Cloudy With a Chance of Gaming -- 3/6/2011

by jjweatherman

99.9% of this blog has nothing to do with Lost Since last week's blog was a day late, my plan was for this one to be a day early. It's not going to technically make it until the early hours of Sunday, but that's good enough. Here I sit, softly sipping my scrumptious orange cream Sobe, ready to tell all of you about the things that interest me. Against all odds, I made it to yet another Blazer g...

99.9% of this blog has nothing to do with Lost

Since last week's blog was a day late, my plan was for this one to be a day early. It's not going to technically make it until the early hours of Sunday, but that's good enough. Here I sit, softly sipping my scrumptious orange cream Sobe, ready to tell all of you about the things that interest me. Against all odds, I made it to yet another Blazer game this week. I also decided to brainstorm some songs that remind me of video games. Oh and hey, GDC stuff! Off we go.

Joel Przy-bill-a! clap, clap, clapclapclap

I just got home from my second Blazer game of the season. That’s the Portland Trail Blazers, the NBA team, for all of you busters. Just kidding; I love you all.

This time was much different than any other time I’ve been to a game though. My grandma knows some people that know some people that rob some people, so we got to sit in an executive suite that we were told belongs to the owner of the team, Paul Allen. Yes, Paul Allen of Microsoft fame owns the Blazers. Anyway, we were served hotdogs, two different types of pizza, cookies, drinks, all kinds of things. The seats were made of squishy leather and the view of the court was a great one. Despite the view, every seat had binoculars underneath for a better view when needed. The suite was complete with a kitchen, lots of walking-around space, and even its own bathroom. It was great experiencing that since it may never happen again.

As for the game itself, well, it was alright. We won, so there’s that. It just seemed incredibly slow throughout. Struggling to score 15 points in the first quarter doesn’t exactly make for the most entertaining basketball. By the final horn though, the Blazers scored 93, which is almost enough to net everyone a coupon for free chalupas at Taco Bell. Almost. If you'd like to witness my lackluster phone camera for yourself, then here's the starting lineups in a fraction of their glory:

Joel, the Thrilla, the Vanilla Gorilla, says: Get off me, Shaq! I’m really glad I was able to be in the arena for this game in particular, though. It was the return of beloved former Blazer, Joel Przybilla. He was traded away just a week or so ago and he was, at the time, the longest-tenured Blazer on the team. We all love him, and we showed it tonight. Despite Joel sporting a Bobcats uniform this night, the entire Rose Garden arena gave him a standing ovation as he stepped onto the court for the first time mid-game. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a standing ovation for an opposing player before; I’ll probably never see it again. As Joel made freethrows everyone cheered as well. Not only all of that, a large amount of people actually started chanting “Joel Pryz-bill-a! *clap, clap, clapclapclap*” It was pretty great to see that in person. We all miss you, Joel!

Oh and I forgot to mention last week, during the last game I went to, some dude won a truck. It was one of those “hit a shot from half-court” things, and he totally hit the shot and won a truck. It was crazy too; he just threw it up left-handed, overhand, one try. It swooshed right through and everyone went CRAZY. That guy’s one lucky fool. I’d bet Nissan is hesitant to run that promotion again. They lost $30,000 in about 4 seconds. Nothing of note during the Bobcat’s game’s halftime. Some dudes just jumped off of trampolines and dunked. Pretty standard.

GDC 2011 happened

Easily the funniest picture of the GDC logo that I could find on Google You know what's been annoying me recently? When people say "that was a thing", or "so that happened". Naturally, Navarro is annoying me. No, that's not true; it's just everyone else that says it. Probably because it reminds me of Navarro and then I just freak out. I think I do it sometimes too, though. That makes me a hypocrite. Not that any of this matters, because GDC happened! It's a thing... that happened! I have to be honest, I'm not exactly sure what that means. I think GDC is just when a bunch of developers give talks and meet up with each other. Apparently they give interviews to press as well, as there have been a couple here on GB. I often don't go anywhere else for my gaming news, so all I have to talk about here is whatever has shown up on The Bomb.

First order of business being Swery. That guy is fantastic. The bombcrew got to talk to him, and if you haven't seen that conversation yet, do check it out. That's probably the single best interview on this site, and they've done a lot of 'em. Remember that one with the guy in his bath robe? Yeah, this is somehow better. I love Swery's visibly crazy personality. He's just as nuts as you'd expect the creator of Deadly Premonition to be.

