Tuesday, October 28, 2008

"It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes."

Time to revitalize this blog! Been awhile since I posted in here for obvious personal reasons, which are my exams. Which are gladly over last week only one more left which is situated in two weeks for some odd teacherish reason. This is week is an study/break week for me, no school at all so that leaves at lot of free time on my hands. So why didn't I post earlier after my exams? Well you know when you realize how much you miss something until it's gone? For those who know me I needed to play improv so, there was an 24 hour improv tournament this weekend and I was itching to play and it took me a day to recover. Now I'm back so I can start updating for my legion of fans (2-3 that I know of). Lots of catching up to do, especially in my gaming, see for me my online gaming isn't just about having fun its a way to stay connected with my friends who moved away. Since I wasn't able to play for the last week or two they've been or I've been dragging them to some gaming). Think I would make an epic informative interesting post with my comeback!? HA! Prepare for some small ranting and other quick stuff...

Battlefield 2142: Potatoes can't make me better at this game

I really do like this game a lot, nothing better than organizing a group on teamspeak and doing some kick ass futuristic first person ownage. The game is fully multiplayer, there isn't even an one player campaign mode so don't even plan on buying this one if you want a interesting story. Now things I hate. The learning curve, you start out not knowing what the hell you're doing and two seconds later brutally killed by an unknown opponent. I don't know if it was just me but at first I would die constantly fumbling with my weapons and equipment. Further worsening the situation they added this RPG like system to the game, and I do hate it when Americans try to make an RPG system. You start off with no equipments at all so you progressively unlock them with each rank up. At first you quickly rank up but then the requirements get higher and higher and the time span between rank up and unlocks become bigger and bigger. See how irritating that can get? Still not as bad as I make it seem, it is gratifying finally unlocking a special item.

You can't fix/destroy the vehicles with potatoes either. The vehicles are great, at least some of them are great. The walkers are like these giant robots with legs that are super strong with an high armor. The problem is that it has way to much armor and almost no weakness. Seems like the one in the walker most often will have the most kills in a match. They are also impossible to kill no machine gun will do them damage even a rocket launcher does minimal damage, often airstikes are used to finally bring the fucking tripod wannabe down. When the game loads there are "tips" shown at the bottom, one of those tips are "Walkers have vents in their undersides that are weak to any firearm.". Yes that might be true but it is near damn impossible to get under it for various reasons. 1. the driver will shoot and kill you 2. the co-pilot manning the turret on top of the walker will shoot you. 3. Other ground units will shoot you 4.incoming grenades and fire from your teammates that want to take down the walker will hit you 5. You can't run as fast as the walker can walk. Even if you do manage to get under it you soon realize it was a huge waste because shooting the vents does damage but barely anything to destroy it and it will notice you and take a step forward and insert 20 pounds of led into your ass. There also the flying vehicles, there two vehicles the carrier and the fighter. The fighter is fine but the carrier is a piece of crap. I nicknamed it the moose, know why? Have you ever tried to fly a moose? Well it's the equivalent experience.

Still a great game, but now for a little less ranting.

Batman vs Dracula

I watched this yesterday kinda confused on how I missed it because it was made in 2005. At first looking at the info I though it was the old Batman series from the 90's but soon realized that it was the new Batman series cleverly named "The Batman" .Because nowadays we don't need "The animated series" attached to a product to know what it is. Seriously did they think we wouldn't know that it was animated without it being labeled? Back on topic, I found the concept of Batman fighting Dracula very hilarious, surely this isn't the first time Batman fights Dracula in his history? I was very surprised at the quality and the movie as a whole.

The movie takes on this cinematic look especially in the actions scenes, you see things thing normally seen in movie now used in an animated. For example slowing down a hard hit for a second then speeding it up right when he hits them and in one scene the vampires see Batman and for a second you see inside Batman with his veins and heart. All very little details but those are the small things that make the movie. I'm sure that there are a lot of other little instances like that, but that would require I second watch methinks.

The whole events are very improbable, the premise is that Dracula was though to be killed years ago but they shipped the body to America so it could be buried in a safe place and that safe place is now Gotham cemetery. After the Penguin escapes he revives Dracula by mistake. Now the penguin doesn't play a huge role he really only plays comic relief. The other Bat villain to come into play is the Joker of course and he is awesome in this movie. Never did like the joker from "The Batman" but in this one he is pretty twisted. People are going to hate me for this, but I like better the Mark Hamilton Joker than the Heath Ledger Joker. That statement has nothing do with this film but I just had to get that out.

The movie is way darker than the series itself. Shows a lot more blood than expected, it is Dracula after all. Still they did censor it quite a bit, when Batman gets cut he doesn't bleed or anything, just a scratch. One scene in the blood bank is pretty twisted and creepy, but yet again they censored blood the American way by changing the color. In this scene there a lot of blood it even rains blood at a point. The problem is that because of the lighting the blood is dark and not red almost black. They pulled the same thing with Castlevania for the Genesis, turning the blood green, because green isn't blood its ooze and that a-ok for parents!There a numerous times were they change the blood color so it makes it Ok and I'm sick of it. Still might be just me over thinking it again, the dark colors fit the scene and ambience of it really well. This is the darkest animated film, yes even darker than the uncut version of The Return of The Joker.

In the end it was still predictable, but the actions scenes and the dark feel of an animated Batman makes it worth the watch. It even has small camp value with cheesy lines for the penguin like "Breakfast in bed freshly squeezed" right when Dracula eats someone in his coffin. Well at least there weren't any Bat Credit Cards (For those who don't know or remember, consider yourself lucky). Oh also there's Dracula renaming himself Alucard while in human form! How clever we never saw that in modern media before!

Last note: I will be attempting to complete the whole Megaman X franchise during my week off, already at X3 . So watch out for a Megaman related post! Just to clear things up I won't be searching for 100% just the final boss battle.

2 comments:

Siskoid said...

Actually, while we do call it Batman: The Animated Series (to differentiate with other things called Batman), it was never so titled on the show itself. The opening sequence had no words appearance and no title.

Martin Léger said...

Sometimes I wonder about what you don't know about superheroes.