Hello everyone. It has been a while since I've posted a blog. I just became a mod yesterday, and am having fun with it. It feels good to contribute to the community and feel like you are making it better.

I saw Where The Wild Things Are this weekend. I thought the movie was great in some ways and lackluster in others. The movie really succeeded in making you feel like a kid again, but not in the joyful way that, say, a Pixar movie might. This movie made me cry more than once.(laugh all you want jerks.) It dredged up a lot of memories about how sad my childhood was, and how alone and out of control a lot of us felt growing up. I used to run away and hide too. At first I didn't care for how 'normal' the monsters where in the movie until I slowed down enough to think that these monsters were representing people in Max's life that scared him. On an emotional level, and a visual level, this movie was a great success. It is gorgeous to look at, and it makes you feel a lot of raw emotions about your childhood. The story structure is pretty busted though. The movie almost feels too short, and things don't really get resolved, but I that kinda describes my childhood too.

My brother and I are off to see Paranormal Activity tonight. This movie was made for around $15,000 dollars and is supposed to be absolutely terrifying. I've been really curious to see it, and it is finally showing in my town.

What is going on with you folks?

I had a pretty solid weekend. I beat Arkham Asylum and have been fiddling around trying to find the Riddler Challenges left in the game. I absolutely loved this game. I'll probably do up a review for it later in the week... suffice to say it was a dream come true.

On Saturday I bought a couch from St. Vincent's for $7.50. It is rad. Totally rad. I also went and saw the new movie from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli called Ponyo. It was gorgeous. Easily up there with some of my favorite Miyazaki movies.

It also has the most obnoxious song ever that plays with the end credits. I can still hear it in my head and it might drive me a little insane.

On Sunday I went and played some frisbee golf with a buddy and then went to check out Boise's first annual Curb Cup. Curb Cup was this thing where a bunch of random musicians, magicians and street performers all came out and took over downtown boise. It was sort of like a Battle of the Bands type event where every person who came voted for who they thought the best performer was. There was a wide variety of strangeness, with pockets of good stuff here and there. Here are some pictures...

There was a dude that I won't show too much of that was wearing a medusa hat and not much else playing a guitar.

There was a robot magician.

There were these weird bastards... I'm not really sure what they were doing...

There was a luchadore playing the drums!

This is the cutest girl musician I've seen in a long time.

The highlight of the whole thing would definitely be my friend Erin's RedLight Variety Show... they put on burlesque shows every once in a while that are a lot of fun.

I had a pretty great weekend.

How goes it? What have you people been up to this Summer? I haven't blogged about anything in a while, so I thought I'd post an update. I've been playing a lot of frisbee golf lately, and not a lot of games. We always play down at the big park in town, Anne Morrison Park, and while it is a great place to play, it has some issues. Mainly, the entire west side of the park is covered in goose ****, and there are a lot of water hazards, so any time your throw lands in the water, you end up wading into the goose crap infested stankwater...

Here is my friend Jason after rescuing his frisbee from the muck:

Here's me being chivalrous and getting my friend Heather's frisbee out:

Oh... and for the lulz, here is a great picture of Jason and I:

Outside of frisbee golf I'm looking forward to taking a camping trip down to the City of Rocks this weekend. I plan on getting drunk and falling off a cliff. At least the site of my death will be beautiful:

I can't wait! It is going to be nice to get away for a while.

In other awesome news, my brother and I are moving to a new place at the end of the month. It is an 1800 square foot monster of a place, which means I will be able to finally have room for my ping pong table. Here are some pics...

The view from the front door:

The room where the ping pong table will be:

It has a huge back porch area as well as a two car garage:

I'm getting a new roommate to go with the new place as well, my friend Loren is coming to live with us. He is a rad dude:

Life is going well. Some of you might have known that I broke up with my girlfriend a while back. She was going to move to Korea, but now she isn't, and we are talking more often lately. Who knows what will come of that, but I'm happy that she is back in my life. What are you guys doing with your summer?

Over the past few months I've had the pleasure of playing Demon's Souls. I've beaten it twice, and have loaned it to a friend. This is a hard game for me to review. There are some flaws in the game that will be major annoyances to some people, and there is the game's crushing difficulty that will turn off others. The score I attach to this game is reflective of my own experience with the game. This is not a game for everyone. First and foremost, Demon's Souls is a game that requires you to put in a lot of effort. You get out of it what you put into it. Every thing you accomplish in this game will be something you fought hard for, and that is why I love it. There is a sense of accomplishment provided by this game that is matched by few others.

Before I talk about what the game is, I'll talk about what it isn't. When the first screen shots showed up for the game, several people around the internet were billing Demon's Souls as an Oblivion styIe game with Japanese art direction. As appealing as that description is, it doesn't describe Demon's Souls. This isn't a sandbox styIe RPG in the vein of the Elder Scrolls games, and in the end, there isn't anything about the game that is comparable to JRPG design either. The bosses are gigantic, and the character designs are fantastic, but they don't seem to be at all similar to what you see in most Japanese games.

