I'm Back/Contra 4

Yes, I know. Everyone though I was dead, but I fooled them all. Just don't tell the people that poisoned me, or the ones that planted that car bomb, or that sniper who killed that double... On second though, just assume that I am dead, and spread the word.

So, here I am blogging from the land of the dead, and the reason I have decided to write from the land of the dead is Contra 4. Yes, that is right, Contra 4 has the ability to revive the dead and kick ass.

This game rocks, yes, rocks. It is set up like the original Contra with both side scrolling (2d) and down the hallway (3d). Both of the styles are pulled off perfectly.

The main game can be played on three difficulty settings. On easy the game is just that, as you get a plethora of lives/continues, and all your weapons are instantly upgraded to full power. On top of all that, you don't get to play the last two levels, so the lives don't need to go as far. Easy is not exactly 'easy' as you will still die a lot, but you have plenty of lives to go around. If the difficulty of easy is 'n log n', then normal is 'n^2', death is swift and assured for all but the expert player. Hard I have not even attempted yet, but I have to guess it is like 'n!'.

So far I have only beaten easy, which unlocks bonus content, specifically the challenge mode. Challenge mode is rad. You play levels from the game, but with special conditions and no lives.

Rating: Buy it! Its Contra 4!

DS Homebrew

Today I got DS AIM to work on my homebrew cart and it is made of win. I also got a Google maps program working as well as a Windows Live (MSN messenger) app. It just keeps getting better and better.

I play DSDoom (doom port) and it brings back the old days of classic gaming while scaring the people next to me on the plane. Some other games are a NetHack port and a Drugwars port, though I have not really played much with those. Just not enough gibs.

A true homebrew game is 'A Touch of War', but I have not gotten a new version in a while and the one I have is too buggy to play.

There is also an I-Pod like (imp) media player, but I will need to experiment more with that.

Superbad

Go see it.

How much do I like this movie you ask? I saw it twice in theaters. I never see movies twice in theaters. Never. Ever.

That being said, this movie is not for everyone, and I wouldn't recommend taking your grandparents to see it with you. It is basically a 'Dazed and Confused' or 'American Graffiti' set in the modern day with modern day language. Lots of talk about human anatomy and pr0n0graphic subjects.

The two main characters Seth and Evan are the best, but McLovin and the cops help to keep the film going with all that hilarity that ensues. So one more time, go see it.

Two For the Price of One

The Simpsons

All in all I was very disappointed in this movie. It felt like one 30-minute TV spot stretched out over an hour. Maybe there were some in-jokes that I just did not get as I am not a Simpsons fanboy, but it still seemed too long. There were a couple of side lines, like the romance and Flanders, that took up a lot of time just to make one joke. Those side plots should have been dropped to streamline the story, but then we might have been down to just a 30-minute TV spot. 2.5/5

The Bourne Ultimatum

All out action. Those three words basically sum up the movie. The plot was ok, and the dialog was a little tedious because it looks like the cameraman has had twelve cups of coffee, but the script is alright. But that is not why we are here, we want to see Bourne beat the living daylights out of the bad guys. So, buy your popcorn, and just don't think. That being said, I feel like in the end the director did not have the guts to do what was needed, so it ended up a little cheesy, a sell out if you will. Still it is one of the best sequels so far this summer, and a good conclusion (hopefully) to the series. 3.25/5

I am holding out hope for Superbad later this month.

The Lives of Others

This past weekend I went to see 'The Lives of Others' and it was great. I say it is the best movie this summer, but be warned this is not for everyone. First off , this is a German movie, so that means subtitles! and lots of them, and then it is a drama so action buffs need not apply.

This film takes place in the GDR, communist East Germany, and the main character is in the secret police. He is tasked with spying on a play-write who is thought to be subversive.

The plot was excellent and the acting top notch, but it was a little slow. Still, the best movie of the year, so go see it now before it out of theaters all together and you forget about it before it comes out on video.

Transformers, a Week Later

Thinking back on Transformers a week after seeing it, I realize that something bothered me about it beside Bay. I eventually came to realize that it was the movie can no decide what age it caters to. The Die Hard movie, though it was rated PG-13, was clearly targeted for more mature teenagers as well as adults, but Transformers did not have a clear distinction. It is PG-13, but it seems more targeted for those 80's children who grew up watching that cartoon, so those people are in their 20's to 30's. It has immature toilet humor and an unbelievable government agency with their over the top agents which are clearly targeted for a less mature audience, but it still includes more mature sexual innuendo and references to Iraq that would not be understood by that same audience.

I think I will rent it when it comes out, but I suspect that it is not one that I will purchase for my movie collection. I just don't know where it would fir, and I do not really see me watching more than once more when it comes out on DVD.

