Stuff...

SO I’m almost done my Chemistry Course. Finally. Just about 5 more days of work, and then I’m done. Three days of reading, one of review, and then the final chapter test and I’m free.

So I suppose I should finally say this, but I think, though it has taken me nearly 12 months to do so, that I finally understand Chemistry. It only took me the entire year, but now I get it. I’m not sure what happened, but these last few weeks everything has just well… clicked and I’ve been able to absorb the information at a good rate and understand it all. I don’t like Chemistry, and I still want to avoid all forms of Science while I’m in college (Sorry Brian) but I understand how it works and I have been able to enjoy a few different bits.

Also… I’ve been playing Moo Moo Town the last few days and yesterday I beat the game. Yes, I beat it by mself. Sure it was on the easiest mode and in the end I got an item that granted me unlimited reincarnations (it only took me like 20 minutes of hitting this guy with something like 99% DR) but I did win the game.

On the other hand, I don’t think I’m going to be able to play Moo Moo again for a few days. I spend over 2 hours beating that map and it got REALLY boring by the end.

What is Moo Moo? Well, in short it’s a Warcraft III Custom Map (that is, a mini-game that uses Warcraft III’s powerful map editor to make a different game inside of Warcraft) where up to 6 players face several waves of monsters that attack “Moo Moo” a big giant Minotaur in the center of the map. Each player controls one “hero” and uses gold gained by killing the enemy units to build items that buff your hero. It’s a fun game, even if it takes FOREVER to beat.

Oh, and with the end of my Chemistry will come the beginning of my College Applications. I’ll tell you how those go later, that is, once I’ve actually started them.

Sims 3

So… Sims 3. Been playing it for quite some time now… maybe like 15-20 hours.

In short, it’s a good game. EA may be the Nazis of video games, but they have managed to, once again, make a solid Sims release. One that is sure to have dozens of “extras” like all the others.

Anyways… so, how to begin?

I’d say that the first thing about the Sims is that each one had a specific outlook, goal or whatever you want to call it. The first Sims was just the basics. You have a family, they get jobs, go to work, meet people, fall in love, etc. The 2nd Sims had all sorts of family tree stuff plus extra relationships, new graphics, and the community lot feature added on from the beginning. The Sims 3 improves upon all these features and adds more. Jobs have been tweaked, as have relationships and the various services (fyi maids are now overpriced. In the others they were far too cheap).

But the biggest change is how the neighborhood works now. In all the old Sims when your sim(s) went to a community lot time on your house lot froze until you came back. This had some advantages, of course. You could go out and play video games at the arcade and get home three hours later all prepped for work, for instance. However, it also had the annoying effect of spending two hours shopping only to come home tired and come to work. In general, it was annoying and I didn’t really like the system.

Not so in the new Sims game. Now, the entire community can streamlessly be visited. Sims can drive (yes, you get your own cars without any expacks) to the park while their children stay home and do homework with the babysitter. Or they can visit friends at their houses, or they can see a movie, or they can search for bugs, or go fishing. You get the point.

On the downside, you can no longer play multiple families in the same neighborhood. At least, after 20ish hours of playing the game I haven’t figured out how to… IMO this is a (sole) step backwards. Part of the fun of the Sims was creating your own neighborhood (you can’t do this either; you’re stuck with one neighborhood, two if you download the extra one) and then filling it with your own sims and giving the neighborhood its own story. Now, you can do that to a degree, and the seamless neighborhood makes visiting and meeting people easier, but its not the same in my opinion.

There are a lot of other little features that I could mention about the sims, but honestly, those are the two things that struck me the most. All I can say is that I think the Sims 3 is better than the previous two releases. That being said, unless you’re a die-hard fan of the game I would encourage you to wait until EA releases some tasty expacks and the original game’s price goes down form $50 to like…. Well $30 or something.

Oh, and on another note, if you buy a pirated version the game will tell you that its pirated. It won’t stop you from playing, but it will ask you to buy a real version.

CoD 5: World At War

So yesterday I played CoD 5. I played and won CoD 5. Let’s have a moment of silence to realize that this means that it took me like 8 hours to win a game that, should I have bought it retail, would have cost me perhaps $40 dollars (I don’t know what the price is, I borrowed it from a friend).

