jadegl

Astro Boy (2009) - 3.5/5

This was a cute kid's movie. Had some heavier moments, especially a few scenes towards the end, that surprised me. There were also quite a few funny moments. Overall, I liked this more than I thought I would.

Steamboy (2004) -2/5

What a disappointment. I can dig slow movies and more contemplative films. I don't need nonstop action. But this was just a chore. Boring. There was a lot of cool stuff on the screen visually, and some neat ideas, but the overall film just seemed to drag on forever. If you want a slower anime that's visually stunning, try something like The Tale of the Princess Kaguya or the first Ghost in the Shell. Both are way better ways to spend a few hours.

Super (2010) - 4/5

Funny, super dark, but utterly engrossing and unforgettable. I expected it to be out there, but it really pushed the limits of discomfort in a lot of scenes. Just violent and twisted, but also oddly touching at the end. It's a real weird movie, but I liked it quite a bit. Not for everyone, though.

Hardcore Henry (2015) - 3/5

A gimmick movie that overstays it's welcome in the end. The action scenes were pretty intense and inventive but I honestly feel it lost something after a while. Still, I am a fan of gimmick movies and this one was well crafted, but a bit long at 96 minutes. Plus I feel like the camera work was starting to give me a headache/make me feel sick by the end credits. But man, Sharlto Copley was awesome. Like the best thing in the movie by a mile.

My quick and dirty list -

• Halo 3: ODST
• Borderlands (Borderlands 2 is also good)
• Puzzle Quest
• WWE All Stars (no joke this game was super fun)
• Crackdown
• Condemned: Criminal Origins
• Warriors Orochi

If I had to recommend any of them over the others, I would say that one of my favorite games of all time, let alone on the 360, was Condemned: Criminal Origins. I love that game. Also, WWE All Stars is also a super fun arcade game that, unlike WWE games that try to be more of a simulation, goes all in on over the top action and game play. I checked online and all of these games can be had for 5 dollars or under, except for Borderlands which is hovering at about 10.00 and WWE All Stars which seems to be between 15-20 dollars for some crazy reason. Puzzle Quest is an XBLA game, but all the others are on disk.

I also devoted a lot of time to Mass Effect 1-3, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Of those, the first and second Mass Effect are probably the ones I remember most fondly, especially that first game in the series.

Midnight Special (2016)- 4/5

Solid movie that I didn't expect to be as science fictiony as it ended up being. This is definitely all about the acting with the plot kind of coming in second. Still, everyone does a great job. BTW, has Michael Shannon now become one of my secret favorite actors? He was awesome in this, and I recently thought he was pretty great in Revolutionary Road too. Go in as blind as you can like I did. I think knowing too much would ruin some plot beats.

Assassin's Creed (2016) - 2/5

Not a bad movie, but not good either. Stunningly average. It's a shame too because the action scenes taking place in the past are great. The cinematography is great. The costumes are great. The music is pretty good. I thought all of that was very true to the spirit of the AC series. The worst thing, I think, is the ending is literally so quick that if you blink or check your Twitter feed, you'll miss it. It's a wet fart noise following a middling movie. Oh, and the stuff happening in the present day is just not interesting enough to carry the amount of time that the movie devotes to it. I would watch a sequel IF they focus more on the in Animus stuff. But if it's 90% our timeline/world? No thanks.

Passengers (2016) - 4/5

This was a pretty great science fiction movie. I was worried because I had heard some people kind of being down on it, but I really enjoyed it. Yes, the ending is a bit happy for what has come before it, but I think that that's perfectly fine. I kind of wanted the heroes to be happy, even if Chris Pratt kind of wasn't really all that heroic in the movie (watch it to understand what I mean). Still I think they manage to make all of the characters we meet in the movie, and there aren't many, interesting and relatable. I found myself hating and loving characters at different times, and it made sense in context. Oh, and Arthur is a fantastic character. I loved Arthur. Arthur is worth 1 full point in my ratings. :D

I have considered spending money on older games, but I always catch myself before I fall down the rabbit hole.

I would like to complete a Marvel vs Capcom collection, and to me that means going back to get all of the PS1 era games leading up to it, but they're kind of pricey imo. I recently snagged a copy of X-Men vs Street Fighter at my local Goodwill for about 12 dollars and change, only to see it on ebay when I was searching for the other games for 50 dollars or more, even up to 100. That's insane to me. So now I pretty much always scan PS1 games at local used shops in the hopes that I can snag X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes and Marvel Heroes vs. Street Fighter at a sane price. Luckily, I have the other games, including my PS2 version of Marvel vs Capcom 2. And you know what's even more insane? The box and used voucher (not even the game) for the PS3 release of Marvel vs Capcom 2 goes for as much or more than the real PS2 game! And a factory sealed one? Hundreds of dollars! WHAT THE WHAT?!?! I mean, I have it, I bought it when they released it originally, but MvC fans are straight crazy when it comes to collecting.

