Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Yesterday I had the day off work so decided to go to the matinee of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. I didn't have high hopes for this movie as I'm still annoyed with stupid plot choices found in the first Transformers movie. In addition, the physically attractive yet enormously untalented and full of herself Megan Fox got the star headline giving it one strike right off the start.

The movie starts and I'm actually getting into it as it opens with the joint task force of humans and autobots taking out some rogue decepticons. The only huge annoyance in the begining was the introduction of two new autobots obviously added purely for comedy relief. However, they didn't get a lot of screen focus so I never wrote the movie off.

Then they jump to the main human stars showing the beloved Sam Witwicky getting ready to leave home for college. At this point the movie takes a spiraling dive to suckdom. Lets see we started off with a pretty awesome action packed beginning and then the movie turns to Naked Gun style humor totally destroying my emmersion in the story. Let's see cool robot battle followed by dog humping jokes ... just doesn't mesh.

The rest of the movies feels like a split personality one minute futuristic action adventure the next juvenile humping jokes. Now I'm not saying an action movie can't have humor but it shouldn't feel like it's trying to decide if it's going to be Terminator or Animal House and doing as sub par job at both.

I will admit Megan Fox was by far not the worst part of this movie. In fact, her character was maybe the only one I didn't want to have killed but if she had died I wouldn't have been that upset either. Any action scene with the robots was damn cool (except for ones with the comic relief robots) and the fight scene with bumble bee was the highlight of the flick. However, this movie that initially held some promiss turned into a stinking turd. I blame the writers.

Big Brother Blizzard: Women's Undergarments

I made an interesting observation on the visuals of women's underwear while dual boxing with two accounts on World of Warcraft.

I decided I wanted to try a druid again so created a male Night Elf on my main account. Now wanting to take advantage of the recruit a friend triple XP I decided I'd create him a hot chick human priest named Ouch on my other account who would simply follow my druid around while he does quests so he levels faster. No being a somewhat infantile heterosexual male it make sense to me that Ouch should run around behind him in her underwear improving the scenery of the Night Elf opening area. That's when I discovered something interesting.


Apparently, Ouch's view of her underwear is a bit more revealing than what the rest of the WoW world sees and I'm pretty sure this is a change. The view on the left is what Ouch's underwear looks like on her account but the view on the right is what my druid sees for her underwear. Can't help but wonder if Blizzard is trying to get people to cut back on naked dancing.

***Update***
Okay I tried again and didn't get the same results. Must have been been a glitch :(

WoW's Recruit a Friend Experiment

I was just listening the WoW Insider Podcast and the co-host Turpster, who is freaking hilarious by they way, was going on about using the recruit a friend program to dual box and level characters uber quickly on a quest to have a level 60 of every class.

This got my WoW propeller spinning as I'm a dabbler and a little shady so the idea of using a loop hole to my benefit is very appealing (even if I suspect that loop hole was intentionally made by Blizzard). Therefore, I went and started a trial account for myself and embarked on a quest to use the recruit a friend benefits to my own benefit.

First Pitfall:
My original intent was to take advantage of grant a level to the veteran account characters benefit: where for every 2 levels the recruit account earns they can grant one level to one of the veteran account's toons. My plan was to play a bunch of characters up to 6 and keep granting 3 levels to my Blood Elf Paladin to fast tracking him from 38 to 60. Road Block! Apparently, you can only grant a level to a character who is a lower level. Meaning my little level 6 warrior can't give shit to my 38 paladin. Blizzard you are tricky bastards aren't you :). Okay I can understand that as it was maybe a little to obvious and more of a gaping chasm then a loop hole.

Adjustment to the Plan:
One of the other benefits of the recruit a friend program is triple xp when grouped and within close proximity to each other. Therefore I figured I have a pretty powerful computer with 2 monitors so I can run two instances of Warcraft at a time and dual box. Clicking between the two sessions to control two characters is a pain therefore I toyed with the idea of using Octopus to assign key strokes to both sessions of WoW at the same time. I was pretty much committed to that plan until I looked up the dual box set up instructions. My mind went numb after step 8 and all I could read was "blah blah blah". I'm not saying I'm not going to set this up someday but it will have to wait until my attention span miraculously grows.

