The Expendables

I just got back from seeing this movie at the theatre and I'm still a bit pumped from it, so I'll try to keep the spoilers at a minimum, but you'll have to excuse the occasional one.

Stallone should stop acting. Right now. Simple as that. I almost needed subtitles to understand him most of the time. His slurring is reaching the levels it was when he was in South Park and it doesn't make for a good bit in a movie.

Otherwise the movie was excellent. Good acting on quite a few points. Some were more believeable than others. Stallone was not one of them. It actually had a decent story, brothers and loyalties and what not.

Good to see Arnie in film again, even if it only was for a couple minutes and Willis' preformance was highly overrated and over promoted. Rourke was not in the kind of role I expected, but he did it well. Austin was also not in the role I expected, but he also did it well. Eric Roberts, the baddie in the movie, was okay, but not terribly amazing, at least not more than usual. The team of Crews, Statham, Li, Couture and Stallone was pretty good. Lundgreen was in there too, but I won't go into that, sufficied to say, Stallone frakked that part up pretty good. Twas just an "Omfg, really? REALLY?" kind of part with that. The entire bit with Lundgreen's character could have been written out and the movie would have been just as good, if not better.

The main sequence, near the end, was pretty awesome and had a few good moments, could have been better topped off by Stallone saying "We're expendable" (watch it, you'll see where I mean) to Eric Roberts.

All in all, a pretty good movie. Worth seeing. 4 of of 5.

Mafia 2 demo

I just finished playing the Mafia 2 demo. It was basically what I had expected, Set in 1950s USA, the game featured one mission that showed off most of the key parts of the game - driving, shooting and most of the mechanics.

You start off playing Vito, an Italian immigrant trying grab a slice of the cake that is the "American dream". The mission that you are given is basically a hit mission and it shows off several of the game systems. You get to use a small variety of weapons, and I have a feeling that the small variety isn't going to change. Over the course of the demo, you use a wall-mounted machine gun and then you have your fists as well as a 9mm pistol, shotgun and the infamous gangster "Tommy Gun" Thompson Submachine gun. As well as you have to drive through bits of the city. Now, the driving bit is where I noticed the hardest part of the game. And while I won't say too much, I will say that it does need some tweaking, but I think by now 2K Czech is well beyond that. Either that, or the cars really do handle like 1950's Chevy autos.

I'm not sure which I would prefer....

All in all, the game is amazingly well done, so far anyway.

Also, I got enough into it that I had to bribe a cop. I didn't see that coming.

The demo is now available on Playstation Network, Xbox Live Marketplace and Steam. I highly recommend downloading it.

The real downside is that you only get 10 minutes ingame play, which is just enough time to finish the mission or play around. Your choice.

Sucker Punch Impressions

Released today was the trailer for the newest project from acclaimed awesomeman, Zack Snyder

<- him



The title of the project, is called Sucker Punch

I didn't think too much of it either, when I heard of it. Especially when I heard it had Vanessa Hudgens in it (commentary: blargh).

But then several posters were released, showing the female leads from the film and it suddenly became interesting. And then the trailer was released today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpGmrF_1JUI
And a whole new level of awesome was created.
The trailer, which comes in at 1:26, shows a world that is only limited by imagination. A world where giant, minigun wielding samurai and regular samurai clash with Nazis and and US Black Ops agents decked out in Medieval armor and carrying machine guns. A world where strippers and mob bosses rule over insane asylums and dragons fly through the skies fighting scantaly clad female badasses who arm themselves with the latest in high tech assault rifles. And a real look inside the mind and how spending too much time can blur reality.

A really fair comparison would be to the recent Alice in Wonderland. But with that said, Alice in Wonderland didn't have assault rifles or heavy weapons.

The Avengers news

So, in case you are one of the few people on this planet that hasn't heard the news, Joss Whedon has been OFFICIALLY attached to direct The Avengers movie.

I'll give you a minute to come down from that orgasmic high.



All done? good.

Anyway. With this announcement, the internet rumor mill has been buzzing on this subject. A lot of people, most in fact, are saying that this would make the movie basically a total win, even though even pre-production hasn't even started.

Do I agree? well, lets see what else Joss has done..........

I see no problem with giving it the stamp of internet win already.

Not to mention the other talent already attached to this project *cough* Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson *cough* it may just be the most awesome movie of the decade.

My advice to the theaters that are going to show the film, is to have Paramedics onsite for every showing in case of rabid fangirls, overawesome orgasmiming (and yes, I know that is not a word), hysteria and unconciousness.

On second thought, maybe just showing the movie stricting in hospitals would be a better idea. You know, so help is right there when needed, and it will be needed

Game Review - Beat Hazard (2010)

I just found this game and decided to play a few rounds.


