Southpaw Samurai

For what it's worth, while the IMAX version is nice for its pure size, the 3D is a mixed bag. It's twenty minutes in four various scenes. The 3D REALLY works in the slow, panoramic shots (such as the pan over the Kent farm)... definitely gives you a feel of you being there. In other scenes, it still unfortunately feels like the old school 'Viewmaster layer' 3D movies. And what suffers the most is the plane sequence. It's cool, but between all the random objects flying about and the herky-jerky camera, it is almost more distracting. Still, if you enjoyed the movie the first time through, seeing it with the bonus of the 3D should be worth it. Still wish they let you keep the glasses, though... all the potential after-movie Clark Kent/glasses of disguise humor you could have with those big, honking spectacles....

This movie made me beleive that a geeky World of Warcraft junkie (Routh claims it himself) can fly... and be Superman. It's sort of funny. Everyone was worried if Routh could pull it off. He does... his Clark is very downplayed, but does come across as a sweet little nerd. His Superman has much of the same charisma and wholesomeness as Reeves'... to the point where even though he does have some creepy abuses of his power to verify the romantic situation, you almost can write it off. As for his build, I don't know why Superman needs to be a bulked out character anyway. He wasn't always and the concept is sort of silly. Tall, athletic, ripped... yeah, but bulkiness is created through controlled damaging of muscles. How exactly does Superman strain himself that much? I mean, the guy can bench press islands! As for the rest: Lois is currently a flatline for me. I'll need to rewatch it. Bosworth just really hit me in any direction. Lois is strong, but she's a little dull and common in this. Maybe she rehearsed all her lines with Orlando Bloom.... Jimmy is a good variation. Less 'golly-gee', but certainly still a bit goofy. Perry is, like Jimmy, one of those tragic Superman characters that's often not much more than background noise, but so intrinsic to the Superman mythos you have to have him stand in the light for a line or two (speaking of which, he DOES get his trademark line in). Langella does good with what he gets and there does seem to be a lining of compassion under the gruffness. Marsden has an interesting character... one that makes me want Singer and the writing crew to stay on just to see the development. He's almost a foil for Supes in that he's as honorable and heroic as Kal-el without all the superpowers. Spacey plays Luthor with a relish. He's definitely continuing the Hackman Luthor, which is both good and bad. Bad because Spacey could've been told to recreate Luthor as really scarey. Good because Hackman's Luthor might piss off hardcore fans, but he's fun. I've never had a problem with Luthor being a little flippant and a tad mad... really smart folk are often a little odd. It's always been the hair brained schemes that are the problem.... ....and SPOILERS that's where both this Luthor and the whole 'evil plan' portion of the plot loses me. END SPOILERS That said, the movie was enjoyable, if a bit long with all the stuff that'll probably make your wife/girlfriend interested in seeing it with you. And the 'I thought she had TWO Poms' scene has got to be one of the most subversively evil moments I've seen in a movie recently.

Broadside was such a sad toy. As a kid, you had to love the concept... a jet AND an aircraft carrier... and a robot that has an axe! But I pulled him out of one of my boxes a few weeks back. He's a brick. Flip him one side and he sort of looks like a carrier. Flip him over and he's... well, he sort of resembles a brick with wings and tailfins... you could make a more aerodynamic plane with Lincoln logs. Flip and pull a few pieces and you have a brick with a head and barely articulated things resembling arms... And as a character? The guy got seasick and was afraid of heights! What sick person forced his alternate forms on him?!?

And you thought Superman's writers had a hard time coming up with challenges for the near-omnipotent Kryptonian? Imagine writing for THIS series: Our Father, Who art in heaven, please put on some pants! I have to agree with the Superdickery.com website author... this has to be THE best WW2 propaganda cover of all time.

I don't think there's many ways that kibble can naturally transform onto his hips like that (if so, they did a major retooling), so I think we'll be in luck and everyone will be happy. Those who want a more accurate Starscream can keep it on his legs (hopefully they'll leave that as an option) and those who want their stylized version can detach and move the pieces up to the hips. I'll live with the extra armor/jet shell on his forearms...especially if it makes the fighter mode look better. To me, it'll all come down to the coloring. Things that look wrong can look better in color and things that you didn't notice can suddenly stand out when the paint apps are done. I'm still willing to put down money on four or five of these: the original Seeker trio, plus a 'realistic' or low vis version and then one to keep in fighter mode if they decide to make any beyond Starscream himself (which should be a gimme given the profit in it). Heck, if they want to toy with wings, I'd even get the 'conehead trio'...even if the design doesn't allow for them to have the nosecones sitting on their heads like dunce caps.

