Long live the king! (of the hill)

So the new TF2 classless update hit last Friday, and I've had about a weekends worth of time to digest it. With it came hats, a new play mode, new ctf and arena maps, and a metric crapton of tweaks. Here's my (obligatory) two cents:

What Valve did right:
Hats. While they're a pain in the ass to get, the option to give your character a little more customization is a welcomed one (camera beard ftw) . Now if only I could get myself some of those freaking hats...

CTF_Sawmill. I never was a fan of arena Sawmill, but take out a couple of the side attack routes and it plays very nicely as a capture the flag map. Only slight niggle is that the map is so open and with plenty of water on both sides of the map, that pyros tend to be underpowered on this map.

Sandman tweaks. Un-freaking-believable what they did. Scout now can double jump with the Sandman, but can no longer stun uber-charged enemies. Also, there's a significant health penalty, dropping the Scouts health to only 95 hp. This means taking one rocket to the face, not even a crit rocket, usually means you explode. This change is amazing for 2 reasons:

• No longer are people limited to the Force-a-nature / Sandman combo. Most people (myself included) teamed the two items together to help compensate for the Sandman's lack of double jump. Now Scouts are free to choose either scattergun.
  
• The decrease in health actually forces Scouts to play as, well, Scouts. It's easier to learn how to play any class when you can vividly see your mistakes. What better way than dying just about every time you make one as a Scout? That's what the 95 hp represents - a learning tool. Jump in, deal quick damage, jump out. Learn the value of making the other team chase you and not take your objectives/engage your team.

King of the Hill - I really love this play mode. You and your team try to capture a central point and have your timer reach 0 before the other team's. Simple, yet maddeningly frustrating at times. Plus, shortly after the release the announcer kept shouting "overtime" which was hilarious. But most of all, what's great about King of the Hill is...

koth_nucleus - This map was made for King of the Hill. It's small and incredibly well balanced. The capture point is literally inaccessible until its unlocked which has the added bonus of preventing one team from camping it. There's no good place for a sentry nest, yet it doesn't preclude the engineer from setting up shop somewhere - its defenses are just not impregnable like in some other maps. So much fun to be had in this map.

What Valve did wrong:
King of the Hill nests - In koth_Viaduct, and to a lesser extent koth_Sawmill, the matches are usually won not by the team with the most skilled players, but the one that establishes its nest first. There are a few spots on these maps that are perfect for it, and that's the problem. If the other team's sentry is at level 3 and the teleporters are up, good luck turning the tide (unless the other team is really bad at protecting their stuff). Remove those nests, Valve.

Alternatively, I'd love to try Viaduct and Sawmill as-is on a server that doesn't allow engineers. THAT would be interesting.

Arena mode - It got replaced. Much like the Medic's Blutsaugher to the Syringe Gun, King of the Hill almost completely replaces it. Sure, I may indulge Arena from time to time to get a Counterstrike-esque feel, but even with the nesting problem King of the Hill is more fun than Arena.

Rocket jumping / Force-a-nature jumping - While I haven't tried these out for myself, servers chatter was alive with complaints on how Soldiers were unable to reach places they normally could with a rocket jump, or how the Scout's "triple jump" with the force-a-nature is more or less taken from them. I guess I didn't see the need for this, Valve. Why change what wasn't really broken?

Overtime! OVERTIME! overTIME! OVER time! ...overtime! OvErTiMe! oVertime! OVERTIME! OvErtImE! Come on, Valve, you didn't need to patch this shortly after the update. I may be alone in thinking it, but it was welcomed unintentional hilarity, and really gave life to the otherwise unknown Announcer.

Summary
Overall, there's a lot to be excited about in this update. While I'd always love me some new unlockables for a class (Demoman, plz), the Scout plays like a brand new class with the changes made so I can't really complain too much. Not perfect, but few things are. 9.5/10

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Lost in Translation: Funny People

I've watched Funny People (applause). And, like any person with an opinion and a soapbox, I'm going let you know what I think. Instead of sharing with you my thoughts (far too easy), I've translated them once again into Japanese and back again via way of Babelfish. Enjoy!

Misnomer.

