Bonnaroo Destroyed by the Sword

So I'm back from Bonnaroo, and it was magnificent the entire time.

I fully expected to have a huge write-up covering the entire festival, or better, from when I left my house to when I got back, since I was gone for eight days total. But I really don't feel like it, so I won't.

But I will say that the Sword was far and away the best show there. They played on the first night (Thursday) and everything was kind of downhill from there. Which is not to say that there weren't great shows, because there were, but nothing could touch the energy of the Sword. When the last note from Freya (the Sword's closing song) faded out and I turned around, I fully expected Bonnaroo to be gone. I braced myself and expected to see nothing but flame and rubble for a mile in all directions.

Metallica sucked it and I left their set four songs in. They completely phoned it in and couldn't care less that they were at Bonnaroo. Plus I'm surprised that they fit their egos through the front gate. Same goes for Kanye West, who started an hour and a half late (4:15am) so I missed him and went to bed.

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Bonnaroo Bound

I'm at Bonnaroo, hopefully, and probably, having the best time of my life.  I'll be back the evening of the 18th.  Expect a post following shortly after. 

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Gnomes and Their Wicked Magicks

Since it's summer I've been playing a lot more Xbox than usual. I rented the Orange Box, as I've said before, so I've been plowing through the Half-Life 2 episodes so I can stop paying 99 cents a day for it (Blockbuster). Episode One was the most boring shooter I've ever played, and Portal was lame until the end (which I had quite a bit of fun with). But Episode Two is more like the original Half-Life 2, which is a good thing.

But I'm not here to give a review or anything, I'm here to talk about Trey the Gnome. I think I read somewhere that he has been named Trey, and if not, that's his name now, since it's what I've been calling him.

There are things in all Xbox 360 games, for those who don't know, called achievements. You get a predetermined amount of points (which, when it comes down to it, mean nothing) for pulling off certain tasks in the game. Most of them are pretty standard stuff, 50 points for beating the game, 10 for X amount of kills in a row, 15 for finishing first in a race, yada yada. But sometimes there are weird ones. Fun ones. Episode Two has one of the weirdest (but coolest) ones I've ever come across. It's called "Little Rocket Man" and requires you to carry a garden gnome (Trey) through the whole game with you, put him in a rocket at the end, and launch that little sucker into space.

Keep in mind this is a shooter. There's lots of bullets, puzzles, swarms of enemies, bosses, falls, jumps, vehicles, you name it. Now picture someone running through all of this with a garden gnome tucked under their arm. Pretty excellent, no?

At first I loved Trey. I'd run into a room, see some baddies, run back and put him down safely while I took out my gun and cleared a path. Then I'd go back, pick him up, and move on. I grew close to Trey. I would talk to the TV, tell the other characters that I can't go anywhere without my little man, to wait up because I can't run while holding a gnome.

We had good times. We swam in underwater caverns. I shot him at some zombies. I shot him ahead, sprinted, picked him up mid-run so we could both outrun the antlion warrior. We solved puzzles. We were friends. Or so I thought.

Recently Trey has been a wicked little gnome. One that snickers and grabs out at your ankles while you walk down the stairs. One with pointy teeth and leathery skin.

For some reason, about halfway into Episode Two, Trey has been two and a half feet of glitches in a pointy red hat. If you put him down somewhere he's fine. But sometimes you're being rushed by a mob of zombies. Or the sky is raining bullets and hand grenades. Sometimes you don't have time to put him down somewhere out of the way. Sometimes you step on Trey, and that is when Trey gets nasty.

When you step on Trey, you launch into the air. And when I say launch, I mean it launch. Once I was flung 200 feet into the air, and at such an angle that I flew out the game. I was surrounded by white nothingness and died. Another time I was flung over a building and, in the process, skipped almost an entire level. Sometimes if you're lucky you'll get flung right into a mob of baddies and get raped to death.

Trey, if I didn't enjoy your company so much at first, I'd dump your ass in a swamp. But you're sticking with me, no matter how many times I step on you and launch into the sky. I didn't carry a goddamn gnome around for two hours for nothing.

update: I'm bringing this game back tomorrow. I can't play it anymore, the gnome is making me insane. To play a difficult part over and over, and then finally beat it, only to back up and accidently step on that fucking gnome and fly to my death is infuriating.

Here's a YouTube video of it .  At least I'm not the only one. 

Fuck you, Trey. And fuck you, Valve, for making carrying around 20 pounds of fatal glitch an achievement.

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M. Night Shyamalan is Badass Now

M. Night Shyamalan knows that he sucks. He has always sucked (I can say always because I'm positive that he stole the script for the Sixth Sense from someone and then killed them in a shocking twist that nobody saw coming). He knows that he sucks because when I was counting change and watching TV (I'm bringing a giant thing of change to the bank) a commercial for his new movie The Happening came on. It started off saying something like "from the writer/director of the Sixth Sense and Signs" blah blah blah, normal movie stuff, blah blah, then "brings us his first R rated movie".

So he knows everyone thinks he's lame, so he figures if he pumps the movie full of tits and exploding heads that he'll sell tickets (if that's really what it was about I'd buy two).

That's all. I just wanted to point out that Shyamalan, who has always fancied himself quite the genius artist, is letting everyone know that his movie has plenty of swears.

 

update: I just read the plot keywords for The Happening on IMDB and I need to put them in this post. There are as follows: Crisis | Bloody Nose | Teacher | Shotgun | Family

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Gordon Freeman Wishes he was Turok

I rented The Orange Box today, since I absolutely loved Half-Life 2 and have heard nothing but praise for Portal. I am not enjoying it at all.

I started with Portal, since it's the main reason I rented the game to begin with, and it's not really doing anything for me. I usually like puzzle games, but I'm just not having any amount of fun at all when I play it. I'm just kind of annoyed the whole time. I'm sure ti wouldn't be as bad if the hype wasn't through the roof.

After being disappointed with Portal I decided to play Episode One (since I've already beaten HL2). I'm not having any fun with this one either. Writing it out makes me feel like a whiney bitch. But I'm probably a little over an hour in and I don't even have a gun yet (except for the gravity gun, but I'm sick of it). It's even more obnoxious because everyone I kill has guns, but they dissolve when they hit the ground. You know what makes a shooter fun? No guns, that's what. Also lots of jumping puzzles, where if you fall you die and have to start over. Jumping blindly is tons of fun in a first-person game. I feel like I'm playing Turok on N64, only without Turok's cool yell as he falls. And without badass weapons.

Again, I don't like complaining, and I'm not overly far into either game (judging by what I've read I'm over half done with Portal and 1/3 through Episode One). I'll give them another shot tomorrow, and if it doesn't get better I'll just say fuck it and play COD4.  It hurts more because Half-Life 2 was so awesome.

Now I want to play Turok. Maybe I'll rent the new one tomorrow, if I bring back The Orange Box. I want to kill dinosaurs with a knife. Turok is the John Rambo of wherever Turok is from.

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