Now, Tool is a band that you either like or don’t. Nobody really says they’re just okay, in my personal experience. I could be wrong though. Then again this whole planet could be wrong at times. Wouldn’t that be a travesty, someone actually being wrong?

Let’s get back to Tool though. I picked up their album (ae)nima, I’m using the (ae) because I can’t be bothered to find the symbol, and I have to say that this album is actually one that I’m impressed with. Now, I’ve been into too a bit, and I liked what I knew, but I always wanted to look more into it. This one I actually followed through with and went and got the album, well, more got it for my birthday, but let’s not get into that.

Now, the first thing I noticed is the album art. It’s queer as a three dollar bill…well, I don’t know about wherever you are, but a three dollar bill doesn’t happen in Canada. The album art is extremely well done, with two irises on one eye, a flaming thing with eyes floating around it, a shaking contortionist and neat changeable front. Oh yes, the front is this weird lined plastic that makes the images underneath move when you move the CD. The album art, frankly, scares the living sex cells out of me. I’ve not even touched it all, but it does lose a point for the song listings. They’re not easy to find, as you have to slide out the booklet and then look around at it, and the words are quite small, but I’m just being picky now because I have nothing else to complain about. It easily redeems itself and gains that point back for having a picture of Bill Hicks in it. If you don’t know who Bill Hicks is, look him up. Wikipedia is a good source, despite it being full on non-facts.

The lyrics aren’t listed in the booklet and they are at time, through distortion and sound effects, hard to understand. But, that’s okay because the internet has everything. Plus, if you’ve listened to Lamb of God as long as I have, you can pretty much understand anything. They lyrics are well thought out and well delivered, but start to confuse you unless you know what they’re talking about. Forty-Six and 2 takes a bit of a biology lesson and involves chromosomes and evolution. That can all be forgiven though for the chorus of the song Hooker With a Penis. The song has nothing to do with hookers, or penises, but it’s a good song none-the-less.

The guitar is well distorted, the bass is well distorted, the vocals are well distorted, heck even the drums are distorted at times. It’s a big distortion fest, and normally this would bother me, but it didn’t during this CD, because it was well delivered, something that is lacking from most of today’s artists. The songs at times did become a little long at times with Eulogy being eight and a half minutes, and Third Eye being thirteen and a half minutes, and I did find myself wanting to skip songs sometimes. They’re great songs, but they did not need to be that long, because they start to repeat themselves. Sorry Tool, you need to learn when to stop.

Overall a really great album, though at times it did wear a little thin. It’s something different and good from front to back for the first few listens, but then you’re going to want to choose your songs.

Lyrics 4/5

Music 4/5

Originality 5/5

Album Art 5/5

A solid 90/100 for the album

(Don’t blame me for the lack of indent, WordPress won’t seem to let me)

Bloc Party on the other hand, They’re opening to Helicopter is amazing. Here, check them out. Both vids are live.

Dragonforce – Through the Fire and the Flames (Live)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdMIQ1jfJm0

Block Party – Helicopter (Live)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvNrsuieMLs&feature=related

Don’t get me wrong. Both are great bands, but Bloc Party just seems better at guitar than them to me. Plus, I didn’t notice anyone playing the opening high notes in Through the Fire and the Flames.

The first thing I found is that most games coming out are solely console based. This is not fun for one such as me who only has a PS2 and a comp. Unless you count the Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, and NES. I would like some games to be ported from their console games to the PC, as long as they do it well (Halo 2 was not done well…)

The second thing that I noticed is that you seem to have to spend quite a bit of money to play the news games on your PC. Every game seems to push the limits of new video cards. Maybe this is a sign that console gaming has surpassed the PC. (This might be because I’m a cheap bastard too)

One thing I did notice that supports PC gamers, is the independent developer. These guys rock. These are the people sitting in their basements programming games for the PC, and man do I love this. Because, I don’t see a lot of homebrew games being made for console, though it’s coming too.

So, is the PC gamer dead? Not yet, but we are being pushed out of the spotlight. Let’s face it though, there will always be a small group of people that will get together to play a good RTS or FPS over a LAN network. And, it’s all made on desktops. So, enjoy it while you can consoles, we’ll rise again one day.

Most third person action adventure shooter lack back story and have poorly written, predicable plot devices. This game however is all back story for the first two and a half hours of video, action for an hour, and poor and predicable dialogue for the last hour and a half. Sadly, there are that many videos in these games.

I call this more than one game because I felt that it was. For the first quarter of the game, it seems like a true Final Fantasy, despite the genre switch. It’s intelligent, it’s full of real feeling characters and it’s just great. After that though, it turned into a generic Devil May Cry shooter with less combos that leaves you feeling like your controller is enjoying it more than you are. After it’s done introducing the story, it turns into a giant, mindless shooter where you’re running around slaughtering everyone with the odd “Save the WRO members” side mission that if you fail it doesn’t really matter because the fights are so easy anyway that you don’t need the experience and gold you would get from it. The only part where it becomes intelligent is when it’s showing back story, which we’ve all seen before if we beat Final Fantasy VII with Vincent in our party. This is granted that it isn’t one of the scenes trying to shove the words “Chaos, Omega, and Lifestream” into every sentence. We get it already. If you didn’t get Vincent, you should go beat your head against a wall for failing at Final Fantasy puzzle solving and having a general lack of yearning for knowledge. It does get back to a Final Fantasy game in the last level or two and ending video where things aren’t bat-shit crazy with a giant man walking around with a tank cannon. Has this really what gaming has come to. “OH MY GOD! HE’S GOT A TANK CANNON! HE MUST BE COOL!”

Though, despite the problems with the story and a bit of repetativity in the gameplay, it’s a fun game. The controls are solid, the camera works with you quite well, and shooting shit is fun. I would have liked to play as some of the other characters though. You get every character from Final Fantasy VII in the game, but you can’t take control of Barret and enjoy a rip-roaring good time shooting up a bunch of guard wolves and Shinra executives.

Overall it’s not a bad game. The ‘cream-in-your-pants’ graphics and half decent beginning and end make up for the disappointing writing and sub-par gameplay. Plus, I like being able to shoot great big fireballs from large, tri-barreled rifles.

It’s worth renting, and if you’re a die-hard fan, owning. But, if you’ve not played Final Fantasy VII (That’s seven if you haven’t figured it out yet), and haven’t seen the movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, I’d take a miss, because you won’t have a fucking clue what’s going on.