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Y2kk Update: - Smallville: Fade small Smallville Week in Review (Spoilers...) -

Then again, I really must've been disillusioned at the time. Because, when oh when, has Smallville ever provided even a single sigh of goddam relief?...

"Yet another Smallville stalker shower scene? WTF?... Either way though, I'd hit that. I'd hit that. I'd hit that. I'd hit that. I'd hit that..."

Because sadly? I pretty much equate Fade and its goddam Hitman scenario with how goddam awful all those fucking, goddam PSP commercials are on TV...

Seriously, why the hell did we get yet another standard fare freak of the week episode at this point in the season? And a dumbass one at that... Why did he just bury Clark outside of The Talon (where apparently there just happens to be a huge tuff of dirt that anyone can step on)? Why not take him for a ride in his car, and just shoot him in the fucking head?... And in the final bout with Lex? What kind of moronic hitman walks right into a room by opening the door himself, making it completely obvious when he entered and where the fuck he is. And then apparently was too damn dumbass to even duck from fucking bullet shots (as evidenced by a fucking wound to the goddam gut)? WTF?...

Well, it's not like Clark was any smarter. A battle of brilliant wits, this was not... I loved how it took forever for Clark to even think about using his super-hearing to track down the invisible hitman, let alone actually even attempt to use his fucking X-Ray vision. And why the fuck doesn't he just ever throw a fucking object at his enemy, just in case the guy has fucking kryptonite on him?... It was moronic at best how Clark and Chloe were openly discussing his meteor rock weakness in the Daily Planet, not just because a fucking invisible hitman can be a "fly on the wall", but also because there are fucking tons of reporters around them. What the fuck kind of dumbass people are they?...

Well, Chloe was decently cute again at least. And I kind of got the impression, that she was hoping that Clark would "move on" from Lana with her instead... Of course, that didn't amount to anything in the end. And at this late stage of the season? I seriously doubt we'll get anything between the two of them besides maybe a few "oh shit" looks, that will eventually get me to hate even Chloe cleavage as much as I despise Lana's fucking scrunched, constipated, Renee Zellwinger face...

Lana is the fucking whore you can hit over and over again inside, apparently. I love how she blames Clark for lying to her all the time, yet is dating the supreme evil asshole of Lex Luthor (who she knows has tried to fuck over the world in the past)... Didn't she completely avoid Lex last week? And yet now they're sucking face and probably going down together since she's obviously worn out all the batteries on her bunny-fanged vibrator? Talk about a fucking cock-tease of a schizophrenic rebound whore. WTF?...

I just couldn't help but fucking roll my eyes at just how "noble" she thought she was being with her "oh shit" Clark moments at the end of the episode. Yet, you know what the saddest thing was though? Being in a such bad mood myself while watching this episode, I kind of almost could relate to the bitch when she was bitching in the barn... Clark is like a sick stalker of a hitman when it comes to Lana, afterall. He left her, he dumped her. Sure he obviously cares about her still, but she's a "big titty girl" as Chloe might say (or not). She can make her own choices, failures and fucking misforgivings. And if she wants to date Lex, then that's her fucking whorish, horrible decision to make...

And you see? That's where the MWAHAHA hitman villain of the week went wrong. If he really wanted to help Clark, it wasn't Lex he should've fucked over with the fishes. It was Lana fucking Lang...

But then again, this was coming from the same moron who apparently was dumb enough to become visible again just to choke Lex Luthor, exposing his identity in the process. WTF?...

At least Lex Luthor had a few moments. The thing is, Michael Rosenbaum has always been a great actor. It's just that, the writing is so fucking all over the wall when it comes to his character, that it's simply goddam ridiculous... Smallville is absolutely schizophrenic. We all know that Lex is lying through his teeth most of the time, but he still seems mostly sincere about becoming friends with Clark again, and with protecting Lana from goddam fucking bullets (his one weakness, I suppose)...

... though I suppose the latter is what makes him evil in the eyes of most fans...

Sure, Lex can go off the edge at any moment, but he's actually trying to be nice and compassionate. Meanwhile, Clark keeps making the guy go fucking batshit, Batman insane. If anything, the fifth season of the show has shown that Lex has the potential to be a good man, yet assholes like Clark and Chloe just refuse to put any faith in the guy. WTF?...

Let's face it. Clark was a total complete dumbass in Fade, to the point where I pretty much saw him as the fucking true villain of the show... First, he saves the next great hitman from death. Then he saves the next fucking Hitler yet again by catching the bullet meant for Lex fucking Luthor... Even worse, he stopped the bullet that could've killed Lana fucking Lang. Sure, a true hero will save lives first and ask questions later. But what the fuck is wrong with the guy? Just fucking let Lana die already, and then we can all be happy...

