dreams of having Subway for lunch (but I’m broke today)

Also it took me till last night to think “why are miniguns called miniguns?”

Not so "mini" gun

  Right now I’m currently sat at a random computer at the University Library killing some time, I’d make a comment about how everyones hard at work on uni stuff, but the random screens I can see from here mostly seem to be on Facebook.  I was late to uni this morning and on Thursday I have “life drawing” which basically means drawing nude models, but I figured as I was late I wouldn’t risk making a scene so I just went to the library, and will go catch the second half of the class after lunch.  They don’t allow people to come in late, as it’s meant to be a quiet concentrated environment and you’d cause a scene setting up an easel.  I need to sort out an emergency loan from uni too as I’ve recently spent the last of the loan I’ve had so far, although I should hopefully have a maintenance grant coming soon, and if not then I get my next proper loan installment in April, so this emergency loan is just to tie me over till then.  The reason I’m so broke this week though is because I pre-ordered a game for the PS3 a few months back (Heavy Rain), forgot to cancel my pre-order when I realised I was running low on money and thus I have been billed and sent the game…although I’m not complaining, as it is meant to be an amazing game.

Speaking of games…(awesome segway setup)…allow me to introduce my new gaming specific blog.

“Currently Playing”

I’d really of liked to of jazzed the site up a bit more before I unveiled it (or at least given it a logo), but I suppose there’s no harm in letting you click through to the link, there’s only a “welcome/ intro” type post there at the moment, but a lot of article ideas are in mind and should be filtering through soon.  If you’re on google reader or follow RSS feeds for blogs, then click the title above or the link below, and get the feed. 

http://playing.kusohappens.com

I’ll also add a feature so that whenever a new post goes onto my Currently Playing blog a tweet will go up on twitter “here” so if you tweet, add “CurrentPlaying”.

  –Also, if you like writing about games, or want to review some retro classics, or have other ideas for gaming articles you’d want to do then feel free to get in touch with me, or send me some sort of demo article, I’m happy to accept other contributors on “Currently Playing” to keep things fresh and diverse.  Obviously it’d be just a casual ‘because you enjoy writing about games’ position.  Although if by some sort of luck Currently Playing ever landed an opportunity to make money in the future, then sure enough I’d share that income amongst staff :)–

NOTE: My other blog is only going to be regarding video games, to re-cap my last blog explaining why I’ve set up a 2nd blog is basically because I was blogging a lot about video games in my regular blogs and wanted to seperate the 2, as not everyone who comes here will want to read about video games, and on the flipside not everyone that enjoys reading about video games will want to read my random blogs on my life and such.
  Other kinds of media, such as movies and tv shows I’ll keep in this blog, as I feel as though they’d be more widely accepted from the average reader without boring them too much, plus I don’t really go into too much depth about movies and tv shows in my blogs, and it’d be too f’d up to have more than 1 spin off blog I reckon.  So if you don’t care about video games, then you don’t need to ever go to that blog, and also if you only come to this blog to see if I’ve gone on about games, then you’d be better off following my other blog.

…and that just about wraps things up for this blog.

I’ll be back with more random yappings sometime soon no doubt.

Stay classy San Diego

Adios

Kermit

—

Kermit is Currently/ Recently:

Playing:

• Punch Out (Wii)
• New Super Mario Bros (Wii)
• Ghostbusters (360)
• Street Fighter IV (360)
• Burnout Paradise (PS3)
• …also played a bunch of classic Dreamcast Beat-Em-Ups recently, and some Perfect Dark on N64

Watching:

• Terminator 2 – Epic
• WWE Elimination Chamber – Pretty decent, should help lead to some good Wrestlemania matches too.
• Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe – Catching up on earlier seasons I missed.  Hilarious stuff.

Hello hypothetical reader of this blog.  Hope all is well and stuff.

Anyway, polite intro aside, here’s a tiny little blog to update on things here on my blog.

Since the origin of my blogs back on myspace way back when (2006?), one thing I’ve covered quite often is Video Games.
Video games are a major part of my life, from my gaming roots of taking over my parents Nes as the main user back when I was about 3/ 4, to the modern day where I’m 23 and currently in education again on a path to hopefully being a games designer.

Street Fighter <3

games!

