Bioshock 2

Sorry about the whole not putting up a review last week. I admit I’m not perfect, though I am closer than just about everyone else. Anyway yeah sorry.

Been a while since I did a game review there will probably be more comin up soon though.

Bioshock two
I played the first Bioshock and it was great, the story, the mechanics, it was all great really a good game. So when Bioshock two showed up I decided to grab it and recently decided to play through it again, hence this review. And while I can’t recall how I felt about the game the first time I bought it this time I’m liking the game less and less as I continue through it. Honestly I don’t even know if I’m gonna bother beating it or not. And let me stop you right there before you grab your wood and nails and crucify me in the comments for talking about a game I haven’t beaten. First off I have beat it before, I did the good ending for those of you wondering. Secondly, if 80% of a game kinda sucks, ten to one odd then ending sucks too and even if the ending was just okay it wouldn’t make up for the sucky first four fifths of the game. However the first 80% of this game doesn’t suck. The game actually starts out really fun, though thinking about it that’s probably just cause I hadn’t become annoyed yet with the two major problems the game has.

Problem one: Hacking
For those of you who aren’t aware Bioshock has a great deal or machinery and robotics lying around everywhere. There are vending machines to purchase items, turrets, security cameras that can summon drones, and other stuff too. Now the guys at 2K had a cool idea with all this stuff: They allow the player to hack into the machines and get a slew of bonuses from doing so. Vending machines lower prices, turrets become friendly, security cameras will send drones to kill enemies instead of you, health stations will spew poisonous gas into the face of any baddie who tries to use them. You get the idea here hacking = good stuff. However, you can hack bloody fucking everything, nearly every single room, in every area of every level has like tow hackable things in it. Let me stop another angry commenter here, yes I know I don’t have to hack every machine in the game, I could just not bother with it on health stations and vending machines and just break security cameras and turrets. I know this. But when I break a security camera I fell the same as I would if I used a rocket on a grunt in halo minus the hilarity of seeing his silly body flying through the sky. Using a rocket on a grunt is a waste of that rockets potential damage dealing. It should be saved for a group of guys or a big baddie with a load of health. When I break a camera it can’t help me out later, and I don’t get the health and eve (eve is essentially mana) restorative I would of if I had hacked it. So this being the way it is I feel the need to hack everything I see, which is a serious pain in the ass when I’m hacking the seventh thing in five minute window and just failed the hack cause I’m pissed off which caused fucking security drones to come for my ass. So yeah way too much hacking.

Problem two: The spawn rate
So Bioshock is divided into levels and each level is quite expansive and looks different and unique from the last. Seriously, they all look pleasingly different from the last and one thing I’m certainly not sick of most of the way through the game is the aesthetics. Big props to the artists and set design on this. You guys did a fantastic job. And I love the large open levels that allow and even encourage exploration with rewards for the player tucked away in little corners here and there. In fact one of my favorite gene tonics (Passive upgrade) in the game I found while rooting around some guys basement in siren alley that I would never have had reason to enter if I simply followed the quest arrow. The thing about very large open areas is that they tend to require back tracking through rooms you already looted and killed the inhabitants of. Personally I don’t mind going back through the areas of rapture, as I said the areas are beautifully designed and having to see some of the rooms a handful of times does not bother me at all. However 2K decided with all the backtracking that needs to be done they needed to have enemies show up in rooms the player had already completed. This normally wouldn’t bother me at all except that they respawn something like every three seconds and it’s always the same ones. It’s always two three baddies with tommy guns and shotguns. Rarely there’ll be a Houdini or a spider splicer. But 90% shotgun and tommy gun guys. While I do think the repawn rate is simply too high, enemies showing up in a room the very instant you leave or I feel sometimes if the game decided you’re just hanging around that room for too long. That coupled with the fact there is no variance in the enemies that do this. The game has more than two types of enemies in it; but for some reason having a guy with a pipe or a pistol or having one of those big brutes be on room insta-spawn is too complicated, though thinking about it with the spawn rate as high as it is if the brutes had any chance to show up you would never have ammo for anything since they just eat bullets like nobody’s business.

Now these two issues aside, it’s a great game. However, I find it basically impossible to put these points aside as they show up constantly. I know blue really hated one of the mini-games in FFXIII-2 but that mini-game only showed up twice ever so it didn’t ruin the fucking game for him. I’m honestly finding it difficult to continue enjoying Bioshock two because these problems occur ad infinitum.

