I’ve been having these weird thoughts lately…

Well, in truth they are more peculiar dreams. I have been mentioning them on Twitter, but I’d rather go for a full blown explanation on here of the past few in reverse date order (so most recent one first).

A new ace attorney In this dream, I was in a courtroom over some trivial matter, and had a strange defence lawyer. It was the honey monster from the Sugar Puffs adverts. He was dressed rather plainly in a suit, parading about the courtroom and defending me and appeared to be winning the case. No-one reacted to it, and the judge passed it off as normal and I ended up being found not guilty for whatever it was I had done.

RAW’s scary guest hostWWE RAW has a thing of having a guest host each week at the moment, and in my dream, the next guest host had been announced as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and I started off watching next week’s show in the dream, enough to see the marshmallowy giant walk out in to the ring, only to realise he couldn’t get in it.

What an interesting revolution In this next dream, I was watching TV and a newswoman was recapping the recent overthrow of the US President, Barack Obama, claiming he had been replaced by a sentient LEGO person, and that now we know they had been secretly living within society and waiting for their time to rise and had chosen now to do it, and then we cut to a speech from the new president, and I changed channels.

Not as stealthy as they once wereFor this one, being the one from last night, I had a tool shed in a long garden and had gone there to do some work when I noticed some people that resembled The Borrowers sneaking around the plant pots and stuff. I had a quick conversation with them, telling them I already knew they were here and didn’t mind. They spoke of getting ready for Christmas and I informed them to borrow what they like, just stay out of sight of others besides myself, and then wandered back out to the garden leaving them to their own devices.

 

Just for the record, I have never taken any illegal drugs, not on any medication or anything like that, these are just my regular dreams from my subconscious.

Blinkered Season Two – Fire Retarded Review

Season Two of Blinkered started recently on NudiaTV and as I reviewed season one before as a whole I decided to do this season as an episode by episode basis, so here’s the first episode review, named “Fire Retarded”.

Characters/CastAside from the new female character that I noted on the season two preview that I did, Frazzle has his own spot in the introductions now, and we’re a character down with Jimbo’s chubby friend having been taken off (presumably due to him leaving for storyline reasons along with Lance Volcano, a guest character last season). Character development remains strong, and doesn’t focus too much on the new character as a show might.

Brandon Carr (Richard Pohl) remains the funniest cast member still, with his odd quirks.

I also noted that the courier seen in this episode is related to the newest cast member Wendy Joelseph (Lauren Knust) and filmed alongside Joel Henderson.

Sets

The rarely seen meeting room gets used in this episode to show off Big Al, though he is not in the episode apart from this appearance.

I’m not sure how many different sets you can really have in an office, so I feel this segment should actually be replaced. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Comedy One of the funniest moments for me in this episode, was when the usual “pick on Jimbo” part was going on and he was informed he had a courier. Then we flash to Dennis who says “I love how I can confuse Jimbo by using a word with more than five letters…” Then starts to count them aloud. This was made even more funny to me when @comeuppence mentioned to me on Twitter that it wasn’t even intentional.

Parts about the GPS post-it notes also raised a few chuckles, as did Big Al’s video. Jimbo bashing remains funny too, with tweeting “Jimbo is gay”.

Soundtrack Aside from a little singing from Brandon Carr (who is in a band by the way who happen to do the intro music, which as much as I slated it, has now grown on me) there’s not a whole bunch of music, which would have been nice to dub over the outside shot scenes or perhaps in the background of Big Al’s video.

There was quite a catchy tune after the bloopers however.

Plot This episode may have revealed the name of the office/company at which they work, probably not significant or interesting to anyone else, but it’s been bugging me since season one. Dennis looks through a file labelled “RDS” when looking for a “Jimberly Holton”.

Seeing Wendy being nice to Brian/Jimbo was a bit strange (not for the character, but because I’m used to seeing the whole office pick on Jimbo), but I’d like to see where that goes. But then he finally reaches breaking point and snaps. I expected him to quit, but it all turns out to be part of a joke, which he then takes rather well.

Closing Comment
An average episode overall but a nice start to the new series…let’s see how it all goes from here.

Characters/Cast: 6/10
Sets: 6/10
Comedy: 7/10
Soundtrack: 6/10
Plot: 6.7/10

62.40%

• 0 – 19% Unwatchable - why the hell did I even watch this?
• 20 – 49% Poor – Certain elements of the show hold it back
• 50 – 69% Average – More good than bad, but you might need to be a fan to really get in to it.
• 70 – 84% Good – This is what you’ll be talking about with people in the office the next day.
• 85 – 89% Excellent – This is what you’ll be talking about for the next month.
• 90 – 100% Fucking Excellent – This is the best TV show ever, therefore going by Josh Whedon logic, it will soon be cancelled.

