Okay folks, I have need of some second opinions...

What with the current financial suck that has been my life I am considering selling my TV and my XBOX360. The problem is here in East Texas no one seems to use craigslist very much.  Anyone have any suggestions?  I was thinking the Sentinel but it turns out that's washout lane for classifieds.  I was looking at peddlernet.com and that might be promising.

If you or someone you know if looking for a TV and XBOX360, lemme know.

Faery - Legends of Avalon (2010) Focus Home Interactive

So it's that time of year when I've played through most of the games I wanted to play and start digging through the catalog of XBOX Live games and DLCs.  Last night I was wading through demos, some good, some not so good but I stumbled across Faery - Legends of Avalon from Parisian indie designer Focus Home Interactive.  I downloaded the demo and I have to admit that I am kind of charmed and impressed at this little release.  It's a well done classic turn based RPG with a 3 member party system, elemental magic, minimal inventory management, and a "get to the root of the problem" story arc filled with step'n'fetch and puzzle quests along the way.  It's not ground-breaking and it's probably not going to wow a lot of fans of shit that blows up or fans of jabbing plastic instruments with their pudge paws but for fans of classic non-JRPG styled games it certainly fits the bill.

The basic premise is Avalon, ruled by Oberon, is fading as modern man forgets and disrespects the magic of the Old Ways.  The player character is awoken from stasis within a crystal to find out if there is anyway to salvage the realm.  The adventure begins.

Four things really work for me while I've been playing Faery:

1. The art design is brilliant from NPC to level to monsters.  There's a very clever and understated Brian Froud-esque quality to the characters - vaguely menacing and ugly though, in some cases amusingly adorable.  My favorite character so far is Grim who looks like a cross between the Artful Dodger and Jacob Marley.  
2. This is one of the rare games that I would let children play but I would enjoy playing with them.  Hell I think the text based speech would be fun to read out loud to a kid, especially since each character has their own style of dialogue.
3. Though the levels initially seem small the ability to fly from the beginning of the game creates an excellent illusion of scale.  The second level (based around Ygdrassil) was a lot of fun simply because of  zooming through the leaves and branches of the tree exploring.  I am currently on the Flying Dutchman but have yet to explore it.
4. Just because this might be a game I approve for children doesn't mean it's for slack jawed troglodytes.  In fact many of the jokes are only funny if you know anything about mythology and folk tales (no Greco-Roman bullshit either) or 16th-Century French literature (okay I had to wiki one joke in the game to understand it, I think it's a funny joke - now that I get it - but you won't).  It's nice to play something that intellectually amuses as well.

I expect the game to top out at maybe 12-14 hours of gameplay but for the low price point I'm over-joyed at the experience.  Faery is like a meal at a fancy French restaurant.  You may be disappointed by the tiny portions at first but the meal is so delicious and filling and satisfying.

Dead Rising 2: Case Zero (2010) Capcom

So I was looking for something to play yesterday and Dead Rising 2: Case Zero was available for download on XBOX Live for only 400 MS Points (about $5.00).  While I wasn't a hardcore fan of Dead Rising I figured five bucks is cheaper than a rental of a full title and I felt like whompin on some zombies.

I gotta say it's well worth the price.  DR2:CZ has a lot packed into a small amount of space, at least a good six-eight hours if you want good endings and achievement points.  Plus it's just good fun butchering the snot out of living dead.  Some of my favorite weapons from Dead Rising  make a comeback including; the frying pan, the bowling ball, and the shower head.  There's also the ability to make insane customized weapons, my personal favorite is the baseball bat with nails in it -surprise, surprise.

You can level your character up to five but everything you unlock will carry over to Dead Rising 2.  That's cool. Personally I think this is a great marketing trick - offer a extra large demo for a cost less than a meal at a fast food joint, give the player enough incentive to replay several times, and it's all the hook to draw the player in.  The only downside I have to both Dead Rising and DR2:CZ is that tasks are timed, there little room for exploration the first or second time through. I understand why they did this but I'm not sure I like it, since I mainly game for exploration.

In any case, it's a fun diversion.

Red Cliff (2008) Dir John Woo

Ever since John Woo came to America he has made movies that are so bad that even with the taste of Tarantino could like them. They suck. Hard Target-sucked. Face/Off-blew. Windtalkers-both sucked and blew. You get the idea. I had pretty much written Mr. Woo off. Fin. I wasn't expecting much of anything from the man ever again.

