Marvel title we should check out

Hey everyone,

so i was just browsing Marvel.com and saw the next War Machine issue announced... #3 to be exact.

I could not find an image of the cover, but it shows Ares taking an axe swing at Rhodes.

War Machine vs Greek God of War? Sweet!

As i was reading, direcly on marvel's website, about the upcoming issue, i kept finding more and more reasons to buy that title, starting from #1.

First, apparently War Machine has had somewhat of a power boost lately. He can now incorporate machinery and weaponry into his body and armor to heal/improve himself, and is now part robot permanently.

The write is also planning something big with him and Norman Osborn. I'm definetly picking up this title now!

And by the way, while looking for pictures of him, i found THIS:

War Machine in Iron Man 2!!!

Another strange tale from the real world

Scientists have discovered a 5mm jellyfish that is technically immortal!

The story, from telegraph.uk, here.

Budapest

Je sais que la plupart des gens qui lisent ceci n'ont peut-être pas les moyens de prendre des vacances en Europe, mais si jamais ... Budapest est une superbe ville, pas chère du tout.

Budapest a été formée à partir de 3 villes: Buda, Pest et Obuda. Buda et Obuda sont sur des collines et Pest (prononcer PESH) est dans les plaines.

On y parle le hongrois et en tant qu'ancienne capitale de l'empire austro-hongrois, on y retrouve une grande quantité de monuments et de villas somptueuses.

Mais comme le pays a vu ses ressources et même sa superficie grandement réduites par les guerres et l'ancien régime communiste, la ville est par endroit quelque peu en décrépitude.

La ville vaut quand même la visite, par exemple la vue des collines de Buda est imprenable. Le château royal (jamais habité) est également superbe et le soir, des rives de Pest offre une des ces vues inoubliables que l'on retrouve à Portofino ou Florence par exemple.

Il y a également de nombreux musées, dont le musée des horreurs, l'ancien siège social de la police secrète. Nous étions à Budapest le soir où les musées étaient gratuits, pour une nuit et c'était très impressionnant de voir la quantité de gens en file à chacun des musées.

Étant un pays pauvre, la Hongrie n'est pas dans la zone euro et on s'amuse beaucoup à calculer le taux de change puisque qu'il faut compter environ 180 florints pour un dollar canadien ... des heures de plaisir!

La bouffe n'est pas chère (environ 12$ pour 2 pizzas, un verre de vin et un coke, sur une terrasse - bon le serveur nous a oubliés dehors mais comme c'était une belle soirée chaude, on n'a pas vraiment souffert) et les plats locaux sont intéressants quoique plutôt lourds.

Les gens sont en général très sympathiques sauf les vieux communistes qui travaillent dans les lieux publics: vieux airs bêtes blasés, de vrais caricatures.

Ma blonde et moi aimons marcher dans les villes que nous visitons et nous pouvons dire que presque partout dans la ville il y a de quoi de beau à voir. Un peu exténuant par contre d'escalader Buda par 34 degrés de chaleur.

La langue est par ailleurs peu évidente. Jo a appris que pomoc! veut dire à l'aide! et évidemment hurlait cela à toutes les 10 minutes (elle le fait encore mais moins fréquemment).

Le premier soir, je me suis retrouvé devant 2 signes: ferfi et noy qui indiquaient les toilettes ... je vous laisse le soin de trouver lequel est lequel.

Une des attractions que nous n'avons pas visitée: les bains. On retrouve un peu partout de ces fameux bains de style turc, à l'architecture grandiose et aux nombreux services. Mais on a passé l'âge de se promer en maillots.

Ne pas manquer non plus les ponts, la place des héros et les petits pickpockets de 5 ans qui font semblant d'être affamés (ou peut-être le sont-ils vraiment)

Donc: belle ville, gens sympathiques, peu chère

Here's a little update of my dynasty, for people who actually find this entertaining (i'm looking at you, Bassam)

Well, after 15 games, the team's stats are 12-2-0-1. Not too shabby!

The 3 defeats were these games: Toronto 3-1, Tampa Bay 6-5, Capitals 2-0.

