Well, I just defeated Dhoulmagus and lost Jessica. I hope I get her back soon--I need her group magic attack. Hopefully, she won't come back several levels behind the rest of my party. Anyway--in the real word, just had a nice late winter/spring snow storm. Took a half day from work. Now looking forward to vacation!!!! Vegas!!!
Well, I played about 5+ hours today and I think I'm ready to head off to the island to see if the jester is there. I find it interesting that nothing is straightforward in this game. You go to the casino, then you have to go to the island, then to a castle, and then go on a quest with the prince-dude to get the mirror, then once to get the mirror you gotta talk to the old guy and then recharge the mirror in a random battle. Man, I can see why this game is soo long. I'm still having loads of fun--but I wonder if I'll start to loose some momentum once some of the newer games start coming out--I'm thinking of infamous, but not 100% sure yet. Onward!!!
Just got back from Taken--and I thought the movie was pretty good. It was sort of a "Bourne-light" type action/suspense movie with Liam Neeson (who is always awesome--thoughts go out to him and his family for his loss) being bad-assed. The movie was always moving forward, and although does get a little silly, was totally worth my $7.
What I did find interesting was what it sort of had to say about sex/virginity. Now TOTAL spoilers here (sorry, have no idea how to black crap out): Liam's daughter goes to France with her girlfriend, Amanda, and both of them get kidnapped by Albanian's involved in the sex trade. Well, stuff goes down and Liam, ex-CIA, goes on a rampage to find his daughter. Well, towards the end of the movie, he manages to find the daughter's friend first--but she's found tied to a bed, and most likely overdosed from drugs the Albanian's forced on her. Interestingly, Amanda, implies early on in the movie that she isn't a virgin, while the daughter is. The fact that the daughter is a virgin, managed to prolong the daughter's life because she is "more valuable" on the sex market and was sold to a dude running an auction in teenage girls--thus keeping her alive/safe long enough for Liam to find her. The daughter eventually is saved by our friend Liam and it ends well--except for Amanda who wasn't as "pure" or as "valuable" and died, tied to a bed, OD'd on drugs.
I have no idea if the filmmakers even had this quasi "don't have sex" message in the movie, but I thought is was a interesting "hidden?" message on not having sex. Think about it, the slutty girl is the person who makes contact with the kidnappers, and is the one who dies. While the virgin is saved and lives. Perhaps I'm the only person to have even thought of this connection and am crazy, but that was the first thing I though of when I came out of the movie. Reminds me of an anthropology class I had back in college about urban legends--they were stories that had hidden "don't do it meanings". For example--the babysitter gets a call from some creepy dude, and after a few calls she decides to trace the call and the call was IN THE HOUSE!!!: lesson-girls should not be in a house alone. Or the story about 2 young people making out in the car and hearing scratches at the door, and when they got home, A HOOK WAS ON THE DOOR!!!: lesson--don't make out have sex. Perhaps this is a movie with the hidden message about not having sex? Just throwing it out there.
Well, after over a year of owning the Blu-ray (got it for free), I decided to finally re-watch the thing. Man, the movie is not good. The story is all over the place. The acting of James Franco is awful, and for a movie that cost $258 million--the special effects were awful. I originally saw the movie in the theaters and didn't like it then. But after a few years, I decided to give it another shot--nope. I just hope that the next Batman doesn't fail like this one.
So, I initially saw WALL-E with my wife, the weekend it came out and we both felt the movie was a bit slow, and got a bit silly towards the middle (pretty much when the humans got involved). Well, I just saw the movie again on Blu-ray (mother-in-law gave the movie to us as a gift) and I have to say that my tune has changed. I really enjoyed the movie--a lot. I always remembered that this movie had heart, but I though the movie lost it's way when they got to the cruise ship. But on this second viewing, everything thing seemed a lot more cohesive. The humans really didn't dominate the 2nd half of the movie, like I remembered, and managed to tell a machine love story. Really good film. Will be interested to see how UP turns out.
Well, I'm back on the first continent looking for a ship and just passed the area where you had to find the horse through beggar's ally--which was funny because I was surrounded by homeless people, and I was breaking their pots/barrels for hidden stuff. It's funny that when I enter a dudes house, I steal whatever stuff I can find in cabinets and pots, and they don't seem to mind.
Basically it says that an analyst, Mike Hickey, made a report this past Feb about Sony thinking of reducing the price of the PS3 by removing the Blu-ray out of the device. Sony has responded that Blu-ray is the backbone of the system and is here to stay. My question is, where the hell are these "analysts" getting their info--because this one seems totally illogical. As anyone with eh PS3 knows, the damn games are Blu-ray disks. It's like saying Microsoft is trying to save money by eliminating the DVD drive. Perhaps this Hickey dude was thinking that Sony would remove the Blu-ray movie PLAYBACK on the device the lower costs--not sure about all the licensing stuff the Blu-ray group has, but if it's anything like the DVD one, by now allowing playback, you could save some cash (thus for the original XBOX, you had to get the remote to get DVD playback)--but that's not the point.