The strange people are the movie concerning the comedian who never really does not hit to large and. Oh truly, secretly laughing, the movie concerning the comedian who brags about the power where this casting ones are strange - especially 1 - being consistent, when it is stranger, the large number of joke it had smile on my surface, but many there is the point which differs in the movie which makes, thinks.

The movie itself was in some genre, it could not define. On the one hand, as for that comedian who's concerning it possessed the element of the story of rather good growth; which exactly obtains that large being broken eye. The love story of those which obtain the change which leaves remain, that's arrange subpar at the very most. This time being clear, throw the help of accumulation of the old drama.

And however, every one of that is clumsy, it seems that disorder does not work exactly together with the enormous lump. In its movie the way because it seems the way, it is strange or, either one which goes somewhere. It reverses. There are no all assemblies or the punch line.

Just Seth of the entire movie was Rogen passing possible. While believing, that me it is the actor where he really is strange, he is clumsy, it seems that is the majority of all that elements. As for me lion you must say as for the share of laughing supporting position, all people you. The empty it came we which is heard never perhaps (certainly me didn't). Appreciating, that this movie won't it means the loom of on those remaining for carrier.

I remain the theater completely to regret the fact that you see, the movie which leases me whom perhaps it had the chestnut it probably will return. Favor to do you yourself, this just that time you see re-curiosity does not remove the forcing or the money for that from the shell.

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Of Wizards and Men

I find myself in an interesting cross section of popular culture. I enjoy the Harry Potter series enough to watch the movies, but not enough to forge ahead and read (devour?) the books. And since I'm about the only person in this demographic, either you don't care to see the movies or I'm not going to be spoiling anything for you having read the books.

This is what we call in the blogosphere a spoiler alert.

Ok class, let's try to ONE have a lab that doesn't involve someone's death.
The Half-Blood Prince was a good divergence in movie from the other previous ones in that it really felt like there was no closure at the end of the movies. Previous films all left me with that same episodic feeling, like Harry triumphed over Voldemort once again - but he'll be back another day. Kinda like how The Claw from Inspector Gadget always shouted "I'll get you next time, Gadget! Next time!" as he made his escape.

In this movie, things got real. Over the course of the movie, you see an interesting playout of Dumbledore and Voldemort infiltrating one another's ranks and trying to out maneuver one another. Dumbledore knows he's missing crucial information needed to defeat Voldemort, one a former teacher has. This teacher is reluctant to give up the goods, as they say, and after much persuasion, Harry finds out how to defeat Voldemort: destroy the horcruxes - things that contain Voldemort's soul.

Meanwhile, Snape is infiltrating the Death Eaters - Voldemort's band of merry murderers - and acting as spy to Dumbledore. All this is happening as Malfoy, who looks like a band member of My Chemical Romance, is trying to get the Death Eaters into a magically fortified Hogwarts to kill Dumbledore.

All the while Emma loves Ron but Ron doesn't know it. So Ron dates some floozy and that pisses Emma off. Top that off with a heaping helping of Harry falling for Ron's sister, Ginny Weasley, and you've got yourself a love cocktail that's fit for any soap opera.

Confused? Too much to follow? To its credit, the movie does a good job of making sure you aren't lost over the course of the 2.5+ hour movie.

So we get the buildup of what I've been told by my book-reading friends is the final arc. And the movie plays out like a buildup movie. The story progresses. We see newer darker sides of a lot of characters. We see a lot of ambiguities in characters that need (we hope) to be reconciled.


Ron's helmet was part of his "special needs" at Hogwarts.
I came out of the movie theater feeling the same way I did after the second Matrix movie - I understood this movie was a necessary transition to the end of the series, but the movie left me wanting more. More action, more wizardry, more excitement. Half-Blood Prince didn't quite feel like it was dragging, but it did feel much slower than the other movies.

Notice how I'm primarily focusing on the story of the movie. This is because you know the other aspects of the movie already. This is Potter, after all. It's like trying to dissect how different yearly batches of Madden '0X are from one another. It's what you've already come to expect from the series:

• The supporting cast all play brilliantly around Daniel Radcliffe who plays a perfectly capable, though comparatively underwhelming, Harry Potter.
• Everything else was superb. The music, the costumes, the setting, the visuals - you name it.