So how the hell do I do this without torturing myself with a long setup process? hmmmmm .... Solution! Use a hunter on the one account and a warlock on the other account. Both classes have pets that can be set to "defend" and will automatically attack anything that attacks it's master. Therefore I setup up a group and set the one character to follow the main and then pretty much just play the main. If something attacks the follower his pet reacts to it defending until my main can finish up and turn around to take care of business. I've tested this scenario and it works, not as slick as mapping the key board to control two sessions but it involves my not having to learn how to do something I don't want to bother learning so I'm happy.

Second Pitfall:
Okay Blizzard really limits what you can do with a trial account. No Auction, no trading, and no receiving email with attachments. Meaning no way to make or give the character money which in turn means no way to improve your equipment, buy bags, and pay for training. Quest money and vendor sales doesn't cut the mustard when your earning triple xp and leveling fast. Therefore, to continue the experiment I had to upgrade to a standard account. This is pretty much what Blizzard wanted to force me to do when they designed this loop hole. Still my main account gets a 30 day credit after the recruit account pays for 60 days so it's not a total wash.

Overall I still like the idea of leveling faster with the triple xp but have just started the experiment and only have my warlock and hunter up to level 11. I'll comment on this more later with a final judgement.

Old School Arcade Games

This last weekend I had a chance to play a game I remember fondly, the arcade version of The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from 1989. I picked this little gem up on Xbox live for around 4 bucks and couldn't wait to start playing it.

The game played pretty much the way I remember, especially since the analog stick on my controller acted like a miniature joystick, but it really served to remind me that in those days the games won't so much about the skill level you possessed, although that helped a lot, as it was about how many quarters you had in your pocket.

Well, this didn't present much of a problem for me as my 360 doesn't need quarters, but without that little adrenaline burst that comes from wondering how many quarters you have left in your pocket the game just wasn't the same. Don't get me wrong, I spent several hours playing it, finishing It at least 5 times, but it just wasn't the same.

I got a bit of fresh air going live with it, they limit you to 20 lives so at least you have a bit of anxiety with each subsequent life used. I didn't actually finish it that way, the best I did was get up to Krang who soundly kicked my ass, but it was still fun.

I'm not going to complain about the game, I knew what I was getting into when I bought the game, but it sure did serve as a frame of reference for how much gaming has changed in the last 20 years.

Like the man said, it's been a long, wild ride!

Thoughts on WoW Promissed Mount Changes

While playing WoW I've often said that when leveling 25 to 30 it feels like a game of running. I hate Wetlands and Duskwood so much! You run for 5 or 10 minutes to kill skeletons for a few minutes then you run another 5 to 10 minutes to return the quest only to be told you have to run the fuck back and kill the slightly larger skeletons. Brutal! If I wanted to play a game that involved running across the landscape over and over I'd play Fallout 3.

Anyway, Blizzard isn't stupid and they know future players will get bored with this quickly and go back to their XBox so in a win-win move they have announced changes to the mount system and I for one am a tad excited.

1) Cheaper Land Mounts Given a Level 20: Sweet!
Now that I have a level 75+ toon mailing one of my alts the 30 gold for their ride training and first mount doesn't seem like a big deal. However, I remember how painful it was to raise that much money the first time I hit level 30. Therefore, I say cheaper is good. Plus I might not throw up in the back of my mouth a little anymore at the mere thought of Duskwood and Wetlands given in the future I'll be able to speed up all the running back and forth using a mount.

2) Cheaper Epic Land Mounts at Level 40:
I am a little torn on this: part of me thinks it's to early for an epic land mount. However, I did think 60 was a little too late and would probably have preferred the epic mounts be available at 50 but having said that with flying mounts coming at 60 instead of 70 getting a epic land mount at 40 may be a reasonable.

3) Faster Flying Mounts at Level 60:
I actually kinda liked outland so personally I think speeding up the experience by providing a flying mount that early is going to rob people of the experience as they'll fly over a lot of cool stuff. However I was pissed off buying a flying mount at 70 then going to Northrend to find out I couldn't use the fucking thing for 7 more levels, this way at least you'll get some use out of your flying mount when you buy it. The big score is they are speeding up the standard flying mount to 150% traveling speed which makes sense as it should be at least as fast as your epic flying mount.

4) Cold Weather Flying and Epic Flying Mounts still at 77:
To fly in Northrend you need to train Cold Weather Flying and that they aren't changing. As far I've heard flying in Northrend isn't going to change.

5) Faster Mount Summoning Times:
3 seconds down to 1.5 seconds hell I'm okay with that.