I love Robot Chicken. The Vader phone call one has to be one of their best. Here's some other Sci-fi related ones... none as good, but worth a chuckle: Alien Vs. Predator - First Date Transformers Health Reminder Keanu Reeves' Sausage Real World: Metropolis Cobra Workplace Introduction Video

If I prove that it's not a mistake, do I win a No-Prize? 403806[/snapback] I think you deserve a No-Prize for mentioning such, much less accurately denoting why you would deserve one. I always liked the No Prize concept as it made kids think creatively, all for the glory of getting mentioned and at best getting an envelope with no prize. That sorta-dusk bridge/definitely evening battle sequence was VERY jarring, although I'm surprised none of the friends I saw it with seemed to notice or care. It should've been a bit more gradual (the sun was low enough towards the end of the bridge scene that if you had it slightly brighter in the original face-down scene and got darker), it would've been less noticeable. As has already been said, there is definitely a reason why technically/financially the two scenes were done as they were...but some effort should've been made...hell, a throw away scene of Magneto asking some pawn to darken the place up a bit with his/her abilities (a la like Storm creating fog in X1)...that would've cheaply and logically done the trick. All things considered, though, X3 taught me something. Thought I still buy toys, read comics, and watch movies from creative and technical angles in addition to pure entertainment, I am NOT the uber-geek that I would appear to be. I actually came away not having much in the way of qualms. In fact, I actually sort of DUG the take they took on certain things. Yes, it's too much plotlines/characters thrown into too little time and there's a lot of room for improvement, but I'll actually give Ratner credit for salvaging what could've been a mess. SPOILERS follow (although if you've been reading this thread, you're probably already spoiled): People are whining about the Phoenix story not being the 'Dark Phoenix Saga' from the comics. Have those people READ that series recently? It works well for comics and the death at the time had a major impact, but there's no real way to tell that story within the semi-realistic world Singer established. I mean, you have aliens, starships, oxygen on the moon, near-omnipotent beings, etc. I think given the confines of the single, 'last' movie, they did a good job with telling the story of Jean's powers getting the better of her. Cyclop's death? Yeah, it's a waste of the character, but he's been wasted from the start and in the end, it's perfectly fitting. Scott is the goody-goody, nice guy that Jean loves. Her Phoenix side (yes, I enjoy the concept of it being a repressed part of her psyche) probably has incredible disdain for the straight-laced geek and probably despises Jean for being in love with such a 'pathetic' little whipped boy. Scott probably would've had a much harder time deciding to do what Logan does at the end (and he definitely wouldn't have survived her assault to do so). So, from a certain point of view, it's actually fitting. The only thing I didn't like is how non-chalant everyone was. They find Jean and rush back home without any further looking for him and even after they're told, they're sort of like, "Hm....oh well... anyone put beer in the fridge yet?". At the very least they could've had a 'Who's Cyclops again?' 'The guy with the goggles in a lot of scenes who doesn't do anything.' 'Oh...yeah, him...' scene. Xavier being 'out of character'. It's an aspect they've hit upon a couple of times in the comics recently (in fact, it's soured me a bit because it seems like everytime I've picked up an X-Book of late, Prof X has gone and done something ELSE that seems out of character and the rest of the characters seemed surprised again). I sort of enjoy the concept of Xavier being self-righteous to the point where he doesn't even think twice to screw over someone if it's for the better good in his opinion. And it's not really out of character for the movie Xavier anyway. In X1 he strips the free will away from Toad and Sabertooth in a bid to free Rogue. Because they're baddies, you don't necessarily feel that's wrong, but it's all about how far you're willing to excuse him. In X2 he strips away all sensory and mobility from both the museum crowd and the Oval office attendees. Again, you can argue for the greater good, but how violated would you feel if you were one of those people and later found out you stood in one place for five minutes as if you were unconscious? Xavier has a ton of power and ocassionally abuses it when HE feels its worth it. Screwing around with Jean's mind and getting defensive when people call him on it seems fitting. Magneto's out of character 'I feel like killing a kitten' evilness (as so well put earlier in this thread), DOES feel more out of place than Charles' behavior. Given how buddy-buddy he was with Mystique in previous films, it does seem awfully cold to turn on her so quickly without even a 'Here, wear my cape and we'll drop you off someplace.' The senseless throwing away of fellow mutant life as 'pawns' also seems to be a little too far as well...heck, even Pyro gives him a look in both situations. Magneto's not above killing mutants to achieve his goal for mutantkind (see Rogue in X1), but it seems a bit much to have a group charge when his heavy hitters sit back and watch them get mowed down (the only redeeming part is that he seemed confident that he could get rid of the guns/bullets before realizing that only plastic was involved). It's not jarringly out of character, but it does make Magneto lose a lot of the sympathy one has built for him over the trilogy. And what's WITH that charge anyway? Would it have hurt to throw some two second CG work in to show some fire/lightning/something so that it didn't look like a bunch of unarmed, non-powered people charging a line of armed soldiers? Aside from the leaping and little bit of flying, you really don't get the impression that it was a charge of mutants. Granted, few of them were supposed to be that powerful, but as someone said, if they were that under-powered, wouldn't they have had traditional weapons for firepower? Making Juggy a mutant serves two purposes: Gives a reason why he's in the movie and also saves everyone from busting a gut as they tried to explain the whole crystal thing. The 'I'm the Juggernaut, b---' line didn't bother me as much as I feared (to me the original video gets tiresome about the second time he says it). No problem with this change. It's a shame Psylocke was completely wasted. She says one line in the church (the purple haired Asian girl) and then chases after Worthington II with Arclight and Sonic-the-Hedgehog-kid only to be wiped away by Phoenix. Don't mind she was a baddie or a background character, but to kill her after barely having her there was a disappointment. Then again, no one would probably care about Psylocke if she hadn't been changed into a hot-bodied, skimpy outfit, ninja-babe in the comics, so go figure.... And, as has been noted by others, the same fate probably happened to Callisto, Juggernaut and Pyro if Jean cleared the island of life. As the movie was promoting the lesser/cheaper actors' characters, I was hoping that perhaps they were gearing up for a cheaper sequel or maybe move the series to television. Having the Morlocks and Psylocke wiped out ruins that a bit. Oh well. ENOUGH SPOILERS and rambling... I personally enjoyed the film. It's far from perfect, but it's a fun little romp and definitely worth at least matinee price as long as you're not the type who's unwilling to have a version that strays from the original stories.

