Friday, January 2, 2009

10

10. Kung Fu Panda
9. Curious Case of Benjamin Button
8. Rambo
7. Cloverfield
6. Pineapple Express
5. Mamma Sing (Sing Along)
4. Iron Man
3. Tropic Thunder
2. Let The Right One In
1. Hellboy II

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Disney + Home Theatre = Too true.

There's nothing I love more than a good animated short. There's nothing I like more than an animated short than home theatre systems! Let's combine the two:



Note the blink-and-you'll-miss-it allusion to John Lasseter taking over for Walt himself...

And holy crap! Michael Giachinno did the music!

Friday, September 26, 2008

New VALKYRIE Trailer

Say what you want about his films (even though it was a terrible Superman story, S.R. was pretty awesome),  you can always count on a Bryan Singer film to be gorgeous. Here's the new trailer to the oft delayed Nazi Espionage'n film VALKYRIE.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Bathroom Reading

I am most depressed at my reading habits as of late.

As in: The only time I have for reading (school or otherwise) is on the John. 

The main cause for this, though is that I still have 0 (zero) furniture in my bedroom. Someone please buy me a modern cut wood full size bed frame and some reading lamps. Now.

Thank you.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Emmy's

Lost and Mad Men are both up for BEST DRAMA.

This would be the first time I'm going to go with a non-LOST show.


WIN MAD MEN WIN!!!

p.s.- where the @$%! is Battlestar.

Mercenaries 2







Many games these days are touted as being 'sandboxes'. This refers to the idea that you can enter the pre-designed world and do whatever you want- you want to smack a grandma in the face? Go ahead. Most of these do not allow you full control over the VR presented, however; but offerer variations on a theme. 

Take the most recent high profile entry in the sandbox genre, 'Grand Theft Auto IV.' Rather than letting you do whatever you want, you're given New York. And I mean New York. Five burghs. Manhattan, Jersey, Bronx, etc. All there to run around in. The name of the game is detail; so much so that most of my jollies were pulled from just seeing what they included next. If you get in a car, the cabin lights turn on, then turn off when you close the door. They included a fake interweb with almost a 1000 different pages to visit. You can buy ringtones on the fake internet then download the fake ringtone to your fake phone in-game.

Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, is quite the opposite. Let me liken it to a friend 
of mine, who will go nameless. Let's just say she's a soprano grad student at my college. And she was in Hotel Casablanca. And she plays World of Warcraft. Her enemy is subtlety. If I am the refined plot and attention to detail of GTAIV, she is M2. Meaning: 'SPLOSIONS.

Mercenaries 2, henceforth referred to as M2, features 3 mercenaries (clearly) traveling through venezuela, working for various political factions, all in the name of blowing the shit out of everything. 

(The Merc 2 team (of 3))

Now, I only rented the game, so I can not claim to have plumbed the game's fiery depths, but I will say that as far as blowing stuff up goes, this is the game to beat. Instead of giving a thoughtful analysis, I'll just tell you how about 15 minutes of one of my playthroughs went. 

(Keep in mind that there were 0 load times in the following)

I started a mission that required me to fetch a military grade bunker-buster bomb so I could get to some little bugger holed up on an island in the middle of a huge lake. So I leave my mansion (video games always give you mansions) and go down to a country road. I see a dude riding a motorcycle, so I politely rip him off of his bike and head north. 

Now, the world map is probably 15x15 actual-game-miles wide, so it's a fairly long ride through the lush, jungle infested mountains. I stop by a small town that I see on my radar is holding some C4 charges (which I steal). Once I reach the north coast, the henchmen of the terrorist guy spot me and start to chase me with tanks, helicopter, jeeps, etc. 





(Not me playing, but I swear it looked like this)

A tank shell hits my motorcycle, sending my character ragdolling 200 ft. in the air. But this is alright as the bike is a bitch to drive in water. I stand up and hop onto a nearby jet ski. I take the jet ski further north , all the while being chased by a helicopter. Weaving through the wake, I spot the island with the bombs. I hit the beach, hop off the waverunner, and come under fire from a pill box. Oh? OH? I have this C4 here! BOOM. A tank? Oh??? I run up to the tank, jump onto its cannon, and drop a grenade into the driver's hatch, ruining his shit. 

(from here the story is abridged due to a need to get onto WoW)
I eventually get the bombs, find the compound the terrorist is in, bypass the suggested route entirely (mainly because everything is destructible) by blowing up the walls of the compound, send in the bunker buster, and call it a day.

Wash, rinse, repeat. 




If I had any quibbles, it would be that the driving physics leave much to be desired. GTA4 was the first game to give a legit. illusion of weight for vehicles, where as here you feel like you're driving in an ice storm. 

Especially fun when played with a friend on LIVE.

(Oh yeah. You can eventually call in a tactical nuke.)





Friday, September 19, 2008

An Intro

So I'm about to head off to Wal-Mart to pick up a prepaid gamecard for WoW, but I felt it important to give you guys the mission statement for this blog.

I'm not planning on waxing emo about personal issues or anything of that sort; I'm just here to review w/e geeky item of interest is currently holding my attention, be it episodes of LOST, Mad Men, or BSG- to video games and comics. I realize I'll probably be the only one interested in anything I have to say, but this will, in the very least, give me practice developing a journalistic voice. Of some sort. 

Huzzah.