I hate bricks! (Just keep reading)

It's a shame that so many things we love must come to pass. Today marked the going-away party for my 360, after 2 months of frustration. It was almost 1 year old, if I remember correctly... Yeah, I got it as a gift last Christmas. Ironic, ain't it?

The console in question had been working on and off for the past 8 weeks or so, clicking when I put any disc in and refusing to play it. This led to much pounding, punching and blowing into the disc drive by me, as often it took longer to get a fucking game running than it did to actually play it.

So I called Microsoft a couple of days ago, sat on hold for fifteen minutes, talked to some Middle-Eastern dude who I couldn't understand and eventually decided to send it in for repairs. He said it should be back in time for Christmas, but something gives me reason to doubt Microsoft's word.

So now it's time to break out the cartridges and shake up the air filters, because I'm back to playing my big black brick, the N64. This thing is ancient, but it does have a few nice games. Ocarina of Time I still want to complete, and Pokemon Stadium is still one of my favorite pokemon games of all time.

I suppose something good did come out of this situation, as I finally broke off my long standing love affair with Gamestop, after two things happened.

One, the return amount they give is outrageous. I spent 60 dollars on Bioshock (Which I thought was used, by the way!), returned it and only got 8 in return. No thank you, you divy bitches.

Second, the Play N Trade across the street has a whole heaping helping of classic games dating all the way back to the 2600. Plus, their prices are pretty cheap and the people are friendly. I got two games while I was there, Mortal Kombat 4 and Majora's Mask, so I'll be timing myself to see if I can complete them in time for Christmas.

I guess I'll sustain myself over the months by buying a few 64 games while I wait for the Xbox to come back in time for the Christmas flood of gifts.

I'm not really sure why I'm putting this here, if only to inform you that I won't be able to do any game reviews for a few weeks.

Rant: Extremists are pissing me off!

Blech... Hey guys. Strep sucks ass, which is one of the reasons I REALLY, REALLY hate the fall. But something good has come out of my sickness, as it has fueled my rage into something worth blogging about.



As you can tell by the title, today's rant is going to be about extremists, more importantly, religious extremists.


Allow me to expand and tell you a little about myself and my religious views. Personally, I am an agnostic. Now, many people will automatically think I don't believe in God and that I'm a "burn the churches" kind of guy, but that's not the correct definition. An atheist is someone who completely disregards religion. As an agnostic, I believe in a higher power, or perhaps numerous higher powers. That would make a bit more sense.

But, as an agnostic, I am directly opposed to organized religion. If there is a god, then I believe it's content with having us live and die. I don't try and formulate some kind of symbol of a god in my mind or write a book describing my god down to the very last detail, or even build monuments where we can pray to my nonexistant god.


Being someone who believes in a higher power myself, I have no problem with ordinary religion. Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jew, Scientologist; it doesn't make any difference to me. You have your religion, I'll have mine. Hell, I'm fine entering a civilized discussion with people over their religious beliefs and my own.

But there is a very thin line in the sand that people cross all too frequently, and it pisses me off to no end.


There are millions upon millions of Christians in the US alone, and most of them are good, normal people. They go to church, say their prayers and are able to live their lives without the fear of almighty God driving their every action.

It's time to begin our foray into religious extremism, starting with the Fearful Follower.

This kind of extremist is the one who is incredibly afraid of God, so much so that every move they make, they second-guess, just to make sure they're not committing a sin.


"Would you like a free chocolate bar with that, sir?"
"Are you crazy?! That's gluttony! That'd send me to hell! And you're going too for trying to tempt me!"


These people go to church not because they want to pay their respects to their creator, but go because they're so incredibly afraid that God will send them to a fiery pit of torment for all eternity that they feel they have no choice.

This makes no goddamn sense to me. People should be free to worship any god they want to because they're thankful for, you know, being created! Worshiping out of fear is not worshiping at all; in fact, it's oppression, something the United States has sworn to liberate people from.


Moving on to our 2nd Bible-Thumper, we have the Blind Follower.

These are the people who turn a blind eye to everything that doesn't deal with God, namely science and the history of their own religion. These people claim to follow every word in the Bible, which is fairly impossible, mainly for the fact that it's written by so many goddamn people. Why couldn't He just tell one of his disciples to write the book for him, instead of telling so many, and with a large time gap, too. I am of course referring to the Old and New Testaments.


In the Old Testament, God was a certifiable bad-ass, unleashing all kinds of plagues and such onto his enemies. This is where we get the 'put gays to death' and 'all blacks are sinful' works of Leviticus, which apparently every Christian clings onto into this day and age. You know, except for the blacks part, since that's illegal now. Then the New Testament comes along, and suddenly God's all about peace and love and 'thou shalt not kill' and all that malarkey.

So the question I pose to these people is why did God change his attitude towards people? And in doing this, is he admitting fault? This should never have happened, as God is all-knowing and omnipresent.


And let me tell you, 95% of the time, people will answer like this: "God had a plan, and he was executing it. He has a plan for all of us, including you." And the other 5% will skate around the question, not bothering to actually answer it.

We've gone a bit on a tangent here, so allow me to reel this train back on topic. The Blind followers are the people who don't know that Christianity was a sect from Judaism, or that the Crusades EVER HAPPENED. They also refuse to believe anything about the Solar System, beginning of the Universe or anything of the type. I'm fine with not believing evolution, but seriously; sometime you're going to have to wake up and smell the sulfur.

The Blinds are extremely annoying, because most just won't listen to reason. But they're nothing compared to our last class:


The Holy-Crap-Let's-Get-These-People-Some-Fucking-Therapy class.

You guys knew this was coming. These people are the ones who hide behind some obscure religious text as a way to instill hate and fear onto other people. The prime example of this phenomenon would be the Westboro Baptist Church, who combine all three classes of religious extremist.


This church has about 90 people altogether, mainly the Felps-Roper family. These people fucking infuriate me to no end! These people are so sick and twisted that they picket soldiers' funerals, holding up signs that "God hates fags" and "Thank God for IEDs." Their response to why they spread this hate? They "love all of God's decisions, and the military are fag enablers."

What in the fuck's a fag enabler in the first place?! Look, I understand you are opposed to gay people, but what in the name of fuck do you think gives you the right to hate other people for it?

And why a military funeral, you sick fucks? If it weren't for men and women giving their lives on the battlefield, you wouldn't have the ability to worship freely!

And what's more, they actually criticize the Catholic Church for being too soft and fag enablers themselves. What. The. Fuck.

Let me run down some of the other things they "thank God" for. They believe God organized 9/11 as a way to "wake America up," and he did so because he was angry at the fact that so many fags lived here. God will smite us all, and no-one is innocent. So it looks like we'll all burn in hell for things we didn't do.

These people just make me so FUCKING-

You know, I just had an epiphany. These people aren't sick, disgusting people who want to pervert the founding of a decent religion. They're professional trolls!

This entire fake religion was created for the sake of fucking with us! No ordinary human being is this messed up. They're running a 32 year scam on us, and it's been working!

Damn, these people are smart. In fact, I salute you, Most Hated Family In America. You've conned us all into believing you're a family of fucked-up people, and that takes some intelligence.

(Reality: I actually do believe they're faking, at least to a point.)

So, if you've skipped down here to the bottom, I'll give you the TL;DR version. Religion will always produce people like this, which is why I hate it being organized.

If I ever do become a productive member of society, I think I'll be a pastor, so I can save people from going down these paths of idiocy.

Videos to watch: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Darknessthecurse&view=videos Just type in "Religion" in the search videos bar. Make sure you watch the Jesus Camp rant too.

Hentai and common sense forever,
Kyouger.

Review: Left 4 Dead

Yo again, dudes. In a rather stunning twist of fate, I finished one of my most anticipated games of the year in one day, and now feel confident enough to review it.

