My Vote for The Lollipop Chainsaw Contest Goes To Jessica!

This is the last day to vote for the Vote for Your Juliet contest at IGN. My vote goes to Jessica Nigri, a talented (and one of the prettiest) cosplayer out there who’s known for her Pikachu getup. Out of all the contestants out there at IGN, Jessica gets the thumbs up from me because not only she’s got the looks to play as the Lollipop Chainsaw protagonist Juliet Starling but also for her bubbly personality and commitment to the contest. I hope she wins. Jessie really looks like Juliet, doesn’t she?

My 2012 New Year’s Resolutions for Metallica

 

I love Metallica. I really do. I listen to their songs regularly and hum to their tunes from time to time. They play an important role in my life and their music has influenced me in so many ways. However, like any bands, they make a few blunders over the years and make us fans look bad. While James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, Jason Newsted and Robert Trujillo are not known to have wild behaviors like most musicians do, they as a whole have made some dumb decisions and leave you to wonder why they do things that they do and vice versa.

We all know about the Load/ Re-Load incident – the two albums that most consider to be one of Metallica’s biggest flaws and an absolute joke because the music strayed far from Thrash Metal or even Metal for that fact. St. Anger corrected that mistake but while the music was a lot heavier, the tracks sounded really awful with buzzing drum sounds, over-the-top vocals, the lack of guitar solos and off-beat melodies. For me, I’ve never disliked those albums. I accept them for what they are and I enjoyed majority of the tracks like the Unforgiven II, Until It Sleeps, King Nothing, Mama Said, Fuel, etc. I believe that bands should never stick to one sound and one genre. They must be diversive in their music.

Death Magnetic was a great comeback to the Metal roots with hits like All Nightmare Long but overall, I was not satisfied with the record. I find the tracks to be dry, repetitive and not that interesting. As for the Lulu album…sigh! It was bad. Lou Reed is a douche. What was Metallica thinking?

With all these mistakes pointed out, I thought it’d neat if I can share my personal input of what Metallica should do in order to please the fans this year or in many years to come so here it is: the top 6 things Metallica should do in 2012:

1. Produce an official compilation – To this day, Metallica is yet to release an official Greatest Hits compilation featuring all their super hits. Devoted fans may not feel the need to have one but I was thinking of taking this opportunity to attract newer fans. I don’t normally favor the idea of bands launching a greatest hits album after only producing 3 – 4 albums but for Metallica, they are long overdue for one.
2. Remastering their albums – It baffles me as to why Metallica hasn’t yet re-released their first five albums (Kill ‘em All, Ride The Lightning, Master of Puppets, …And Justice for All and The Black Album) into remastered editions. While the current versions are still in great shape, it’d be a lot better if they can crank up the vocals, guitars, basses and drums a bit more like what Megadeth and AC/DC had done with their albums. I’m aware that Metallica did re-release these five albums in 2010 but they were only released in Japan. Why?
3. Adding the bassline on the Justice Album – For those of you who don’t know, the fourth album (“…And Justice for All”) had no bass in it from the get-go. It was the first album to feature Jason Newsted in the band who replaced Cliff Burton after he died in a tragic bus accident in 1986 and I find it insulting for his basslines to be removed from the album. For many years, Lars and James have given all kinds of excuses for this blunder – ex-bassist Jason Newsted wasn’t present during the mixing session, it was in loving memory of Cliff Burton, bla bla bla bla. Whatever the excuse is, I’m not buying it. Just add the basslines already! It is worth pointing out that there do exist a version of the Justice album on the Internet with the original bassline included appropriately dubbed “…And Justice for Jason”. It may not be an official work but majority of the fans including myself think it’s a much superior version than the original bass-less version so bottom line Metallica, please put the bassline this time.
4. Adding extra tracks on the remastered albums – Remastered albums should always include extra tracks in them whether it’d be demos or unreleased tracks so…please do so.
5. Fully orchestrated version of Nothing Else Matters – Nothing Else Matters is one of my favorite tracks of all time. It’s got great harmony, beautiful words and plenty of exquisite guitar playing. Michael Kamen was asked to add orchestration to the track to help amplify the song but even though he had it done, Metallica and producer Bob Rock did a lousy job of mixing it. The song does have the orchestra tune added in but you can’t really hear it for the most part. My request to Metallica is to please add the orchestration to Nothing Else Matters.
6. No more collaboration with other artists – The Lulu album sucked ass. Nuff said.

Metallica, I love you very very much and if you love your fans, please fulfill these tasks with love. We’d appreciate it.

- Psykhophear

My Top Five Games of 2011

2011 has been a great year. I was able to play all the games that I wanted to play, which is something I couldn’t accomplish in previous years. However, having said that, most of those “played already” games didn’t make it into the list because they are the ones I don’t think can compete with the ones I haven’t played yet like Uncharted 3, Skyrim, etc.. Yes, I’ve not played those games yet unfortunately. You can check out the full listing here but for now, let’s get started.