I've conditioned myself to believe that no game is worth that much money. I love games, I just think that older games should be easily accessible to people, and a crazy inflated game resale market dashes those hopes. I hope that the people buying the games also try to preserve them and share them with others, and even would be willing to loan them to people who can dump the ROMs and preserve them in that way. I would hate to wake up one day and be unable to ever play something like Deceptor for Commodore 64 again, but I also don't think a copy of a game should be hundreds or thousands of dollars (that game isn't worth anywhere near that obviously, but who knows, maybe the C64 market will explode someday). I just get so amazed that the secondary market for this stuff is so intense right now. I remember being able to get all kinds NES and SNES games for dirt cheap in the mid 90s, and now even Mario and Duck Hunt can be overpriced. I don't know, I kind of hope the bubble bursts and it gets easier to collect again, but that probably won't happen.

But, I won't begrudge someone spending money on stuff they love. I have a lot of comic books and other things that I paid more than I should have for. I bought a 3 issue Green Lantern miniseries for over 30 dollars in 2001 or so, which you can now get for under 10 dollars on ebay (believe me, I just checked). But I love Green Lantern, and Jade, and so buying those books was well worth it to me at the time. Heck, I don't regret it now. So if people want to spend a ton of money on N64 games, who am I to judge? :)

@freedom4556: It's kind of funny. My husband has not been having much luck with the combat and has been dying a bit more than my character. We discussed it and I think it is totally because some classes, like Vanguard, are much more viable in early game, maybe even throughout the game based on what you are saying. I rarely die and, if I do, it's because I messed up and got surrounded in the open. He's been trying to find something similar to how he played in the prior three games (he was Infiltrator, I believe) and it just isn't working as well as my set up, at least at the moment.

What you just described is pretty much what I have been working towards based on how I've been playing so far. I am so glad that I stuck with Vanguard, because it seems like the powers are tailor made for how the enemies work in this game. Which kind of sucks, since I remember being really challenged with Vanguard in 3 with enemies like the Banshees who could instakill you if you charged in. Anyway, I'm kind of babbling but your comment kind of gave me a light bulb moment about the game and how the powers and classes seem to work in comparison to the older trilogy.

It depends. For anything new, my husband and I buy digitally. We don't have a lot of space to dedicate to "things" like game boxes and whatnot, so we only tend to buy physical copies if it's our only option or if we really want something in a collector's edition. For instance, we tend to buy the big box copies of Blizzard games that we like (me = Diablo series, him = Starcraft series).

For older stuff, I only get copies if it is a series I really love that is unavailable elsewhere, such as GOG. It also needs to be reasonably priced. I will not drop 60+ dollars on a used PS1 game, even if I kind of want it. I look for deals. Recently I bought X-Men vs Street Fighter at my local Goodwill for about 12 bucks (it was marked as 15 and it was a 20% off day). It was clean and complete and worked when I put it into my PS3. SO as long as the game is something I really want at a really good price, I will buy it used.

Honestly, the ease of having digital copies is something that outweighs having physical copies at this point in my life.

@bane said:

Exactly! If this teaser had starred Zavala or, Traveler forbid Eris Morn, there would have been a totally different tone. Both of those characters are super serious. Cayde-6 is a goof. A sarcastic rogue. He is always cracking wise with guardians, so I see this as a more animated "theatrical" version of that character.

I want the game to have different characters with different ways of handling the world and the events happening in it. Some would joke to try and lighten the mood, others are very serious, others maybe don't let it change them, but act more aloof, maybe others try to attack it with logic and academics, others with big guns. I don't know. I really liked the little teaser and I liked that there is personality being shown by an NPC in the game that we usually don't get to see too much of.

We'll see what the actual game is and what they're going for on the 30th, but I think it's way too soon to take anything as set in stone yet.

I wouldn't mind the galaxy map if it worked a bit better. In most instances, it tends to be very jittery when zeroing in on the new planet/asteroid or whatever the spacial anomaly is. It's very distracting. I know that they wanted to make something that was visually pleasing while also hiding the fact that they are loading in all of this new planet assets, but it just looks poor in action, at least to me imo. It honestly makes me long for the old galaxy map. At least it worked relatively quickly and looked good, if utilitarian. This galaxy map tries to put aesthetics over usability and I think it falls short.

But, if it actually worked and didn't look like it was chugging badly, I might be more forgiving of it overall. I don't mind hiding loading and all that, I just want it to not look like it's struggling to load new planets.

I tend to stop watching for a long time, and then catch up in a huge chunk. This season I have only watched the two first episodes. Then I decided to wait on the rest. It just doesn't play well as a week to week experience, at least to me. I would rather save up a ton of episodes and plow through them quickly.

The show never really lost me. It just has become a show that I don't need to see as it comes out. I honestly kind of almost gave up with season 4, but I kept trucking along. The thing is, they have episodes that are awesome and rekindle my desire to watch, and then they seem to coast by with long periods of little action and plot progression at a standstill. I still think my favorite episode is No Sanctuary (the season 5 premiere) and it's episodes like that that make me stick around. That and wanting to see how they interpret stuff from the comic, which I read before the show came out and still follow.

But I'm pretty much a whole season behind now. :/

@theht: That would be pretty dope. I also think the Krogan hammer looks neat too (I saw it under the research tab) but I assume it's heavy and I don't want to trade too much off in weapon weight vs power recharge rate.