Weekend Review: Oct 27th & 28th

Every weekend there are new sights, sounds, and taste to consume. There are other sensory inputs that tickle my brain too, but saying there is stuff to feel sounds creepy. This is a weekly journal of my weekend endeavors. Enjoy!

Ninjago
Somewhere in the last two months my three year old's preschool class turned into ninjas. They make swords and throwing stars in the art center. They are all going as ninjas for Halloween and they are all obsessed with Ninjago. Lego's line of ninjas. The associated cartoon is not Adventure Time (nothing is), but it is not bad either. They toys are pretty great though. We have picked up three sets in the past two months. He puts together the minifigs and then takes off to play with them. While I build the ninja motorcycle or ancient cave of evil. I found out I still love building Lego. I have been tossing around the idea of dropping a ton of dough (relatively) on a big set just for me. That is silly right? Right? RIGHT?

Good Kid: M.A.A.D City
Kendrick Lamar's Section.80 has been getting a heavy rotation in my car all summer/fall. Dude is a wicked talented rapper and gets up on some fantastic tracks. His latest Good Kid: M.A.A.D City dropped this week and has usurped his previous outing in my heart of hearts. GKMC is pretty damn good work. Backseat Freestyle is the track I keep coming back to, but this is an album you can just play straight through. Rare in these days. Most of the time I hand pick a few tracks and eighty six the rest. Highly recommend this to folks who have not listened to a rap album in a long time and to the heads that never left.

Hotline Miami
2012 feels like the year of the small indie game or maybe just a continuation of that trend from 2011. I'm certainly playing more of them. Hotline Miami was made by two dudes and cost $10. I picked it up based on this and a small storm of game news hype that formed over the past three months. I was all geeked to play it and then the game was broken. Over the weekend I dealt with a frame rate that would start out slow and within 10 minutes seize to a crawl. The game is supposed to be really fast and twitchy, I never got any of that. At some point my install got corrupted. I played with deleting and re-installing it about six different times. When it finally came back, it was slow again. What I did play was great, albeit two to three times slower than it was supposed to be. The soundtrack is fantastic, I think I will pick up in the near future. As to my return to Miami, that won't be for a long time. After it is good and patched. It was a bummer, but I can't recommend getting this game.