Then I heard drums in the deep about Woo returning to China to make an epic of such sweeping proportions even Ang Lee and Yimou Zhang said, "Damn! Now that's a sweeping epic!" I've read that Woo's Red Cliff was released in Asia in two chunks for a total of four viewing hours and has outgrossed Titanic in China. Outside of Asia Red Cliff has been edited down to two and a half hours. The movie is not due in theaters until later this month. I downloaded a copy from XBOX Live and watched it with the missus last night.

I tell you what-Red Cliff is awesome. While there were one or two weird editing problems I noticed I was quickly distracted by all the awesome. I don't know if Red Cliff is as pretty as a Yimou Zhang (Hero, Curse of the Golden Flower) movie but it has an excellent look of its own. I don't recognize the movies the cinematographers (Zhang Li & Lu Yue) have worked on but I want to track those movies down. Red Cliff is blessedly 99% free of spastic camera work allowing the viewer to watch the action. The action director was Corey Yuen, stunt supervisor Dion Lam, and stunt coordinator was Jian Yong Guo (all have impressive backgrounds to say the least). Red Cliff is a top notch action movie (at least this version was). When the main ass kickers are let off the chain they seriously dish out the Mu Shu Pain. One awesome move I haven't seen before was: impale a guy with a spear, keep running, yank the spear through the guy and keep fighting. Amanda and I were actually cheering because some of the action was so awesome. Cheering, in the house, I shit you not. At one point the action got me so riled up I started whistling the action theme to Better Tomorrow II.

The basic story of Red Cliff takes place during the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" period c208 BCE. If you're familiar with the story (or played any number of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" KOEI games) then all the major players will be familiar-Cao Cao, Liu Bei, Sun Qian, Zhang Fei, etc. Zhang Fei (played by Jinsheng Zang) captures the image and personality I had of him in my head perfectly; plus it was fun to watch him bodyslam a horse. For viewers not really familiar with the story Red Cliff does a perfectly decent job of introducing the characters and their roles in the grand scheme of things.

Wow. I gotta say Red Cliff is so damn enjoyable. I'm still excited by seeing it. I would see it again and will probably buy the complete cut if and when I see it for sale. John Woo, I love you again, please don't make shitty movies in America any more. xoxo Joshua

A half hearted review and an upcoming review...

College. (2008) dir. Deb Hagan. I was bored and didn't have the brains to play Fallout 3 or Persona 4. I downloaded College watched it and can say don't bother. While it wasn't worse than most of the piece of shit 80s teen sex comedies. There were boobies. There were one or two parts that made me laugh. There were boobies. The mean frat-boys get what's coming to them. There were boobies. A kid barfs on the Dean's car. A kid get shot in the crotch with a paint-ball gun. There were boobies.

On the upside I also downloaded:

Tokyo Gore Police (2008). dir. Yoshihiro Nishimura. If you haven't heard of this then that's okay. I haven't been keeping up with my Japanese films either. As many of you may know for quite some time I was addicted to Asian cinema - Japanese in particular. I guess I just reached a saturation point and gave up on looking for stuff to watch. The J-Horror/American remakes probably had something to do with my waning interest as well. God forbid I like something popular.

In any case I saw the trailer for Tokyo Gore Police and was/am genuinely intrigued. It looks like one of those apeshit over the top, horrorshow, ultra-violent, "Holy Shit, am I watching this?" inducing, Japanese lunacy movies. I looked up Yoshihiro Nishimura and he was: Art Director, Production Designer, Special Effects mold maker, and Special Effects Make-Up for one of my favorite twisted Japanese movies of the early aughts - Jisatsu Saakuru a.k.a. Suicide Club (2002) dir Sion Sono. Based on that information I am pretty excited to see Tokyo Gore Police tonight. I will have a review up for it ASAP.

A friend of mine reviewed Tokyo Gore Police pretty succinctly on his site.

Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage

The first downloadable content for Fallout 3 is available! Operation: Anchorage is a VR Combat Sim mission. According to the official site:

"The Brotherhood Outcasts are trying to acquire advanced military technology, and the only way to open the vault containing these relics is by completing a tactical simulation only you can enter. In Operation: Anchorage you will re-live the epic Battle of Anchorage from Fallout lore. Find your way into the simulation, stripped of resources, and survive within the rules set up by the simulation’s creators. The Chinese red army is everywhere, so secure the surrounding mountain side and fight your way into the Chinese base."

Neat!