$40 for that?! No. Just no. I realize that it has multiplayer, but I would never have bought it for multiplayer considering I have CoD 4, which is better. It makes no sense. The game isn’t worth that price.

Anyways… the game itself. First thing I noticed is that Treyarch did attempt to make it a “different” WWII shooter. Instead of the typical Stalingrad/North Africa/Normandy campaign game it had a Battle of Berlin/Pacific Theater Campaign. Both were fun and I enjoyed them. As usual, my favorite campaign was the Soviet Battle of Berlin Campaign. Why? I think it has something to do with me really enjoying running through ruined buildings and killing people. Its fun. Though I didn’t like the Story line that much. It was really… brutal and sad, because the soldiers in question fought for a horribly abusive regime and the sole motivation of your CO was revenge. A boring, horrible motive if there ever was one. I much preferred CoD 2’s story of defending Stalingrad (your homeland!) from the evil Nazis. I felt sorry for the Nazis because at that point they were fighting for a lost cause and they were going to die and have to rebuild their nation, which was in ruins. Russia one the other hand, came out of the war as a Super Power.

CoD 5 added a lot of new “features” to the game. Rifle Grenades, Bayonets, Flamethrowers, Molotovs and possibly another thing I’m forgetting. All of these features were nice, but they weren’t needed. The flamethrower was fun, but… meh. It got boring after the first time I used it. I much preferred using a submachine gun or repeating rifle.

Everything else, the bayonets for instance, were really gimmicky. They didn’t, as far as I could tell, add ANYTHING since you already had a melee attack. If it was better I missed it. I only used Rifle Grenades once.

By far the coolest level was this level where I was the gunner in an airplane shooting Japanese fighters and ships. It was really, really fun. I mean amazingly fun. Good enough to make an entire game about you being the gunner for a airplane. Shame it was so short and easy.

One more thing: none of the characters were memorable. I remember in CoD 2 how memorable the characters were. How I loved McGreggor and Price. Both of them were amazing. I want more of those two guys. CoD 5 didn’t have anyone like them.

I’m installing Sims 3 now, btw. I’ll tell you how it goes later.

SHOUT 2009: Return of the Light

So last night was SHOUT 2009: Return of the Light.

Shout is a worship concert our Church organized, well I really should say our Church Youth (4him) and the Worship team organized. In simple terms the concert was well… AMAZING.

So we had three “bands” performing. Two of which were our Church Worship team, and one was a special team from Thailand called the Leviticans. The Leviticans is a worship team that my friend Caleb plays Bass for, he managed to get his band to come and play for us, which rocked.

So… basically, there were a TON of people. I thought there would be more but I think that we had just about the right number of people. A lot of (boring, or too old to be jumping, or they couldn’t take the noise) people did sit in the back but the (standing/jumping/dancing) crowd in the front did a very good job of jumping about and having lots of fun.

The first band didn’t sound that good and they probably had a good number of reasons why. First off, the power went off and we went to generator, which probably messed up the speakers a good bit. Second off I heard that the monitors went off and that probably messed everyone up. Still, the bass and the drums sounded great for most of the performance.

The second band was the Leviticans, and they were AMAZING. Everyone else had vocal issues (because the mics weren’t loud enough) but Chris (their vocalist) has a very loud voice and he managed to sound pretty good throughout his performance. The band was also very good. I heard them play one song on Friday and I wasn’t too impressed with their drummer (who didn’t seem to build up properly) but he was amazing during the concert. Their lead guitarist did an amazing job IMO and had a pretty cool solo (as always, I love guitar soloing, shame he only had one). The crowd was really wild during their entire performance. We had a train going through, some people (like me :D) were headbanging and EVERYONE was jumping up and do during the choruses, if not the entire performance. I think the best song was their ending song (because the “encore”) “Solution” which was AMAZING.

Last performance was also not that bad. Max did vocals and he has a nice voice. His only problem is he needs to learn to control it more and not sing off his throat. He’s getting better, but by the last song (Paint this Town Red???? Chorus was “we’re gonna paint this town red with the Blood of Jesus) his voice sounded pretty… well screechy and bad. The crowd didn’t have that much energy by that last performance because well… we were all really tired! Still, we had a train and during the last song, “One Way” any energy the crowd had left was used up.

