Reviews

Snakes on a Plane... the review

Chris Williams — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:25:58 GMT

Let me start by saying I really like Samuel L. Jackson. I hope he had fun making this movie. It looked like he had fun. Surely he had more fun making it than I had watching it. This movie sucked. It sucked in a way that defies words. In sucked in that way that Love Boat reruns you watched with your grandmother when you were a kid sucked. Only more so.

I had a plan. Samuel L. Jackson has a certain "signature" phrase he uses a lot in movies. Knowing this, and knowing I was in for a bad movie, I decided to play a game. Every time Mr. Jackson used his signature phrase, I would take a drink. It was a good plan, and secretly I hoped that I wouldn't even be able to finish the movie... having taken so many drinks, you see?

Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be. On the upside, since I remained sober for pretty much the entire movie, I was possessed of the mental faculties necessary to Twitter my impressions of the film as it went along. I'll let that suffice as my review.

Remember, Twitter has a 140 character limit, so brevity is key here...

home at last, McD's chicken nuggets and Snakes On A Plane DVD after a 12 hour day at work. life is good again.

every time SLJ says MF, I take a drink. I wonder if I'll make it to the end of the movie.

wow this movie is bad. 23 minutes in... first snake sighting, still no MF from SLJ though. No drinks yet.

damn that's a lot of snakes. damn this movie is dumb. SLJ just tazered a Cobra.

thank god there's a professional kickboxer on the plane to save the hot chick and the gay flight attendant from all the snakes.

the gay flight attendant is now sucking the poison out of the rappers fat bodyguard's ass... and still no drink for me. SLJ you let me down.

oh noes... both pilots are dead... fortunately SLJ knows how to fly a bigass plane... and still no drinks for me. someone lied to me

crap the honeymoon couple just got eaten. .. and now the giant damn python is loose. snooty french guy threw a chihuahua at the snake. HAHA

armed with only a zippo, a can of hairspray and a mag-lite, SLJ fixes the air conditioning... thank god!! germphobe rapper is freaking out.

OMGNFW SLJ finds a speargun in the cargo hold and kills a rattlesnake with it. such a good shot!!

all the hot chicks are hugging SLJ and the germ-phobe rapper gave him an air-five... awww the pilot we thought was dead wasn't, but is now.

YES!! two drinks in 10 seconds!! 1 hour and 26 minutes in...

SLJ just shot out the windows to suck all the snakes out while Keenan (yes that Keenan) climbs into the cockpit to LAND THE PLANE!!

oh god BRACE FOR IMPACT!!

whooo another drink!! annnnd we're safe. on. the. ground.

damn. gay flight attendant had a hot girlfriend after all... and SLG gets a date w/ the hot stewardess who was quitting to go to law school.

well it was an hour and 40 minutes I'll never, ever, get back. but... oooh two more drinks!!!

and its over.

hope you all enjoyed it as much as I did...

Star Wars: The Clone Wars - a review

Chris Williams — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 23:39:18 GMT

This review will contain naughty words. I don't know how many because that phrase is the first thing I typed, other than the title. I just know there's going to be some.

I went to see a matinee of Star Wars: The Clone Wars today. There were 9 of us, ages ranging from 10 to older than me, so it seems like a good spread.

I'll give you the short version first since there's a lot of ADD geeks out there (like me) who are about to stop reading if I don't get on with it...

THE SHORT REVIEW: It Didn't Suck. Sorry to disappoint all the haters, but well... there you have it. I liked it.

If you care WHY I liked it, and want to hear me rant on a few other tangentially related topics (and get to the aforementioned swear words) then keep reading.

THE LONG REVIEW:

Let me start off by saying this: Fuck Harry Knowles and all the haters going off about this movie. Harry has been a Star Wars fanboy since before the term existed, but for some reason has chosen to crap all over this movie. It's as though George Lucas himself came over and broke all of Harry's action figures. Sorry Harry, but you're way off in left field on this one. I'll even tell you why.