Parapraxis is hilarious

Better known as a Freudian slip, or slip of the tongue is when you say something that you thought etc. but didn’t mean to vocalise. I guess the story I’m actually telling is about a slip of the mind (but in a similar sense to a slip of the tongue, rather than another phrase for forgetfulness) but it remains funny nonetheless.

Firstly, you need some back story to fully understand this. My youngest brother’s girlfriend had a large fall out with her parents who weren’t exactly nice, or the most attentive or aware of parents (She’s never had fireworks on November 5th, and got a £3 t-shirt and a sandwich for Christmas gifts and Christmas dinner) so she decided to move in with our family and now my parents are her guardians and she’s not had much contact with them.

However, they did recently apologize for some things that they’d done, and as she noted "They made up just in time for me to get them Christmas presents” but I was told of a phone call she made recently that got them not talking to her again. Her actions below:

*looking through phone to ring my mother*
Finds the ‘Mum’ contact to ring, and calls her
Her actual mother answers, as she’s the “Mum” contact
”Hey, is Pete there?”
”No. Why would Pete be here?”
”Oh, er never mind. Bye”

Yes, she called her actual mother when she went to call my parents. So I guess her parents aren’t speaking to her again. Oh well, no big loss there.

Also, this is my 100th post of 2009. Woop!

Kitties!

This is the family’s cat, Ruby, who recently had kittens, and I thought I’d show them off here. That’s the entire post for today I’m afraid folks.

   Aw, kitties…obviously click the images for bigger versions.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Review - DS

 Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days is a DS RPG telling the story of Sora’s Nobody and Keyblade wielder, Roxas spending his time within a strong group of Nobodies who call themselves The Organization (often nicknamed Organization XIII) who have the intention of completing Kingdom Hearts to become real people once again, and fills in gaps during the GBA adventure Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories as well as adding in multiplayer missions.

I previously blogged a few spoilers about the story here so if you just want to leap straight in to my pre-playing thoughts check that out.

StoryThe game starts from Roxas’ seventh day within The Organization and a new character, named Xion (pronounced She-On) who can also wield a Keyblade and collect hearts by defeating Heartless. There are some great unexpected twists within the story, though I was disappointed that the group who went to Castle Oblivion (the world played in Chain of Memories) are slain early on eliminating story missions alongside them.

Gameplay This is the first game of the Kingdom Hearts series to feature multiplayer and has a mission mode system for playing with friends. Alas, as none of my friends play Kingdom Hearts I haven’t been able to capitalize on this aspect of it. The main mode is the Story Mode where Saïx hands out varying missions to aid The Organization. Gameplay on this feels very much like Kingdom Hearts II, with the exception that you have a specific goal in mind when visiting each world. New types of Heartless appear to challenge you, and some such as the Dustflier are a real challenge.

Also introduced is the Panel System, which determines what you take with you on each mission, and what weapon and magic you carry. By gaining experience, your levels also fit on here too. You can find various Gears for your weapon to add on to your panels and then store these panels to use in multiplayer to give you an edge. Once you find a system that works, there’s little point in messing with it, until you gain a better Gear.

Graphics The graphics are okay for a DS, but in a similar fashion to how the cutscenes stunned me on the GBA for Chain of Memories, I am floored by how great it looks when we’re getting over forty minutes of beautifully detailed cutscenes, though after the start of the game, there’s a large gap before you see any more.

SoundtrackUnfortunately, this game heavily borrows from previous Kingdom Hearts titles for it’s music, only having a few original songs for new characters and the like, so it gets knocked down here.

Replayability Whilst playing through Story Mode again would be a waste (unless you gain extra achievements for finishing on Proud Mode) Mission Mode allows you to attempt previous missions and try to completely fill the mission gauge to gain all the extra things but unless you are a fan of the series you probably won’t want to 100% complete it.

Story: 7/10
Gameplay: 6/10
Graphics: 6.5/10
Soundtrack: 4.5/10
Replayability: 5/10

58%

• 0 – 19% Unplayable - why the hell did I even buy this?
• 20 – 49% Poor – Certain elements of the game hold it back
• 50 – 69% Average – More good than bad, but you might need to be a fan to really get in to it.
• 70 – 84% Good – A nice franchise or single game, that just misses out on being great because of a few flaws.
• 85 – 89% Excellent – You could play this for ages and be happy
• 90 – 100% Fucking Excellent – You should have this game and play it every single day.

Want me to review a game? Comment and let me know and I’ll see what I can do.