Haven't posted in a while, been more about making the files than I have been about making the words, but hey people would rather that anyway I suppose. At any rate, here we go again.

This is a bit for those of you in my area, or any other area of Texas that surrounds the Grapevine area, for it involves a location that was probably good at one time or another and now fails pretty hard. GameWorks. Now, I don't go to places thinking, "Hey, I'm gonna have problems with everyone here and everything about this establishment." But things happen at certain places that seem, they appear to desire that outcome from their customers, and what makes this absolutely baffling is that somehow even during this they still attract regular customers.

The story starts out like this, I was engaged to this girl, we are both big anime fans, and even moreso right about the time that DDR Extreme showed up there the "anime crowd" who had a habit of hitting the anime conventions would show up for lady's night or some shiz. Back then, the problem was that the screen on DDR Extreme was very messed up. Sometime soon thereafter, the screen only had a huge tint problem that saturated the entire screen in a yellow overlay (more or less). During this time the pads were incredibly unreliable - "now they work, now they don't" kind of thing. Afterwards the pads were reliable if you expected broken, strangely it was claimed that they did maintenance on the machine regularly, and yet it was always the same buttons, the same problems, and the same level of insensitivity. If this was caused by the same regular who committed the same abuse on the machine all the time, who knows, but it made it look like there really was no attempt to fix it even after numerous complaints were made. Once the pads were overall pretty decent again (keep in mind these are all different days and different events spread pretty far apart), we had maybe an hour or two before another problem surfaced which has yet to this date happened exclusively at GameWorks... the right button - left pad, and up button - right pad, would inexplicably stick. In other words, would stay activated when pressed, I guess that is convenient for hold notes, however it is incredibly inconvenient when having to hit another step altogether. This time, enough of us made a fuss that the manager, who I used to know as an employee there (a friend of mine), made certain to send a tech over to fix it. This is where things are just amazing... the guy heads over there, turns the machine off, calls another tech for assistance, opens the individual buttons (apparently a two man job, should've only openned the button that was having problems), then the two men LEAVE and don't return for a good twenty minutes. After the twenty minute absence the two finally return, one with a soda, and the other one with a Honey Bun, who then proceeded to eat this very sticky, messy, crumbly food directly over the open pad which was reported to have problems with sticking. That was it, I was fed up, I got my manager buddy to refund the money that I'd spent there that night and left. I was invited again recently by my good friend Stephen, who lives in that area and had a Saturday of free time, and we (thankfully) went to a movie instead. Fact is that I'm sort of sick of DDR, I'm not very good at score attacks any more, I'm out of shape, and I'm a hell of a lot more of a mod player now, so what good would DDR be?

Next story, Mass Effect, I was randomly exposed to this game maybe about a month ago now, and it has infected me. I didn't really expect much out of it because of all the pre-release hype that tends to drum up games that end up sucking horribly on top of the "sex scene" gimmick that seemed to follow very closely. But I've never had more fun saying that I was wrong, the game is addictive, it's style of play is very fresh and entertaining, the scenes are done well, it is graphically beautiful (I'm not saying that the graphics are high res, though they are, I'm talking more about the art of the graphics)... overall it is an amazing game. Though I won't be quoted saying that this game has no problems, there is of course the futuristic elevators that seem to move at a rate of 1/20 the speed current elevators do, one can certainly understand these feelings. But what's more is the conversation system, which at first seems extremely vast, until you learn a few things about it. Basically, on any conversation you'll have a maximum of six choices, on things that involve furthering the plot in the game and your actions during you'll have three choices involving positive and negative responses on the right. They will be top - positive, middle - usually neutral (can be a bad thing to be neutral), and bottom - negative. This is not always true, but I've never run into a top right option that was shitty, seriously. This system is a little too consistent on top of, from time to time, you'll die and go through a conversation again, sometimes noting that several response choices actually produce the same thing. Even moreso, there are some choices that, when read, give a completely different idea than what happens when they are selected. But it becomes outright ludicrous when you involve the Charm and Intimidate skills. These skills add properties to your character which can be vastly helpful, in Charm you gain an ability (forgot its name) that gives you discounts on sales prices, whereas in Intimidate you get an ability (I believe it is called Motivated Buyer) which increases the resale value of your items, these are in addition to opening up additional conversation choices when responding to certain situations. You'll recognize these selections as Charm related conversation is highlighted in a pale cyan (blue) and Intimidate red. Intimidate pretty much means "be a prick," so it involves a high amount of Rebelion, and possibly the elimination of useful characters. Charm on the other hand is an invaluable tool if you want things to go your way, it can help you obtain more equipment and complete missions that are otherwise nearly impossible (or completely impossible, seemed like it). But it gives a silly level of unrealistic reactions between characters, when using Charm, you can almost convince anyone of anything. Charm can make hardened criminals give you things they stole and end their life of crime, it can make people who hate you suddenly trust you, it can make a very angry Krogan agree that the cure for his species against a horrible genophage should not be saved. Want to make someone who is under the control of the enemy kill themselves rather than obey their master, or make someone fight against mind control at the expense of insane amounts of pain for you and you alone? Select the text in blue, it is magical.

Third selection of insanity is a request I recieved recently from "Penguin" asking if I would chart a song for him. After hearing the song I decided that it had potential and planned on stepping it myself, I was even foolish enough to announce it, but then when it came right down to it I couldn't focus on it. The song has potential but it isn't my style, so I passed it to Aldrasio who tends to work with that kind of music, and okayed the transfer of the request with Penguin. There aren't any bad feelings and there've been no consequences about it, I just feel bad having announced that I was going to do it before I had really started any work on it, what's even more is that I had never announced a sim before, it was sort of dumb. That won't be happening again.

Well, I've been rambling on for long enough, I guess it was making up for having not said anything for awhile. For those who are still harassing me to make a forum, I doubt any of you harassers would actually join it after it is made, but I decided that I would make one once I find three or four people who I trust and are reliable to be admins. That is the final word.

See you on the other side.