I had an amazing time there. I think the entire thing was a testament to how good God is. It took us three years to organize the event and a lot of things went wrong, both during and before the concert, still, the entire thing went off well. All the bands played as good as they could and besides the first band, which sounded pretty band, everyone did great.

All I can really say is I can’t wait for SHOUT 2010! And that hopefully it will happen before I leave! :D

Also personally, I think with this concert each year should be bigger. First time it was kinda just thrown together by a few key people. We had like 4 bands and it lasted FOREVER. To me I remember it feeling more like a somewhat louder worship session than a proper concert.

However, it took us three years to organize a second one. I think our major problem this time was money, because we had to pay for our speakers and our budge was actually really small. However, we did get everything together and managed to get all the money we needed, which was awesome.

I think our next goal for SHOUT should be to rent a Hall or proper place where the concert can take place so that we can have better acoustics, because, no matter how you work it, our church has just plain bad acoustics. Eventually I do think it would be great if a big band from the US like Switchfoot, Kutless or Leeland (actually it would be EPIC if Leeland could come and give us a proper full on concert!) could come and give us a performance. Matt mentioned it would be weird our church band performing with them but I think, if our Church band could open for them that would work perfectly. That and actually I think our church has some very talented performers. They might not be as technically proficient or as good song-writers, but they have the anointing of God to worship and that’s all they need!

And… I’m rambling. Chemistry beckons… I’ll write more later.

GBA games

Recently I’ve been replaying some GBA games that I never won on a GBA emulator I got from Jacob. The two games in question are Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, both of which are very highly recommended Japanese RPGs.

Final Fantasy is fun, though its gotten somewhat boring now. The battles are all very similar and after a time training your characters gets a bit boring. Still, I’ve played the game so many times… and its quite fun so I did enjoy it for the week or so I played it.

Now I’m playing Fire Emblem, which just so happens to be one of my favorite Japanese RPGs of all time. I’ve played three games in the series and all of them are amazing. These games all work as turn-based RPGs where you lead a small band of warriors through various maps fighting lots of other games. The amazing thing about these games is a very simple, very logical game feature: if a unit dies he is DEAD. As in, no resueraction, no KOs; dead is dead. If that sounds harsh, then you’re right: it is a harsh rule that makes you actually care for your units.

On top of this you’ll often find yourself with rather weak units, but units that you NEED to use to make them strong so you can have strong units later on. This means you’ll have to put them on the front line, but in such a way that they don’t die.

Add to the fact that you have weapon triangles, magic triangles, special weapons that destroy other weapons, and most of the games don’t allow you to save in the middle of battles (well… they do, but once you access the save it deletes itself), it all makes for a very challenging tactical experience.

Anyways… so I’m gonna probably play a level now… see if I can finish it this time without losing my thief.

NOTAE BENE: I say Japanese RPG several times. What I mean by this is that I find most Japanese RPGs are rather different from their western counterparts, such as that they should be in a different subgenre of RPGs. If you want more information on RPGs you should wiki it or something.

I wish I was good at titles...

Before you read any further, read the following article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8113778.stm

Now that you’ve read that, I’m going to comment.

What’s my initial reaction? They’re still missing the point. Quote from the article:

“[Nicholas Sarkozy] expressed his strong distaste for the head-to-toe Islamic veil, calling it not a sign of religion but a sign of subservience.”

Sadly, this “head-to-toe Islamic veil”, goes hand-in-hand with much of Islamic doctrine and teaching. Yes, it is a sign of subservience. Yes, it is in fact a sign of subservience that the Koran and many Muslims want. I don’t see the Burka as anything other than one of the many methods Satan has invented to oppress the crowning jewel of God’s creation.

That being said, the fact of the matter is that the Burka goes hand-in-hand with much of Islam, and you cannot force someone to without the Burka without infringing on their freedom of religion. It’s like asking some of my friends to wear a Bikini while swimming or that Amish can’t wear their Colonial Era clothing, doing so would go against their beliefs and I don’t think anyone would dare to force them to do so.

This article, to me, shows how people have failed to realize that religions are not just beliefs and religious acts; they are living, breathing things that infect people at every level. When someone adheres to a brand of Islam (I say brand because there are various sects and groups, like there are in Christianity) they agree with beliefs of that sect, and should act upon those beliefs. The belief that one should pray five times a day means that if you truly believe that you WILL pray five times a day. The belief that women should wear a Burka means that you will do your best to make your female relatives and the women around you wear Burkas. Both of these things stem from Islam and to forbid either is a breach of Freedom of Religion.

