Forza Horizon Review

This may sound very unrelated, but as a car guy and gamer I have always been a huge fan of Polyphony Digital’s Gran Turismo series. Gran Turismo 5 was 80% of the reason I bought a Playstation 3 (and the game that I spent about 90% of my time on that system playing), and overall it’s an amazing game. Well Microsoft has a flagship racing game series of its own, called Forza Motorsport. Being that I loved Gran Turismo so much, but my PS3 being dead, one of the first games I bought when I received my free Xbox for buying a windows laptop back in august was Forza Motorsport 4. Overall, I found it comparable to GT5 in many ways, worse in some, and better in others. So it was an enjoyable experience, and I made sure Forza Horizon was my next game to get. I am so glad it was. I have played a few free roam driving games over my gaming career, and I’d have to say that Forza Horizon takes the cake for my personal favorite.

Since we do cover music in this blog as well, I’ll go ahead and comment first on the soundtrack that the game has. They have three “radio stations” to choose from, one for lots of electronic stuff like house, dubstep, etc., another for indie music, and a third one for Rock. This is a very nice feature that all racing games should have; many games get rather irritating because they mix so many genres into one soundtrack, and usually I end up turning the in-game music off within 30 minutes because of it. Anyway, because I’m not really much for the first two radio stations mentioned, the couple of hours I played with their radio on was solely listening to their rock station. Overall I wasn’t all that impressed, but of course it’s more because of my musical tastes than anything else.

Of course pretty much any licensed soundtrack seems like **** after playing this game.

Another small thing I enjoyed about the game was the little steps they made to increase the immersion factor. For the first time I can think of, the civilian traffic is driving real licensed vehicles. To many people this may not matter, but it really helps me get into the game when I’m whooshing past a Prius or a Taurus during a street race, instead of a generic hunk-o-crap designed by the developers.

As for the cars that you actually get to drive, I’d have to say it is a decent selection. Being that this is an xbox game, they are rather limited in terms of disc space (Forza 4 had a lot more, but you have to consider that the tracks didn’t take up as much disc space as a full-fledged free roam map, and plus many of the cars were on a second disc that you had to install). So, given that, they have a really nice variety of vehicles. However where I am rather disappointed is that some of the paid DLC cars were on-disc content for Forza 4. You already made your money on those cars; don’t make me pay for them again!

I'll smash your puny Prius to make myself feel better!

Another result of hardware limitations is that while there is a decent amount of world to explore in Forza Horizon, I drove all of the roads within about 10 hours of gameplay, most of which was just me completing races and thus not really setting out to complete said roads on my map.

One place where almost all free-roam racing games fall short, and Forza Horizon really shines, is the physics. You get the same decent physics model from previous Forza games, and it just makes all the other games in this sub-genre feel like complete and utter junk, because Forza Horizon actually feels a bit like you’re driving a real car. If I had a wheel that worked with the 360 I’d probably be in heaven.

Is this real life?

Of course, the ultimate question is… is it fun? Answer: hell yes! I’d definitely recommend this game if you enjoyed Test Drive Unlimited 2, love sim-racing and need something casual to play every once in a while, or want to try and get yourself into more realistic racing games without the pressure of a serious atmosphere like Forza 4 has. It’s really good and I don’t think it will leave my xbox’s disc tray for at least a few more days.

Album Review: Ulver - Nattens Madrigal - Aate hymne til ulven i manden

I have been absolutely obsessed with this album for the last month now. I don't know exactly what the circumstances were for my love of Nattens Madrigal, be they mood, certain subjects of interest to me at the time, etc. But no matter the the reason, I immediately took to it and never let go. Although Nattens Madrigal is a 90s Norwegian black metal album, it is anything but simplistic, far surpassing bands like Burzum and Darkthrone to create a complex and musical album behind the walls of noise.

Ulver are a highly... polarizing band, to say the least. After their first three albums, each in a different style but all influence in some aspect or another by the 90s Norwegian Black Metal scene, they decided to leave their roots behind and start making avant-garde, industrial, electronica, dark ambient, 60s psychedelica, and other such genres. The discrepancy between the band's eras has caused much conflict among Ulver's fanbase. While I enjoy each of their albums, a special place in my library (and heart) is reserved for Nattens Madrigal - Aatte hymne til ulven i manden (or, in English, The Madrigal of Night - Eight Hymns To The Wolf In Man). And yes, that relatively lengthy title describes perfectly the contents of the music.

If you ask any random metalhead about Nattens Madrigal, chances are the first thing to come to mind is the production. The production here is almost indescribably raw and harsh, and I cannot deny that to the unseasoned ear, it will take quite a bit of getting used to. It may very well be a turn-off for some people. But that is not to say that the production quality is completely pointless, as I find it to be an extension of the atmosphere and musical content contained within. Despite the harsh, lo-fi sound, surprisingly, there is one aspect found here that almost no other black metal album ever provides: Beauty. The riffs are harsh, yet quite musical, with sections covering the gamut of human (or otherwise) emotions. Yet another aspect is the lyrical concept. The album is a tale of a man's transformation into a werewolf at the hands of Satan, and the events which transpire that mark his unholy gift as both blessing and curse. Although the lyrics themselves are written entirely in a Norwegian dialect, there are also English translations, which reveal the lyrics for what they truly are; some of the most haunting, almost romantic lyrics in all of black metal. The music reflects the story perfectly, with both unspeakable violence and haunting melody where called for.

