Thanks You!

Ok, first of all, to everyone reading the blog and emailing me (shockingly enough) thanks, I appreciate it.

I really can't stand the stereotypical magazine game review, for example

"man, this game is sweet, the tech specs are amazing, and it doesn't remind me of a crappy game like custards revenge or rogue warrior, even though i got the game for free, I'd still consider shelling out the money for the game, oh wait, they let me keep it, thanks infinity ward, you get a 10 out of 10, don't mind that the gaming companies own the gaming magazines and can tell us what to rate"..... wait a minute....

its true, most gaming companies give money to gaming mags, in short, don't read them for the reviews, it's better that way, and they get the game for free, so they don't care what you think.

however, I, play the game, and buy the game, so I'll tell you whats goin on from an aspect of someone who knows $60 ain't cheap nowadays (that's 60 tacos, just sayin)

Recently one customer told me at work that he trusts every single game I tell him is good, which is always a great thing to hear. I don't sing the praises of COD like others. However, another guy told me that he can never trust a single review I give a game. (Both are readers of my blog, and both of you know who you are, I don't hate you that you hate Just Cause for the 360)

Here's the way I look at it, there are probably millions of blogs out there on video games, probably even thousands of blogs written by people who work at gaming stores, but I don't give you the bullshit tech specs 1.21 gigawatts "compare this game to billions of other good games" verbose review, I tell you about the game, and I take maybe 5 to 10 minutes of your time, the same short and sweet review you'd get from me in the store, if you want a fuller review, rent the game and make your own decision.

Mostly though, thanks to everyone who reads this, and understands the difference between magazine/ online gaming reviews, and reviews written by an actual person who actually had to fork over the cash to get the damn game. Let's not forget when other gaming magazine critics were working on their high school paper, or getting a journalism/ english degree, I was helping start a gamers club and playing N64 while rehearsing theatre shows, haha. Priorities.

Basically, thanks for reading, I haven't turned on any money making schemes on this blog because I don't care. My theory is if there are more people who game, and more people who talk about gaming out there, better games will start to be made. Nothing wrong with Infinity Ward and COD, but it's not the game for me, and it's not the game for lots of gamers, so let's keep the reviews balanced. (To date 4 game informer issues have had Halo as the cover, you'll never see something like Saboteur or Borderlands on there, since those companies didn't give money to the gaming mags)

And as always, if you want me to review something specific, let me know. I'm workin through my list as best I can. Keep an eye out for

DS-

Moon

Legend Of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

Pokemon HeartGold/SoulSilver

360-

Batman:AA

Final Fantasy 13 (which releases tonight)

Saboteur

Bayonetta

Dragon Age: Origins

Kane & Lynch 1 &2

and a bunch of others, haha, like I said, I have a list.

The one comment I heard was compare it to other games, like I do very often in the store, which I'll be more than happy to do, but remember, this game is of course different, so it's not EXACTLY the same. Happy Gaming!

Ragnarok DS

Well, some games just take too long to beat before reviewing them completely, so in an attempt to get reviews to all of you faithful readers, I'll start reviewing games after getting somewhat into the game.

Ragnarok on the DS. Apparently this is a huge pc game, an mmo at that, that tons of people play, younger teens it seems.

It's slated as a single player mmo-rpg on the ds, if that makes sense, the basic idea is you have a very very modifiable character, with 17 classes to pick from. The classes are of standard fare, ranging from soldier to mage to thief.

The storyline somewhat standard for the jrpg as well. A girl and some guy are with an adventurer, and they are attacked, the girl has some special power, and she runs into you, a boy with a sick mom? And the two of you start to fight evil, oh and she has amnesia as well, but isn't too concerned about finding out who she is, but more of commenting on your attitude to others. Needless to say your character is sort of a jerk to people.

At any rate, the storyline is somewhat forgetful, and you'll quickly become annoyed at the fact that you have to click the touchscreen to advance every single line of dialogue, an annoying but ignorable element.

The strongest part of the game are the controls. There are two kinds of rpgs in this world, some have you select attacks and advance slowly, or more commonly known as turn-based fighting, the other is a sort of "click on what you want to fight, once" and the character does the rest. Ragnarok allows you to simply click on the enemy, and you attack it until its dead. For those of you video game savvy, Diablo or Tales of Symphonia style.