Demon's Souls is, at its heart, a pure action RPG. There isn't much of a story in Demon's Souls, and for the most part you will either experience the game by yourself, or with the help of other players that you can summon into your game. There is no voice chat with your co-op partner, which may be seen as an annoyance by some people, but for me it only served to preserve the game's sense of isolation. There are some NPCs that you will run into in the game as you explore new areas, but most of your NPC interactions will be done in the game's hub world, The Nexus. The Nexus is a place that traps your soul at the beginning of the game. Within it are 5 archstones that serve as portals to varied regions in the Kingdom of Boletaria. Each area has unique enemies, huge bosses and incredible level design. Whether you are exploring the crumbling walls of Boletaria Palace, the depths of the Stonefang Mines, the Shrine of Storms, or either of the other fantastic levels in the game, you will always be up against a challenge, and you will continue to run into new enemy types and be forced to develop new strategies for dealing with them.

This game is difficult, but not cheap. There is no pause button, and the game does not let you manually save.(although it autosaves very frequently) Fighting enemies and killing bosses earns you soul points that are simultaneously the currency of Demon's Souls, and the experience points. Buying an item with souls can be a hard choice when you know that you can also use the same souls to level up. When you die in the game, you lose your souls. You must make it back to the spot where you lost them without dying in order to regain your lost souls. This can make for some tense moments. The other thing about dying is that you lose your body, and you awaken at the start of the level in Soul Form. This means that your health bar is cut in half, and it is easier for you to be killed while in Soul Form.

There are four ways to regain your physical form in Demon's Souls. The most common ways are to either beat a boss demon, or use one of the rare Stone of Ephemeral Eyes items that will resurrect you. The more interesting ways to regain your physical form are to either let yourself be summoned into someone else's game to help them beat a boss, or to invade their game as a Black Phantom in hopes of killing them. Playing the game in co-op is a lot of fun, and while it was frustrating at the beginning, as I got better at the combat in the game, I began to look forward to Black Phantom invasions. As challenging as the game's enemies are, there is nothing like going toe to toe with a human opponent who is as smart as you are. The PvP in this game is a phenomenal game of cat and mouse. They invade your game and if you have time, you can conceal yourself and choose to confront them when you have the upper hand. There is nothing like getting the drop on a Black Phantom invader and turning them from hunter to hunted.

The real standout element of the game is easily the various enemies and demons that you fight. They all require different strategies to take on. The game is a learning experience, and sometimes the most valuable lesson is learning when to run away. There are enemies in this game that can kill you in one hit. You always have to be on your guard and take every encounter seriously if you want to survive. Fortunately the combat system is very deep, and there is a wide variety of weapons, spells and miracles to aid you on your way. The combat system is flexible enough to accommodate a variety of playing styIes. If you want to play as a nimble mage that focuses on ranged combat you aren't at a disadvantage compared to an iron clad knight swinging a sword bigger than he is as long as you know how to adapt. Some bosses are weaker against ranged combat, and others are weak against melee attacks. Knowing how to exploit their weaknesses is often more important than being leveled up. The sense of accomplishment you get when you beat a boss demon after a long hard fight is fantastic. This game presents some truly epic fights with some bosses being on the scale of something you'd see in Shadow of the Colossus.

My only major complaint regarding the game is something that most people aren't going to know about, or care about. There is a system called World Tendency in the game where the enemies you run into in an area, and the difficulty of said enemies, can change depending on your actions in the world. The rules governing world tendency are way over my head, and in the end, while there are certain things you won't see in the game without manipulating the World Tendency, you can experience all of the bosses and beat the game without every needing to understand it.

On a technical level, the game's graphics aren't perfect. There are framerate issues in certain areas and in general the graphics look a little dated for a game that came out in 2009. I should also point out that while the game uses the Havok physics engine, the fallen corpses of your enemies behave very oddly, as though they don't weigh anything at all.

There is a barebones story in Demon's Souls that involves restoring the kingdom of Boletaria and defeating the Demon's that have taken over the land. There are some minor elements of choice in the game, but the game never explicitly lets you know that killing a certain NPC or saving them will have an effect on the story. Things are much more grey and mysterious than something as overt as, say, choosing whether or not to harvest a Little Sister in Bioshock.

When you beat the game you will wake up back in The Nexus where you are free to start all over and play through the game at an even higher difficulty. This is the only way that you will be able to obtain every spell and weapon in the game, as you will need to use the souls of various demons to make new spells and weapons. I imagine most people will be content with beating the game and moving on, but it is nice to know there is an even greater challenge awaiting you after the credits roll.

In the end, this game has been the most unique experience I've had in years, and it is something that I can easily recommend to anyone looking to play one of the most challenging games ever made.

9 out of 10

As most of you know, I am a wuss. I play on easy mode in every game but Tekken(Ultra Hard please!), and typically if I run up against a rough spot in a game, it goes back on the shelf... well, that is how I used to be anyway, but playing Demon's Souls for nearly a month has made a man out of me.

I haven't beaten it yet, so this isn't a review, but this game is amazing. It makes you work for every single thing you get. In most games, if you'd been working your way through a dark cave, killing ghosts and battling the grim reaper himself, you'd expect a little cool down period when you finally reached the light at the end of the tunnel. You know what Demon's Souls has to say about that?