The 15th game was against the Canadiens, Nordiques won 3-1.
Habs fans will maybe like to hear that Ovechkin is their Captain, and Biron is between the pipes.

Despite this amazing number of victories, Les Nordiques are 2nd in the NHL. The pesky Rangers (who we haven't played against yet) are 1st, maybe because they played a good 4 games more.

Here's my lines so far, goes like this. C-LW-RW.
Malkin, Fedotenko, Bureau.
S.Koivu, Dufort, Kotalik.
Backström, Michalek, Boyes.
Turris, Bell, Tukonen.

For Defense:
Phaneuf and Larente.
Johnson and Vlasic.
Cury and Komisarek.

Goalies are Smith and Johnson.

The coach is Elvis Gratton.

Koivu has the most points and assists in the team, with 15. 3G-12A, +11. He is the 7th in the NHL for points.
Malkin has 14 pts, 7G-7A +8.

The two goalies are both young rookies with amazing potential, competing against each other for the starting spot. Smith has the most skills right now, and the most ice time.

M. Koivu was traded early during the season, since he didn't harvest any points after 6 games. He was traded for Tukonen and Kotalik, 2 so-so players who had great potential and are getting better every game.

You are probably wondering who Bureau, Dufort and Larente are. They are custom made characters representing my friends, who i play hockey with in real life.

Philippe Bureau is actually my little brother. I'm a goalie playing for Atlanta who only started in 1 game, my father was the coach of my old team.
P. Bureau was originally playing offensive defense but since he is not very heavy he couldn't do checks properly (wich is the essence of my def), and was moved to the first line. He has a precise, although somewhat weak, shot.
Jonathan Dufort is a good all-around, explosive player. He has a lot of acceleration, is good at decking, and has an amazingly precise shot.
Joffré Larente is a defensive defenseman, good at blocking shots and passes. Somewhat slow on his skates, he is however very good at passing the puck.

I'm now thinking about trading Boyes and Bell, who both have a good shot but are frustratingly slow. I'm probably going to try to get some rookies to lower the player salary overall, and make more profits. I'm 30th and last in the league for profits!

Weird tales from the real world

Nazi scientist's secret project to create Aryan race of twins comes to fruition?

Directly from Telegraph.com!

THE COLLAPSIUM - WIL MCCARTHY

an interesting book

mccarthy brings us back to the world of the wellstone, where matter is malleable and a fax machine is used to make copies of humans

where a king and a queen from the Pacific islands reign over almost a hundred billion humans

where, because of the fax technology, humans are immorbid, meaning they can live forever but can still die if an accident happens and there is no stored copies of themselves, they are also always in perfect health and can be of any colour they want and have as many limbs as they wish

where armies of robots (or humans) can be instantly created as long as there is enough raw matter available and a fax nearby

where the prince, fed up with the fact that there are almost no chances he will become king because of the immorbidity of his parents, decides to start a revolution by affixing a balloon on top of a log cabin and travelling through the galaxy

i have mixed feelings about this book

i loved the ideas put forward in the previous book and used again with great success here. there are also some great characters involved

but the queen and the king are way too perfect and the revolutionary act, while interesting does not justify hundreds of pages

at the same time, there are 2 endings and the second one is really clever, an excellent link to the next book of the series (lost in transmission)

in fact the book suffers from one the most common ills of sci-fi, characters that are too perfect

still i really enjoyed the way mccarthy describes a society where people almost never die, where resources are unlimited and where young people have almost no hope of replacing their elders

plus, once again, a great ending

7.5 (out of 10)

Random Spotlight #2

Random Spotlight #2, on Sin-Eater!

(First one was on Crystar)

Sin-Eater, is very well described at this here link.

I first learned about him in a crappy Venom issue that my friend has, where he fights Venom with Bazookas and Machine guns. He is also way, way bigger, probably jacked up on steroïds (geez, what those bad guys are willing to do).

The real reason i like this character though, is because he was in a very memorable 3-issue run in Spider-Man. His second appearance in the title, offered something more than just brawls and guilt that the Wall-Crawler no-brainer issues usually showcase.

