the Fretless Bass reviews: The elder scrolls 4: Oblivion

I was excited to get Oblivion, because my friend had it and he wouldn't stop raving about it. However, upon starting the game, I was introduced to the biggest snooze-fest of all time. The opening consisted of running down narrow-linear hallways and getting stopped every five minuets to answer personal questions. I thought the whole point of RPG's was to get away from all of this. So the main quest goes that the king of your country dies and needs you to deliver the symbol of rulership in the kingdom to his lost son or everyone is going to die in an obscure way they never really get around to discussing. They keep going on about how it's time-sensitive, but I had enough time to go loot an entirely different dimension before I even read the quest info. I want to talk now about the biggest problem with the opening and main quest. You start out in jail. And the king is running away from assasins through a secret escape route that is in your cell. This raises many questions. Who was dumb enough to build a potential escape route for a cereal rapist? And why are you in jail? I think it was probably for something really trivial, like swearing in public, because throughout the rest of the game, the guards will arrest you if you look at them funny. And furthermore, when the king dies, he gives YOU, an escaped convict, the symbol of rulership previously mentioned. If i were really in this situation, I would sell the thing to the nearest store and skip town.

Character customization is almost too detailed, you start by selecting your race, I decided to be cliché, and became a Wood Elf, which was a mistake because I got no good bonuses and became so short I often mistook myself for an eight year old child wearing combat armor. Designing your face is the aggravating part, it's so detailed that you could model your character after yourself, and your favorite baseball player, and your mom, and no one would be able to tell because YOU NEVER SEE YOUR FACE ANYWAY!

Combat is less than intuitive, it is little more than attack as much as you can with R1 and shield and eat herbs or something when your health is low. Bow and arrow combat is standard, but you pay dearly if you forget to equip arrows. Magic is the way to go, if you train your destruction magic high enough, you can obliterate any enemy with ease, but it's not easy to train your magic that high, so I just went with swords and bows.

Armor is good, the game doesn't do the old "you must be this tall to wear the orkish armor" (which is good because if that were the case, by elf would only be able to wear the cotton candy armor. I was skilled in light armor, and I was genuinely surprised when I realized the game didn't trade speed for protection. Not all Light armor sucked, I got a full Myth armor and it actually protected me!

You can also choose your class and birth-sign I became an assassin born under the sign of the Lord, which meant I could sneak around and heal myself. The selection was immense though, each class and birth-sign had advantages and disadvantages, it took me over five minuets to decide, which may be a little too long.

Quests are fun and imaginative, where bad RPG quests are little more that "go there and kill everything" Oblivion makes the goals and plots of the quests unique, although as I was writing that sentence it occurred to me that no matter how the quests are explained to you, killing everything is usually what it comes down to. So I retract that statement, the quests are heavily cliched with a unique lacing around the edges where there's no dungeon, wait...... Half the quests are in dungeons, so I subtract both statements and replace them with the quests being s&*^.

The most aggravating, difficult, and stupid part of Oblivion is trying not to be Cliché, I've brought this up in previous paragraphs, and it really is difficult to be what you want to be and unique. A Wood Elf assassin archer that wears a robe (my character) come on! I could have done better. The salt in an open wound part came when I made a second character that ended up being an imperial (human) knight that specialized in hand to hand combat. It's not really cliché, it's boring.

In short, I liked Oblivion, it just seems like it's trying to hard to be a fantasy RPG. Here's a hint, if you are making a Fantasy RPG, don't have elves, lizard things, and dwarfs, try to avoid the mainstream and be different. If this makes your game really good then I am a genius and deserve to work in hollywood, and if it bombs then it was all your Idea and I'm in the Green Party!

The Fretless Bass reviews: High School: the game

I had nothing to review this time, so the brilliant Idea came to me, why not review high school like it was a video game? so this is what I got.

I was excited and a little scared to get High School, because there were a lot of mixed reviews, some said it would be the best game ever, some said it kept you up until one in the morning with side quests, but they turned out to be both wrong.

High School is the worst game I have ever played, it's just not fun, you learn a lot, but you find yourself falling asleep during the science levels. The only fun part of the day is extracurricular quests, and they get in the way of all your side quests, which shouldn't be called that because they're all required.

The game is also so strict too, if I miss one quest, I have to keep playing for tree hours after I've completed the day's main quest, and the teachers mark me late if I enter the door one second after the bell rings.

The map is large and confusing, you can't seem to get around, and the other cpus seem to have incredible contempt for your desire to BE ON TIME.

People say the biggest improvement from the game's prequel, Middle School, is all the freedom, which I guess is true because in middle school if you even uttered the phrase, "I wonder what's on the other side of those walls." you were suspended from gameplay immediately. In high school you can go outside, but you get damn near expelled if you cross an invisible boundary that only the administrators can see. Not to mention that you only have three minuets between each block to go outside.

Now for the side quests, they are a lot harder, but everyone complaining about how they stayed up until one A.M. every night playing sufferers from a syndrome I call "inability to manage your time in the slightest." All the instruction manuals say you have four house of homework a night, but thats bulls@#$, you have two, on a heavy day, it's just really hard. So because of that, you can only get out on the weekends.

