I also gotta recommend any of the Atticus Kodiak books by Greg Rucka. I'm working on Shooting at Midnight now and it's another homerun. I always gotta give props to writers from my neck of the woods. Oregon has one helluva a lot of great authors.

I missed the first FEAR, but I always knew how wonderful the AI was supposed to be. How brilliant it was at finding you and killing you, almost but not quite like a real player. I also heard how repetitive the spaces were, just office after office after fucking office. What got me to check out the sequel were some good words from Listen Up, a long wait for Killzone 2 and my interest in both Akira and The Ring.

Story-wise it still makes little sense. It’s clumsy, muddled and could deal with some real cut scenes. FEAR 2 works with the fear aspect though. It has plenty of creepy bits that managed to scare the pants off me here and there. The atmosphere effects add to this as do the ghostly baddies, the creepy long haired girl Alma and the typical dark spaces. Sure they are repetitive, but not quite so bad. I still feel that these guys at Monolith know fear. They can scare you and unsettle you. They know how to make good bad guys who can outflank you and piss you off, but they fail at challenging narrative even when they try to ape the Half-Life first person style cinemas. The environments are well modeled, but dull and things all fall together into a fun, but not Triple-A game.

It’s all fun and challenging, but it’s pure shooter, a bit old school with med packs and armor rather than recharging shields. But I could care less about my character Becket or this plot. It’s just a shooter with good controls, some fun guns, challenging baddies, the ability to change difficulty every time you die and boring ass typical factories, offices and industrial locations.

Now, I do love the mood and feel they strike and the satisfying spray of blood everywhere is fantastic. I love that shit. I just could give a shit about the story and that’s a shame, cause it is so close to being fucking-A fantastic and not just a great first quarter shooter. It’s not going to topple CO or Halo but it’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a solid 7.5 kind of shooter. If you want a good ten hours of shooting shit, it’s great, but couldn’t they just reach a little more and make it a 9?

Thousands of years ago, Man left Kobol for new homes. Twelve went one way, one went another. The twelve colonies were formed. Earth was formed. Sometime in the last three thousand years, Earth created cylons. Machines at first, they soon took human forms. They took over, expanding, procreating. Our final 5 were part of them. The bombs rained down and they were resurrected leaving behind a dead world. With no FTL, it took 2 thousand years to travel to the 12 colonies to warn them against creating cylons. They were too late. Just 50 years in the past (see Caprica) cylons were created. This led to war with the centurions. The 5 arrive and offer to help them make skinjobs, to evolve. These centurions believe in the one true God and agree to end the war in exchange for this help. They get it and create 8 models. They are betrayed by the first, Cavil, who kills them, resurrects them and places them without memories into society...they stay that way until their reawakening....And in one fell swoop, the history is outlined and nerds around the world rejoiced....That's how you fucking answer questions on a show like this. Fuck yes. And I think it's quite clear that our Earth has no place in Battlestar's universe. Fine by me. No need to merge the two at all.

Another fraking good episode. Too bad we only have 5 more to go...

This shit moves like molasses. No wonder they added the shut down after download complete function. It's so you can go to bed and not leave the damn machine on one minute longer than necessary.

I heard a lot of “meh” about Benjamin Button before I watched it. Many called it “Forrest Gump 2.” I cvould certainly see the similarities, but that‘s like complaining that two action movies from the same guy have car chases. This thing with Gump and Button is merely Eric Roth’s thing. And I liked Button better. It didn’t blow me away nor did it put me to sleep. It was an interesting movie, a long story about two people who CAN NOT grow old together. Because one of them is growing younger. Technically, the movie is a fucking marvel. Fincher’s direction is excellent. It’s a beautiful movie. All that is well deserved praise you’ve read elsewhere. I’ve heard the Slashfilm guys say that the aging gimmick comes across as more of a handicap, much like Gump’s leg braces or his low mental ability, and not as an old man growing younger. But I like that. Button is not born an old man, he’s born with a body that ages in reverse. He doesn’t pop out 90 years old because he has no life experience yet. The aging thing is entirely physical. Inside, he’s a kid before he’s a man and then instead of hitting old age, he hits puberty and adolescence and all that. It’s certainly interesting as he goes from a baby with old age afflictions to a perfectly healthy baby at the end of his life. I’m sure people wanted more sci-fi out of this premise and it is interesting to think of how this would really play. And the film does skirt the childhood weirdness by putting him in an old folks home right away. Button truly does live a life that is backwards in many ways, but also normal in many ways, because inside he’s not old. Perhaps my favorite line in the film is when he’s 7 and goes to a faith healer. He’s asked how old he is and responds, “Seven, but I look a lot older.” And that’s what it’s about. Maybe the scariest aspect of the film to me, is that growing young is far, far scarier than growing old. You don’t know what to expect. Sure, there are similarities, but we take comfort in growing old. We know when to expect. We grow old with each other, but Button’s curse of being younger while we get older is terrifying. And that’s what the movie is really about. It may not say things perfectly, but it’s not about a grown man popping out of a woman, it’s about how growing old is how it’s supposed to be. We’re not meant to stay young forever. Or get younger.

When I look at my backlog, I see half finished games that I either need to churn through or give up on. I'm definitely into the buy-it-play-it-until-done thing. Still, that said, there's too much good stuff out there to waste time on something that's not fun. It's a matter of balance, but when I was young I have a limited library, now that I can afford any game I want, I don't want to buy too much. I have to get my money's worth. That's a challenge for sure. I'm going to crank through Half Life 2 Episode 2, go back and finish Fable 2, Too Human and hopefully Far Cry 2 and Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway. And probably God of War 2 before I retire my PS2 for good.