Brief, Scattershot Thoughts on Uncharted 2

Great graphics, that goes without explanation if you’ve seen any screenshots or videos. Though I really had a problem with the character’s eyes in the cutscenes. It wasn’t that they were all dead/Polar Express/Uncanny Valley-ish it’s that they were too shiny and the irises seemed really big or just not a natural colour. It seems like a really nitpicky thing but it took me out of the story until I would just start staring at how amazing the fabric on someone’s jacket looked or the camera zoomed out far enough that I didn’t notice it as much.

Sometimes frustrating gameplay and that’s why I never finished Uncharted 1 but for some reason something felt different in this one and made me less frustrated. Though a lot of times during the game I’d just wait around (or purposely die a few times) for the ‘hint’ to pop-up for where to go or what to do and then immediately feel stupid that I needed that hint. It ended up boiling down to, ‘Ohhh, that’s what a climbable object looks like in this level’. I guess I was too accustomed to the inFamous style of being able to climb anything.

Also sometimes the shooting sections went too long between checkpoints. ‘Enter the area, ok, about 10 enemies, carefully pick them off. Ok, 10 more enemies come rushing in, cool, let’s do this. Ok, three guys with body armour and shotguns show up and one got behind me, ah fuck I’m dead. Respawning, goddammit it put me back at the beginning…’ repeat until I’m begging the game, ‘Oh please don’t put me at the start again.’ That happened all too often.

Multiplayer has some good ideas but nothing worth tearing me away from my MW2 addiction. In the lobby you get a choice between two levels to play and have a little election to see which one actually get played, that’s a pretty neat feature. It was nice to see the platforming and melee elements from the single-player game intact in the multiplayer game, wasn’t expecting that which was a nice surprise when trying to find a way to get to an upper level and was amazed that I could climb a wall and not nice when I was getting my neck broken from behind by an enemy. And there starts the problems. The actual shooting didn’t feel right which meant I ended up just running around hoping to melee people (and dying, repeatedly) . Also, at peak time there was only approximately 7000 people in the multiplayer (whereas there could be twenty times that in MW2) so it seemed to take a while to find a good match.

Hm, not as brief as I intended but wanted to write that out since I just played it. My recommendation is to rent it and play it on an easy difficulty just to see the decent story and awesome visuals.

New Fall Shows That I Love And You Should Watch

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!  As a huge TV nerd, fall is my favourite time of the year because there’s so many new shows and most of the shows I love come back (though it also causes problems in terms of scheduling) so I decided to write a post about the new fall season. This post will be about the brand spankin’ new shows this year that I’m excited about and think the millions of readers of this site should watch or at least give a decent shot.

Glee
This is the one show that I cannot shut up about and that my friends will not stop making fun of me for watching and loving.  But fuck them all, I love Glee and I’m proud of it. Glee is about the hilarious trials and tribulations of a high school glee club, its members, and the faculty surrounding it. Being about a glee club, of course it has a few musical numbers per episode which are usually quite entertaining and fun whether the song is a Queen or Journey cover or a musical number from Cabaret.   I have downloaded a few of the songs from iTunes and am eagerly awaiting the first album (which I believe is out in November).  The musical numbers are performed by a superb ensemble cast that all have their moments.  The most recent episode is #5 so you have some catching up to do if you decide to jump on the bandwagon and if you’re already on the bandwagon: good for you, you like good things!

Community
My love of this new show can be summed up with: Joel McCale is awesome. I’d like to say that it’s not just him but it’s hard to think of someone else to play such a likeable asshole.  And without that likeable asshole, the whole show would probably fall apart despite all the side characters and actors being great.  Chevy Chase stands out, as the older eccentric guy going back to school who is also a little bit sexist and racist, along with Danny Pudi as Abed who has Asberger’s (as a joke in the first episode commented, “hehe, ass burgers”) and often references TV shows or movies (a funny example of which is in the pilot where he recites a speech from The Breakfast Club).  It is quite funny, it has a fantastic cast, and there’s less story and more just funny here but it’s still great.  It’s also supported by some great guest stars so far: the Spanish teacher played by Ken Jeong and the accounting (I think? not really sure what he taught in his episode, which was the point) teacher played by John Michael Higgins (you might know him from the Christopher Guest movies or Wayne Jarvis the professional attorney from Arrested Development). The third episode is the most recent but being a half hour show, that’s not much catching up to do.

