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This is the 2nd

VLog 3/01/10: It's A New Year

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As 2009 turns to 2010, Jensonb gives us his thoughts on his favourite movies, games & music from 2009, complete with anecdotes and more. Then he takes a look at 2010 and what he's got in store for this year.

Endurance Run Endurance Run Part 2

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The Endurance Run Endurance Run returns as Jensonb continues his quest to finally watch every single episode of Giant Bomb (dot) Com's Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 Endurance Run, here tackling episodes 20-26.

Hey! Watch this... Music Video Rough Cut

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This is the rough cut of my A2 Media Studies Coursework, a music video for the song "Hey! Watch this..." by The Auteur, which I'm making available so we can gain some audience feedback ahead of making the finishing touches. Most transitions are missing, some of the edits are work in progress and some of the audio cuts need some modifications. Additionally, at least 1 instance of onscreen text is missing.

Review: Mrs. Santa Claus

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Jensonb celebrates the Christmas season by sitting down to partake in a favourite hobby, watching trashy Christmas movies. Alas, his choice of trashy Christmas movies may have been a bad one in this instance. See what happens next as Jensonb takes on the 1996 Made for TV Musical, Mrs. Santa Claus, starring Angela Lansbury!

Endurance Run Endurance Run Part 1

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Jensonb embarks on a deliciously meta quest to catch up with the Giant Bomb Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 Endurance Run. This, obviously, is of most interest to Giant Bomb Users.

Little Big Whoop

The following is from my new primary blog at Giant Bomb:

So everyone loves LittleBigPlanet apparently. Seriously, the game's not out yet and everyone seems to love it. Everywhere I look, it's heralded as the second coming. And I can't see why. Okay, it lets you make your own levels. It's not that big a deal. I see people rave about every little thing. People call me weird for not being interested. I'm sorry folks, it's just not that interesting an idea. I'd never play it long enough to make anything I really liked with the editor, so I'm not interested.

It bugs me that in an era when everyone complains about the hype of games like Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4 (Games which were awesome, get over it folks), all those same people don't have a bad thing to say about LittleBigPlanet. I get it, you're interested. Doesn't mean the idea is particularly amazing or that the game's that original. Doesn't mean I have to like it too.

So add me to the minority not in the least bit interested in LittleBigPlanet.

Now Black Rock's Pure? There's a game I can get behind. Mindless off-road fun? Hell to the yes. 16-Player online races? Oh yeah.

Yes, I think Pure's going to be better than LittleBigPlanet. And for me, it will be. I might be alone in that. Does that mean you need to come here and tell me how wrong I am and list all the features of LittleBigPlanet which have still not made me think it's god (Yes, I ave heard about them)? No, it doesn't.

I'm immue to Little Big Planet's power. Even if I have to be the lone critic, I will be.

Jens Out

Kaboom!

And just like that, The Bomb blew. Giant Bomb (dot) com has finally opened the doors to the final site, and it's absolutely fantastic. The site's got a few creaks owing to the huge load we're putting on it, but it's standing up better than I expected. Things are getting done.

The site looks attractive and it's laid out very well. The whole thing also has a very social atmosphere to it, it's friendly and communal - the content, largely collaborative. The forums are just getting started and already we're getting on very well.

The site's video player is also very good, attractive and simple, keeps out of the way. Very nice.

We may have just knocked the servers over there...Whoops.

Oh, there it goes. Back now.

Anyway, staying up for the site proved to be worth it. I guarantee if I'd gone to bed, I'd have slept past the launch and wouldn't have gotten to see the site until the afternoon. That would have been unacceptable.

I'm making a bunch of friends in the Live Stream chatroom. This is going to be fun.

Well, the site's now getting over the earlier crashes where it would completely fail to resolve as the load on the servers decreases - a lot of the users in America for example are heading to bed so the server's aren't taking such a huge hit.

There are lingering issues, with quite a few bugs and glitches yet to be sorted, but there don't seem to be any show stoppers. So far, it's a relatively smooth launch.

Can't wait for the next Bombcast.

Bomb Watch Starts Here

Giant Bomb's Jeff Gerstmann today e-mailed anyone who had sent an e-mail to one of the Giant Bomb addresses (Notable the Beta Signup Address). It formalises the site's launch as being imminent, a fact already made abundently clear by the blog having been replaced with a teasing image and a "Landing shortly" message.