Star Wars came out in 1977. I don't know how old you were then, but I was 7 (seven) and I loved it. Over the years, I had all the toys, read the novels, read the comics, had the Halloween costumes, watched the Super 8 version until it broke, bought the VHS, the re-released VHS, the DVDs, saw all the movies, etc. Now, other than the occasional action figure, I haven't bought a Star Wars toy for myself in at least 15 years. Somewhere along the way, I grew up. I still enjoy the movies, as do my kids, but I've accepted one fact in all this. You and I are no longer the target audience for these movies. This is a good thing.

Some people expect the Star Wars movies to "mature" at the same rate we have (ok, well, some of us have.) As these people get older and their tastes inevitably change, and their expectations change, they expect each new Star Wars film to be darker and grittier than the one before it, to the point of resembling something decidedly un-Star Wars. Well, guess what... it's not happening. It's not GOING to happen, no matter how much lesbian sith fan fiction you write, it's just not going to happen. Star Wars has ALWAYS been for children.

Let me repeat that. Star Wars. (check) Kid's Movies. (check) That doesn't mean we as adults can't enjoy them... of course we can. It's Sci-Fantasy escapism. Good guys fighting bad guys, in a black and white world. The bad guys are evil for the sake of evilness. The good guys are good why? Because the bad guys are Soooo evil. Just pay your $5 and enjoy it and shut the hell up.

So Harry, if you want to get pissed at someone for wasting your money or your time, forget George Lucas and consider the theatres who charge $11 for 80 cents worth of popcorn and soda. Those are the real bastards in this story. If you still can't get past it, and I know you probably can't, consider this for money wasted: The hundred or thousands of dollars you spend on those toys that you buy and never play with, because they'll "appreciate in value," are a waste of money. Why? Because if you never sell them, the value doesn't mean squat. Or how about those $200 (each) light saber replicas you bought that you keep in their boxes because you're afraid your (random relative) will break it if he touches it? Or maybe that hooker you wasted $150 on for those 20 awkward minutes and that lonnnng car ride back home alone. $5 for an hour and a half of Star Wars immersion seems like a pretty good deal after that, huh?

I see you complain about how silly the movie is. You don't like the baby Huttlet. You don't like Jabba's oddly effiminate uncle Hutt in Coruscant. (For the record, he was a little creepy.) Personally, I've always hated the inherent silliness in the Droid Army dialog, and this film is no exception but I can overlook it. You know WHY I can overlook it? Because I'm not one of these basement dweller jackasses who re-validates their pathetic existence with each new Star Wars film. I don't have mountains of action figures, still on the original card. I don't wear Darth Maul costumes or list Jedi as my religion.

You know what made this a good movie? The fact that the ten year old sitting next to me LOVED IT! He laughed at all the silly parts and oooh'ed at all the explosions and ahhh'ed when the bad guys got what was coming to them. THAT is what made this a good movie. I was right there with him too, enjoying every minute of it.

This is a Star Wars movie. Who cares that the guy who did Walker, Texas Ranger composed the score instead of John Williams? Who cares that the animation style was different than the Clone Wars shorts on Cartoon Network? Who cares that the random voice actress that spoke for Asajj Ventriss wasn't the same person in this movie? Does it really matter? Does it really keep you from enjoying the movie, because you're so hung up on your elitist fantasy of what a Star Wars movie "should" be? Shame on you Harry.

So, back to my short review. I liked the movie. It's fun and clever, and maybe a little sillier than the other movies, but it hits all the happy buttons for its target audience. Expecting more than that of any movie, Star Wars or otherwise, is just absurd. Don't go expecting Empire Strikes Back or 300 or Gladiator. Go expecting a fun kid's movie set in the Star Wars universe and you won't be disappointed.

WALL-E

Chris Williams — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 14:21:41 GMT

I went to see WALL-E earlier this week (Yes, I know it's supposed to be a dot and not a dash. Call it a hardware limitation.)

I wasn't in a big hurry to see this movie. The sense of urgency that I felt for Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Hancock, The Dark Knight, etc this summer so far, just wasn't there. It was more like "oh look, WALL-E is playing. Well, I've seen everything else TWICE, so why not?"