Summary:
The Mount changes are just another sign the Blizzard is trying to help new players level faster and get to their newer slicker game play at Northrend. I think that's a sound business decision. Video games have changed a lot and they know that getting and retaining new customers means getting them to the current content faster.

Bombshell Beauties

If you're anything like me then you grew up watching movies and documentaries and reading books, comics, and magazines about World War II. OK, so maybe you're not a lot like me, but I still don't think a Wikipedia hyperlink for WWII should be necessary for simple little things like the name of the American admiral responsible for stopping the advance of Japanese forces in the months after Pearl Harbor (and for the record, I don't care what anyone says, Spruance may have carried the big stick to Midway and actually spanked the Japanese, but Halsey is the one who told him to go there so he's the one who gets credit).

Again, if you're anything like me you will have also noticed that the video game world has been flooded with WII games for the last 10 years, some good, some not so good, others, complete crap; Battlestations Midway would fall somewhere in the middle. Built to be sort of an overall comprehensive battle simulator it had some cool things going for it. I especially loved the mission where you sailed the IJN Yamamoto through the British fleet, that was good shoot 'em up fun. However other stuff really fell short, like the flight missions, they just didn't have the bang that I came to expect from arcade fliers like Heroes of the Pacific.

Anyway, the powers that be decided that they were going to make another one. Good for them ,I'll probably check it out since I'm compelled to do all things WWII. The point of this though is a particularly unique marketing campaign. Last Christmas I had the opportunity to get a desktop from this game, a piece of era art that would have graced the nose of a B-17 or possible a fighter, a healthy young lady in a white bathing suit with a giant Candy Cane. I kept it on my desktop unitkl near the end of January.

Now we have this site, which continues the line of nose art, except now you are not just given the choice of 1 or two pictures, they let you design the whole thing. You get your choice of a model, she goes through some poses and you take the picture of her you want, you are then presented with your choice of airplane, for my first shot you can see I choose the iconic C-47, not a fighter or a bomber, but we all know it's role in the war, you then get to choose some accessorizing art, bombs, company crests, and so on, and apply it to the nose of said plane. When it's all done you can download it and call it your very own. Here's my first try at this:

You can see that they went ahead and made the pic look a bit faded and basically turned it into exactly what would have need on one of these planes. Now by today's standards this may not be "sexy" but I still think this type of art has major appeal and I wholeheartedly recommend you go check it out and make your own.

Some Games I'm Excited About

Rob's already covered a few of them like the next Dead Rising 2, Bioshock 2, and Left 4 Dead 2. However, there are 2 more that I'm excited about and one combined with Infamous may force me to buy a PS3.

1) Dragon Age Origins: Watching the trailer to this I was blown away and I kinda like the heavy metal music background. However, most games come up with a good trailer so that's not it alone. This is a Bioware game and I tend to like their games quite a bit. Plus this companies headquarters is a mere 8 hours away so I can entertain delusions of working for them someday. I am a little nervous sine EA bought them out and outside of sports games EA tends to drop the ball. Regardless I will definitely be checking out this title.

2) Demon Soul's: This is the 2nd game that I really want to play but is going to only be available as a PS3 release. Fable II and Bioshock (at the time) where to 2 games that convinced me to go XBox but this title combined with Infamous are making a strong arguement for getting a PS3, plus I can rationalize it to my family as a Blue Ray player. I really like action RPGs and this looks to be pretty damn cool maybe cool enough to help me shake my World of Warcraft addiction.

Darcy Rants Episode 1: Screw you Coca Cola

Okay this is maybe a bit off the usual Geeky Blithering content but I have a beef and that beef is with the Coca Cola company.

This week I went to the movies twice and was thus subjected to a barrage of commercials before I got to watch trailers (which are even more commercials) before I finally got to see my movies. Up here we have one choice in movie theaters Cineplex Odeon who obviously have an agreement with Coca Cola so thus this rant focuses on Coca Cola but I want to point out Pepsi does the same damn thing I just don't see it as much being I rarely watch television.

Anyway, I was forced to sit through a couple Coke commercials prior to my movie which is fine. I honestly don't despise paying to sit and be advertised to ... hmm wait that may be a future rant. In these Coke commercials this dude is in a heat wave living in an apartment with no air conditioning and suddenly craves a Coke. He then wonders through the city in search of said Coke while bombarded with subliminal images of Coke bottles. Bang! That's my freaking point. I WANT TO BY MY COKE IN A BOTTLE! All of Coke's advertisements feature the classic bottle. The stupid cuddly polar bears, do they crack open a can of Coke NO they drink their Coke out of a bottle. Does this guy accept a can of Coke to cure his craving NO he finds a bottle of Coke.