You level up quickly and you don't constantly have to stop to readjust skill points, you can just do them whenever you start to feel the game is difficult, a nice gameplay element not often used.

The music is dreadful, but hey, its a DS game, haha. You'll hear the same music for a dungeon, every dungeon. The same music for towns, every town. The same music for forests, every... you get the idea.

Overall, if you have a DS for rpgs, and let's face it, if you're over 16 and you have a DS, chances are it's for rpgs, this one fits nicely within the ranks. It's not the annoying Final Fantasy titles (look I'm sorry, I played through them once, I hate having to grind again, sorry), and it's not a kids title (although making hooker-looking girls in "my fashion designer" does have some appeal).

Since it's a DS game, and the first one I've reviewed for my own blog, you can't exactly rent them easily, but if you like rpgs, or are a fan of Ragnarok on the pc, get this and chances are you won't be disappointed.

Law Abiding Citizen, at least until the last 10min

Take one part Saw, one part Se7en, mix in Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler, and you get Law Abiding Citizen.

Oh man, oh man did I love this movie, I loved the looks, I loved the plot. Gerard Butler's family is murdered and raped by some guy, so Butler goes to trail with his lawyer Jamie Foxx. They plea bargain, and the guy gets 3 years jailtime.

This does not sit well with Gerard Butler. He goes postal, well he disappears for 10 years, comes back and systematically kills everyone involved with the case. However he does it in a clever way, he's sitting in jail, bargaining with Foxx because they have little to no proof that Butler did anything!

Butler is like a supersmart criminal mastermind who's only reaping vengeance for his family. His traps are very Saw-like, and the chase to find the bodies is extremely reminiscent of Se7ens final act.

Here's the problem........ you root for Butler, you want everyone to die, most of the time you're sitting there waiting for Foxx to die too (which everyone knows Butler is saving for last)

*spoiler*

but then you get to the ending.... lemme give you a rundown, Butler had placed a cell-phone activated bomb in city hall and was going to blow it up, all while "trapped" in his jail cell (he had a secret escape route).

Foxx foils the plans and places the bomb under Butlers cot, traps Butler in the cell just as Butler activated the bomb, Foxx lives and Gerard Butler dies for trying to exact revenge for his family.

Yes, I know, it's a morality play, it's to show that eye for an eye leaves the world blind, but you can't help but root for Foxx, so... I've re-written the ending for the sadistic ones out there.

stop the movie at the exact moment Gerard Butler gets out the phone.

Butler: Maybe I wasn't such a bad teacher after all.

Foxx: Maybe. You'll be regretting this for the rest of your life.

Butler: I'm sorry Nick

Foxx: Me too.

Butler: (hits send on the phone)

Foxx turns to open the cell to find it locked.

Butler: But a good teacher knows to never teach his students every single trick.

Foxx: No!

BOOM!!!

and they both die in the explosion. Gerard Butler would rather both he and Foxx die, rather than just let Foxx escape without truly knowing what loss is like. Just sayin, if you're going to make a movie where someone outsmarts everyone, suddenly at the last moment you can't have the foil turn over the greatest and final plan of the masterminds, it doesn't work that way.

At any rate, the movie is really good, Butler and Foxx are great opposite roles, you spend most of the time rooting for Butler to kill everyone involved and are a little disgusted at Foxx's disregard for the injustices.

It's a good movie, but that ending they kept just leaves a bad taste in your mouth, Butler lost everything, Foxx gave him little to no help, and gets to go home at night, tragic hero indeed.

Rent it though.

TNA Impact...ed ass

TNA IMPACT!!

Fight Night Round 3, Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 1, Oblivion, Hitman: Blood Money, Prey, Godfather: The Game, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Gears of War, Crackdown.

What's this a list of? Xbox 360 games that cost as much or less than TNA Impact, all of these games came out 2 years before TNA Impact, and all sell better, look better, and play better than TNA Impact. There is no reason for a game like TNA Impact to exist, here's why!!.....

Look, I'm a wrestling fan, a big one, have been for years. There's no way TNA will buy out WWE, I just can't see that happening.

Yes, this game is old. But first of all, let's blame Gamefly, since they seem to be out of everything nowadays. And frankly, there aren't many wrasslin' video games out anymore, cept for Smackdown, so to find something like TNA Impact is a nice change of pace

or so I thought.....

