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Avatar Review

I have been meaning to write a review on Avatar the first time I saw it. But since then I have already seen it a second time too, both times in IMAX 3D. I first saw it with my girlfriend and then the second time with my brother.

Where to begin? This movie was just one of the greatest movies I have ever seen my entire life. The visual effect will just blow your mind away. The story? Just one of the most amazing scripts in a movie in the last many years.

Yes, there have been other great movies with such great scripts and visual effects. I am not saying there has not been but Avatar I would have to say is the first of its kind in a long time, yet alone in its own category.

Now, if you did not know, this script was actually wrote in 1995. But due to the fact the technology necessary for such a film he in-visioned was not existent back then, it did not come out back it. I would say this is a very, very good thing and I am glad that James Cameron waited so long too.

I highly recommend you go see this movie if you have not yet, see it in 3D too, preferably IMAX over Digital but Digital 3D will be fine though. This movie blows a 10/10 rating out of the water.

At least one Avatar sequel is already in the works, possibly two more at that. Taken from James Cameron’s Wikipedia:

Cameron has confirmed that at least one Avatar sequel is being planned, including more story lines with Jake and Neytiri, and the exploration of another moon orbiting Polyphemus. The sequels are rumored to be Cameron’s next two projects.

Armored Review

I watched the star packed movie Armored earlier tonight. I must say, I was quite disappointed in this movie. I think I would of been more upset to have spent $20+ at the movie theaters as it would of been myself and my girlfriend Jordan at least there. I recommend only renting this one.

Basically what you see, is what you get. If you have seen the trailer, you know what the movie is about so do not expect more than that. There was no crazy twist or turn here in this movie which possibly may of made it even better. I will also point out it was a very short movie, only an 1 hour and 22 minutes long.

So the movie has pretty much every known awesome actor today right? Consisting of Columbus Short1, Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne2, Jean Reno3, Amaury Nolasco4, Milo Ventimiglia5, Skeet Ulrich6 and Fred Ward.

I think I would of enjoyed a different plot then what was shown in the movie. You could maybe split up the actors all working at the Armored Truck Service and have one half trying (bad) trying to steal the truck. Then the other half trying prevent the armored truck(s) from being stolen without any outside assistance and then go from there.

Anyways, that is not how the movie was or ever will be. It seemed as if some of the actors, especially Laurence Fishburne, Jean Reno ad Skeet Ulrich really enjoyed bitching a lot in this movie and acting very pussy like. Even if they are just armored guards, I expected more out of such great actors. Unless they were playing these characters like such because they figured they finally realized they signed onto a terrible project and wanted to get it over with.

  1. Stomp the Yard, Accepted [↩]
  2. CSI, The Matrix [↩]
  3. Godzilla, The Professional [↩]
  4. Prison Break [↩]
  5. Rocky Balboa, Heroes [↩]
  6. Jericho [↩]

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Review

Let me start off by saying that I do enjoy and like the game already. It is much, much better than Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis. But I will start off by saying a short message to Codemasters. Why in the world would you not allow us to utilize ALL of the advanced options when starting a co-operative game? Seriously, the wait time if you happen to die from BULLSHIT while in the game is absolutely ridiculous. To top that off, if all of you die in co-op, you have to start the entire mission again.

Seriously Codemasters, what were you thinking? Why the hell even advertise that checkpoints have been reached if in co-op it does not count? Lazy coding to you “codemasters”? Ugh. I could totally deal with spawning right away with no checkpoints or vice-versa checkpoints with spawn wait time.

Anyways, I will move on to the actual game. These maps are huge. Now I do not exactly remember Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis size maps but I do remember they were fairly large but these maps are HUGE. With the lack of vehicles too, you find yourself walking/running a lot. Forget even crawling in the grass at any point, it will not even matter to your enemy A.I.