Left 4 Dead is made by Valve Studios, creators of Half-Life, Team Fortress. Counterstrike, and Portal. Most, if not all of these games have been met with glowing reviews. And so far, Left 4 Dead seems to be heading down the same path.

Story-wise, there's absolutely nothing to talk about. There are 4 different maps, all shaped to look like different horror movies. They are, in order, hospital, deserted town, airport and farm. There's only one cutscene and almost no character development. I could finish each story in under an hour, which makes the entire game pretty damn short.

The one thing I have to mention is the extremely impressive friendly AI. 9 times out of 10, my AI companions were better teammates than anyone online.

The thing that everyone has been talking about is the game's impressive AI director, which spawns enemies at different points every playthrough. But the fact remains that I'm still playing through the same damn levels every time, just with enemies at different places.

The game is also pretty low on variety when it comes to zombies and weapons. There are five different "boss" infected. There's the Smoker, which can seize survivors with its extremely long tongue; the Hunter, which will leap on survivors and tear them apart; the Boomer, which will vomit on people and cause a horde of zombies to attack those in range and the Tank, a brick shithouse that will tear you the fuck apart before you can count shit two bricks.

And finally, there's the Witch, one of the scariest motherfucking zombies you will ever see. She's fast, deadly and will kill you in one hit. And the strange thing is that I'm pretty damn attracted to her.

There are only five weapons (Not counting grenades or machine guns), and three of those are upgrades of the other two. They get boring after a while, but they serve their purpose, just as they did in all of Valve's games.

Online play is alright, even though I'm still playing through the same four damn levels with checkpoints spread thin. But verses mode is a nice touch, allowing us to play as the boss infected, with the Tank spawning randomly.

I never really felt like this was a "Survival Horror" game, as everyone has been proudly claiming. The zombies can't take more than two bullets anywhere in their body, and they do nearly no damage to me. I was never really scared of anything in this game. My heart pounded a couple times when I heard the music change and a horde of zombies come swarming at me, all brandishing dessert forks. It's like the lead designer knew what a zombie horror movie was, and might have even seen posters for some, but he just can't grasp the concept. The only time I ever actually died was when a Tank pinned me up against a wall and kept pounding me before I could shoot back. So this simply wasn't a scary game. If it was headshots only, I would quite easily crap my pants every time I set off a car alarm.

Now that I bring that up, I have to ask something; if the zombies hunt by sound, why are they never attracted by the sound of GUNS? Seriously, I'll clear out a room standing from the doorframe, only to go in and find that three or four were standing not five feet from where I was firing. So the enemy AI is a little touchy at places.

Let me sum this up in three more marketable points. Neat, but repetitive. Cool, but limited. Unique, but linear.

I'm going to start using a different review system now. Instead of giving games x out of 10, I'm going to be listing how much I feel comfortable spend for it on opening day. So I'll give Left 4 Dead 50$ out of 60$.

Review of Gears of War 2

Welp, I can already tell November and December are going to be two extremely busy months. It seems like we're getting a new, exciting game every week. This week's exercise in manly grunting and weight-lifting was Gears of War 2.

My history with the Gears franchise has never been a strong one. I thought the first game was mediocre, and I really couldn't understand why people were giving it such glowing reviews. But people said that this time around there would be vast improvements in nearly every category. Teach me to listen to hype.

Looking back, I'm almost embarrassed at how deeply the hype claws sunk into me. I bought the Collector's edition and strategy guide, which totaled to over 100 dollars. I paid for it in advance throughout the year, so the strategy guide (Which I never had to even use) was the only thing I paid for.

But anyway, back to the review.

This game was... alright. That's all I can say; alright. The entire game is fairly good, but the individual parts of it bring it down.

The unique cover system is pretty much what makes the whole game tick, and it does so quite well. You can get into cover, jump over it, blindfire and so on. However, some of the controls feel delayed, especially the sprint button.

The aiming system also feels sticky. If an enemy gets behind you, then you're pretty much fucked for about 3 seconds. Attacks from behind are very, very cheap.

The plot is actually not that bad compared to Gears 1, which was simply a linear progression of stop-go shootouts with no real goal in sight except to detonate some bomb or something. But again, it's simply adequate; a big step over the original, but still only so-so.

The battlegrounds and where you fight are where this game suffers the most. There are only 5 levels in the entire game, broken up into 7 parts each. These sections take FOREVER to complete and just make you wonder when you're ever going to see a change in scenery. Especially when you're underground (Which is about 70% of the game, I might add) the environments are nearly the same everywhere, which makes it very confusing to navigate.

On the surface, things are a little better. In the bigger shootouts, I actually felt like I was in a huge, gigantic war against creatures that threatened my very existence.

But underground, everything just muddles together; one gunfight seems identical to the one before. It gets so goddamn repetitive.

But the acting... oh boy, this stuff made me want to throw up. John DiMaggio is great as the voice of Marcus, but he presents his lines worse than Ron Pearlman in Turok.

But the true champion of bad acting definitely Dominic Santiago. There's this pointless and shoehorned story about his love interest being captured by the Locust and blah blah blah. And when he actually meets his wife, I just gave up on him.

I honestly can't understand why so many people love this sequel so much over the original. Hmm... I have been hearing the multiplayer is vastly improved over the first game. Lemme go check.

Okay, it's a little better. Not by much, though. There are a few new maps, but nothing spectacular, all just variations of the same destroyed environment theme. The biggest (And perhaps only) thing I liked was Horde mode, where 5 players can face off against increasingly difficult waves of Locust. I've never even made it past the tenth wave. I hate to think what they do once you get up to the higher levels; probably replace all the monsters with velociraptors and give you a shotgun with no ammo.

I'm being overly mean; some of the shootouts are pretty fun and multiplayer isn't bad. Perhaps I'm just miffed because I spent so much unneeded money on it. But it's repetitive, badly voiced and holds very little replay value for me.

I give Gears of War 2 a 7/10.

I think I'm going to start renting games from now on, so I don't fall into these kinds of traps anymore.

BONUS REVIEW!

I downloaded the Call of Duty: World At War demo yesterday, and I'm a bit torn on it. On the one hand, I like the maps, the fact that you can drive tanks and such, and the World War 2 setting.

The reason I'm torn is because it rips nearly every single aspect off of Call of Duty 4's multiplayer. This would be fine if Infinity Ward was developing it, but Treyarch is (There's this weird system where Infinity Ward develops the even numbered sequels, and Treyarch develops the odd numbered ones). It looks amazing so far, but I'm probably not going to buy it; mainly on priniciple. A studio should put more work into making good games, instead of copying ones from earlier in the franchise.

Whatever, I'm done and this is probably longer than the Fallout review. And Left 4 Dead is coming out next week. Ugh...

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

Review: Fallout 3

Warning: this review will go on for quite a long time, and cover many different broad subjects. Feel free to skim over parts; that is, if you want to be a complete douche.

Fallout 3 is developed by Bethesda, creators of Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls. The game takes place in 23-something or other in Washington DC and the surrounding area. Nuclear war has nearly wiped out humanity Perhaps not the most original concept, but this is made interesting by the fact that the war seems to have taken place in the 50s, because it's what the desolate world looks like. I think the trailer is a perfect example of this.

I try not to make a habit of reviewing anything until I've finished it. That's why I haven't told you the upcoming Watchmen movie will be awesome, even though I know it will be.

So I thought this review would be quite a long time in coming as soon as I passed the two hour mark. The reason being is that I expected to be in this game for no less than a week. I knew immediately that this was going to be a game that sucked up my free time like a vacuum cleaner with a pufferfish on the end, and suck it did.