Coke why do you taunt me with the promise that I can buy your acid water in beautiful bottle when I can't! If I buy a Coke I have to settle for a stupid fucking can or if I want twice the amount anyone should drink in one sitting I can get a ugly fucking plastic bottle. Coca Cola if your not going to give me the ability to buy your product in a glass bottle don't fucking advertise it to me as coming a glass bottle. I've been pissed about the replacement of glass pop bottles since I was a kid and your just rubbing salt in the wound.

Anyway you can shove your cute polar bears up your ass I'm not buying your product until I can get it in a glass bottle. Until then I'm going to the drug store and getting a pic-a-pop.

Overrated Game Award Goes to ... Fallout 3

Back in October 2008, despite having never played a previous version of Fallout I still found myself caught up in the nerdy excitement surrounding the release of Fallout 3. I of course blame this on clever marketing and my good buddy Rob.

Anyway back to the point I was excited, I went to the website, read the vault cartoons, and looked at screen shots on a daily basis. It looked freaking amazing! The release date hit and I quickly started the Fallout 3 download to my PC using Steam, a fine and noble service. Then I started it up only to be exposed to one of the most painfully boring games I've tried to play. In fact the only game I've ever tried that was more boring was EVE online which was about as fun as counting the carbonation bubbles in my coke.

I'm going to be honest I have yet been able to play this game for more the 4 or 5 hours and have barely explored the vast post-apocalypse Fallout landscape. I can only assume that at some point Fallout might actually become interesting but I refuse to invest more anymore time to find out! Last I checked a game was suppose to be fun and not feel like work. Let me check:

Game: An activity providing entertainment or amusement; a pastime (www.thefreedictionay.com)

Yup I'm right game doesn't equal work so I'm sorry I'm not forcing myself to use (I can not use the term play) a game with the hopes it gets better at some point.

In Fallout 3 you start out as baby and build your sex, looks, base skills by answering questions presented to you during a serious of sequences of your early life growing up. Then your dad leaves the vault so of course all the people who protected and sheltered you in your youth feel betrayed and do their best to kill you. Wow talk about separation issues!I assume this seeming over reaction is explained later but again I'M NOT INTRIGUED ENOUGH TO LAST DAYS OF BORING GAME PLAY TO FIND OUT! Anyway you escape and I will say this you are greeted by an amazingly large and detailed world. Problem is your character's movements never mesh with the landscape and the result reminds me of South Park animation.

Then comes the worse part of the game interaction with the AI: it doesn't matter how many times you've talked to the same blanked faced individual you have to surf thru the exact same dialogue pattern over and over asking different questions in the hope they give you something to do. Really it's like one of those lame pick your own adventure books that were popular in the 80s. This became really frustrating when I encountered a lady offering her .. ahem .. services in Megaton. I having just finished playing Fable 2 thought this may be an interesting pick your own adventure dialogue to get through. Thus I spent 30 minutes chatting up the bar prostitute to get her to give me a room and some company hint hint wink wink, and she comes up stairs and just goes to sleep leaving me standing there wondering what the hell I just wasted 100 caps (Fallout money) on. At least Fable 2 gave me a black screen with some amusing fun noises when I got that far.

Out of pure desperation to make the game interesting I started over with a female character thinking I could make her hot and them make her run around naked. Well this game can't a make up it's mind whether or not it's a 1st person or 3rd person game and you can never really get a good look at your own character. Meaning all the time you spend customizing your characters look was a complete waste of time!

Anyway I can honestly say that despite dropping over 50 bucks on this game I probably won't bother re-installing on my newly rebuilt PC.

Dark Avengers

So back a few months ago Darcy talked about this one and while I don't want to steal any of this thunder I have to come on and recommend this one myself. I finally got around to reading this one, now in issue 6, and I have to say I'm really impressed. I highly recommend checking this one out.

Now let me just say I'm not ready to renounce DC comics and swear undieing allegiance to Marvel. While I fully enjoy this run and am looking forward to the next ones, I still fully expect that Marvel writers will eventually step up to the plate and ruin it. Sooner or later they're going to make up a story line about Norman Osborn having an eating disorder or Moonstone will acquire a past with an abusive father, and then it's all going to go downhill.