I downloaded the content last night and played through the first few sections. It's pretty cool - nothing too insanely outstanding compared with the downloadable content that was released for Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. Once I finish off the new content I will give a full review.

The new XBOX360 Live Experience is live!

I was pretty excited about the new XBOX 360 Live experience - not wetting myself Fallout 3 excited but still...

All in all it's pretty cool. Mainly a reorganization with a new coat of paint. The big draw is being able to stream/download movies from Netflix onto the XBOX. That's pretty sweet however:

1. I need to have both an XBOX Live Gold membership and an active Netflix account. I suppose that makes sense but I was under the impression that if you had a XBOX Live account then you could download movies from Netflix for free. Stupid when I think about it now but at the time it made sense.
2. The movies available for download are not necessarily the best movies or rather - movies anyone would really want to see - i.e. Brainscan.

Right now we're in the process of re-evaluating what services we need (i.e. Internet) versus what we don't (cable). I'm not sure if there will be a savings if we switch from cable to just Netflix. We shall see. If we do go with the XBOX/Netflix combo I will let you know how it works out.

By the by I downloaded The Strangers and should have a review up in a few days. Was going to watch it tonight but were going to the tattoo shop this evening - Amanda's getting more color done.

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix site has trailers!

Woo! The Puzzle Quest: Galactrix site is finally up and has trailers and assorted goodness. We can't wait. This is one game that I am chomping at the bit to play. Dear D3 please release this sooner than later.

XBOX Live offline today for overhaul.

Kind of awesome. Makes me happy. XBOX Live is being updated today. Hopefully we'll see Netflix integrated. Neat.

Battlefield: Bad Company

Whatever your feelings are about EA Games they do make some polished quality games.
Battlefield: Bad Company is no exception. I've really been enjoying the online mode even though there aren't too many options for missions - i.e. Deathmatch, Conquest, etc. - but this doesn't bother me too much because more often than not I end up playing Team Deathmatch anyway.

How does B:BC compare with Call of Duty 4 and Rainbow Six Vegas 2? As far as story goes B:BC has the most enjoyable storyline. It's more along the lines of Kelly's Heroes than a Tom Clancy potboiler or other modern military mumbo "evil dictator has a nuke" jumbo. It's fun and I found myself laughing more often than I do during comedies. One of favorite lines so far has been,

Sweetwater: But that place is heavily guarded.
Haggard: Well we're heavily armed!

B:BC doesn't take its self too seriously and that allowed me to have fun even at a higher difficulty level. Playing isn't punishment or profanity inducing - okay it induces profanity but it's more along the lines of, "FUCK YEAH!" than "FUCK YOU!" Part of the fun is that things blow up real good. I've developed the habit of blasting holes in walls instead of using doors. Hey, it works. I've also learned the joy of ferreting out snipers by reducing cover to bits with a well placed mortar attack.

Game control is standard FPS controls. There's not much in the way of a cover system a la RS: Vegas but you don't really need one. COD4 needed that because the game was punishing.

I'm not saying B:BC is the end all be all for FPS but for a summer diversion it definitely fits the bill. Whatever problems I could have with B:BC can be remedied by playing the other FPS out there.

My first impressions of GTA IV - about a third of the way through the game.

If you've been following any of the reviews online or off then you will know that GTA IV is one of the most amazing games to ever be released. There are certainly a few minor problems here and there but over all these are simply quibbles. I'm gonna get the complaints out of the way:

1. The soundtrack isn't my cup of tea. The score is great and some of the stations - i.e. Vladivostok & IF99 playing Eastern European pop and Afropop/Funk respectively - are a blast. The Latin station is a welcome change. I was happy to hear a Jazz station though I kind of miss a Classical station. Journey FM does a decent job of filling the Classical slot though with ambient Tangerine Dream-esque tunes. There are a good number of stations that are hit or miss for me. The rock stations are meh. One is old hits DJ'd by Iggy Pop and the other is new white belt rock DJ'd by Juliette Lewis. The rest of the stations are okay, some modern urban crap, rap classics, some smooth gettin ass music about shorties, and an electronic station I always skip past. I usually end up just turning off the radio.
2. I want more clothing options. So far there are only three stores. Yes this is a ridiculous gripe.
3. I miss taking pictures of stuff. In past games you could take snapshots and save them. Maybe this happens later in the game.

And those are the only three I can think of right now.