I'm not a huge, huge fan of the RPG genre, and I hadn't even heard of the Fallout series before this. And I will admit to my shallowness by saying that the reason I first became interested in this game was because of this single picture:

Can I get a "Boom, Headshot?"

The excitement had been building to a fever pitch until four days ago, when I got to Gamestop at 10:00 in the morning to pick up my collector's edition copy of the game, complete with Vault-tec Lunchbox and Bobblehead.

And after four days of shooting at people, being shot at and subsequently dying, I can officially say that Fallout 3 met my feverishly high standards.

The game starts out with... well, your birth. Can you think of a better way to begin a great game? Here you choose your race, hair style, color, chin length, forehead size, eyebrow fluffiness and so on. The sheer amount of choices is staggering.

Soon (But not too soon) after your birth, your father (Voiced by Liam Neeson, who I think did terrific) escapes from the vault in which you were born, and it's up to you to find him.

In the first five or six hours of gameplay, I basically wandered around the Wasteland, until I got bored and decided to head into the core of DC. Then... I got my Caucasian female ass handed to me by Super Mutants. They all look like this scary motherfucker here:

The game plunged me into DC a little too early, I think. I really wasn't ready for the onslaught of creatures. But perhaps that was only because I wasn't playing the game right. Early on I was playing it like any conventional FPS. That is, running straight in with guns blazing and expecting to get back out alive and with all my ammo. This is what mainly got me killed.

But soon I came to grips with the unique combat system and actually began to feel refreshed by it. As you can see in the picture above, using the Vault-tec Assissted Targeting System (VATS), I could que up individual body parts, see the chance to hit and fire. This lead to much glee and dismemberment. However, sometimes the system can get hung up on rocks or other debris, when it was cleat that your gun wasn't aiming at anything other than the Raider with an AK.

I think the thing I like most about Fallout is the freedom and openness it gave me. I could choose my own path, skills, perks, dialogue and perhaps most important of all: fighting style.

I'm confronted with this situation frequently, so I'll use it as an example. Say I have a building in front of me filled with around six hostile Raiders that will shoot me on sight. I know their numbers, but I don't know their armaments. At any given time, there are about fifteen different ways I could deal with this situation. I could take my time and try to snipe them all from a distance. I could sneak around and try to perform silent kills to take them all out. Or, I could run in with a minigun, lactating testosterone, and try to kill them quickly before they take out their flamethrowers and burn me to a crisp. (Guess which one I picked)

There is also the aspect of "Karma," the system by which your interactions with characters is shown on your wrist. You can either choose to be a merciless, unstoppable badass devil who cares for no one but himself, or you can be a patron flower child, giving out alms to the poor and water for the thirsty. The game gives you bonuses for whatever side you choose.

I somehow ended up becoming a lesser Archangel, simply by disarming a couple bombs and giving out some water to beggers.

Of course, being evil has its advantages and disadvantages. I nearly armed the bomb I disarmed, which would have subsequently destroyed the town. At the last minute, I thought better of it and saved the town instead. By saving it, I used the town many, many times during the course of the game.

Fallout really made me care about the characters in it, even to the point of pulling out some real emotion that wasn't online-caused. I once help fix this election for a small-town mayor, who agreed to pay me after it was done. When it was over, he paid me with a measly 25 Bottlecaps (In-game money. And yes, they are actual bottlecaps.). Needless to say, I was pretty pissed and nearly shot him before thinking better of it.

I think the moment that I truly realized this isn't just an ordinary game was when I walked inside the ruins of Fairfax. It gave me a chill, not only because it's near where I live, it's also that I've walked along its streets before.

Fallout is an extremely easy game to get distracted in. I could be simply heading to a nearby radio station when I discover a town and decide to investigate further, finding out that they have a nasty problem with someone named the AntAgonizer, which leads to me proceeding to convince to give up her evil ways. After which, I find a town populated only by children, which subsequently sends me off to rescue three of their own, imprisoned by the motherfucking king of the fire ants.

Yes, this actually happened. I could not make this shit up.

I do have a couple complaints, though. The ending came out of fucking nowhere in the middle of a gunfight. I was still sitting in my chair waiting for the next quest to start until the credits started to roll. Many expletives followed.

Also, the amount of money I got and its worth in the game are both pitifully small. I feel like the design team was trying to emulate the current economy of the US, a attempt they unfortunately succeeded at. I don't get Bottlecaps off dead bodies, and instead I have to find bottlecaps in metal boxes and the like.

Wow, this is getting long... lemme wrap this up. Fallout is a game that sucked me in and refused to let me go until I paid it. It fills its niche beautifully, and I plan on replaying it to get all the mini-quests completed and get the "Evil Douche" achievement.

I give Fallout 10 headshots out of 10.

I'll leave you now with the opening cinematic for Left 4 Dead, which looks to be another game I'll be sinking my time into this November.

Heroes: A retrospective of pain

If you don't already know, I am a nerd. I can accept this. And one of the shows I latched onto early in my acceptance of my nerdihood was Heroes, a TV serial that was much like X-men. I loved the first season for various reasons which I couldn't quite place. Was it the quirky characters, the strong dialogue or the effing superpowers? I could never tell. But bottom line, the show rocked, but the ending... well, I could tell where this was going.

Heroes is a textbook example of "Star Wars," "Pirates of the Caribbean," and "Pretty much any damn Disney movie" syndrome. The first movie or season was so excellent that the studio decides to make a sequel and fucks it all up. I'm not saying that a sequel can't be done right, it's just that the studio or director tries to change the formula that made the first season work so well and ultimately ruins the experience for real fans.

Lemme run through the painful second season of Heroes before my brain starts to hurt. At the end of the first season, Hiro (The Japanese otaku who could control time and space) was transported back in time to the feudal period in Japan's history, to meet his hero, Takezo Kensei. He turns out to be a douchebag, a drunk, and a hero. Wait, what?

The first season really did a good job of making us care for the characters, and this is possibly where season 2 stumbles the most: they introduce too many damn new heroes! There are these two Hispanic siblings who want to see Suresh (The doctor character who is working on cracking the genome) to take away their powers. This takes up something like, 30% of the series. Read my lips: I do not give a shit about these guys! I want to see Hiro do something funny with Ando, or have Sylar closely stalk another hero, waiting to kill them.

The second season also focused more on "The Company," the mysterious corporation that was controlling everything behind the scenes. This was exposition alley, and it made the thing boring. Even as these people were being taken out right and left, I couldn't feel anything for them, because we were never given enough time to get to know them. As almost every episode ended, we were either shown a new character brought in on a whim, or someone who inexplicably came back from the dead. This theme of overly dramatic endings still persists today, and it makes it incredibly annoying to follow. I need a fucking flowchart to keep track of all the new characters. If I made one, it would probably take up an entire apartment complex.

And now, the third season is even worse. I don't even need to see the rest of the episodes to know that they're going to suck. It seems like this season is trying to explain the origin of the heroes, how most of them got their powers and how the Company gave it to some of them and blah de blee de blah.

This makes absolutely no sense! If powers are controlled by a kind of gene, how in the hell can Hiro control time or Nathan fucking FLY?! Things were fine when we didn't know the origins of heroes. We didn't particularly care. We accepted it and focused on the characters instead. Trying to explain these kinds of things just opens more plot holes.

So that's my feelings on Heroes. I really hope that this season will bring the closure I need from the series, even though I know it won't.

Pep rallies rule! Except when they suck.

I've never liked sports or dancing with people. So combine football and awkward dancing, and you've got a hot and spicy can of Kyouger repellant. I am of course talking about homecoming celebrations.