My daughters are in from Atlanta for most of the summer, so we're seeing a lot of movies. They wanted to see WALL-E. So we went to see WALL-E.

Anyway, lest I bore you with seemingly irrelevant personal details... my review.

It's a good movie. It's Pixar, so you know the production quality is first rate. It has funny moments. It has, umm... endearing moments. It's cute. Lots of cute. There are some pretty clever aspects of it, including how fat and decadent the human race has become. How we trashed an entire planet (literally) because we apparently never learned to recycle. How Corporate Big Box America is destroying our planet (yes, we're talking to you WalMart...)

The message is loud and clear, but it never becomes heavy handed or overbearing. Even to the adults. Ok, let's face it, none of this crap matters a bit to the kids... (and some adults) to them it's just a funny love story about two robots. If you're paying attention, yes there's a point to be made, semi-preachy but smothered in enough cute to make it easy to swallow.

If you're like me though, it's fairly easy to ignore the message and enjoy the movie. Like I said, it's funny. It's quirky, with interesting characters. Even the robots are decidedly non-Robotic, including the very OCD cleaning robot. (In my opinion, he's the funniest character in the movie.) WALL-E represents a rather pathetic figure, hanging out with a lone cockroach until EVE shows up.

Yes, there's one cockroach on an entire planet covered in junk and waste. Talk about missed potential for comic relief. There should be BILLIONS of TRILLIONS of those nasty little bugs. Sorry, I digress.

Anyway, things start to get a bit more interesting once the movie gets to space. Everything is clean and polished and pretty. Except for the people of course.

I don't want to talk too much about the later story for fear of ruining any surprises, so I'll give one final gripe and then wrap it up. The trailer is a lie. So many movie trailers these days show stuff that's not in the movie. Kung-Fu Panda did it, and WALL-E is no exception. I really really hate this. HATE IT!! It makes me nuts.

ok, sorry about that.

Anyway, my final verdict is this: Go see it. It's cute and if you have kids you probably won't have a choice anyway.

Hancock

Chris Williams — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 05:17:02 GMT

I just got back from the 9:30 showing of Hancock.

Let me start off by saying this is a great superhero movie, but it's NOT a comic book movie. (Well... until Dark Horse starts cranking out comic movies anyway.) The point is, you can't really compare it to Iron Man or Spiderman. If you do, you'll be disappointed. There's no canon, no established history. This is something fresh and new and unlike anything you've seen before.

I really REALLY enjoyed this movie.

Imagine drunk and dirty Superman from Superman III... sitting in a bar flicking peanuts through the mirror. Now instead of one scene, picture most of a movie that way. Hancock is a total asshole and you can't help but love him for it.

There's a great joke, that goes something like this:

This salesman walks into a fancy bar on the 60th floor of a new highrise, sits down and orders a drink.
The guy sitting next to him is a bit tipsy, and he looks over and says "I bet you didn't know this but the winds this high up are so strong you can jump out the window and they'll blow you back in."
The salesman looks doubtful, so the second guy hops off the barstool, runs and jumps through the window... falls for a bit and then wooooosh comes back in through the window, landing on his feet.
The salesman says "holy shit that's the most amazing thing I've ever seen..." and so he runs and jumps through the window, falling to his death.
The bartender looks up and says, you know, you're a real asshole when you're drunk Superman.

That joke could just as easily be about Hancock... because that's the kind of guy he is. He may be a hero, and he may save lives, but he doesn't give a damn about you. It's just something he's compelled to do.

He does eventually clean up his act, mostly, although there's enough comic relief even after his "hero turn" to keep you laughing. A few folks have said this isn't a superhero movie, it's a comedy. Those people are wrong. This is very much a superhero movie, it just happens to be one that's funny as hell.

There's also a great scene in this movie with Daeg Faerch which was a nice surprise since I didn't even know he was in it. (if you don't know who this is, you're missing out. He played the young Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween.) He is one creepy looking little dude.

