Back from the Con...

I'm being lazy with uploading the photos from Chicago Comic-Con to my facebook page (to which I never have posted a link, so it doesn't matter anyway), but I wanted to let everyone know that they are coming. Eventually. Until then, enjoy this video of Iron Man and War Machine crossing the street:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_z0a0G0ids

You've Just Been...Expendabled...

This past weekend saw the rise of a new number one movie (which will probably replaced this weekend, since most movies these days, with few exceptions don't have much staying power), Sylester Stallone's latest nostalgic throwback, The Expendables.
As always, I try to provide a spoiler-free review of films/games/whatevers, but be warned, there are some.

First off, while the plot and the stars might be from a bygone era (though the plots of beefed up action heroes out to rescue damsels in distress will probably never die), the filming techniques are very modern. While Stallone's Rambo had a very gritty feel to it, Expendables looks to utilize modern techniques like the jerky hand-held camera style for the action scenes as popularized by the Bourne films (though why all of Ultimatum had to be filmed that way is still beyond me). It even tries to be innovative during a couple of scenes, to varying degrees of success. Overall, though the action gets muddled at times by the shaky camera and jerky cuts, there's more than enough mayhem to go around.

The actors do a good enough job at making you like the right people and hating the rest. My only real problems were with Steve Austin and Randy Couture (sp?). Randy isn't an actor and Austin just came off as a pro-wrestler, not a bad ass military-type. I know his claim to fame is as a wrestler, but he has been in films since leaving the WWE, so I expected a little bit more from him.

The film has a reported budget of 90 million, and it looks like most of that went into the special effects. An oddity I noticed was in the blood splatters later in the film. Sly reported that there was no CGI used in the Expendables, but the blood towards the end looks straight out of Ninja Assassin.

A bit of the thrill is seeing which of the Expendables is going to bite it, and there are several tense moments. However, there is one fight scene where I almost couldn't suspend my disbelief.

Overall, the film is a bit deeper story-wise than what I was expecting, but it definitely was a no-holds barred action film and that's all anyone really needs to know.

You've Got the Touch!

You've got the power....yeah!

*Ahem* Anyway. I swore that I wouldn't purchase the recently released "Transformers: War for Cybertron" until I had either played it, or at least wait until after Chicago Comic-Con. Yeah. You can see where this is going. I swear I was going to hold myself to it, but I was at a local(ish) used game store and there it was, all by its lonesome, calling to me. Also, it was only thirty, half of what I would've paid for the game new. So there was that.

Before I could even play the game, which my girlfriend graciously allowed me to do (she picked up both Burton/Keaton Batman films from the same place), I had to install updates.

That is something that has appeared only in this generation of console gaming: updates (and installs, but more on that in a moment), and there is nothing that infuriates me more than getting a shiny new game and then having to wait for the updates to download and install. I also hate having to wait for a game to install itself to the PS3's harddrive. Also, I don't know where all my storage space went, since I have a 60gb model, and can only account for about half the drive being taken up by games and demos and what not (I don't have movies and the only music I have is from a Linkin Park concert I went to in '08). So where'd it all go?

So after almost an hour of updating and freeing up space from my drive (I deleted the game data for Oblivion, since I tried it once and didn't much care for it), I finally get rewarded for my time with an awesome intro voiced over by Peter Cullen (the voice of Optimus Prime from what is now dubbed Generation 1) in which he explains that there is a War for Cybertron (ah, so that's why it's called that). I decided to start from the beginning rather from the middle. The Decepticon campaign begins with Chapter One and the Autobot's start on Chapter Five or Six. After playing for about ten minutes, you know what I noticed?
That my favorite parts of the old cartoons is running out of ammo every twenty seconds.

That's sarcasm, by the way. Also, I don't really like the voices. Soundwave sounds like, well, Soundwave. But Megatron doesn't sound right and Brawl and Barricade (the Deceptichumps that hang around with Megatron for at least the first chapter) just sound...wrong. They don't sound like Decepticons. They almost sound like slightly more evil versions of the main character's best friends from a Judd Apatow film.

Overall, only about an hour or so in, but I like it, I guess. Probably should have started with Prime's campaign. Then again, who knows if I would've ever played through Megatron's...

Today was a Good Day...

Most days, when I go into work, feel like Office Space. You know, the part where Ron Livingston is explaining how everyday he goes into work is the worst day of his life? That's how I feel about ninety percent of the time when going into work (at my summer job, anyway). However, every so often, I have a day that doesn't suck. Nothing seems to go wrong, or I'm just too tired to notice/care, and I don't feel entirely like harming myself or others by the time my shift is over. For some reason, that Ice Cube song always plays in my head when that happens. I don't have an AK, but I don't think I would've used it today. And that's a good thing.