5. Dead Rising 2: Off The Record

I love Dead Rising games and this one is no exception. Even though the game is pretty much similar to the original Dead Rising 2 but I still consider it to be fresh and original.

4. Rage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

id Software has done it again. John Carmack and the gang have once again blown me away with this amazing game. Rage has so many cool stuff to offer I feel that there’s more to it than what the back cover had to say. The thought of moving from confined space corridor to an open world concept was a risky move but as Creative Director Tim Willits put it best, “our risks always pay off.” Apart from its glitchy graphics and awfully poor ending, Rage is exquisitely awesome in terms of playing and spectating. I love this game!

3. Dead Space 2

A worthy sequel. I love the fact that Isaac Clarke is now a talking protagonist as oppose to a silent one because it adds a whole new experience when you hear him speak. The psychological thrills really delivers and I can’t think of no other game this year that provides the same level of scares and adrenaline rush like Dead Space 2.

2. Batman: Arkham City 

I love Batman and I love this game. Rocksteady has proven themselves that they are the kings in making solid comic book games and I salute them for the impact it had to me and other comic book fans. Some parts of Arkham City may not be as refreshing as the original and Catwoman’s costume annoys me like hell but this game is overall a force not to be reckoned with.

1. Mortal Kombat

My absolute favorite game of 2011. Everything about Mortal Kombat is beautiful, visceral and mindblowingly superb. I normally don’t favor fighting games but Mortal Kombat is so cool, I just can’t get enough of it. It is such an improvement from its predecessors. The X-ray moves and story mode are definitely the biggest highlight and I simply adore this game very very much. I heart you, Ed Boon!

New Address, Same Inhabitant

Just to let everyone know that I, Psykhophear, have recently changed his blog name to Glimpse Studios so please take note for future reference. The previous name, Chrotokho Creative, will no longer used.  Thank you for reading.

How The Blair Witch Project Should’ve Ended

This ending is so great that it makes me feel that it should’ve or could’ve been the actual ending to the Blair Witch Project Movie. Three cheers to HISHEdotcom!

The Search for the Army Men

Believe it or not, I am actually in the midst of collecting the infamous Army Men games, the series that is known for its decline in quality in newer games. I consider myself to be a fan of Army Men because I just love the whole concept of toys duking it out using plastic weapons and utilizing “real world” items to create WMDs. The series had a a great run in the late 90s but as time went on, the developer 3DO began to make so many Army Men games in just a couple of years that it made it difficult to keep track of them.

This made the quality in each title dramatically butchered due to its rush development. As a result, these new games showcased outdated graphics and controls to the newer consoles. And because of this huge blunder, 3Do filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002. It’s a real shame that 3DO did such a terrible job with their products because Army Men had the potential to be an awesome series with memorable characters, locales and stories. If only they took their sweet time and produce new titles every two years or so like any game companies would.

So what is left for me to do? Why, collecting them of course. With the help of online stores and game shops, I am determine to find every last one of the Army Men games including their handheld ports and console ports. I decided not to buy the Sold-Out edition of the PC games but the actual retail ones that are either packaged in the old fashioned big boxes or the regular ones. Same goes with the Game Boy games where I want to buy only the ones that are still in their original packaging with manuals included. It’s not going to be easy but it’ll be worth it.

If you have any Army Men games that you would to sell, feel free to notify me. I would gladly remove them from your shelves.

My Resident Evil PC Collection

I’m proud to own the first three Resident Evil games (1, 2 and 3: Nemesis) including 4 and 5- all PC versions. The first trilogy is rare and hard to find but I managed to get them (still in their original packaging) but with an expensive price. However, it was all worth it and I couldn’t be anymore happier. The only problem is playing them. Since 1, 2 and Nemesis were made during the late 90s, making them to work on a latest computer will result to a lot of compatibility problems, especially the first one. Depending on the type of graphics card you have, sometimes the game will work and sometimes it doesn’t.

I had a lot of problem getting the first Resident Evil to work because during the installation process, it asks us to choose which graphics card to use and if you choose to wrong one, it’ll result to a lot of complications such as audio problems, graphic glitches, and show stoppers. I did manage to install the game successfully on my Sony Vaio laptop and I was able to finish the game without any problems but when I tried playing it on my Dell desktop, it doesn’t work.

2 and 3: Nemesis worked well but 2 seems to have problem with the saving system. 4 and 5 of course have no compatibility problems whatsoever since they’re the most recent games to come. Once again, I’m very pleased to own all five Resident Evil games PC version but then I realized one game is missing: Code Veronica X, which is the only canon RE game that was not ported to the PC and it makes you wonder, why not? If they port all the other games to PC, why not Code Veronica X?

If there’s one I wish Capcom would grant me is to port Code: Veronica X to the PC and make a compilation of all six Resident Evil games into one through retail or Steam. And it’s Windows XP compatible. That’ll be awesome. Ok I know, that was two wishes but what the heck?