Anyway, I don't want to spoil the movie too much, but there are a few good twists that certain sites have already spoiled (this is why I try not to read reviews beforehand.)

Oh and there's an excellent soundtrack as well.

I'll probably see this again in the theatre and I'll definitely buy it on DVD.

Bluetooth Rearview Mirror

Chris Williams — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:04:58 GMT

I (relatively) recently received a handsfree bluetooth rearview mirror kit as my prize from Community-Credit.com.

This weekend, I finally got around to hooking it up. First impressions are good. The mirror just clips right on top of the existing mirror and is held in place by some spring loaded clips. I like the fact that this mirror is about 25% wider than my original mirror, giving me a better field of vision. The mirror does seem darker though, but not so much to be a problem.

Pairing the bluetooth to my phone was quick and painless, and a small blue led lights up when connected. On the side of the mirror is a small earpiece that connects via magnet. So you can use the speaker on the mirror or the earpiece for more privacy.

Sound quality is acceptable, and if you have voice tags set up on your phone, the hands free dialing is nice too although I had to speak pretty loud for it to recognize the voice tag.

I don't know how long battery life is because I haven't driven anywhere long enough for it to get a full charge... so far I've been keeping it plugged into the lighter. If the charge light ever goes out, I'll unplug it and see how long it lasts.

The incoming calls feature is kinda cool, since it shows caller id on the mirror surface. I've tested the incoming calls a few times and it's kinda nice just hitting a button on the front of the mirror.

All in all, I'm a bit of a gadget geek so I'm pretty happy with it. I've seen these things go for around $100 at MicroCenter, which is probably more than I'd be willing to pay. If the price goes down though, it's worth snatching one up.

my thoughts on SlickEdit

Chris Williams — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 16:04:14 GMT

I got a review copy of SlickEdit recently and over the last couple weeks, I fired it up to check it out. These are my thoughts...

Overall, it's a lightweight alternative to Visual Studio .NET. I can customize the look and feel and can build from it, and the memory footprint seems pretty small, so it's not all bad.

It's not all good either. I don't know if I'm just spoiled on Visual Studio, but a lot of the "not entirely necessary, but nice to have" features that I've come to rely on just aren't there. Or if they are there, I can't find them.

Could Visual Studio be more intuitive than SlickEdit?

It was for me. If I open a solution file, I assume it's going to open the solution, not just show me the contents of the file. It didn't occur to me that I had to open a workspace in order to see my solution. Sure I figured it out eventually, but it wasn't obvious.

Hitting F5 to debug is pretty intuitive, except I had to go in and configure some command line stuff first before it would work. Fail. If they can configure it to build right out of the box, then debug should be just as easy.

This probably sounds more negative than I mean it to be. It's not a bad product, and I'm sure there is a market for it. If I had more time to really dig into all of the various features and settings, I might like it better, but for now (and the foreseeable future) I'm sticking with Visual Studio .NET.

Radeon HD 2600 XT

Chris Williams — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:29:00 GMT

This is not a review. This is just me complaining. If you like that sort of thing, keep reading. If you're looking for a review, check back in a month or two.

My Radeon 9800 AIW card was serving pretty well under Vista, but I hadn't upgraded in a few years and figured why not... time for a boost. My ASUS mobo isn't PCI-e so I looked around for a high end AGP card. I found the Radeon HD 2600 XT (512MB, AGP 8x) and thought... hey this looks like a good card. It says it supports Vista and DX10 so I ordered it.

First off, out of the box there is no support for Vista. So that was a little frustrating. Downloading drivers isn't anything new to me though, so after a few false starts and reboots, I eventually get the machine stable long enough to DL the ginormous install package and then uninstall the card, reboot and begin the process again of installing proper drivers.

The most recent drivers are dated 1/16/08 so that seems pretty recent, although I do think it's odd that my card doesn't show up in ATI's drop down list with all the others. (The PCIe edition is listed, just not the AGP) Oh well... I grab the latest Catalyst drivers and off I go...

