Everything

XBox 360 Review: Splinter Cell – Double Agent

Posted on by Ricky in Concerts, Everything, Video Games | Leave a comment

Toronto – After watching shows like 24, theres nothing you want to do more then sneak up behind someone and snap their neck or slit them in the throat. I mean look at this clip (probably favorite one of season 6)

in the deadly world of espionage, you can trip, and your neck will break. This leads me to everyone’s favorite spy game – Splinter Cell. In Splinter Cell, you play Sam Fisher, basically, a really bad ass ninja version of Jack Bauer. You get put on missions where you sneak around..gather data, spy, kill, etc. Typical spy shit, minus the glamorous parts (no tango dances with Tia Carriere, for example). In this particular game, you have to infiltrate a terrorist cell group ran by over ambitious militants in the US. This is a newish concept to the game, as some of your missions are now terrorist machines, where you have to do stuff like blow up a cruise ship. Obviously, one of the themes of the game is morality or something, where you have to equally balance the trust of the terrorist group and the spy agency at the same time..

If you have played Splinter Cell before, then this game will be very familiar to you. If you haven’t then you are in for a treat. Splinter Cell is extremely fun to play. Basically, you sneak around, and your character can do all kinds of things to hide. You are equipped with heat, electricity and night vision, so you go around turning off lights and stuff in order to get by. You can climb, hang, hide, etc. The locales in this game are awesome, including stuff like Africa, Shanghai, a Cruise ship and others.

Now you can get thru the entire game without being seen, or killing anyone you are not suppose to…but that’s no fun. You are given a crap load of weapons to use, but really, in the end, you will only use two weapons ..your hands (to snap ze neck) or if that fails..your knife. This is a game about sneaking around, and obviously, if you can get close enough to perform one of these two feats, you have done your job.

Graphics and sound and stuff for this game are about what you would expect for a video game. Pretty good. My only gripe is that this game was kinda short, and some of the terrorist tasks were repetitive.

4.5/5

Concert Review: Ohbijou, Sebastian Grainger, June 9, Horseshoe

Posted on by Ricky in Concerts, Everything | Leave a comment

Toronto – Every June, this little festival called North By Northeast rolls thru Toronto like a hurricane of something, and people from all over Canada come here to play music in hopes of becoming the next big something. It is quite a weekend. There are concerts in every place imaginable, and yet..half my coworkers didn’t even know it was happening. How odd is that? I was lucky enough to score a media pass courtesy of a friend of mine (this industry..its all about who you know). What does this pass mean, you ask? It means a goodies bag, and a chance to not pay for any shows. Also, you can bypass lineups. Pretty sweet, I guess.

So it was Saturday, and I was pretty damn tired. Toronto FC on Wednesday, Interpol Thursday, Voxtrot last nite.. It would of been easy to call it a night and go relax somewhere. But sometimes you have to choose between what is easy..and what is right. What is right, obviously, is to use this pass and go see some hyped show, and bypass an entire line of people while flaunting the pass and walking right on in and looking mildly disinterested at the show.

The show in question was the CBC Radio 3 showcase at the Horseshoe. The show consisted of three hyped Canadian acts – Ohbijou, Sebastian Grainger and the Montagnes and You say Party We say Die!. My roommate scored a pass as well and we headed down to the Horsehoe via the trolley. Holy lineup batman! When we got to the corner of Queen and Spadina, there was a lineup around the block. I was like ..man those 1.50 street dogs must be really popular. However, upon further inspection, it turned out it was to get to this CBC show. I was shocked…this many people listen to radio?

My first thought was that we were not going to get in, but then I remember this little thing dangling around my neck. I went up to the volunteer manning the door and asked what the deal was, and he was like ‘well the capacity is full right now, but if you line up here, we will let in badge owners first..and then the peasants.’ So five minutes later, we were let into the Horseshoe, walking pass the non-special people, I can just sense their beady little eyes shoot lasers of hate and distaste toward us types and it hurt. Kinda. I am glad this was not an emo show, or everyone would have pulled out razorblades and cut themselves i bet.

In all honesty, this is a fairly crappy system to do a music festival. Fans spend like 30 bucks to buy a bracelet, and line up for hours to see their favorite bands. They should be allowed in first, as they probably care the most. I always thought CMW was the industry show, however, with the amount of passes they hand out, thats probably not the case. Anyways, I have just realized I have written four paragraphs and there has been no mention of music anywhere.