You can do some research if you want all the technical reasons why anamorphic presentations are better, but it comes down to a two simple things: 1) A non-anamorphic widescreen film is still sized and compressed for a 4:3 ratio...just cropped with fixed-sized black bars on the top and the bottom. The result is generally an inferior picture quality. You can play it fine on HD/Widescreen televisions (providing you don't get a wonky model that doesn't allow you to change picture modes), but it usually just doesn't look as good. 2) If they're going to use the same procedure that they did for the definitive Laserdiscs, there's another problem. All the captions for the alien languages (Greedo, Jabba, etc) were placed BENEATH the image on those discs. I loved that when I got the laserdiscs as it allowed for no cluttering of the film image (really nice for screen captures), but on some people's wider-screen televisions, this results in a portion of the captions being lost off the bottom of the screen, or they wind up having to shrink the image more to preserve them. Hopefully Lucasfilm takes at least THAT into account and moves the captions back up. As has been said, it's not even a Star Wars fan whine at this point as much as a general film enthusiast, classic film appreciation level whine... and something of a valid one at that.

I think Brawn had the appeal of being a sort of straight-laced, non-berzerker Wolverine type... the tiny little runt who's a lot tougher and stronger than he looks and who can lay down guys thrice his size. That and the fact that he probably was one of the Autobots every kid could get (because he was one of the tiny ones) probably helped his popularity. Personally, I miss all four of doomed shuttle crew (will avoid the names of the rest so I won't spoil it for the three people who haven't seen the movie), all for various reasons. But you're right. While the others went down in a blaze of glory (two to tons of hits, plus Megatron's followup) and one to a silly Constructicon shot (which at least looked like some kind of critical hit), Brawn gets up, gets shot in the shoulder, and goes down. Heck, Bumblebee took more abuse in the cartoon and survived.

