Beyond The Sword!

Been spending most of my free time (which frankly, isn't a lot) playing Beyond the Sword, 2nd expansion to Civilization 4. Awesome and deadly addictive... I love all the additions - the espionage system, the new leaders and civilizations, the new artworks and everything. And I haven't even got to experience all of them yet! It's probably going to receive the game of the year or something for being the best expansion in the franchise.

There's actually a twist the name of the expansion. "Beyond The Sword" signifies 2 things. The first focus is the era after the swords, aka late game. The 2nd meaning, of course, is an "alternative to sword/force", which means diplomacy...

Talking about that... We finally signed the peace treaty for World War 9...

As predicted, we lost the war. The deaths are uncountable... we bowed down to our enemies... but we're not totally conquered. Someday, we will rise again and fight once more for our rights...

Well... that was a bit of deviation (I hope I used this word correctly...) for a post about games...

I don't know if I'm slow or what, but only recently do I discovered a new genre (not really genre, but a new input for games) They've been hanging around for quite some time in fact. One of the game is Singstar.

"By using a USB microphone, would-be singers chant directly into the mic and have their voice and pitch analyzed by the console."

"For the first time ever SingStar lets you personalise your playlists by downloading the songs of your choice -- so you can sing along to what you want, when you want it."

"All of the songs have the music video (or in the case of older songs, edited concert footage) to accompany the song. You're judged by your ability to stay in tune, and especially for being able to hit the glittery golden notes that mark some of the trademark sections of the songs you'll be performing."

Sounds interesting for those KBox regulars right... LOL. Pretty cool... and I thought Dance Dance Revolution (the one with censors) is just about as far as it would go...

Imagine next time, when you go KTV... Everytime you finish singing a song, a screen will pop up at the side stating something like:

"Tempo: 60/100, Pitch: 70/100, Grade: B+"

Cool, huh?