I hate saying that. I loved the first Bioshock and I loved the beginning of this one, but these just ruin it in my opinion. Please please please 2K fix these before you put out Bioshock infinite. I want to like that game. I really do.

4 massive disappointments out of 10

Hello there!

Well I am sorry...... once again. My posts have been irregular as of late and I do feel moderately bad for that. I really do need to start doing this more often but I've been quite busy lately watching movies and listening to music to have material for you i just have gotten bad about writing about it. I am back though (hopefully). I will say this right quick before I go. Go see The Dark Knight Rises. Review of this later.

Clockwork Angels by Rush

Clockwork Angels by Rush

Released June 12, 2012

Label: Roadrunner

I have not been able to listen to Rush's Moving Pictures EP and not see Paul Rudd and Jason Segel jumping around badly miming Giddy Lee and Alex Lifeson so when I heard a new Rush album was coming out I was eager to hear. One of the most celebrated rock bands of all time puts together another album here and they deliver. Let me say first that if you don't like Rush this won't be for you. They haven't changed over the course of 15+ studio albums previous and you really shouldn't expect them to change now. With that being said I think that this is probably Rush's best work in..... well ever. These guys have been together for 30+ years and they have the same unique style that they've kept the whole time. I admit I was a bit skeptical because of the hype surrounding this album but I was thoroughly impressed by it. They buckle down and focus on musical focus and some great lyrics here written. 

Notable Tracks:

Track Seven: Seven Cities of Gold

It's damn catchy and the intro is killer.

Track Eight: The Wreckers

Classic Rush in the style of the Moving Pictures EP but even better in my opinion. 

Track Ten: Wish Them Well

What's not to like about this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv8zCQ4Itf8 check it out.

Track Twelve: The Garden

They end the album with a good song. 

Track List

1. Caravans

2. BU2B

3. Clockwork Angels

4. The Anarchist

5. Carnies

6. Halo Effect

7. Seven Cities of Gold*

8. The Wreckers*

9. Headlong Flight

10. BU2B2

11. Wish Them Well*

12. The Garden*

7 living rock legends out of 10

I did this one a little bit different and I just singled out the really good tracks as opposed to running through the entire album and giving thoughts on most of them. Yeah, less on each review but just a good bass line doesn't make the track good (maybe worth a listen by a fellow bassist such as me, but that's besides the point). I would also single out really bad tracks but there are none of them here to be had. That's all. 

Hard Candy Review

So this movie, well fuck this'll be interesting.

Plot
Ellen Page stars in the film playing a fourteen year old girl. In short order the girl agrees to meet up with a guy she's been talking to on the internet and then further agrees to get into the car of this guy, he's thirty-two by the way, and go to his house. Of course nothing could possibly go wrong with a 32-year-old male and a 14-year-old girl alone together and that's exactly how the movie plays out. First they listen to music, then they play cards, then she falls asleep and he carefully puts her into his bed and sleep on the couch like a true gentleman. Of course that last sentence was utter bullshit. Clearly Jeff, the guy, wants to get all creepy molester mode with Hayley, the girl. Only stuff doesn't go the way you, him, her, or anyone else expects it to. And that's all I'm gonna say.

Going into this movie I was a bit uneasy just cause of the premise but my skin really started to crawl once shit really started going down. And that is such an understatement. This movie was just bizarre.  Now the thing about this type of movie though, I'll never watch it again. Once I started it I couldn't sop and the plot is really damn good and I couldn't guess it, every time I tried I was wrong. Page, I have to comment one. She does an amazing job at her role, hands fucking down, she makes this movie. She does so damn well at her role, I would watch a movie of her watching paint dry on grass that she's watching die if she committed this much to that role too.

Seriously, go fucking watch this, it's fucked up and unpredictable. Page knocks it out of the park with her acting. It's not just another film full of shit blowing up or another stupid love story.

9 plot-twists out of 10

The Amazing Spiderman Review

Alright so this fourth of July instead of blowing shit up and having a barbecue I went to the movies, and, as anyone who read the title can guess, I saw the new Spiderman movie.

