So, after a week of playing a game I waited so long for, what did I think?

Let me just say right up front that I have NO delusions about this post influencing anyone on this game. This thing is a juggernaut that I could say “It literally kills puppies”, and people would still buy it.  Also, considering how many millions of copies have already sold, no one is going to really care, but I figured I might as well express my thoughts since I talked it up so much pre-launch.

Single-Player Game

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare had a fairly good single player mode, and a fairly coherent plot.

… what went wrong this time?

The plot felt like something that would fit better in a season of 24 with conspiracies, shadowy government plots, rogue military officers, double crosses and more.  At least in the first game you were working towards an actual enemy, and this one just felt like Infinity Ward, the makers of the game, had a bunch of random ideas for scenes and then went, “how do we string these together?”

There was also the issue that this had to be one of the shortest single player games i have ever gone through.  It only took me about 5 & 1/2 hours, and considering that I am not some hard core gamer, that is just ridiculously short.  The game play is solid with excellent controls, and the game is gorgeous to look at, but it is just way too short.

Significantly missing from this game was any sense of gravitas.  While the first game made me actually move to the edge of my seat a few times while in a firefight, this time I just felt like I was being led by the hand through an amusement park.  During one of the major chase scenes I was trying my hardest to catch the villain, only to realize at the end I was never going to be allowed to catch him so I could be led to the next scene.

Then there is “that” scene.  The scene that is causing the game to be pulled from shelves in Russia, and leading to talking heads wringing their hands on news shows.  While the ‘No Russian’ scene is essential to the “plot” (I use the term loosely), and there is a way to skip it, people are still freaking out over it.  Folks … it’s a video game, get over it.  The scene is not glamorized in any way if you actually bother to listen to the mission briefing before it.

In short, if you aren’t going to play online, I would skip the game, but as every one knows, Call of Duty games get their real value in the multi-player modes.

Multiplayer Game

Holy …

Infinity Ward basically took everything you loved about the last multi-player in CoD4, and turned the knobs up to 11.

Weapons – Better … really, that’s all you can say.  They are better.  They look better, they handle better, the sound effects are improved and in general they just seem like they are all around better.

The fact they also made your secondary weapons more broad helps a lot.  Instead of waiting for the perk that allows you to carry more than a pistol, you can carry machine pistols, shotguns or pistols from the outset.  It makes a lot more sense from a military perspective, being restricted to pistols never made much sense.

Play – The “Host Ended The Match” pain in the butt is a thing of the past as the host will now migrate to another player if the host should happen to leave.  The matchmaking also seems to be a bit quicker, but that could be chalked up to the millions of people currently playing.

Experience Points – This may be my one complaint about the multi-player.  There are so many ways to earn experience now that the screen always seems to be busy telling you the 500 ways you just earned some more XP.  ”+50 for ending a kill streak … + 100 for revenge … +100 for longshot …” you get the idea.

The XP just flows so fast it seems like Infinity Ward may have coddled the lower rung players a bit much in giving them faster ways to rank up.  I am not the best player, I admit it, but even I think they went a bit overboard in how many ways you can earn them now.

Grenades – Not too get too specific, but … oh thank you almighty Infinity Ward for getting rid of the rain of grenades we all suffered through various maps in the previous games.

Maps – The maps seem a bit more complex, and a bit “blind corner” happy, but they do seem a bit more balanced and “realistic”.  By that I mean you really do have to be aware of your complete surroundings from looking up at roof tops a lot more than you did in the last game, checking more balconies, preceding with a lot more caution through alleys and so on.  In short, these maps are not suited to people who just want to run without thought, there are consequences to just about all of your actions.

Perks – We now earn XP for using perks?  We even earn basically for just having a perk installed that has nothing to do with what you are doing … er, okay, that makes no sense, but whatever.

Multiplayer Conclusion – If you liked CoD4, don’t worry, you’ll still love this one.

Conclusion

It basically depends on what you want from the game.  If you just want it for the single player, skip it.  If you are the least bit interested in the multiplayer aspects, it’s a must buy.

***MAJOR SPOILERS***

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The Batman was yet another series based on the Caped Crusader, but how does it measure up against other animated efforts to bring him to the small screen?

Following up on my overviews of Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond comes the early 21st century animated version of Batman, a series simply entitled The Batman.

Running from September 11, 2004 to March 8, 2008 on the Kids WB animation block for five seasons, The Batman was faithful to the source material while also finding a way to do a  re-imagninaing of the character all at the same time.

Confused?  Don’t worry, so was I.