I LOVE talking about video games, whether it be retro, what’s in the disc drives at the moment, or what games I’m very much eager for.  I read a number of video game news sites, listen to several podcasts, watch video interviews/ features, post/ lurk on video game forums, and follow a number of people in the games industry I have respect for on Twitter.  Not to mention the fact I have a number of video game loving friends who I can have some good old fashioned chats with too.

The reason I write a blog is because I enjoy doing it, I didn’t study journalism or English for years at university, nor do I claim to be some sort of authority figure who’s opinion is fact… I’m not a guy who has any sort of ego really.  So it’s just opinions, observations and write ups generally on things that I’m familiar with, if you enjoy reading my blogs, then I appreciate the page view, and you giving up your time, you don’t have to read it though, it’s all optional .

Anyway, back to the point of this blog.  Most commonly my blogs have been about my life, my ups and downs, my embarrassing moments, my idiocy, just general reality type stuff from my perspective.  It’s the core of what got me into blogging, and it will continue to be something I do for as long as I exist as far as I can see .
2 things occur to me though…

1. Some people that read my blog won’t be interested in all my ramblings about how awesome [whatever i'm playing] is, they may have no personal connection to video games (other than what came with there latest phone), and find themselves annoying have to skim through a chunk of my blog to read the mindless goings on that they can relate to or have a laugh with whilst they drink there cup of tea, eat there sandwich, or just kill some time on the internet before they have to get back to reality.
2. Like I said, I have no educated background in blogging, and due to me giving a mixed coverage of all things in my blog (although video games are perhaps at least a 1/3) I feel as though any write ups I’d be doing on video games would sort of lose credibility to the outside reader.  [Hypothetical] People who know me, or at least have a sense of knowing me may get a kick out of my blogs, and if they too are gamers then it might be a cool coincidence for me to cover a topic that is mutually appreciated.  However if I was to go to a bunch of randoms within the gamer crowd and say “hey, I wrote this informative blog on…[insert gaming subject]” they may be turned off by the fact that it’s just opinions in a sea of text about some random guys life.  If I’m reading a gaming blog, I generally don’t want to read about the writers hard times at home, there relationship status, or things of that nature unless I’m actually interested in that person.

SO! …within the next week, I will no longer be doing any video game specific blogs on here.  Any mentions of video games will be kept to the minimal, and my video game blogs will be happening in a seperate blog of mine I am currently in the set up stage with.
THIS MEANS!…I will still be blogging here as normal (you know, about my life and stuff), it’s just any lengthy video game specific talks will be kept on my gaming blog.

equality

I will no doubt update in my next blog post here with details in regards to my Video Game Blog, so stay tuned if that’s interested, otherwise just smile in the knowledge that the content here may be less alienating to you when you’ve got time to kill and mindless internet reads are the ammo for that very killing [I lose time in random wikipedia reading all the time].

...if only the Nes had memory cards too, no leaving the console on for days on end to complete the longer/ harder (that's what she said) games for it.

Till my next blog…

Adios Amigo’s

Kermit

So…I haven’t blogged in a while.  My friend Joe said he couldn’t keep up with what I was outputting back in like Dec/ Early Jan last year, so I stopped blogging for his sake.

Nah, just kidding, the truth is a number of distractions got in the way.  Some good, some bad.  Normally after a random blog hiatus I’d come back with a “what’s gone on” update thing, but that would no doubt end up taking over the blog, and I don’t want that.  This is technically my first proper “general” blog of 2010 too.  So enough bullshiz, let’s roll!

First up, last weekend I got a +1 on my concussion count (I’m upto about 4 or 5 now).  I went to see Lost Prophets last weekend with my girlfriend (yep, girlfriend), got majorly drunk and was all hyper excitable and stupid thanks to mucho Budweiser, next thing you know I’m headfirst into the road and looking like this…

I was drunk at the time, so naturally I wasn’t really feeling any pain, plus at that point I hadn’t actually seen a reflection of myself, so I didn’t notice quite how bad I was cut.  I lost quite a bit of blood though, and learned a valuable lesson…I should never dye my hair red.  The next day when I showered I finally washed the wound and then finally got to see just how deep the wound was.  It was quite “gnarly” it was no wonder I bled so much cause the cut was deep, which is saying a lot considering forehead’s are only a thin layer over your skull.  After the hangover shifted on Sunday, it was clear I was concussed, just constantly felt a bit off balance/ dizzy, felt sick, and no amount of aspirin or paracetamol would show me some love.  A week later, still got some marks from my facial wounds, but my head seems back to normal now.