So let's break it down,

Plot
This is a re-vamp so Peter is just a kid at the beginning back in high school without powers. Obviously, in short order he gets bitten by a super spider and gains some cool abilities. Then some guy decides he wants a better life and the obvious way to go about getting one was to turn himself into a giant mutant anthro-lizard. This was actually what I was gonna do when I wanted a better life too, but you would not believe how hard it is to turn yourself into a giant anthro-lizard. It's really tough. I was able to manage an anthro-hawk, anthro-panther, and even an anthro-cupcake but I couldn't pull off lizard so sadly my life sucks. What was I talking about again? Or yeah right Spiderman. What do you want me to say about the plot people? Honestly, there's not much to say. It's a superhero movie. There's a good guy and a bad guy, they fight, the good guy wins. And that is not a fucking spoiler, anyone who was thinking there was any chance of Spiderman losing, I don't even have words for you. Just go take a shovel, dig a hole, and hit yourself in the face with the shovel till you collapse into the hole. Then have your friends bury you, presuming you have any friends.

So yeah is it good? I liked it... some. I think the one thing that makes this movie really work is the actor playing Peter. Peter seems like a much more believable high school kid that got bit and got all these powers. I would list examples here, but they would constitute various degrees of spoiler so that's not happening. Anyway, Peter actually seems like a real kid and I like that. That's really all I have to say about the movie though. Nothing else really sticks out to me other than very slightly the bad guy and his weird mental issue that's never explained. I mean I guess if you turn yourself into a giant lizard you probably aren't right in the head, but then he develops like split personality syndrome for no damn reason in this weird Dr. Jekyl Mr. Hyde bit, that only serves to make the bad guy seem like some twisted, tragic loss instead of just letting him be evil. Why? Why can't the bad guy just be bad? Why can't he just hate people and want to be a lizard and fucking tear people in half? So he can save Peter from something he caused that peter still didn't need saving from? That's a fucking stupid reason. Looking back, the only reason this movie is good is because of the actor playing Peter, if not for him this would be bland and forgettable and it's still verging on forgettable for me.

So it's passable but there's a lot here that was done poorly or just plain wrong.

6 destroyed families of superheros out of 10

**Minor spoiler**
And what the fuck!? Where was Uncles Ben's fucking quote!? I thought maybe there at the end in the voice mail on his phone but no, he never says "With great power comes great responsibility." I don't who decided to not include that but fuck you.

Review of Ted

Ted

Although it probably isn't going to be the biggest smash box office hit but in my opinion it is the funniest movie released since Hangover. The first one. Ya know, the one that was good and not just redone.

This movie works on every level that it tries and it feels great to say that Seth MacFarlane's film debut is a success. It is some mindless fun with A LOT of jokes. The theater I was in was laughing non-stop the entire time. If you even slighty enjoy Family Guy, American Dad, or the Clevland Show, you will enjoy Ted. So here is a plot run down and as Green says, spoiler free.

The movie starts telling about how Ted came to be alive. From there it goes right into where the meat of the story is. Mila Kunis, who is Mark Wahlberg's girlfriend, says that Ted is dragging him down and basically it boils down to Mark trying to grow up and be in a relationship as well as keeping his childhood friend. Even if you replaced Ted with a stupid human friend and changed a few lines of dialouge it would still be decent. The teddy bear voice by Seth MacFarlane just makes it better.

9.5 potty-mouthed teddy bears outta 10

Believe by Justin Bieber

Believe by Justin Bieber

Released: June 15, 2012

Label: Island Records

I decided to review this because..... well why the hell not? I was pleasantly surprised by Bieber's new studio album. Anything I have ever heard from him other than the lead single Boyfriend is not for me. Then he comes out with this. And it's good. My biggest piece of advice for people who listen to music of this genre is do NOT discount it because of the name on the cover. I firmly believe that good music is good music, no matter who writes it which is really why I gave this album a chance. With this album he is clearly trying to shed previous conceptions about him and make himself a new image. It largely works seeing as it as some elements of pop, rap, hip-hop, and R&B as opposed to largely being just a pop artist. The album really starts to show his maturity as an artist and his ability to branch out into more than just one genre.

Track One - All Around the World feat. Ludacris
The track to start it off moves you. It has a great beat and makes you want to move because of its "dancy" feel to it. Ludacris' verse is pretty good too.

Track Two - Boyfriend
This is the track that got me to give this album a try. I was driving around and this song came on the radio. Usually I listen to my iPod as I'm driving but I had forgotten it. After the first chorus I found myself singing along to it and I used Soundhound to find out what it was. From then on I decided I would give this album a try.

