There's been a lot about games lately, hasn't there?

I know, I get a new TV and suddenly my games look all sorts of friggin sweet and that's all I want to do anymore. It's not JUST that though. The other problem is that all of these movies look sweet. And I want to go back and re-watch movies again. So, I haven't seen much new.

I rented Mirror's Edge. Rented, not bought. It was the right choice.

Be careful what you read into that. I loved the game. It was incredble. Fun, interesting, unique. Everything one might want from a game. It's well worth playing.

You are Faith, a runner. You have to get from one place to another. On foot. You deliver messages. Yeah, I know what you're thinking but, Parkour Mailman just doesn't sound as sexy as Mirror's Edge, now does it? No, of course not.

There is some fighting, but not much. The game mainly focuses on running and jumping from building to building. You're more or less encouraged to avoid anyone shooting at you rather than confronting them. On the occasions that you must fight them, the battles flow as smoothly as the running.

It's a short game. This isn't a bad thing though. It ends when it should. If it were longer, it would get boring. It's really the perfect length for this type of game. It's biggest flaw, at least to me, was that there wasn't much about it that made me want to go back and play it again. It was a lot of fun, once. Time trials through the levels aren't that interesting to me.

It makes it a perfect game to rent.

It's pretty friggin sweet

I am so glad that I picked up Left 4 Dead. It is, quite possibly, the best zombie game I've ever played.

I know how that sounds. And yes, I've played Resident Evil 4 (though, not RE5. The demo comes out on the 26th...I can't wait!). So, it's no small praise when I say this.

L4D has very little story to it. Basically, you play as one of four survivors. Francis, a tattoo-covered biker; Zoey, a college student and horror movie enthusiast; Louis, a Junior Systems Analyst in his company's IT department; and Bill, a former Green Beret and a Vietnam veteran. It doesn't matter which one you play as. They have the same abilities, can use the same weapons. There's no advantage to playing as one over the other.

As a survivor, it's your mission to...survive. You have to avoid being killed by the many MANY zombies out wandering around. There are 4 campaigns to clear, each with 7 different missions. At normal difficulty, a campaign takes about an hour or maybe a little more. The campaigns really don't have much to do with each other.

In each, you explore the city, going from safe house to safe house. Along the way you encounter the mindless zombies, hunters, smokers, boomers and the occasional tank. From time to time, the zombies will attack en masse as the horde.

It's designed primarily as a co-op game and is best played that way. The AI is really quite good though. I played with a friend of mine, leaving two computer controlled characters. I never felt like they were hindering me along the way. They were there with health when I needed it, and were pretty good shots.

It's an intense game, and actually worth the money they're charging for it. That may have been the biggest surprise for me. I'd heard so much hype that I thought that there was no way it could be that good. But it was.

It actually almost makes me want to play it online. If only to play as one of the infected.

Yoda isn't actually a lot of fun to play with...

Do you know what I watched over the weekend? Nothing. I managed to find a way to watch nothing besides a few episodes of Futurama on DVD. Aside from that, I picked up Soul Caliber 4 for the 360.

I had played it when I saw my friends out in San Jose a couple of weeks ago and had a lot of fun playing it. I've had fun with all of the Soul Caliber games though, so that wasn't too surprising. As an added bonus, the PS3 has Darth Vader in it and the 360 has Yoda. You know, from Star Wars. And they both have The Apprentice from The Force Unleashed. Yoda isn't actually a lot of fun though. He's small and kind of agile, but surprisingly slow and unresponsive. The Apprentice though is kind of cool and maybe a little more fun here than in his own game.

One of these days I should get a gold membership and play against people online. The only thing stopping me (well, 2 things) is my hatred of playing games with people I don't know and not actually knowing anyone else with a 360.

Why? Seriously, why! Why can't you just make a regular game.

What's long been rumored is now confirmed. Yes, Bioware is working on a new Knights of the Old Republic game and, sadly, yes it will be an MMO. Yes, that bums me out.

I loved the two KotOR games for the original XBox. I've played them both probably half a dozen times, beginning to end. Mass Effect is a great game as well, one that I've played through a couple of times now. Bioware has made some really good games. And, what got me hooked with their games was the story telling and the decision making. I liked that your actions had concequences. Sure, you could kill a guy if you wanted, but people would react to that. It would make you more evil. Saving someone's cat might make you more pure, and all of these decisions would add up and have an impact on the end of the game. It's an idea that has become pretty prominent since then, being used to great effect in games like Fable and BioShock.

Now though, I don't know. I just don't have any interest in playing an MMO. I don't really like playing games online, and I really have very little interest in playing games with, or against, people I don't know. I only tolerate Mob Wars on Facebook because I can just have anyone who bothers me killed. Hell, most days that's all I do in the game, add people to the hitlist. Sure, it kills 3 minutes, but it's not exactly fun or interesting.

So, yes, I'm saddend by their decision to make KotOR into an MMO. I'll have to wait for Mass Effect 2. In the meantime, I picked up Fable 2 last night and played it for a few hours. It's off to a pretty good start, and I'm curious to see how it all plays out. And, as always, I'm already pretty evil.