He had some decent scenes with Lois in the end though, enough to salvage this episode somewhat, I suppose. Obviously, the stalker shower scene was cliche as hell, but even I snickered at Clark just standing there like a deer in the headlights at the fucking naked Lois Lane. I know I would've had the same reaction, as any fucking bitch on TV should've been smart enough to just put on a goddam towel...

I expected at least some more comedy at the end of the episode though, when Martha was lecturing Lois about the fine wine of men (as if Ms. Kent wasn't fucking whoring it up with Lionel Luthor in the background). I expected the ever cliche sitcom moment, of Clark coming in through the door right when Lois was saying she'd find the right man, only for her to tell the jackass to buzz off or some shit like that...

Like I said, that would've been cliche and predictable as hell. But it would've made me laugh still, you know?...

Y2kk Update: - Smallville: Mercy small Smallville Week in Review (Spoilers...) -

I saw this fucking hot waitress chick when my brother took me to Jack Astors for my birthday this week. And I'm telling you, she was smokin' hot, with the fucking face and skin and hips and curves...

But why, oh why must there always be something wrong with the way a woman looks, even to a noname nerd like me?...

She was as flat as a cardboard box. She had no tits, no ass, no cheeks, no nothing...

Sure, I could stare at the fucking bitch sucking my cock all day. But really, what the fuck is there for me to lick and suck on that's sweet and holy in the meantime (well, besides her tight ass pussy, I mean)?...

Because that's exactly the same way I felt about Mercy as an episode. Well, besides the smokin' hot bitch part, at least...

Mercy was decently well written and had some solid acting, but it just didn't seem right, you know?...

Something was missing, and without it? I just couldn't enjoy the episode... because, well?...

"A Toad like, what? The so-called Apex of the series, completely ignoring the fact that Smallville is a failed takeover of a show in the first place? WTF?"

I don't get it. To the point where I'm barely coherent myself, don't you know...

Smallville tried to be smart and witty with their little mind games in Mercy. The key word here though, is that they tried...

Smallville is all about the takeovers, or the copying and stealing of any movie or television show with teen angst written all over it. The problem is, the writers just fail so damn miserably at everything they do try to take, simply because they rarely ever write an episode where any character has a purpose or meaning or a goddam reason to be there...

Lois Lane was great as always, being noticeably absent yet again. As for Chloe, I do love the little cutie outfit she was wearing, but what was really her purpose in this episode? To just sit around and spout technobabble about the evil, psychotic of the week?... With just a few episodes remaining left in the season, I thought that maybe she'd start trying to go for Clark or something, or at least show some of her previous venom towards Lex Luthor. Instead, she acted as if we were back in the third or fourth season again, as the sidekick to both Superman and the evil Lex, completely invisible in the background (except for the Chloe cleavage, of course...)...

Well, at least I should be thanking my lucky stars that Lana fucking Lang was only in a single fucking scene. Yet even I was getting seriously pissed off as hell from her, simply from the fact that she was cock-teasing Lex Luthor with all her own fucking bitch mind games yet again... Seriously, she came alone to his place for a chess game? And she came dressed in a fucking hottie, night slut outfit? What the fuck kind of shitty ass writing is this?... If I were Lex Luthor, I'd slap that bitch for her mixed messages. She's dressing up as a whore just begging for sex, yet she walks out of the mansion as soon as the topic of her fucking sluttiness was finally brought up? WTF?...

Lex Luthor himself was just an enigma. It's just too bad that his enigmaness or whatever, has all been said and seen and done before...

He acted like an enemy with Clark here, claiming that he was hoping that they could one day find some common ground. But weren't they friends just a few episodes before? I really can't remember or keep track of this shit anymore, so whatever... All I do know, is that why must Lex still always seem like the good guy of the series? While Clark was looking like a distrustful asshole with his opinions about the Luthors, at least Lex was actually putting all his effort into finding his father... Is it just me, or were the roles of these two switched in Mercy or some shit like that? Sure, it wouldn't have made sense if Lex had actually set the whole ordeal up, but the show really has to stop painting him as the hero of the goddam story...

Because seriously, what the fuck was up with Clark Kent this episode? Why did he show no mercy towards any of the Luthors, even in a crisis like this?... Yeah, yeah, he did save Lionel's life (even though stopping the elevator instantaneously with his hands should have been no different in sudden impact from the damn thing slamming against the ground... inertial dampening hands for the win?...), but he obviously didn't care about the welfare of the Luthor patriarch one damn bit. He obviously wouldn't have cared one damn bit if the man had died... What kind of shitty ass anti-hero shit is he? Ripping off Batman Begins now, I take it?...

Though WTF? Clark Kent was actually on the same page as I was, accusing Lionel Luthor of staging the whole damn thing?...

