MEIN GOTT!

Besides loving long walks on the beach, Hitler was a strict vegetarian, anti-smoker, and loved dogs and children. He truly was the personification of evil.

BANZAI!

The Easter Bunny believes in you or "One of these things is not like the other."

Rainbow Six Las Vegas 2, There Will Be Blood, and I'm not dead just working.

Apologies for the long delay in posting folks. Nothing too earth shattering to report lately. Just a lot of work and tooth pain.

Have two quick reviews:

Picked up Rainbow Six Las Vegas 2 and yes, Virginia, it is awesome. It is also hard as all get out even on the regular difficulty. I prefer this game over Call of Duty 4 but the combat is completely different. You can't charge the enemy apeshit in Vegas 2. For one -If you do you will blasted into little chunks of meat with scraps of fabric and hair stuck to them. For two - there's not a melee attack. The cover system is just my style and I like the shift from FPS to 3PS when you take cover. The graphics and the sound are awesome - especially on the new speakers. I like the level design - there's enough variation to keep things interesting. One gameplay factor I like is the fact that a second player can pick up and play either the story mode or "Terrorist Hunt" - track down and eliminate all the terrorists on the level. I haven't put it to the test yet but the next time me and the lads hang out and game I think we might give it a shot.

There Will Be Blood is one hell of a movie. In a way I am amazed that it's by the same guy who made Magnolia & Boogie Nights. There Will Be Blood is nearly Shakespearean in its scope. Daniel Day Lewis seems to have taken a new direction in his acting - that of the insufferable bastard - and it works. Apologies to sound cheezy but this movie plays like a meditation on the evil that men do - to themselves and others. Perfectly paced and stunningly filmed There Will Be Blood is a real movie - a real cinematic experience. Instead of some gruelling "War is bad." NPR totbag movie or some totally insipid rom-com or gornographic throw away There Will Be Blood nails you to your seat and keeps you there. A movie like this has renewed my faith in film. Now I just have to watch No Country for Old Men.

Final Fantasy VI Advanced (1994) Square Enix

Final Fantasy III was released in the US on 10/20/94. It was actually the sixth in the series in Japan but this ain't Japan. I had grown up on Zelda, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, & Ultima for the NES and the SNES but Final Fantasy III was something totally different entirely. This was melodrama, death, destruction, love, loss, a psychotic villian, a large and varied cast of kick ass heroes & heroines, hidden characters, some warped humor, and some truly difficult profanity inducing boss battles. Final Fantasy III or VI or whatever you want to call it is a completely awesome RPG that is a true classic of the genre.

I haven't played it since 94 but had been hankering to pick it up since I got a DS. For the last week I haven't touched my 360. At first I thought the game was much easier than I remembered. Levelling was pretty smooth and for some reason I remembered locations of items and the hidden characters. Combat - even boss battles - was a snap. Then I hit this point in the story where everything goes to hell and damn it the difficulty level ramped up.

The story is really frickin' awesome and I can't remember the last time I had such a good time with a Final Fantasy title, even VII. The cast of characters in pretty large - not Suikoden large but still. Sure you can only use four at a time but character management is pretty simple but with enough fiddling to satisfy stat-line whores.

The graphics are good but in some ways I wish I could actually play this on a TV because the sprites are so wee. The soundtrack is still memorable and oddly catchy.

All in all if you see any copy of this game pick it up, even if you have to buy a SNES, GBA, or DS to play it. That is of course if you're a RPG fan.