Ladytron come back soon, oh please do!

I saw Ladytron this weekend at Merriweather, a few notes about the show. First off, Ladytron is absolutely amazing and great live performers. Immediately when their set was done I wanted to see more of them, I am greatly looking forward to their next tour through the area. Annoyingly though this show, which was supposed to take place at the 9:30 club and would've been 10x better there, had been changed to take place at Merriweather. Adding Ladytron to the line-up of a mini-festival whose lead act was Thievery Corporation. While I honestly don't know much about Thievery Corporation (I hear they're good) the other artists at the show were Seu Jorge (Awesome work in The Life Aquatic), TV on the Radio (I found them as a group a bit out of place at this festival, I only know one song by them but I like it), Turntables on the Hudson (it was pretty interesting ethnic dance music), and Federico Aubele whom I didn't know but their music was definitely pleasing to the ear. I am pissed that Ladytron was taken from the 9:30 club venue where they would've headlined, had even more performance time and better sound mixing and added to the lineup at Merriweather. I generally feel bad to rag on people but the guys doing the sound mixing at Merriweather were horrible, they had the drums and bass and low synth frequencies drowning out Mira and Helen's vocals, not to mention the other melodies from the guitars/synths. I mean come on, you would think they would understand not ALL shows need "ZOMG MORE AWESOME BASS" (when I was in the Drum 'n' Bass tent at Starscape for over 10 hours that is when I want the bass, not here). Despite being hot, humid, and aurally disatisfied by the mixing I still had a hell of a time purely from Ladytron's set. Also Mira is super cute/hot, props to the outfits they perform in. Here is a little live performance at KCRW they did, asklhgfhgfg



Ahhh I want to see them again live as soon as possible...

So my recent escapades with my newly acquired 360 have taken me through Clive Barker's Jericho. Despite the scathing reviews and utter beating that it received from critics and reviewers alike I went ahead and bought it after much enjoying the demo from Xbox Live. I have to honestly say I loved the game. I do agree that the ending was a bit of a let down, but it was not a complete game-killer and the overall experience was rather memorable. First off, despite this being a FPS it's not Halo or Resistance. If you think of it this way, if these were RPGs Halo would be Morrowind (fuck you Oblivion, you sucked...ok you weren't that bad, you just weren't as good as Morrowind) very open and explorable in terms of story(more open/explorable maps for Halo). Jericho on the other hand is a JRPG in that the levels are very limited and shuttle you in the direction you need to go, on top of that it's episodic (read clear a couple rooms and enter loading screen with story advancement update + save-checkpoint). I found this change of pace refreshing after having played various other FPS games where YES you can use strategy to hang back and take 10x longer but you never get hurt because you're being snipey, but there is never any actual danger. Jericho basically puts you in these claustrophobic corridors with enemies that can spawn from anywhere (think aliens how they can come in from any vent around you) and on top of the fact the enemies are in your face there are suicide exploding enemies as well which can wipe out your whole party. Basically every review I read called this cheap, I honestly saw it as the only way you can possibly die in this game. Oh right, I need to explain the mechanics...I'll get back to the enemies.

So in Jericho you're a 7 man squad, soon to be 6 man because one person dies (no spoiler there, it's practically on the back of the box). This dead teammate ends up being the explanation for why you can, at any time, jump between squad members and take control of their person. This is AWESOME and really well done. Seeing as how the 6 different characters all have unique abilities and weapons this adds amazing flexibility on how you can approach situations or how you wanna play depending on your style. Since the spirit of the 7th guy had the power to heal, this means whoever you currently have control of can revive a downed teammate. This leads you to realize the only way for you to get a game over really is to either all die very rapidly before you can revive (this did happen a couple times when we were caught in machine-gun cross-fire...my fault) or to be caught in a massive explosion, aka explosive cultists. Yes these exploding enemies are throughout the game, I mean can you fault the designers for wanting to put an actual danger to your safety throughout the game to actually add a challenge? Yes, that's right, I didn't see it as cheap because almost any time happened to die to them was because of my own fault from lack of accuracy (you have to take out these points on their body, think regenerators from RE4) or from advancing too quickly.

Another complaint people had was the scenery was bland and uninspired due to repetition, I didn't really think this was the case, plus since you are constantly in darkness it didn't really matter much to me anyways. I guess the flaws that reviews found in this game were things that didn't phase me and the unique experience that Jericho had to offer me won out. You can command either alpha or omega squads (3 people in each), the VAing I found to be great, the graphics were awesome and absolutely horrific. Some of the larger boss battles were awe-inspiring, the enemies are QUITE numerous at times, but this isn't a problem if you're smart and target their respective weaknesses. They have some of those crazy "PRESS THIS BUTTON TO NOT DIE, NOW THIS BUTTON" sequences in the game at various points, I found this fun despite many other people finding it out of place and frustrating. Also when creatures jump on your face and try to evicerate you and you have to do the button sequence then it's exhilarating (I think the voice acting really shines for some of the characters as they scream/breathe hard/yell during these struggles, ESPECIALLY if you fail at the buttons).

In closing regarding Jericho I would say it's definitely not for everyone. It seems that the critics have thought this, I enjoyed it as a change up in the FPS genre that gave me a real run for the money in terms of difficulty. Yes you die from exploding cultists who frequently spawn behind or very close to you, but it's not like sodliers in Iraq get fair warning of the various planted roadside explosives. I found the claustrophobic levels to keep me on edge rather than just get frustrated with the level design. A lot of people won't like the game, I can't really recommend it, but I can say I enjoyed it at least. I also went and read Clive Barker's The Hellbound Heart (inspiration for the Hellraiser movies) after I beat the game, pretty interesting book too. Plus Clive Barker gets two thumbs up in my book for saying games are definitely an art form.


.....Ladytron you are awesome come back SOOOOON.