But the final scene between the two was decent, if only because John Glover can truly act his way out of a fucking tin can... Clark may have threatened Lionel with his life, while at least keeping in mind some memory of what the Luthors are really all about. But why is it that the writers still make the boy wonder completely forget that Jor'el (or Zod... whatever) once had full control of Lionel Luthor at the start of the season, and probably was still controlling him now?... Why else would the guy be having headaches and quickly writing everything down on paper while he still can? Goddammit, I can almost already hear the damn reset button being rubbed like a fucking clit by the goddam Smallville writers...

Copycat of an episode or not, I will admit one thing. Lionel Luthor always has been and probably always will be the best damn character on the show, and Mercy was made all the better from him and him alone... Martha Kent was a real bitch in the meantime, just whining and complaining as she basically took Lana's spot as the slut in distress. But Lionel actually seemed to show real compassion for her (which is more than I can say for Clark whenever he was with Lana fucking Lang), taking her by the hand and sacrificing all he was just for her (and her son), even if perhaps it was all a ruse in the end...

Now, I will also admit that a few of the torture chamber scenes were decent. The fiery bucket one had my attention, and I kind of felt bad for the poor actress locked in a fucking water cage... On the other hand, the last task in the elevator was predictable as hell, as of course there would be fucking blanks or no ammo in a weapon that Lionel would selflessly sacrifice himself over. And it's not like I gave one damn shit about the generic villain of the week, who was apparently too damn Austin Powers dumbass to even check if his victims actually had died in the fucking elevator shaft or not...

Mercy as a whole was decently well written, with some smart puzzles and great acting between Martha and Lionel Luthor (apparently, the new replacements for Lana and Clark...). But I just couldn't really give a damn about the episode in the end though, thanks to an uber-cliche villain, moronic second helpings from Superman and his crew, and a script stolen straight out of the monster movie of the fucking week...

And fuck, none of the bitches in Mercy were even remotely as fucking smokin' hot as that Jack Astors waif of a waitress was this week. What the fuck kind of shitty ass teen angst show is this then?...

Because if anything? That, along with the moral of this episode, has taught me a very valuable lesson for all my future small Smallville weeks in review... and short story short, that simply is?...

Y2kk Update: - Electronic Arts' / Valve's Half-Life 2 Microsoft Xbox Review (Spoilers...) -

One of the most pivotal and perhaps transcendent games in the history of the entire gaming industry...

You'd be hard pressed to find even one person, who wouldn't argue that Half Life revolutionized the gaming world in terms of story-telling, AI, and pure goddam first person gameplay...

I've made an entire noname nerd of a career based on my own personal names and bias against the series...

I'm sorry, I just don't see what was so great about the original Half Life. It's not that it was a bad game or anything, but I seriously laboured and tortured to find my way through it...

So what if Gordon Freeman was able to tell a story without ever opening his mouth? I've experienced far greater moods and atmospheres from NES games than I ever got from Half Life. Not to mention the fact that the G-Man was absolutely the worst excuse for supposedly great storytelling than I've ever heard from the PC fanboys in my elementary and high schools...

I'm just not a PC first person shooter fan, that's all. I tried liking Half Life on my PC, but shoddy framerates back then (I'll admit that) and my ineptness with the keyboard and mouse, have seriously dampened my ability to enjoy any FPS on a computer since the days of Doom and Duke fucking Nukem...

Maybe I would've found Half Life to be something special, if only I hadn't become desensitized to it already by shit like the Quake series, or experienced the real renaissance of first person shooters on the N64 through Goldeneye (cue rolleyes from PC fans here, but whatever...). But that was then and this is now...

Half Life 2 arrived in stores in late 2004. Or should I say, arrived on Steam?...

I've heard all the stories before, how Half Life 2 followed so proudly and successfully in the footsteps of its predecessor, in becoming the best damn first person shooter ever made. And yes, I've tried Half Life 2 on another person's computer where the framerate was decent, the graphics were relatively sharp and high resolution, and the game itself didn't seem so bad. But there were three main reasons why I never, ever bothered to buy the game for my own goddam PC...

And there was no way in fucking hell that I would ever pay for a fucking game, where Valve reserves the right to revoke my fucking gameplay license through Steam at any fucking point in time in the future that they want to...

If I fucking fork over my hard earned cash for a game, I want to fucking own what I buy. I want something solid and tangible in hand, actual recorded software that will allow me to play the game wherever the fuck I go or whenever the fuck I want, without the fucking digital consent of some lameass server on Valve that can screw me over any damn time in the future. Hell fucking no...

It's ironic, really. Gabe from Valve created a disutopian world in Half Life 2 with a Big Brother motif in mind...

As any PC gamer would tell you, it's just flat out wrong to play Half Life 2 on the Xbox. Even Valve's Gabe himself claimed that the Xbox port of his precious series was a fucking travesty in the end...

... kind of weird then, that I preferred it to his shit on the PC... but whatever...

Half Life 2 was a technical masterpiece on the PC, I'll give him that. And without a shadow of a doubt, even the shadows produced on the Xbox are but a pale imitation of what Gabe originally had envisioned and supposedly successfully programmed...