Missed a number of days of uni recently that I’m not pleased about, this weeks been due to my concussion, but there was time before that I had off too, and I’ve just had a letter asking if I’m ok etc.  I should be back in as normal next week, and will have to have to buckle down and have to focus heavily on getting up to speed.  I should have gone in today really (Friday 19th) but I didn’t feel up to it.  I feel like my tutor man will be disappointed with the absences, and just had it in mind that today would consist too much of me being overwhelmed with a big “to-do” list, and just felt like I could do without that for today, and will approach it on a new (fresh) week come on Monday.  Technically it’s me paying to be educated, so it’s my own loss for the absences, and anyone who’s followed my past knows Uni means a lot to me as an opportunity and towards my future prospects, so I gotta sort myself out.

PS3 Slim

I finally got my university loans early in January, had a lot of fun with the money, bought myself a lot of things, and had a number of social catch ups with people I hadn’t seen in a while (due to lack of monies), need to ration my money now though till my next loan installment.  One thing I treated myself too was a PS3 slim, anyone who knows me will know I’m a hardcore gamer geek, it’s a fact I’m not ashamed to admit, and thus it was time I made sure I had all the major consoles of this generation (so now I have XBOX360, Wii, and PS3).
….My first impressions of the PS3 are definitely positive, InFamous, Uncharted, Killzone 2, Flower…great exclusives for the PS3 that I’ve played.  However, I still think the 360 has the edge in terms of a bigger and better games library, plus a better online service for multiplayer.  One area that the PS3 is a definite leader in though is in it’s media player capabilities, plus if you have a big hard drive you can load your PS3 up with great content, oh, and I have to mention Blu-Ray.  Blu-Ray isn’t the same jump in quality that VHS to DVD was, but if you’re lucky enough to have a HDTV then watching a movie in beautiful HD quality, with the added Dolby surround set up I have in my room too…it’s just a spectacular feat in home cinema.

I’ve bought a number of new games over the last month too, I’m eager to write some gaming-based blogs soon on my hands on with some games I’m loving up as of recent, so when I see expect that sometime soon…I actually mean it this time .

Did people have a nice Valentines Day btw? …the day that believe you CAN put a price on love?  I did, head bleedings aside.  I spent pretty much all of 2009 not really giving love a chance, had a long time relationship break down late in 2008, and just 2009 sort of on the rebound and rebuilding my confidence, and sort of feared anything serious cause I didn’t want any heart ache or to cause any for anyone else.  2009 was quite a fun year though.  I kind of botched up a “seeing someone” moment last year, and I think I ended up hurting that persons feelings in the process :/ (which I didn’t mean to do), and after some time, without looking for anything, I ended up hooking up with another girl.  For a while I was still in heart defence mode, and wasn’t looking for anything serious, but it just get’s harder and harder to stay with someone without things progressively getting more serious, and so I figured I’d stop denying myself a chance of happiness, and be real with my feelings (jeez, this blog post is becoming a romantic novel).  Anyway, short story,  I’m in a relationship, I’m happy, k.

Right, well.  I have things to be doing.  Glad to of closed the gap on my blog hiatus, and should hopefully be right back into the swing of things from today.  Thank you (my hypothetical read) for checking this post, whether it be legitimately through it’s home, on my site or via the RSS feed automatically jamming it into Facebook or wherever else I have RSS’d this malarky.

Hope y’all have a good weekend
Don’t Worry Be Happy
Adios Amigo’s
Kermit

—

Kermit is currently/ recently:

Watching:

• One Tree Hill – Season 6
• The Big Bang Theory (been amazing for lolz this season)
• Band of Brothers (on BLU-RAY )
• …as well as a number of ‘4 the gamer’ type DVD’s which I’ll mention in my upcomin video game covering blog.
• Flags of our Fathers – Amazing film!!  Shows the battle of Iwo Jima from the US side, the best part of the film is it shows it from the soliders perspective, and it feels a lot more “real” and doesn’t really hollywood-ify World War II like other WW2 movies do.   …Loved it!
• Terminator 1 – Awesome!…effects are a bit dated now, but still I fkn <3 it, gonna watch the ever more amazing sequel some point soon too.
• The Eye – I was expecting this to really press my “scare” button, what with it being a highly praised J-Horror, but I guess I’ve just been desensitized to horror films over time, and although I enjoyed it as a film, it didn’t leave much of an impact on me.

