September’s ebbing away now and October is bearing down on us full-bore, not stopping until it arrives with a pumpkin-sized slap in the face. More power to it I say, it’s already feeling colder and giving me opportunity to wear the bargain of a coat I picked up in a sale last week. October is, by and large, a good month. I have lots of really good memories from Octobers gone by. I’m hoping my plans hold up for this one and make it as memorable as some of the other recent ones.
Moving swfitly along, we had the *best* sparring training session on this Sunday just gone. There were only four of us fighting and I knew it was going to be continuous (as opposed to point-stop) training, so I was expecting to be very knackered by the end. I was right, but it was the most enjoyable sparring I’ve done in a long time. We took contact levels all the way up and pretty much just pounded one another for an hour, which to anyone who doesn’t fight often doesn’t sound like much fun at all – including my bemused friends who I saw later that evening. They’re wrong though, it’s very enjoyable! I got kicked in the throat which made me gag and cough a lot, but with hindisght even that was quite cool :). I took quite a few lessons and improvements from the session, little things I wanted to work on and improve so I was doubly happy – I’d learned AND been beaten like a red-headed step-child.
I’m really enjoying GTA4 at the moment. I was a bit disappointed when I first started playing it, because for all it’s purty looks it was still almost identical to the previous games. The more I play it however, the more I realise there’s quite a lot more depth to it. The story is much more involved, the missions manage to pack in quite a lot of variety and some of the choices the game forces you to make are very tough. If I had to pick holes, I’d say the only annoying thing is trying to keep your acquaintances happy. If you’ve got a mission in mind, or are halfway across the city with intentions of buying some new weapons or kitting yourself out in some new togs and someone calls you on the in-game phone you get a choice of whether to meet up or not. The only way you can win in this scenario is to agree and then to get there sharpish – one game hour goes very quickly. If you get there late, or decline their invitation, they dislike you a little more and your relationship sours a little. I understand it’s in keeping with the nature of the game, but it brings to mind the things I dislike in games, the things which make a game feel more like work than fun. That minor gripe aside, it’s still an awesome game!
Rock Band still holds me captive in its greasy tendrils, but I don’t really mind. It’s so satisfying to play when you ace a favourite track, or even just make it through a paricularly difficult one. Maybe I’m a tendril kinda guy?
I can’t add music to posts here really (work filters to blame), but if I could I’d have a really hard time picking today. On the one side I’m loving me some In Flames recently, but there’s some other stuff I haven’t listened to in a while which I’d have to consider too. I heard a Bjork track the other day which took me back and made me totally gormless, so maybe that, or maybe a particular Moby track, I don’t know. Maybe by the time I get home I’ll have chosen one and might even edit this to include it :).