Iron Man
I just got back from seeing an advance preview screening for Iron Man. In two words? Fucking amazing.
This is by far the best superhero movie I've seen since Batman Begins. I may, in fact, like it more because it has a robot suit in it, and that robot suit is so well thought out, designed, and modeled/animated that it makes everyone who green-lit the visuals in Transformers look like giant assholes.
When Iron Man gets hit, he moves like he's a giant metal suit getting hit by something. When he takes off, flies, and lands, he looks like what a metal suit would look like doing that. He doesn't float through the air like he's made of tissue paper and twist-ties like 90% of the shitty animation that accompanies modern movies.
Robert Downey Jr. is so believable as Tony Stark, it's one of things that seems like it couldn't get any more perfect. Not only does he bear a striking resemblance to Whilce Portacio's rendering of Tony from back in the late 1990s, but he's a fantastic actor as well. The evolution of the character through the movie is seamless.
If I had to put hard numbers to it, I'd say that Iron Man was about one hundred times better than the Spiderman movies. Not just because I find Toby Maguire's toady little face obnoxious beyond belief, but I know that I will never be bitten by a radioactive spider and gain super powers. I may, however, one day own a robot suit. Robot. Suit.
New NiN
A new Nine Inch Nails single was released this week. The song's titled "Discipline" and you can download it directly (for free!) from the official NiN website here. If you liked "Year Zero" at all, you'll love this.
The Magic of Building a PC
The final piece to the PC crashing puzzle lies not in faulty memory, or Windows Vista, or bad drivers, but in an overly complex PC case. That's right, several important pieces of the computer were being shifted out of place because the case has a hinge with too much give. Now that all the cards are seated properly, everything looks good and Bioshock doesn't crash every 5 minutes.
Pics and more when I'm not at work until 1am...
New PC
I've spent the better part of a week assembling a new PC and trying to get the stupid thing stable enough to use. I was originally going to title this post "fuck Vista" but it's not Vista's fault. It's the fault of every manufacturer who still doesn't have stable drivers out for Vista more than a year later. And there's a lot of them - the only thing that's worked out of the box has been the sound card.
I can't get any game to run for more than 20 minutes under Vista, so forget it. I'm nuking the HDs and going back to XP. I may write another post later about the process of shopping for PC parts, and putting them together, but it might depress me.
Doomsday
Not only is it my birthday tomorrow, but it's also the day the movie Doomsday opens. And it just so happens that Doomsday is the handle I used to use back when I played LAN games of Descent with my friends.
Coincidence?!
Wanna know the name?
After a grueling all-weekend affair with Devil May Cry 3, I finally finished the game on Sunday night. By the end I had maxed out all of the styles (except the somewhat useless Royal Guard) and had enough purple orbs to Devil Trigger for fairly ridiculous stretches of time. I think one of the reviews I read when the game came out said that you should just stick with the Trickster style, and they were probably right.
I got wrapped up in the high-damage style of Swordmaster, but letting any of the later enemies hit you can really mess you up. Better to have level 3 Trickster to Star Dash out of trouble than to take a 4-bar hit from something.
Anyway, with DMC3 out of the way, I can finally start to play Devil May Cry 4. I'm trying this new thing where I have to finish 2 games before I can get 1 new game. This is in the hopes of clearing the ridiculous backlog of games I have, and to stop wasting so much money on them. My friends have already told me "good luck with that."
I Invented You, And I Will Destroy You!
A bit like Arcade Fire, a bit like Broken Social Scene. I've been listening to this song constantly since I first heard it.
At the urging of a bunch of friends, I'd signed up for a Facebook account about 4 or 5 months ago.
For those of you unfamiliar with Facebook, it's one of several online social-networking portals, similar to Myspace, Friendster or ConnectU. At it's heart, Facebook is designed to let you connect and talk to all the people you liked talking to during high-school/university/work, and also all the people you didn't like talking to that much, but didn't want to be rude. It does this by letting you maintain a list of "Friends", which can be people you know from school, work, or that killer party at Brad's parent's cottage, oh my god we totally bonded, don't you remember that?
Once "friended", your friends can look at each other's profile, as well as the profiles of their shared friends. Facebook also lets them upload pictures of the beautiful spouses and offspring that you don't have, as well as letting them provide details about their lifestyles and jobs as a doctors/lawyers/International Rockstars/Millionaire Gadabouts. At present, there are no plans for allowing you to upload clips of yourself sobbing quietly on your couch.
We Contribute Nothing, and History Will Not Remember Us
I was directed towards the webcomic EEGRA by a fellow on a forum. They're all pretty funny, but I think the Bomberman comic is my favorite.
GDC 2008
I just got back from a week in San Francisco, attending the 2008 Game Developers Conference. Our flight got back at 6am, so I've been sleeping most of the day, trying to recover. This was the first time I've been to SF for any significant amount of time, and last time I was here I didn't get to see around the city that much. It's a pretty amazing place - the streets and sidewalks are so wide, and everything seems so well maintained. Walking around Union Square, I saw all the fashions I see on TV and wonder "who would ever wear that?" Well, I guess the answer is "people who don't live where it snows." I can't imagine how the average person lives in the city, since it's so fucking expensive though.
