Just a Lark

The Wedding

The wedding was nice. That’s really all I can say about it, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. I’ve never been to a proper wedding before (as in, one that has a full on reception afterwards and the like), and the only real way to talk about how good one thing was is to compare it to other similar things. So yeah, it was nice.

The ceremony was outdoors at Tahoe, and the reception was indoors nearby. Besides the married couple, I only knew three other people there, and we had our own table to ourselves, which was tucked away in the corner near the open bar. I’m glad for this, as I hate awkward conversations with people I don’t know. Plus, the open bar was pretty nice.

Chris and Liz looked great, and really happy, and are either in Ireland now on their honeymoon, or on their way back. I hope they’re having a blast, and I wish them the best of luck.

Oh, and I don’t know what was funnier–how JD kept bungling wedding reception etiquette, or how Matt was well enough versed in it to point this out.

Believe

Believe is Microsoft’s new Halo 3 marketing campaign, and it comes off as both simultaneously silly and incredibly effective to me. On the one hand, an advertising campaign of this magnitude for Halo is like strapping rocket launchers onto dragons–it’s pretty pointless (but awesome, I guess). Everyone in the universe already knows what the fuck Halo 3 is and that it’s coming out. It’s unlikely that they’ll gain any new audience because everyone who is already into shooting dudes will buy it and no one who is not into shooting dudes is going to assume that it’s about anything but shooting dudes. But on the other hand, the campaign is so very well crafted, that even I want to believe that the Master Chief is not only real, but an 11 on the 1-10 Badass Scale.

They went and created an incredible diorama of The Battle of New Mombasa over 1,200 square feet in size and 12 feet tall that is the centerpiece of this campaign that features thousands of UNSC Marines and Covenant forces locked in battle, and is seriously one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen before. Word is that the diorama may tour around the country, and I really hope it does because I would love to see it.

But, on the flip side, this is putting the Halo 3 hype machine into hyperdrive. This better be the best god damn game ever made, after this kind of hype. And really? If I don’t get to participate in the Battle of New Mombasa as seen in the diorama–with thousands of Covenant and UNSC Marines–in the Halo 3 campaign… Well, Halo 3 can go fuck itself, multiplayer be damned.

Initiate Code Yellow

So I finished BioShock yesterday, finally. I did the good thing and saved all the Little Sisters, and just as Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation said, you’re a virtuous flower-child with love and a smile for all the shiny-coated beasts of God’s Kingdom. I do want to get the bad ending and become a hybrid of Hitler and Skeletor that pisses pure malevolence, but luckily, all I have to do is reload an earlier save game and kill two of the little brats. Really, that’s it, and you get the bad ending.

What…the…fuck…? Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the game, and everything about it up until the end is phenomenal, but a 20 second CG ending that basically talks about how I’m a great guy wasn’t something I was expecting. There wasn’t even a god damn credit roll or anything.

That complaint aside, if you haven’t picked it up, go buy it and play it and love it, would you kindly?

Comment Moderation

So I figured out why comments were being held for moderation, even though I thought I turned that off. If you have an account and have had a comment posted, then you were no longer put in the moderation queue. If it was a new account, your first comment had to be approved. This is off now.