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Monday, July 13, 2009

About the Same.

I recently have had the feeling that if Michael Jackson were out there some where on a cloud looking down he would think "Wait...people like me?" I know for a fact at least 2 people personally who have always been devoted Michael Jackson fans but since his death everyone and there cousins brother have been acting like they always loved and supported his lifestyle. Not to disrespect the dead but I think this clip takes that a little bit to far


What do you guys think?

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

In Memorium


Well like it or not Michael Jackson has had a HUGE effect on music. I am posting this just to show how some people need to get actual role models and have WAY too much time on their hands. And its pretty cool to boot.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Revenge of the Spolsions.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the sequel to the original films ultimate success. It increases everything the original had by 2. More Splosions, More implied Sex, more one Liners, more Megan Fox in more outfits, More Product Placement (any one else catch the Naruto Poster?) and more Autobots vs Decepticon battle royals. Personally I felt they only need more of one of those things. Guess which?

Generally in a review I would start out with a very small un-spoiled plot description. In a movie about special effects and action I could care less what the plot is. Unfortunately for the audience, Michael Bay (Director: Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) Really wants you to care. He wants you to care so much about his asinine senseless plot that he drags it out for over 2 and a half hours.

Michael Bay I believe has always wanted to be a respected film maker. That's why he created the overly bloated and historically laughable Pearl Harbor film. It bombed almost as bad as the actual event (to soon?) There is one thing he understands well however, making money. Megan Fox isn't so much a character int his movie as she is an inspiration for young pretty objects everywhere. See her Bend over a bike, watch her strip in front of a garage, glamor at her gorgeous eyes in the only scene shes covered. They say the Eyes are the window to the soul, well then Cleavage is the Door way to Big Box office Bucks.

Shai Lebouf the other star more or less at least has a memorable name. One the autobots and decipticons can't get enough of. SAM WITWICKY this, and SAM WITWICKY that, in booming drawn out tones. He repays the favor by shouting out there names as much as possible as well. I suppose what I'm getting at is there are actors but in this film but that doesn't really matter.

To make things worse, as in all Michael Bay films, any form of authority dances to the beat of a moron soliloquy. We have cops who are utterly clueless, Government officials who wave badges around but have no idea how a parachute works, and Parents who have no idea what the young hip drug Marijuana could possibly be. Parents who have lived through the 70s for crying out loud. Yes if you have any say how any thing goes considered your self a complete and utter moron in a Michael Bay movie.

Second a Michael Bay movie has to have a overly loud catch phrase toting over weight tokin' black guy. Apparently one wasn't available so Michale Bay in all his genius gave us to rambunctious street cred autobots who :Don't read so good" and "aint the foo's to be messing with". It was painful watching these two annoying characters trying to crack jokes. Why, it was suppose to be painful though "thats why its called an ass kickin', p***y". I didn't know why and I didn't want to be but I was deeply offended by these characters.

Michale Bay's Tour de Force has always been Splosions. The spolosions in this film are top notch. The Camera has been brought way back from the cliche Bourne style of fighting and you can actually see the robots fighting each other with great landscaping destruction to boot. Clearly the highlight of this entire film was Optimus going toe to toe with Star Scream, Megatron, and Random Victim Decepticon in the Forrest. That alone brings this movie up from Total garbage to Meh for me. Optimus Prime is Awesome. In Lamen's terms. 2-5 stars.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

I Ain't Afraid Of No Ghost!

This is a post from a good friends blog that I thought belongs here also!

