Here’s something you may or may not know about me: I’ve had a bit of a thing for drums for quite a while. About a month ago I actually got myself a drum kit (pictured on the left), and I’ve been loving the hell out of it since. In case you can’t tell by the picture, it’s a TAMA Imperialstar 6-piece kit. It’s got your basic snare drum, bass drum, two rack toms, and two floor toms. As far as cymbals go, it came with a basic set of Meinl cymbals, including hi-hat pair, crash, ride, and an extra splash cymbal (which I am currently not using). In time I’ll probably replace the cymbals that came with it with some nice Zildjian cymbals, but for the time being the stock ones do their job nicely enough.

In case you’re curious to see me “playing” (if you could really call it that), I recently did a drum cover of a song by the band Anathema (check them out if you haven’t, they’re awesome) called “Empty”. As far as drums are concerned, it’s a pretty basic song and didn’t take me too long to learn, but seeing as I’ve only been playing for a month I’m not trying to go way out of my league and attempt something I probably couldn’t even play. Hit the jump for the video.

It’s not perfect, and there are a couple of minor hiccups, but I pretty much did it in one take and didn’t feel like re-recording the whole thing because of a couple minor problems. Also, I have since retuned my drums after the recording of that video.

It’s been quite a while since I last did a formal map review, so I thought I’d get things going again by reviewing something big: The NewDoom Community Project II. I first remember hearing about this project three years ago; it’s been a long time in the making, and finally hit the streets late last month. This is the second collective effort of the NewDoom community, with a pretty big wealth of familiar map authors contributing maps. So how does this mammoth project fare? Keep reading for my in-depth review. Continue Reading…

I’ve been playing around with the 1.0 release candidate of Songbird for a few days. For the ill-informed, Songbird is an open source, extension-based media player which is being developed as the “Firefox of media players”. I used an early build of the program a few months ago back when I was having a media player identity crisis. Eventually I settled with MediaMonkey, which is what I currently use for most of my music listening, but after seeing this new version I decided I’d give Songbird another try. And so far, I’m liking what I’m seeing (and hearing too).

I’ll withhold any critical judgment until the official release of Songbird 1.0, but I thought I’d point out a few things I like about it:

• iTunes-esque Interface - Okay, so this may also be considered a bad thing, but the new interface looks eerily similar to iTunes. I mean that in the best way humanly possible, of course; iTunes has always been notable for having a simple and intuitive interface. The songbird team clearly took the idea of simplicity to heart and made something even better.
• Extension-based Design - Like Mozilla Firefox, Songbird was built with extendability in mind. Also like Firefox, there’s a convenient database of extensions for users to download and install. As if that wasn’t enough, downloading and installing new extensions is so easy that I’m pretty sure it’s illegal in at least three countries. If it’s not, it should be.
• Last.fm Scrobbling Support - Last.fm, in case you don’t know, is just about the most awesome social networking site ever. It’s a convenient place for music junkies such as myself to congregate and share our musical tastes, while also simultaneously helping to discover new music. I’ve been hooked on Last.fm for the last couple months, and I’m a mad scrobbling machine. Now, I’m not entirely sure where the word “scrobbling” came from, and I probably don’t want to know, but it’s basically a way to track what songs/artists/albums you listen to and upload it on the internet. “That’s a violation of privacy!”, you’re probably saying to yourself. Well, the same can be said about every other social networking site out there. Anyway, before I get into a heated debate over privacy issues, Songbird is being shipped with native Last.fm scrobbling support, which I’m absolutely crazy about.

There’s some things I think Songbird could still use in order to fully convert me over from my beloved MediaMonkey (like an equalizer for example), but it’s certainly shaping up to be one hell of a media player. I’m definitely going to be keeping up with its development from here on out.

I recently picked up a copy of Guitar Hero World Tour for the 360. I didn’t have very high expectations when I purchased it, so I wasn’t all that disappointed when the game turned out to be what is essentially a poor man’s Rock Band. As a matter of fact, the thing I was looking forward to most was the new guitar peripheral.

Red Octane typically makes better fake plastic instruments than Harmonix does. I strongly dislike the guitar that comes with the Rock Band bundle, so I’ve been using the guitar that came bundled with Guitar Hero III with that for some time. However, I did want another decent guitar controller for when friends come over, so we don’t have to fight over who gets to use the good controller. It just so happens that for a small extra fee, I could get a game along with a shiny new guitar controller, so I just had to get it.

At first, the new guitar controller proved to be even better than the one bundled with Guitar Hero III; the strum bar is quieter and easier to flick up and down at fast speeds, the buttons seem more responsive and have a better feel to them, and there’s a conveniently placed button for easier star power activation. However, and this is why I said “at first”, the joy did not last long. After a few hours of playing, the strum bar on my shiny new guitar controller would randomly stop recognizing strums periodically, essentially making the game unplayable. Needless to say, I was just a tad bit miffed. I looked online to see if there were any other reported instances of this happening. Lo and behold, there were. However, unlike Harmonix’s policy on replacing individual instruments, it seems like Red Octane/Activision is currently requesting that people go to the retailer they bought it at in order to get a replacement, which means packing up the entire box again and taking it back to the store. Luckily for me, I had only bought the guitar bundle, though I imagine it’d be quite a large inconvenience for people who had bought the full band bundle.