Maybe it should have stayed leashed. Maybe that was the problem...

Go ahead and watch this. It's only 2 minutes. I can wait. I just need you to be familiar with the subject at hand.



Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is the latest entry in the ever more diluted Star Wars universe. Not a movie this time, but a video game. A video game that looked pretty sweet, to be honest. I mean, look, you can pull down a Star Destroyer! How cool is that?

Let me tell you how cool it is...it isn't. It's such a stupid thing in the game that it took me 45 minutes to finally bring the damn thing down and dying repeatedly because wave after wave of Tie Fighters come at you making you break your grip on the ship so you can destroy the Tie Fighters and essentially start over on bringing dow the Star Destroyer. You have to use the controller to position the Star Destoyer for a certain amount of time to bring it crashing down. It took me forever and I had the game on easy!

The game takes place in that magical time between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, which at least means that it's not dealing with the already boring Clone Wars. You play as a Sith apprentice named Starkiller. Vader has been training you in secret and is now sending you to kill the remaining Jedi for him.

It's a very linear story. After Knights of the Old Republic, I kind of expect more from a Star Wars game. I don't want to sit down and play through the story, I want an experience. Maybe KotOR is the wrong kind of game to compare it to. Maybe I should compare it to something more linear, like Gears of War or Bioshock, but it still wouldn't fare any better.

It's not a very deep game. While the use of the force is exciting and over the top at times, it's not enough. The game play mysteriously hovers somewhere between over simplified and overly complex without ever finding a happy medium. The story, while filling in an area of the mythos that hasn't been explored too much is interesting, but kind of silly at times too.

The game itself was kind of fun, most of the time, but for $60, I want something that is more than just 'kind of fun'. It's certainly worth playing, just not worth buying.

FGFC: Killing with a garden claw...I never thought of that.

It will inevitably be asked at some point, what I did this weekend. Well, let me tell you.

I rocked out.

You see, I'm something of a "hero" when it comes to playing the "guitar" or, gee-tar as you may know it. I have a Gibson SG that I like to refer to as The Terror of Tokyo due to it's custom Godzilla design. Friday night, I jammed with my friend, covering some hot Cheap Trick and Nirvana tracks. On Saturday, I just sort of played with myself (not like that), practicing some Deep Purple and White Zombie covers. It was sounding pretty awesome, at first...amps at 11, adding a little extra whammy bar flair to Iron Man. But then I upped the difficulty to medium and I just couldn't hit the blue notes.

So, I decided I needed to stop rocking out. I did not, however, stop my normal post show ritual. However, due to a lack of groupies in my apartment, I could only get drunk. And drunk I was as my friend and I popped this month's Final Girl Film Club movie into my DVD player. That movie being the 1984, Daphne Zuniga classic, The Initiation.

I did, desperately try to take notes, but I gave up only a half hour or so into the movie. I have no excuse. So, bear with me as I try to recall what I saw through my post-rock-out hangover.

After the worlds longest and least interesting credit intro (okay, it was only two and a half minutes, but wow was it dull. Even for credits!) it all starts off with a kind fast asleep. She wakes up to walk down a hallway, to appropriately creepy music. A child wandering through the house to her parents bedroom where there be some fuckin goin on. So, she stabs dad and then, someone else comes in and seems none to happy and ends up on fire in the fireplace.

Oh! It was a dream! Okay. Kelly wakes up to a bunch of lingerie clad ladies singing "Delta Rho Ki never will die", which as songs go, has a good beat, but the lyrics lack originality. Kelly is apparently pledging a sorority run by someone's mother. I'm sorry, but this Megan lady just seems too old to be in college. Regardless, she's come up with a prank that involves breaking into Kelly's dad's mall to steal the uniform from the night watchman. That's hot. Apparently Megan wants someone to go be a whore or something.

We then go over to a loony bin...full of loonies! And a gardener. A BURN VICTIM gardener. Foreshadowing! Apparently no one is interested in locking doors in this place.. As the Nurse Ratched wannabe walks to her car, all the loonies are out of their bin playing ring around the rosie in the parking lot. She gets to her care where she's carefully stabbed with a garden claw. By carefully I mean without enough real force to puncture the chest plate, but it's a movie and we'll suspend our disbelief for now.

Which brings up to the one thing we at 7dp industries couldn't stop laughing at.

Look behind him...on the chalkboard...it says anal! Ha! We laugh at fart jokes too.

This is sort of where my notes end...that's right, less than a third of the way into the movie. I'd like to say that it was because I was so ENTHRALLED by the movie, but let's be honest for a change. The reality is that it took me almost 20 minutes to lose interest. This is a movie who's own box advertises that it "delivers the goods with gratuitous nudity, carved-up co-eds and a truly wicked climactic twist." Of which, it actually delivered none. While there was some nudity, it could hardly be called gratuitous, which is a shame because that's my favorite kind. I would hardly call anyone "carved-up", it was more like "punctured with gardening tools" and the so called twist is...well, twisty and possibly unexpected unless you read the chapter titles before watching the movie (which I did). I will say this about the shocking conclusion, they did a fairly good job of leading you away from that possibility. The filmmakers did include, however, some rather unfortunate clothing choices, large belt buckles, and a guy in a penis costume.