What about your team A.I.? Not the greatest. Sometimes they are smart, sometimes not. Half the time I find myself wondering where the hell did my teammates go? So if you are going to buy this game, make sure you have someone to play co-op with. Remember you can play up to 4 players co-op. Thank god, cause some people will need that.

You can command your teammates to do various commands from having them flank left to having the move fast or suppress fire. Now do they always do this? I found it works pretty well but since each mission is at least an hour long, if you do NOT die (especially in co-op) then you may find yourself using this less and less so you can move on since each level is not only huge but there are fairly small simple missions.

Now I have been playing on Normal so far which is the “easiest” and even then, do not think it is that easy. You can not run and gun in this game, it is pretty realistic but you will die in a few shots, depending where you get hit. You can heal yourself or get healed. Driving controls in this game are absolutely terrible. I have yet to get to any flying missions so I hope to god it is not as bad as driving vehicles.

Well that is about all I will continue to say, I have said enough. This game is not a terrible game, but it may just be that rental for you rather than purchasing it. Unless you are picking it up for maybe $15 and have interests in it. It could of been much better, especially if they were to make use of stealth, no point in having a knife you can’t use 99.9% of the time.

Xbox 360 Launch Console vs Xbox 360 Elite Fall 2009

On Saturday, August 29th, 2009 my Xbox 360 Pro Launch Console received the dreaded E74 error message. Which is basically right next to the RROD error. My Xbox 360 Launch Console is obviously out of warranty and I was not going to pay $99 to get rid of the launch console to only get a refurbished one sent back to me that could possibly get this again. Plus, the launch console is too valuable to me for various reasons.

Anyways, here is what I have noticed with the Xbox 360 Elite Fall 2009 build. The console is obviously quieter, without a doubt. I forget it is on, which is even better when you are using it to play movies. I never really had a problem with it while playing video games. I also noticed that game discs load much faster than before with the launch console. Then there is the Jasper CPU which you will not really notice but it is better than the Falcon CPU they used in the launch and early on system consoles. These 360’s should not be prone as much to the RROD’s or E74 error messages either.

If you are looking to get an Xbox 360, definitely by the Fall 2009 consoles or any other ones with later build dates. If you some how have waited this long to get an Xbox 360 because of hearing people with RROD/E74 problems, then you should not of waited but no need to wait any longer now either.

Biggest Summer Movies of ’09

This year’s biggest surprise movie according to the list yahoo movies put together was The Hangover. Now this movie could of been so much better than it was, how about actually showing what happened rather than trying to remember? This is where I hope The Hangover 2 picks up from and makes better. Time will tell, I still will see it. Anyways, I saw this movie the night it premiered with my girlfriend Jordan. Like I said, while it could of been better I did really enjoy it and have since seen the movie a lot since then.

Back to it being the “biggest surprise” summer movie of the 2009, it made a total of $270,237,753 in the U.S. alone. Not bad what so ever I would say! The biggest loser of the year was Land of the Lost with $49,438,370. That, I would totally agree with. Will Ferrell needs to start rethinking the roles or movies he makes. The biggest was Transformers 2, now that one is an easy one :) while I have yet to see it, will soon with Jordan in the meantime it made $399,416,040. The new Harry Potter movie made the biggest worldwide though with $895,958,075.

Somehow Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs made it as the biggest international hit with $613,790,529. I am quite surprised by this. While I saw the movie and it was alright, it was not as good as Ice Age 1 or 2 was.

Source: Yahoo.com

Initial Snow Leopard thoughts

Well first off, you will notice a speed improvements almost everywhere as well as lots of saved hard drive space. After installing I gained around 18GB of space, yes, AFTER installing Snow Leopard from Leopard.

There are a bunch of “apps” that do not work for me. Most of this is because of InputManagers have been removed by Apple. It will be interesting to see what will happen from this and how, if ever, this applications will work again.