The biggest problem from the game is the fact that it takes four years to complete it, and then because you have spent so much time preparing for it, you feel compelled to buy collage!

Now, I can sum up the entire game in three sentences. Whoever invented high school should be punched in the face. I have better things to do than play High School, like pound a nail into my eye by slamming my head against a wall. I could only write this review because my math homework got delayed.

The Fretless Bass reviews: Walt Disney World.

I just got back from a ten day trip to Florida, most of which I spent in Disney World, the mother of all amusement parks. For those of you who don't know it, I have a working theory that Disney secretly owns everything in the world, including YOU, and what I saw in the Florida park only advanced my far- fetched hypothesis. My mother was able to set up the entire trip easily on the computer, we got a great hotel in the Animal Kingdom that let you look out at animals in the hotel's backyard, we got a meal deal, which meant three meals a day and one snack a day with no hassle, and we could "park hop."
So apart from the conspiracy theory part of this review, I will be reviewing each park in the resort in the order I visited them, and, in the end, Disney's overall appeal to me.
1. Epcot: the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow was the worst park in the entire resort. It seemed to be based around education, which is not why I came to Florida, and the only way to make the park more interesting was to pronounce the area called "The Land" in a really low voice. It had a few gems thrown in, it had Soarin' which was agreed upon by my family to be one of the best rides in the resort, and the Mission Space simulator, which was a mock-mission to Mars complete with three-G's, and Test Track, which was half roller- coaster and half something else. So because of the previous rides mentioned, Epcot is worth visiting, but don't get excited.
2. Hollywood Studios: The almost polar opposite of Epcot, Hollywood Studios is all about movies. Many of the attractions in the park were actually shows about filming movies, in which there was no fourth wall. These shows were all very good, but the real reasons to visit Hollywood studios are the Tower of Terror, and the Rockin' Roller Coaster. The Tower of Terror is different from other drop rides because it has a plot, I won't ruin it for you. The Rockin' Roller Coaster is one of only two true roller coasters in all of Disney. It also blasted classic rock behind you while you rode, so it was a good ride for me. In all, Hollywood Studios is probably the overall best park in Disney.
3. Animal Kingdom: This was the park that was tied for second with Magic Kingdome. This park had such rides as Dinosaur! and Expedition Everest. Dinosaur! was not a roller coaster, but not a sit there and watch the story go by ride. In Dinosaur!, you ride a time machine on the bumpiest ride since my airplane pilot died just before landing, trying to bring a dinosaur back to 2010, from literally moments before a giant comet hits the Earth and kills over half of all life on Earth. Expedition Everest is the only other true roller coaster in Disney, and It was a great ride; Animal Kingdom is a park you don't want to miss.
4. Magic Kingdom: The Magic Kingdom was not all it was cracked up to be, the best rides in the park were Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Buzz Lightyear. Splash Mountain was just a wet ride that takes you through the Br'er Rabbit story, before dropping you into a not that big splash. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was a lame roller coaster that had no sharp turns, and was really just circling the whole time you rode it. Buzz Lightyear is an interactive ride that lets you shoot lasers at the minions of Zerg. Magic Kingdom was just OK in comparison to the rest of Disney, because it had the highest concentration of mediocrity, unlike Epcot, with the highest concentration of suck, Hollywood Studios, with the highest concentration of good, and Animal Kingdom, which is somewhere in-between. At least in Epcot, you have Misson Space, Test Track, and Soarin' as gems thrown in among garbage. Magic Kingdom's lack of good to balance the OK may even make it the worst Amusement park in Disney.
To conclude this article, I would like to explain my lack of enthusiasm for the land where all your dreams come true. The truth is, the slogan says it all, but the dreams that come alive at Disney are those of young children who stay up all night listening for Santa Claus, playing spaceman in the backyard, and having tea parties with stuffed hippos. While Disney has branched out a little to older vacationers like myself, it is still geared for younger audiences, it saddens me so say this, but for anyone above the age of 12, the magic is almost over, Disney should be experienced by children the ages of 6-10, when Never Never Land isn't so far away.

Avatar screwed with the movie industry!

Recently, I was thinking fondly of the days when 3D was something a cartoon-movie added on for yucks because they knew the movie was terrible, or just to drag in a few more dollars from the people who actually let the presence of 3D influence their moviegoing experience. 3D was a gimmick, it was something that was always just thrown on a movie to make a sack of dung look like Buckingham Palace, until you step inside and ruin your new shoes.
Then Avatar came out, and now producers think they need 3D to compete, well I need to tell you something. Avatar wasn't even that good, the plot had been done a thousand times before, Avatar might as well have been named "Dances with Blue Aliens." I'm going to admit it, 3D was the only thing that made it good. I saw Avatar with my family without 3D because some family members get a little sick with 3D, and none of us liked it very much, but everyone who saw it with 3D wouldn't shut up about for two months.
Now, because people have associated making more money than The Titanic with 3D, Captain America: First Avenger, and Thor are both going to be in 3D. These are two movies I am very excited for, and Avatar is going to ruin them. If Marvel studios is smart, they will ditch 3D for both movies, and make Captain America more of a war movie to drag in the Modern Warfare nerds, and Thor a norse epic.
In short, Avatar wasn't even that good, and thanks to it, all my favorite movies are going to bomb and end the superhero movie business for a decade. Thanks a lot, James Cameron, Terminator was good, but you should have quit while you had some dignity.

the Fretless Bass reviews: Bad Company: Live In America

The other day in Boston, I saw a Bad Company concert as part of their American tour. This was my first actual ROCK concert, (I've been to Jackson Browne and some piano recitals) and I loved it. Bad Company proved that there is no school like the old school.