And where were the corpses anyway? Half a dozen people are killed, yet only 1 dead body is really ever found.

Wait. I'm sorry. There were 2.

And wouldn't THIS just fuck your shit up?

The Initiation is not a great movie. Hell, I'm not sure that is was even a good movie. It reminds me of the stuff my brother and I used to watch on USA Up All Night with Rhonda Shear. This was of course, back when cable tv was a veritable wasteland after 11pm, littered with b-movies and infomercials. Now it's all Law & Order repeats.

In the end, I give The Initiation...let's go with almost 5 garden weasels out of the shed...I mean out of ten.

And now, they want my band Seratonin to do an encore. I think we're gonna do War Pigs. After that, we're going to go play a new venue. I'm so excited.

Edit: I've changed my "rating" of this movie three times now. In it's original form it was 3, then 4. Now it's a 5. Why do I keep changing you you ask? Well, the more I talk about it and the more I think about the movie the more I like it. And besides, it's entirely subjective and I CAN change my rating. I can't imagine going above a 5 for it, and it's a soft 5 to begin with, it was an average movie. It was a good movie to get drunk to, and that counts for something.

You tell me.

I know that I've kind of been piling on Dead or Alive, which is admittedly, a little unfair. The movies not out, and I haven't seen anything beyond a few still and a trailer (a very bad trailer).

From the website:

"The story, a cross between Charlie's Angels and Enter The Dragon, revolves around four beautiful women who begin as rivals in a secret invitational-only martial arts contest, but find themselves teaming up with one another against a sinister force. Joining Tina, Christie, Kasumi and Helena at the lush jungle location are Zack, Bayman, and Leon.

Others come to the island for their own ulterior motives. Bass, a world-champion wrestler, arrives to convince his daughter Tina not to put her life in danger. Then there's Christie's former partner-in-crime Max, who masquerades as a Brazilian kick-boxer but has his eye is on an even bigger prize than the $10 million purse.

On the other hand, Princess Kasumi is surrounded by her own entourage of characters: her bodyguard and friend Hayabusa, her half-sister and would-be assassin Ayane, and her brother Hayate, who disappeared during the previous Dead or Alive tournament.

Who will win the Dead or Alive tournament? Will Princess Kasumi survive long enough to find out whether her brother Hayate is still alive? How will Helena's learning the truth of the unseemly death of her father, the founder of the Dead or Alive tournament, affect her loyalties? Can the former allies-turned-sworn- enemies Christie and Max reunite to pull off the biggest heist of their careers? And exactly what does Donovan have up his sleeves?

Intrigue and mystery, beauty and brawn, exotic scenery and extraordinary sets - this plus awesome state-of-the-art martial arts and wire fighting - all await in Dead Or Alive !"

And, now some pictures...


I guess they're fighting on a boat. Jamie Pressley's boobs look weird though...actually, everything about her looks weird in this picture.


A pillowfight gone wrong? Or are they fighting with poultry?


Well, shit, I'm glad they included the Extreme Beach Volleyball part of the video game series.

Look, all I'm saying is that the only thing that could make this less appealing is if it was directed by Uwe Boll.

How bad is this movie going to be?
	It's going to be bad.
	It's going to make Snakes on a Plane look good.
	I't going to be so bad it makes Showgirls look like like an ocsar nominee
	It's going to be so bad you'll wish you were watching a Gigli/Glitter double feature
	It's go to be so bad that it makes it becomes the shortest ever entry in Quick Reviews of Bad Movies

The Way Things Should Have Been...But Weren't

To be perfectly honest, if Lucas had made these changes, I probably would have been cool with it...

This is actually, a rarity for me so far...

...something about Silent Hill. And trust me, like everyone else, I'm more excited about this movie than can possibly be healthy. Which is maybe a little odd. You see, I never played any of the games.
Maybe that's why I'm so interested in it? I have no idea what to expect out of it. The story is completely unknown to me. And, I won't be able to bitch about it straying too far from the game!

It's kind of the same way I felt about Resident Evil. Only I had played the game. I hated the RE games. I never liked the controls. Yeah, I'm one of those. The one who wouldn't play because the controls were stupid. Sorry. But I liked the movies. For the most part, I'm a fan of video game adaptations of games I didn't play religiously at some point in my life (sorry, Doom).

So, the reason I'm posting today...Ropeofsilicon.com has 6 clips from Silent Hill up. So, I went over to YouTube and of course someone had it posted there which means that I can put them here. So, Enjoy! Or don't! Whatever!

Trust me on this:


It's just the radio:


We've all lost our children:


There's no room 111:


It's happening again:


Be careful what you choose:


Now, I know some people don't want to know too much about the movie before it comes out and won't watch the clips. That's fine. To be honest, *I* may not watch the clips. I haven't decided yet. We'll see what happens later...though, more likely, I'll forget and watch Deadliest Catch on the Discovery channel.