This is a great run and fortunately, due to the nature of the team, I don't expect it to last long enough to come to that. Long story short, get it while the gettin' is good.

I'd still rather read DC.

The Punisher

I've always been a fan of the Punisher, even in the mid eighties, when they tried to turn him into some sort of spandex wearing psuedo-hero, he was cool. I have to say some of the best stories I've read were in the Punisher War Journal back in the late eighties, early nineties, usually one shot stories were he has a mission, goes out, kills someone, and carries on.

Somewhere in the mid nineties the writing lost it's way they even had a short run where Frank became a mob boss himself and supplied mob 'protection' to a neighborhood, what kind of crapola was that? I honestly thought that the entire franchise had hit the dumper at that point. Mr Castle had to sit in a file for a few years waiting for a renew, one that cam in the early part of this decade with the help of Garth Ennis.

Now I've talked about Ennis before, he's a great writer, but I think in this case he's actually accomplished a bit of a legacy. He took the Punisher and made him into what he is meant to be, a viscous, marginally sociopathic, killing machine who is determined to kill in the name of his dead family until he himself killed. Ennis manages to put all the brutality of both the Punisher and the people he deals with into those pieces of ink stained paper that leaves you feeling a little horrified and sorry for this essentially soulless killer.

Now the point of all this not to expound the brilliance of Garth Ennis but to instead recommend the new Punisher comics out. The current main Marvel series is a bit superheroish for my taste, they're good stores, but the Punisher is not a superhero. But if you head on over to the Max series you'll see what the Punisher is all about. What has actually amazed me is the fact that the Ennis stopped writing at issue#60 and the series, now almost a year later at #71, has actually remained readable.

It must be difficult to follow in the footsteps of a name like Garth Ennis but an admirable job is being done. The story lines are fairly brutal, although the actual writing is getting a little more comic oriented; the last run kind of cheaped out in my opinion, when Frank is saved at the last minutes by the very people trying to kill him. All in all it's good and I'm really looking forward to the next storyline, but then who doesn't enjoy watching inbred cannibalistic bayou hillbillies getting their asses kicked? Side note here, can you imagine living in a world where the phrase "inbred cannibalistic bayou hillbillies" has no meaning? I for one don't want to!

2 things I'd like to recommend right now:

#1: Get out there and buy the Trade paperbacks entailing the Ennis run of the Punisher, great stories.

#2: If you're looking to start buying a new comic, go look for Frank Castle The Punisher. It's a MAX series currently starting a new storyline, good jumping on point and well worth the read.

In a nutshell, if you liked the last Punisher movie, the only one to get the Punisher right, you'll love these books.

Zero Punctuation Reviews

I've always been a bit torn about game reviews, most of the time I think they spend too much time talking about what is wrong and not enough about what is right. To be fair, a lot of games don't have enough right in them to talk about, but still I like to hear about what is good, not what is bad. Apparently I'm one of the only human beings in the world who actually feels this way so I try to skew my own reviews to reflect my own personal lifestyle choices. Having said all that, I have found a new staple in my future gaming critique diet here.

If you haven't already gone and watched it, the above link is for the Zero Punctuation Review for The Force Unleashed, a game I have an unending love for, but then I chose to play it on the 360 and PS3. If you want another taste of this dudes style check out his Fable II review, I have to say I agreed with everything he said.

What I like about this dude is how he picks apart the dumb and ridiculous in games and blends in the little animations to make it amusing. If you want further examples here's his take on Left 4 Dead and Soul Caliber 4, I loved his take on Left 4 Dead, and couldn't have agreed more with Soulcaliber. The guy is actually amazing to listen to, I'm still wondering if the audio hasn't been edited to sped it up slightly.

I plan to keep track of this dude in the future, but not so much for a review, he gave me almost nothing that I would use to base a decision on a game. What I'll be doing is going back after I've played a game and getting some secondary enjoyment from it. Perfect name for it his reviews too.

Seriously, this dude is funny.