http://www.stolendroids.com


Well, actually it turns out I am.
I’ve installed Ghostbusters on my computer and have been playing it since it was released. I wanted to play through it to give everyone a review, but it seems I might not be able to! See, I’ve played it nearly every night . . . and I have yet to pass the first level! So, I’ll give you what I can in review form.
Gameplay
It must have taken the game designers some time to figure out how to turn busting ghosts into compelling game play, but they did it! Assuming the ghost is just sitting there in front of you (which rarely happens), you hit it with your particle stream to wear it down. A green circle around your reticule will start to wear down as you tire the ghost out. When the ghost is sufficiently weakened the pack will automatically switch to your secondary attack, the capture stream (you can also manually do this to other objects, more on that later). With a capture stream engaged, you can wrangle the ghost pretty much where ever you want. Throw out your trap and drag the ghost over; the trap automatically opens when the ghost is above it.
"See? Now that wasn't such a chore, was it?"
"See? Now that wasn't such a chore, was it?"
Now that you know the basics of trapping the ghosts, let me just say this: The ghosts are NEVER staying still! If there are multiple ghosts, you could be just about to have one in the trap when the other attacks you and you break lock. If you are still at step 1 and trying to wear down the ghost, they might throw a table at you, or duck through a wall. Anything to get you to STOP wearing them down. Only once you have the capture stream locked onto them does your proton pack actually lock onto the ghost; the rest of the time it’s like using a machine gun.
Using the PKE Meter and Goggles adds another part of game play. By equipping the goggles, you can track down where ghosts are hiding and any other environmental anomalies nearby. You can also find randomly placed “Cursed Artifacts” lying about different levels. By using your scanners in this manner you can not only track down ghosts easier, but you are paid for every “snapshot” of a ghost you get, and Egon can upgrade your equipment with what those snapshots contain. This forces you to really balance your need to explore with the knowledge that what you’re looking for is trying to kill you. Of course, if you just go shooting for ghosts willy-nilly, you’ll never get any upgrades for your pack that you’d need later on!
Red means "bad". Bars are down, so it's not close.
Red means "bad". Bars are down, so it's not close.
Story
Having only made it through the introduction and partway through the Sedgewick Hotel level, I can’t tell you everything that happens. I can tell you that the story is as solid as you should expect from Ghostbusters; that is, if anything from either movie seemed remotely realistic, then everything should feel totally fine here. That being said, the story is really well done and fleshed out. There is an actual over-arcing story that your rookie character (who is given no name, no lines, and not even a proper nametag) gets caught up in on his first night. This is a very good thing, however, as I believe a simple “Go Here, Shoot That, Come Back” would have done this game a great disservice.
Graphics
I’ll split this into two parts, with the other part being under “Design” down below. These ARE next-gen graphics. I’m not entirely sure which engine they used, but it’s hard at work in this game. Characters look awesome, the proton streams look incredible, ghosts are beautifully done, and the proton pack didn’t look that good in the movies! While it’s hard to say if this is a good thing or not, there is a LOT of stuff going on in many scenes; five bright proton streams going everywhere, ghosts weaving in and out of walls, fire popping up from the places on the walls you WILL inevitably hit, and debris from everything you are actively destroying can make the scene very hectic. It can get easy to lose where you threw your trap and there are times when the game suddenly sags under so much processing. It can be argued, though, that this just adds to the frantic experience that is being a Ghostbuster.
Sound/Environment