I believe that this movie, on it's own, is the weakest of all Harry Potter movies. That said, even a B-B+ Harry Potter movie is better than 90% else that Hollywood's been producing. It is a necessary (and fitting) transition movie for the series, and one I wholly recommend to anyone with even the slightest interest in the series.

Oh, and Snape kills Dumbledore.

9/10

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Best review of a video game EVER

My good friend Jaz (who, btw, is making a name for himself in the gaming journalism scene) sent this to me, and it is without a doubt the most creative video game review EVER. Destructoid reviews Mad Dog McCree Gunslinger - one of those cheesy, full motion video light gun-esque shooters for the Wii.

Only, they made it such a way that you yourself are playing a cheesy, full motion video light gun-esque shooters by using the magic of youtube links. Fail, and you have to start over (or at least rewind the video a bit). Absolutely brilliant.

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Leonard Nimoy's Seaman Is All Over This Post

For those of you who don't (or won't) remember a time when Sega was still in the video game console business, the Dreamcast was a college student's dream. It was well ahead of its time in terms of graphics and hardware, a fairly good library of games to choose from, and cool little virtual memory units that acted like little Game Boys. I still have fond memories of my machine.
One "game", quotes indicating a loose application of the term, that really stood out was called Seaman. Essentially a pet simulator gone wrong, you have to hatch, raise and care for you half-man, half-fish abomination.

Caution: Your mind's about to be blown
And while the premise itself was fairly intriguing, how you interacted with your sin against God was particularly awesome: a microphone. Yes, packaged with every Seaman game was a microphone attachment you would use to literally give your Seaman commands. The controller was used primarily to drop food into the tank and to tap the glass, but once you had Seaman's attention it was all voice commanded.

The freakiest thing is, after a while, it started to talk back to you. And have emotions and feelings and hopes and dreams. At least I think so, I never played it long enough to watch it graduate from Seaman college. Come to think of it, Seaman college may not even be real. But they did develop personalities.

Mine were always bastards.

The challenge of the game was that you really had no idea what you needed to do to evolve and raise these Seaman. You had a microphone and a tank. To help you with this was narration by, no lie, Leonard Freaking Nimoy. His soothing voice overs are seconded only by Morgan Freeman's, and they were like the rich, chewy exterior in the caramel apple that is this game. My only wish was that he had more narration, if only to tell me what to do with the tank. I really had no clue most of the time.

To give you an idea of the gameplay:


I'm not a fan of any kind of simulator genre, particularly because I like to escape reality with my video games. If I wanted to learn a flight simulator, I'd rather learn to fly. If I wanted to tend a virtual pet, I'd just get a real pet. But Seaman was novel enough for me to overcome, and I'm really glad I did. Seaman is an interesting experience, one I wholly recommend to anyone who can find and assemble the necessary Dreamcast equipment to play it (particularly the microphone).

Just don't raise your Seamen to be bastards.

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Not Down

Oh god, not more Jehova's Witnesses!

I'm a sucker for just about everything that Dreamworks or Pixar puts out. I know they're geared towards a younger audience, but these movies have plenty of entertainment for adults. I also will probably never outgrow my love of cartoons.

A recent trend in these movies is to make them 3D, which really adds to the movies and all but guarantees that I'll go see whatever it is they put out. Seriously, if they put 2 girls 1 cup in 3D, you know I'd go see it. I'd regret that decision, sure, but I'll have already bought the ticket and want to stick around to get my money's worth.

So Disney/Pixar's (Dixar?) latest incarnation, Up, is about a man trying so hard to keep a promise to his wife. We first see the two in their childhood meeting up in an abandoned house, find out they share the same spirit of adventure, and are then treated to a 5 minute montage of their lives together, culminating in Ellie's (the wife's) death. Their dream was to live at Paradise Falls, so Carl - the old main character - in a incredible disregard for building code, attaches a ton of balloons to the house and flies off.

This movie was funny, and Ed Anser was amazing as the crotchety old man. I must confess, one of my favorite TV shows growing up was Freakazoid, and every time the old man was on the screen, I kept imagining Cosgrove. The other characters played off him incredibly well, including a naive boy scout, a large rare bird, Carl's childhood-hero-turned-rival, and an army of talking dogs.

