X-men Origins: Wolverine - Long Live Deadpool

Last night my daughter and I went to the latest X-men movie, X-men Origins: Wolverine. Personally, I've never been a fan of the whole "X" thing marvel does whether it be X-Men, X-Force, Weapon-X, or X-whatever. I have read enough of the comics to understand that it would damn near impossible to be 100% true to any continuity as Marvel themselves have done complete 180s over the years: one year Sabertooth is an anti-hero face and the next he's the most vile creature ever. In a way the heal turns remind me of the good old WWE. Anyway, I expected them to be 100% true to story lines or characters. It's a movie after all and they have to work with the medium. Still why the hell do script writers think they should completely change the character, yes I'm talking about what they did with Deadpool.

My daughter loves Deadpool. Whenever, we play Marvel Ultimate Alliance she always picks Deadpool. Thus she was pissed when they made him ...

(spoilers happening now so quit reading at this point if that bothers you)

... some robotic mutant monster with all the mutants' powers only to cut off his head. Sadly I thought they were straying from the known storyline a bit but were close enough that it worked until this point. In addition, at the beginning Ryan Reynolds nailed the character as a smarted mouthed mercenary: not sure why I never thought of it but Reynolds was the perfect Deadpool. This made it even more annoying that the messed up his character completely at the end. Hollywood you totally could have made a mint with a Deadpool movie but NO... .

I will admit that I'm not a Deadpool expert but I don't think at anytime the Weapon-X program made him a combination of Wolverine/John Wraith/Cyclops. Yes they gave him the Wolfy's healing factor but that's were it ended. I also don't recall Wolverine ever cutting off his head and killing him.

In short, "X-men Origins: Wolverine" joins the list of horrible comic book movie adaptions with the first two Punisher Movies, the first Hulk Movie, Daredevil, Electra, .... the list goes on and on. Thank god there are some decent movie adaptions that keep my faith like Punisher: War Zone, Iron Man, the 2nd Hulk movie, the latest Batman installments, and the first Batman movie with Jack as the joker.

Long live Deadpool!

Review of Twitter

Note: Image borrowed from The Drunken Servered Head (hope they don't mind)

The biggest internet trend of late is Twitter. I'm pretty sure anyone who uses a computer knows about Twitter as it's the rage at the moment. However, just in case you haven't heard about Twitter: it's a micro blogging social networking service that limits entries to 140 characters. The idea is you can quickly update what your doing at any given moment using mobile devices or your computer. In addition to entering your own tweets you subscribe to other Tweeters and get a little feed of their latest entries to which you can comment and reply. Woot just what the world needed one more social networking platform: that is sarcasim in case you missed it.

Technically Twitter seems to work pretty good and if you lead an extremely adventrous life it would be a good way to share with the masses. The problem is that most people aren't doing anything interesting and that includes the plethora of celebraties using Twitter or having their assitant using Twitter. I really could careless if Lance Armstrong was picking up his kids or Brooke Burke changed a diaper or that Shaq was just getting back from the club. Who cares! Well apparently a lot of people do but for the most part I don't.

Like most other web social networking services Twitter's is sadly abused but spammers and this was the main reason I ended my Twitter experiment. No internet porn lady I don't intend to subscribe to your nudie site just because your said your following my Tweets and no lady I don't want to rescue you with my western money: your story is sad but I question it's legitimacy. In it's defense, Twitter does do an admirable job of catching these spamming accounts and shutting them down but you still keep getting messages that they are following your Tweets which is enough to annoy me.

Now during my Twitter experient I did discover a couple interesting Tweeters and my favorite would be, Veronica Belmont (every male nerds idea of the perfect girlfriend aside from my wife of course). She actually includes quite a few cool web articles, videos, and technical trends in her Twitter entries. I also picked up the term SUGLY (Sexy but Ugly) from Shaq's tweets and now use the word whenever I can.

In conclusion, all though there are a handful of interesting people on Twitter that occassionally include interesting content in their Tweets those are rare finds. So unless your really bored or want to know when your idol does laundry I would suggest not bothering with it.

Windows 7

Back in January I installed the newest Windows OS, Windows 7.  I didn't have time to mess around with it a lot so I installed it in VMWare and had few opportunities to play with it.  Last week that all changed and I went ahead and installed the newest release; been using it it for about a week now and I gotta say I'm lovin' it!

Not much has been done to change it,. they put a bit of window dressing on it, prettied it up a bit, and sent her out for another dance, and you know what?  That's OK, cause, pause for effect, THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH VISTA!!!!!!!  The only real problem with Vista is that people weren't running it on the proper hardware.   Give her a decent processor and enough RAM and there's no problem with it, mainly RAM.  I've got Vista on my desktop and my laptop and I have had no problems with it.  My desktop has a 3 GHz hyperthreaded core with 2 GB of RAM and I have no issues whatsoever.  My laptop is a 1.5 Celeron Mobile with 1.5 GB of RAM and the only issue I have is the fact that Acer refused to make drivers to support all of it's hardware in Vista, however I can hardly help but notice that is an Acer issue not a Windows issue.  The fact of the matter is that Vista actually came with the default drivers to make everything work.  So get over it people, despite what Mac ads want you to believe there's nothing wrong with Vista.