With that said though, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who didn't admit that the Xbox version of Half Life 2 at least compares to the PC version running at medium graphical quality...

The resolution took a bit hit, literally being reduced in half for SDTV and 480p. There's simply no denying it, as backgrounds look faded and characters looked blurred at times... Hell, the first time I ever saw a Strider far in the distance on the PC? It was one of the most artistic sequences I've ever seen in a first person shooter before, and it looked amazing at 1280x768 resolution. But it sure as hell wasn't very wowing at all on my own 480i projection at home, for all the obvious reasons stated...

I could deal with the resolution dip if textures had been kept up to stuff. But the Xbox with just 64MB of RAM just can't compared to the 1.5GB RAM behemoth that I saw Half Life 2 running on over a year ago (even though I was impressed that the console did hold its own)... Character textures aren't bad at all, as Alyx and Dr. Eli Vance look almost identical even up close to what they were on the PC. But after seeing what the Combine soldiers used to look like up front and personal, or how the buildings and environments used to look so damn deeply textured on the PC? It's winceful for me then when I stop on a whim, glance at a wall on the Xbox version, and notice that it all looks like pure Half Life 1 shit...

Absolutely the worst part of the Half Life 2 port was the framerate. Gabe was a bit too obsessed with keeping his graphics intact, me thinks, and he inflicted his wrath on the rest of us with a goddam framerate that barely exceeds 20 fps... Seriously, sometimes I feel like I'm playing Goldeneye or Perfect Dark again, and not in a good way. If Half Life 2 on the PC at 40-60 fps was giving me motion sickness somehow, then you can pretty much imagine my reaction at fighting five Combine soldiers at once on the Xbox at 15 bloody hell choppy frames per second...

But contrary to what you'd hear from almost any gamer who swears by the PC? There was a lot of little things that Valve also did right in their conversion to the Xbox as well... or at least mostly right, for an evil scheming Steam of a company...

It's a shame that the loading times are still present and unbearable in the Xbox version. It's embarrassingly bad that just when you're finally getting into the groove of the hovercraft or dune buggy stages, a fucking loading screen pops out and jumps at you every five fucking steps you take in the game... I wish that Gabe had probably learned and utilized the streaming systems of consoles to perfection. And the even sadder thing is, he did try that shit but failed miserably in my opinion, even if he managed to cut loading times from the PC in more than half...

On a computer, I would have to wait literally minutes to continue on in a stage, no matter how much fucking RAM or hard drive space the PC I was using had. At least on the Xbox, loading times are manageable, although they still pop up at the worst spots possible to ruin whatever mood or atmosphere the game is trying to create at that point in time... It was a horrible programming decision on Valve's behalf, to segment each area of the Half Life 2 stages into designated fucking loading zones. But at least the half-implemented console streaming helped make it so that the Xbox version of the game does improve upon the PC, in this one department of presentation at least...

My largest single complaint with the PC version of the game though was surprisingly not the loading times, but rather the fucking useless AI. Why is it that the original Half Life was praised for revolutionizing the genre, with elite soldiers who hide behind cover and enemies who fucking used team tactics to flush Gordon Freeman out, while somehow it turns out that Half Life 2's most intelligent opponent is literally the fucking barnacle?...

Is it just me, or in all the original versions of Half Life 2 on the PC (I'm not talking about future patches or mods here), the Combine soldiers literally just stand around and wait the fuck forever to get shot? Is that what's considered transcendent gameplay this days? Enemies with the collective IQs of fucking sitting ducks?...

Where was the teamwork we saw in the first Half Life? Didn't they roll grenades and flush you out with flanking and shit like that?... I admit I only played the Xbox version of Half Life 2 on normal difficulty. But even there, I was hoping for some sort of improvement over the lacklustre AI of the PC version, only to realize that my opponents had gotten even stupider than they were before... But at least, without the perfect precision of a keyboard and mouse any longer? Shooting the enemy didn't completely feel like fucking basic target practice anymore...

But oh dear God, the weapons? Don't even get me started on those half-witted pieces of shit... In the PC version of the game, I would only use the fucking shotgun, because the mouse and keyboard made every single shot with any other weapon into a perfect fucking head-kill on the moronically still AI... The thing was, the PC game was even marred further by the fact that in the rare event that you didn't get a fucking head shot? Then your weapon would barely do any damage to the enemy whatsoever, making your pistol and even the plasma rifle into the equivalent of a goddam feather gun in the end...

The Xbox version of the game does improve on the weapons, in a limited capacity at least. Aiming is a finally a bit of a challenge with the dual analog sticks, as it should be for a fucking physicist like Gordon Freeman. And weapons like the basic machine gun have a better feel, now that recoil finally has an effect... It still feels like you're firing at your enemies with BB guns or some shit like that though, considering they just don't react at all to your shots. That's why I fucking only used the shotgun in the end; it was the only damn weapon with heft and girth, or the only damn weapon that could actually make the enemy wince in pain from a fucking nose-bleed at least...

