this is my blog, rant area, general chat and most importantly........................urm, i forgot.
bugger.
that link for the halo 3 review from yhatzee at zero punctuation is http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/2304-Zero-Punctuation-Halo-3
also watch his other reviews their as funny as hell. saying that, im going off to watch the halo 3 review again, tat ta!

• 1Jan 10

  the second (and final part) of my trilogy.....

  yep, my trilogy has now been cut down to a duet. since i got an unexpected christmas present in the form of terminator salvation on blu-ray (another subject i will move onto at the end of this blog).

  right on to review time

  Terminator Salvation

  now, we all know that all the terminator movies are pretty damn awesome (except the 3rd, that was meh) so when i saw that not only was the main actor from avatar (sam worthington) was playing in this move, but christian bale was also starring, i almost wet my pants.

  so the acting is of course, top notch stuff. nothing else really to say there. the story however, is abit questionable.

  so the main premise is that this movie is set after all the other Terminator movies, after judgment day so the human race is fighting the war against machines. what really baked my noodle was that in all the other movies, it was said that conner would be the leader of the resistance, whereas in this movie he sort of isnt until about 3/4 of the way through the movie.

  and there is the unescapeable fact that they CGI'd arnie. sorry for the epic spoiler (if you havent already seen it on youtube) but it has to be said. if i could be so bold, i would say that the director was an utter genius at that point in the movie, letting see arnie in CGI just long enough for us to notice its CGI and getting the nostalgic lookback to the old movies, then by means of explosive weapons, turning into a normal T-800 so we dont sit there thinking "why did they CGI arnie?".

  and as a last note, sam's character has a plot twist that you will never see coming (no spoilers here).

  Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

  im just going to come out and say it, this film is so average is makes a new standard of averageness.

  the story continues on from the first in only the vaguest sense (as in its got the characters still but thats it) and now they have to save the earth from one of the weakest bad guys in existance.

  the fallen, the main baddy, spends all the film sitting atop a throne until the last bit where he comes to earth, beats up a few tanks and planes, then gets raped by Optimus. no spoilers here since if you didnt see that one coming, you have a brain the size of a walnut.

  the actors are mediocre and i was actually skipping vast portions of the film on my very first sit-through because so much of it is just excess baggage and irrelavent to the film in any way.

  if you want to see it, i would just buy (or rent) it on normal DVD and not waste your money on the blu-ray, since the film is hardly worth it.

  Avatar

  okay kids, the big one.

  this film has been hyped to the end of the galaxy and back with its coma-inducing production costs and one of the greatest film directors of all time at the helm.

  so the verdict? let me put it to you this way, i will not call you a true movie goer until you see this movie. thats how good it is.

  the story is set on the planet Pandora where the evil corperations (humans, basically) are trying to mine the mineral which conviently is only under the Hometrees (skyscraper tall trees) where the tribal Na'vi live.

  im going to have to come out with this, i cant hold it back. the CGI in this film will actually screw with your perception of reality. at points in the film i was actually so convinced the CGI Na'vi were real i has to slap myself a few times, drawing very weird expressions from a few people, but the rest of the audience were doing the same.

  i was listening to a few guys as we walked out the cinema and the guys infront of me were saying how great the animatronics were in the film......when it was all CGI.

  unfortunatly i could not see the 3-D version or watch it in I-MAX but that only adds to how awesome the CGI is. i watched it without 3-D and Imax and still believed they were real.

  also, the acting is about as good as you can get it. sam worthington is awesome and bringing Ms. tough b***h of the Universe, Weaver , into it was just icing on an already perfect cake.

  right, now onto the only negative of the whole film. the story pans out with no unexpected twists or shocking moments at all. i predicted almost all the events of the film within about 10 minutes of the film starting. but i wouldn't say it was a bad thing per se, since its done so beautifully, you never find yourself screaming "come on, thats obvious" at any point.

  and i like how even though the film is set in the quite far future, which FTL drive and hover cars, the tech that they use on Pandora is quite modern, high tech for us, but still using bullets and rockets rather than lasers and railguns. this adds to the realism and i think was the glue that stopped the film from breaking its own bubble.

  and the James Cameron has annouced that he will do sequels (maybe even a prequel) if it is recieved well. and it has been, so expect more awesomeness in the next 4 years or so.

  i am definatly getting this on blu-ray when it comes out.

  which brings me onto the blu-ray vs DVD argument.

  im only going to rant a tiny bit so bear with me. when i first saw a blu-ray movie in the currys store which was using thier best Blu-ray player on thier best HDTV, i couldnt help but think that it looked roughly the same when looking at real human beings in real places but then i saw a CGI movie and was instantly sold. it seems to benefit CGI more than anything else, and with quite a few movies coming out with CGi in them, i couldnt help but feel sorry for the Blu-ray haters. "its just an expensive DVD", "more storage doesnt mean better quality"...i heard all the arguments. we even had a massive argument in our forensic computing session with our lecturer, one of the people behind the blu-ray laser.

  and after seeing transformers on normal DVD (rented) and BLu-ray (got for christmas, unexpectedly), i can almost say now that my PS3 is not a dust collector anymore. im fairly certain that any movie that i buy now that has any CGI (Avatar, District 9) i will not hesitate to spend some extra dosh and get the blu-ray version.

  right, thats my shouting into the black abyss of the WWW done, lets see if i get any echos back.

  happy new year guys!

