This past Christmas, I was introduced to a demo of Karaoke Revolution Party for the PS2. After playing the demo once, me and Laura were hooked on this game.

Now, after having played Karaoke Revolution Party for a few weeks now, I can say we probably unlocked just about all that there is available. It is a truly revolutionary game that actually does grade your vocal pitch when you are singing into the USB microphone. The game has 50 songs, a duet 2-player mode, sing and dance mode, and it even supports the Eye Toy. I do not have an Eye Toy, (nor do I want one), so I can’t comment on that feature. The game does require either a USB microphone or headset. I have both, but I highly recommend that you try the microphone. It is so much fun to use and the cord is generously long. I love leaping around the house, jumping off of the furniture, and all the while trying to keep up the gig and score well.

All in all, the game is fantastic. It is extremely enjoyable and a blast to play. The game has an impressive spread of 50 tunes that span practically every music genre. I have now learned the words to songs that I have never known before. Everyone will find something to love in this game. It grades you based on vocal pitch and timing. Still, you can still be a bad singer and have fun with this game. I simply do not get tired of it.

In addition to its impressive spread of songs, characters, accessories, and performance arenas, Karaoke Revolution Party servers up a two-player duet mode and singing battles. In these modes, two microphones can be used at one time. There is even a sing and dance mode where you sing and literally dance on a PS2 dance mat to the tunes in the game! I find that mode to be particularly challenging.

The bottom line is that if you like music, and enjoy singing in the shower or in the car, you will love this game. It is highly addictive. Traditionally, I love shoot em’ up games, but I have not played any other game other than Karaoke Revolution since I got turned on to it many weeks ago. I give it the highest rating, if I had such a system.

I have created a new category in my blog, called Games. From time to time, I may write a short game review of something really cool, or really awful. The vast majority of these games will be for Playstation 2. If you want to see only the posts for Games, you must click the category in the list. Otherwise, the blog page will display posts from all categories.

To my friends and family, it is no secret that I hate the post office. I always have. At least 50% of the time that I have to physically go to the post office to conduct business, I walk away empty handed, or sorely disappointed. I am not exaggerating.

There are always forty people in line and the stamp machine is always conveniently out of order, or is out of change. This happened to me two days in a row at two different post offices this week! I just had to leave. I didn’t have time on my lunch break to wait in that kind of line. If the post office itself actually had to directly compete against another company, such the way banks do, customers would never tolerate their lack of service. People today just universally accept the way the post office is and have grown numb to their ways.

The post office reminds of me a slow, uncaring government service like the DMV. They are so slow! That is a story of its own, but the mail service comes accross the same way, like a bureaucratic mismanaged operation. If they cared about making customers happy, they would put a drive-up stamp machine outside of the post office building. And make sure it works! Sure, you can buy stamps at the grocery store, but they are usually marked up, so that a bad option.

I’m sure it is no coincidence that the mail normally comes around 4:00 every afternoon, but on Saturday, it somehow manages to get here before noon. If they can deliver it that early on Saturday, then why not do it that way every day of the week? It has also long been time to start delivering the mail on Sunday. Every time I order something online, the looming Sunday is always in my mind. That one day interrupts the flow of everything. That causes you to, again, on Monday have a line of forty people in front of you at the post office when you get there. Granted, the only good thing about the mail not running on Sunday is that it probably saves on traffic congestion and air pollution.

For me, I use every online banking and bill payment option for every account that offers it…and every institution should have online billing by this point in time. I don’t mail off payments and I turn off paper bill options whenever possible. It isn’t that I don’t trust the snail mail, it just takes too long and always has a way of making me angry.