Our school pep rallies are a bit different than most. Lemme give you a little bit of history behind them while changing the names to protect the innocent and the stupid. About five years ago, our school was overpopulated. So the superintendent decided to add another school, codenamed Skywalker High. In the coming football season, we at Warrant County got our asses royally handed to us on a platter made of solid irony. So we have a long-standing hatred of Skywalker High and College. Our Pep rallies take on a very anti-jedi tone to them, which I suppose is to be expected.

But on to the rally itself. After squeezing through a crowd that would have embarrassed Japan's subway, the drum line marched in and actually played a nice, rousing theme song which I could've never made out the words to if I tried. Then the cheerleaders came up, and much panty-flashing ensued. They weren't too bad, but they cheered better with music than just singing.

Then we went through a bunch of bullcrap games, like musical chairs and hot potato, played with a football. We then had a nice skit involving the Warrant Wildcat and Skywalker Toucan. In short, the cat kicked the crap out of the bird, as everyone expected it to, and then they engaged in a dance contest to the extreme!!!!!!!!

Actually, it kinda sucked, the choreography blew and Skywalker actually won, though of course everyone in the stadium screamed that we did (And blew out my fourth eardrum in the process).

I actually liked last year's pep rally and got into it, but this one was just annoying as shit. The fangirlish screaming for the jocks drove me insane, and... well, I don't know. Maybe it's because I started cutting down on my caffeine intake and wasn't as hyped up, but this one just didn't do it for me.

I'm not sure why I'm even talking about this, but perhaps that's what a blog is actually for. I'll post the score of the football game tomorrow.

COCKING PISS TROUSERS!

Goddammit! I'm pretty pissed off now. I accidentally lost my camera in the convention and thus lost so many terrific opportunites to take pictures of terrific cosplayers. I am such a goddamn idiot. But, the trip wasn't a complete loss, for 6 reasons.

1. I had a hell of a lot of fun rocking out to Down With the Sickness, Chop Suey and Eye of the Tiger on Rock Band 2. And seriously, can you think of anything funnier than watching Kisame do a stage dive off a chair during one hell of a solo?

2. I had a bit of fun with Wren and Captain Crazy (Whose name escapes me). Pink Power Ranger and Misa-Misa to the rescue!

3. I realized that Super Smash Brothers sucks ass on the Gamecube. So does Bleach: Shattered Blade.


4. See picture below:

FUCK YES! YURI PADDLE FTW!

5. See other picture:

I am officially a member of Anonymous, the bane of teh intarwebs.

And 6. I'm sure many people will remember me as that drunken asshole who was dancing to "Beat It" in the Dealers Room, blocking the walkway for everyone else.

It wasn't a complete drag, but for over 100 dollars counting the metro station and souvinier money, it really wasn't worth it.

It's cherry poppin' time!

Hey guys. Long time, no post, huh? Well, no crap-tastic movies have been shoveled down my throat now, so I really haven't had any reason to post. I do have good news, though. I will be heading down to Anime USA in Crystal City with a couple of my friends. I'll hopefully have a lot of pictures to bring back, but until then, please help yourself to the pictures of last year.

An ariel view of the Artwork something-or-other.

Me, dressed as Kisame, out in the parking lot. Note the duct-taped headband.

An in-character Jack Sparrow poses for an embarrasingly long time. I really held him up.

A nice leather outfit; can't place the anime.

A cool lolita-fairy outfit. I like the wings and the staff.

I could have sworn I had more pictures of cosplayers, including a few nice Avatar ones. Oh well. I hope to have even more pictures this time around.

Anime USA is this Fri, Sat, and Sun. I'll be heading out on Saturday and staying for most of the day. If any of you are planning to attend, I'd love to meet you guys.

Who am I kidding? No one will show up. :(

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

Happy days are here again! (Not really.)

Good day everyone. As you may have noticed from my Mummy review, I'm finally back in school. Now, for the most part, everything has been going okay. The first year I got all girls, and most of them are alright. Except for my English teacher. So you know what she did to me the first day of school? Of course you don't. She spoiled the ending of Breaking Dawn for me! Granted, she was lying about it, but you just don't tell someone how a terrific book ends and then lie about it! That really pissed me off, and she has made a powerful enemy.

As a startling contrast to my merely good looking or old as dirt educators, my Math teacher is smoking hot. I am not kidding, people. She looks a lot like a crush I had last year, just taller and with a better ass. This kind of thing don't happen often. Nice breasts, red hair, freckles, a great smile and a genuine laugh all made me look twice when I first saw her. And the clincher? Married. Not surprised in the slightest. She also might be a couple months pregnant, but it could be my inagination.

But anyway. So far, only thing major update about any updates to come is I got a job working the school library, so I can come in whenever I want. They got this idiotic daily system where grades are only allowed to go on a certain days, but with this, I should be able to get past that little rule.

I started a new chapter for Ask the Cast, hopefully explaining my absense, so if I do post it in the next few days, please read it so I don't have to explain myself further.

I don't have much more to say on this matter, so I'll leave it at that.

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

Review of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Yes, I do aplogize for not posting in quite a while. Nothing has really been happening as of late, except for the fact that I go back to school next week. Actually, I suppose that is pretty big, since I'll have access to the two things that fuel my writing: boredom and computers. It will eventually depend on the teachers on how much I update, though. It's always a lottery when it comes to getting new teachers. You can either get a real grouch, or you could get an awesome one like Mr. Evans. That dude was awesome.

But anyway, onto the review. I will be explaining the movie all the way through, because I really don't think any of you really care that much about the movie to get on my case. It starts out with an opening exposition about how China's emperor got a bit power hungry and decided to take over. He is cursed by an old woman and becomes a clay statue, along with the rest of his soldiers. Jump forward to 1945, and Brendan Fraser is having a strained marriage with some divy bitch who to the best of my knowledge wasn't in any of the previous movies. I didn't really care, but my dad seemed to, so I suppose it's a big deal to Mummy fans.

Anyway, turns out that Brendan's son has dug up another mummy, only this one isn't alive just yet. It needs the jewel of deus-ex-machina to be revived. Of course, the old guy turns out to be a spy and they accidentally end up reviving him.

Alright, moment number 1 that makes no sense. Apparently, this ninja chick (who is the daughter of the woman who killed the emperor the first time) has this magic dagger which is the only thing that can kill the emperor. When his casket is open, the ninja chick jumps in and stabs a skeleton, which turns out to be a decoy. If he could be killed while he was still in stone, why didn't you kill him beforehand instead of waiting this long? I mean, you had to have known where the tomb was. And don't worry, there will be many more moments that make no sense to come.

After that, they have a car/horse and buggy chase through the streets of chinatown. Now, here I went to get some popcorn, so I missed a bit, but when I got back, the gang are all in the Himalayans for some odd reason. Oh wait, the emperor has to put the stone in a fixture to shine a light telling him where to go.

Along the way, my IQ dropped about 30 points after listening to Brendan's son attempt to act. This guy is one of the worst actors I've ever seen. He tries to put the moves on ninja girl, and comes up with some of the worst lines ever.

"No, the reason you don't like me is because you don't like a woman who can knock you on your back!"
"Hey, the expression is kick my ass!"

Dear god, someone put me out of my misery.

So Brendan and the gang set up a defense perimeter around the stone tablet thing. There is some witty banter between Brendan and his son about which gun is better, the Thompson or the German M-40. This was funny because I often get into gun arguments online on call of duty 4.

So the emperor and newly appointed general (he was the guy who revived him) launch a full-scale assault on the shrine where the tablet is. And that means it's time for the 2nd moment that makes no sense. So far, the emperor has shown control over fire, water and air. He seems fairly indestructible. Bullets only penetrate his clay shell, which covers up his molten insides. So why didn't he just attack in the first place? Instead, he wastes about 20 soldiers only to step in at the last second and totally bitch-slap them all to hell.