Playing:

• Burnout Paradise (PS3) – I already own this, and have played the hell out of it on XBOX360, however I just had so much fun with it, and it caters really well to my arcade racer roots that I couldn’t pass up it’s recent sale bundling on the Playstation Network.
• Flower (PS3)- Amazing little download, it’s sooo laid back, a total contrast to games where bullets are flying, or I’m racing against the clock, there’s just no pressure at all, looks and sounds beautiful, it’s kind of like a session of video game based therapy.
• Street Fighter IV (360) – Had a break from this in the last week, but in the last 6 weeks or so I’ve really invested a lot of time into Street Fighter IV, upped my game a lot, and have really taken a lot of liking to the SF scene, more on this in my next blog…
• Matt Hazard: Blood Bath & Beyond (XBLA) – A decent throwback to the classic 2d side scrolling action shooters of the 90’s.  Parodies a lot of games past and present, and it’s got that old school challenge too it, really want to play it in local co-op to enhance that old school charm some more.
• Resident Evil 5 (360) – Playing it in Co-op on Pro mode, I seem to love Resident Evil 5 a lot more than most people I know.  As a Resident Evil game, it’s strayed off course a bit, but as a sweet action game experience, with great co-op, it’s catered to me big time!

• New Super Mario Bros Wii – Amazing!  Nintendo know too well how to make a platforming game, and Mario has never stopped delivering on quality in that area.  Great level design and the difficulty hasn’t been made too easy for todays world like a lot of games have been, plus being a MASSIVE Super Mario fan, it’s always great to see the return of some of the quirky enemies I’ve not seen since SMB3 or Super Mario World.  Great co-op game too.
• Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles (Wii) – Not played much of this yet, but the original game was a LOT of fun, and this one seems to be more of the same.  <3 Capcom
• Pokemon Pearl (DS) – Got back into Pokemon a little recently.  It’s the only RPG series I’ve really ever been tolerant of, plus the fact I got shoulder deep into the Pokemon fad of the late 90’s.  Really eager for Pokemon Heart Gold/ Soul Silver later this year

Current Mood: Fairly happy, I believe I’m having a Roast Dinner later on, having a productive day at the uni library, and I’m hanging out with my homeskillet Drew tonight for some video games and other dudely-dude-ness.  Normally I’d take a picture to go with my current mood bit, but I’m at the library and it’d be too much to take a pic on my phone, email it to myself, and upload it to here, so instead here’s a picture of me “orton” posing outside an Art Gallery in Manchester.

Peggle.

Do you know what it is?  …if you don’t then oh lordy consider yourself lucky.  No doubt if you don’t know you’re now curious and will continue to read on… :\

Ok, so, Peggle.  Peggle is a sort of puzzle game, in the same vein as Tetris is a puzzle game, but at the same time it’s not like you have to do that much thinking.  However, HOW-freaking-EVER!! I’m perhaps more addicted to Peggle than I was on my original discovery of Tetris as a little boy receiving his much wanted Nintendo Game Boy when I was about 6.

The game itself is a cross between Pachinko and Bust-a-Move/ Puzzle Bobble, you fire a ball from the top of the screen and your objective is to clear all the orange pegs from the level, but the more blue pegs you can clear before you run out of shots will net you a better score, plus there are many ways in which you can get score bonuses for doing certain things. There are a few different characters in the game whom you can choose to do a level with, each with there own special abilities and once you complete the game you can re-play any level (and there are more than enough of them sure to satisfy) where as on your first play through you are limited to using a specific character per level (in adventure mode)

.

It doesn’t require much skill, you can strategise a little, but a lot of it comes from the luck of the bounce, and the luck of timing.  The package itself though is great, the sound effects REALLY compliment the simple gameplay and you have to experience them to really get what I mean, the colours are bright and cheery (which is what these types of games usually have), and all the cartoon animal cast in the game have daft characteristics, which whether I’m laughing with or at…it’s still laughter.
Now…at this pointyou’re perhaps still not sold on the idea that this game is that fun, and fail to see how it’s become my new addiction.  Well…all I can say to you is go and play it.