Mickey Rourke in Iron Man 2

Now I don't have a big problem with Mickey Rourke, I don't hate him, but I also don't love him, although I do know at least one person who does. Any ideas who that would be Darcy? So when earlier I read that he was going to be in the next Iron Man movie I though "Cool, he might be OK. I mean he is big and ugly, perfect material for a villain. Then I saw this:

I've never followed Iron Man closely, mainly because he's Marvel and I don't care for a lot of their stuff, so I'd never heard of Whiplash before but after doing a little reading about him I thought he'd make a cool villain for the movie. My only problem is the picture above, I mean what the hell is that supposed to be? I hope to god this is a pre-taping prototype for his suit cause quite frankly what he's wearing up there looks like something from a cheap 80's sci-fi movie, something that Jean Claude Van Damme would have fought in 1987. Seriously, look at that getup!

I still have high hopes for this movie, I loved the first one and it looks like a lot of the writing and creativity from the first one have gone into the story and plot for this one. However, I'm wondering if I'm getting my hopes up a bit high.

Justice League 1987- 1992

I was originally going to do a video game review/preview but I'll wait for that. The tone of the last few posts has been about the works of Giffen and DeMatties and I just want to finish up with that. I agree with everything Darcy said in the last post wholeheartedly, I just wanted to put my own two cents in on it. The Justice League as it existed for those 5 years, from 1987 to 1992, spanning The Justice League to The Justice League International, to The Justice League Europe, right up to the end of the Breakdowns storyline, is some of the best creative writing I have ever had the pleasure to experience.

This issue has lately been acknowledged as one of the most influential comics of the last 25 years. Strange considering the death of Superman occurred in this same time frame.

Here's what it was all about: in 1987 comic books were living in a post apocalyptic Alan Moore wasteland. The Watchmen had introduced a dark and gritty super"hero" world that had influenced everything being printed at the time. I blame this as the #1 factor behind the elimination of Sgt Rock and the Haunted Tank, how do you make war comics grittier than they already are without making them horrific? I admit it was time for these books to be put to rest anyway so I'm not here to lament that loss. And, in fact I am not really trashing Alan Moore, his work was groundbreaking and important; even though I think most of his stuff is way overrated he did pave the way for the likes of Garth Ennis and The Preacher.

What in fact I'm talking about here was the death of fun. All of a sudden no one wanted to be fun anymore, everyone wanted to be dark and serious and, to be perfectly frank, where's the fun in that? I mean sure it led to the death of Jason Tod, a Robin so bad that when the fans were asked what to do they overwhelmingly voted to have the Joker kill him with a crowbar, but still, while that was cool, where was the fun? I'll tell you where it was, Keith Giffen and JM DeMatties had it in the new Justice League.

I won't go into great detail here, Darcy already covered a lot of it, but this was just good fun, they actually managed to make Mr Miracle into someone that you cared about and wanted to know what he was up to. Now I've always been a fan of Superman, but keeping him out of the League was a genius move, he would have ruined it, as he did 6 years later. Making the Blue Beetle and Booster Gold into wisecracking goofs? Genius. Captain Atom? That dude is as dull as dishwater, yet he became entertaining. You see the trend here? They took second rate characters and turned them into real people that you looked forward to spending time with. They even took some European superheroes, Fire and Ice, and made them good.

They ran the gambit on the stories too, silly and dumb to pure action. Watching the Martian Manhunter, G'nort, and Kilowog go for a night out on the town, pure comic genius. Same thing with General Glory, the ridiculous take on Captain America. But as for down and dirty, well they took down Despero by themselves and the JLE introduced the Extremists, these guys were so bad that they actually tortured to death every single person on their home planet. Even more amazing, they took down Starro, the intergalactic starfish conqueror from the original League and managed to make it an interesting story.

As with all good things though, this came to an end. Too many fans got their panties in a bunch about these classic heroes being turned into goofs and demanded a return to the old school League. Funny enough, that league, with Superman at the helm, along with a serious Green Lantern, first Hal Jordan and later Kyle Rayner, and Wonder Woman, only lasted a couple of years before it got swept aside and the entire series cancelled. Nothing new and nothing interesting there.

My point is that it's OK to do things different, that's the only thing that the Watchmen had going for it, at the time, it was different. Different is good, because otherwise, everything is the same. I personally own every Justice League comic from this period, from the main titles, to the annuals, to the quarterlies they started coming out with and I wouldn't part with them for the world. Seriously, if you ever get a chance to read them do so, they're pure gold baby!

Bwah-ha-ha-ha!

