this is the song that i'm currently obsessing about - Muse Uprising:

http://www.youtube.com/user/muse?blend=2&ob=1#p/a/0/w8KQmps-Sog

Left 4 Dead

L4D is a first person shooter survival type of game. you are playing one of 4 survivors who managed not to get infected by virus that changes peoples to zombies. yep, i know, it was done before:) however what is really cool about this game is that you get to play with your buddies on split screen (big TV is recommended). in my case it was my nephew currently visiting from Poland.

Ladies will be happy to know that there is a female character - Zoe.

There are four campaigns available of which each contains few chapters. the locations are really creepy and zombies comparing to Resident Evil prior games run at you, they do not walk.

there is a horde - mass attack by zombies, hunter - jumps on you unexpectedly, smoker-gets you by his long tongue, boomer - if shoot to closely spills some king of slime on you, Tank - huge sob, hard to kill, witch - silent but deadly if bothered.

i rate this game quite high because it is a lot of fun to play along with somebody and XBox360 has really very few games with local multi player.

True Blood

The first season recently showed up on DVD and BlueRay. 

I am on the 6th episode (12 total) and i have to tell ya this show just blowed my mind!

I am into scary stuff but not particularly into vampires although when i was younger i loved Buffy :) Anyway I hesitated before watching the first episode but eventually cave in after persuasion from my boss. I am hooked!

True Blood takes place in the small Louisiana town where nothing really exciting happens until Bill - the vampire comes back to the town after his last living relative dies. the story goes around the relationship between Bill and Sookie - the waitress at the local bar, Sam - Sookie's boss and Tara - Sookie's best friend, and Jason - Sookie's brother with many partners. Town also is strucked by murders of women who get acquainted with the vampires.

True Blood is actually the name of the synthetic blood which replaces the real blood and now vampires do not have to attack people to feed:)

anyway, seriously, you should watch this show.

Survival games

Resident Evil is a type of the survival game but about the game later...

not so long ago my boss and I were wondering about a good horror/survival game. since the new Nightmare on the Elm street is in the production we thought about the move where you are Freddy. you are the mastermind behind best scenarios of the deadly dreams where you scare, attack and eventually kill terrified teenagers. this would be really cool don't ya think?

Study Shows Playing Video Games Improves Women’s Spatial Skills

I thought this might be interesting to read:)


By Shawn on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at 12:15 PM PST
In Gamer Life, Games
Need a convincing argument to get your girlfriend, wife or daughter into gaming, or are you a girl gamer that needs extra leverage with your parents? A study at the University of Toronto has indicated that just a few hours of video game play can improve spatial awareness in females.
The research, to be published in the October issue of Psychological Science, suggests that a new approach involving action video games can be used to improve spatial skills. Women have been proven to test lower than men on spatial awareness based skills such as reading a map, driving a car, assembling a barbeque or learning advanced math. However the gap can be closed.
Our first experiment discovered a previously unknown sex difference in spatial attention,” said Jing Feng, a psychology doctoral student and lead author of the study. “On average, women are not quite as good at rapidly switching attention among different objects and this may be one reason why women do not do as well on spatial tasks. But more important than finding that difference, our second experiment showed that both men and women can improve their spatial skills by playing a video game and that the women catch up to the men,” Feng added. “Moreover, the improved performance of both sexes was maintained when we assessed them again after five months.”
Professor Ian Spence, director of the engineering psychology laboratory in the Department of Psychology, theorizes that playing action video games may actually trigger previously inactive genes that are crucial in developing neural pathways necessary for spatial attention.
“Clearly, something dramatic is happening in the brain when we see marked improvements in spatial skills after only 10 hours of game playing and these improvements are maintained for many months.”
Professor Spence expresses hope that video game training could help to encourage more young women to enter the mathematical sciences and engineering which are still male dominated fields.

Virtual Fighter 5 Online (Xbox360)

VF belongs to 3D fighting game. two opponents equipped with amazing martial arts skills fight each other until one of them is knocked out. to win the fight one of the fighters has to win two rounds. rounds are usually 30 seconds long.

there is a variety of fighters that player can choose from. each fighter has its own bio and it's more interesting if we first get familiar with the fighter before choosing him/her. yes, i said her, girls are there! :D each fighter also presents variety of skills; for instance; Sarah Bryant's Martial Arts style includes Karate, Teakwondo, and Savate style.

before getting in actual arcade the player has a choice of practicing moves in training mode. 

the further you get in the arcade the better opponents you will face.

what i like about the game is well the fact that you can choose to be female fighter. Sarah was actually my prime choice. you can even change the outfit. the graphics are really neat. the way the characters move is very impressive. there is a two players mode which is nice to actually play against human. before going online i recommend practicing for some time because they are really good out there and they can kick your butt in two simple moves :)

being able to control your character the way you want needs lots of practice, at least for me but it is forth it. if you are a Martial Arts fan just as I am then you will love this game.

i used to play Dead or Alive (not quite sure which part) long time ago on Sega and it basically has the same concept as VF.

Star Trek

this post is off topic about my other passion - movies, especially scary ones, although Star Trek does not really belong to this category i thought i would give it the acknowledgement it deserves.

over the weekend i went to see Star Trek, I'm not a fan of the movie nor the sci fi category but i was allured by the commercials of the movie on TV. Special effects looked nice, guys in the movie even better and besides the movie was directed by J.J. Abrams ('LOST' - adore this show) so i thought eh, what the hell? so i grabbed my husband and we went.

this movie keeps you at the edge of your sit from the beginning to the end and it is over 2 hours long. i was actually surprised at myself that i liked the movie so much. here is why? 

well, first of all the cast was really well arranged beginning from Chris Pine as James T. Kirk and Zachary Quinto('Heroes' as Sylar) as Spock to John Cho as Hikary Sulu. i aslo have to mention Erica Bana as Nero (the bad guy) which was totally unrecognizable with shaved head and tattoos on his scalp and Karl Urban ('the Bourne Supremacy', 'Doom', 'Pathfinder') as Dr.MacKoy, there was even original Spock (in the movie Spock form the future) played by Leonard Nimoy.

second of all, the special effects - amazing! you go to movie theater to see movies like this.

third of all the story itself. since it is a prequel, movie presents the story since the birth of the Kirk to how he becomes the captain of the Enterprise. we are presented with his rebellious childhood and youth which is very fun to watch. the other person on which story focuses is Spock. Spock is shown as someone torn between his human side where he experiences variety of emotions(his mother is human played by  Winona Rider) and his Vulcan side which is very logical and puts emotions on the side. these two at first hate each other but then they become really good friends. story is easy to follow filled with action and funny dialogs. 

movie ends with original Spock citing original series motto:

"Space... the Final Frontier, these are the voyages of the star ship Enterprise. Its ongoing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before."

and as a fun comparison - characters of the original movies (top) and new ones (bottom)