The Scribblenauts guys are making a 3rd person cover-based shooter? You don't say. You can see the video here. The game's called "Hybrid" and it looks funky. No direct control over characters just seems like a baaaad idea to me. You target cover and select to move or retreat back, but that allows no precise movement. It's going to frustrate a lot of players and ultimately end up a failure. Mark my words right here and now. It's a neat concept, but I just can't imagine it working well enough to be successful. I think they should stick to puzzle games, personally.

Then there was the Socom 4 interview that Jeff did. He mentions in the video how the PS2 Socom games were some of the first console games to do online multiplayer right. I totally agree. I have some great memories of hooking up that giant network adapter to the back of my PS2 and jumping online. It was Socom and some old NBA game that I would play non-stop in online multiplayer matches. That stuff was great. Anyway, I think Socom 4 has A LOT of potential. Seriously, it could be freakin' incredible. I still don't own a PS3 though, so there's that. If anyone wants to donate to my "I need a PS3" fund, then by all means. =P

Last thing I'll mention is a talk that Cliff Bleszinski gave. He talks about a bunch of interesting things, and even name-drops Jeff about 19 minutes in. Props go to peligroy2k for posting the video to the forums. I recommend watching it.

Do certain songs remind you of specific video games?

For me, the answer is a definite yes. there are certain songs that just flash me back to the good ole days of *insert game here*. I think most of these mental ties came about due to the custom soundtrack feature in the original Xbox. A truly great and innovative feature back in the day.

I was much more into hip-hop when I was a young-un, so I have a lot of ties between video games and random hip-hop tracks. The first I remembered being "My Place" by Nelly, from his Sweatsuit album. I was listening to that song the other day and was instantly reminded of playing the NBA 2K games in the old 24/7 mode. This was a mode that basically acted as a story mode. You created a baller and took him around the country and played with and against NBA players in pickup games. It was a pretty dumb mode in retrospect, but it was the only story-type game mode in the 2K series at the time. It was easy to just put songs on in this mode and play some ball. I also have memories of a couple Lloyd Banks songs while playing 24/7 mode. That's Lloyd Banks of 50 Cent: Blood On the Sand, folks. Gangsta.

So when I was coming up with more, the next thing I thought of was listening to Fabolous' "Street Dreams" album while playing GTA 3 and Vice City. Darn those custom soundtracks, they deprived me of listening to Vice City's soundtrack more. I'm pretty sure I listened to Street Dreams more in GTA 3, though. I remember it was my friend's album that I copied onto my Xbox HDD, and I just listened to that while running dudes over in the Red Light District.

This right here kids. This is what winning looks like. Charlie Sheen knows what I'm talkin' about. There's one--and only one--song that will forever be tied to competitive online in NBA 2K games. I think it was NBA 2K6 specifically that my friend would sleep over at my house and play. He'd play online in ranked matches, and honestly he'd beat almost everyone. The one common denominator between the wins was that he always listened to "Roll Call" by Lil' Jon while he played. He'd just have that on loop the entire game. For those that don't know, it's an extremely explicit song (seriously NSFW), so maybe that was the trick. It's just funny to me that a song like that can just instantly remind me of a perfectly innocent sports video game.

The last one I came up with was "Green Grass and High Tides" by The Outlaws. I think that song will probably always remind me of the original Rock Band. It was the only song that took me many many attempts to beat, and it's ingrained in my mind as the Rock Band song at this point. Not that it's even my favorite song of the setlist--I think Cherub Rock may get that honor--but it was just so... epic? Pardon me for that. On the topic of rhythm games, Through the Fire and Flames probably will always remind me of Guitar Hero 3 as well. Although I'd say the chances of me ever hearing TtFaF again in my life is much lower than GGaHT. At least I'd hope so.

I'd like to know about any songs that you guys have mentally tied to a video game. I have quite a few, so I assume other people have some as well. Oh and of course it probably should be a song that's not an original composition. Everyone knows that the Bolero of Fire reminds you of Ocarina of Time. =P

I'll see you in another life, brotha

That was it. That was all that my first section title was referring to. Aren't you disappointed now? I hope you're not too disappointed to come back and read this next Sunday. Before I go though, someone on YouTube totally wrote a song about me:

I was legitimately really freaked out when I saw that video pop up in the related videos panel. I really thought some creeper made a video about me for a second. =P

<3
--JJWeatherman