On a different subject, some friends/almost relatives of mine have purchased Playstation 3's recently and came to me with adivce on what games to get. Now, most of my collection for the PS3 is either games I don't expect other people to get (Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2) or franchises that have carried on from the PS1 & 2 days (Resident Evil 5, Metal Gear Solid 4). So I have a hard time making recommendations. I like those games, sure. Love them? Might be too strong a word, since I have huge problems with both, of which I have vented for years about, so I don't need to expand upon that here. But would I recommend those games?

No, not really, not unless you've been following the franchises for years.
Instead of just poopooing some of those games, I've come up with a list. Without further ado, here's my list of top 5 PS3 games that I would recommend (in no real order) and why:


Batman Arkham Asylum: Despite the fact that I feel let down by any and all news of the sequel (outside of the teaser trailer from last year) that does not keep me from recommending this gem. It might have the most entertaining melee combat system I've ever seen in a game. Every hit, every move has weight to it and it is a blast to fight through the challenges. An added bonus is that they got Kevin Conroy and Mark Hammil to reprise their characters from the Batman: Animated Series. Fun fact: At one point, I was ranked #6 on one of the combat challenges (after the boosters were cleared out).

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2): Either one is a great game, though I'd recommend both just for the story. Some felt jilted by the single player story in 2, but my only complaint is that it really felt like it was a setup for the next game (which may or may not come). The only difference in multiplayer is that MW 1 seems to be more strategic in that there aren't as many ridiculous knife kills and kill streaks to use to rain hell down on your enemies.

Lego Star Wars: The Complete Trilogy: Yes, this one is available on the PS2 as well (and the DS and every other system out), but the PS3 version is only 19.99 new, and for what comes out to be two complete games, the price can't be beat. I've heard some gamers say that they like Batman or Indy better, but I think things like the Force and lightsabers just works better than the whip or batarangs.

And...that's it. Huh. I don't own five games that I would honestly recommend to others. I own about twenty games, but not all of them are good, and not all of them are by choice.

Honorable Mentions: Metal Gear Solid 4: I know I said I wouldn't recommend this game, but it does deserve a spot on this list for being a part of the series that I did one of my first speed runs on. We never timed it, but we got through MGS1 in just over two hours. If you want to see the end to Snake's story, here it is, in all of it's 1/2 hour + per cinematic glory. On the plus side, the graphics are amazing, the gameplay has been refined from 3 (which was already pretty good), and you get to pilot a Metal Gear.

Resident Evil 5: Some say that RE has lost its way. That the series has lost its dark roots and is no longer scary. Yeah, I guess so. But if better gameplay is the sacrifice I have to make for cheap scares, then yeah, take the cheap scares.

Sound off in the comments if anyone has more games to recommend.

The Other Guys & What is up with CoD: BO?

I saw The Other Guys tonight at a local theater. I've been trying to save for the convention coming up, so I wasn't going to go, but then the theater advertised that all tickets were supposed to be $6 all day. I say supposed, because we ended up getting charged full price (which has gone up at that theater). No explanation was given as to why the promotion didn't apply to the movie we were seeing, but since we were there, we saw it anyway (probably something the theater was counting on).

The movie itself was pretty flippin' hilarious. There were times where I wondered if the film even had a plot, since it seemed to mostly be a bunch of over the top cop jokes. Samuel L Jackson and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson were great as the over-the-top action heroes that Mark Wahlberg's character longed to be. Kind of messed up what happens there, but I won't spoil it.

If you've seen other Ferrel movies, you know what to expect going in, and that about sums up The Other Guys.


The Multiplayer (MP) trailer for Call of Duty: Black Ops was released today. It looked kind of neat, but I do have some problems with it. Namely, it still contains everything players complained about in Modern Warfare 2's MP. Of course, since it doesn't have MW in the title, people for some reason are going apeshit over it instead of getting pissed off. It still has the ridiculous knife kills, killstreaks, and everything else you'd come to expect from Treyarch ripping off Infinity Ward's work. I know some people will call foul on that, but it's true, Treyarch just takes the game engine IW develops as well as some of the scripted events and tosses 'em together and calls it a day/game. Sure, the end result might turn out ok (as was the case with WaW and probably will for BO), but that's really all Treyarch is doing at this point. Kind of makes you wonder what's going to happen next year now that IW was all but gutted.

Anywho, that's all for me. Nine days until Comic-Con.

Well...damn

So, in about ten days I'll be heading down to Rosemont, IL to attend Chicago Comic-Con, where I will once again be nerding it up. In addition to hunting down collectibles and trades, there are also a number of celebrity(ish) guests that I'd love to meet.
For the past month or two, there was one in particular that I'd do just about anything to get a picture with (including paying the $100-200 fee to do so). That person was Sir Patrick Stewart. Unfortunately, he has been removed from all of the guests lists and there was a note of apology from the third-party company (pretty much a party planner for conventions) saying that anyone who bought the picture package could get a refund (thank goodness I hadn't, 'cause I don't want to know how hard that would've been to actually make good on the refund).