Sadly, most of the trailers and demos available on Live left me with a 'meh' feel (with the BIG exception of the Lost Planet demo, of course! ). I think part of it has to do with the fact that if a 'trailer' only shows me cutscene footage, I'm turned off no matter just how exciting the footage was and too much of the stuff available (across the board) was hype-generating CG footage with little to no in-game stuff to give you even a small idea of what to really expect. I'm actually looking forward to a bunch of things coming soon for the XB360, but last week's stuff didn't do much for me... Love the Culdcept Saga trailer, btw (fine example of the above). The series is a fun little board/card game that's enjoyable with a bunch of people, but the trailer briefly shows you the board, then spend the remaining 90% of its time showing you the somewhat dreadful story cutscenes making you think it's some kind of really bad Asian RPG.... talk about misleading people...and in a bad way. Shadowrun is probably the game that left me most twisted. The universe is such a fun mix of so many trite concepts that become cool when combined, but to take it and make it a multi-player only shooter just seems to rip so much of the potential out of it. At this point, it could be a more generic universe....and not much impressed me about the game in terms of visuals or concepts. The Test Drive demo left me with a 'why was I excited about this again?' feeling. Something was just not clicking with me with it. I'm sure the more open world and customizable cars/driver will be nice but the physics sort of struck me as a wonky combination of arcade/realism... Just so I don't sound all negative, I'll repeat Lost Planet. Great combination of third-person action shooting.... bugs, sub-arctic temperatures, space pirates, mecha... what more can you ask for? And I will say that Prey, despite the million engine/design team changes, still looks like it is a descendant of the Duke Nukem 3D era style shooters (in terms of style, not graphics, of course), so it might be fun... you think a game with a ten year on-and-off production period would have SOME value, no?

Just how much physical visibility DOES a starfighter need, though? You're fighting in space, which (unless you're close enough to a direct or reflective light source) isn't too much different than fighting at night. In most cases, BVR starts at a few meters away. Pilots would most likely rely their detection equipment and probably have that fed into their HUDs or eyepieces to highlight ships or even create VR-like simulations. A decade or so ago I did some starfighter designs for a game idea some friends were tossing about. The more I worked on it, the more I started applying 'realism' to the designs' and one of the latter designs was a canopy-less fighter, taking protection of the pilot over the limited benefits of direct visibility. Of course, at that point your next step is to ask, "If the technology is there to allow the pilots great situational awareness without visually 'seeing' everything, why not just take the pilot out of the tiny ships and allow them to pull harder turns and quicker acceleration/deceleration?'....at which point you lose all the 'coolness' of the whole one man/one machine mystique of fighters. Of course, we ARE talking sci-fi, where everything's brightly lit, spaceships use WW2 airplane physics, and starfighters always engage in knifefights at ranges that WW1 pilots would've said are dangerously close.

eugimon has now made it so I will never be able to watch X2 without everytime Jason gives Xavier the evil eye, the sound of a South Park-ish 'TIMMY!' rings through my head...but, actually, that might be an improvement. The movies have been very Logan heavy, much like many of the comics the past 10-15 years. The first was Logan's joining the team and the second was his learning of his history. While the general plot details did revolve around other characters, Logan's story is one of the primary themes of the films. Poor Scott has gotten the shaft in all the movies. He's relegated to less a role than Storm...heck, less a role than Iceman or Rogue. He's getting bested, knocked out, taken control of, or made fun of most of the series so far. It would almost be a mercy killing to put him out of his misery.

I have to agree. Are you sure she didn't mean 'fat' in some good way (like 'phatt')? One of the criticisms about Routh was that he looked too skinny and wimpy (I've always contended that if Superman draws strength from the sun, he doesn't HAVE to be bulky, so I'm a bit more lenient...after all, Reeves wasn't all that bulkier, he just had a more 'manly' shoulder-chest-waist-hip ratio). If Routh is fat, what does she consider fit? Heroin addicts and starving Africans? Routh might work for me...still iffy. Lois isn't doing much right now...just something seems off (maybe she'll pull it off and define HER Lois like Kidder did). Spacey, though.... while it would've been nice to see more of the typical comic book Luthor (and less giggly-insane), it actually worked REALLY well for me that he's channelling a hardened variant on Hackman's portrayal. Definitely continues the Donner characters with a little evolution. We'll see. Superman's never been a favorite character, but the originals were fun thrill rides as a kid. If the movie carries that tradition, we're good (hey! at least Luthor isn't a Kryptonian or there's some kind of giant polar-bear-spider-robot thing in the third act. )

