Sunday, July 31, 2011
-I was just able to crank in another update before the end of the month. Almost missed it! It has been a gorgeous July here in the Red River Valley. We had a couple weeks where the heat index topped a 100 most days.
I took advantage of this by going camping with my dad on two weekends. We cooked a ton of food over the campfire, went on some hikes and got to attend service out at a new, gorgeous lakeside church that opened up a few years ago. We also ran into some scattered bouts of rain while we were out there, which gave us the opportunity to pump out some movies I brought along. I know it may seem ridiculous to bring movies along camping, but in case of any bad weather and random lulls during camping I thought it would be wise to bring them along.
The first camping trip we watched all three of the first X-Men movies. Part of me wishes FOX would have went all out with an R rating of the X-Men trilogy, because there were several scenes that felt compromised and restricted. They still held up pretty well though, and X-Men 3 was not as much a letdown as I remembered. Only other interesting development during the trilogy I did not recall was Halle Barry having a heavy African accent in the first movie much like Storm did in the excellent animated series from the early 90s. She inexplicably dropped the accent for the second two films, and in the third movie I got the feeling Halle must have been protesting for extra screen time because there are a few too many scenes of her preaching for mutant rights.
The second camping trip we watched the first two Spider-Man films. I still have not-so-fond memories of the third, and refuse to own it. Those two Spider-Man movies still hold up quite well, and I just cannot help but feel it is too early to be remaking the origin movie of Spider-Man again. It will most likely be good, but just feels too soon, and I cannot see why they could not have just done another movie set past the third film, but with different actors like they did with the second Hulk movie.
-A couple weeks ago I had another Risk all-nighter with Paul, Jim and Mike again, this time at Paul's new place. The one game we played went three and a half hours, and it was the most intense round of Risk I have ever played. It featured many great comebacks, and it was practically anybody's game. I believe it was the only game that went so long where we were only one set away from maxing out the Risk set card bonus. In the end, Mike won it all in a night filled with countless brews and good fun.
-WWE has been churning out some truly exciting television this past month. CM Punk has been tearing it up on the microphone and delivering many 4th-wall breaking promos that got me reeled in to tune in every week. It has been so fascinating that I recorded the first Cheap Pop episode in nearly three months where we speculated on the many directions this intriguing feud could go. Click here to give it a listen.
-I have been catching a fair amount of movies from Netflix and at the theaters lately. For big box office films I saw Captain America most recently, and it was better than I thought it would be. Hopefully next year's Avengers movie they continue to build up will be worth the wait. I took my mom to see Horrible Bosses, which we both chuckled at throughout.
From Netflix, I watched two excellent survivor movies in Buried and 127 Hours. Two great films, that probably did not cost all that much to make, hell the entirety of Buried takes place in a coffin. I also consumed Psych season 5 within about two weeks of the DVDs becoming available on Netflix, and I even have the one DVD out at a time plan was able to plow through them that quick. The Twin Pikes inspired episode titled "Dual Spires" was an awesome tribute to the original and is worth checking out. I also really dug the apparent end to the Yin/Yang serial killer trilogy of episodes.
Aside from the aforementioned X-Men and Spider-Man films, I also got around to finally finishing off volume two of the X-Men animated series from the early 90s, which concluded with a 5-part installment on the Phoenix Saga. I re-watched Stay Alive and GameBox 1.0 in research for an upcoming On Tap episode. I also watched the straight-to-video live action rendition of Tekken. It was not as terrible as I thought it was, and was about as good as it could get for videogame movies with some solid fights, and fitting portrayals of Tekken roster mainstays. If you want to hear more about it, click here to download the latest On Tap for my review.
There appears to be quite a few more videogame movie that just hit shelves in recent weeks. Uwe Boll just rocked out a third BloodRayne movie that went straight to video. A film adaptation of The King of Fighters went straight to video too this past week, and I was just surfing the newest additions to Netflix Instant Streaming and low and behold there was a sequel to Alone in the Dark that I never was aware of before. Looks like I will have my hands full in research for On Tap episodes.
-July was also a busy month for games. I plowed through Homefront, which I made the unfortunate mistake of playing through after beating the far superior Call of Duty: Black Ops. Finally TreyArch can say they made a Call of Duty campaign that can hold their own against Infinity Ward's best efforts. Homefront was ok, but did not live up to the blitzkrieg of media hype that THQ subjected us all too.
I got back into adventure games this month and finally beat the first episode of Penny Arcade after chipping away at it the past few months for a total of around 13 hours. I also finished the very first episode of Sam & Max, which was a much more manageable two to three experience and started the first Puzzle Agent on PC recently also. I started and finished the retro-RPG, Breath of Death VII that came out a couple weeks ago in about six hours. It is an ode to 8 and 16-bit RPGs, with many references to the great RPGs of those generations, and is well worth checking because it only goes for a buck off the 360 Indie Games Marketplace.
Finally, that Fallout 3 itch came crawling back and I finished The Pitt and Mothership Zeta DLC packs. Both took around three hours, with a little more time spent in the Pitt because I got addicted to Ingot hunting. Both experiences were pretty short, but the Pitt was still good 'ol Fallout fun, and while Zeta I give props for being something different, it just tried to play too much like a regular FPS, and Fallout 3 is anything but.