So...yeah. I'm a bit less enthusiastic for the convention now, since that had really gotten my hopes up for how awesome it was going to be. Now...meh. I'm still looking forward to it, but it isn't like, "oh my god oh my god oh my god" fanboyish excitedness any more.

Still, I want to get a baseball signed by Avery Brooks (and whoever else I can get from Star Trek), because I'd just find that awesome.

I bet most of you thought I was dead...

I've been neglecting my social netwoking facets this week (facebook, twitter, this blog, etc...), but that's mostly because I have nothing really new to say. I spent most of my work week in a department I despise (front end, or cashiering, for those not in retail). That's how I was rewarded for my excellent sales for the first two weeks of July. I was stuck up front at a register where I can't move and am overworked for eight hours a day. You know what wasn't designed to stand in one spot for eight hours straight? The human body. My knees are pretty well shot by the time one of those shifts are done. And at one point one of my managers asked why my sales weren't as high (I have seven different bosses. I'm hoping for one more so that I can find someone named Bob and explain to them how many bosses I have).
But today, oh boy, today was going to be different. I was actually in technology. And, you know what, I made a bunch of sales! Who would have thought? But enough of the bitching about work, because, honestly, it doesn't get me anywhere. I will, however, write one thing more about work. Only because it is so f***ing ridiculous.
So, on Tuesday, the last day I worked before today, I found and then rang up a couple of flash drives (or USB drives or thumb drives or whatever) that were on sale for a customer.
She came in today after hearing that we were giving away a cheap lil 6.99 backpack with a $10 purchase and demanded to know where her backpack(s) was(were).
I told her that we were out.
She asked for a raincheck.
I explained that it was a promotional item and that we weren't expecting to get anymore in.
Then she asked why I hadn't given her her backpacks when she had been in on Tuesday.
I had no response to this, because, really, anything I could have said would only have made things worse.
She asked who the store manager was and if he was around (I've been asked that a lot lately, and it's usually never my fault or that of the employee the customer is angry at). He had just left, so I told her I was calling the manager on duty to the front of the store.
She proceeds to call the MoD by the wrong name and then goes off on how she never shops at our store because we intentionally label items with the wrong price and how I should have given her the backpacks when she was in the store on Tuesday before they ran out on Wednesday (I mispoke, because I rarely have Wednesdays off and we had run out the last day I worked).
He explained that it wasn't an item that we just give to the customers, that they had to either get one off the shelf or request it at the register. She yelled for a few more minutes and then said she was going to write a letter of complaint to someone or other and asked for all of our names.
She then called the MoD by the wrong name again and he asked for her name so that he could relay her complaint to the Store Manager. And then she left.
It was only the 2nd customer of 3 in a row to yell at me. And it all boils down to this:
The customer was pissed because I wasn't psychic. Sorry.


Now, I will very rarely openly debate politics. Mostly because I try to actually be rational and logical when it comes to such things, and whoever I argue with hardly thinks of those things as useful or intelligent. I preface this next segment because I don't want to see any political comments (not that there are many comments in general). An...acquaintance that I knew in high school joined the military after graduation. I say acquaintance because I mostly knew him from working at the grocery store in my town and I graduated high school with his sister. He served in Iraq and was wounded three times in the line of duty. Twice from shrapnel from homemade explosives and once from a missile. He took a godamned missile hit and kept going.
He recently received the Purple Heart and a commendation from President Obama. His sister, with pride (and well-deserved) pointed to a news article on the website for the local paper (hence how I know how many times he was injured and from what). I read through the article and thought, "This is a boy (I later corrected myself and said man when retelling the story to my girlfriend, since the young man in question is only a year younger than I am) that served his country. And he was mentioned, by name, by the President of the United States. How cool is that?"
And then I made the mistake of reading the comments. I think maybe two comments in is all it took for the hate and political rhetoric to creep in. One of them even blasted him for joining the military to support a fake war. Another was ranting about President Obama and how he is ruining the country. Now, I don't care how anyone feels about Iraq, Afghanistan, or the current President of the United States, but there is a time and a place to argue about such things. At the end of a news article about a soldier receiving the purple heart for being wounded in action is not one of them. Nor the funeral for anyone who fought for their country and died. Nor anything having to do with sports. Really? The Cubs are playing lousy and you're going to blame the war or Pres. Obama?

So this is my salute, Matt Seidl. Thank you for serving your country and continuing to do so in the face of adversity.