Spider-Man was at the time battling the always dangerous Electro, when he was confronted with a Sin-Eater very, very different. The man (Stanley Carter) that first wore the mask was now walking with a cane and suffered severe brain damage during his battle with Spider-Man, and he now stutters. Spidey is taken aback by this, thinking he probably forgot to pull his punches on him, wich can hurt a lot since our hero has the proportionate strenght of a spider.

Guilt of course started to work on Peter Parker, and so he was not able to properly fight Electro, thinking he could damage him permanently, even kill him. Electro, who realised this quick enough, took advantage of this.

But the most striking part of the 3-part arc is the ending... Quite sad and unusual for a Marvel of the time i would say...

I suggest that any Spidey fan get his/her hands on these issues:

The Spectacular Spider-Man # 134-135-136

***Spoilers to follow***

During the arc, we and Spider-Man realise that Sin-Eater and Stanley Carter are 2 different personalities.

At the end of the arc, we find Sin-Eater in full costume, backed to a wall, holding his signature double-barrel shotgun, holding a boy hostage.

The boy somehow gets free, and the police shoots down the villain.

Spider-man then runs to him, to ask why he did that. We find out that Stanley emptied the shotgun, without his Sin-Eater persona realising it, effectivily leading up to his death, this way ridding the world of Sin-Eater.

Stanley Carter, a hero?

Keep readin'!

What i learned about Customer Service

First, you never EVER want to work on a monday. People are downright mean.

Second, when people ask for your help in understanding something, they don't really want to hear an explanation. They want to know it was a mistake. An error. They don't want to be told ''It's very simple'' or ''These are all legitimate fees''. Because it insults their intelligence.
You know you got a client like that when they cut you off as you're trying to explain to them what they want to know.

Thirdly, old people are not bad with cellphones and current day technology. Sure, the learning curve is longer, but you don't ever, ever want to fuck with their bills. Because in their times, a dollard was a big thing. So if the system fucks up their balance of 70 cents, you better fix it mister.

Fourth...ly? Young people, like me for instance (between 18-25) think they are smart, think they found a mistake on their bill, think a lot of things when they call a company to complain, and hate, HATE to be proven wrong. Maybe their parents shouldn't have let them win so much at Monopoly when they were kids.

Fifthly (lol), what is it with the mentality that if you bitch enough, that if you yell enough, that if you threathen a company enough, you will get what you want? I do not understand this. And what pisses me off is that, it works.
But just so they don't get what they want TOO easily, i'll argue with them for 20 minutes about nothing. Just for the sake of it.

NHL 09, second period

Well, this is a little follow-up to one of my previous blogs about NHL 09, and also an introduction to my latest dynasty. I'm also going to try and post the development of my dynasty on this blog, for people's entertainment.

First, i played a LOT of NHL 09 in the last weeks. Perhaps... too much. On my first dynasty on the normal setting, i'm right around the end of the season. The reason i didn't go all the way to the Stanley Cup is that i lost about 3 games in the last 40, and the majority i win 5-0 or 7-2, something like that.

Also, the shoot-outs after overtime are completely impossible to win. I CANNOT score for some reason. Maybe i just suck?

Anyways. So i started a new Dynasty on Hard, with continuous OT instead of stupid shoot-outs. I re-created the Québec Nordiques. Big fan here, grew up watching them, used to live on the south shore of Québec City.

To have them in the right division, i had to replace a current team. I chose to remove the Ottawa Senators. Not that i hate them, but i just couldn't bring myself to remove any of the other teams, Sens being the team i care the less about when we play against them. Let's get some rivalry going, people!

I went for the fantasy draft, so that evil clones of players don't appear in the NHL, and played my first game with the new Nordiques this very morning. Since NHL 09 included their logo, home and away jersey, the team looks damn good on the ice.

The opening game was against the penguins. I had an equal goalie rating, and my stats for defense and offense lines were a good 5 points above theirs.

Since i play a pretty good defense in that game, i was able to obtain a victory, on home ice, for season opening, of 3-0!

I don't have my roster list with me, but i can tell you that my 1st draft pick was Malkin. My 2nd pick was a young goalie having an average overall stats of 77, but a very good potential of 93. With my facilities boosting home morale and a practice schedule focusing highly on goalies, he was able to start the season with stats of 87!