All the voices are done by the original cast, including Walter Peck and Janean. The proton pack sounds are authentic and deliver all the right notes to make you happy every time you blast something. The music is from the movie as well, and is tastefully done throughout the menus and cut scenes (can you imagine the theme looping non-stop in menus?). While that’s all kinda expected, what was a surprise was all the little sounds that come from everywhere else. When tracking a ghost through the Sedgewick by yourself, you really do get creeped out by the mist, creaking sounds, and dripping water. With the light bulb in my office burnt out and my headphones in (to keep from waking the kids next door), I was jumping out of my chair more than a couple times! Going into PKE Meter mode makes things even worse, since your field of view is suddenly very limited (think night-vision meets tunnel-vision) and all you have is a little bar to tell you a ghost is nearby, but not in which direction. Oh, and the black slime on the wall will make your skin crawl (just don’t touch it).
Design/Development
This is a bit of a mixed bag. Activision originally developed this game, and you can tell it was a labor of love by the designers. Everything looks exactly how you think it should look, levels have real weight to them, and the game is really immersing. When Activision “merged” with Blizzard, the new management shelved Ghostbusters as well as other games that had been in development. Activision then sold the rights to Atari, who then published the game. Without knowing for sure, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Atari saw a game that was 85% done and said, “Meh, good enough.”
Cut scenes are an odd mix of prerendered full motion videos and prescripted in-game action. The FMV’s were likely rendered in 720 to fit most consoles and that’s fine. Except they used the SAME FMV’s for all versions of the game! That means that if you’re playing the game in 1080, it will automatically downscale for the cutscenes. If you’re like me and playing on the PC at 1920X1200, the cutscenes will just look like crap. On the other hand, the prescripted scenes that use the graphics engine look awesome . . . except they take so much computing horsepower from my PC that the sound and graphics rarely match up.
This leads me to another issue with graphics. My PC has a Windows Experience Rating of 4.7 with the lowest subscore being the hard drive. Ghostbusters says the required lowest score is 3.7, and the recommended score is ALSO 3.7. So why does the game play like crap on my system? Even with all the shiny extras turned off (high detail, shadow mapping, etc) and my resolution scaled way down, my framerates are wretched. I installed the game again, this time on my beast of a machine (the one with a 5.9 in Vista and 6.7 in Windows 7) and had some very impressive game play . . . right up until the game crashed.
There is a LOT of humor in this game, and the script is very well written (what else would you expect from the original cast AND writers?), however many of the conversations are triggered by you moving into a certain position, or a certain action happening nearby. This leads to many occasions where something happens, Ray says a line, then after 50 seconds of your poor GPU trying to catch up, Peter says the punchline. A 50 second lag makes the whole conversation unfunny and really messes with the flow of things. Add to that the odd jumping back and forth between in-game scenes and FMV’s for what could be considered unnecessary cut scenes, and things get REALLY choppy.
This could all be simply chalked up to poor PC coding, and maybe the console versions of the game don’t suffer from these problems. However, to me, it’s pretty bad. Perhaps Activision hadn’t had much time to perfect their PC coding, and Atari didn’t want to deal with it, but it feels like it could have used some more time in development cooking. Other games that have been released across the Xbox 360 and PC have had much better consistency, with players on both platforms getting the same experience. As it is, I feel like I’m being cheated by Atari for their lack of effort.
I might not be too far off the mark on this either; the PC version sells for much cheaper than it’s console counterparts, reportedly because it lacks multiplayer. It’s very possible that the PC side of development was father behind than the Xbox or PS3 sides, and Atari just pushed it out regardless.
All I know is that I WANT to love this game, but can’t get past the first level because I keep getting swarmed by these things and my framerate drops to zero! Maybe I’ll have more luck on the Xbox.
Easy to kill, slow, and stupid.  Too bad there are too many for my CPU to handle.
Easy to kill, slow, and stupid. Too bad there are too many for my CPU to handle