So, if Bumblebee winds up being a '70's Camaro, can we FINALLY get a Bumblee Alternator? I know making him a Camaro will force him to be as big or maybe even bigger than some of the others, but I just want a Bumblebee and a Camaro, while at first seeming to be a ridiculous choice, it sorta works in terms of the personality of the vehicle and the fact that he'd still be a little pathetic (in this case, outdated as opposed to outright underpowered) compared to his teammates. Also, I can live with Devastator being one robot (could always work in something weird with him being split later on if you want to return him to his Constructicon ways), but why also include Bonecrusher, then? And for the love of whomever you believe in, why not include Skywarp and Thundercracker? You don't even need to have speaking parts for them. One of the iconic images for the original Transformers were the motley colored trio of Seekers... Starscream needs his wingmen! Hopefully that list is speaking roles. We don't really need two dozen combatants on each side, but a few backgroound faces will not only appease the old time fans, but make this 'war' seem more than 'Millions of years ago, there was a never ending game of five-on-five street basketball on Cybertron...now they've brought their game here...'

So, just how much screen time will the actual Transformers of the Transformers movie get at this rate? I know the studio probably feels the need for some star power, but most people who go to see this couldn't care less who the humans are....

To some extent, you can say that about ALL the post-ROTJ Expanded Universe stuff. In the grand scope of things (especially considering Lucas' current philosophy of how the movies were about Vader and how he fulfilled the prophecy), then having the Emperor re-appear as a clone, having the Empire still be a giant menace, and having all the various grand conflicts going on really removes the importance and relevance of what happened in the movies. Most great periods of strife/war/heroic effort are remembered because there WAS a down period after it. Perfect example of the opposite is WW1. Big, highly important period. But even though people still realize such and talk about it, in the minds of most people, it got eclipsed by WW2, which resonates more because it occurred so soon afterwards and because what followed that were mostly smaller wars that were more almost follow-ups to what WW2 wrought. Had Hitler suddenly reappeared in 1950 with a large scale army in South America and threatened the world again, WW2 probably would've not had as much importance to people today. The images do look both silly and trite and the story sounds equally unimaginative so far. BTW, I don't know if you've seen the actual message board from the link, but whatever you do, DON'T go there and post your feelings unless you want to kiss the creators' butts. Between the DH fanboys and the highly defensive creators, you'll be at best ignored....but most likely lynched. I think HG/Robotech lovers get a better treatment here...sort of scary.

Had the US Pacific Fleet not been neutralized, Japan would never had been able to spread out so fast and so far. In that sense, Pearl Harbour was a strategic success, though as pointed out the failure to attack the fuel storage and repair facilities was a major failure on the part of Nagumo. But in a sense the decision is understandable. The fleet carriers committed to the operation constitute the majority of the Japanese naval aviation assets. Losing even one of them would have been a major blow to the military power, especially if they lost one carrier to a US carrier. As I understand it, the Japanese wanted to target the US carriers... but it just turned out that they weren't in port. .....In this light, Nagumo achieved his primary objectives very successfully, but his overriding concern on the last point required him to abandon the secondary objective. From a military perspective, I find that this is an acceptable outcome for the Pearl Harbour operations (alone). 391947[/snapback] I have to concur. Nagumo had no knowledge of where the U.S. Carriers actually were and had they actually been grouped not too far off Pearl and managed to pull off what they did at Midway (and they wouldn't have needed as much luck since the Japanese carriers probably had a limited CAP at the time and decks busy with the Pearl Harbor operations), we'd be tearing Nagumo a new one over how he pretty much handed the Pacific over to the U.S. at their first engagement. Landing such a strong blow and getting away with it scot-free is a good showing and saying that his conservative play was a mistake is like saying an American football team should've went for that fourth down conversion in the first quarter and the touchdown instead of just a field goal because in the end they lost by two. Too much hindsight. Although, I will admit that Pearl Harbor DOES give a lot of potential 'what if' options. Given how many long and short term warning indicators the U.S. got and ignored (argue all you want about how the longers ones were deliberately ignored, but you gotta love the sheer coincidence of a friendly bomber group being expected and therefore the large formation detected inbound being assumed to be them), there's so much opportunity to speculate on what could have happened. All useless in the end, but pure fun. As for notable sea battles, how about the Battle of Actium? All things considered, it wasn't so much a great battle (Mark Anthony's forces suffering from illness which undermanned their large, bulky ships and the lack of dedicated support from his Egyptian allies made the battle much more lopsided than it should've been), but it had a major impact on the overall war between the two triumvirs. Anthony's army was of comparable size and might to Octavian's, but after this battle, his legions were wary of who was actually in the right and many of his men deserted. Otherwise, we may have seen a long, drawn out series of land engagements between the legions of the west and the legions and local armies of the east.

