Monday, December 20, 2004

Player Of The Year

Saturday afternoon, at a special Christmas Chess-Party, I was officially given the title of "2004 Player Of The Year" by the Charlotte Chess Club. It is truly outstanding to be given this high honor, I want to thank NM Leland Fuerstman, Jon Pietras, and all the leaders of the Charlotte Chess Club, for their friendship and support over the years. I would not be where I am today without the support of such living legends of the chess world, nor would chess in general be where it is today without their herculean efforts to promote the Royal Game.

I would like to congratulate also everyone else who won prizes and awards at the Christmas Party, it was truly a wonderful afternoon for everyone. Also, its worth mentioning that NM Leland Fuerstman actually played the guitar and sang for all the members in attendance, and I think its fair to say that his musical stylings leave James Taylor, and other such musicians, in the dust.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

I know its after Thanksgiving now, but a technical problem has prevented me from posting for a while, and I wanted to make sure that I told everybody Happy Thanksgiving :). Also, I'd like to fill everybody in on some other interesting news and information.

I would like to share some information about some video games Ive played lately. It has become obvious to me that EA Sports has become a clear 2nd to The ESPN 2K series, at least from what Ive experienced. Never has it been more clear than when I played the NCAA Football 2005 game by EA Sports. Its inferiority to ESPN NFL 2k5 is so extreme, its really intolerable, I cant stand to play it its so bad by comparison. The graphics, the gameplay itself, I played it one time with my cousin, and the term she used to describe the NCAA Football 2005 game was "primitive", and it was a very good description. Its very primitive, if you're looking for a good NCAA Football game, you need to hope that Sega puts one out, I know I sure do :).

But speaking of the ESPN 2k series, another gem that I have had the extreme fun of playing is the NCAA Basketball one, again only $19.95, and its the best basketball game Ive ever played. It has a super awesome "Legacy" mode too, that has super duper awesome recruiting options, and its very deep. The announcers are awesome, the graphics are top of the line, the sound effects are super duper, tons of different kinds of music, depending on where you're playing the game, the mascots, cheerleaders, coaches, its all there baby!

I'd also like to take this opportunity to review a game for the PC, that I have been playing for a while now. This review has to be very nuanced, because I dont want to give a mis-impression when I'm critical of certain aspects of it, it is overall an amazingly awesome game.

The name of the game is Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines Lets start right away with the one bad part of the game, so I can get it out of the way and focus on all the things this game does right. If you note the rating of the game, you'll see its rated M, and theres a very good reason for it, the language at times gets really bad. I hope that noone who is under 18 will play this game, and those of you who are over 18 and who do play this game, please keep in mind you can hit the space bar when you see bad words coming, and you dont have to hear them (the subtitles appear on the screen very often before the words are actually said). Also, the game at times gets a little bit gorey, but nothing really terrible, at least to me.

Now on to the main portion of the review. This game is amazing, the graphics are top notch, the people, and creatures, are super realistic. The sound effects, the background music, and the voice acting, are all superb, top of the line stuff. The game itself is what you would call an 'Action RPG', that is to say, a Role Playing Game that is played not in a turn based, 'Final Fantasy' style, but rather in an action based style, much like 'Fable' for the XBox. There are so many different awesome things to see and do in the game, I wouldnt want to ruin any of it for you by saying too much. Some points in the game are actually even scary, I was scared during portions of this game, it was the scariest game Ive ever played. If you dont like being scared, you can always turn the sound down, because while it will still be scary in these moments, the scary sound effects really make it extra super scary, and turning the sound down will help at least to make it seem less scary. I'm somebody who always loved vampire movies and stuff, and I love playing as a vampire in a game with lots of vampires and cool stuff related to vampires in it.