Archive for December, 2007
I saw The Golden Compass this past weekend and it sucked pretty bad if you ask me. I can see where it would make for a good book, and there were some interesting things in the movie here and there, but for the most part, the movie was formulaic and cliche in almost every way possible. To top it off, it was boring, and was pretty much devoid of any imagination, and even the concepts that were interesting in theory had such poor execution that the point of it was lost. The movie really led me to believe that the only way you could really enjoy it is if you were either extremely young, extremely inexperienced in or apathetic towards the majesty of cinema, or someone who has read the book. It took far far too long to get started, and it was pretty quick and anti-climactic to finish. I can see how it would be difficult to make a movie out of the kind of story it was, but the problems really went beyond an inability to convey significant details in precious little time. In fact I felt that the movie did tell a surprising amount of information despite keeping the audience uninterested and unaware of it.
Also, what’s up with the slew of uglies in the movie? Outside of Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, roughly every character looked so damn ugly, it hurt. I was actually getting annoyed having to look at the main character’s teeth every time she decided to be a bratty loud mouth, which is roughly 99% of the movie. It’s mind boggling really, I can imagine not-so-great-looking adults, but cute and adorable kids? For real these have to be a dime-a-dozen. I can’t remember the last time I saw a kid that I thought was ugly. I think they were really banking on the fact that her first name was Dakota and people liked that dumbass Dakota Flanning. When exactly did loud-mouthed asshole kids become so popular anyway? Hmm, maybe they were always popular and I just grew up.
It’s a shame that this movie will probably make more money than Stardust, which is a far superior, and in fact a fantastic fantasy movie. I’m reading some of the reviews for this movie on Rotten Tomatoes and seriously, some of the writers of these positive reviews just had to have been “bribed.” Most of the negative reviews are hilariously right-on though.
December 10th, 2007
by Anuj
I found this great new game that I think everyone would find interest in if they are into this kind of thing. It’s called the simExchange and it’s like play-stock market for gamers… well more specifically for gamers that are interested in the “politics” of games. In essence it tracks NPD data for most games in the current generation on a monthly and a lifetime setting. It also tracks the Metacritic score a game will get.
So in essence you are buying stock in a game and investing in it. You play with play money called DKP where 1DKP = 10,000 sales of a game or 1 Metacritic score. If you think a game will do well, you buy buy buy! If you think it will do worse than it is projected at the moment, you sell sell sell! And like the stock market, it’s all based on “investor” interactions where the current “price” is based on their selling and buying tendencies; take a look at how Super Smash Bros. Brawl is doing right now! Anyway, it is a little complicated, and particularly more complicated than I just described, but it’s very addicting and a lot of fun! It’s something you can spend minutes a day with or hours with, much like the stock market! I recommend you all at least check it out. Also when you do create an account, feel free to friend me: AnujSuper9.
December 7th, 2007
by Anuj
Alas I make this post because the video told me to… and of course it’s an interesting and amusing video/song. Also, it’s certainly not as easy as the video makes it sound… I think everyone with some kind of website has hopes and ideas of being able to do something like that with it, but I think it requires things from you as the developer, sacrifices that aren’t seen on the surface of the simplicity that make it questionable if it’s worth it or not. Ah ‘get rich quick,’ always easy on paper… even easier in your head.
Oh and a snippet of my opinion, myspace sucks, facebook is pretty awesome.
December 6th, 2007
by Anuj
So last night I noticed a dashboard update to the Xbox360 dashboard, which I thought was mostly pretty cool! Most of the changes seemed kinda pointless, but it did add efficiency and I’m always a fan of efficiency.
I guess they also took this time to unveil the new and highly talked about feature, which would be the “Xbox Originals,” which seems to be the ability to pay $15 for classic favorites on the Xbox and then be able to emulate their play from your hard drive instead of from your disk. If you ask me, this is a ripoff… you could find most of these games on shelves for under $15 bucks anyways, and you get no added features or support by downloading it, no 360 menus or dashboard options, no achievements, no content addtions or things via the 360Live system, not really anything new. I don’t really expect a whole new game with features that didn’t exist when the game was first released, but I expect some reason to pay for this.
Also, comparisons to the Wii VC are undeniable, but I think the comparison would be more fitting if you saw GameCube games on the VC for $15, and furthermore, it seems to me that Wii VC titles are a lot harder to come by, the prices are much more reasonable, and you’d actually have to connect another console to your TV to play these games, which, depending on the game, is reason enough (IMO).
Oh hey also, I got the Psychonauts theme which was awesome, and that’s probably the coolest thing about the new Xbox Originals update is that they are giving away themes for those things free instead of charging the dollar or two they normally might to especially rip you off. I’m sure it won’t be long before they add price tags to those things. But anyway, I did get the Psychonauts theme because Psychonauts is awesome. You can see it in the pictures I took with my cell phone above. But hey, you know what’s also weird, for some reason I’m getting my messages from other people in Spanish!
December 5th, 2007
by Anuj