-That wraps it up for yet another blog, sorry to make your eyes bleed by the end of it. Later!
I took advantage of this by going camping with my dad on two weekends. We cooked a ton of food over the campfire, went on some hikes and got to attend service out at a new, gorgeous lakeside church that opened up a few years ago. We also ran into some scattered bouts of rain while we were out there, which gave us the opportunity to pump out some movies I brought along. I know it may seem ridiculous to bring movies along camping, but in case of any bad weather and random lulls during camping I thought it would be wise to bring them along.
The first camping trip we watched all three of the first X-Men movies. Part of me wishes FOX would have went all out with an R rating of the X-Men trilogy, because there were several scenes that felt compromised and restricted. They still held up pretty well though, and X-Men 3 was not as much a letdown as I remembered. Only other interesting development during the trilogy I did not recall was Halle Barry having a heavy African accent in the first movie much like Storm did in the excellent animated series from the early 90s. She inexplicably dropped the accent for the second two films, and in the third movie I got the feeling Halle must have been protesting for extra screen time because there are a few too many scenes of her preaching for mutant rights.
The second camping trip we watched the first two Spider-Man films. I still have not-so-fond memories of the third, and refuse to own it. Those two Spider-Man movies still hold up quite well, and I just cannot help but feel it is too early to be remaking the origin movie of Spider-Man again. It will most likely be good, but just feels too soon, and I cannot see why they could not have just done another movie set past the third film, but with different actors like they did with the second Hulk movie.
-A couple weeks ago I had another Risk all-nighter with Paul, Jim and Mike again, this time at Paul's new place. The one game we played went three and a half hours, and it was the most intense round of Risk I have ever played. It featured many great comebacks, and it was practically anybody's game. I believe it was the only game that went so long where we were only one set away from maxing out the Risk set card bonus. In the end, Mike won it all in a night filled with countless brews and good fun.
-WWE has been churning out some truly exciting television this past month. CM Punk has been tearing it up on the microphone and delivering many 4th-wall breaking promos that got me reeled in to tune in every week. It has been so fascinating that I recorded the first Cheap Pop episode in nearly three months where we speculated on the many directions this intriguing feud could go. Click here to give it a listen.
-I have been catching a fair amount of movies from Netflix and at the theaters lately. For big box office films I saw Captain America most recently, and it was better than I thought it would be. Hopefully next year's Avengers movie they continue to build up will be worth the wait. I took my mom to see Horrible Bosses, which we both chuckled at throughout.
From Netflix, I watched two excellent survivor movies in Buried and 127 Hours. Two great films, that probably did not cost all that much to make, hell the entirety of Buried takes place in a coffin. I also consumed Psych season 5 within about two weeks of the DVDs becoming available on Netflix, and I even have the one DVD out at a time plan was able to plow through them that quick. The Twin Pikes inspired episode titled "Dual Spires" was an awesome tribute to the original and is worth checking out. I also really dug the apparent end to the Yin/Yang serial killer trilogy of episodes.
Aside from the aforementioned X-Men and Spider-Man films, I also got around to finally finishing off volume two of the X-Men animated series from the early 90s, which concluded with a 5-part installment on the Phoenix Saga. I re-watched Stay Alive and GameBox 1.0 in research for an upcoming On Tap episode. I also watched the straight-to-video live action rendition of Tekken. It was not as terrible as I thought it was, and was about as good as it could get for videogame movies with some solid fights, and fitting portrayals of Tekken roster mainstays. If you want to hear more about it, click here to download the latest On Tap for my review.
There appears to be quite a few more videogame movie that just hit shelves in recent weeks. Uwe Boll just rocked out a third BloodRayne movie that went straight to video. A film adaptation of The King of Fighters went straight to video too this past week, and I was just surfing the newest additions to Netflix Instant Streaming and low and behold there was a sequel to Alone in the Dark that I never was aware of before. Looks like I will have my hands full in research for On Tap episodes.
-July was also a busy month for games. I plowed through Homefront, which I made the unfortunate mistake of playing through after beating the far superior Call of Duty: Black Ops. Finally TreyArch can say they made a Call of Duty campaign that can hold their own against Infinity Ward's best efforts. Homefront was ok, but did not live up to the blitzkrieg of media hype that THQ subjected us all too.
I got back into adventure games this month and finally beat the first episode of Penny Arcade after chipping away at it the past few months for a total of around 13 hours. I also finished the very first episode of Sam & Max, which was a much more manageable two to three experience and started the first Puzzle Agent on PC recently also. I started and finished the retro-RPG, Breath of Death VII that came out a couple weeks ago in about six hours. It is an ode to 8 and 16-bit RPGs, with many references to the great RPGs of those generations, and is well worth checking because it only goes for a buck off the 360 Indie Games Marketplace.
Finally, that Fallout 3 itch came crawling back and I finished The Pitt and Mothership Zeta DLC packs. Both took around three hours, with a little more time spent in the Pitt because I got addicted to Ingot hunting. Both experiences were pretty short, but the Pitt was still good 'ol Fallout fun, and while Zeta I give props for being something different, it just tried to play too much like a regular FPS, and Fallout 3 is anything but.
-That wraps it up for yet another blog, sorry to make your eyes bleed by the end of it. Later!
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