For my 3rd draft pick i was able to get the guy on the cover of the game, Dion Phaneuf, making sure my defense will be at the top of the league.

For the following picks i ditched Saku Koivu for his little brother, hoping to get the two Koivu together at some point during the season. I'm a trade-heavy GM.

I also want to point out that Saku sports a Thoughness of 99 in the game!

For the rest of the draft i aimed to recruit LWs and RWs with a high accuracy, and Defense with lots of speed and checking. I soon grew tired though, and did an auto-draft for the rest of the rosters. I'll have to clear and trade after a few games since i have way too many captains, and a player salary of 54 millions, resulting in only 2 million $ in profits.

I like profits, gentlemen. I think it influences how many times during a season you can upgrade your facilities. This also makes me think that never have i seen a game with so few available information on how the game exactly works.

This being said, my goal with this season is of course, to win the Stanley Cup, and thus re-enact the many days of my youth i lost, winning the Cup with the Nords on hard in NHL 94.

Rosters and trade info to come!

Fantasy shmantasy

Heheheeeee,
hope everyone liked my dad's introduction.

Even if i know future contributor Meor One will come to fantasy's rescue, i feel i have to say something myself.

Thing is, fantasy is not for everyone.
Thing is, fantasy can be divided in many, many categories.
It is NOT limited to elves in trees, dwarves in mountains, and barbarians from the north. Sometimes elves live in caves! (Sorry, i mean.. Drow)

Anyways. It is unjust of my father to say that fantasy is only for retarded children, and then give Eragon as exemple.

I know how he feels though, i don't read a lot of fantasy myself since i feel it repeats itself a lot. Dragonlance original trilogy is a classic though.

I do understand why they put Science-Fiction in the Fantasy department though... i think. But if you ask me, Horror fits more in the Fantasy section... well, supernatural horror at least.

But, to make everyone happy, there is a mix of the science-fiction and fantasy styles that i am particularly fond of... Cyberpunk.

SitOne of the often overlooked series, of couse, would be Shadowrun.

A variant of D&D mixing technology, a dirty future, evil corporations, elves, orcs, magic, implants, and... well, you get the idea. Think LOTR meets Blade Runner. I heard many a great things about this universe, and if i was geek enough to play D&D regularly, well i'd be playing Shadowrun instead.

I was personally introduced to the universe through the Shadowrun game on the Sega Genesis, of all places.
My mind would get an erection whenever i'd see this:

Ooooh yeah... So much fun.

Well, there's nothing much to say, i just had another blast from the past while writing this here post and HAD to put up pictures of that Sega game.

I do like posting pictures.

Allright... let's put one more picture.

Because i was just about to forget, the master of the cyberpunk realms would not really be Shadowrun, but more accordingly Warhammer 40,000.

Space Marine in his battle suit with battle standard


Does that make you SALIVATE or WHAT???

For anybody not familiar with Warhammer 40,000, it is the futuristic version of a tabletop war game called Warhammer, simply.

But it is oh, so dark.

A huge selection of races, mythology, weapons and vehicules are already heavily described all around the net, and it makes for hours of fun discovering this insanely huge and popular universe. There is simply too much to say about this tabletop game, videogame, painting hobby, comic book and novel world to fit in one blog.

And hey, is a chainsword cool or what.

PLEASE !

Everytime I look for a new sci-fi book in a library, I always end-up p***-off because stupid librarians classify sci-fi with Fantasy!

Fantasy uses friggin dragons, magicians, sorcerers and other stupid characters. There is ALWAYS a good magician loosely based on Merlin and a bad magician loosely based on Raspoutine; plus a prince, a beautiful princess, a wisdomly king, a motherly queen and all sorts of stupid characters who usually get changed to an animal by the bad guys early in the book only to be brought back by the prince/magician/king/princess or queen. And I forget that the dragons usually speak and are misunderstood by the villagers because it just ate their sheep.

Mind you I loved the Lord of The Rings books and movies, but they are well written and directed, and even if they have the usual characters, they interact grandly.

I kno, there is also terrible science-fiction like Star Wars and other disguised Fantasy books that just happen to happen in the future. But those books are Fantasy, not sci-fi, just check the list of characters!