I was taken aback, actually, at the amount of emotion that was inherent in this Pixar movie - there were times where you couldn't help but feel sad. This movie brought my girlfriend to tears on more than one occasion.

The 3D aspect of the movie never really jumped out at me. This means it was either done poorly, or so well that I wasn't noticing the 3D details. Given Pixar's reputation I'm inclined to think the latter, but that's the ironic thing about details - do them well and no one notices. I'll have to watch it in non-3D (likely when the DVD comes out) for comparison.

Verdict: See it in theaters

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Review: Knowing

As usual, I'll try my best not to spoil anything here for you. But given that the entire plot was given during commercials/previews, and people's natural resistance to watch anything with Nicholas Cage in it (except maybe pachinko machines), if I slip up I'm not going to get too worried about it here. So if you're Nicholas Cage and I'm spoiling the movie for you: sorry.

Like I said, the movie's plot was given to you in the commercials: Nicholas Cage and son get some set of random numbers which predict a lot of disasters and eventually the end of the world, and they've got to figure out what to do about it. The interesting thing here is this kind of parallels how the movie went. Once Cage figures out the numbers are a warning, he too understands the world's going to end. He knows he can't change it, he just has to deal with the inevitable. It's a suspense thriller that takes some outlandish, yet believable turns.

SPOILER ALERT: This movie wasn't terrible.

While I'm trying not to spoil anything, the "ok, the world's going to end. What now?" question that went through both the audience's and Cage's head was really believable and played out to create the right amount of tension.

A few things of note:

• This movie takes place on a planet where bad parenting is the norm. Cage is a single parent father who apparently needs to get good and sauced to watch the news. In a span of a few days, I saw enough emptied hard liquor bottles to put some frat houses to shame. Also, Cage meets up with a woman, herself another single parent, as they try to understand what's going on. In the course of investigating, the two leave their kids in the car for long stretches of time out in the woods when they know (spoiler alert) something or someone has been targeting their kids.
  
  
• The acting in this movie was in-line with expectations. I expected awkward, bumbling Nicolas Cage and I got awkward, bumbling Nicolas Cage. Thank God the plot was compelling enough to overlook this, and that some (though not all) of the supporting cast was pulling the slack.

Would I recommend this movie to others? Yes, but not to watch in a theater. There are a few blockbusters coming around the bend probably more worthy of your time and money. But make this a rental when it comes out, and I don't think you'd be disappointed.

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Video Game review: Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

The early 90's were an interesting time in video gaming, where graphics were coming of age, but you could still pretty much make up anything and it was considered an awesome idea for a game. Mutant hockey players? Why not? Vampire slaying bloodline on a never ending quest to vanquish Dracula? Sounds like fun to me! A puffball thing with an insatiable appetite? That's the makings of a successful franchise, my friend.

Back then, even celebrity endorsements hadn't lost their credibility yet. Before John Madden had lent his name to a football empire, and Tiger Woods cashed in as well, Michael Jackson had a humble game on the Sega Genesis, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker.

Michael Jackson doing the thriller dance with a couple of stray dogs. As good an idea for a game as any.
It's a game that hasn't really gotten better with age. Not because it's difficult to play, or it's mechanics were bad. It's just... well, we all know what happened to Michael since the early 90's. He just got weird. He went from a pop superstar to an albino alien autopsy after what has to be several botched cosmetic surgeries. Oh, and the (alleged) children touching thing.

Which is why this game really is out of sorts. In the game, Michael has to rescue children that are hiding. In the first few levels, you're in a old-timey pool hall searching for children behind doors and windows. Once you find them, they ride off in a comet. And when you find them all, you get a monkey that directs you to the boss. Because somehow he knows. I really wonder if the people making this game had a crystal ball or something.


Picture above: Michael ignoring the scantily clad woman, hupming the air and a child crying in the upper left corner. Not pictured: My dignity.
If the concept of the game wasn't weird enough, Michael's attacks consist of several kicks and dance moves that spray out some kind of deadly fairy dust. When an enemy comes into contact with said fairy dust, they either fall right over (heart attack?) or are no longer bound by gravity and fly off screen.

