Monday, May 24, 2010

Intern Initiation...

So heres how it all went down.

Saturday afternoon I went to eat with the other intern for the Legacy Church of Christ, Stephanie Bertot, and 3 girls from the youth group. She had been the intern last year so she knew them from last summer. She told me how her car got pranked like 8 times last summer. When the girls inquired about my car I told them they will never know...

but they saw my car when we left the restaurant.

They then proceeded to follow me home to see where I live.

I went into my house and opened the blinds so I could see if my car were attacked. About 930 I saw some car pull up, turn off, and someone approached my car. I had already planned to go to a movie with a friend so I decided it was time to leave.

I walked outside and gave the car an evil eye. As I drove away the car turned on and followed me. So with some fancy driving and making it through a yellow light and it turning red letting no one else pass, I ditched them.

I proceeded to pick up my friend and go to see shrek 4. (which was terrible by the way)

When I left the theater I was surprised to find my car saran wrapped, stringed, toilet papered, ribboned, and written on. I was very impressed.


How did they find me? There was no way they could have tailed me.

I later found out that they just guessed where I was going and they got lucky that I did go there.

They won this round, but revenge will be mine yet!

Jeremiah

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Prince of Persia: Forgettable Sands?

I pre-ordered the new Prince of Persia game The Forgotten Sands. It came in monday night but unfortunately I was in Tulsa so I couldn't play it. So I started playing it the moment I came home Thursday night. Here is my review of the game for all those wondering if they should get it.....


Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands.

If you are like me then you are a die hard POP (Prince of Persia) fan. The sands of time series are my favorite games, although the Mass Effect series is possibly even with it. So I jump at the chance of getting a new prince of persia game. I made the mistake of jumping at the reboot game and that was abysmal. This one I was slightly hesitant but more optimistic when i saw that it is the same prince and you can rewind time.

After completing the game in maybe about 5 - 6 hours I can say with some certainty that some aspects of this new POP is awesome and some suck...

Combat

The fighting is the worst part of this game. The game just throws just massive hordes of enemies at you that you mow down with the assistance of your different powers. There is no strategy to the combat unlike Sands of Time. The other POP's had a different variety of enemies that you had to change strategies for. Forgotten Sands you do nothing but button mash X. You have the opportunity to vault over enemies like the old games and perform aerial slash attacks but theres no point when there are 70+ enemies on the field. Focusing on one when your broad sword swing could get so many more is just pointless. There is no blocking in combat either. There is either attack or dodge. Which makes for even less tactical strategy to the combat. Another annoying aspect is that in the other games when you were hit you fell down or stumbled back, but not in Forgotten Sands. In combat there is hardly any indication that you have been hit and because of that I was startled every time i looked at my health bar to find that I have been taking hits this whole time. By the end of the game my sword swings had become so powerful I was killing enemies in one hit. Even the REALLY huge guys were felled by my sword in 4 hits. Where is the fun in that?


The Powers

Rewind - You of course have the ability to rewind again which is of course my favorite. Allowing you to make a mistake and then take it back. If you didn't like how much life you lost then take it back. It's that simple.


Freezing Water - Now they introduced a new power that you use constantly through out the game, even more than rewind. This is the power to freeze water. So, of course, there are waterfalls and spouts every where. Even places like the prison. Out of place much? So with this new power you can freeze a water spout into a pole to swing from and waterfalls into walls to wall jump. This made the already amazing acrobatics even more fun by adding this element. It makes getting around rooms much more tricky. They mix it up too by having water falls in between spouts so you have to unfreeze the water to pass through the water fall and then refreeze it before you catch the next spout. It gets pretty intense especially when there are 7 water falls all facing each other that you have to jump through the 1st one and freeze the water to wall jump back off the second one then wall jump off the 1st one to propel your self forward and unfreeze the water to pass through the second one and freeze it to wall jump off the 3rd one.... and repeat that all the way across the room.

Recall (select locations) - You get an additional similar power for one part of the game where you can recall a segment of ground that has long since eroded or recall a pillar that is now broken. But only one piece at a time...this with the addition of the water freezing makes for a wild ride around a room.

The other powers are mostly for combat which I only upgraded to get to the things like more health or stronger sword attacks. They were helpful but i found other upgrades more important.

Fire trail - an ability that makes a burning trail as you run so you can run through you enemies and when they chase you they will ignite and loose more health the more you upgrade it. I imagine that this would get much more deadly as you approach lvl 4 but by that time you can already pwn everything insight with one hit.

Stone armor - makes you invincible and the more you upgrade it the longer it lasts. This is the ability that I used the most and I found came in handy more than the others. This is nice because you can have no fear. You just waltz into enemies and start cutting them down and you don't have to worry about your health bar. I found this power particularly helpful on the final battle. I didn't have to do anything but stand there while he pummeled me and then I just attacked his weak spot when he presented it. Talk about cheap... :-) This ability also allows you to run through traps and such with out any fear of getting hurt. Also kinda takes the strategy out of getting around the traps.

Whirlwind - make a strong wind that goes in every direction from you and knocks back all your enemies and gets stronger and more deadly the more you upgrade it. Whirlwind was nice even though i didn't use it much. You do find your self surrounded a lot in battle and this can help out

Ice sword - this gives your sword a frost attack that when you swing a wave of ice will shoot out from it damaging everyone standing in front of the swing. It gets stronger and the range becomes greater as you upgrade it. I thought ice sword was a bit cheat like. It was so over powered that you didn't even have to get close to enemies before they were all dead. You just sent waves of ice at them to kill them...so i avoided using it. Becides by the time you have your max upgraded sword you don't need any thing like that.