They had three of the original band members, and some additional players, and played all the hits. Some of my favorites were when they did, Can't get enough of your love, seagull, simple man, ready for love and, of course, Bad Company.

Bad Co. is really fun in concert, because they are a real performance band, several times in the show, Paul Rogers swung around the mic stand. He also took his shirt off, so from where I was sitting, he looked like Wolverine in Jimmy Page pants.

As with the Stones, Bad Company focuses their music on hard, simple guitar riffs, which make them easy to jam too, you could tell that the band was having fun.

If you get the chance, I highly recommend seeing Bad Company in concert, because on this tour, they record the concert and give you an album of it, before you leave the theater. As I write this I am listening to myself singing "Shooting Star" with the rest of the crowd.

the Fretless Bass reviews: Call of Juarez: Bound In Blood

Western Games are hard to get right, this is the fist one I've bought, but from reviews I've read, I know that only a few good ones have been made. Fortunately, Call of Juarez is in the minority.
Like many good western stories, the tale starts during the civil war. The plot follows three brothers, two playable, gunslinging, badass, fighters, and a priest that is constantly whining. The two brothers you can play as are Ray and Thomas McCall, and the youngest and dumbest is William. In order to rebuild their lives after the war, the three go on a quest to find the legendary gold of Juarez.
My favorite part about Call of Juarez was the weapons, they got it right, not infinite ammo pistoles, but six-shots that took three hours to reload, and this may seem like a bad thing, but you can avoid it very easily by buying better guns. These better guns have acceptable reload speeds and still capture the wild west combat style. Another cool aspect of the combat was the cover system, instead of having to press a button to super glue yourself to a wall, you just ran up beside it, and peaked over/around. It felt very natural, and did not slow you down at all.
One interesting thing that I have taken a neutral standpoint on is the fact that before each level, you can choose to play as Ray or Thomas. Ray can kick down doors, wield two pistoles at once, and throw dynamite. Thomas can use a lasso, clime any object higher than the curb (unlike ray) and can wield knives and a bow. I don't know which one sounds better to you, but I only played as Ray three times in the whole game, twice because the game didn't give me a choice, and once because I couldn't pass one level as Thomas, but every other level was just as easy with Thomas.
One thing I disliked was William, he is the wimpiest brother, and spends the entire game narrating and praying. (sometimes at the same time) William does move the plot along until the end of the game, but before then, he is dead weight on the gameplay, and the plot. He is also a christ analogy, which is the stupidest thing to put in a video game, besides silent protagonists. The one thing I hated about Call of Juarez was how there was no Co-op mode. In every level except for two and a half, you are fighting alongside your brother as a CPU. The game was built for Co-op.
Unfortunately, Call of Juarez is rated M for language, and suggestive themes, so it can't be marketed to anyone below fourteen. Also, the two cool characters have no values beyond family, so they are mean to women, and kill enough people to fill Arlington cemetery twice. I give it 7/10

The Fretless Bass reviews: Inception

The other day, I decided that if I didn't see Inception and find out what the heck the spinning hallway was I would have to be demoted to asking my friends what it was about, and neither one of them gets out very much.
So I saw it, and it blew my mind! (no pun intended)
The movie follows Dominick Cobb, a man with a really strange talent, preforming corporate espionage by putting a subject to sleep, entering his dream, and stealing his secrets while inside. Usually, he and his team steal people's ideas, but in exchange for a chance to go back to America (where he is wanted) to see his kids again, Cobb agrees to preform inception, which is to give someone an idea without them knowing you gave it to them, a process that has been called impossible.
The thing about dreams is, during them, you can do anything, but you find out in this movie that if you mess with dream physics too much, the subject's subconscious projections will kill you. When I found out about that, I said, "What the heck? What's the point of going into a dream if you can't create images of your jerk classmates and have them stand in their underwear in front of congress?" or in this case, create a gun big enough to blow up all of your problems. That was my only problem with the premise, but besides that, I really liked the idea of dream sharing.
Cobb's internal conflict (Internal conflict always drives the plot) is the guilt over his dead wife, and the really cool thing is that in the dream wold, the character's internal conflicts become projections in the dream world, so Cobb's internal conflict becomes a physical entity, in the form of his dead wife screwing up all his missions in the dream world.
My favorite part of the movie was when due to inner ear function in the dream world, a hallway started spinning around while two guys were fighting in it, and it made some fight-scene history! This fight scene is better than the one in Spider-man 2 when they were on the train!
My final review of Inception, this is the best movie of the summer so far, and you should see it twice if you want to fully grasp it in all it's glory. 8/10.