I have it on my XBOX 360 (downloaded via XBOX LIVE, as well as the add-on pack “Peggle nights”).  It’s also available on the PSN, iPod Touch/ iPhone, Nintendo DS and PC/ Mac.

I downloaded the game after I saw it listed in a couple of peoples Top 10 lists for Xbox Live Arcade games and saw that the game had scored high in reviews.  I was hesitant on buying it at first though, as I’m not the kind of person that sits and plays these sort of games, I normally only play something like this on my phone, or on a web browser if I’m bored somewhere other than my place…although still, it’s rare I’d play these sorts of games then and even in those instances i don’t find myself saying “just one more level…” for 3 friggin hours O_O.  So I can certainly confirm that even as a hardcore gamer, this game found its way in…and has claimed me BIG TIME!  I almost feel bad for playing it as much as I have been, instead of some high class blockbuster of a game that pushes my 360 or Wii’s potentials.  It’s like the gaming equivalent of watching reality TV, one of those casual anyone can play mainstream-ish kind of games, and I’ve literally put over 15 hours into this game over the past 3 days (I’ve been dealing with a bout of flu though, so it’s helped having something mindless to kill time with).

I can sit and make note of the fact that this isn’t something epic like “The Orange Box“, “Forza Motorsport 3“, “New Super Mario Bros Wii“, “Punch Out Wii” or “Castlevania Sympthony of the Night” (5 games I’m also playing at the moment)
…but then, just because Peggle isn’t like a “proper” video game, it’s not something I can really complain about.  The fact is I’m happy when I’m playing it, even when I’m not doing good I don’t feel frustrated, I just feel more motivated, or I blame myself for a mistake and want to better myself.  One of the core values I look for in a video game is “fun”, and this game has definitely achieved that.  I will no doubt pick up another copy of this for my Nintendo DS at some point in the future, and maybe even onto whatever my next phone is when in the distant future I upgrade to something new.  Finally though, if you’ve come this far in the article and haven’t already opened up another tab to check the game out in some form or another, then I urge you to go to the website and at least download the PC Demo.  It’s £15 (in the uk) from that site though, so I URGE you NOT to buy it from there, but instead to buy it through STEAM, as you can get not only Peggle, but the Peggle Nights (add-on pack which adds another 50 or so levels) all for £9.99.

It cost me 1200ms points on XBOX Live Arcade to get Peggle + the add-on pack (which is approx £9), but it’s definitely one of the most “bang for buck” games I’ve bought in ages.  I’m nowhere near done playing this game yet and it is pretty much the best thing since Tetris in terms of “I’m frickin addicted!”, and as much as I do blogs, I rarely devote a blog fully to a single game, yet Peggle has just stole me completely in the recent days and I’m just compelled to share it’s awesome-ness.
or perhaps I’m just sinister in the fact that I’m brining more people into this addiction with me, hehe

You can read the IGN review of Peggle >here<

also I just read on the wikipedia page for Peggle that people who have Steam on there computers can get a free short version of peggle inspired on some of the game developer Valve’s games (Half Life/ Portal/ etc)….So I downloaded it myself and lost approx another hour to it.  Great cross-over product though ^_^

…and if you’re a fan of Valve, why not check out there G4TV Idols video –> HERE

If you like Peggle you may also like “World of Goo” (available on Wii and PC).

First up, this blog is regarding Pro-Wrestling.  Not something I’ve devoted a specific blog too before I don’t think, but things are getting pretty interesting in the world of wrestling at this moment, so much so that I’m doing a lil bit of coverage on it ^_^.