Where do I begin? The TNA roster that is half missing, the other half you have to, HAVE to play through the story mode to get them. What about arenas? Same deal, if you play exhibition you get to choose from a single arena, until you suffer through the story mode. Create-a-character? Same deal, you have nothing other than a default setting, until you play through the story mode.

Alright, fine. I'll go through the story mode. Let me give you a rundown...

you're a somewhat famous TNA wrestler called Suicide (which hilariously after this game came out, they did in fact get a character named Suicide to join actual TNA ranks, since they liked the idea so much). So you are famous, and you win matches, when some mexican fellows tell you to take a dive in your next match, you don't and they beat you up later, somehow you end up in Mexico, and you have to fight your way through the ranks of amateur wrestling to finally get a chance to be on TNA.

Now, if you missed the contradiction, you were a TNA superstar, some guys beat you up, and now the storyline is you crawling up the ladder to become.... a TNA superstar?

Ok.... so I get through like 5 matches, and I finally get to fight my difficult opponent, but this guy is tough, really tough, confusingly tough. So me wanting to simply get through the story mode to get the achievements and be able to review this, check the difficulty setting. I was going to lower it to have a easier time suffering through the game.

I am given the options of Indie, Pro, and Backyard. The default is Indie.... So I assume Indie is medium, so I switch it to Pro, nope, that ain't it. I check online and find multiple forums where people aren't sure which is which. In case you ever find yourself needing to know, Backyard is easy and it goes Backyard, Indie, Pro.

Why am I explaining all of this? It's a perfect example of whats wrong with this game, generally speaking. They could do things easy, but instead they just make it more difficult.

The sound is horrible, the announcers are perfect, circa 1998 N64 wrestling games. The controls are confusing (i.e. run is a trigger button, grabble is left bumper and Y?), the story mode basically consumes the entire game. The arena is aged (as of now), half the people on the roster don't exist anymore (I know it's an older game, but still). Just a poor excuse for a wrestling game.

Here's the deal, back in the day of N64 and PS1, the reason you played the wrestling games were either the giant roster of characters (WCW vs NWO revenge had like 100+ people) or you played for the features (WWF Raw and Attitude had decent announcers and customizable ring entrances), but this game? Nowadays? Around the time WWE Smackdown 2k7 was out? No good.

There really isn't a reason to play this game. Even if you're a hardcore TNA fan you'll know enough people from Smackdown to play it. Yeah, I'm going to compare it to Smackdown because basically, it's their direct competition in this wrestling gaming world (I'll leave out Rumble Roses X).

They basically took a average PS2 wrestling game, and ported it to the other systems, because it would sell, and sell it did, only.....eh, not so good.

Don't play, don't rent, don't gamefly, even if you like wrestling. If you HAVE to have a wrestling game, buy WWE Smackdown 2k7, and make the TNA wrestlers, chances are they'll even look better.

The Singing Dic

The Singing Detective, apparently theres a BBC miniseries that this movie was based on.

Ever heard of the movie or the miniseries? Probably not.

Hey! Did you know Robert Downey Jr, Mel Gibson, Adrien Brody, and Katie Holmes were in a musical of sorts together? Yep, that's this. Shockingly enough, not many people remember it.

Alright, here's the skinny-

"Suffering from the skin disease psoriasis and a crippling arthritis, detective novelist Dan Dark is in such pain in a hospital that he begins to delve into fantasy, resulting in several story-lines told simultaneously:"

Thanks Wikipedia!

Now here's the problem, this movie is one of those "let's be weird and have flashbacks and burst into song and not really make sense until the end"....like.... umm..... Happiness of the Katakuris. This sort of design works only sometimes, and usually it's destined to become a cult following abstract movie.

That's the same deal with this. Frankly, I thought the overall design and storyboard of the movie was brilliant, Downey can't sing but his character can...well... the character in his story that he replaces with himself can. So you have scenes where Downey is "singing" but it's obviously been dubbed, no matter it simply adds to the elements.

This is just a strange movie, but I've always been a fan of both film noir and this sort of abstract musical-esque clip show? Yeah, that.