Sci-fi is anticipation of future societies, of inventions, of galactic races, of faster than light travel, of catastrophies and drama on a galactic scale. Yes I've read sci-fi books where there were dragons, but the last one was composed of 5 kilometer long semi-metallic spheres and could control space-time. Take that Eragon!

Good sci-fi is not easy to read, it requires imagination and intelligence. Fantasy crap can be understood by any first-grader.

So PLEASE LIBRARIANS, CREATE 2 CATEGORIES SO I DON'T SPEND MY TIME FIGHTING NAUSEA EVERY TIME I AM LOOKING FOR A GOOD ANTTICIPATION BOOK

QUELLE EST LA MEILLEURE SÉRIE DE SCIENCE-FICTION JAMAIS ÉCRITE?

Je lis de la science-fiction depuis environ 40 ans(!).

Le tout a commencé par The Martian Chronicles de Ray Bradbury et s'est poursuivi avec des centaines de livres.

Présentement je lis The Wellstone de Wil McCarthy, lui-même partie prenante d'une série.

Les gens me demandent souvent quel est mon auteur préféré et sont toujours surpris d'entendre que je ne nomme pas les Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert et autres auteurs "classiques". Bien que ces pionniers aient beaucoup fait pour faire avancer le genre et que je les recommanderais à ceux qui veulent apprivoiser la science-fiction, ce sont des auteurs qui ont été éclipsés ces dernières années.

Mon auteur préféré est Dan Simmons, qui a écrit selon moi la meilleure série de science fiction à ce jour, les Hyperion Cantos, 4 livres d'une profondeur et d'une imaginations extraordinaires basés sur la poésie de Keats. Je n'aimerais pas rencontrer le Shrike dans une ruelle!

Il (Simmons, pas le Shrike) a également écrit une courte série où des post-humians s'amusent à être les dieux de l'Olympe, capturent la bataille de Troies et l'amènent sur une autre planète!. Un des livres commence avec un bibliothécaire du 19e siècle couchant avec Vénus. J'espère qu'il publiera une suite à Illium qui se termine avec Achille montant l'Olympe, seul, pour affronter Zeus.

Voici mon classement des meilleures séries de science-fiction

1. The Hyperion Cantos, de Dan Simmons

2. The Confederation Universe, de Peter F Hamilton. Une saga galactique où les morts prennent possession des vivants. Al Capone est un des personnages principaux et est un bad *****.

3. The Golden Age, de John Wright. Un futur crédible, très très très différent de notre époque.

Je n'ai pas encore commencé Saga of the Seven Suns de Kevin Anderson qui semble très prometteur.

Fondation et Robots de Asimov et Dune de Frank Herbert ou encore la Saga Ender d'Orson Scott Card n'apparaissent pas dans ma liste car bien que chacun des premiers livres de ces séries soit excellent (surtout Ender's Game et Dune), le reste est plutôt faible.

J'aimerais bien recevoir vos commentaires à ce sujet.

A drool of old-school

His name is Crystar, the crystal warrior.

Bought this book for 50 cents in a used bookstore a bunch of years ago, and it turned out great!

A kind of weird fantasy, medieval epic story, involving kings and knights, family and long-time enemies!

The art is pretty cool also, looks painted in water colors or something else. I don't know, i'm not a painter.

I recommand it to people who like classic orc vs elves or medieval tales and are open-minded enough for a new twist in the style!

All things MARVEL

Ahhhh, it feels right.
This is why i started writing blogs in the first place...
Back in 2006, i was reading comic book reviews on the internet, and i thought... hey, i can do that.

Write comic book reviews.

But first! HULK VS



Does it look, sounds, feel right or WHAT?
The voices sound really cool, except maybe Deadpool's one. I heard he's supposed to sound like a hangover Demie Moore. Or is it Demee?
The animation looks slick too, and there's evidence great supporting cast looks to boot. Awesome.

Do want.





















LORD i love lolcats.
Aaaaand that's enough moving pictures and images for now.

Let's get back to our first topic of discussion, comics. And mainly, Marvel comics.