It seems like everyday, we hear some analyst making some claim, and most of the time, it is totally wrong. Where do these dudes get their info? Are these guys actually talking to people or pulling crap out of their asses? I mean Michael Pachter, who is freaking everywhere, seems to be making crap up as well--didn't he say recently we're supposed to get a new GTA game this year (that's not DLC?). I just don't know why people takes these dudes seriously, when they are wrong so many times. The problem with these analysts and I suppose, other rumors in this internet age--is that there are real consequences for the all this BS. I think Apple is the easiest example of analysts making up BS that end-up hurting the company. Before any big Apple event, there are HUGE rumors that the next i/phone/pod/mac/book will be announced. Some rumors coming from rumor sites like, well macrumors.com...but others come from analysts. So the issue is that we're now all hyped and jazzed about these new things and then the conference happens, and boom--no huge announcement, stock prices drops, people loose job. I mean seriously. What the hell.
So I guess it just all boils down to the questions, can we take any "analysts" predictions seriously? I for one would take the random rumors from quarterman (RIP EGM), Giantbomb or Kokaku before I would believe an analyst.
Well, I just realized that last Sunday Circuit City closed down for good. I always thought they're stuff was a bit expensive, and I'm more of a Best Buy man my-self, but I have an odd connection with Circuit City and this generation of gaming.
By some odd coincidence, I got all 3 current generation systems there. The Xbox 360 came out a few months prior to me getting it. I really didn't think at the time I wanted it--it seemed a bit expensive and nothing really looked all that good. Then I saw Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and that sold it. I read on the internet that CC should be getting a shipment on Sunday, and I decided Saturday night that if I called and it was in, I would get the system. Low and behold, around 10'ish, they still had some 360's and I got the last Pro bundle--and that really expensive wi-fi adapter.
Wii--once again, really didn't want the Wii. Then the sucker came out and was selling like hotcakes. The gaming sites were telling me how awesome Wii sports was and how Zelda kicked total ass. Then the Nintendo-fanboy in me kicked in and I needed a Wii. After talking to a dude at EB, he said that a shipment of Wii's should be going out to stores this coming Sunday. This time, I got up early (my only day off that week) and sat in line outside the CC. It was like around 30 degress outside and I needed by ski gear, but I managed to get the Wii 2 weeks before the first Christmas it was out.
PS3--It was almost a year after the release of the PS3 before I got the Blu-ray bug. Wal-mart was having a black Friday deal--get the PS3, and get 10 free blu-rays in store (plus the 5 you got in the mail). Well, after some drama, got the PS3, and by movies. About 3 weeks later, the disk drive stopped working so I returned the thing for a swap. Well, this should teach you to open the damn thing up at the store, because when I took it home, the side of the PS3 was smashed in. So I took it back to Wal-mart, but they didn't have any PS3's left--so I got my money back and decided to go to--you guessed it Circuit City.
So while I'm not a big shopper of CC, for the past 3 years it's been the closest electronics store to me. And somehow this current gen of gaming is linked to it. Thanks.
I just saw the Watchmen the other day in IMAX. I was hoping to see the movie Saturday, but magically the IMAX showing was sold out. I waited and saw the first showing at 12:20 Sunday, and also was surprised to see the theater sold out. Movies usually don't sell out in where I live (with the exception of Dark Knight--damn, the IMAX showings were sold out for a few weeks). Anyway, I never read the graphic novel, and only saw the first chapter of the itunes thing, but I have to say I really liked the movie.
I did appreciate the action, but the things about the movie I really enjoyed about the movie was seeing superheros living their life and tying to cope with their situation. I thought the acting was top notch and the movie had a great cohesive look too it. I personally didn't find the movie at all confusing from the movie, but then again--I could follow Speed Racer without any issues!!! The story started to fall apart at the end and seemed a bit generic but, what a ride.
The only real complaint I have is some of the use of the background music. I can't think of any one specific song, but I think they could have done better with song selection, or should have just replaced all of it with a score.
Well, so there it is. A dude who never read the novel, who had no problem following the story. I'd be interesting in reading the novel now, or perhaps getting the motion comic on Blu-ray.
Well, I just entered the South Continent and got the 4th character. I am still impressed how good this game looks. As I kid I dreamed about games that looked like this. For all the people saying how the story is meh--like all DQ's, I found the story to be interesting/entertaining enough to pull me through the game. While I do like the FF series and can't wait for FFXIII to come out, a return to a medieval setting is nice. Ever since FF VII, I kept wondering when the series will go back to those roots and out of more Sci-Fi stuff (I suppose FFIX did). I also think they did a good job with the voice acting--especially compared to FFX (the last FF game I played). Well, off to grind some more.
Log in to comment