The next day I took it back to the store and got a replacement. Surely I couldn’t get two copies of the game in a row with faulty hardware, right? Sure as shit, the second one screwed up on me too, albeit a completely different problem this time around. This particular guitar had a strange problem where it wouldn’t recognize button presses if you held down more than one fret button at a time, rendering the game nearly impossible to play at all. So I packed that shit right back up and got a third replacement the day after. So far I haven’t had any problems with it, but I’m not going to hold my breath. If this one screws up on me, I’m just going to say “fuck it” and get my money back.

Update — Okay, so I’ve decided to go with the “fuck it” path and get my money back. The game is shitty and the quality of the hardware comes pretty damn close to rivaling the quality of the game. If you were thinking about buying any of the Guitar Hero bundles, I would highly advise against doing so. :D

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, the third installment of the Castlevania series for the Nintendo DS, came out the other day. Being the rabid Castlevania fanboy that I am, I just had to get a copy the day it came out. I’m starting to seriously regret that decision, but not for the reason you’d normally think. No, it is not, in fact, a bad game. In fact, it’s actually really, really good. I regret getting the game for the sole reason that I haven’t been able to put it down since I got it. As a matter of fact, I’ve already managed to rack up a good three and a half hours of play time. Pretty crazy stuff.

Throughout those three hours of playtime, I have only noticed a couple of small things I moderately (put extra emphasis on moderately, in case the italicized text wasn’t enough of an indicator) dislike about it. For one, from what I’ve played so far it’s mostly been pretty linear, unlike Dawn of Sorrow; once you’ve gone through a certain area, there’s not really much need to go back again. But hey, I’m not sure how far into the game I am, but from what I’ve heard the game gets more open-ended during the latter-half of the game. My only other problem is that there’s a little bit of copy-pasta (rooms that have been copied and reused). Normally I wouldn’t complain about this in a Castlevania game, but there are some pretty large-scale rooms that appear to have been lazily copied and reused more than once with slight item and enemy placement changes. I’ve only noticed a couple of areas like that so far though, so it doesn’t really bother me too much. I honestly can’t think of anything else I don’t like about the game.

If you’re a fan of Castlevania, get it. Now. If you’re not a Castlevania fan, well… what the hell is wrong with you?

Rock Band 2 for the XBOX360 came out well over a month ago, and I’ve been hooked since day one. As if the addictiveness of the original Rock Band wasn’t bad enough, Harmonix just had to go and make the game oh so much bigger and better. Surely this game will be the end of me.

It seems like more of an update than a sequal, but the improvements they’ve made to the game will make you forget the first game even existed. There’s a ton of songs to play. Take into consideration the 80 some-odd songs included on the game’s disc, and then add on top of that all of the songs from the original Rock Band songs (minus 3 songs). I’ve also got quite a few downloadable tracks as well. I’d estimate that as of right now I have about, oh… 150 songs. I had always felt that the original game’s track list was a bit lacking. The world tour mode in the original Rock Band was a great idea, but it falls short because there’s simply not enough songs in the game to keep it interesting for long. That’s no longer a problem with Rock Band 2.

That’s not really what has me hooked, though. The addition of online world tour, challenges, and battle of the bands is what’s got me so addicted. There’s just something awesome about forming a band with 3 other people you don’t even know on the interwebs and kicking some musical ass that, to put it simply, kicks a hell of a lot of ass.

I’ve been primarily playing drums since I got the game. Yeah, so I can kick ass on guitar/bass on expert, but there’s just something about pounding on some cheap plastic drums and kicking the twice broken bass pedal that’s a lot of fun. Plus I’ve kinda grown tired of playing the plastic guitar from excessive amounts of Guitar Hero playing over the last couple of years.

So… why aren’t you running out and buying the game already? Do it. Then give me your gamertag so we can rock the world… or at least pretend to. My gamertag is AgentSpork, by the way. Pretty easy to remember I’d say.

Okay, so this web log hasn’t been put to very good use since I set it up way back in July. The main reason for that is simple: I’m already maintaining a personal blog over on LiveJournal. I didn’t really have any need for more than one blog… or so it seemed. Well, I was thinking of ways I could actually put this section to some use, as opposed to letting it gather dust for all eternity. I think I’ve come up with a pretty decent solution, too.

To kick things off, I’m going to be keeping the personal crap down to a minimum. If you’re even remotely interested in what goes on in my life on a daily basis, you’re going to want to check my LiveJournal instead. Instead, I’m going to use this to post about my game/web design endeavors, and little projects I’ve been working on that don’t really warrant a news update on the main section of my site. In addition to that, I was also planning on starting up doing some Doom map reviews again. I may not be a very active Doom mapper these days, but I still love the game and play it on occasion. I might also post little mini-articles on whatever happens to be sparking my interest, too. Who knows? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

On that note, I’m accepting requests for maps to review. Have a totally awesome map you want good ol’ Agent Spork to review? Well, just ask! Leave me a comment or something, and I’ll give it a go.

Greetings. How goes it? Wait a second, this isn’t your blog, this is mine. I’m supposed to tell you how my life is going, not the other way around.

Things are going pretty good for me right now. My last year of high school is slowly drawing to a close, and I couldn’t feel more awesome about it. Senior prom is coming up in about a week. It’s going to be pretty epic, I must say. I’m working on getting myself a job as well. To put it simply, I’m happy.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been doing a great deal of work on my site. In addition to that, I’ve been working on a new design for my best friend’s site as well. Feel free to check it out at chasupi.net if you so desire. It’s turned out pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Okay, I’m bored now. Gonna go entertain myself until soemthing more interesting appears.