Except, well... I don't. For some reason, the installer keeps crapping out. It can't find the card, then it can, then it can't. It says I have a generic VGA (which for the record would make it one hell of an expensive generic vga card) then it sees my card. I get spontaneous freeze, reboots, etc...

I check all the obvious stuff. Very frustrating. extra power to the card, reseat the card, uninstall reinstall, etc... eventually I get to a more or less stable environment again... only none of my games that worked before will work now. Except WoW... good old WoW works fine. Hellgate claims to support DX10 but it crashes when running with the new card. Oblivion crashes with the new card. etc... HA! runs fine of course, but who the hell needs 512MB of Video RAM to run an ascii based console app?

So... I'm selling off my arcade games and of course, my 360 is still busted. I almost caved in and paid the $99 but I remembered how much I had wasted on this stupid video card and decided I was just throwing good money after bad.

Now that I can't do any gaming, maybe I'll finish that Sharepoint book I've been forcing myself to read. Who knows. It's either that or stick my head back in Azeroth and flush the remainder of my free time. Jason did it... I guess I could too.

The "WoW Ancient Enemies FragMat Mousepad" Review

Chris Williams — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 17:20:16 GMT

The World of Warcraft "Ancient Enemies" FragMat Mousepad review

Let me start by quoting the marketing materials:

"The World Of Warcraft^® Ancient Enemies FragMat Gaming Mouse Pad from Ideazon^™ provides your mouse with a smooth surface ensuring precise and accurate control. It is made of high quality materials for both laser and optical gaming mice and provides you with high gaming performance. With Non slip under-padding, slim profile of 0.07-inches and a excellent gliding surface, this Mouse Pad is the ideal surface for your mouse."

Like hell it is...

Don't get me wrong, as far as the graphics go, it's beautiful but you'll get better performance out of framing it and hanging it on your wall.

Some good points first:
1. it's pretty
2. it's slick, so you don't get dirt and crumbs and junk built up on it.
3. it doesn't slide around much, depending on the surface you put it on.

The problem:
1. I can't speak for laser mice, but the various optical mice I tried perform horribly on this mouse pad. My cursor constantly jumps all over the place with this mat.
2. It's pretty expensive. I've seen prices ranging from $18 - $22 for this mat.

So basically, I bought it because it's WoW. I like looking at it, but it kinda sucks as a mousepad, especially for the price.

Caligari GameSpace review

Chris Williams — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:55:51 GMT

I've been messing with this in my occasional free time for a few weeks now. If you havent heard of it, it's a fairly high end 3D graphics authoring environment specifically for Game Devs.

There's also a lite version, which this review focuses on. The full version is about $300 and the "lite" version is free. From what I can tell, the lite version offers a decent subset of the full package. Less polygons and less export formats to choose from, no plugins, a watermark and no real support to speak of, of course.

Hmm... and no manual. Ok, I understand limiting functionality, and maybe even giving a time limit. But the whole thing about no manual is irksome. How can I (as a 3d newb) properly evaluate the package if I dont know what I'm doing and there's no manual to read? I tried clicking on Help and got the choice of an About box or "Contents." Clicking "Contents" resulted in absolutely nothing.

(Before you warm up your flamethrowers... yes, technically, there IS a manual, but you have to buy it for $15. So I'm still not happy.)

So, being that I'm a total 3D newb, I figured I would just start randomly clicking on stuff here and there to see what happens. There are lots of pretty icons and some even have popup labels. Most of the labels used terms I was completely unfamiliar with, and with no manual... (see above) I was pretty lost.

After a couple hours of futsing with it... I got a few basic shapes on screen and set about sculpting and shaping them into mostly unrecognizeable stuff. Technically I got about 4 spheres on screen, and eventually figured out how to get other "primitives" as well. That's the right word for it too... I felt like a caveman compared to some people using this tool. Eventually after much clicking, I got a cone on there as well.

The interface used for manipulating the objects onscreen is actually fairly intuitive, although I certainly had my share of missteps. Basically you click on the section you want to manipulate and then you can click and drag to push pull twist etc the piece in question.