Track Three - As Long As You Love Me feat. Big Sean
The song has some good lyrics and a damn good beat. In all honesty, just consider a good beat to be on pretty much every track on this album.

Track Four - Take You
The acoustic intro is pretty damn kick ass.

Track Five - Right Here feat. Drake
I'm not a big Drake fan, so this is just decent for me.

Track Six - Catching Feelings
A little slow, but it is not a bad song. The acoustic through it is again is a great touch.

Track Seven - Fall

Track Eight - Die In Your Arms
Samples some Michael Jackson here.

Track Nine - Thought of You

Track Ten - Beauty and a Beat feat. Nicki Minaj
Again, not the biggest Minaj fan but the beat is great and JB really carries it.

Track Eleven - One Love
Only track I can say I don't like.

Track Twelve - Be Alright
Hands down my favorite song off of this album. I play guitar and can appreciate a good guitar line, and that is exactly what this is. Yeah, it really just rinses and repeats but it is really damn catchy.

Track Thirteen - Believe
This follows the trend of almost every other album titled track. Eh.

Track Fourteen - Outta Town Girl
Pretty badass song. This alone makes getting the bonus/deluxe version worth it.

Track Fifteen - She Don't Like The Lights

Track Sixteen - Maria
Channeling his inner Michael Jackson here. This sounds a lot like something Jackson had done when he was writing music. A bit modernized though. This make the bonus/deluxe worth it as well.


7 boyfriends with outta town girls 10

YouTube top five (July 9th 2012) (New series!)

What's going on everyone, I'd like to welcome you all to my new thing; YouTube top five. Plan is once a month, typically on the first, though it's obviously late this month cause I just thought this up, I will go to YouTube and watch/listen to the top five music videos then come back here and tell you all how stupid they are, er uhh no I mean review them all in a professional and dignified manner. Yup that's what I meant. I don't intend on giving these reviews a numerical score unless you guys really ask for it. If I did give these a score I see two ways that would work, Either each song get's its own rating out of ten, or I could review the five as bundle and give them one collective score, If either of those sound neat or if you have some third idea, let me know in the comments

Well here we go, this month's YouTube top five.

#1 Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe

So this song is alright. It's not that good, but it's alright. I wanna take a moment here to talk about some of the lyrics. "Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad." Wait what? Before he came into your life you didn't know he existed. How can you miss something you don't know exists? "It's hard to look right at you baby." Really Mrs. Jepsen? You found an individual so amazingly good looking and beautiful that he is on par with the visual appeal of the Greek king of gods Zeus himself, and if you were to gaze directly upon his true form your puny human eyes would burst into flame at heralding such raw magnificence as him. Now then, the big on, the chorus itself. "Hey I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's my number. So call me maybe." Jepsen you whore! Giving your phone number to a man you just met I bet you let him look at your ankles too didn't you. What would your mother think of you? And the car washing scene, honestly, if you're that desperate to get him to see you, take off your shirt, walk over to him, grab his head, and shove it between your tits. You'll get his attention I promise. But like I said at the beginning, the songs alright.

#2 Maroon 5 - Payphone (feat. Wiz Khalifa)

I was pleasantly surprised to see this in the top five. I'd expected this to be largely songs I'd never heard and might not like. But I have both heard and like this song before. So there's my opinion of this one; I like it. It's good. It's really good. I like cause it's real. "If happy ever afters did exist, I would still be holding you like this. And all those fairy tales are full of shit. One fucking love song I'll be sick." That's real. Fairy tales are cute stories. This song doesn't make me cynical though. It's just like, yeah man I know what you mean.

#3 Justin Beiber - Boyfriend

This is the kind of song I expected I'd run into with this idea of mine. I was sure I would find wildly popular songs from artists that I would almost certainly hate sitting through. Only thing is, I didn't hate it. I thought I'd hate it, but I didn't. I didn't like it really but it was a pleasant surprise compare to what I had expected. When he hits the lyric "I'd like to be everything you want, hey girl lemme talk to you," I actually like his singing, and if the entire song were done like that then I would actually like this song, despite it feeling odd for me to say that. But ya know in the end, Beiber may have looked and sounded like a girl for a while but are we all forgetting the fucking king of pop who did the same damn thing. That's right, I just compared Justin Bieber to Michael fucking Jackson. Deal with it.