Before he does however, Ninja Girl summons three yeti (I know, just go with it) to assist them. These things actually look pretty cool. Like werepyres, only with shorter snouts and no wings. So after the emperor FINALLY steps in and decides to take charge, showing the way to Shangri-La. He also stabs Brendan, who was protecting his son who set off an avalanch with dynamite. Yeah, nice idea there, braniac. This triggers an avalanch, prompting the emperor to do a corny Star Wars ripoff before letting it fall.

Brendan is in mortal peril, so the yeti take him down to Shangri-La, where the woman who killed the emperor is waiting, and heals him. Soon enough, the emperor busts in and steps in the water, emerging as a 3 headed dragon.

We're already up to the 3rd moment that makes no sense. Why would the emperor transform into a western style fire breathing dragon? Wouldn't an eastern dragon have been more apropriate? Lemme provide a couple pictures for compairison.

Chinese:

Western:

So why would he go as a Western instead of a Chinese dragon? Fuck it, I don't care. Let's move on.

So the emperor kidnaps Ninja Girl for no adequately explained reason (I guess he wanted the dagger, but wouldn't it be easier to just take the dagger instead of taking the girl?) and returns to raise his army.

Brendan and the gang travel to the desert just in time to watch Jet Li at work. His son does the stupidest thing posibly and breaks into the camp to rescue Ninja Girl, leaving the old woman to raise the army of the dead from under the Great Wall.

It's time for moment number 4! I don't even think there is a desert anywhere near the Great Wall, yet the entire climactic takes place there. And what's more, shouldn't the emperor's army be inside the wall? Continuity errors are all over the place here.

Isn't it odd how one thing strings into another? It's already time for no-sense moment number 5! Everyone is constantly saying that the emperor's army must not be allowed to succeed or all will be lost. But seriously, this makes no sense! The emperor's army is made out of clay, and a single pistol shot will take one down! Plus, it only numbers about 2,000 to 10,000, depending on which shot you're looking at. That would be incredibly easy for even the smallest millitary in the world to defeat, much less China.

So the climactic battle is on, as the dead are fighting the dead! And here's where the idiocy really starts ramping up. Moment number 6 is huge. The emperor is supposed to have control over all elements, yet he only fights with a sword. He even gets into a battle with the old woman and fights her sword to sword. He has control over metal, for christ's sake! He could have turned it around and shoved it into her heart! Plus, he never seems to really help his troops all that much.

Right about now, I'm drooling on the floor from the mass amounts of stupid being shoved down my throat, so I don't remember much. But I certainally remember one of the stupidest moments of all, moment number 7!

Alright, so backup in the battle comes in the form of a B-17 or similar. The gunner (Who is Brendan's brother from the first two movies, but I couldn't give a shit right now) drops a bomb that lands on a Jeep being driven by the general. But later, he attacks Ninja Girl and Brendan's wife. What the fuck!? The Jeep clearly explodes into a flaming ball of nothingness, but yet the general manages to escape with only minor facial burns! Oh my god, I'm getting retarted just thinking about it.

Lemme wrap this up before I forget how to type. Brendan kills Jet Li and saves that day. Woo-ho. As a quick side note, why did Jet Li get top billing, anyway? He's only in the movie for like, 20 minutes. The rest of the time, he's in his clay/molten rock form. And the movie gets in one final joke as Brendan's brother says that he'll be going to Peru, along with the caption: "Soon after, many mummies were found in Peru." The only part of this movie that was actually brilliant was the ending line. Hoo-rah.

To sum it up, TOTDE is the worst of the mummy films. It's at least on par with Journey, which I have to imagine Brendan was filming at the same time to not know what kind of crap he was working with. I would never spend 40 bucks on this monstrosity, EVER!

It gets a 6 out of 10. An unforgettable experience, at least if you count mental scarring unforgettable.

Review of The Dark Knight (Finally...)

Yep, I finally managed to beat, stab and maul my way into the theater to catch The Dark Knight at around 3:00. First things first; I didn't see it IMAX. Our theater is not equipped to run 3d simulations, and personally, I don't think it would make much of a difference. 3d will not make a shit movie better, or a terrific movie even more terrific. With that said, let's get onto the review.

The movie starts out... you know what? I can't seem to remember how the movie started. Well, I know there was a bank heist my some men in clown masks, but after that I just lost track of whatever was happening. The first 15 or 30 minutes are pretty damn boring. After the Joker comes in though, things get a move on a little quicker.

The J man intimidates a bunch of criminals into financing him to kill the Batman. Later he makes a video telling the city that he will kill a bunch of people unless the Batman takes off his mask and turns himself in. And that's how the movie continues.

I'm not going to try to deny that Heath Ledger's death played a big part in promoting this movie. Not that the viral-marketing at last year's Comic-Con didn't do anything, either. But this movie was hyped on beyond belief. Way too much, if you ask me. Iron Man was announced, a trailer was shown and people got excited. That was it. Dark Knight led people all around San Deigo to find the date of release and a picture of the Joker. So I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this didn't fill a lot of people's expectations, simply because their expectations were too fucking high!

Anyway, on to individual segments of the movie. The acting by Christian Bale was very good, but I really didn't like his constant growling at criminals and stuff like that. If he's trying to disguise his voice, that's fair enough, I suppose. It still got on my nerves though. Most of the rest of the characters were solid actors, but the actor who really stole the show was Heath Ledger, and I got to say that he really did a fantastic job as the Joker. I don't think many people could have pulled off this psychopath easily. The makeup was especially good; I don't know who came up for the more grungy looking Joker, but whoever he is, he's a frigging genius. He seriously creeped me out, and I just might go as him for Halloween this year. Two-Face/Harvey Dent was also freaky, seeing as he had the entire left side of his face practically burnt off. Though it would have been a bit better to give him a split personality, like in the comics.

The actions scenes were very good and varied. Maybe it's because I was sitting right in front of the screen (unlike I normally do), but the editing seemed too fast-paced for me to follow very well. Still, every explosion in the book is in here, and weather you like your action on a train, on a plane, or in a high-speed car chase, it's all in here.

The plot is one of the only parts where this movie slumps a bit. It goes a little something like this: Joker threatens city, Batman tries to stop him, fails, Joker blows something up, and a new plotline opens. Repeat as necessary. The new plotlines are usually varied and unique, but it does slow down the movie a bit in between action sequences and long bouts of dialogue.

Another complaint I have is that the Joker just seems invincible. He intimidates the mob, stabs a guy through the eye with a pencil (Eraser side, by the way), escapes from the prison way too easy and takes enough cracks to the head to knock Rocky on his ass. The focus on the movie is how he manages to intimidate a city to the point of anarchy in the streets while wearing clown makeup. He also changes Harvey Dent's mind a bit too quickly.

But overall, for all of my incredibly small nitpicks and gripes, this was a terrific movie. Hell, you don't even need to know who Batman is to enjoy this movie. Great acting, action scenes, and one certified badass as the main villian make this a must-see.

I give it a 10 out of 10. It's going to be nigh on impossible for them to top this one with a sequel.

Hentai and comics forever,
Kyouger.

A double review! SC4 and NG2

I've decided to do something a little different and review two games in the same post to save time. The titles of those games are Soul Caliber 4 and Ninja Gaiden 2. Let's run down the things they have in common. They're both Japanese, have women in skanky outfits, use swords, and it is the main character's job to fight through as many of his fellow man or ninja as possible. But there the similarities end.

I'll keep the review for Soul Caliber short, since it can be summed up fairly quickly. It's a fighting game. Yeah, I know that; I knew that before I picked it up. There are numerous problems that keep it from being a good fighting game, like Mortal Kombat: Shoulin Monks. First off, you've got about fifteen different characters to start off with, each having a unique storyline that are exactly the same! You go through nearly the same enemies every time, all culminating in a boss which has twice as much health as you which you can still kick the shit out of if you hold the block button.