Actually, aside from the shotgun? There really was only one good weapon in the entire damn game, but thank God it was good enough to save the series from mediocrity...

The final stages of the Xbox version of the game were so kickass, if only because I absolutely adored sucking up random Storm Troopers and tossing them off cliffs and ledges. Hell, even the mighty Striders fell beneath my fury, as the suckage of the zero point energy balls was one of the most creative things that Valve has ever put into a first person shooter...

Too bad the fun didn't last though, as the game developers took out the option to use the Super Gravity Gun throughout the single-player campaign after the final credits roll for the first time. I heard you could do this in the PC version, so why not here? It would've given the game some sort of replay value then, as God knows it was sorely needed thanks to the complete lack of multiplayer here...

The one aspect of Half Life 2 that I actually did think was somewhat revolutionary on the PC were the physics. Finally, we had a game where cars and characters and even robot dogs all animate fluently and realistically, rather than flapping and fapping all over the place like rag doll fucking physics... If there's anything to truly be proud of in the Xbox port of the game (and the reduced loading times don't really count, since they never should've been there in the first place), it's the fact that literally all the physics from the PC version of the game made it completely intact to consoles. Hell, if anything, I actually thought the physics had been improved with the Xbox S Controller in hand...

I am still amazed at just how lifelike characters like Alyx and Dr. Kleiner animate their mouths and move with their eyes. Sure, it can't quite compare to Pixar shit like The Incredibles or anything like that, but Valve really produced a convincing enough effect to make me stare at my screen in half a state of disbelief... The Xbox version of the game may suffer from reduced textures and visual resolution, but it more than makes it for it by keeping every single frame of character animation that the PC version had, if not even more. If there's any real reason to pick up Half Life 2 for the Xbox, it's for the physics and "digital actors" alone...

I guess the full Dolby Digital 5.1 sound on the Xbox kind of helps things out as well. On the PC, I don't care what kind of rig you have, as sitting just a few feet away from your monitor and speakers just doesn't create the full effect that I think Valve or any gaming company truly intends for its audience...

Sure, I was disappointed in the music in Half Life 2, considering there barely was any. And the enemy sound effects were obviously designed for the PC in mind, concentrating more on distance and position for CounterStrike audio radar than anything else... But when it comes to the digital acting, and the actual storytelling of Half Life 2? The full Dolby Digital sound just is so much clearer and so much more vibrant on the Xbox than it seemed on the PC, that it even almost convinced me of all people, that perhaps the Half Life series really is a revolution in real-time gameplay story-telling?...

... almost, that is... if it wasn't for the shitty ass actual script and ending, I mean...

... major spoilers... though you'd be hard pressed to finally anyone out there who hasn't beaten the game, or hasn't pretended to beat the game at least...

You shoot a couple of glowing energy orbs into the fucking dark fusion reactor, time stops, and then credits roll? How the fuck could people ever criticize Halo 2's ending yet not this bullshit? WTF?...

As much as I hated the storytelling in the original Half Life, I did respect it somewhat for following in Nintendo's footsteps. Gordon never spoke a word, letting his actions speak for themselves, and all the cinematics were done in real-time (rather than that FMV crap that Sony was spewing out with the PsOne)...

At least in the original Half Life, there was a genuinely interesting story. Why were aliens from Xen invading? Who the fuck was the G-Man?...

But what the fuck did we get in Half Life 2? Oceans being sucked dry, a flock of Combine seagulls, a worldwide gas shortage, and that's about it?...

I'm sorry, but I just didn't give a shit about the disutopian society. I've heard all the bullshit about Half Life 2 having the best damn art direction ever seen in a game, but I just found all the backdrops and building textures to be boring as hell, if only due to the repetitiveness of fucking sewage systems and Doom-like corridors. After experiencing the outdoor environments of the original Halo on the Xbox, I expected so much more...

And while certain Half Life 2 stages were decent (the hovercraft and "Anticitizen" ones come to mind), Valve tried to absolutely ruin the franchise by artificially extending the game with shit like "We Don't Go to Ravenholm". I gave up the PC version of the game then and there, and I almost tossed my controller in frustration at the Xbox for the same goddam bullshit... Why the fuck would I would ever want to shoot headcrab zombies all fucking day long in a game? If I did, I had my fucking Resident Evil 4 (GC definitive version) in hand, which was a hell of a lot greater and grander in the end than Half Life 2 could ever dream of becoming...