Big fan here, ever since i bought a Spider-Man comic at the local grocery store for $2. It was in french too. I still have it. It's bagged and boarded in one of my 8 quintessential x-large carton boxes.

I have been following Marvel titles pretty regularly since around 2004 now, and there's a few titles that have grabbed my attention. Mind you, i went crazy during Civil War, i bought EVERY title that had the banner on it for the whole event. Now i'm not as rich as then, what with being out of the elders' den and owning a car and whatnot. So i have to be more selective in my readings.

Here's a bunch of series i like to read:



First and foremost: NOVA

I was never a big fan of the human rocket, to be honest. I always liked his looks, even with the mullet, but i never payed much attention to him.

During Civil War, there was also the cosmic event Annihilation. Great series, i highly recommend it. There i got to know Nova a little bit more, and a huge change in his power settings made him way more interesting.
***Spoiler alert***
To read spoilers, simply click, hold, and roll over with mouse over covered text. It concerns the Annihilation storyline.
Basically, the entire Nova Corps got decimated by the Annihilus forces, and Richard Rider was the only survivor. Previously, the Nova Force was divided amongst all the Nova members, but now that R.R is the onlyrecipient for that power, he is exponentially more powerful. Think... slightly under SilverSurfer's class.

Anyways. His solo series has been AMAZING, the art is always cool, the writing is quite good too. It shows the usual series slow-downs when it gets around issue 20, but i'm still hooked.
A good pick-up for marvel fans, cosmic adventure fans, and people into comics just looking for a good read. Look for the TPBs for back issues, simpler to find.

P.S. while looking for pictures of Nova, i stumbled upon this website, where they explain Marvel classics with playmobile dudes! In french yes, but still cool to see hahaha!

Second series: Thunderbolts.

Aaaah... Thunderbolts. This series REALLY got a nice boost right around Civil War. This is where i started reading it. I got some back issues before CW but didn't like 'em. No, you really need Norman Osbourn at the head of that team to make it interesting. That and an amazing writer. I highly recommend the CW run and issues up until now. The rosters have just been heavily turned around, so i don't know what is going to happen.

Also, you might want to check out Zemo: Born Better. A mini-series focusing on Zemo, who is being thrown into the past to visit each of his ancestors.












That being said, enjoy the reads!



Other good series would include Captain America, who has been simply amazing from #1 of his latest run, Avengers: Initiative, who played a good part in Civil War and a huge part in Secret Invasion and always had good art. For Deadpool fans like me, the new series is alright, but not up to par with the delicious Cable/Deadpool series and its 50 amazing (and some not-so amazing) issues. Incredible Hercules replaced Incredible Hulk's title after World War Hulk (more like New York War Hulk) and is really different from other Marvel titles, with a huge emphasis on Greek Mythology still being present in the modern age. Wolverine: Old Man Logan is a great What If? run and fans should pick up the tpb when it comes out. Another cool mini-series i found is called X-Men and Spider-Man. It's a 4-part mini-series (with the last issue still to come) that takes places around a different time period in each book, and really uses and connects past stories well, even if sometimes they are more than 20 years apart.

And to be a little fair to the Distinguished Competition, a great, great run of Green Lantern just came to an end: Synestro Corps.

I HIGHLY recommand the 2-volume tpb that just came out. Even if you are not a Green Lantern fan, if you like cosmic chaos, you should pick up this book.

Simply EPIC.
Art: amazing.
Scenario: really cool.
Colors: out of this world.
Pick it up, folks!

That's about it folks, i'll see you next time i have something to say!
Do not despair, at least i leave you with good news.

Readings for the lazy and easily distracted

Hello again, dear inhabitants of this virtual reality.



I am stuck in my little cubicule, on a day i should have had off, but i didn't check my schedule right, and now i came in for work.

I don't even know what's going to happen. I think they'll file it as over-time, or give me a random day off to compensate for their ''loss''. Heh.



You're probably wondering what this has to do with the blog's title.

Nothing.

I just had to get it out.



Now, for the actual blog's subject.



As the title inclines, i like to read but i am easily distracted or bored. If the book is too complex, i litterally fall asleep in my seat.