So because of InputManagers being removed, one popular app that no longer will work is PlugSuit aside with aFloat. This allowed me to keep certain applications on top of others no matter what. While I barely use this anymore like I use to for my own reasons. I will be able to live without this I am sure.

iStatMenus also does not work and no update has been released yet even after all this time they had to update it. They are working on an update (2.0) and it is in beta already and should be released in the next few days the developer says.

Chax is another InputManager application that does not work. But do not fear as it is its own app now with iChat inside of it. Chax Alpha 1 is out that gives you bare minimum of the Chax features. A lot that you will miss and have to wait for as the developer has time to code and release updates. [UPDATE] Alpha 2 is out and released more missing features that you may of used that I used such as auto-accepting features and bug fixes to some features that did not work in Alpha 1.

Okay, aside from those applications. I have not really had much of a problem with others or have had a lot of time to check all of what I have. Moving on though, I am absolutely still loving Snow Leopard. Expose got a HUGE upgrade that is 10x better than before. Expose now includes minimized apps and even a better interface than before. You will notice some menus like long clicking dock icons look more iPhone-like too.

Overall, I am impressed with Snow Leopard even if some applications need to be updated or may never work again because of InputManagers being removed. Maybe we will see something different with this in the future from Apple or not. I do recommend the $30 or less upgrade. If you are upgrading from 10.4, you can upgrade to 10.6 from 10.4 so do not cave in and pay the even more increased price and save money by getting the $30 version as they are both the same.

My Top G1 Apps #3

G1screen0003 This is my third list of my top G1 Apps. I think I will do this every so often months just to give some people a fresh list of what is out there, what is better than previously was and so forth. If you would like to, you can read my previous top G1 apps lists here, #1 and #2.

I have since rooted my phone as of last week. I am sure if you have rooted your phone by now, you have already installed aNetShare if you at any point in time plan to tether your phone to your laptop/other devices. Also Advanced Task Manager is key to have to close apps in use.

If you use JesusFreke’s root, make sure you grab JF Updater if you have not. I however am not nor going to use any type of App2SD, I do not recommend using Move Cache either (see an earlier post of mine about this).

If you have not rooted your phone, unless you plan to tether, control tasks or do something else that requires root then you do not even bother to, though it is very, very easy to accomplish.

Since before I have removed AnyCut and replaced it with Better Cut. I actually decided to make my phone more Apple theme like using BetterCut to replace a few icons on the desktop (I am an Apple fan just not an AT&T fan).

I also decided to replace the default virtual keyboard that came with Cupcake with Better Keyboard.

If you do not know by now, make sure you download the new version for Google Maps. You will find it much better with more features, it sadly does not show up for an update until you do this. Google also just came out with a new application about 2 weeks ago called Places Directory and boy, what an amazing new app by Google. Very good and useful, I highly recommend adding it to your collection.

Here is the “full” app list I am currently using that I recommend that most people have or try out not including root apps: AK Notepad, Better Cut, Better Keyboard, aTrackDog which will check apps for updates, Movie Finder, My Account, MyBackup Pro which backup text messages, apps, contacts and more, OI File Manager, OI Flashlight, Places Directory which will find nearest gas stations, restaurants and more, ShopSavvy, Weather Channel, TuneWiki which is the best music player, Twidroid best Twitter client so far, Txtract which backs up text messages and WeatherBug.

OS X Native Twitter Apps

Lately and finally, more native true real OS X Twitter Apps have been coming around. So if you are looking to get away from those shitty Adobe Air apps like Seesmic, TweetDeck, Twhirl, Destroy Twitter or anything else. You have come to the right place. :)

There should be no reason why you are using those fake twitter apps especially on OS X. I can understand being use to them before these apps have finally arrived lately or if you are a Windows user using these Adobe Air apps.

Lounge is a great app. I am still using it as my main Twitter app along with Tweetie on the side. I mainly use Tweetie to scroll through my tweets faster as I can use the arrow keys. Lounges offers a great way to save searches and view linked tweets.