Favorite Comic Writers: Keith Giffen

Last night while my buddy Rob and I were have a beer after work we got to talking about one of our favorite writers, Keith Giffen. Although, normally an artist Giffen has written and created some of my favorite characters in the DC Universe. Giffen's Justice League was perhaps my favorite comic book when I was in University. A lot of the hardcore comic fans hated what he did because he made most of DC's heroes and many villains comical using parody and plain silliness. However, for me he made them likable and human with some of the best humour I've ever read.

Notable Works:
Lobo:
Giffen was one of the creators of Lobo, an instant DC universe hit. This biker assassin was one of the few beings capable of beating the shit out of Superman. I for one always loved watching big blue get schooled.


G'nort:
This human/dog alien got his power ring from the Poglachians in an effort to ruin the Green Lanterns reputation with amusing chaos. He had two successful arrests, the Scarlett Skier and a band of cat bank robbers who give up the moment they saw him. Note that due to the embarrassment the skier becomes G'Norts arch nemesis. Oh yeah, as part of Justice League Antarctica G'Nort helps the league survive the attack of killer penguins.


Mr. Nebula:
Speaking of the Scarlett Skier I've got to mention Mr. Nebula. The Scarlett Skier is the herold for Mr. Nebula a cosmic being who travels the universe red-decorating one planet at a time in a battle against tackiness. Earth is only saved from Mr. Nebula when he sees Los Vegas and lets us re-decorate on our own.


Injustice League:
Composed of Big Sir, Clue Master, Clock King, Major Disaster, Mighty Bruce, and Multi-man this band of villains don't even come close to destroying the Justice League so then turn good forming a big part of Justice League Antarctica.

Ambush Bug:
All though not my favorite I have to mention him because there is more than a bit of a cult following for this dude. He's basically a teleporting idiot used purely for humor and parody. I do like the fact that he considers himself Superman's good buddy a fact that drives big blue crazy.

Really I could go on and on: like how he made the Martian Manhunter addicted to Oreo cookies, turned the Blue Beetle fat, made Guy Gardner annoyingly nice and gentle due to head injury, ... etc. Anyway, I read somewhere that Giffen was getting Doom Patrol, I hope it's a return of the JLA style of parody humor mixed with good stories and not the more series Giffen. Either way I plan to buy it.

Robs Favorite Comics

Now I'm not talking about highbrow crap like the first appearance of Superman or Batman, frankly my father wasn't old enough to remember that stuff, let alone me, I'm talking about good books with great stories. The kind that you can pick up and read again and again, and when you've been away from comics for a while and think back about it's always one of the first issues that come to mind for you. For me my top slot has got to go to Justice League America Annual #4: Justice League Antarctica.

Now to be fair you had to be up on who these guys were and what the current version of the Justice League was all about, but from the first time I saw this issue with that take of the iconic Justice League#1 cover art, I knew this was going to be special. In a nutshell these guys were the then current version of the Injustice League, however they weren't very good at it so they asked the League if they could join. Maxwell Lord, the then leader of the League thought it would be easier to say yes and put them someplace where they couldn't do any harm, thus they were sent to the Antarctic. I guess old Maxy couldn't have foreseen them stumbling across a genetics lab churning out penguins crossed with piranhas now could he?

As can also be seen on the cover, G'nort, the worst Green Lantern to ever sling a ring, padded out the ranks for this one, again so he could be kept out of the way, along with the Scarlet Skier, not shown, also an ex-criminal trying to rehabilitate. Apparently locating for Mr Nebula, interplanetary decorator, wasn't all the Skier had hoped it would be.

I'm gonna go home tonight and dig this bad boy out of my collection and read it again. Hell, I might read it twice.

Project Natal

Well, Microsoft is trying to break some barriers and it looks like they're doing an interesting job of it. The only problem is, I don't think they have their follow through directed properly. If you don't know what Project Natal is it might benefit you to check it out here before reading the rest of this.

Simply put it's a means of using a camera for the system to get active feedback from the user, thereby replacing the controller.Everything that goes on in the videos, both at Microsoft and the E3 stuff I've seen, looks cool, but begs the question, is this made for gamers or would this be better for the next generation of Internet surfers? Two things highlight my points:

1. The family playing the racing game, how the hell do you play a racing game without holding on to anything? I love the concept of actually steering and shifting, and even the pit crew sequence is cool, but I couldn't do that with out something tangible to hold onto. Changing a tire without actually holding a tire? No way man! The same as the fighting game, without physical feedback whats the point in throwing a punch?

