Other than the frantic drawing of requested Brave Combination pictures, I had a pretty uneventful weekend. I did, however, have a pretty cool Friday. I went home for lunch, as I do most days lately. My current job is in a building approximately 50 feet from my front door, so there's not much reason to stick around if I've got more than the 5 minutes it takes to ride the elevator and cross the street to spare. Anyway, finding time to watch anime now that I'm working hasn't been too difficult as a result. I tend to do most of my watching while I eat my mid-day meal. It's always nice because I tend not to watch garbage, but on Fridays it's a particularly special treat. Not only because of the innate awesomeness of the final day of the work week, but because the Haruhi subs tend to be released on Thursday night or Friday morning, giving them ample time to finish downloading for my Friday lunch break.

Kind of a long opening for me just to talk about Haruhi (yet again) but the overall theme of this post is gonna be last Friday in particular, so there is a reason for it. But yeah, I am going to talk about Haruhi (yet again). After last week's tension-filled episode, this week's was a nice change. Sure, the resident time-traveler, alien and esper each had their own brief moment of seriousness in there to reassert the sci fi elements and to deepen Kyon's (and by extension our) confusion over what exactly is going on, but all in all, the episode was pretty light hearted.

When this new season began, I counted myself lucky that I hadn't read the novels because it meant this would all be new content for me. When Endless Eight was crushing us all under its mighty girth of frustration, I was starting to feel like I'd just like to know what happens next without having to wade through all this repeated timeline nonsense (it's a cool sci fi concept, but if the loop repeats more than 3 times, 4 tops, you're doing it wrong. Oh, so wrong). Now, I'm not sure where I stand. With actual new stories coming out once again, I'm happy to be surprised and amused by things for the first time. But part of me wonders what's original to the novels and what's KyoAni's doing. Finer touches that I really appreciate like Shamisen the cat struggling to stay on Yuki's shoulder as he debates linguistic philosophy with Kyon or Haruhi's taking a moment to hastily consume the remainder of Kyon's tea before storming out of the cafe. My first guess is that light novels being what they are, smaller details like that are the animation studio's two cents. But then, as I haven't actually read these novels, I really can't say. So I guess mostly, I'm glad that I don't know what'll happen next (this week, it just so happens that I do because, if I'm not mistaken, the next episode ought to be one from the first season, but let's ignore that fact for the sake of this sentence making sense) but I'll admit that there is a curiosity inside me that wants to analyze what belongs to Tanigawa Nagaru and what's Kyoto Animation's.

So I watched that at lunch and it was good stuff. After an afternoon of work and a 100-meter-dash of an Aetheria Epics putting together, I went out for supper with my girlfriend, my sister and her boyfriend (he's also a good friend but I never know if I should specify or if it's just a given). After drinking enough beer to give us to confidence to belt out a few classic Beatles tunes in front of each other, we did just that. Which brings me to Beatles Rock Band.

(Come to think of it, is that the official title? That's what I've been calling it since they announced it, but I never bothered to check. Oh well, official or not, the title fits and you know what I'm talking about when I say it.)

So it's a lot like regular Rock Band, but with the Beatles. A simple recipe but a recipe for success, nonetheless. The backgrounds are what I've heard a lot of people talk about, and while they are very nice (someone definitely put a lot of effort into them), it's all just static noise to me if I'm playing. I generally wouldn't care if they weren't there at all. The song selection is good but I felt as though some were intentionally left out with the intention to sell them individually for download later on. If you're a big enough Beatles fan, though, you tend to know and like them all anyway, so you'll likely be happy enough with the sheer range of available songs. Like regular Rock Band, Hard mode tends to be too easy and Expert tends to be too hard, but that speaks more of my own ability than of the game, I suppose.

The drum peripheral is apparently the same as the one that came with Rock Band 2, but with a fancy new Beatles-esque look. I'd never used the Rock Band 2 drum kit before, but it's definitely an improvement over the first. A lot less noisy on its own and it just seems generally sturdier. The guitar that I tried (not sure if there are more than one kind to go with this game) was also nice. I've been told that we're finally up to something resembling "actual size" for our plastic instrument, meaning that it feels a little bit more "right" in my opinion. Also, the effects switch is a lot harder to accidentally change in the middle of a song and you now have to hold down the start button for it to work, meaning it's less likely I'll be accidentally pausing the game mid-song, which has always been a frustration for not only me, but the people I play with as well.

All in all, I dig it. And with the Rock Band Queen pack supposedly coming out this month, it looks like the game will be seeing a lot more use in our small circle during the next little while than it has over the past several months.

After that, the girlfriend and I went home and had a long and much-needed sleep. The rest of the weekend is just a muddled blur of photoshop, crumpled up pieces of paper and a fequently-refreshed forum window. I'd do it all over again, though.