Holy crap. It was the most trippy thing I have ever played. It goes through your music files and you can select tracks to play too. It's like Rock Band or Guitar Hero or even DJ Hero, but you know, ACTUALLY GOOD, which was suprising, and not unpleasant.

the gameplay is fairly simple, it plays like Asteroids and those kind of "top down" shooter games, but adds in the whole music element which adds in a whole new element of awesome.

It looks simple. and it is. W A S D and a mouse is all that is needed (well, music tracks too, I suppose). And the filesize is small, but amazingly impressive. The game comes with several tracks built in, but you can also mess around and do really crazy stuff like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIbNBkRx8gg

OH THE HUMANITY.

Go out and get this game. Now. If you don't, you are the most lame person on the planet.
http://rs758tl4.rapidshare.com/files/388649550/2623707/Beat_WarezFreaks.Org.rar
^if you are too cheap to buy it.

annonimity and the internet

I've been reading some articles that have been saying that the times of anonymous posting on the internet is basically over. And I'm relieved. Soon the days where every 13 year old will be able to wander into an internet forum and start flaming everyone with no one knowing who he is.

The Koreans have the right idea,creating a 6-15 digit PIN number that everyone is issued. Probably from the day they are born. This pin would be linked to the Department of Justice (or it's counterparts in other countries) and would allow internet police (or whatever they are) to enforce spam laws on users. The PIN would be like an online profile, having your data about where you posted, when and what was in the post. Simply put, it would be like a credit card number, and most people protect those with their lives.

Now, there will be privacy groups who will cry foul and say that this would invade a person's rights and freedoms. I can see how that could be seen, but there is a solution: have it so that the PIN doesn't contain any actual information. But it links to the CRA or IRS or whatever. They are required to keep tabs on people, so their information would be up to date and accurate. Therefore, no actual important information is used with the PIN. It would only link to the account at the DoJ and come up as a number, and if there was a problem, then the CRA would look up the number in their system and say "Okay, that's so and so and they live at this address".  If the PIN was email linked to send a message to the PIN owners email account, then any slanderous use of the PIN would be quickly and easily reported.

Simply put, it would be a new credit card like system, but without any important data kept with it.

Might sound kind of harsh, but if it gets rid of all these "FIRST" and "LOL FAIL" comments on sites everywhere, then it's worth it.



/b/ would, of course, be exempt from this system. Because let's face it, that's basically the whole site anyway.

Just Cause 2

minor spoilers ahead.

Before I begin, let me start by saying that YES, I know this has been out for awhile. I've been too busy playing it too actually review it, so here goes.

JC2 is one of those games that you might look at and not think much of from the cover, but it is amazing. A cross between Grand Theft Auto, Mercenaries and Spider-Man. That sounds cool, and it is. It's very much like GTA and Mercenaries in that you play as a character running around in an open world doing whatever the hell you want (unlike in Mercs, you don't get penalized for killing civvies). You play as Rico Rodreguiez, an agent for the creativly named US organization called "The Agency" (my hunch is C.I.A., but there is no hints to that). The game takes place on the fictional South East Asian island nation of Panau. A place where, despite the tropical local, the climate is wide and varied, from a large desert to the South-West to the snow capped mountains and the tropical savanna in most of the map.

The map itself is huge. Massive even. about 5-6 times as large as GTA: San Andreas + Mercenaries 2 maps. With 369 villiages, millitary bases/airports/communication outposts/ports and a few smaller cities beside the main capital city which, in itself, is massive. (I'm about about 71% and I've been playing for about 76 hours. Yes, that large.) Vehicles of all types are readily available for use. From motorbikes and small, 3-wheeled taxis, to sedans, sports cars, hummvees, tanks, helicopters, planes (both millitary and civillian), as well as both millitary and civillian boats. Really, the only type of vehicle that the game should've had added was submarines. But oh well, maybe in JC3.

The wrist mounted grapple and redeployable stunt parachute are the real gems of this game, they make it amazingly unique. The grapple can be used for simple tasks, like pulling Rico towards vehicles or complicated tasks like wiring two vehicles together. Either way, it makes the game amazingly fun. The parachute allows Rico to base jump from very high up and land safely no matter what.

When Edios Interactive, Square Enix and Avalanche Studios made this game they took the physics book and tossed it out the window. Rico can pull stunts that would kill a real human (or even some game characters), but isn't affected much at all. For example, you can fall hundreds of meters to the ground, pull your parachute at about 5 meters and be perfectly fine, just stumble a bit. It makes for some reallllllllly fun game play.