[note: if you're reading this on Kusohappens.com, the BOLD black text are links, any other site this post appears I'm not quite sure how the clickable text links will workd.  Also  I'm trying to write this in mind for the casual reader.  I know a lot more than I'm probably sharing in this article, but in the interest of not over-writing about certain things, I've just simply linked to wikipedia articles where you can catch up on things you might need too, also this is just the brief outline of things and my own views, so anything I've left out I probably already know full well about I just didn't deem it mandatory to mention in here]

First things first.  I’m currently 23, I first got into wrestling as a kid, about 6 or 7, at the time Hulk Hogan was still riding high as the poster boy of Wrestling and as a lil’ kid, Hulk Hogan was the man!  He was everything I thought a man should be, he was pretty much a living super hero, as were many of these giant powerhouses…  As a kid though, my attention span dipped into other things quite easily and before I knew it I wasn’t watching it any more.  Till I was about 12…at the time I used to get dragged into town every Saturday morning with my mum, cause she would take my little sister to dance classes and hit the shops.  I used to hate this, most of the time I’d have no money to buy anything, so I’d just be against my will dragged around some womens clothes shops and what not for a few hours, and naturally I’d rather either be in bed, or at home watching SMTV live (a popular Saturday morning kids tv scheduling spot in the UK, containing cartoons, competitions…and eventually the pokemon phenomenon).
…Anyway, this 1 Saturday morning had more joy too it, I had enough money saved up to get a new game for my N64.  I looked around for a while, and I’m not quite sure why, but I decided to get WWF Warzone.

At this point (12) I wasn’t actually watching wrestling, and it wasn’t really something I’d ever hear amongst my friends either.  However the back of the box made it seem like a cool little fighting game regardless of if I followed the TV show or not, and what can I say…my instinct was spot on, for it’s time the game was great.  I told my friends about the game, and convinced a few others to pick it up (or they’d play it at mine), and not before long a couple of us had the game and we’re enjoying it (purely as a good game).  Eventually I noticed that we got the WWF via our cable package, and I decided to tune in…to see if I could recognise some people from my awesome game, and that I did…and it was epic!  It was sort of backwards how I re-got into wrestling as generally people buy merchandise for something there into, but I’d done things the other way .  Still though, I can remember the first time I caught an episode of RAW on the Sky Sports channel on our Cable set (at the time), it was unreal to see some of these characters from my game in life, kicking ass, and with so much personality.  It was about this time that the “attitude era” was starting in Wrestling, so I luckily (perhaps) was getting into wrestling at what is to this day regarded as the best time to of been a fan.  The storylines were pushing boundaries and made some great TV, the roster was diverse and had a lot of the most charismatic and most talented performers Wrestling has ever seen, and as a 12 year old kid it was just all so bad ass!

So….at this great time of Wrestling I got in…I got hooked, my friends got hooked, a couple of people in my high school class didn’t have cable access so I’d be taping the weekly shows as I watched them to pass around the following week at school, it was so good it was pretty much the highlight of our weeks, every week in terms of entertainment, we were all buying merchandise, play-wrestling in our spare times, heck…for a couple of years I even acted a “bookie” as people would place bets on the Royal Rumble, all school fun aside though, WWF was at the height of mainstream popularity and for good reason as it was putting on a great show.  At this time though there were a couple of other big name rivals to the WWF that were competing to be the best wrestling promoter there was, it’s always been like this in the business of wrestling, but it was during these late 90’s years were things were more close, everyone was pushing the envelope to be the must-watch wrestling show, so because of the great competition, there was great end products for the fans to lap up.  The main 2 brands people were divided by were WWF and WCW, these 2 were above everyone else in terms of viewers numbers and every monday they’d go head to head with there flagship shows airing at the exact same time, thus further pushing people to devote to what they deemed to be the better show (see Monday Night Wars), at the time I just stuck with WWF.  Eventually though WCW fell, WWE bought out WCW (as well as another decent competitor named ECW) and WWE pretty much had a monopoly on pro-wrestling.

At the time this seemed to me like it could be a good thing, well…I was already loyal to WWF so it was nice to see them be the winners in the wrestling franchise wars, and now it meant that some of the people who were talented in the rival wrestling franchises would be in WWE (changed the name from ‘WWF’ to ‘WWE’ around this point due to a court battle with the world wildlife fund).  Somewhere just before all this took place though I kind of fell out of the loop with wrestling again, as by this time I had my final exams for high school, and I was just spending more time doing other things I guess.  Anyway, the monopoly WWE had eventually became a bad thing, they had too many employees and weren’t making the best use of them all, things got a bit stale, but there was nobody else on a big stage to compete with WWE so the fans just had to put up with it or stop watching pretty much, and over time more and more people stopped watching…and still to this viewing numbers just aren’t what they were in the 90’s, you used to see wrestling merchandise all over the place but now pretty much the only things you see are kids action figures.

