It's been a while since I've talked about much of anything so GET READY FOR EXTREME WALL OF TEXT ABOUT RANDOM CRAP FUCK YEAH.

GAMES

Lately I've been playing a lot of Day of Defeat: Source.  I'm kind of late to the party since Day of Defeat: Source was originally released in 2005.  I used to play a lot of the original Day of Defeat back in the day but I just never really had a good opportunity to buy this game.  See, I was originally turned off by a lot of the changes they made in this game, since it is much more than just a simple graphical upgrade like Counter-Strike: Source.  Unlike CSS, DODS actually changes quite a few things in the actual game which initially pissed me off.  However, this game was on sale last summer for $5 and my friend bought it for me as a gift over steam and eventually bought it himself recently.  So I've been playing this game a lot more now than during the summer, since multiplayer games are way more entertaining when you play with a friend than when you just play by yourself.  Regardless, this is a fun game with excellent weapons and gameplay.  If you're itching to get your WWII on in a team-based multiplayer setting (this game has no single player) for the relatively low cost of $9.99, then you can't really go wrong with Day of Defeat: Source.  I'll probably get bashed for saying this, but I've always thought Day of Defeat was the superior game to the Call of Duty games.  The single player in Call of Duty is awesome, but the multiplayer fucking sucks.  Yes I said it.  I've played Call of Duty Multiplayer, Call of Duty: United Offensive Multiplayer, Call of Duty 2 Multiplayer, and Call of Duty 4 Multiplayer.  They all fucking suck, with the exception of United Offensive, which IMO is the ONLY Call of Duty game with multiplayer that is not a fucking snooze-fest.

F.E.A.R. is a game that I initially had the opportunity to play all the way back in 2005 when it first came out.  I played it for about an hour, and then just kind of forgot about it and it eventually disappeared off my hard drive, probably due to one of the billion reformats I've done in the past 4 years since buying the computer I am currently using.  Anyway, I've had this game on my computer since I think this last summer, courtesy of psychomode incessantly rambling about how awesome it is, and on Halloween I FINALLY decided to play it.  This game definitely lives up to it's name.  So far it hasn't really relied on the Doom 3 IN YOUR FACE scares with enemies coming out of nowhere to tear you a new one, but mostly relying on creating a freaky atmosphere to freak you the fuck out.  Which is cool, but freaky at the same time.  I'm kind of a big wuss when it comes to freaky games and I generally don't play them very often (being scared is a love-hate thing for me) but I think I've been somewhat desensitized after my excursion through Doom 3 on hard difficulty last summer.  I'm about 2 hours or so into this game and it's pretty good so far, the action is pretty kick-ass and is kind of reminiscent of the bullet-time stuff from the Matrix movies.  The AI in this game is also incredibly good... the enemy soldiers are disturbingly intelligent which has so far made up for the extremely repetitive level design.  I plan to try and get this game finished by the end of this week because I will then be moving on to another game...


As you may or may not have already read on psychomode's blog, we have made an agreement that this game will be ANNIHILATED.  I have literally had this game haunting my backlog since as far back as possibly late 2004 (or early 2005, I'm not sure).  Regardless I have had this game for such a goddamn long time and for some reason or another have failed to defeat this game on numerous occasions.  Once I complete F.E.A.R. I am going to kill that stupid scientist asshole and his retarded gorilla mutant monkey soldier things ONCE AND FOR ALL.

I've also been dabbling in a bit of Final Fantasy X on the side... this is the first time I have played this game in over 2 years.  Final Fantasy X is a personal favourite game of mine, and for a very long time was my second favourite game in the series after Final Fantasy VII... that was until I played Final Fantasy VIII which immediately challenged Final Fantasy VII for the first spot upon it's completion.  I have been debating which game is better for almost a year now (FFVII vs FFVIII) and I cannot come to a conclusion.  Maybe replaying FFX will once again remind me why I loved it so much in the first place.  I have to admit that several years ago there was a point where I actually debated which game was superior (FFVII or FFX)... I ultimately came to the conclusion that FFVII was still my best/favourite, but FFX is really, really close.  The only problem for FFX, is that FFVII does too many things perfectly.  FFX doesn't really do anything wrong... but FFVII is as close to perfect as any game has ever been as far as I'm concerned.