If a part is too boring (hello, Legend of Huma), i simply quit and never think about it again.



I have been concentrating on small books, easy to read or full of short stories. On some occasion i have devoured bricks (Hello, Dragonlance original trilogy) but what's most frustrating is that i've been staying away from psychology, history and science-fiction novels because i know i won't be able to finish the books.



Well, i just discovered a series of cool little books, cheap to buy and easy to read! Sure, they have some spelling mistake and they are not as deep and complete as a full blown volume would be, but as an introduction to a subject, they are great.



I am currently reading ''A brief history of the Vikings'', wich i purchased for $5 (canadian) at Chapters. They have a plethora of books and so i also grabbed ''The Crusades'' and ''100 years war'', wich i haven't yet touched, all part of their ''A brief history of'' series.



The books are published by Robinson, and i highly recommend them for people who would like to learn a little bit about history but are not ready to make a full commitment about one subject.



Basically, for people like me, who like to know tons of little facts about lots of subjects rather than be experts in one field.



Jack of all trades, master of none, as a DM would say.

-Thanks to Meor for spellchecks.

NHL 09 Review

Hello folks, welcome back.

I'm not even sure ANYBODY's reading me hehehe, what with Internet being virtually infinite and me writing a blog about once a year.


Good news people: I just got a new deskjob, and i hate it, so i'm more inclined to slack off/blog.



Well, on my last blog i believe i was talking about the DS.



Well, i just traded it for a PSP and i'm very satisfied with it. I wanted to buy NHL 09 on PSP but they stopped making hockey games back in 07, so i bought it for PS2.



Only $33? Sign me up!





Back in my house, opening the new game, all exited. I remove NHL 06 from the PS2 and insert NHL 09.



New menu, new interface, very promising!



Anxious, i go and do an exhibition match, get the feeling of the game.



Little did i know i was in for a surprise! The new analog controls are made to simulate the hockey stick like never before. You don't just push a button to do a slapshot, you pull back the right analog stick and flick it up. You can fake shots and wristshot that way. To do a pass, hold R2 and flick the analog stick in the direction you want.
Same commands for the poke checks.


Sounds easy? Not when you have been playing NHL games since 94!

Instead of trying to get used to the new commands, i quickly go into custom commands and switch the controls to what i'm used to, plus some tweaks.



After the exhibition, i came to the conclusion that, all that EA did for NHL 09 on the PS2, was update the rosters and stats of players, tweak the dynasty mode a little bit, and change the controls and interface.



The gameplay is almost exactly the same (hurray for that) except that it is much more hard to score with one-timers. You will do the most beautiful pass jugling in history, the goaler will stop it easily.

But if you slapshot from the blueline, there is a chance that it will find the back of the net.

I was at first frustrated with this, but it forced me to find new ways to score.



For example, a slapshot from the blueline, if stopped, will rebound from the goalie. If you have another player coming at top speed in the zone, he might be able to catch that rebound, and automaticly put it in the net.

Backstrom was quite good at that i found.



The animations between plays are the same, goalie saves are the same, player behavior is a little different though.



I created a new team for my Dynasty, of course. I did the fantasy draft and everything, because i find that when i create a team and select players from a team and THEN start a dynasty, you'll have the Crosby on your team AND the Crosby in the penguins team. If you remove the salary cap, you can have two Crosbys on the team! Stupid, right?
With fantasy draft, at least every team has to do the draft (even drafting your created players) and so there's no evil clones roaming around in the NHL.


Yeah!



So anyways. $33 is a good deal for a PS2 game i find, if only to have the new rosters available and to play with the new analog controls, wich i am not doing.



I am still addicted, watching my Dynasty grow. If anybody is wondering what my team is, I called it the Miners (wich sounds like minors and is confusing my friends) and they play in Val-d'Or, wich is a small city in the province of Québec. I was thinking of doing a second montreal team, or even re-create the Québec Nordiques, but i thought that a Val-d'Or team would be much funnier.



After a lot of struggling in the first half of the season, i was able to make important trades and am now in the first position for the play-offs. I cannot afford to offer good contracts to my star players right now, but drafting is so fun anyways.



See ya!