If each of these characters had their own storyline, I might hate this game less, but they don't. It's the same rooms over and over again, just with different characters. I mean, this could be forgiven if it wasn't only five rooms long. In MK:SM you only played as Lu Kang, but it was an open area with tons of different enemies to defeat. Soul Caliber could have done something like this, but decided to go the cheap way and put a couple random characters in front of you, add a boss that you could beat in ten minutes and pretend to call it a "story."

The gameplay is really where this game fails. Usually the purpose of a fighting game is supposed to be fast-paced action coupled with easy to understand controls. SC's controls are easy enough to understand, but the fact that the game boils down to a button masher detracts from the easiness of use. Plus, the game has about four combos for each character, each of which can be repeated over and over until you win a fight. This is not fun, people! I know that this is kind of what Soul Caliber is supposed to be like, but if a bit more work had gone into the story mode and refining the gameplay, this shitty game could have been turned out alright. As it stands, I doubt it's going to stay in our house for more than a couple months.

I give it a 4/10. Fighting game, yes. Good controls, storyline or gameplay. Definite NO.

Now, shifting gears to a game that is what Soul Caliber should have been but wasn't, Ninja Gaiden 2 is better in almost every way I can think of. The "story" (And I am putting air quotes around this for a reason) of the game revolves around the four Greater Fiends' ressurection and their quest to destroy mankind. This may sound interesting in fanfiction terms, but in a day and age that worships the story and is willing to look past a game's faults if it's well written, this falls flat of standards set by today's market. But relax, it's not all that important. The story does what it's supposed to in a Gaiden game, and that's drive the gamplay. Ryu's travels will take him to all kinds of places, from a gigantic airship (Which he BLOWS UP, by the way. Damn, Ryu is awesome) to the GATES OF HELL themselves.

The combos are fairly tough to pull off, but if you can practice with them enough, you'll be Izuna dropping those spider ninja in no time! Damn, I feel like such a nerd... Anyway, the game is fairly difficult, and the bosses are once again simply ridiculous. Especially the boss of the fourth level, Alexi. His moves are so fucking cheap that you can't even avoid most of them. He'll grab you, strike you with lightning and throw you down on the ground before you have a chance to heal. Plus, there's no way to go back and not use all your healing items because there's a boss coming up. But still, other than the bosses, the game can be mastered if you don't mind getting a few limbs bitten off along the way.

Speaking of severed limbs, there will be quite a lot of those body parts flying around in this game. Frankly, it makes it hard to tell if an enemy is dead or not. Some ninja will get their heads cut off with one strike, some will die if you chop off a leg, yet some will still not die if you chop of both of their arms and one leg. It gets very frustrating sometimes; I'll be doing combos on someone who's already dead (And the combo count will not stop, by the way) while another one crawling on the ground stabs me and blows up, taking about a quarter of my life with him.

Another thing that pisses on my chips is the camera. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with having a fixed camera, so long as the flood of monsters is controlled so you can see it wherever you are. But it seems that the camera was an afterthought in this game. Way too often am I backed up against a wall, blindly slashing at air because I can't see more than three feet in front of me. Plus, there is this boss battle at the end featuring two lava armadillos (I know, just go with it). The camera kept rapidly switching between the both of them like it couldn't figure out which it wanted to focus on, meaning that I died quite a lot through no fault of my own.

As one final complaint, the platforming sections of the game are quite oddly placed. You can fight through about thirty minutes of enemies and then get to a very oddly placed puzzle that really doesn't seem like it moves the game forward at all. The sections with overwhelming enemy fighting and platforming are separated by an almost audiable clunk. It doesn't mesh them together near as well as it could.

You may think that because of my bitching, I hate this game. It couldn't be further from the truth. I am doing what we in the buisiness call nitpicking. Trust me, I'm not some spectecale wearing model railroad enthusiast who can not function without absolute realism. Leaping eight times your own height, doing a five trillion hit combo on somebody when you cleanly sliced them in half in the cutscene and walking on lava are all fine, so long as it's in the name of good fun. I'll even accept that getting a six foot katana rammed through your torso (Again and again and again) is completely survivable, if a bit homoerotic. All these things are fine, so long as the game plays well. And I'm happy to say that it surpasses Soul Caliber and Devil May Cry 4 in every way I can think of at the moment.

I'll give it a 9/10 for unbelievable orgasmic awesomeness, coupled by a lousy camera and stupid puzzles.

Both of these games appeal to a niche audience, but Ninja Gaiden fills its niche so much better. It's good old hacky-slashy-maimy fun, whereas Soul Caliber is a slogfest that you just want to know when it will end.

My Zombie Plan: New to DA

I’ve said it before I don’t know how many times. The dead are going to rise, weather we want them to or not. So it’s essential to have a plan, even a flimsy one, in place before they do. Organize before they rise. Here's the link to my zombie plan on DA. I won't be submitting this to fanfiction, since I don't know where to put it under.

http://kyouger.deviantart.com/art/My-Zombie-Plan-93173957

Oh my god...

If you're actually hoping to win at this game, you might want to clear your schedule for...oh, say, about Christmas.

http://www.addictinggames.com/pandemic2.html

DAMN YOU, MADAGASCAR!

Seriously though, this game is hard. I've been playing it for about six hours and still haven't beaten it once. One time it came down to two countries, Greenland and Madagascar. I now wish to bomb both of those countries. You know the reason I keep coming back, even though this game routinely kicks my ass? It's addictive. And I mean crack cocaine addictive. How many other games let you strategically control a virus as it tries to infect humanity? Zero many, that's how many, man.

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

Leaving

Small update, guys; I'll be leaving for today and most of the weekend. I'm going to a family reunion. So, don't bother messaging me or anything. Not that you would anyway. Summer's been kind of slow.

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

My E3 thoughts

Hello everyone. If you know me well enough, you probably know that I love video games. So E3, the Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles is a pretty big deal for me. It sucks that I'll never be able to go, what with the restrictions on who gets in, but I can at least watch G4 and get all the inside scoops.

Let me recap what happened over the past two days. Microsoft got a jump on the competitors by debuting their press conference a day early, and shocking us with quite a few demos and conformations of changes to Xbox Live.

The next day, it was Sony and Nintendo's turn, each of them showing off new console peripherals and trailers for games. So who really won this competition? Personally, I think Microsoft took home the gold.

Microsoft showed several demos for up and coming titles like Fallout 3, Gears of War 2 and Resident Evil 5. Fable 2 I could pass on, personally. I can take or leave RPGs by Peter Molyneux. Plus, they showed some fantastic new updates to Xbox Live, including avatars, a partnership with Netflix, and several new games for XBL arcade, including a sequel to Galaga, Portal: Still Alive, and a South Park game that didn't have much screen time. But perhaps the biggest surprise of all was the announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would be arriving on the Xbox 360. I'm frankly shocked that something this huge didn't leak.

Nintendo's conference seemed to dawdle on for far too long. Most of the execs gave long winded speeches on improving the status of their games and seemed to be skating around the issue of actually getting to the games. And pretty much the only thing I saw that looked good was Animal Crossing for the Wii, which seemed pretty fun. In a later interview with G4, when asked why the conference focused more on casual gamers than the hardcore, one of the execs asked how they could be viewed like that with titles like Animal Crossing and (I swear I'm not kidding) Grand Theft Auto for the DS. I... I honestly don't know what to say to that, except that I rolled around in laughter for about five minutes after I heard it. Oh, and they had Shaun White promoting a snowboarding game. That was alright.

