April 26, 2007

  • Racing away this weekend

    This weekend I'm heading to Talladega, AL with my dad to watch the NASCAR races.  We're going to be watching both races, on saturday and sunday.  Unfortunately, we'll be in the cheap seats so I'm going to need some sunblock SPFOMFGIBURNSOBAD.  We'll be heading out tomorrow night after we get home from work, and we're not going to be back until sometime monday.  We'll be in a hotel somewhere in Montgomery, which is pretty much directly south of the race track.  It's been a long while since we've gone to Talladega.  It's been a long while since me and my dad have done anything together.  Especially since because of Katrina, the monster truck show didn't come to the Super Dome, and that's something I usually like to see, since it normally comes around my birthday.  Instead, they replaced it with a motocross rally, and I don't particularly like motocross.  I guess it's the child in me that likes to see the oversized trucks crushing cars like they're made of cardboard.  And who doesn't want to see Grave Digger flip over?  I mean, seriously.  That's the only reasony anybody goes to those shows, for the freestyle competition.


    I haven't been active lately.  I mean, at all.  In fact, I've been getting very sluggish these past couple of months.  Maybe it's a side affect of not having any stress anymore?  Or maybe it's because half the time, I'm sitting in the server room doing absolutely nothing physical, aside from moving the odd computer or two.  Most of my dad is spent sitting around, waiting for someone to enter a support ticket.  And when someone does enter a ticket, it's usually a fairly easy fix.  So in between fixes, I'm surfing the internet or reading a book or playing something on my PDA or chatting with someone on my SideKick (not gonna risk installing AIM or MSN at work).  Being a government employee can be pretty dull, but at least I don't have stress anymore.  I need to start DDR'ing again.  I popped DDR Mario Mix in my Wii last night and played it for a good 45 minute session.  My legs are pretty stiff right now.  I need to do that every night.  Maybe I'll lose some weight.


    Speaking of my Wii, I grabbed Super Paper Mario over the weekend.  They've taken most of the roleplay elements out of it.  There's no random battle scenes, there's no independant leveling of your characters, etc.  Now it's more like a sidescroller plus.  I'm not complaining though.  It's a nice twist.  And I prefer not to have to go through those random battle scenes.  FFXII has spoiled me.  Anyway, one of the nifty things about this game is that you have the ability to switch from a 2D view to a 3D view.  Apparantly the 3D view is touted as a "parallel dimension".  Yeah.  It certainly adds to the innovativeness of the game.  There are puzzles all over the place that can only be solved by going into the 3D view, and often I forget that I have the ability, and have gotten myself stuck more than once.  But there's a wide cast of characters both playable and NPC.  You even get Peach and Bowser on your team again.  It doesn't put too much use into the Wii Remote though.  In fact, you don't even use the Nunchuk.  You hold the Wii Remote sideways, like a classic controller.  Though there is one use for the Remote, and that's to use the ability of one of your team to get information about enemies and find hidden things.  And as usual, the story is long and involving with some good plot twists thrown in for good measure.  It's a good mix of the original style of Super Mario Bros. and the newer style of Paper Mario.  Get this game.  And make sure you invest in rechargable batteries for your Wii Remote.  This game will have you wearing your batteries down.  I had force myself to stop playing it to recharge my batteries after going through five chapters in a row.  It's that good.  It's not too hard, and it's not too easy.  That's the way I like 'em.


    That's all for today.