Modern Family
The funniest new show of the year so far and I’ve only seen two episodes so that might change but screw it, I have my opinion and I’m sticking to it.  I laughed out loud when watching the premiere of this show more than Glee or Community combined; it just had so many funny moments in it and ones that have great staying and quotability power (I’ll be quoting “Why the face” and “I can’t turn it off, it’s who I am” for a while).  I was worried after such a good first episode that the second episode would show a huge quality drop off but it didn’t; it had just as many funny, quotable moments as the first and though there was a little bit of a sappy speech towards the end, it didn’t falter. It seems like a premise that has a lot of legs. It’s about three interconnected families: one traditional, one older man married to a younger woman of another race with a son from a previous marriage, and a gay couple that has adopted an Asian baby so they likely won’t run out of ideas for a long time since there’s just so many stories and angles they could approach it from.  It just aired it’s second episode so it will be easy to catch up.

FlashForward
This show was HILARIOUS…well, not so much (though there was a pretty funny scene in the second episode involving blacking out in a bathroom).  This post has been talking about all comedies so far so I’m just used to it.  I’m a big Lost fanatic and as such was pretty interested in this show ever since it started being touted as the next Lost.  It also doesn’t hurt that it is based on a book that I read and enjoyed years ago. That may cause some problems for me because if it follows the book i know I’ll enjoy it but I kinda know what happens and if it doesn’t it might not be as good a story.  The story in the show is that everyone in the world blacks out for two minutes and seventeen seconds and sees their future (six months to be exact).  With a premise like that it has both great character story lines and an overall story arch, just like Lost.  It also has a large ensemble cast with a familiar face from Lost (PENNEH!) but my favourite cast member has to be John Cho, I’ve been a fan of his for a while now and think what may or may not happen to his character is quite interesting.  I’m not sure if it will have the the same culture around it (e.g. tons of theory sites, podcasts, etc.) as Lost or if it will even be as good but I really like it so far and you should give it a chance if you haven’t.

My Late review of Drag Me to Hell

So, I finally saw Drag Me to Hell and I have to say, I was less than impressed. I was excited to see this movie. I’ve been a big fan of the Evil Dead series since I was a kid and saw Army of Darkness for the first time on First Choice (now known as The Movie Network).

When I heard Sam Raimi had a new movie coming out I was really excited. I obviously didn’t see it in theatres, but that’s another article I need to write about. I just don’t do theatres. Regardless of that though, I got ahold of the pre-release DVD and sat down with my girlfriend to watch it.

She didn’t want to watch it, but that’s expected. Women don’t normally like movies like that, but she watched it anyway.

From start to finish, I neither laughed or felt scared. At least in Sam Raimi’s other horror movies you find it kind of funny, but this was just…. blah. There was a scene with the main character’s nose bleeding profusely over the bank manager. Lame. The was the fight scene with the old gypsy woman. Super lame. When the demon took control of the body of the Spanish Dude. Extra lame.

Speaking of that scene, it reminded me of that scene in Evil Dead when the demon is in the air dancing to an Irish jig. This scene was clearly copied in Drag Me to hell.

Anyways, that movie was stupid and recycled. I guess it might just be me. I got my hopes up for the movie to be “Sam Raimi” and that’s what I got. I guess my tastes have changed and my love for Evil Dead isn’t that it’s awesome, but it’s just nostalgic. Oh well.

Why your XBox 360 sucks

Alright, so it’s only fair that I pick on the giant of the 3. The XBox 360. Since November 22, 2005 the XBox 360 has been a powerhouse of a console. They are currently the top selling console on the market. That might change now that the PS3 has the same $299 price point. Although, Microsoft could reduce their prices to retaliate. After all, the XBox 360 is a cheap piece of crap. Here’s why:

1. The Red Ring of Death

When a console has been out for 4 years like this one has, it’s hard to believe that such a “good product” (based on sales and fanoyism) can be such a piece of shit. How come they started shipping a product that wasn’t ready? The PS3 doesn’t have this problem and it’s got more horsepower under the hood! The statistics don’t lie. Look at this:

A new survey published in Game Informer’s print edition indicates the Xbox 360 failure rate has climbed to a shocking 54.2%. The magazine surveyed nearly 5000 readers, asking them about their experience dealing with broken consoles. 