Sony's was just a bunch of lies and shameless evading. Probably the only thing that piqued my interest was a new trailer for God of War 3, the only reason I would consider getting a PS3, with so many other series jumping ship. Speaking of which, one of the speakers listed Grand Theft Auto 4 and Metal Gear Solid 4 as their best sellers. MGS4 I can understand, but what he seemed to fail to comprehend was that GTA was selling more copies on the 360 than the PS3. Yeah, you're not fooling anyone. Plus, a lot of the conference was about promoting the PS3 online service, which is a load of bull. Everyone knows that Xbox Live is infinitely better, at only 50 dollars a year. It's not that much, seriously. They then went on to show one of the 2 demos of the night, Resistance 2, which actually looks okay. Then again, I said the same thing about Haze when I saw the trailer. Then Little Big Planet came on, which looks like it'll appeal to a lot of people, just not me.

I'm feeling in an organized mood, so let's break down the three things that make a conference good: Demos, New Announcements, and Interest.

Demos:
Microsoft: Came right out and showed several demos back to back, and got me hyped as hell for some of these games.
Nintendo: Had a couple of demos for Wii Sports 2, but nothing really spectacular.
Sony: Showed a kick-ass demo for Resistance 2 and a LBP/PowerPoint demo. You'd have to watch it to understand what I'm talking about.

New Announcements:
Microsoft: Had several new announcements about XBL and how it's going to work, plus the fact that Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour will be coming to the 360 first. But probably the biggest announcement was Final Fantasy 13, something that's certian to rifle some feathers in the coming months.
Nintendo: Um, a band game that you can't miss a note on, Animal Crossing and a Wii Sports sequel. A lot of these were rumors, so it was nice to see some conformation.
Sony: Showed a pretty nice trailer for God of War 3 at the end and a few updates to the online community. Not much to say.

Interest (Or hype):
Microsoft: Fallout looks fantastic, Gears looks very... erm... manly, Resident Evil looks freaky and Fable looks ehh. All in all, a good turnout.
Nintendo: Pretty much nothing. I mean, Animal Crossing? Come on! I would have loved to see a new Metroid or Zelda title grace the platform or even a trailer for a 2009 release.
Sony: God of War looks awesome, but other than that, nothing makes me want to sell my internal organs any more. A cheaper way is to wait about six months for whatever game to come out on 360.

What would I like to see from this E3? As I've said before, I'm a big shooter fan, so I was slightly disappointed when Microsoft didn't show anything about the upcoming sequel to Bioshock. So, I'd like to see more of that. Fallout 3 simply looks amazing. As Tod Howard said during an interview, "It's easy. You just cue up VATS, and it's as simple as selecting sniper rifle, head, fire. Bam!" That I'm really excited to see. Plus, the new fast-paced zombie shooter Left 4 Dead has got me hyped and a bit scared. I'm going to use it as a training simulator for the worst case scenario zombie outbreak.

This year's E3 looks to be pretty exciting. Most of the titles are going to be out before Christmas, which is also good. I'll keep you covered with any new information that I find out.

Hentai, video games and other nerd stuff forever,
Kyouger.

Review of Journey to the Center of the Earth

Yes, I'm not dead. Yes, I apologize for not posting anything but movie reviews and no new chapters for a few weeks. I don't know, but I just seem to have lost the flair and excitement that I had while writing during the off seasons.

So yeah. A little backstory before we begin. I wasn't extremely excited to see this movie, but with my brother's birthday coming up, we thought it only fair that we go see it before The Dark Knight puts a bat-boot up its ass and kicks it out of the theaters. I would have much rather have gone to see Hellboy 2, but oh well. We can't have everything.

The movie starts out with a kid named Sean coming to his uncle Trevor's house to stay the week or something for some reason. Sean brings a box filled with things that belonged to his father, along with a copy of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, which is full of markings his father made. They find out that one of his father's seismic probes has gone off in Iceland, so they set off to find what set it off. (No pun intended.)

While there they meet a mountain guide named Hannah who guides them to the probe. When they get there, a storm pops up and they're forced to dive into a cave which subsequently collapses shut, trapping them. They try to get out by going deeper in the cave when it turns out that blah blah blah, yeah we've all been here before.

I gotta say, this movie was a very big dissapointment. I don't even know where to begin.

First off, I'm not exactly sure who the target audience for this movie was supposed to be. In the trailer, it shows itself off as a new kind of Jurassic Park, with lots of action and T-rex fights, but it also tries to appeal to the scientific community as well with bits and pieces of useles knowlege thrown in for dramatic effect. It fails on both accounts.

It does have a couple of decent action scenes, but they're usually ten or fifteen minutes of downtime until another one starts. And as for the scientific factor... dear god, this movie failed.

I am a scientifically designed individual. This doesn't mean that I'm such a Darwin thumping indiviual that I'm not able to accept new theories. So for the moment, let's just say that a hollow pocket in the center of the earth is possible and by some freak anomoly is able to support life. So what do we get from about 100 million years of creatures evolving down here? A few overgrown venus fly traps, some overgrown pirhanas, some overgrown mushrooms, a single regular sized T-rex, and a few Loch Ness Monsters thrown in for good measure. One mark for lack of originality.

If you take a look back at how things have evolved in the past 40 million years, we should have a hell of a lot more original things for a hundred million years worth of evolution. So, another mark for lack of creativity and empty-headedness.

Let's compare this to a much better alternate-reality movie, Peter Jackson's King Kong. Both of these movies are fairly tied for improbablity, but King Kong pulls it off so much better, plain and simple. KK has many more original examples of how the things on the island evolved, even though it doesn't go into as much detail. A couple of V-rexes (Yes, they are different enough visually to warrant a change of name), a giant ape and a few hundred giant bats are much more believable than a single T-rex and a few plesiosaurs.

Plus, much of the science in this movie doens't even make any sense. There is this one part where the kid has to traverse a stepping stones of magnetic rocks. Magnetic rocks? Um, yeah... no, no, that's fine. We can roll with it. What's more, once he's on the other side, the compass continues to point towards where he wants to go, and not back from where the magnetic rocks are. For all the non-scientists that don't know how what I'm talking about, believe me when I say that this makes NO FUCKING SENSE! If it was just another cheesy action flick, I could forgive this, but this is a movie that actually tries to be scientific, and FAILS at it. A final mark against it for lack of scientific clarity.

If this movie were a little bit more clear as to who it was aimed at, it might actually have saved a little bit of face. As it is now, it's just a way to cash in on people looking for a scientific movie with some decent action.

Final verdict: 6/10. Not worth the 6 dollars. Take my word for it.

I would post some more, but it's getting really late and I'm tired. And don't worry, I'll most likely review Dark Knight on the day or the day after it comes out.

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

Review of Wall-E

So, WALL-E. Not my usual cup of tea, Pixar movies. Mainly because it's physically impossible for them to make a bad one. Sure, Ratatouwhatever wasn't all that good, and the video-game tie ins are usually crap, but no matter what anyone says, little kids will still be drawn into them. There have been a couple exceptions to this rule (The Incredibles, Toy Story and so on), but most of them are kinda ehh. Thankfully Wall-E does not fall into the latter category.

This is the part where I talk about the plot to prevent me from actually doing any work or thinking. It's 700 years in the future, and Earth has become a desecrated wasteland with mountains of trash. A monopoly called BnL sponsors a trip into space for the rest of humanity while thousands of WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) units behind to clean up the mess. All of them have been disabled except for one, who has developed a personality and has an understanding of human emotions by watching Hello, Dolly! (No joke)

Soon the doldrum of his life is interrupted by a spaceship carrying EVE, a female robot whose job it is to find plant life on earth to determine if it is colonizeable again. WALL-E befriends her, and mistakenly shows her a plant he collected, causing her to follow her directive and capture the plant. WALL-E protects her for some time until the ship comes back to pick her up. He hitches a ride on the ship and arrives at the human space colony, Axiom. As WALL-E chases EVE across the city, it becomes aware that humankind has become extremely fat and lazy aboard the ship, having robots do everything for them, drinking meals and going everywhere on hoverchairs. All working jobs are done by robots.