MOVIES

On Halloween most people watch scary movies, I watched a 3 and a half hour Samurai movie from 1954 called Seven Samurai.  This is a movie I had in my possession for a few days before watching it, but for some reason on Halloween night I finally decided to watch this movie.  One thing I have noticed is a lot of people say old movies suck.  After watching this movie I couldn't disagree more.  I know there is also this big rift between people just like in music where some people say classic cinema is superior to the crap hollywood churns out these days, and people on the other side of the fence.  Just like with anything, I think the best course of action is to watch the and enjoy the best from every era, so long as it interests you.  I don't really care how old something is - if the plot/characters sound interesting then I will watch it.  That was the case with Seven Samurai, which is also ranked at #13 on IMDB on the top 250 best movies list.

Anyway, the basic premise of this movie is about a small farming village who discovers that their town is soon to be raided by bandits after the harvest.  They realize they are sick of being taken advantage of by bandits, and thus devise a plan to hire Samurai to protect them.  Unfortunately for them Samurai usually have much higher aspirations than helping farmers for little to no pay and fame, so they look for "hungry" samurai.  This plan eventually works and they gather up a group of samurai who are all in on the deal for their own reasons.  One thing I especially liked about this movie is that during the recruiting phase each samurai is introduced with his own unique scene that explains a lot about their character.  This film is more of a character study than an action movie, as the first 2 hours are all about the group and their bonding, and their experience in the town once they actually get there.  The last hour of the movie is all battling though.  The difference between this movie and other movies is that the action scenes are not over-glorified giant battles.  They have a group of 30-some bandits against 7 samurai skilled to various degrees, and a bunch of poorly trained farmers with spears.  The battles are ugly, strategic, and chaotic, much like real fights.  The samurai don't just go in and kick ass like in most movies... they fight realistically which was cool.  This movie makes it seem like just fighting against a group of 30 guys is extremely freaking hard, whereas other movies generally use GIANT numbers of soldiers ranking in the hundreds or thousands but they are dispatched with relative ease.

My favourite scene is near the end of the movie where they are fighting in the rain.  Because this accurately displays how unheroic war is.  It's dirty, and disgusting and generally just really awkward and violent.  This is probably one of the most unromanticized movies I have ever seen, as it accurately portrays the living conditions of ancient times... survival isn't exactly a cake walk.  But I'll stop talking about this movie now... I'd just like the say that the final thing you see on the camera is really an amazing thing.  I want to show a picture here but I'll leave it out for the sake of anyone who wants to see the movie.  It really moved me though, the final lines of the movie were absolutely fantastic, and really moving.

This is a movie I've had in the back of my mind for a few years actually. I initially became interesting in seeing this film after seeing a clip of it in V for Vendetta (2005).  The Count of Monte Cristo is V's favourite film, and the scenes with this movie in V for Vendetta really intrigued me into wanting to watch this movie.  After watching Seven Samurai I acquired this film, and I plan to watch it soon.  I have no idea how good this movie actually is, but it's OLD AS HELL.  When I watch this movie it will be the oldest movie I have ever seen.  I know the story is supposedly legendary though, written by the same man who wrote The Three Musketeers.  If I like this movie enough I am probably going to buy the book and read it sometime in the near future.  All I know so far about this movie's plot is that a guy is betrayed by his friends and imprisoned.  He then devises a plan to exact revenge on his "friends" who wronged him.

Another thing I plan to watch is the anime series Trigun.  I don't watch a lot of anime, the last one I watched was around like a year ago or so, which was Gungrave.  The general concept of Gungrave was extremely interesting to me and I decided to watch it based on the recommendation of a friend.  I really liked the characters in Gungrave too.  Trigun was created by the same guy who created Gungrave, which is the main reason why I have been wanting to watch it for quite some time now.  A few people have told me that if I liked Gungrave I would probably really like Trigun too.  The only difference is that Trigun is apparently much less dark and more humourous than Gungrave.  Gungrave was a really dark story, the first episode introduces you to this really weird dark brooding character named Beyond the Grave who you later find out (in the first episode) was previously known as Brandon Heat.  Brandon is killed, and eventually brought back to life.  The thing I found interesting about Gungrave is that the first 75% of the series explains the story behind Brandon and his relationships, which leads to his eventual death and resurrection as an undead killing machine.  Trigun is apparently about some good guy who is unable to avoid conflict, and has some BAJILLION DOLLAR bounty on his head for something he cannot remember doing.  Regardless, I will be watching this soon and reporting in later on what I thought of it, and it will probably wind up being compared to Gungrave due to some similarities which will probably undoubtedly surface since they were created by the same dude.

...and thus ends this massive wall of text about random crap.