#4 Katy Perry - Wide Awake
Alright Katy Perry, I don't actually hate her music much like you might assume a young heterosexual male would. I actually kind like California girlz for a reason other than seeing a nude Katy Perry laying on a pink cloud. I definitely like seeing that though. Yes please. But yeah Wide awake, It's okay. I like the gothic outfit she wears in it. Again yes please. But the actual music part is decent. I don't really like it, but it's alright. Decent beat and she's got a good voice.

#5 Gotye - Somebody That I Used To Know (feat. Kimbra)
Eh, this is not for me. There's nothing I found really wrong with it, but I just don't listen to stuff like this. The video is random. Some naked dude get's slowly painted, then a painted girl shows up. I really don't have anything to say about this piece. It's not bad but it's not my taste.

Allow me to speak candidly for a moment

So then, we all know there haven't been posts recently. I apologize for that. I am one under-motivated, forgetful college student. Even with Blue we are just two people so I ask for a little bit of patience. Anyway, that being said, I do intend to continue with my two movies per week as well as a new series I'm going to be starting that is planned for one update a month. The new series will cover the current top five music videos on youtube. It's possible that if I see that group changes often enough the series may become every other week, but at least for now it's going to be coming out on the first of each month and today for this month. I also still do plan to have the occasional video game review or possibly other stuff like anime perhaps or I may talk about last.fm sometime soon, I'm not totally sure of everything but I don't intend on going anywhere or stopping posts. Just work with me a little if I miss one please. Thanks guys.

As always, if there's a movie you want reviewed or questions or comments you would like to ask feel free to comment on this or any post or send myself and Blue and e-mail.

Peace!

-Green

Double update spectacular

This post will cover Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Brave both of which are still in theaters if you want to go see them and since the rush is over now that they've been out for a bit, getting a ticket should be easy.

Brave

So then Brave, it's a Pixar movie. And honestly I feel like I can stop here. Brave is a movie that exists, at least in my opinion, only cause one exec at Pixar turned to another and said "Hey Jerry, my money throne feels a little shorter then usual. We should make another movie." So they did. Pixar made another movie and there's nothing remarkable about it. It's not bad by any means, it's just absolutely run-of-the-mill. Maybe I remember the older movies fondly cause I was a child and easier to impress, but this was just bland.

Plot

Some viking princess is coming of age and her mother expects her do do exactly what she's told and give herself to which ever young viking lad can best fire an arrow, since apparently women are worthless here despite the queen clearly running the place and not the king. But that was probably done intentionally so that the women wouldn't look totally useless. Anyway the chick tries to weasel out of getting married, her mom gets mad, there's a tooth-rottingly sweet moral at the end and everyone lived happily ever after.

Now I don't think Pixar makes bad movies; I can't think of even one movie Pixar made that I would call bad and tell people not to see it. That being said, this is the worst Pixar movie I've ever seen. The whole thing just reeks of not caring at all and just pushing out anything for us to lap up like hungry dogs just cause it's from Pixar.

Unless you really wanna go to the movies and have seen everything else even remotely interestingly sounding, don't see this.

4 utter cash-ins out of 10

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire HunterIn contrast to Brave, I liked this one. Now quick point to anyone who read the book and wants to see it cause of that; this movie takes almost nothing from the book apart from the title and the absolutely most basic level of the concept. Pretty much everything beyond that is different.

Plot

As a young boy Lincoln sees his mother killed by a vampire, and vows to kill as many of the blood-sucking fiends as possible. Along the way he meets a man named Henry who trains him how to fight and equips him with the weapons needed to kill the beasts of the night. Ultimately he decides he must get into politics, you'll see why, to truly destroy the vampire infestation in America and sets about doing just that.

So like I said before, It takes really nothing from the book, which I did read and thoroughly enjoy. Normally This would annoy me, but thinking about it the layout of the book really just does not line up with the typical action curve of a movie. In the book the entire last third of it is pretty much just Lincoln becoming president and dealing with the vampires through politics and not the head of an axe.The book is charming and witty and I'd recommend it if it sounds interesting, but I'm talking about the movie right now. The movie does still have Lincoln become president but most of it happens off screen since people came to see Lincoln swinging an axe not pushing papers. This also leads to and epic finale throwdown that was entirely non-existent in the book. The movie is well done and its a fun concept; Abraham Lincoln fought fucking vampires. It's not amazing, but it's a good time.

7.5 tragic origin stories out of 10

P.S. I really wanted to make this **SPOILER axe-guns! SPOILER**