Despite all this: that much of Islam and many other religions have creeds and laws that go directly against what God teaches in the Bible, as far as I can tell, Freedom of Religion remains a powerful and important right. The United States’ Constitution has Freedom of Religion in it and I belief that this right remains one of mankind’s most important rights. However, I struggle with the fact that I see much injustice in the religions around me. What some people have done in the name of their religion (and atheism counts as a religion, by the way) disturbs me in ways beyond belief. So the question I pose, constantly is this: Where do we draw the line? When do we say, “live and let live?” and “No! You can’t do that!”? How to we respect one’s religion when we know that doing so means accepting, to quote Monty Python, the violence (or injustice) inherent in the system?

Summer Update

So its summer... I've been on holiday for a couple weeks now. I have some school in the morning but its only a little bit of work. I took the SAT and I'll get my grades for that and the rest of my grades for all my classes should have come in by now. I'm generally pretty pleased. An A in English and Math (my two best subjects... don't ask how, but I do good in Algebra. I'm also very good in English. :))

Major updates in the past few days:

I played most of HL2. I might finish it again, I might not. It's an awesome game with a lot of fun parts. I loved, loved, loved escaping from City 17 in my little airspeeder boat thing. VERY fun. Valve really did an amazing job with this game.

I played enough of Half Life (the original) to understand why it was such a good game. Its not your typical FPS in the sense that you shoot everything that moves with really cool guns (read: Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty) but it instead focuses on figuring out puzzles. You do fight monsters and bad-guys but they are not at all the focus of the game. This of course makes it rather different from Half Life 2. Still it seems to be an amazing game in its own right.

Also, IceFrog released the latest version of DotA (6.60) a few days back. I played with it for a few hours on Friday and wow... its a big upgrade. First off, a bunch of changes to heroes in some minor things like stat changes which I never pay attention to (I'm not good enough or concerned enough to notice an extra 1 str to my favorite hero or whatever). Then there were the bug fixes and the new heroes. There are now two new heroes: Tauren Chieftain and Troll Batrider. Both look cool, Tauren, as a Str. Hero sounds fun.

Most important though were three things: they rebuilt razor, and changed the organization of both the Heroes and the items. Razor is now very different with some weird spells that seem pretty cool. I personally loved razor as his old self: boring, simple and very deadly. Still, he seems to be slightly better and perhaps less boring and more balanced. That's always a good thing.

The tavern and item redesign? At first, everyone hated it, but I instantly saw the reasoning to the new organization and realized exactly why IceFrog did it. After reading the changelog my reasoning was confirmed. He reorganized everything to make it newb-friendly. Now the defensive items are together. The orbs are together. The early game items are together. It makes sense instead of having a bunch of random items in the new item shop and then everythign else sorta placed willie nillie. Also he added the talisman of evasion. I need to check if this thing stacks (I assume it won't) but 25% evasion sounds... amazing. Really, really amazing. Expensive, yes, but still amazing.

hmm... Oh, I got an new album: Twilight of the Thunder God by Amon Amarth. The band is a swedish Melodic Death Metal (read: Death Metal but with more melody and generally less crazy/heavy stuff). Its the first time I've listened to an album with nothing but "extreme" vocals (in this case the semi-understanable growls of whoever their vocalist is) without pause. This of course means I LOVE the album.

The band itself is a Swedish band (IIRC) that gets lyrical inspiration from Vikings and Norse mythology. So stuff like Thor, Ragnorok, etc are common themes in their music. Their name is a mountain in Mordor from LOTR. The music is all very good. Just enough melody to keep me interested and very good stuff in general.

Played a good bit of Far Cry 2. I'm now pretty good at it, though the repetative quests got pretty boring. I might finish it, but I'm not too interested in it anymore. I will say this is the first game where I've used a sniper rifle a lot though. That is no mean feat since I generally prefer shotguns and SMGs (close range action FTW). Still, this is a game that seems to reward stealth range and avoiding enemies (or engaging them from a distance) so the sniper seemed to fit.