Eventually I made a snowman. Ok, I made three spheres on top of each other. Sorta. Turns out once I discovered the tool that let me rotate my world (camera?) I also discovered that my three spheres werent on top of each other at all... they just looked that way from my perspective. So back to the drawing board.

This software does A LOT. Unfortunately I havent even scratched the surface after a few hours of playing. I'm pretty sure the manual would help, and I'm tempted to buy it, but I'm not really a 3D kinda guy (and not even sure I want to be at this point.)

It's funny, we see in 3D, live in 3D and to an extent we think in 3D. so why is it so damn hard to design in 3D? I'm not knocking the product here, or 3D people, so much as just expressing my own inability to grasp what must be fairly basic concepts to people who do this for fun & profit.

Unfortunately, I'm not really able or qualified to put this product through it's paces enough to give it an unqualified thumbs up or down. It seemed hellishly complex, but I did eventually figure a few things out on my own... without the manual, so I guess that says something about it, or me, I'm not sure which.

and I finally finished my snowman. Maybe I'll ask Santa for the manual for Christmas.

The bottom line is this, if you're the sort of person who works with 3D graphics for games, this seems like a pretty good choice and you'll probably already know how to do more with it out of the box than I ever will even after reading the manual. On the other hand, if you're a TOTAL newb like me, I'm betting there is something simpler and certainly cheaper. (I hear Milkshape isnt bad)

update: Feel free to buy me the manual if you're so inclined...

Hellgate London review

Chris Williams — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 03:11:47 GMT

I don't get many chances to play games any more, at least not for lengthy periods of time. It's usually a few minutes here and there. I haven't played WoW in well over a month, although I sign in periodically just to stay updated on patches.

So I'm not really sure why, but I picked up a copy of Hellgate London a few weeks ago. I think it was the cool looking box that did me in. I even bought the Collector's Edition in the big ass box. I'm a sucker for packaging, what can I say?

Anyway, I let the game sit on my shelf, mocking me for a few days... I considered returning it. Eventually, my curiosity got the better of me and I ripped it open and installed it. Installation went smoothly enough, no errors or weird messages... always nice.

I fired up the game and watched the intro movie, pretty cool. Compelling story. After watching it (twice actually) I made a character, customized the look a bit (I enjoy this part more than I should) and jumped into the game.

The plan was to play for 30 minutes to an hour. So, four and a half hours later, I decided I really like this game. It's more sci-fi than fantasy, swords and lazer pistols, demons and undead, hellgates and teleporters. So basically it's Science Fantasy, which is a genre I actually like better than hard fantasy or sci-fi by themselves.

The action is pretty basic. Melee combat is point and click Diablo style, except more first person style, although you can zoom back a bit and make it over the shoulder, which is how I play it. Ranged combat does require some aiming. You have a health pool and a mana pool, and ways to refill both in combat. So there's definitely some Diabloesque action here. You find way more stuff than you can use, and you have an easy means to sell it off... with on demand teleporters to get you from the action to the store and back.

There's very little "new" here, quite honestly. Like I said it takes one of my favorite games of all time, gives it a first person feel, interesting storyline, interesting characters, cool weapons and different character classes. So far, I am loving it.

I just finished the first "chapter" a couple days ago (Sunday) and I haven't played since because I've been too busy, but I'm looking forward to some quality gaming time this weekend.

I can't honestly say that the collector's edition is worth the extra $10 because I havent looked at a single extra yet... but the box looks awesome on my game shelf. :)

Also, I don't know that I'll subscribe or not, because there's a ton of playability in the solo game, but apparently you can subscribe to an online part of the game as well. I just kinda skimmed through it, but apparently there's some MMO aspect to it, along with additional content? We'll see... it will be a while before I jump into that. I still need to finish the game as a swordmaster, and then try all the other classes.

If you're looking for a fun, addictive game with a good storyline and lots of action. You can do a lot worse than Hellgate London.