2. The woman going picking clothes online. OK, this is just cool, being able to walk up to the machine and have it recognize you and start your account, then being able to try the clothes on virtually? That's just plain neat, but this is Internet surfing, not gaming.

I think this is a great concept and will be amazing for flipping through menus and doing all the things leading up to the game, but for the gameplay itself I'm going to need something more. I can sit in the middle of my backyard and pretend to drive a racecar if I want, it'll at least discourage my neighbors from wanting to be friends, and it'll be just as satisfying as sitting on my couch and watching the TV for directions.

I don't like to arbitrarily foo-foo these things, progress is good and I can see the greatness in this to come, but for the foreseeable future, I'm going to continue using a controller for all my gaming needs.

November 17 == Left 4 Dead 2

That's right, it'll be released on November 17, check out the trailer here. One thing you can say about these guys is they don't waste time, and it looks like this will be a worthy sequel. Despite the rush time, almost exactly a year since the release of the first one, I think they had everything they needed to make another first rate game here. The limited campaigns in L4D kind of speak for themselves, they begged more and better, and that looks like what we're going to be getting.

Up until this morning I had been concerned about the fact that Valve didn't give enough content for Left 4 Dead, especially after they went to the trouble of releasing the Survival Pack, but I understand a bit more now. According to what I've read they changed the basic system so much that a new launch was the only reasonable path to take here; I'm sure the fact that they will profit enormously from a new title played no part in their decisions, but I digress.

Set in New Orleans, new guns, new zombies, and actual honest to god melee weapons, including a chainsaw and a frying pan. I love the line at the end of that trailer, "if we run out of bullets, they gonna wish we hadn't!". That's what I'm talking about, full 3 dimensional zombie killing, guns, brains, and melees. Nothing makes me happier than watching a zombies brains explode when I get a solid headshot, but true zombie hunting is done with tools, guns are always a last resort.

I'm more than a little excited about this one so I won't go into much more detail right now, over the next few months we'll get some more looks at this and hopefully it won't turn out to be a disappoint. My thoughts are, either this is going to end up being another serving of Left 4 Dead with very little new or exciting content or, if we're lucky, the first one will end up being more of an extended beta, paving the ground for what this game looks like it should be.

I dunno though, I think I'll miss Louis' terrified face during those heavy firefights!

Plant vs Zombies

So it goes without saying that my video game addiction covers the whole gambit; I love my consoles and my hard core PC games, but I also like to chill occasionally with a nice little flash type game. I recently played my way through Plants vs Zombies and I thought I'd give a quick rundown of it.

It's a reasonably simple game to play, you've got to protect your house from hordes of zombies and all you have to help you is your gardening skills. You start out with your basic attack plant, the peashooter, a pod like plant that actually shoots peas, and build your way through a series of offensive and defensive plants, facing an ever growing and evolving horde of zombies. Completing each level gives you a new plant and you can buy upgrades from your neighbor Crazy Dave. Additionally, the game takes you through several scenarios that require different tactics, for instance eventually the zombies try to come over your roof, requiring you to first put down pots for your plants then plant your weapons for the coming attack.

That's the game in a nutshell, you 'buy' each plant that you put in the ground with sunlight. The sunlight comes from the sky but you need to plant sunflowers that produce it as well in order to have enough light to keep planting; this also requires you to guard these plants as they have no offensive or defensive capability. Gets a bit more tricky at night when there is no natural sunlight.

The zombies themselves range from your standard shambler to ones in full football gear up to some driving Zamboni's, or Zombonis as they are called in the game; to make things worse, after they Zomboni has laid down a sheet of ice and killed all your plants, a bobsled with 4 zombies comes shooting down the path.. The zombies have varying attacks and speeds so you can't use the same offense or defense on every level. This gets a little tricky as time goes on and they only let you take so many seeds in to each confrontation, you have to pick carefully sometimes. I personally enjoyed the Michael Jackson zombie whose dancing summoned 4 zombies from the ground every minute or so.

The difficulty level is medium at best, there were only two times during the regular campaign that they broke completely through my defenses and ate my brain. I kind of liked that though, a little bit of challenge but not enough to frustrate you,it's a nice break. Plus some of the mini-games get a bit tougher, such as the Survival mode opened up by finishing the campaign.

It's available through Steam right now for 10 bucks, and worth the price if you're looking for a quick time killer. I started it last Thursday and I'm still hacking away at it every free moment I get.