The movie is better viewed in its entirety, because, as you watch it you start to piece things together, start to piece the plot together. You quickly discover things that the movie then tells you at about the same time.

The reviewers gave it horrible ratings, but that's almost to be expected since it appeals to a crowd of oh, I dunno, like 5. If you're familiar with the Happiness movie I've previously mentioned, or something like Death to Smoochy, then this movie is right up your alley. If you want something strange, and I mean strange, but a decent movie for a saturday afternoon, then this might be it, as long as you like detective stories. If you don't like the strange and abstract, and don't care for dic stories, just stay away, most everyone else did.

Thick As Teefes

Get it, teefes? like in Snatch? Ahhh, anyway..

Thick as Thieves staring Antonio Banderas and Morgan Freeman

Ok, if you're reading this so far, you've probably read my Smokin Ace's 2 review, I followed that movie by watching this one.

And yet.... another..... confusing..... plotline.

Here's my thing, when I watch a movie I'm not really paying attention to the names necessarily, I'm more watching the movie for the movie, so when you get to a plot point where you say "it's not mr x, it's mr y" for example, chances are I have no idea what anyone is talking about.

Laziness on my part? Possibly. So here we go!

Antonio and Morgan are both on a train, Antonio robs some foreign guys, Morgan comments on it, and the chase is on! By chase I mean Antonio is chased by the police.

So Antonio and Morgan teamup to rob a rich russian guy, that's basically the short of the movie.

However, *spoiler* Antonio is an undercover cop hired to catch Morgan who is an expert art thief. BUT WAIT. Morgan knew this and made up the whole heist to screw over Antonio. BUT WAIT, the tables turn again when Antonio and Morgan steal a priceless egg and give it to the rightful owner, but wait! the man they give it to is actually a thief. OH NO!

Confusing right? Right. That's basically what the last half-hour of the movie was, plot twist after plot twist.

It wasn't a bad movie, just confusing, it kept me entertained for like an hour, and if you actually follow the storyline and enjoy those kinds of twisty turney(?) thriller action mysteries, this is totally up your alley.

Overall I'd say rent, if you own Entrapment I feel like you're supposed to have this movie sitting next to it. It's a nice evening movie, or like a movie you watch when you have a few hours to kill, or a plane-ride movie. Yeah, that's it, it's probably playing on a plane right now, and the people are enjoying it, but not too much.

Smokin' Aces 2- Assassin's Fail

Smokin' Aces 2- Assassin's Ball.

Oh Vinnie Jones.... You were in Snatch and Lock, Stock.... you played Juggernaut.... you played that criminal guy in Condemned.... you even played football somewhere that you call something that has nothing to do with football, football.... Wales? Anyway,

A veritable "who's who" of actors that you've seen in tons of movies, but aren't sure of their name.

I think I could name about one actor I knew in this movie, Vinnie Jones, he kinda stands out.

Wait... Tom Berenger? Do I know you? I think.... maybe?

So the movie is basically "remember those people from Smokin Aces 1? They're back, in a prequel?

An FBI analyst has a bounty on his head for a very specific time and day, so the feds lock him up in this super secure vault underneath a Chicago nightclub. The $3 million bounty has every single assassin coming out of the woodworks to kill this guy. It's almost like a "hired gun gathering" or a "mercenary meeting".... or an assassin's ball.... har har.

WAIT. Ernie Hudson!!! You were in this movie? When? Where?????? Oh my....

thats..... kinda sad.

Long and short of the movie, it makes no sense, haha.

*spoiler*

The FBI guy everyone is protecting is actually a terrorist (i think) who planted all of the information (and the entire life) about this analyst and worked in the FBI for years just to be able to kill him off, not sure why.

On top of that, the assassins that came to kill him were actually all hired by the US Govt.

The movie was just, confusing, I watched it twice, the first time to see it, the 2nd time to see if I could figure out what was going on, no chance. See here's the problem, the guy who's portraying the FBI guy is also outside of the building, I think. Like, at the end of the movie, they try to explain everything and they explain it wrong the first time, so they explain it again, and it's just more confusing.

Oh, Ernie Hudson comes in at like the last 5 minutes, that's right, bit part.

Basically, there's a reason no one remembers this movie in theaters, it didn't come out, haha. Least not around here. If you love the first movie, redbox this, don't you go buying it. Just confusing.