Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: November Edition

Since I've been neglecting the blog updates lately, I figured now was as good a time as any to unveil a new feature that'd catch everybody up on what I've been doing and thinking lately. Of course there's two sections of bitching for every one of positivity, because that's just how I roll.

The Good: Fallout 3 I've been playing obsessively in between drinking binges, work, and drinking binges at work. I'm not going to give it a full-length review (there's a good one over at Squidly.com), but suffice to say that this is the best game I've played in several years. Great story, great voice acting, great graphics (even on a midrange system), and most importantly good gameplay that makes it feel like part of the Fallout family, despite being made by a new development house. Bonus points for moving the setting away from the West Coast (where I haven't been in about 15 years) to the Washington, D.C. area (where I was this past weekend). It's a cliche at this point, but if you only play one game this year.....yeah.

The Bad: Ben Folds - Way To Normal It breaks my heart to have to do this, but one of my all-time favorites has had this coming for a while now. His last album (Songs for Silverman) fell into that category of "OK-but-not-my-favorite", but this one sinks to a whole different level of suck. I committed to listening to the whole thing, but found myself wanting to just turn it off halfway through. Most of the songs are lyrically unrelatable (at least to me) and Folds's normally melodic piano rock is overlaid with obnoxious synthesized sounds through most of the album. I just hope this album is a one-time aberration and not a shift in direction.

The Ugly: The 2008 Election I sure hope I'm wrong about our president-elect. I hope so, but I don't think so. He's vowed to "share the wealth" and his standard of what defines "wealth" gets lower and lower with every press conference. You can't legislate charity, folks. America is the land of opportunity, but it seems like the Obammunists are confusing the definition of "opportunity" with that of "guarantee". And his promises to stop President Bush's new drilling and "bankrupt" the coal industry? Yeah, that's really going to help the economy turn around. I'm praying that I'm wrong and that the next four years go smoothly and successfully...but I think I'm right.