Ohbijou is a local toronto band, listening to them, you would think they are an arts and craft band, because they sound like an arts and craft band. That is not a diss or anything, as they play really mellow and good music. They are a large band, comprising of half males, and half females (just like planet earth). The lead vocalist is female, and an asian of some sort. I couldn’t really figure out what kind of asian she was, so i spent the better half of the show analyzing it. I think she is filipino, but she can also be spanish. the name is “Casey Mecija” so definately, she is not a chink. That is what asians do, as soon as we see other asians, we try to figure out whereabouts they are from, and then judge them accordingly. Here is a link of their music:

http://www.myspace.com/ohbijou

Sebastian Grainger and his band came on next. Sebastian was one half of the duel DFA 1979. His solo stuff was suppose to be more poppy then DFA, and I guess this is true. His act was a 3 piece set with a drummer and some dude who looks like a cross between Triple H and Meat loaf on bass. He rocked out pretty hard. As for the show itself, the music was pretty good, and the highlight of the show was the last song, which was synth heavy and sounded nothing like all the other songs. kinda weird.

I missed the third act, because I started getting hungry, so I went to go eat a burrito. Overall, the music tonite was very good considering I have not heard any of these songs.

Review: 3/5

Here is a link to the entire show. you can listen to it.

http://radio3.cbc.ca/

Concert Review: Voxtrot, June 8, Sneaky Dees

Posted on by Ricky in Concerts, Everything | Leave a comment

Toronto – Continuing with my ‘multicultural lead singers’ theme for this week, me and some friends made the treacherous trek down to the infamous Sneaky Dees (or Sneaky Disease as it is known) to watch Ramesh Srivastava and his band, also known as Voxtrot. Voxtrot is a band from Texas, that well..is awesome. They play twee-ish/smith-ish kind of music, and released a few EP’s last year that were fantastic. They also released a LP this year, whether you can buy it or not is completely unknown to me. Its always kinda funky to see a band fronted by a non-whitey and its becoming more and more common. A Texas band fronted by a brown guy, who woulda thought? I wonder how bad this guy got it after 9/11, its amazing he’s making such happy tunes.

The last time these guys came to town, there was like 15 people there, so it was nice to see a nicely-packed Sneaky Dees this time around. Voxtrot came on around 12:15, and immediately started singing. Thats the nice thing I like about bands that arent really famous is that they don’t BS around and make you wait for them. Appropriately enough, they started off with the song ‘introduction’. I don’t think enough bands start off their albums with a song like ‘introducing the band’. Suede did it with Dog Man Star, and that’s pretty much my favorite album ever.

The rest of the setlist comprised of songs from the new album, as well as favorites like ‘the start of something’, ‘raised by wolves’ and ‘mothers, sisters, daughters and wives’. The crowd for most part was into it. As someone who was a big fan of their EPs, I was pleased with the show, and this was pretty much what I expected. The dude doesn’t have that great a stage presence, but that might just because of the bands I have seen in the previous few nites (pipettes, css, interpol).

Show: 4/5

Ps. funny story . because of sickness, one of our friends could not attend the show, so we ended up with one extra ticket. My friend tried to sell the ticket outside Sneaky Dees to two members of Voxtrot.

Concert Review: Interpol, June 7, Guvernment

Posted on by Ricky in Concerts, Everything | 1 Comment

Toronto – After playing some shit hole towns on their most recent tour, Interpol returned to Toronto on Thursday to play a sold out show at the Guvernment. Going into this concert, I wasn’t overly enthused about the show, as I was not the biggest fan of the Guvernment. I don’t even know why it’s spelled that way, unless Arnold Schwarzenegger spelled it. Man, I really miss Arnold movies, you can always count on a good ole “get daaaoowwwn” or a “get oooouttah heee-ahh” for any Arnold movie.

On to the show. Man oh man, the guv must of renovated or something since I was last here (for the Rapture) because, well, it’s freaking fantastic concert venue now. Before, the stage used to be in the corner, so the sightlines wasn’t that great and the stage felt a bit small. Now, the stage lines up the far edge of the wall, which must of taken away some capacity and the stage is nice and high and it improves the sight line dramatically. Very smart, it made the show feel semi-cozy (for a large show). Coupled with a nice sound system and a decent light show and I think you got the new best mid-size venue concert place in Toronto. The only crappy part was they only sold Coors light, canadian, heiny and coronas. What a crap selection. They only sold the midget version of heiny cans too. wat up wit dat? we aint midgets, dont sell us midget beers.

Let me say this, Interpol is probably the best dressed indie band out there. They all came out in like, suits. Carlos D looked like Neo from the Matrix, only if Neo was french, drank wine and ate cheese all day. The crowd was pretty receptive towards this bunch. One of the worries i had going into the show was that Interpol would just play most of the stuff off their upcoming LP and ignore their old stuff. However this was not the case, thru out the show Interpol played a good mix of new and old. The only complain I have about their set is that they didn’t play “The Specialist”, which is my favorite Interpol song. Overall, Interpol was the same as last time, more or less. I am thinking the fact they play with a slight disinterest only favors them once or twice. I mean, you see people go crazy for their music like CSS or British Sea Power and then you see Interpol standing around and just trying to look cool, it gets a bit old.

Interpol – 3.5/5