Here are their findings:

Console failure rate
Xbox 360 – 54.2% 
Playstation 3 – 10.6% 
Wii – 6.8%

Read more stats here: http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/101/1014486p1.html

2. The Controller

Most 360 fanboys will argue this one to the death during a console debate. The controller for the 360 is garbage. It’s bulky, too heavy, and in all honesty, not much different than the original XBox controller. Take a look for yourself:

It’s not that much of a difference. I know the controller for the PS3 hasn’t changed in forever, but that’s because PS3 fanboys don’t care. They like the controller. ALL 360 people admit to the first controller sucking. It doesn’t look like much has changed. Also, no sixaxis :P

3. Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD

OH SNAP! This one is gonna haunt 360 fanboys forever. The XBox 360 got owned in the HD Format war. The 360 doesn’t even come installed with HD-DVD. You had to buy it as a peripheral. This makes it cost the same as the PS3 and the resolution wasn’t that great on HD-DVD and it failed anyways. If you bought this add-on, you would have shelled out money for nothing.

Because I don’t wanna write a summary for everything, here’s a list of other reasons why the 360 sucks:

• Most 360 exclusives are on PC!
• You have to buy a Wi-Fi adaptor (Wii and PS3 come installed)
• You have to buy an inter cooler (The 360 heats up quickly)
• You have to pay for LIVE
• It’s more expensive after adding everything to it that it should have
• It has an extremely large power supply
• It has a disc tray. WTF! No one uses those anymore!
• The XBox 360 has a locked hard drive, unlike that of the PS3
• Halo is outdated!

The boys over at Microsoft should have put more time and thought into their console like Nintendo and Sony did, instead of trying to get their console out before everyone else, because it clearly is garbage. Now that you know that, and hopefully it’s not too late, you have no reason to waste your money! You’ve been warned.

Why your PS3 sucks

Face it. The thing sucks. I have one and cry every time I turn it on. I suppose it’s come in handy as games started coming out, but I really just bought it as a cheap Blu-Ray player. At the time I bought it, $399 was the price point and that was as cheap as Blu-Ray Players got. Sure, games started coming out that got me interested, but no real exclusives to get me behind it enough to really mean it when I tell people it’s the superior console. It is, but it isn’t at the same time. Here’s why:

1. Price: No so much anymore, actually. For the sake of argument and history, we’ll make the argument. The PS3 was the most expensive console on the market. Sure, it’s a cheap Blu-Ray Player, but people just weren’t making the move to Blu-Ray anyways. They still aren’t. Read this. No one was buying the PS3 and they were instead flocking over to the XBox 360. This allowed more money to be put into development for more games.

2. Games, Games, Games: Sorry, but no one’s gonna flock to a console when one of your biggest games is Little Big Planet. Sure, the concept is good, but I think people will have more fun with Left for Dead or Gears of War. Playstation has no PS3 exclusive games worth making you shell out for the cost. The PS3 has been too expensive for too long that there is no development behind it and the the boys at Microsoft have clearly taken advantage of that.

3. Online Play: The online experience flat out sucks. For the cost of it, $0, it’s actually outstanding. If you’re lucky you will connect to someone almost seamlessly and play a game before getting booted after 20 minutes. That’s not a bad record. The XBox 360, even though you have to pay a yearly fee of about $50, has waaaaay better online play. You can chat while loading a game, and even boot a gameduring that chat.

4. Graphics: Now, here’s where you might be wondering, why is he complaining about the graphics? Everyone knows the PS3 has the best graphics on the market right now! That may be true, but developers are having so many issues creating games that they’re not using the full potential of the machine. In fact, development for the XBox 360 has moved so far, so quickly, that it actually has superior graphics. Crazy eh?

So, there you go! The PS3 is a piece of garbage and you might as well throw it there, because you and your PS3 would be better off there.

Now, don’t think this is an XBox 360 fan boy or Nintendo Wii fan boy article, cuz it’s not. I made that clear with my article on why the Wii sucks. So, the XBox 360 isn’t safe, and I got those sons of bitches in my sight for my next article!