While I agree that Larry Hama was THE best thing about the 80's G.I.Joes (with everything from working on the file cards to the comic, which was infinitely better than the cartoon) and feel few have ever been able to mix in the humor and pure cheese parts of G.I.Joe with enough realistic military stuff to make it feel mature enough like he can, I sort of disliked that issue (and the subsequent set where even more Joes died). It felt too much overboard. For half a decade only minor, comic-created characters died and the in-the-field Joe could get shot or wounded, but always came away fine at the end. Then you suddenly have one S.A.W. Viper start a bloodbath by spraying his machine gun into a pit of Joe P.O.W.s, starting with multiple rounds into Doc's face before promptly killing off many tertiary-level Joes (god help you if you were a unpopular vehicle driver that day!). Then you let the Joes escape, do a tally of those still alive, then blow up their vehicle and in a single panel of dialogue say just about everyone but Duke died in the explosion (was never really a big QuickKick fan, but to have go out like that is even crappy for him, much less someone like Breaker who just never got respect). Then an issue or two later you wipe out the BattleForce 2000 folk in a convenient big explosion (yes, they were a crappy concept, but still...). It's almost like Hama was saying, "You want deaths?! I'll give you deaths!!!" Still, I DO really like the fact that the whole bloodbath started because Cobra Commander really didn't want to piss off the Joe team by holding prisoners during a delicate attempt to conquer a oil-rich country, so he gave the order to 'get rid of them' and miscommunication between him, Tomax & Xamot, and the Viper who pulled the trigger changed the meaning from 'let them go' to 'kill 'em all'. Then when C.C. has a fit in front of the Viper in front of everyone over it, the Viper says something like, "Look, I just wasted more Joes in one minute than you did in over five years!" and C.C. realizes the best option for overall morale is to say, "You're right! Give this guy a medal!" To me, that... and seeing a very pissed Snake-eyes....made up for the over-the-top body count. Geez...this is bringing back too much childhood-through adolescence memories and a level of geekiness I thought I packed away years ago....

Only thing missing from this movie is a Kurt Russell cameo... and maybe have David Hayter do some voice work...maybe as a flight officer so he can talk on the PA. If you're gonna have snakes on a plane, might as well have Snakes on a plane too! You gotta love the title, though. Totally agree with Sam Jackson that it is THE title for a movie like this. I would've been adamant about it myself. BTW, I don't think he forced Lucas to give him a purple one. The way I remember it, he asked Lucas if he could be in the PT and when Lucas said sure and said he'd make him a Jedi and what color saber he wanted, Jackson said purple and Lucas didn't have a problem. When I first heard this title without any context a few months back, I assumed it was yet one more 9/11 movie... had absolutely no idea that this was a movie literally about snakes on a plane....

God...I thought I had successfully forgotten the whole Mainframe/Zarana cartoon romance.... But, come to think of it, I actually know two relatively hot girls from punkish backgrounds who are now really into thirtysomething computer geeks, so it's not really all THAT far fetched.... Poor Mainframe. Never got much respect. I mean, you think of Joe Jarheads and you think Gungho for certain and Leatherneck if you were paying attention (although the name is obvious enough), but ol' Mainframe never gets the respect of being from the Corps.

Well, after many hours of changing characters and then getting sidetracked like Guppy into visiting everything I come across, I actually came back to the main quest a bit and closed my first Oblivion gate (would say 'spoiler', but just about every preview, trailer, or what not has either hinted at something like them or outright talked about them). On a role-playing end, it actually worked out. My character didn't really care much about the emperor's wishes until he accidentally came upon that first gate, realized the impact, then decided maybe it WAS in his best interest to bring the amulet to Jauffre. Surprisingly, for getting his butt handed to him every which way to sunday by trolls and other relatively ordinary baddies, my Dunmer jack-of-too-many-trades actually kicked some butt in Oblivion...his natural resistance to fire turned half the scary things there into wusses...I was more afraid of Clannfears than almost anything (at least, in one-on-one situations). I do have to thank the many trolls who ambushed and pummelled my guy along the way. Surviving those encounters really taught me how to effectively block and counter.