Tweetie is now a Mac app and no longer just a iPhone app. This app is probably the most beautiful Twitter app as far as user interface goes to use. Plus it has a great way to pick up where you left off such as what I always missed and from when I used Twitterrific (stopped using, not native and other reasons).

There is also Bluebird and Beak which I have not given too much of a try yet and might at a later date. But I am really liking Lounge and Tweetie right now a lot.

So Long, Circuit City

March 8th, 2009 marks the date that every Circuit City will officially be closed. I guess it is not just Circuit City that makes me have chills when hearing this or rather saying but among other companies that have already gone under that will be missed, that are going to be gone as well or headed there.

I will miss Circuit City, I know I a few bad experiences with them in the few end years. But I do have some fond memories there as well such as when I camped out on launch date for Xbox 360. What an awesome night that was and for the people I met. Camping out is always fun, not there are becoming very few places to camp out.

Circuit City really messed up many years ago and just continued to more. They should of never got rid of appliances, fired top smart employees and so forth. Now given, who knows what state they would be at if all this never happened, their mistakes, maybe they still would be going under. But it will be missed still. Very soon for how many businesses are going under in these scary times, we seem to be headed in the direction of Wall-E’s “Buy More” or also known today as Wal-Mart which they have already been doing almost 20 years though but you can really see it more than ever now.

Halo Wars Review

I decided to pick up Halo Wars, especially since it is an RTS and I like a new RTS from time to time. I am not a huge Halo fan but here it can easily be ignored. If you do not know if it has a story to it or not, it does when playing campaign mode and so far it seems to be great as well as they did a great job with the videos. From what I understand it takes 20 years before Master Chief.

After putting about 5 hours into it already and nearly done with ACT 2. I decided to take a break and write a review on it. This is a cut down RTS in my opinion compared to the Command and Conquer series on Xbox 360 and Civilization Revolution on Xbox 360. But if this scares you, it should not, there is little worrying to do here unlike in both of those games (I know there are a few more RTS on 360 but I have yet to play them) where you have a lot to do, control, build, defend, etc.

There is a lot here not only in Single Player but in Multiplayer as well, so if you are worried about putting this game away on the shelf after becoming bored of it, you should not worry unless you are that type of person then maybe you will just want to rent it. Online will give you many more hours to play out of this once you are finished with playing Campaign. You obviously can play Campaign further more on the harder difficulties like Legendary.

You also have Skirmish mode as well, very popular in RTS’s so nothing new there, I have yet to try that mode though, still playing through the Campaign. As long as people buy and continue to play online, online should be fun for those people that are into it. I doubt I will venture off into it yet alone play it a lot, I have many other games to play before this online anyways.

The menus and online (matchmaking) is just like Halo 3, so those that are coming from the Halo series to this, especially to try out this RTS because remember, Halo 3 is a FPS and this is an RTS. Totally different games if you did not know this yet.

Controls are and work great. I have no problems with them as I know many people always are fearful about how the controls for an RTS are on a console. They are much better and not as many either compared to the Command and Conquer series and others. You have your simple controls here like LB to select all units anywhere on the map and RB to select only units shown on screen. You press A or hold A to select a number of units, I am not too happy with when you hold A to select units as it creates a large circle after holding it more than about 2 seconds. Press B to not select anything, move your units with X and Y to use the units special ability.

There are not many problems I have come across except that sometimes your units block your path, I have had this happen a lot especially when you set down Cobras and clearly other units would be able to get past but they do not. They sometimes eventually find an alternative (takes a while) if there even is one. There is not much else I have run into that bugs me.

I love when you are given Spartans to control, they are awesome to have especially when you have a large group of them. They can not, they will go down as will Forge but as long as you have other units to go by him when his health is halfway again then you will never fail a mission unless you are trying to protect or accomplish something or whatever else going on.

To end this now, I am really enjoying the game. I think if you are new to RTS games and really want to try one out, this is definitely the game for you. I give it 4/5 stars.

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