  • Posted Jan 1, 2010 5:58 am PT
  • Category: Movies
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• 7Dec 09

  its been a while...

  hell, last time i posted was back in august so i thought that i might want to post something up to keep this page a little fresh.

  the topic today is the swathe of films that have come out in the past few months and in two weeks (some of you might know what that particular movie is ) and i thought, as someone who enjoys his movies, to have a look back on a few and my upcoming impressions of a few.

  so far ive watched Wolverine, Star Trek and have yet to see Terminator Slavation, Transformers 2 and lastly, Avatar.

  Wolverine

  this movie was an obvious cinema trip. firstly since i hadnt been to the cinema in many months and because the movie looked pretty cool. when i finally came to watch it, i was quite impressed. all the actors were top notch, the action sequences were always fun to watch and the tie ins for a sequel and to the start of the movie trilogy 'Xmen' all fitted and were done properly.

  the only thing that annoyed me in the movie, the only thing, was Patrick Stewart's cameo. which wasnt even a cameo since it was blatently not him and just a guy they hired to look like him. it did quite annoy me that out of the massive budget, top notch actors and brilliant CGI displays, they couldnt hire Patrick for all of a minute of screenplay.

  overall, a great film to watch.

  Star Trek

  i'd be lieing alot if i said this film wasnt one on top of my 'to watch' list. i have been a trekkie for as long as i could understand words and TV. i even bought the anniversary game on 6 floppys back in the day. so to hear that the best CGI director (JJ) was doing a TOS remake, i almost wet my pants in anticipation.

  what was delievered though was a quite disappointing affair. yes, the Enterprise looked pretty awesome, but you dont get to see much of her throughout the movie. the amount of action in the film was also disappointing. i know Star Trek isnt always action packed but at least put a good amount in a film. the old concept of star trek sexuality is thrown in there, as to be expected.

  for me, there wasnt enough space battles. but in retrospect there was a reason for it. the total number of important ships lists as 4 in the whole film (Kelvin, Narada, Enterprise and Spock's ship) so the big battle sequences were never going to be done.

  overall, it was a good watch but so many niggling things just annoyed me to the point where i just pulled the DVD out and watched something else after the 2nd time.

  ill update this page once ive watched terminator (getting the DVD tomorrow) and transformers 2. will be watching avatar the weekend after its release so this will be a trilogy of reviews.

  tune in for more....whenever i can be bothered to write the next one.

  • Posted Dec 7, 2009 6:28 am PT
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• 12Aug 09

  New Update 11th August 2009 - Yay or Nay?

  Yesterday, a new update for XBL was released.

  the features that this new update brings are as follows:

  - new avatar system that allows items to be bought or awarded through games.

  - new addition to gamercard indicating the amount of years to have been a Live member (with some possible rewards for milestones hinted)

  - marketplace has now got a rating feature allowing people to see whats hot and whats not-so-hot.

  - overall improvement of speed of the dashboard (of which i massively approve of) and some sounds have been filtered through the headset if one is attached (such as invites etc)

  - Games on Demand. whole 360 games can now be downloaded onto you console (hard drive size not withstanding) and played just the same as the old, disc inhabiting game.

  while i approve of all of these things there is only one problem that has ticked me off. that is the pricing of the GoD games.

  now we all know that Oblivion is a massively sucessful game made by an awesome company. we also know that it has oodles of DLC for it. so why in the name of all thats holy has it got a price tag of £20? thats not including any DLC, you have to get that seperatly.

  now, i fully support the notion of supporting good companies by paying for thier games and any DLC they strive to release (though activision has been cast from this list to join EA in the pits of hell) but i can go down to my local GAME which takes all of 10 minutes, and be bakc with the GoTY edtion of Oblivion with includes Knights of the Nine and Shivering isles, for.........wait for it.......£15. plus i have the option of trading it in if i so choose. with DL games you haven ot got that option, you pay for it and you can never get rid of it. thats not so much of a problem when you think that the game is now yours for all eternity as long as you can remember your account details and obtain immortality.

  but that is still one great stonking price tag for a game that i can get out of currys now for 99p.

  on a brighter note, avatars are now useful! sort of. ish.

  i loved the avatar idea, there is so many paths that microsoft could have gone when they released it, making minigames, making a Home-esque mini world to relax and chill while chatting to your mates, or play paintball or footy.

  but no, they just bolted it on and left it there, no real use and got mocked for their nintendo baiting.

  now they are finally doing something about it. while the step is a very small one, the new buyable items for your avatar wil finally make them properly unique. the gears uniforms and ODST stuff are a step in the right direction (though the shirts are a bit unuseful). the next big step was rewards from ingame play. before hand thsi was totally upto the devs whether or not they allowed gamer pics to unlock or not.

  now, you can get something that you can put on your avatar to show you've done something. hopefully the industry will pick this up and use it effectivly (like borderlands or MW2) and make something good out of it.

  im still waiting for a chill room though.

  while some of the features are put down by lack of sensible pricing, lack of more avatar stuff and a few various other things (like having to red-download all my content due to maybe the command paths being deleted) it is a step in the right direction for expanding the service and being more worth the dosh we fork out for it.

  im going to give the new update a Yay.

  thanks for reading.

  • Posted Aug 12, 2009 5:28 am PT
  • Category: Games
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