Each of these abilities uses a "Sand tank" even though they aren't called that and who wants to be out of sand at the end of the battle and then you have to get around the room and not have any rewinds for traps and such.

You level up your abilities in a upgrade system reminiscent of the license board from FFXII. I was fine with the upgrade system even though I had to upgrade things like fire trail to get to other stuff I wanted it was fine.

If you're wondering if this game will be a return to puzzles like Sand of Time you are....kinda right. There were some puzzles just like Sands of Time but not as hard. There was some puzzles that involved freezing water and statues and that was really fun.

The over all game experience was good. Despite the how quick the game went by it was really fun. Maybe thats why it went by so fast. The acrobatics and environmental puzzles getting around were made so much more fun by the freeze water ability along with the recall ability. The freezing water pretty much made the game for me. I know I was harsh on the battle system but I still had fun using powers on the enemies and making my way across a room by hopping from head to head. The voice acting is as good as ever and the cinematic cut scenes are awesome especially the opening video which looks like a real movie. Also the moments leading up to the final fight is the most epic thing I have ever played.

So if you are a Prince of Persia fan like me then you will be happy if you are a newcomer to the series it's hard to say... I think newcomers will like it for the water and the acrobatics and such. Give it shot.

I would give the game a 7/10

BONUS

I just started another game and it remembered all the powers I had so now i can upgrade everything to the max. Interesting tid bit...

Friday, May 14, 2010

Sweet Summer Movies....

This summer is going to be a great summer for movies. For the next few weeks there will be a movie released every friday that I want to see. I marked all the movies i wanted to see down on my calendar so that i would remember when they came out. In case you don't know what is coming out soon allow me to enlighten you...

today (may 14) - Robin Hood
May 21 - Shrek 4, MacGruber
May 28 - PRINCE OF PERSIA! (going to be SO awesome)
June 4 - nothin I care about....just David Bowdens wedding!
June 18th - Toy Story 3
July 2 - THE LAST AIRBENDER (gonna be even better than prince of persia i bet!)
July 9 - Despicable me
July 16 - Inception (defiantly going to blow peoples minds)
Aug 6 - The oOher Guys
Aug 13 - SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD!! (going to be so incredible!)

So thats the movies I want to see this summer. It's gonna be epic.

Also I got a hair cut... enjoy.

BEFORE...




AFTER...

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Something weird is happening.

I went to bed last night at like 3-ish. That part isn't out of the ordinary. The strange part was that i couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned and finally gave up at like 4:45. I then proceeded to get up and shower and watch episodes of TV on Hulu.

At 730 I went to a prayer breakfast at Chic-fil-a with some of my youth group kids that invited me yesterday.

So here I am... 8 am....quite literally about maybe 1 hour of sleep....but oddly feeling fine. Strange. Maybe I'm becoming a super human that doesn't have to sleep. Hopefully.

Anywayz the rest of yesterday was good. Just as i predicted. Yesterday I went to wednesday night church at Legacy and met lots of kids. I tried super hard to remember all their names. I have a terrible memory for names. I remembered a lot though. I was proud.

After church I celebrated my BWW anniversary. I ate them while watching How I Met Your Mother. Delicious.

Also I found out yesterday that like every awesome movie about the future or alternate timelines or any awesome movie is based off books and short stories by like one guy!

Philip K. Dick!

Amazing! I'm defiantly going to go find all his books and read them. Short stories and books of his that have been turned in to movies....

Blade Runner
Minority Report (if you know me, you know this is like one of my favorite movies)
Total Recall
Paycheck
Next
A Scanner Darkly

and soon a movie called The Adjustment Bureau... Looks awesome. Look it up.

So that totally blew my mind yesterday! So I'm going to half-price books today to look for them!

by the way book title for Blade Runner: "Do androids dream of electric sheep?"

Best book name ever!

Also... hair cut soon....

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Happy Anniversary!

It's my anniversary today!

No not with Kristi....

With Buffalo Wild Wings! YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY

Thats right today, may 12 2007, I apparently signed up for buffalo wild wings emails that gave me free coupons and deals and such.

haha so this morning i woke up to find this email



I totally didn't even know it was by anniversary! They are so thoughtful! Needless today I will be celebrating my anniversary tomorrow on boneless thursday! So Exciting!

It's gonna be a good day...

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

All Aboard....

All right N00bs and N00bets! I'm back on the blogging train!

I am about to embark (yep still continuing with the train analogy) on a journey as a intern youth minister at the Legacy Church of Christ. So I decided this was a good of a time as any to start up blogging again. This way anyone who cares about me back at OC or something can see what I'm up too.

So here is the info since i last entered a post. I am now graduated. I graduated with a degree in Creative Media (Aka film).

Thats about all worth mentioning. haha.

Legacy has a special place in my heart because if i recall correctly it was one of the first (if not the first) places that Unbound performed on their very first summer on tour. We stayed there like 2 days and really got to know the kids well. Now its been 5 years since that time and all those kids have graduated but I still am excited.

I am working on getting an imac seen here....

This will allow me to edit videos with ease and will just be a nice addition to my like for the foreseeable future. This imac is made possible by past Jeremy. Who deposited money over the years and then forgot about his savings account. Present Jeremy was reminded of that account and when he looked into it low and behold $3000.

Winner winner chicken dinner.

Thanks past jeremy.

So now I can get this computer with money to spare and also get the profits from working for Legacy to get an apt up in edmond when the summer is over. YAY!

Also Courtney Price, old friend from elementary school, contacted me to help her film something this friday because she too is a film major. Fancy that.

To quote Kronk from the Emperor's New Groove "Oh yeah... It's all comin together."