Anyway, back to Windows 7.  Two good features:  1.  it comes with a screenshot utility, real handy if you're either doing or asking for tech support, and 2.  The side bar is no longer there.  You can still use all the gadgets, as a matter of fact you can still use the ones made for Vista, but the don't appear on an opaque bar on the side of the screen, they just sit where ever you drop them.  What more can I say?  If you've used Vista you're ready for 7, and if you haven't used Vista then get with the times.

Still don't believe me?  Well you don't have to take my word for it, find out for yourself.  Windows is giving anyone and everyone the chance to try Windows 7 at no cost for 1 year, you can get it and full details here.  After March 1, 2010 the system will only run for two hours at a time and by the beginning of July the system will not allow people to use it, but up until then you have the option to use the fully functional software, what have you got to lose?  Nothing, that's what.  Check back for future posts and I'll walk you through dual booting your system, allowing you to run your old OS and another one beside it.  At some point I'll even talk briefly about VMWare.  Have fun and don't forget to spin your propeller!

Dead Rising 2

I was actually planning on doing a blog on another game today but I just ran across this and I had to share it.  In my pursuit of Zombie culture I have ran across a lot of weird and odd things, some good, some not.  I won't go into the "not good" right now because I'm actually quit excited about this, the trailer for Dead Rising 2.

Dead Rising 2

If you've never played Dead Rising all I can say is you are missing out on one of the best games I have ever played.  Classed as a horror survival game, like the Resident Evil series, this game manages to mix some of the most grotesque scenes and bone chilling horror seemlessly along with humor and a good time; if you don't believe me go play the game and kill a zombie with a shower head.  Go, right now, I'll wait for you to come back.

As you can see from the trailer we are looking at much the same gameplay as the first one, you'll have to rescue survivors and solve the mystery to get the true ending of the game.  Along the way you get to kill as many or as few of the zombies as you want using whatever you can get your hands on for a weapon.  From what I can tell it looks like you can build your own weapons too.

Dead Rising was released in 2006, serving as a flagship title for the then new 360.  This version however is being cross platformed and will be available on the PS3 and PC, along with the 360, offering pretty much everyone the chance to kill zombies by the hundreds.  I have to say that was my favorite part of the game, you didn't have to kill any if you didn't want to, you didn't have to do anything at all, they just let you play the game and end it as you pleased. 

I like choices!  

BioShock 2

I got a chance to do a bit more reading about Bioshock 2 coming out this fall, thanks to Game Informer, and I have to say I think the project is shaping up really well. Now keep in mind the article I read was based on an interview with the development team at 2K and of course they are going to spin things to their favor, but the details they are releasing seem really promising. I can even now give you a bit of backstory for the new game.

As previously stated, you'll be playing a Big Daddy wandering the halls of Rapture in search of Adam, the difference being that you are a real Big Daddy, not just dressed in a suit like the end of the first game, and you get to use Plasmids. The story takes place 10 years after the first game, in a Rapture that has just about been destroyed by Splicers fighting over Adam which is in extremely short supply since Jack took all the Little Sisters away. So, what is the game about you ask? Well they're pretty tight lipped about that but here's what we do know: Rapture has recently been stabilized by the appearance of new Little Sisters, creating a new flow of Adam that leads directly to the Big Sister.

As Qui Gon Jinn said in The Phantom Menace "There's always a bigger fish." In video games no matter how bad you are there's always someone badder, and in Rapture that bad ass in the Big Sister. Originally a Little Sister who escaped with Jack, she has since returned bringing new girls along with her and turning them into Little Sisters. Dressed in a scaled down version of the Big Daddy suit and seriously amped up telekinetic abilities she is a force to be reckoned with, and one you'll have to tangle with a few times. As the game progresses you will need to once again fight Big Daddies to get at their Little Sisters; change in the game though, once Mr Bubbles is dead they will no longer scream in terror at your approach, they will instead welcome the approach of a new Big Daddy. Here you will have a similar choice to the last game, except instead of Harvest or Save you will have a Harvest or Adopt option, giving you the same basic outcome, harvesting gets you a lot of Adam and adopting gives you a bit. The difference is that if you adopt her she will share her harvesting with you; of course this means you have to protect her during her stops at corpses, remember how well that went in the first game? So now you're saying, well I'll just harvest her. This time around there is a bit more emotional investment in the girls as they trust and love you, making the harvesting decidedly more cold blooded.

But back to the Big Sister. Like I was saying you have to adopt Little Sisters from Big Daddies you kill, and this attracts the attention of the Big Sister. The first couple sisters are one thing but after a while you start to interfere with he balance that Big Sister has imposed on Rapture, and sooner or later your Little Sister will tell you, and I quote the magazine here: "Mr. B, Mr. B…Big Sister doesn't want you playing with me…", and before long you're going to be in a knock down fight for your life against this armored psycho bitch, every bit as tasking as a Big Daddy fight from the first game.

Few other details of importance have been released so far, apparently Dr. Tenenbaum is your guide through the game, speaking to you on the radio again, the voice recorders are back to fill you in on the story and plot details, the Plasmids are amped up, and the weapons are going to be better. On top of your drill you get the Rivet Gun, complete with custom ammo load outs, and professionally made guns, not stuff like a grenade launcher made by a strung out drug addict using coffee cans. Plus, since you're already wearing a pressure suit they figured why not let you go outside, meaning some levels of the game are only accessible by walking across the ocean floor, affording you views at some of the levels form the first game. One last thing, the "Sea of Dreams" title has now been dropped too, it's just Bioshock 2.

Currently the release date is for October 5th and I for one can't wait to get back into Rapture