Thursday, October 1, 2009

BOOM!

With my recent purchase of a 46" LCD TV and the Blu Ray player all that was missing was the audio aspect of the package. We have had Cody's old bookshelf stereo hooked up as our audio component for way too long. Cody went out and about a receiver and some speakers, so now we can really annoying the neighbours with super loud movies and video games.

The system is a Yamaha receiver capable of 7.1 surround sound, but the Polk speaker package he got is only able to reproduce 5.1 surround. Whatever, I'm cool with it because so far it sounds pretty good. The sound of bullets ripping through flesh is crystal clear. It comes with different pre-sets for movies or music. For movies you got drama, action, sci fi, etc and for music you have like these concert hall settings. I was disappointed there wasn't a "rap concert" pre-set which would just be all bass.

The whole system is up and running, but Cody says it's still "a work in progress". He says he is going to hang the rear speakers in the top corners of the walls and such. Right now they are just sitting on stuff. Also, you can see Cody's speaker wire placement. You can barely even tell it's there! Where is Cam when you need him?

If you noticed in the receiver picture the copy of L4D sitting on top of it. Lately, I've been playing ODST, GOW2, Stranglehold, and Modern Warfare, but dug this out today because the new DLC is out. The first set of DLC was free, but this latest one you had to pay for. If you have the PC version it is free, but if you have the XBox version then you gotta pay. It comes with a new (although abbreviated) campaign called Crash Course which is also available to play in versus and survival modes. I just played the campaign portion by myself this afternoon (twice) and it wasn't bad. It's more zombie killing, so I'm all for it. It has just two chapters for the entire campaign, but they did seem to be a little bit longer than the regular chapters from the game. Since you had to pay for the newest DLC they put in some new achievements including "The Little Genocide" of killing 5,359 infected in the Crash Course campaign. Hopefully, these kills also count towards the Zombie Genocidest achievement for the main game of killing 53,595 infected. I got the Tank Stumble achievement this afternoon totally by accident. You have to stun a Tank with an explosion and right at the very end of the campaign when the rescue vehicle became available I picked up a pipe bomb and tossed it out and waited for it to explode so I could get a few more kills in before the game ended. I didn't even see or hear the Tank, but I guess he was running over the pipe bomb as blew up, so I got the achievement and the 20 G to put me at and even 11,000 gamerscore.

4 comments:

kristian said...

I like the use of the book case as a cover for the wire and the use of the door frame. Very smart and classy!

Cam said...

Unsightly speaker wire got you down? A thin coat of Liquid Paper® brand white-out is just what the doctor ordered! The applicator brush inside the lid is wide enough for speaker cord, and with a quick swipe your wires will disappear - as if by magic!

"Oh, you got those expensive wireless speakers", your friends will say, but only you will know the truth... ;)

Keef said...

Thanks Cam, but the wire is pretty thick, 16 gauge, so will it still work? Also, does it have to be Liquid Paper brand white out or can use one of the other inferior brands to save a couple pennies?

Alternately, I was thinking about either painting the wall to match the color of the wire or strategically hanging pictures and posters to hide the speaker wire.

mike said...

you can get white duct tape now can't you? plus you might even have extra left over for future home renos.