Interest... Dying...

You may have noticed that I'm not the world's biggest gaming addict. Yeah, I don't tend to play computer games, and have certainly never been more than mildly interested in MMOs. (It usually goes away whenever I stop reading whatever related article I happen to be perusing.)

But when I found out about DC Universe Online, I was interested. I like the DC Universe (hurry up, Green Lantern movie!), and, yes, might just be intrigued enough to actually get in and play in there. Like I have the time for that... but I have the interest so I'd make the time...

The date of release is start of November. Fine, not out yet, neat, I can get in on this early and be there, more or less, when it kicks off. I checked our local gaming store and saw they would have it then, great.

And then I rechecked yesterday. Release date is now end of January. Okay... I guess... fair enough... probably has to go through shipping and censors and... But... there'll be people who would have been playing it for four months then. There'll be people at the top end of the levels, and in between, and dozens of alts, and lots of the good names will have been taken, and griefers will be firmly enscounced...

I could get it near the release date from Amazon (which does ship video games to some international countries... such as New Zealand). Except I might be able to get it cheaper over here... and don't games also have regionality to deal with? Would I be able to play a game from the US?

Eh... my interest is now dying in this area. Instead of popping into the local gamestore come November and then jumping online, I'm now jumping through hoops or waiting many months... I guess that's my interest in DC Online over with...

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Zombiegeddon: 8th Bite!

Not really been much in the way of zombies recently. Take the guild hall for example. After kobolds outside, we go inside and... fight more kobolds... with a wyrm priest. Blinky found us some vile flasks of firey damageness, but since he used them during the fight we didn't need to worry about keeping track of those.

The fight was, as mentioned, against kobolds. Not exactly a huge problem. At least, not for me, and I'm the only one who matters. The monk got beat up a lot, and others got hurt as well, but I was fine. After the fight, the priest with the magical staff turned out to be a magical priest with a normal staff. However, I did find a nice set of armour that suited me well. [Yay Shimmering Armour!] We also found a way down into the sewers, which was apparently a good thing.

Without taking anything more than a short rest (as I said, I was fine) we ventured down, and Blinky took us to see his dragon. The others saw it, not me, as by the time I got there, the sorcerer had already nuked it with his orb. From what they tell me, it was less a dragon and more a crocodile. There was one awkward moment where I and the bard were surrounded by oozes, but I managed to deal with most of them. [I really like Shimmering Armour.]

We found out that the guild we were in backs onto the Alchemist's Guild. I'm sure there's no trouble there we could get up to. But first, a full rest for the others...

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Where No Chimp Would Bother Going

The monkeys got themselves a sequel... because... umm...

I'm not sure why. There's about 20 minutes of story in this 80 minute movie. I can only guess at the scripting stage, they got a bunch of people in a room and got them to shout out ideas "bouncy mushrooms!" "Titan does a million crunches!" "Dr Jagu does ballet!" and then they strung those ideas together until they had enough of a script to pad the movie out. One would think that this movie should be about "Zartog", possibly in some manner of "Striking Back", but, as indicated, that only takes up 20 minutes of time.

(Or was this a direct to video release and I missed that?)

Most of the actors come back to do their bits, although Kilowatt is recast (that said, she sounds the same). It's still the same CGI models, and the only sign of advancement is that they've inserted space shots for about five minutes into one scene.

If your kids liked the first, they might enjoy the second. But only if no-one's really paying attention to what's going on and just happen to have the movie playing while they're doing something else...

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The Devil Made Me Go... Meh

Despite not writing the screen play, nor directing it, this movie is associated with M. Night Shyamalan. A lot of movies are associated with the director, and sometimes the writer, but now "being based on a story by" is enough to get the main credit.

Not that there is much to credit in this movie. People are trapped in an elevator. One of them is the Devil. And... there you go. Amazingly, being trapped in with the devil means you no longer are hungry nor need to go to the toilet. And since they seem to be trapped for many hours, I would have thought that issue would have come up.

At least the rest of the people around aren't stupid. The guards pick up on the stuck lift quickly, and escalate the problem when weird things start to happen. And others (such as the fire department) are called in to help as well. Not that they can do much in a fictional story, but it's better than people being trapped with everyone stupidly ignoring them.

I'm not aware of any of the actors being big names, but they do a decent job. Chris Messina in particular, as Detective Bowden, did a very good job. And this movie is dark. Not in story (it's rather obvious), but in picture. A lot of made out of darkness and strange sounds but that just makes you go 'sigh, come on, bring out the scare when we can see again'. As I note, Meh.

Not a great movie. At least it keeps it short, but it doesn't contain any surprises worth noting. This is #1 in a set of three, we can only hope they get more interesting...

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Yes They Do

In the same vein as the humour of Scary Movie, Epic Movie, Date Movie, etc., etc., etc., etc., ad nauseum, we have Vampire Movie. One positive note: it's short. And, hey, I actually smiled 4 times... laughed out loud once...

However, on the negative side, this is all about Twilight. As in the first half of the movie was taking off the first one, and then the second two were heavily compressed further. Admittedly it was about as sensible as the original movies, and a lot more palatable (as it is shorter), but if you've seen the originals, then you've seen this, as the writers simply repeated many of the moments of the other movies and tried to make them funny. See above for how amusing I found it.

Jenn Proske and Matt Lanter replicate the two leads well, and indeed there are several good picks for casting to the actors. Fortunately the movie doesn't go for heavy effects (aside from the broken body moments), and it explains glittering vampires far better than Meyer ever did.

If you haven't seen the originals (and why would you want to?), just see this instead... although I'm not really recommending seeing this either. On the other hand, in many ways, this is far better than Twilight will ever be.

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$#*! His Dad Says

In the midst of other shows kicking off or restarting (yay, new House!) we have the comedy sensation of... about the beginning of 2010. Namely the show of the twitter series... (I suspect there will be others.)

The basic premise is William Shatner gets a chance to one-up everyone with continual one-liners, and there's a heartfelt emotional story about a father and son trying to form a relationship... which is also undercut by one liners. There were a few comedy routine moments in which it would have been perfectly reasonable to rejoin with "Third Base!"

I really hope they expand the range of the series, but I can see it being very formulaic story lines with, as mentioned, one liners dropped every where. The main thing it's got going for it is William Shatner's presence, but even then that can't be the only thing it's riding on.

It has an initial amusement factor. We'll have to see if it can keep it up or if it gets pulled before mid-season...

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Apokebits

While Marvel have got out a few live action movies, DC have been pumping out animated movies.... although I do prefer the live action stuff, DC have produced solid work and have built up quite a large collection of movies.

The latest introduces Kara and is partially set on Apokolips. Yep, once again we have various superheroes quite easily going up against Darkseid, and while Darkseid should stomp them without a second pause, well, I'm sure you can see where I'm going. (Not that it's that easy, but the worse the heroes seem to end up with is a couple of bruises, whereas Darkseid's forces...)

As well as a set of movies, DC have also set up a continuing set of actors. Kevin Conroy has Batman's role set, and Tim Daly is the voice of Superman. Susan Eisenberg has Wonder Woman, and so on... but as this is Kara, we need a new voice. And so we now have the addition of Summer Glau (who also plays Supergirl in DC Universe Online, although I have no idea which came first). But the best casting is, of course, Ed Asner as Granny Goodness. Just spot on casting there.

Despite the range of movies, there hasn't really been a standout one (although I could biasedly point at Green Lantern...). Apocalypse is... good. Not great, but... good.

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