EVE and WALL-E discover that there is a bigger conspiracy going on in the city, and it's up to them to save the day.

Going into the movie, I felt pretty good about the quality. It's Pixar, what more do you want? I didn't expect it to be a blockbuster, but a nice flic to hold me over until The Dark Knight comes out. Besides, what else is out now? The Incredible Hulk? Not worth it. Kung Fu Panda? Jack Black does not a movie make.

Thankfully, it's one of the better movies I've seen this year and one of the best Pixar movies. If you're a kid, you'll get a kick out of the funny moments such as when EVE gets caught in a magnet or when WALL-E accidentally crushes a cockroach, only to have it spring right back up. If you're an adult and worried about where society is going, like myself, you'll be able to look past the funny and see the serious undertones about our life.

The visuals in this movie are exceptional. Every time a spaceship blasts off or something explodes, you're seeing every single particle of shrapnel as it flies through the air. Pixar is just getting better and better, though there really wasn't any reason to do except with movies like The Incredibles. That actually needed to have some good animation in it.

I really liked the romantic turn this movie took, a bit of a side-step from most Pixar movies. It's like how The Incredibles actually showed a real family having real family issues with superpowers attached. EVE was a really cute character, and both she and WALL-E are really good together. A lot is spoken between them, even though not much is said. It's enough to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I was more interested in this romance than I would be in nearly any other live-action movie. Perhaps the reason for this was that it was believable. Not like the Incredible Hulk "omg, liek im gonna stop teh hulk from destroing teh city by kissing it" bull. Too over the top.

In all, WALL-E's a cute movie for a cute audience. It really kept me interested, as any Pixar movie will eventually do, and though I saw the dramatic turning point from a mile away (SPOILERS: the ship's autopilot looks like HAL 9000. That's about all I need to say.), it was still executed fairly well.

I give WALL-E a 9 out of 10. It's a Pixar movie that's actually really good. You should give it a shot, maybe you'll have a good time. It'll be better than Kung-Fu Panda, that's for sure.

A Beginner's Guide to Fanfiction

Hey guys. I've posted a new story. Unfortunately, this is not exactly a story so much as a guide, as indicated by the title. I posted it on Deviantart and Fanfiction, so you can see it now.

Fanfiction: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4334569/1/A_Beginners_Guide_to_Fanfiction
Deviantart: http://kyouger.deviantart.com/art/Fanfiction-for-Beginners-89133066

Have fun.

Hentai forever,
Kyouger.

Review of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

'Ello, G'uvner. It's not often I make two posts in a day; in fact, I've never done it at all. And if I do happen to do this strange thing, it usually means that I have something important to say. And I most certainly do in this case.



When Sweeney Todd came out in the theater, I'll admit that I wasn't too excited about it. I've never been a huge fan of musicals, what with the debacle that was High School Musical, so I failed to see it. But now reveling in the online world of Xbox Live, I happened to discover that it was available to rent for a mere 300 or so Microsoft points. That's about the equivalent of four dollars, easily rentable. And as time had passed, I had begun to hear very good things about the movie and decided to give it a whirl.

As I went in, pretty much all I knew was that there was this barber who kills people and has an oddly attractive assistant who helps him do... something. And he has a really cool chair that people slide down into a bottomless pit of death. But that's pretty much all I knew. Oh, and that Tim Burton directed it and Johnny Depp acted in it. First film that came to mind when I thought of the two (And pale-faced Johhny Depp) was Edward Scissorhands, a film I also enjoyed immensely. And how can anyone say that they've not seen or at least seen parts of A Nightmare Before Christmas?

Even as the opening credits started, I was aware that this was going to be a very bloody film. I'll make a note of this right now so I don't have to later. The R rating is there for a reason. Don't expect them to skimp on the blood in favor of harsh language or something like that. The worst thing I heard for sure was shit, and Mrs. Lovett may have said either 'bugger' or 'fucker,' I'm not exactly sure which. Again, if you have a younger sibling, don't let them see this movie. It's got more blood than a Jason flick, though it is few and far between, and the subject matter that it deals with is extremely dark.

Well, I'm four paragraphs in and I haven't even started about the plot yet. After the credits, Todd gets off a boat in jolly old early 1800s London and remembers the loss of his wife and daughter to an extremely cruel judge named Turpin (Played by Severas Snape! That was really cool to see), who banished him from the city so he could bang Todd's wife. After wandering the city for a short time, he comes back to his old shop, which is now owned by a downtrodden young women named Mrs. Lovett (Who I find very attracted to for a strange reason. Maybe it's the pale face, maybe it's the elegant dress which exposes half of her breasts) who makes meat pies. She relates to him that his wife is dead and Judge Turpin has his daughter locked away. Todd sets out to find her.

Later, he bests a ridiculous frenchman in a shaving contest who later comes to his shop to do... crap. I think that's about all I can do without giving away the major plot of the movie. Basically, I can tell you that Sweeney decides that everyone deserves to die and opens up shop while also opening peoples' throats.

As I walked away from the movie, I got about fifteen steps before I had to sit down and compose myself. The entire film was a dramatic thrill ride from start to finish. I was kept at the edge of my seat for so long, I failed to go to the bathroom once during the easily pauseable movie and relieve myself of the 24 ounce Pespi that I had consumed halfway through it.

I really don't know how to feel about Sweeney himself. Part of me thinks that he's simply a murdering psychopath, and part of me thinks he's a misguided soul whose heart was broken and simply needs revenge to complete his life. Perhaps this is why I felt such a connection to him as a character. All I'm saying is that you might not see me as an Akatsuki the next few cons I go to. A bit of hair dye, a bit of face paint, a barber's shirt..

Now I knew this was a musical, and since the captions failed to work that night, I probably missed half of the singing lines. Now this may or may not be a big issue to some people. For me, it wasn't much of a problem. More of an annoyance than anything. But I will say that about 85 percent of the dialogue is singing, and the rest is spoken. If this annoys you, remember that this is a musical, albeit the most dramatic and bloody musical outside of Shakespeare that I've ever seen and probably ever will.

The ending in particular was really profound and deserves mentioning. I've never been so deeply moved in a movie since I was 5 and Mufasa died. I really didn't want it to happen, and I'll be thinking about this for quite a while yet. Maybe even a story could come out of it; I don't know.

I really can't praise Johnny Depp and Tim Burton enough coming together to form a tremendous tag-team acting/directing duo the likes of which I've never seen. I really can't praise this movie enough. The acting was impeccable, the drama made me want to cry (Which is something I've never done in a movie, EVER), there was plenty of blood, and there were even a couple of funny parts, though you have to be in the mood for them to really laugh. I mean, come on. How many musicals have songs about cannibalism? Zero many, that's how many, man.

In summation, Sweeney Todd was a masterpiece of cinema. Well... Alright, it does have its problems relating to the mainstream audience. It's a musical that's not for kids. This will probably make peoples' heads explode, as these two things have always gone hand in hand together. So, it's not for everyone. If you're a gushing romantic, don't see this movie, because there will be more things than hearts bleeding in this movie. If you're a Ritalin pumping Rambo fan who can't go more than 10 seconds without seeing someone killed, don't see this movie. If you're both of these and need a true masterpiece to complete the triangle of insanity, then you have to see this film.

I'll give it 10 out of 10. I'll cherish this movie even as I grow old and gray. There's no doubt about that.

I'll end this review with a quote from Sweeney himself.
"There's a hole in the world like a great black pit,
and it's filled with people who are filled with shit.
And the vermin of the world inhabit it.
And it goes by the name of London."