The most important part of the message reads:

This e-mail is being sent to let you know that we're getting very close to the beta launch of giantbomb.com -- if you want to be extra-certain that you secure your username of choice, you should start taking occasional looks at the site to see if it's up yet. You will not receive a second e-mail from us, as we're solely focused on the site itself.

So what will you be able to do on Giant Bomb?

Explore a database that already contains...
Entries for over 72,000 releases.
Pages for nearly 90,000 people involved in the creation of video games.
Almost 600 character pages!
Something like 580 pages for gaming franchises!
Dude, I don't know, how about I just write "and much, much more" here and we move on?
Don't forget, you'll be able to edit and add to all of these things!

And of course, we'll have message boards. Tens of thousands of message boards! Way too many message boards! Everything from the PlayStation 3 to hamburgers will have a message board associated with it. In fact, every single page in the database, including consoles, franchises, games, objects, characters, people, and concepts will all have a friendly message board right at the bottom. But don't worry about getting lost or missing out on a conversation. Messages from all boards are easily found in our forum index.

This extract of course excludes the instructions, but they're fairly obvious anyway.

So now, we begin the Bomb Watch. I have arranged for my browser (Firefox 3, Mac OS X 10.5.4, a rock slid and generally excellent browser and platform) set up to reload Giant Bomb (dot) com at set intervals, so excited am I to get into the site.

Unfortunately, I'm also way too excited. I'm afraid to sleep in case I miss it. I mean, even tonight, I really don't want to risk it, even though I'm almost 100% the site won't launch until something like 6PM BST on Monday the 21st of July (At the earliest).

And so, for as long as I'm awake, I'm going to be updating round the clock. I'll Tweet status updates at regular intervals and come the launch, I'll tweet my progress registering, then writeup impressions of the site her on All Your Time.

And yes, I fully intend to contribute as much as I can to anything Disney-Related (Exception: Chronicles of Narnia, we'll get to that little mistake someday).

Speaking of, how awesome does Pure look? For some reason, I'm all-the-way pumped for that game. Maybe cos it's a Disney-made insane off-road racer. We all know I love Disney and Excite Truck, Pure combines them. Naturally, I'll be nabbing the 360 version.

Anywho, where was I? Oh yes, The Bomb. I gotta tell ya, I really need this site. As it stands, the only gaming community I frequent is all but dead in the sections I read. I mean, I visit 1Up and GameSpot, but not their communities (Forums). 1Up's folks were very hostile (Generally, they were some kind souls) to those of us displaced from GameSpot (The site as a whole, not just the forums) after The 29th. GameSpot's forums I just found insular and not very fun.

Wow, I really want to make a movie about Gerstmann-gate...It's a great story for the screen. I saw a YouTube video which recast a JFK (One of my all-time favourie movies) trailer as a traler for JFG, a ficticious movie about Gerstmann-gate (Using JFK footage and dialogue for illustrative purposes), and it was very cool. I definitely think Jeff's story would be good for the screen.

Perhaps a book first, that's howit typically works...Oh well. If it's not been done by the time I can do it, I will. If anyone else is planning to do it and wants help (Writing, directing, any creative stuff really) drop me a line, I have some ideas how it could work.

Anyway, I'm rambling. Onward to The Bomb!

Jens Has Blown

Special Advanced Preview

Here it is folks, the first publicly available Multiplayer Magazine material. This is Beta 0.2 of the Cover Layout, and I'm making it avilable for public viewing as of today for the sake of feedback, just drop me a line at jensonb (at) me (dot) com or jensonb (at) mac (dot) com.

Click Here

Meanwhile, I'm finalising internal notes on the Review Layout and you can possibly hope to see that soon too.

I'm also prepared to reveal that the Multiplayer Magazine website is going to be powered by Joomla and, to support our focus on community, we will be integrating a Kickapps Social Network, comprising message boards, blogs, photo sharing, video sharing and more. many of these features are also very helpful for our needs (Sharing content).

Lastly, I'm ready to reveal the format for the (As yet) untitled video show I'm going to be putting into production. The show will primarily involve me goign through the week's gaming news - lampooning both it and the coverage. Think of it as The Daily Show, but with gaming coverage. It will also play host to viewer submissions, ala Multiplayer Magazine.

Jens Out