Monthly Archives: February 2007

Crackdown, first impressions.

Games

Crackdown is the type of game that you sit down to play and the next time you look at the clock, you can’t believe that that much time has passed.

It’s a very simple game that has been designed incredibly well. This is it: Pacific City has gone to hell and the Agency (“The Man”) has resorted to making super cops to crackdown on crime. At the start you have better abilities than your average human, when you max your stats, you can make cars transform, you shoot guns like you were born with guns instead of hands, you can throw trucks 200 feet and your vertical leap is 30ft. Basically, you’re the Hulk. I think I’ve put in around 5 hours and the game just gets better and better. The game constantly rewards you by letting you do cooler and cooler shit as you go. The area design just gets better and better. The city (13 miles of land, 1 mile high ceiling) is broken up into 3 islands, with a crime family on each one. 3 mob bosses, with 6 underlings below him. Take out the mini bosses (so to speak) and the thugs lose power, the get weaker, their guns get worse, that sort of thing.

So you basically run around and lay out justice anyway you see fit. The game looks fantastic, basically a comic book GTA that doesn’t look like ass and the sound design is phenominal. And it has online 2 player co-op which just makes the game better.

Another amazing game on the XBOX 360.

Movie rundown

Movies

I’ve seen a bunch of movies lately, here’s a quick rundown:

Idiocracy: Mike Judges latest film that was delayed for ages and then pretty much ignored due to a limited release. It’s about a guy (Luke Wilson) who is frozen for an army experiment when some bad things go down and he wakes up 499 years later than he should have. He’s now in a world where this average man is now the smartest man on the planet. It’s definatly no Office Space. There are some funny sections, but the movie is really just average. The story could have done more but what was there (looks good, very good cast) works well, it’s really just not very memoriable. Can’t say I recommend it.

Dead Man’s Shoes: A film from over the pond. With some heavy English/Scottish accents this movie can be hard to understand at times, but it was a quality film. The main character has a retarded (more slow really, not hardcore) brother who he watches over. But when he goes into the service, his brother falls in with the wrong crowd by a case of being in the wrong place in the wrong time. He’s taken advantage of and tortured by these people and when big brother gets back in town and finds out…revenge and personal justice is a painful ordeal. It’s a quality film from start to finish, this is the directors 4th feature film. There’s a few twists and turns and while it takes a bit to get going, it’s a powerful movie. Great acting with solid directing this is a great down to earth revenge film to check out. I even liked the ending.

The Illusionist: What a cool movie. Edward Norton, one of my favorite actors stars with Paul Giamatti and the gorgeous Jessica Biel. A story in the early 1900’s, Ed Norton is the son of a furniture maker, Jessica is a well off Dutchess. They meet in their early teens and fall in love, but as a Dutchess, Jessica is sworn from ever seeing Ed again. Ed has been fascinated with magic and when the two are torn apart, he disappears and travels the world. 15 years later, he comes back and he’s a master Illusionist, learned from the top minds in the world. The two meet again at one of his performances where we meet her boyfriend, the Prince. Two seperated souls meet again later in life, but they’re still not allowed to be together. Much more of a love story than I thought it was going to be, the Illusionist mixes fate, destiny love and magic into a beautiful tale. Awesome acting and a great story combine to make a movie I highly recommend.

The Science of Sleep: Michel Gondry, who last directed Dave Chappelle’s Block Party and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind brings us this bore of a movie. Stephen’s father has died of cancer and he comes back home to his mother who lives in France to work with a calender company that his mom sets him up with. Stephen has a wild mind as we see that Stephen has a hard time keeping his dreams and real life seperate. Brought home on false pretenses by his mother, Stephen hates his new job but falls in love with the girl who lives next door. The movie constantly switches between and merges between Stephens dream world and the real world. I give a lot of credit to Gondry for the visual aspects of the film but it’s the main character that ruined it for me. Stephen is a giant pussy. He’s a 12 year old in the body of a 20 something year old. His social skills are just like an adolescent, he’s awkward, says weird shit and crys like a bitch with a skinned knee. The whole time I was waiting for him to grow a pair and not be such a bitch but that never happens, he likes to analyze shit in his dreams and it gets so bad that stuff he does in his dreams (like write a confession note to Stephanie, the girl he likes) he really does without realizing it. For awhile there I thought he had narcolepsy because he pops in out out of his dream mind so fast it’s ridiculous. He’s really a nut I guess. I really didn’t like it because I couldn’t get on the side of Stephen, he’s too damn irritating to like. Skip this and watch the far superior Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Snow Day!

Life

East Coast weather in the Tri-state area is shitty today resulting in more ice than snow. So bad that my office closed, which never happens. Good day to clean up some stuff I’ve been putting off for too long.

New Monitor!

Tech

So I did my taxes and newegg had sent me a “shit on sale” email the same day. Day before mom said something about moving the hutch on my desk. Didn’t think much about it, thinking if I had a widescreen monitor, I’d need to move it. So I saw some tempting prices, figured out how much I was going to get back and said, hell yeah. I use my computer everyday and I’ve been wanting to make a nice electronics purchase (have been mulling over getting the HD DVD player for the 360) for awhile now. Been wanting a new monitor for awhile so it felt right. Newegg got it to my door in 23 hours.

The Samsung 204BW is a beautiful thing. 20″ widescreen, DVI connection, 1680 x 1050 resolution. After messing with the settings for 45 minutes I got it looking great. This resolution is just nuts, colors are gorgeous and with the cleartype font turned on text is perfect. 6ms response time so it works really well with games, only problem is that older games don’t support this resolution so they look stretched as shit (looking at you Warcraft III). I need to look around and see if there are any hacks out for some games. Company of Heros looks fantastic though, Sim City 4 as well.

I gave dad my 17″ Samsung but his computer just ate it so he needs to order a new one. It’s been a long time coming, that thing is going on 8 years old. Amazing it worked up until yesterday.