The enemy AI is fairly interesting, they aren't too stupid, but tend to favour running and gunning with overwhelming firepower to tactics. The downside is that it actually works. They call in Helicopters outfitted with miniguns and rocket launchers when needed to deliver a powerful punch and handheld weapons are also fairly powerful, the Machine Gun being one of the more powerful ones.

Speaking of weapons, the game features quite a few different ones, or so it seems, they quickly seem to be a bit repetitive, but seem is the operative word thar. However, they could've put in a bit more variety of guns, but the ones they did are fairly good. Scattered around the map are weapon and vehicle upgrade crates, which can be used to, what else, upgrade weapons and vehicles that you can buy from the black market contact. Each weapon has 6 levels up upgrade. One it starts with and 5 more to upgrade with. The other side of the upgrade system is that the enemies ALSO get the upgraded weapons, so it makes it a bit harder.

The real area where the game flounders is in the characters voice acting. Just so bad, and not one of those so-bad-it's-actually-funny things, it's more like so-bad-it-makes-you-cringe. The accents are off key and just terrible.

Final thoughts.

Excellent game. Well put together and thought out. An excellent job in most areas. A few that could use improvements (aiming and voice acting). 9.6/10

On a side note, this game is best played with rock music in the background, like AC/DC or something. makes it that much more fun.

Iron Man 2

quick warning: spoilers included.

Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man
Don Cheadle as Lt. Colonel James "Rhode" Rhodes/War Machine
Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko/Whiplash
Scarlett Johansson as Natalie Rushman/Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow
Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts
Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer
Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury











I'll admit it, I'm a sucker for movies like this. I love everything about them and IM2 is no exception. This movie had me from the start. As it started, I knew I was going to love it. That said, I do have some points to make.

Now, in more detail.

I did love almost everything about this movie. It was well written and had a lot of good moments. The characters, despite there being a lot of them and all intertwined, all fit together very well. The movie also wraps together several other characters and continues to take strides towards "The Avengers" movie bringing in characters like Black Widow as well as other classic Iron Man characters like War Machine, which makes a dramatic entrance

Badass.

The scene on the Monaco track with Stark driving the F1 and facing off against Whiplash was really well done. Slicing several cars in half with the whips was pretty awesome, but a bit overdone. One or two would've had a really good effect, but 4 was a bit much.

The movie is based around 4 things, Tony Stark's being poisoned, Justin Hammer of Hammer Industries being Tony Stark's business competitor and rival and Ivan Vanko's desire to get revenge on Tony stark for what his father, Howard Stark, did to Vanko's father. Suprisingly neither Natasha Romanoff, nor Ivan Vanko are referred to by their alias names of Black Widow and Whiplash, respectivly.

As the movie goes on and Tony really starts to believe that he is dying, he starts to get a bit wilder and uncontrollable. Turning Stark Industries over to Pepper Potts and making her CEO and some drunken antics during his birthday party, which saw him dancing around drunkenly in the Iron Man suit and Rhode having to suit up in the Mark 2 armor to try and bring Tony under control. A fight ensues between Starks and Rhode that ends with Rhode flying off in the Mark 2 armor and a good part of Stark's home being heavily damaged.

After the millitary (and by extension, Justin Hammer) get ahold of the armor, they soup it up and add it crap loads of weapons, leading to the birth of the War Machine. The majority of the movie is just building up to the final fight between Iron Man + War Machine versus a crapload of drones.

Something like this.

After that fight finishes, a newly armored Whiplash enters the arena and continues the fight. Which has the usual result. Afterwards Rhode mentions that he is going to "hang on" to the War Machine armor.

All in all, a fairly awesome movie. A lot of tidbits towards other marvel characters and movies.

In review 4.5/5. A couple bits could've been changed a bit, but otherwise awesome. Go see it. And watch for the small scene AFTER the credits.

political systems

I've been hearing a lot lately about all this political shit. Frankly, it's got me annoyed. People go on and on and on, saying they're all for free speech and freedom of goverment and democracy and flowers and puppies and all that. Then turn around and bitch and complain when what they want to happen, doesn't happen. Frankly, the main reason the world is falling apart is because democracy reins. That's right, I said it, democracy is killing the world. Now, no political system is perfect. It can't be. If there is one that is perfect, it hasn't been invented yet and never will. That said, I've been reading through bits of history, political stuff mostly and after all that, I've come to see the truth behind it all. There was one man in history who made the system work. One man who made the goverment work, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Following the October Revolution of 1917, for those of you who actually give a shit, he brought communism to Russia, based off the works of Karl Marx and Marxism.

"Every man is born equal" that is one of the founding priciples and it is damn right.