As a special attack, Michael can dance around at the cost of health. In this game's logic, you damage yourself trying to spin around. After using about half his life bar, all enemies on the screen bust out into a dance with Michael and afterwards collapses. I like to imagine what would happen if that concept were applied to Broadway.


Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow Ow!
All in all, not a terrible game for its time. I was able to play it for a bit the other day without having to jam the controller through my head. That's a compliment, and about the only one I can give the game. Because now, in 2008, the game is just unintentionally weird... and a little creepy.

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Unwind Movie Review: Wanted

DISCLAIMER: I've done my best not to include any major spoilers but trust me when I say even if I were to spoil the plot, it won't ruin the movie.

An age-old philosophical question asks: "if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound?" Wanted pointedly asks: "if a movie makes absolutely no rational sense, is it still entertaining?"

This is me after trying to make sense of this movie.
Perhaps I'm a little ahead of myself. What I knew going into the movie was that it was a typical guy movie: over-the-top action where guns/explosions are given more weight than less-manly things like "plot" and "character development". I was told by those I knew that I would have to suspend belief to get the full enjoyment out of the movie. They weren't kidding...

Wanted is a typical superhero story where our hero (Wesly Gibson, a previous nobody) suddenly discovers his hidden ability, trains really hard (via montage, of course) and then proceeds to kick butt in the name of good. What is his ability? He can make his heart beat really fast so as to pump adrenaline throughout his system and speed up his reaction time to superhuman levels. How fast does he get his heart going? About 400 beats per minute.

400 beats per minute. According to Wikipedia, your maximum heart rate is about 220 minus your age. This is presumably because anything higher than that would cause your heart to explode.

Plot device aside, our explosive-hearted hero joins and trains with a thousand year old fraternity of assassins (cleverly named "The Fraternity"), run out of none other than the textile industry. While I suppose everyone needs a hobby, it's a little frightening to think that the people that supply Jo-Ann Fabrics are the same people that will also happily end someone's life. Come to think of it, I never see Jo-Ann Fabrics do any legitimate business...

I digress. The movie then continues to spit in the face of reality, for example:

• The first scene sees an assassin jump through a skyscraper window and across the street into another building while shooting 3 people in midair. He only drops one floor in height.
• Another scene sees the hero hit his fellow assassin's car to flip over his target's bulletproof limo and shoot at him through the limo's sunroof. Not only does he pull this off, the car actually lands and the hero drives off.
• There's some kind of "magical bath" that, when immersed, causes you to heal from your injuries in hours instead of days. Non-fatal bullet wound? Have a bath, you'll be all set by dinnertime.

There's literally about 50 other examples, but my head hurts enough trying to make sense of this movie already and I'm not going to get into them. Most prominently though, the movie had obsession with "curving the bullet" where the shooter can bend the trajectory of a bullet and have it move around corners. I don't know if this is possible in real life or not, but I have a hunch that anyone who has actually tried to use this in any kind of gun battle isn't alive enough to speak to it.

So you take the tenuous plot device, odd bit about the textile industry, and the general disregard for all physics with a grain of salt. A very, very, VERY large grain of salt that overwhelms you and leave you on the brink of dehydration. It can't get any tougher to swallow than that, right?

Wrong. In comes "The Loom of Fate". This thousand-year-old loom weaves patterns into the cloth it produces. In binary. Of the names of the targets the Fraternity needs to kill. I couldn't even make that up if I tried.

Because let that sink in for a second. The cloth told these mighty assassins who they need to kill. That's not the actions of a highly-sophisticated organization of death, that's something a crazy person would do. I'm pretty sure that "the cloth told me to kill him!" wouldn't even hold up for an insanity defense in court, simply because the judge and jury will just think you're f***ing with them.

But in all honesty, I liked Wanted. Taken within the framework of its crazy universe, the story did kinda make sense and had a surprise twist I never saw coming (very pleasantly surprised). I was promised an over-the-top, action-packed experience and this movie delivered that in spades. Also, it showed Angelina Jolie's butt for about 2 seconds. If any of that appealed to you, you can safely assume your ten bucks won't be wasted seeing it in theaters.

Just do yourself this favor: don't try to make sense of the movie. I did, and it almost gave me a brain aneurysm.

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