Transformers

I went to see Transformers Friday, and it was pretty good. I would give a 3.75/5. I think the move goes on a little bit too long, about twenty minutes or so. I could definitely feel Bay's influence on the action sequences, which where a little too choppy for my taste. I think if the next movie picks up a different director it would benefit greatly.

That being said I would give the special effects in this movie a 5 out of 5. They were absolutely spectacular. I knew they were CGI but they looked so much better than the standard fair. The dialog was on the cheesy side, 3/5, and the plot could have been better, 3/5. I think the whole John Turturro part and that agency could have been left out. It didn't betray my childhood, but something just didn't sit right which makes my tilt to a 3.5/5.

So lets recap:

Special Effects: 5/5

Script: 3/5

Plot: 3/5

Tilt: 3.5/5

Overall: 3.75/5

Remember more weight is put on what a movie is suppose to be good at. For example, if a special effects movie looks horrible that will effect the overall weight more, a war movie should use period weapons (no AK-47s during WWI), and a drama's main selling point shouldn't be the special effects.

Old Times

After I found out about Contra 4 for the DS I decided to go back and reminisce with some old NES games. Contra and Super-C were and are both awesome games. Though neither game is very long, they are both wickedly difficult, and still they are amazingly fun. This led me down other paths too, Excitebike, Mega Man, Zelda, Mario, and Metroid. I think most of these games have something that modern games lack, the ability to pick it up play for five to ten minutes and still have fun. To be shore enough to beat quickly, but still be just as fun when playing through a second or even forty-second time.

Now I am going to break out my N64 for some Goldeneye and Smath Brothers time.

TV Repair

Today I made two attempts at TV repair and thus I had two failures. Granted all I did was replace two fuses, so it is likely lightning got them long before I did. Still, I can't help but feel I contributed to their untimely demise. One of them (Sanyo) I am going to take to the repair shop because it is only a couple of years old, but the other (Goldstar) is from 1990 and should just be put in its grave.

Fallout 3

I just got done reading an article about the last great hope for my favorite series, Fallout 3. Though I have never been a fan of the Morrowind series, it looks like they will be doing Fallout justice. For them I think the move to to the East Coast is a good one. It will allow them to pass off any discrepancy on the fact that it is a different area, so maybe the stories were not passed on correctly or organizational differences based on region.

This also sets my goal for a new computer to be completed by the time Fallout 3 comes out, and it might even make me put Windows on it or maybe get Cedega if they will support it. Maybe by Fall 2008 I will be able to afford to put more into a PC than $500, or maybe I will get one of the other platforms it is coming out on, but I have always been more of a PC person. Maybe if they put it on the Wii, which is not planned for now, I would get one of those.

Crisis

One of my brothers has just had his engagement put on ice for three months. I hope it all turns out alright. It makes me hope that my girlfriend and I will not go through something similar. Because of this he has decided to give up all video games, ouch. I guess this shows his commitment.

Well my Ubuntu use on my laptop has gone pretty swimmingly after I got the wireless working. Though wireless does have some problems resuming after suspend, but all I have to do is turn the antenna off and then on again. The only other thing is my ntfs partition does not seem to get mounted correctly on boot, so I have to use the ntfs mount tool to unmount its write support and then remount its right support. Maybe I will get that fixed one day, but it is not a big problem and really only one because I duel boot.

I am thinking of deleting XP from my laptop completely so I can get more space to use for Linux. I don't foresee this being a problem because I haven't really used Windows in about a week. I think I will first look into using some of the DLLs from it in Wine so I can get better emulation. I have the license and I am not a fanatic, so why not?

Ubuntu

At first I was a skeptic about Ubuntu (I am a Slackware fanboy), but it is pretty slick. I have installed it on my laptop, and, after sever difficulty from three problems related to my specific model that others would not suffer from, I have finally gotten it up and running. Compiz was relatively easy, at least compared to getting my specific brand of wireless card running, and overcoming Ubuntu's hatred of my graphics card.

The feature I appreciate the most compared to the old days is the auto mount feature, though not being able to just eject my CD drive like Windows could use some work (though this might not be possible). I definitely see why Dell chose this distribution to install.

That being said I still plan on using Slackware for all my server needs, because Pat is the man and he knows how to churn out a stable distro.

My next thing is going to try DSLinux for my NDS (duh) and maybe order the DS browser. Because Nintendo only sells original NDS one from their site, it might be a while before I get it.

First Post

I got the first post!

Anyway, lets hope this is more successful than my last blog. Latter I might come up with a topic list that this blog will loosely stick to, but not likely. This is my first day on my new job so lets turn over a new leaf. Shall we?