While the series kept the basics of Bruce Wayne being Batman and Alfred as his butler, pretty much everything else was turned topsy-turvey by this series: The Joker was a barefooted wild man, the Riddler had numerous henchmen and a different origin, Clayface was a police detective that was a childhood friend of Bruce and so on.  There were also changes such as Batgirl appearing on the scene before Robin which threw me for a total loop as that is so outside of the normal timeline.

The animation style took some getting used to (example to the right), since I had come to love the slickness and stylized versions in Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond, this was by fat the most “cartoony” looking.  Does it mean it was bad?  Of course not, just had more of a “kid friendly” vibe to it, which is why I think a lot of people skipped it.

Of all the animated Batman series of the past two decades (not counting Brave & The Bold since I have seen a whopping one episode), this was my least favorite, but that isn’t to say it was bad, it was just the most inconsistent.  Characters came and went with no real rhyme or reason (Det. Yin had a bit of a cliffhanger at the end of season 2, and then we never saw her again, although she was mentioned in a “future” episode as being the new police commissioner), continuity seemed secondary and in general the writing was very uneven.  It was still watchable despite these nitpicks, but if you have to pick just one series to watch, I think it will always be Batman: The Animated Series coming out on top.

Disclosure: Hey, FTC, no one gave me a flippin’ thing to write this up, and I paid for the DVDs out of my own pocket.  To my readers, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can read about it here.

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What happens when not-so-smart aliens end up on Earth with no way to leave? You get humans at their finest, of course.

District 9 is the story of an alien ship that arrived over Johannesburg, South Africa in 1982, and then went on to just hover over the city for three months with no indication of life on board.  Humans, being a curious lot, decided to finally fly up to the ship and cut their way in.  What they found was over 1 million aliens living in squalor, rife with malnutrition and slowly dying.  In short, they found a ship full of refugees.

The humans, so well known for being a caring group of souls, set up a camp for them named “District 9″.  As time progressed, and people grew more fearful of these visitors and their powerful weapons, the camp turned more into a prison with a shanty town interior.  Nigerian gangsters also moved in, taking advantage of the aliens by selling them over-priced cat food, their favorite snack, and setting up inter-species prostitution.

Now some 20 years have passed, and the MNU (Multinational United), a private military contractor, which has overseen District 9 from the start, has been told to relocate the aliens to an encampment some 240 kms outside of Johannesburg.  The citizens of the city are thrilled, but the aliens don’t seem to even understand what is being said to them.

Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley), an obviously not-so-intelligent worker for MNU, is put in charge of the operation due to his being married to the bosses daughter (daddy denies this, but it’s fairly clear), and on his first day he gets infected by an alien virus.

Beyond that story point you’ll have to watch the movie, but don’t be fooled, this movie isn’t about the science fiction as much as it is about themes: themes of segregation, xenophobia, the good will of humanity, treating those different than yourself as equals and so on.

This move is overflowing with themes, and it actually handles them all rather deftly, but then you get to the third act of the film, and it seems like the decision was made, “Okay, everyone learned their lessons about humanity, start blowing stuff up!”  While it was still enjoyable, the third act of the film is so different from the previous two that it is almost jarring.  There is still a little bit of closure to the story arc of van de Merwe, but it really is all about blowing stuff up and setting up a potential sequel.

Let me say there were two stand out things about this film beyond the story, and that was Sharlto Copley and the special effects.  Mr. Copley has been involved in the South African film industry for some time, but this is the first time he has ever gotten attention on a world wide scale.  His performance as the initially unlikable Wikus van de Merwe really carries you through this film.  There is one scene I don’t want to give to say too much about it and ruin it for you (it’s the scene with the “eggs”), that his performance is so believable, so filled with glee at what he is doing, that you feel like you are actually watching a documentary and you detest this man.

The second thing, the special effects, were phenomenal.  For a film with a $30 million budget, it looked as good as anything coming out of Hollywood in the $175 million budget range nowadays.  A lot of studios could take a lesson from this film and how to scale back on their budgets and still look utterly fantastic.

Lastly, director Neill Blomkamp is going to have a very long career in front of him judging by this project.  He has a fresh, gritty style that is engrossing and quickly transports you into the story.

Overall an entertaining film, even with the run-of-the-mill third act, that I will gladly watch again many times over the coming years.

***MAJOR SPOILERS***

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If you’re considering using DreamHost as your web host… don’t.

Back in August of 2007, I wrote a post singing the praises of DreamHost, and how for the first time I ever I had actually stayed with a web host through an entire contract.  I was really happy with them, and I was acutally renewing my contract for another two years of service.

Well, that ended up being one of the most frustrating decisions of my life.