In this manner, Nattens Madrigal stands as a testament to dichotomies. Nature's beauty and its relentless harshness. The wolf's majestic yet animalistic behavior. Human love and hate. Death as a part of life, and life as a part of death. No matter what your thoughts are on the music itself, it is without a doubt an experience that will stick with you for quite a while. Its morbid-yet-alluring atmosphere and poetic lyricism propel Nattens Madrigal beyond being simply "a black metal album" and into the realm of music as an art form. I absolutely recommend the album to any metalhead, as well as anyone interested in the concept of music as an art form, fans of Norwegian Gothic poetry, and those unconvinced of black metal's legitimacy as "music".

Standout tracks:
Hymne I - Of Wolf And Fear
Hymne III - Of Wolf And Hatred
Hymne VI - Of Wolf And Passion
Hymne VIII - Of Wolf And The Night

A Guide To Freeing Your Phone

I was just thinking back on my first post, when I said I would review games...

What a filthy liar!

Yeah, I realize I've reviewed exactly one game, but come on... there's a lot of awesome shit out there! If you're like me, you probably are awesome and realized this already. I doubt it.

Anyway, I come bearing gifts. After all, this is the season. So what if I'm a day late?! I DO WHAT I WANT.

What I have here today is the equivalent of Jesus, except for smartphones. I'm sure Atheists will appreciate this article too though. I've never had a high-grade Android phone, or an iPhone. Now I see fucking little ten year old kids with iPhones, playing Angry Birds and texting their ten year old girlfriends. You know what was around when I was ten?

The 90s. That's what.

That large device up there was a cell phone, and almost no one had one because they were fucking outrageously expensive. How ironic that everyone has a cell phone today and it's still fucking expensive...

That is, unless you get into one of these "pay as you go" plans, or "I'm fucking poor so here's 20 bucks what does that get me?" plans. I have the latter, through Virgin Mobile, and it's not horrible.

However, most of the phones I've encountered are quite shit. I've owned two LG Optimus V phones, both having shitty internal memory and a processor that can barely handle Facebook. When I discovered rooting, and custom ROMs, I suddenly realized the restrictions these phone companies put on us were quite transparent after some research.

I can understand why they make budget phones. It's easy to throw low grade parts together with a shitty ROM and make it work, and it attracts a lot of people because hey, smartphone for cheap. Except they come loaded with apps that do nothing at all interesting and run as fast as your refrigerator that, by the way, you should go catch right about now.

It went that way!!!

My LG Optimus V ran at 600 MHz, which compared to the phones out at that time, is absolute shit. A 1GHz processor is pretty much standard in any phone that costs some considerable cash. So I rooted the damn thing and overclocked it.

That's right. My low-grade phone is running from 600 MHz to almost a full 1GHz, essentially making it a mid-to-high grade phone, and all I did was download a free app to do it. And my measly 200MB internal storage? Fuck that shit man! I use an app called Link2SD, which unlike many of the App2SD apps out there, creates a link of any app and it's libraries and files, and keeps them on the SD card. What happens is I can have hundreds of apps, and use about 10% of my internal storage.

Damn straight.

Of course it's not all awesome. It still has to read them from the SD card, which can be quite slow depending on your card, but no fear! Most custom ROMs come with so many features and SD reading tweaks it's hardly noticeable.

Which brings me to my next point. If you haven't rooted your phone, you really should consider it. A lot of custom ROMs add a bunch of awesome features and tweaks that can be customizable to your liking, and often fix bugs in the phone itself. My Optimus Slider came with a horrible stock ROM that would shut off the 3G connectivity and never turn it back on unless you put the phone in airplane mode, or restarted it. The airplane mode was bugged out, so it never worked until custom ROMs came along for it and fixed it.

That's when I realized how shitty my phone that I just bought was. Features like that should come working RIGHT OUT OF THE DAMN BOX. Thank God for custom ROMs and the devs that take the time to make them.

So let's recap for a split second. I have a low-grade phone that I pay $25 a month for unlimited talk, text and data, and has almost a 1GHz processor thanks to overclocking, more internal storage I could ask for, features that work and annoying features are gone, and it runs for 2 days straight on a full charge. That's called getting bang for your buck, something a lot of us poor people do!

I often see this in my travels on the internet.

The only downside really to all of this, is it voids your warranty. Fuck it. I'll trade a stupid warranty for getting the best out of my stuff anyday. I love my phone. It does whatever I want and I didn't pay a damn dime for any of it. When I had Verizon Wireless, even if I had insurance for my phone, it was still $35 to have it fixed! That's more than one of my payments for Virgin Mobile!!!!

These are just some of the things I use, but there are a bunch of other tweaks and apps that do wonderful things, and I encourage you to free yourself and try it out.

Choose wisely.

The rabbit hole sure goes down pretty damn deep...