You can read all the other reviews about how awesome GTA IV is. It truly takes gaming up to a new level. There are countless moments of "Holy shit I can do that?!?" and "Holy shit look at that!".

What really makes GTA IV an amazing experience for me though are:

1. The character interaction. A lot of the game depends on social interaction and keeping up with various characters through out the game via phone, hanging out and email. It's kind of bizarre because I am so bad at this in RL but have some what mastered it in IV.
2. The high quality of writing. The dialogue and story are top notch. IV is much more serious and adult in content than any other in the series. I don't mean adult purient I mean characters are dealing with some pretty awful issues on a personal level. This lends a level of sophistication that's refreshing in gaming. A lot of the wacky humor the series was known for has also been scaled down.
3. The overall theme of addiction and recovery is pretty astounding and handled in a way that blows me away. I actually wonder if the writer is in recovery. What could easily be over wrought After School special junk is not. The addictions run the gamut from gambling to alcoholism to drug use to violence. I am looking forward to finding out what happens with the main story line.

More news to follow.

Another plug for Chromehounds and assorted minor items.

I am going to plug Chromehounds again because I am addicted to it - like a fat kid loves cake. I've actually started watching videos of 'Hound builds and combat. It's a good thing I have an understanding woman because I would never get one - this game is one the verge of preventing me from sleeping or leaving the house.

I did pick up a copy of Bully: Scholarship Edition for the 360. I couldn't help it. The previous incarnation for the PS2 was a solid and fun Rockstar outing. This edition is more of the same plus some new additions. A review will be upcoming.

In other news...well...there isn't really any other news. Hope you guys are doing well.

Chromehounds (2006) - Initial thoughts.

I am only a couple of hours into Chromehounds and already I am hooked. It wasn't really all that great until I linked up four assault machine guns to fire at once. In the immortal words of Clarence Boddicker, "GUNS! GUNS! GUNS!". Then I started really tinkering with constructing - with what limited resources I have - a mech or 'Hound as they are known in this game(sidenote: If you're not familiar with the term mech then just think about big fucking robots with big fucking guns).

I really dig this game and look forward to seriously putting some time into it. Basically the whole premise is "Blah, blah, blah, war. Blah, blah, blah, mercenaries. Join a squad, train, get better gear, blast the living hell out of other squads. Attempt to win war. It's the customization and squad combat on Live that I'm looking forward to. I just have to keep building my funds and supplies so my 'Hound is the equivalent of a soapbox racer at the Indy 500.

If I can get a screen capture I'll put it on here.

Netflix & XBOX Live or how I pooped on myself even more.

So there was an article on MSNBC about a possible merger between Netflix & XBOX Live. I'm a big fan of being able to download movies from XBOX Live so expanding the collection available would be pretty darn neat. While I do miss special features more often than not the special features are worthless anyway - unless it Guillermo Del Toro. I hope this comes to pass.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty demo, Burnout Paradise online fun, and something else...

I' ve been pretty geared up for Turning Point: Fall of Liberty (02/26). Personally I am a huge sucker for speculative fiction based on the USA getting invaded - i.e. Red Dawn, Freedom Fighters, The Man in the High Castle. This isn't because I am not a patriot it's because I think Americans would kick the Hell out of an invading force. Could you imagine the Red Army trying to take down Chicago? The demo is available for download and it's impressive as all get out. I worry that it won't be able to go the distance - FPS tend to fall apart at the end. That doesn't mean I won't play the shit out it though.

* * *

Burnout Paradise is a frickin' blast online. It's because it's so easy to get online - if you have an account that is - just tap right on the D-pad and select what you want. Sometimes the servers get bogged down but more often than not there's no delay in game play - no pain in the ass menus or waiting period. I'm a big fan of ghosting people who are crashing and smashing - if someone is just running time laps or jumps or basically not bothering anyone I leave them alone. I do love smashing the living shit out of opponents though and playing high speed chase. I was joking with Amanda that Burnout Paradise is nothing but big kids playing Hot Wheels.


I forgot what the something else was...oh yeah!

For those of you still playing Mass Effect - there will be downloadable content March 10th. It will introduce a new race and new planet and will called Bring Down the Sky and will be available for 400 points. I think that's pretty cool. I already sold my copy so if someone downloads this let me know how it is.

New downloads for Carcassonne! Woo!

Though we don't play as much Carcassonne as we used to thanks to cable and other distractions we still play it here and there. With the new download I'm sure I'll get a couple of hours of play out of it.