Thursday, June 4, 2009

New Moon Trailer over analyzed

New Moon 11/20/09
For anyone who does not have a mother, a sister, who hasn't know girl, or had a girlfriend, or walked past a girl in hallway. New Moon is the "epic" tale of an oafish girl who falls in love with a perfect man. He calls himself a vampire through out the entire series but don't worry for all those who hate violence. Nothing he does ever resembles that of vampirism behavior. If I was him I probably would have made up a cooler name for myself. I know what your thinking, he chose vampire because its Sexy. Well sexy for advocates of abstinence is just about as important and Paper weights for tree huggers. Anyways, On to the Trailer.



To catch you up on the story it seems that Bella played by Kirsten Stewart is reminding us all that Edward played by Robert Pattinson Love each other. Basic enough. I do appreciate the sexual tension in this scene. For those of you paying attention earlier I mentioned that Edward the Vampire was an advocate of abstinence. You won't find a promise ring however, those are copyrighted by the Jonas Brothers. Up next, Bella's Birthday party! How thoughtful for a group of undead immortals with millions of dollars at there disposal to go out of there way to buy Bella...a Cake! Bella makes sure to point out how overly thoughtful it is for immortals with millions of dollars at there disposal to buy her a cake.
Then the unthinkable happens! Bella being so clumsy prone cuts her self on present wrapping. I know what your thinking, infants are not even capable of doing this. I know what else your thinking, if she didn't have such a rich boyfriend she could have sued the pants off of JoAnnes Fabrics. Them and there murder wrap.
One of the peaceful family members then try’s to eat her, lots of jumpy camera work and flailing arms. Bella could have been killed. As in all scenes be it sexual tension or possible death Kirsten carries herself with disinterest.
Now we come to the most heartbreaking a memorable scene taken straight oaf to he book. Edward ditches Bella because if he is around then she is in danger (or so he says, kind of a silly reason really. If he wasn't around she would have been eaten.) So for her benefit he disappears forever. Kirsten we then see hugging a jacket with her trademark disinterest.
Enter Edi Gathegi reprising the role as Laurent. He points out what all the guys in the audience were already thinking. Leaving your girlfriend exposed to a world of violence you introduced her to is a bad idea. I can't help but think at this moment that Edward is the dumbest vampire in the history of literature (and now film). It is a fact that guys loooove dumb girls. I suppose this film proves that girls love dumb guys just as much.
Notice how much self control Laurent has, it's always been irritating to me that "evil" in this series has respect, nobility, self control, and acting to spare (nice to see Edi knows how to portray a vampire..not like all the other stiffs in this film) What do these goody two shoe Cullen’s use OH I COULDN"T CONTROL MYSELF as a scape goat? The evil people seem to have no problem with it. Life lesson number one, To have self respect and control is to be evil!
Watch out Laruant it's Jacob to the rescue, but how can a ripped muscle bound native American save the day? By revealing his true dark nature! WEREWOLF POWERS ACTIVATE. If you've ever seen a geek explain the technology used to create CGI creatures you'll probably remember its around 30 steps. Jacob looks like they stopped caring after step 3.
I'm also comfortable enough in my heterosexuality to point out Jacob looked like he could do a lot more ass kicking as a human being then a goofy cartoon werewolf. Almost looks like he shrinks but that might just be the terrible effects.

Well there you have it, my over all analysis of the trailer. Seems more like a criticism but I'm sure this film will be just as good as Twilight. Maybe even better. I'm actually curious to see how Kirsten Stewart portrays Bella in this film and it will be nice to see if Taylor Lautner can act. The first film he was about as important as a lampshade. Now with a bigger role he can show off his acting chops or fail at doing so. Not that it will matter much to the target audience, the guy is ripped out of his mind.

Ugh, Sparkly Vampires.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Tom Hanks got nothing on Me


Tom Hanks has been in more $100,000,000 box office bashes then any other actor. His roles range from simple minded character study Forrest Gump to Cold hearted Killer Michael Sullivan. Roles varrying in range from Cowboy to Astronaut he cerntainly has done it all. One of his most amazing feats convincing the world that Meg Ryan can fall in love...Twice! Extrodniary. However in this segment which may be the start of many to come I would like to anaylze his character achievements and pit them up against the best of the best of the absolute best.

Forrest Gump much like Tom Hanks has done it all. Though the real achievment here isn't the accomplishments of the jounery but the Journey itself, becuase after all "Life is like a box oh chocolates, yah never know what cha gonna get" Well what if I said Forrest your Ping Pong Playing is medicore at best. THATS CRAZY TALK! or is it?



I mean look at him go? Surely the writer of this Blog is some kind of a clumzy Cluso escq Waitere? Surely no one can demonstrate the skill and mastery of ping pong playing better then Forest Gump. In addition I say nobody plays like Forest. After all look at the enjoyment, the concentration. The brilliant performance by Tom Hanks! (take a drink)

ENTER THE DRAGON. Forest Gump got nothing on Bruce Lee



I don't know how to read Chinese or what a NOkia96 is but I think it translates to something along the lines of "Forest Gump...Got Served!!!"

Friday, May 22, 2009

Our True First Post. Could've been better.

So as our first post here on this "Sweet Action" blog, I would like to bring to every one's attention the long time atrocity of standing around and watching while people get their trash kicked.  As you can see in this video, while the dude is getting a true beat down, there is at least a couple of people that just kinda mosy on by and watch.  Really?  I mean REALLY?!?!  What are you thinking "oh wow check out that old dude getting his a** handed to him, I should - oh looky there I just found a quarter in my pocket now I can go and get that awesome Pepsi Throwback I wanted at lunch."  COME ON PEOPLE!!!

Test Post

This is just a test post to see how things look.