Got Oblivion Tuesday. Was supposed to get the PC Collector's version, but due to messed up delivery by UPS (let at depots and such) and THEN my company's internal shipping department losing it...I STILL don't have it (so much for overnight). Anyway, when the first UPS delay showed up on tracking, I went and also bought the XBox360 version (figured it'd be fun on a big screen anyway). Having a ton of fun. Only been able to manage to get about 8-10 hours in total. Laughably, I've maybe only gotten 2 hours into a single character. Did a couple of restarts...at first because of uncertainty over what type of character I was going to play and also wanting to get the most out of the stats (I don't want to powergame, but I also don't want primary skills so high there will be little chance to level). Surprisingly, my last character 'reboot' was actually out of changing what kind of role I wanted to play....probably not important to many, but I sort of like staying 'in character'. The A.I. isn't as rich as some of the early demos, but it's much better than Morrowind's static, mindless drones and it alllows for Ultima VII like 'daily living' behavior with a slightly dynamic twist as they know what they need to do, but aren't scripted to do it in a particular fashion. So if an A.I. knows its dinner time, but you stole the apple on their dinner table, but left the carrot on the cupboard, they'll either walk over and eat the carrot or even bring it back to the table and eat it there. Sort of fun to stalk people...one guy like to wander around and he only seemed to stop to talk to women, passing guys unless they approached first. There's a hope among the community that the older, wilder A.I. is still in there and can be unlocked, at least on the PC version. While apparently more active A.I. resulted in weird situations like townsfolk wiping each out in anger/desperation, it would be very cool to see such behavior and even toy with it. Otherwise, though, the game is beautiful. Having grown up on CRPGs, the old combat never really bothered me, but the more actiony-if YOU can hit, your character will definitely hit, with damage being stat-based is actually pretty cool. Like having archer/magic shootouts...came across two bandit archers in a dungeon room full of pillars...very nice ranged dueling. If you like RPGs (well, specifically more western-style, non-console 'RPGS'), it's almost a guaranteed recommendation. Early on, especially if you're at first just playing around in the capital, the game feels a little 'souless'...hard to describe, actually...just feels like its missing something. That actually fades to varying degrees of success as you get further in the game. So if you're unsure and decide to rent first, don't give up after your first three or four hours if it's turning you off. Have my typical 'too-curious-for-his-own-good' Khajit secondary character, but after some misfires with my Morrowind-esque Imperial (decided I wanted something different), my Nord 'skald' (basically, a custom battlemage/bard type), and a Altmer warrior/mage (yes, deliberately wanted the handicap of an Altmer warrior...wanted to play a more nimble, less armored fighter/mage than I have before), I actually fell back on a Dunmer jack-of-many-trades type mainly because I decided after walking around (and given how certain things in real life have irked me of late), I wanted to be a much bigger jerk and I couldn't bring my prettyboy Altmer to do wrong (yes, I had to justify behavior that most people wil do anyway, even if they've made their character a 'paladin' or something... like I said, I just like to stick to a role when I play roleplaying games). I'll leave the other characters for maybe a second play through.

Do they have much in the way of new stuff or are they simply replaying the same stuff they've replayed on the History Channel over and over back when there was just that (my friend's wife used to say when they first were promoting the split that, "Finally! They realize history isn't just about wars!"). I don't have cable in the moment. Can't really justify the cost for it when you consider I'd probaly watch maybe two or three hours of it a week. But if I HAD cable and had time (and there was new stuff), I'd watch it. Although you're often getting 'dumbed down' info for the television audience, it's still nice to see footage of things, both old and new. You could probably set up a 24/7 carrier operations channel and I'd tune in from time to time.... and wouldn't be ashamed to admit it.

Cool. I have to go back and try it out now. My sole experience with COD2 online was fairly disasterous. Of course, it might be away...sort of been sucked into Oblivion.

Very cool... you should do a classic diorama of Dig Dug in the middle of sadistically pumping up/deflating the last creature who was trying to escape. Sometimes I think Dig Dug may have been the very first video game where you were mercilessly killing and torturing baddies for really no good reason. Most games had you fighting to defend yourself, or at least for vengeance of some past deed or something. Dig Dug was all about someone invading a native people's home territory and committing genocide in a very inhumane way...