Since I left high school (in 2002) I’ve casually gone on and off wrestling a numerous times since, occasionally I’d always find myself curiously checking out how things were going and sometimes I’d get pulled back in for a while, but generally I’ve never really been as interested in wrestling as I was in the late 90’s/ early 00’s, and this is partly due to the fact that WWE haven’t got great competition anymore.  If no one is putting up a serious threat to your profits and customer base, then it seems you don’t need to work as hard.  Still, out of respect for the wrestling business I keep coming back to it, regardless of how lame it may be at the time (and sure it’s a fake sport…but any true fans can give you the low down on why it’s good).

Video Clips from a WWE House Show I went to in 2005

House Show Clips 2005 from Kev Mitchell on Vimeo.

Now…onto why this blog post exists  A number of years ago a couple of people who didn’t want to go to WWE (or didn’t make the cut) after the big buy outs were made, a new smaller Wrestling franchise was set up called TNA, they had some stuff going for them…but they’ve never been anywhere near a threat to the WWE.  Till potentially now.  See recently Hulk Hogan, unquestionably the biggest name in the history of Pro-Wrestling who has been pretty much in semi-retirement for sometime now has gone through some problems in life.  He divorced his wife, and let’s just say she won in court [let's have some Eddie Murphy whilst on that subject].  Hogans financially troubled and his life has been flipped on it’s head, Hogans past middle age though (being polite), and after soo many years of performing in the ring his body has taken a lot of damage and injury for the sake of pleasing sold out crowds, so he’s not physically able to wrestle like he could in the 90’s, but wrestling IS Hogan’s life, and it’s what gets his bills paid, so… Hogan has signed with TNA, and not only has he signed with TNA, he’s determined to be the driving force in brining TNA to the big leagues.  He’s convinced them to go on TV at primetime so they’re on at the same time as WWE’s Monday Night Raw (meaning a new Monday Night War), he’s trying to convince a lot of his friends in the business who are potential crowd pullers to come to TNA, and he believes in what he’s trying to do [Read Hulk Hogans recent interview with IGN on his comeback and TNA].

At first WWE may have shrugged this off and figured they would breeze by…but clearly they’ve taken notice of the steam they’re only other rival is picking up, and thus they’ve had to try and pull out stops of there own to keep fans eyes on WWE rather than potentially checking out the new push from the competition.  WWE’s answer to this has been Bret Hart.  Now…to those who don’t know Bret Hart was an icon in wrestling in the 1990’s, he may not be a household name like “Hulk Hogan” is, but Bret has way more talent in the ring, he’s adored by practically all the true fans of Pro-Wrestling, and the most interesting part is the fact that he’s coming back on WWE TV given that there is soooo much controversy around him and the WWE (see Montreal Screwjob) it just never seemed like it would ever be possible.

So…conclusion time!
The fact that we (WWE fans) are getting to see Bret Hart on WWE TV again immediately proves that competition inspires better things to happen.  TNA will be doing all they can to get viewers watching there show, so for the first time in a while I’ll be checking out there show for the next couple of weeks, as well as watching WWE and it’s road to this years Wrestlemania.  With TNA wanting to put out all they can to be a serious threat to WWE, and WWE wanting to do all they can to make sure they stay dominant, both of them will no doubt keep on trying to deliver great things like what we’re getting this week (Bret and Hogan).  I’m currently 75% through WWE Raw and I confess that I actually felt a bit choked up when Bret first came out, as I just never would’ve believed I’d see that again.

Who would've thought it?

All I can say is that this is looking like the world of Pro-Wrestling could finally pick up pace and get interesting again, we can only wait and see

[unrelated: Now if only Nintendo would start pumping out more great first party titles, since the Nintendo Wii has become super dominant in the sales charts, Nintendo have started noticeably slacking.  They did the same thing when they won the "console wars" in the early 90's when the Super Nintendo beat the Sega Megadrive/ Genesis.  They got too comfortable with the fact they had won and got stuck in there ways....only for Sony to come out with the Playstation (which could've also been Nintendo's) and took the lead from 1995 - 2006, the Wii was great at first...but Nintendo need to wise up and put more effort in, sooner or later Microsoft and Sony will have there own motion control add-ons out Nintendo will not have the edge they once had].