The Bandwagon Debacle

Previous to that post, I had written about DreamHost partnering up with Bandwagon to allow you to backup your iTunes libraries to their servers.  It seemed like a fantastic idea, and I for one couldn’t wait to give it a try once there was a version of the software for PCs.  They were even giving a free year of hosting away if you signed up for the service, that’s how into this idea DreamHost was.

Well, at some point shortly after that (I can’t find the exact date), DreamHost said this was a violation of their Terms of Service, and you would not be allowed to store your files there.    Never mind they had promoted this idea, and told all users it was okay, but they were suddenly reversing their decision, and any and all files on their servers had to be served to the web or it would be considered a violation of their ToS.

Fine, I hadn’t done the uploading yet, but I did think it was a rather poor decision on their part seeing as they had promoted it.  I had saved other files there over my time with them, always with the understanding it was allowed, but now, suddenly, it was no longer that way.  They have every right to enforce their TOS, but to get people to sign up for one thing, and then strip it away with no grandfathering of those new accounts just seemed sleazy to me.

Strike 1

The Billing Debacle

In January of 2008, DreamHost was upgrading their billing system, and somehow messed up the date, telling the system that it was in fact December of 2008.  The system kicked in automatically, and all customers were billed for 12 months of hosting in one shot.  Those who had credit and debit cards on file were automatically charged for one year of hosting.  Seeing as I had a business account with them that was nearly $100 a month, I woke up to $1200 missing from my debit account I used just for paying bills.  This completely drained my account and made several charges not go through, causing me to be overdue on some bills.

How did they handle the situation?  By writing multiple snarky blog posts about it that laughed it off in a “Oh, our bad” tone.

True, DreamHost had always had a joking tone to their blog posts, but when you’ve completely drained people’s checking accounts, caused them to miss other bills and made us jump through hoops to make sure we got our money back, now was not the time to be making jokes.  I did eventually get my money back, but not before numerous headaches and troubles.

Strike 2

The DMCA Debacle

On April 18, 2008, I posted G.I. Joe Cast Pictures from the upcoming movie.  As these had appeared on several websites, I believed them to be okay.  On April 21, 2008, I received a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) from Paramount Pictures informing me they were in violation of their copyright, and to remove the images.  Within 45 minutes of my receiving that email, I had the pictures removed from the site and server as they requested.

Feeling I had satisfied the request, I was shocked to find my site closed down by DreamHost shortly after that, and it remained closed until the next morning.  I made multiple attempts at contacting DreamHost to discover what was going on, but I had to submit them via their support desk as DreamHost refuses to supply a phone number where you can actually call them.  Yes, I could request “call backs”, which I did multiple times through out the night, but I received no calls or replies.  Never mind the fact I actually had two accounts with them, and was paying them well over $100 a month for hosting, I couldn’t get them to say so much as the word “boo” to me.

By the next morning, I still had not heard from them, and I went so far as to call the lawyer from Paramount who had sent me the DMCA.  He was very understanding of the situation, and he felt DreamHost had over reacted to their letter.  He sent them an email, which he copied me on, telling them that Paramount was satisfied with my compliance and they saw no reason for my site to be down.  Dreamhost still would not reply.

I finally got a terse email from a man in customer service telling me I could reinstate my site and they hoped I had learned my lesson.

I fired back with an admittedly angry email which resulted in me being lectured by the same DreamHost employee, and essentially telling me how I should consider myself lucky they didn’t do worse to me.  He also informed me that my “righteous indignation” was misplaced, and he hoped I had learned my lesson about respecting copyrights.

Don’t get me wrong, yes, I violated a copyright, albeit unknowingly.  That, however, does not give you the right to speak to me like a child and scold me.

Strike 3… you’re out.

A Total Lack Of Communication

I already mentioned that a DreamHost phone number is non-existent, which is bad enough, but when they won’t even reply to support requests for a simple answer as to what happened, that’s too much.  I am writing this post nearly a year after the mess because I still had data on their servers, but that is now all gone.  As I parted, I wrote them a lengthy email about why I was leaving… and not one word of response.

While my anger had cooled over the past year, and I had not planned on saying anything about them publicly, their lack of even acknowledging my complaints just fueled me up again.  If you’re looking for a host, I would recommend that you look at options other than DreamHost because, from my experience, they apparently couldn’t care less about their customers.  I pulled two hosting accounts and dozens of domain name registrations I had through them, and still not so much as a word from them.  And if they make a billing mistake, that ends up costing you money and troubles, they think it’s okay to make snarky jokes about it.  Changing TOS in mid-stream of a promotion?  No problem!  DreamHost phone number?  Oh… er… well… small problem.