If anything, I thought the pace of the storytelling in Half Life 2 was atrocious at best, considering the main core plotline (involving Alyx and the capture of her father) was only dealt with in the mere seconds between every several fucking hours of repetitive gameplay and loading times... The only "digital actor" that I did actually give a damn about was Dog, if only for the moments he plays fetch with the Combine. Because God knows I sure as hell couldn't give half a shit about Alyx, who looked bony and anorexic as hell on the PC, yet somehow appeared chubby and fucking dim as half a doorstop in the Xbox version of the game...

Couldn't they at least given her tits and ass if we had to stare at her so often? Jesus fucking Christ...

But nothing could prepare me for just how bad the ending to Half Life 2 was. While the announcement of two immediate sequels to the game (Episodes I and 2) at least sort of blunts the blow, I know that I sure as hell would be asking for my motherfucking money back if I had actually wasted all my time and credit cards on the fucking Steam version of the game... only to climb up a fucking massive tower at the end, take out the last boss in two fucking shots flat, and then have an ending that lasts about just ten fucking seconds in duration...

Did we learn anything new about the G-Man? Did we learn anything really new about the Combine? Sure, we can figure that they're enemies, or that at least the G-Man is testing Gordan Freeman (who we all know also has the initials "G-Man" in his name... kinda...)... But didn't we already know that same exact shit back when the first Half Life hit? And now we're stuck at the same damn place and point in time, with almost the same damn exact ending that was already fucking weaksauce, way back when the first Half Life was released? What the fuck kind of lame-ass, cock-teasing story-telling is that? WTF?...

So, let me get this straight. The great revolution in story-telling brought forth by Half Life 2, was to tell?...

And also, as you can plainly already tell throughout this noname review? I've shitted all over the game that I so fondly call "Half a Piece of Shit"...

The thing is though, while half of the series may be pure crap to me? Well, that doesn't necessarily mean that the other half is really so half assed or disconcerning...

The physics of Half Life 2 were amazing, both on the PC and on the Xbox. And the Xbox version probably still stands as the second or third best first person shooter on the entire console in terms of a single-player campaign, right behind Halo and the Brothers in Arms series... which ain't so bad, considering it may be one of the last first person shooters on the system as well...

The graphics may look dismal in comparison to a high-end PC, but it still boggles the mind how Valve was able to mostly match the looks and performance of a 3GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM "middle-tier" computer with just the 733MHz, 64MB of RAM available within the Xbox...

Sure, I wish that at least we had gotten shorter loading times, higher resolution textures, and a far more stable framerate than we did in the end. But considering we're comparing a PC game normally seen on a 17" or 19" LCD monitor, with a mostly bug-free port that's been running on my 48" ugly-ass projection SDTV? Then what we got is really not that half baked bad...

I loved the controls on the Xbox. Don't ask me why, but I just did... While Half Life 2 PC felt like it was going through the motions, as almost like a point and click adventure in terms of just targeting stand-still, turnstyle opponents? At least the Xbox S Controller was inaccurate enough in nature to actually force the user to use some tactics, as basic as they were...

The D-pad weapon selection menu in this game should be copied by every other fucking first person shooter out there on the market today (aside from the kickass Halo two weapon scheme, at least). And there's just something that feels so right and just so damn addicting, about using the fucking trigger buttons to toss a helpless Combine soldier into the arms of his clueless comrades with the goddam Gravity Gun...

And as much as I hate the story itself? Sure, I was left unsatisfied at the end, as many other gamers would also agree and attest to. But the digital actors themselves were all great, certain levels with vehicles (the hovercraft and buggy stages, I mean) were absolutely the most well done and polished I've experienced on a console outside of Halo, and like I mentioned before? Lamar simply kicked ass and took names...

Sure, I may have preferred a more realistic setting than a futuristic, disutopian backdrop conquered by interdimensional goddam aliens. But there's also simply no denying, that for the universe that the artists did create? Valve really just has that special kind of touch with the photoshop brush, to make the world around you convincing in ways that almost no other developer can even imagine...

Half Life 2 was no masterpiece by means, contrary to the opinion of so many fanboys out there. But still, I will give credit where credit is due...

Normally, you'd be hard pressed to find someone, just anyone who wouldn't argue that Half Life revolutionized the gaming world in terms of story-telling, AI, and pure goddam first person gameplay...

... and that Half Life 2 didn't at least continue the true evolution of the genre...

But I think, it's even harder to find a person out there, who will argue above all else against all the above?...

... and yet still respect the series for what it has done, and for what it has achieved...

Y2kk Update: - Smallville: Fragile small Smallville Week in Review (Spoilers...) -

And yet they couldn't even get Samuel L. Jackson back as the badass mofo, all things considering?...

"Tom Welling got to direct an episode? They let him direct an episode? I guess it shows... I mean, the Cylons got their ass whooped by Hermione Granger? WTF? That would never happen in real life. Never..."...

But you know what else I never thought would be possible in real life either?...

... that an episode directed by Tom fucking Welling of all people, would actually turn out to be alright in the end...