Now, I am aware that during the Cold War, Communism was labeled as "evil" and "of Satan" and "immoral". Pfeh, I say. PFEH. Now, Josef Stalin warped Lenin's orginal idea to something of his own creation, I know. A totalarian state. But the founding ideals of Communism is something to behold. Something we should adopt. The problem with that is then it would take away the current voice that every Joe and Jane Nobody holds. Frankly, that might do the world some good. People need to have a voice in the way that their goverment is run, yes indeed, but not at the expense of the system itself. See, Communism may not work, but Socialism is the foundation of quite possibly the best political system that humans have come up with. Plain and simple. We should go back to Lenin's ideals and adopt that into our system.

Capitalism is all about money, and thinking about oneself. It's short sighted, greedy and fucking useless. Leninism is about the people. And quite fucking frankly, that's what the world needs right now. Of course, Early Communism also had another trait that I admire, Anti-religious establishment. While I am of the belief that people should be able to believe and worship what they want, read my lips people, the Church should have absolutely no influence on the affairs of the State. Religious figureheads should never, in any instance, be granted the same rights and freedoms as politicians. Now, I could go and say that all politicians should be Athiests or Agnostics, but I won't, that infringes too much on personal freedoms. However, that said, Religious propoganda should be forbidden and things relating to religion should be restricted, by law and force, to designated religious facilities. Simple. As. That.

There we go, I've solved the problems for the world, Adopt Leninism and form a world goverment, while at the same time, forbidding the practice of religion in anywhere other than places of worship. Not hard. Not overly simple, but not unachievable. Of course, the people with the money don't like that. So it won't happen. You know what I say to that?

FUCK. THAT.

It's time for a good ol' fashioned Coup d'etat. RISE UP PEOPLE OF THE WORLD. OVERTHROW YOUR GOVERMENTS. LOVE THE PEOPLE YOU ARE WITH. REJECT CORPORATIONS AND PROFIT. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF AND THOSE AROUND YOU AND IT IS POSSIBLE.

If movies have taught anyone anything at all, it's that ONE PERSON CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. So it's time. RISE UP. The goverments fear attacks from outside, so they would never see one coming from inside. RISE UP AND AWAKEN THE EYES OF SOCIETY!

Humans and the space race

Okay, so people (mostly me) have been talking a lot lately about the future of space exploration and Terran society. With the world fracturing as it is, people are looking to the stars for plain survival. NASA has said that they want a trip back and have a base established by 2019 with a manned mars mission by the same date. Franky, I say that's not good enough. We could've been on mars by now. We could've been that far along. We had the tech and the drive to be on Mars by 1985. Instead, the US goverment decided that it would be best to pursue the Orbital Shuttle program *cough* idiots *cough*. Speaking of which, that program is due to be retired by the end of this year with, whadda ya know, no American replacement ready or even under construction. With the Russians due to take over resupply missions to the ISS. Now, I won't bash the importance of the International Space Station. It's a damn good project. But that said, it shouldn't be a PRIMARY concern. It should have been a thing that got built while we were planning for the trip to Mars. (I'll be giving my ideas for the Mars missions in a later post) And now, the Obama administration is poised to CUT the budget for the NASA Constellation project, which was to develop vehicles to take us to Luna and Mars. Frankly, the ONLY good thing the Bush administration did was to pour shitloads of cash into NASA's budget. And now Obama is saying "Well, we need the monies for the millitary, so NASA, you ain't getting anything" which annoys me, but more so, it confirms the thought that the first country to put a Terran on Mars will be either Russia or China (most likely China). I'm glad. Let someone else other than the US of A get there first. Might show the Americans that they are NOT in fact the greatest Country on Terra firma.

Now, I realize that we can't time travel (yet!) and complaining only goes so far. All I'm saying is that we need to look back to the stars and realize that we need to get back out there. We NEED to go out and colonize Luna and Mars, probably in that order. It will be a step forward for our society, and considering that over the past decade, we've taken about a dozen steps backwards, we NEED this. We NEED to get back into space. Not spend the money on a new missile that can smell it's target. Though that would be kinda cool.

This will probably be how it happens for the manned missions to Mars. China first. Russia second. ESA third. USA dead last. Obama, don't fuck this up for North America.

People need to get it in their minds that we are ALL of the same species. People need to start realizing that unless we start working together and working to better our species, we simply don't deserve to exist. If all we are going to do is point fingers and say "My god is better than your god even though both are exactly the same god, but we worship differently" and hate each other, exploit each other for meaningless profit and just look for new ways to kill each other, then I say, don't wait. LAUNCH THE NUKES!

So, simply. Get the act together. Learn to listen and understand. Learn that we are all the same, despite the small differences. And realize that space is the goal we should all work together. Learn that we must extend our reach to the stars.

MARS OR BUST!