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Showing posts with label review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label review. Show all posts

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Album review- Train

I love Train and plan to see them in concert in August! I just bought their new album called California 37 and from the first track, I'm in love!

I've been a Train fan for years and years, actually, and saw them in concert back in March 2006. They've had several popular songs on the radio over the years: "Meet Virginia", "Drops of Jupiter", "Calling All Angels", "Hey Soul Sister", "Marry Me", "When I look to the Sky", and "Cab" just to name a few.

California 37 is great, easy listening, with some fun tracks, sad songs and is easy to sing along with. I like the lyrics, the sound, the composition so it's a win- win for me.

Many people probably heard then recent hit "Drive By" on the radio and it's a catchy tune- hence the HUGE radio play. But other tracks are that good, or better. I love the duet with Ashley Monroe, called "Bruises" with some country sound. The campy "50 ways to say good bye" makes me laugh, and I just love all the other songs, too. "You can finally meet my mom" just touches my heart and the song "Mermaid" has the name Johnny Depp in the lyrics- so it's can't be a bad, song, right?

So, I recommend this album for people who like the adult contemporary sound. Don't hold that genre against them!

Mags

Other Train songs:


Sunday, November 27, 2011

Video game review by guest blogger, Mac& his mommy's commentary

Well, this is a first on "shoes/ purses": the first ever video game review. I asked Mac for a blog idea- I was just being silly and he starts spouting this so I wrote it all down. I was going to aim for something about bellybutton lint so I guess this is about as interesting. I know I haven't played the game but Mac has- obviously waaaaaaay too many hours: 62 hours , 28 minutes and 55 seconds. Uh, yeah. I've watched him play the game for about 15 of those minutes and I can say:
1) it has an epic sound track
2) it's very violent
3) there's sex in it [not porn style but seriously, sex in this game!!!]
4) the time period is cool, like the era of Knights
5) and, you can kill giant spiders in a swamp.

Without further ado, here's Mac's review:

The video game Elder Scrolls V: Sky Rim is absolutely amazing. The game starts as every Elder Scroll games starts: you're a nameless, raceless prisoner. After a dragon invasion allows your character an opportune time to escape, you go through the tutorial and make a character. After a very exciting and practically cinematic tutorial that shows the different styles of combat like sneak attack, blades, and magic, you quickly escape the dragon and are left in the open world of Sky Rim.

Like the previous game, Oblivion, the main focus of Sky Rim is exploration. As you explore the various towns and dungeons, one quickly realizes that every town and dungeon are different and have completely different feels to them. One dungeon might have you fighting through booby traps of ancient dwarfs and another might have you fighting a bunch of blood thirsty bandits. There are plenty of quests to do almost everywhere. Towns serve as huge social hubs to pick up quests and gear. In doing quests and exploring, the game play and its mechanics are quickly revealed. Simply put, how one plays the game determines how the character levels up. If you run around blasting people with fire balls, your magic ability will level up. However, if you prefer a more close combat, and use melee weapons to combat skills. There are also various abilities like alchemy to make potions, smithing to make weapons, pick pocketing to increase your chances of thieving, and many more.

After going through ten straight hours, I've only scratched the surface. The next 20 hours I delved in more to the mechanics of the game and figured out a lot of things. but there's always still more to do. After playing the game for a total of 50 hours I still have many more things to accomplish, as well as over half of my skills to level up. Sky Rim is an amazing RPG and will attract anyone who loves the open world, western-style RPG.

~Mac, Maggie's son


I'm really impressed with the laying of the story here. As a reader and a lover of movies, the "deepness" of the video game stories are pretty impressive. There's actually some character development, too. I can see how the argument could be made that a video game is alike a book come to life, to a certain extent.

I know lots of people are pro and con video games and I understand a respect both sides. I have to say this is just one impressive game. The graphics and story are very impressive, regardless of my over all opinion of video games.

Changin' it up a bit,
Maggie (and Mac)