I mean, sure Fragile basically just followed the freak of the week formula. And sure, the episode did have a shaky and rather fragile start... I mean, why on earth would a fucking bitch first take cover from all the glass shattering around her, then fucking stare at the one last mirror in the room that was just about to bust open into her face? I guess The Fog really got to Tom Welling or something, because he sure must have a thing for dumbass women in horror situations...

But is it just me, or did Fragile actually provide a somewhat entertaining and meaningful bottle episode, while also simultaneously stringing together a few seasonal story arcs in the background? It was actually decently well written, decently well directed, and even more surprising? Decently well acted, in my honest opinion at least...

Erica Durance finally made her way back into season five, after being gone for God knows what reason for God knows how long. And she was rude and abrasive and annoying as always, without any damn real cleavage out of hospital clothes to warm viewers back up to her... But still, at least the references to her future with Clark were kept rather somewhat subtle yet meaningful. Sure, it was obvious how the two connected over Maddie as if they were parents, but it was still nice to get that kind of relationship-like contrast between the two again like we did in season four... I still miss how the writers actually knew what to do with Lois Lane last year. But hey, even if they just had to give her a new job here out of the fucking blue in this episode, at least it gives me some hope that the actress will get some screen time later on in the season...

Meanwhile, Chloe was useless as always, not even being the sidekick when it came to the whole superhero business. I mean, she was actually that close minded to just believe that Maddie was the supervillain in all this? How many Smallville episodes has she been through again?... Now, I thought her talks with Lex and Lana felt out of place at first, considering we normally don't see Chloe that fired up. The thing is though, if you look at it from the perspective that she ain't protecting Lana, but rather Clark? Then you see the newfound or returning possibly, that maybe she and the boy wonder will get it on sometime. Which starts for me at least, another decent hope for the rest of the horrible fifth season of this goddam show...

Oh, and finally Lana Lang shows her true G-strings of a fucking slut. Of course, we all knew this years and years ago, that she's the fucking princesss bitch of the series, but apparently the character herself was too damn dumb to ever notice just how whorish she's become... If having a Parisian fling as a screaming witch wasn't bad enough, she goes from being totally in love with Clark to rebounding with Lex Luthor in about one or two weeks flat? While I would normally abhor such stupidity, it just seems natural coming from such a bloody hell whore in the first place...

Lana Lang may still supposedly be the good gal in the series, as the "prey" of this relationship. But at least I can finally tolerate the actress to some degree, when her character finally shows her true colours and her true skin (yes, please), trying to hurt people rather than pretend to be all nice and fucking innocent (and of course, failing absolutely miserably in terms of acting in the end)...

Lex Luthor himself is finally getting an ass piece of the action, and it's about fucking time. While the inner Superman fanboy in me would've much preferred a rivalry between him and Clark in terms of riches and power, that just isn't the way that Smallville has gone... What the WB has created is just another one of their fucking overdramatic soap operas, and force fed upon us the horrors that can only be known as Clark and Lana Lang. But now that the bitch has finally switched to the dark side of the force where she belongs? Then finally, the real rivalry of the series between Clark Kent and his mortal nemesis can finally come to the forefront, as undoubtedly one of the two will blame the other for Lana's slutasstic ways...

And I don't know, but I just felt happy for Lex, you know? That little cheekish smile he gave at the end, after Lana kissed him like the cock-tease she is and left, gave me hope that maybe even a son of a bitch such as myself will find a nice gold-digger whore of my own one of these days... And besides, how the fuck could you not side with the bastardly man in his conversation with Chloe? I mean, I sincerely don't understand how a cleavage-totting blonde cutie like her could possibly not already have a relationship with some guy (and Jimmy the news-boy doesn't count), but at least Lex started the possibly that Ms. Sullivan will start looking for a man... and give us a couple that might actually have fucking chemistry on screen, don't you know...

I don't know, but this episode just seemed to create a fragile new balance in the series, or a tipping point where maybe, just maybe the series might turn things around for the rest of the season. And it just gave me a lot of hope that the Superman story arcs we were promised so long ago will finally become the focus once again, as Milton Fine being spotted by Lex's thugs all across the globe in two countries simultaneously, has just got to mean that Spike the Vampire will be going head to head again with everyone's favourite supervillain slayer sooner rather than later...

Hell, even Martha fucking Kent was bearable now and again in Fragile. She's still a fucking whore, rebounding from the ashes of her dead husband to dressing up night and day in scarlett Johansson red for Lionel Luthor of all people. But at least she finally also seemed a bit like a mother again in Fragile Balance, looking over at Clark either with pride?...

Either way though, it doesn't really matter to me. I always do love a good Oedipal Complex sort of story, don't you know...

Emily Herst, whoever the fuck she may be? Well, she played Maddie the little girl in Fragile. The thing is, she was completely the opposite of Dakota Fanning in terms of all her omnipotent annoyingness. Herst actually played the part well, and her character had great chemistry with Clark...