I ended up moving to BlueHost, whom I have been very happy with thus far… course, complimenting hosts seems to lead to problems, so maybe I shouldn’t say I’m happy with them… -knocks on wood-

Oh, and by the way, when you leave DreamHost, they prorate what you’ve paid them and keep the unusued portion “on credit” with them should you ever choose to come back.  HA!  Oh well, there’s some money I’m not sure I would ever even want to see.

I think they may have been victims of their own success.  I think they always had some problems, but as they grew more and more, the problems with their customer service were just that more exasperated. I have no clue if they have fixed any of these problems, or their horrendous attitude, but seeing as there is still no customer service phone number, unlike pretty much every other web host in existence, I somehow doubt it.

Of course these are all just my personal experiences with them, and I am sure some people have had flawless runs with them, I just wasn’t one of them.  Based on my time with them, and how it so quickly degenerated, I wish I had thought twice before signing up with them.

This is one of those movie reviews where you have to wonder where you even begin. Do you judge it based on its faithfulness to the source material? Do you judge it based on it solely as a theatrical work? It’s a tough question, and an even tougher one when it is a film adaptation one of the most beloved works ever in the history of comics.

For 23 years people have attempted to make Watchmen into a movie.  Some called it “unfilmable”, others wanted to make huge changes to the plot and characters, but ultimately it fell into the lap of Zack Snyder, the director of 300.  The good news was he didn’t want to make many changes at all, and he fought to keep it as true to the original as he could.  While there are some minor and some major changes, overall the main themes still shine through, and it makes for an engaging film.

Let me be up front in saying I thought the opening credits, all set to “The Times They Are A-Changin’” by Bob Dylan, may be some of my favorite opening credits of all time.  As the music plays, we are treated to amazing photographs and video that helps us follow all of the costumed crime fighters that have existed in this movie universe since the 1940’s.  It is a great use of time, it conveys the history you need to know that this is an alternative world you have entered that runs fairly close to ours, but not quite.

This is a story that happens on so many levels simultaneously that it is almost impossible to easily summarize what it is really about.  It is a story of humanity and are failings.  It is a story of what would you be willing to do and/or live with to accomplish what is ultimately a noble goal.  It is a story about ideals.  It is a story about the type of people it would take to dress up in a silly costumes and fight crime, and if they do it for the good of their fellow man or if they do it as some sort of  adrenaline rush/aphrodisiac.  When you realize the number of ideas this work tries to convey, you begin to understand why people thought it was “unfilmable”.

What you end up with for the film that is a surprisingly breezy 2 hour and 43 minute running time that flies by without feeling anywhere near that long.  And while it may not give you clean-cut answers to those questions and ideas it puts forth, it at least addresses each of them.  The thing is that you have to watch for them, you have to pay attention to so much, that most people will just see it as an unusual super hero movie when it is really so much more.

If anything surprised me about the film, it is how unbelievably brutal it is.  While the comic was certainly no field of daisies, when you see the violence of the comic projected on a theater screen, it becomes shockingly violent, but it works.  This is not a film for the squeamish, you will feel uncomfortable, and that may be one of the highest compliments you can pay the filmmakers.  It never feels exaggerated, it feels like these people live in a brutal world, and, at times, they must be brutal in return to do good.  Although I will say the Comedian/Sally Jupiter scene in the billiards room is done so effectively, that even knowing the outcome, I still found it difficult to watch for its realism.

From filming, music selection, special effects and acting, this movie delivers on all fronts. (With the exception of Malin Akerman as Laurie… she got it right in some scenes, and in others you were fairly certain she had no clue what was going on, or how to play it)   Sure some things are missing that I would have liked to see stay in from the original work such as the news stand owner and the kid for example, or Rorschach having his pocketful of sugar cubes, but, in general, Mr. Snyder did his job, and you get to see a Watchmen movie that is darn close to the original work, and is a heck of a good film to boot.

To the fans of the book who have complained about “the squid” being absent (I’m not going to explain this to non-readers of the book as it would give away the ending of the movie completely), what they replaced it with makes a ton more sense.  You don’t miss the squid at all, and you actually wonder if it was ever really needed in the original work.  Believe me, I was nervous about the change, but the new solution works out a heck of a lot better.

Although I was uncertain as I left the theater, I liked the film more and more as I thought about it through out the evening.  My highest possible recommendation, even if you have no clue what you are getting in to.  Just don’t go expecting The Dark Knight, because this is certainly nothing like it.

(And thank you to regular commentor “Contrary Jack” and his wife for actually convincing me to leave my office to see this opening day with them)