A little too great of a chemistry with Clark, really... if you know what I mean...

Is it really that wrong that when I see the two of them together, hugging each other with sentimental foolish pictures of stick and matchstick men, that I get turned on? I mean, sure it was supposed to be a father and daughter sort of bond between them, or even a brother and sister. But is it really that wrong that those are the two archetypes that I always sadly find the most alluring in television shows?...

Sure, Fragile was meant to be pretty much just a freak of the week episode, but it also was one of their requisite "Now You Know" types of societal episodes, outlining that "anyone can be a father (even women apparently, according to Clark), but it takes someone special to be a dad"... But still, is it really so wrong that I enjoyed Leoben as the cruel, demented father? Is it really that wrong that when I saw him making little bunnies or whatever out of glass for his daughter, than I had visions of him and his rapist smile, fucking her tiny tight ass? Is it really that wrong?...

Perhaps I would make the greatest, sickest supervillain of this fucking lame-ass series?...

Still, I actually thought that the father turned out to be a decent villain in the end. I mean, he was absolutely no threat to Clark, as glass of all things would be the least of his concerns (even with a shard sticking right in the throat of his mother)... Even so, Leoben provided a nice symbol of what this Smallville series as a representation of the Superman comics has always been about. He represented relationships with fathers, or how spiteful Jor'el in the series can be at least... And I don't know, but I personally did feel a decent connection in the scene where Clark was comparing that voice-over in the caves to Jonathan Kent, the "dad" who's still fresh in our minds from last week's other-worldly, neighbourhood-friendly hallucinatory trip...

Perhaps I'm a bit too maddened myself, in the same damn way that would get my ass tossed into Belle Reve. But still, I liked what she brought to the series at least... Sure, she made far too much of a leap between being the silent cartographer to becoming the loud mouth bitch braggart, bringing up bastardly topics like Lana fucking Lang. But while her acting did feel forced at times, she also really did seem to look up to Clark Kent in a way that was far more real and emotional than any fucking relationship in Smallville has ever felt before...

Fragile may seem on paper to be just another freak of the week episode, and in many ways it was. But at least it told a strong story, at least Tom Welling actually tried his finest to act for once (and still failed miserably, but I digress), at least Chloe showed some cleavage again, and at least the episode gave me some hope (as small of a shard as it was), that the rest of the fifth season might actually get tolerable from this moment on...

Or will my hopes and dreams simply be dashed and shattered, just like every other fucking Smallville season beforehand?...

Seriously, WTF? The series might just as well be called Mr. Glass then, really... as the writing is anything but unbreakable...

But sigh... at least we'll always have Chloe... at least we'll always (sometimes) have Lois Lane...

I mean seriously, is it really that wrong that I found her so damn cute, with her pinkly little ass to the camera when she was cleaning the windows?...

Well, I am the pervert who still sadly thinks Disney's The Parent Trap is the best movie ever made...

So maybe I just have a hard time and a hard on for any movie or episode with an adorable, little girl in it?...

... sigh... either way, back to just googling pictures of Hermione Granger then, I'm afraid...

Y2kk Update: - Smallville: Void small Smallville Week in Review (Spoilers...) -

Did anyone else get the distinct feeling, that somehow after watching a shitty ass episode like this?...

What a perfect name for Smallville as a series then... the very damn show that just keeps on drawing viewers in, yet leaves the masses completely unsatisfied, hollow, and fucking brain-dead to boot...

"Lana Lang dies... again?... and again?... AND AGAIN?!?... And then gets brought back to life? Why the fuck must the writers keep cock-teasing us so? WTF?..."

Oh dear God, just when you think the writers finally have the right idea? They strip it all away, like an illusion, in favour of keeping the fucking bitch as the prime time centerfold of the show...

Seriously, Lana Lang wants to die. The audience wants her to die. It's a marriage made in heaven...

She was happy there in heaven. We were happy she was off the show. Why not keep her dead?...

What the fuck is the problem then? What the fuck are the writers on? Why the fuck must the writers keep cock-teasing us so?...

... constantly cock-teasing us with their fucking cocktails of "non-drug" drugs...

... can the Smallville writers please not try to beat us over the head with their goddam metaphorical ugly sticks?...

I mean, I can still remember how many fucking complaints came out, when Joss Whedon and co in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (season 6) were actually dumb enough to use magical drugs for Willow as a subtle reference and hidden metaphor for, get this?...

And yet what we do we have here? Lana the fucking Smallville Slayer or some shit like that?...

Throughout the whole damn episode, Lana or the medical student MWAHAHA guy, whatever his name was, just keep reiterating over and over again that they weren't doing drugs. Even if they all looked like they had OD'ed on E, even if they were on magical hallucinatory trips to Disney Land, even if their bodies were fucking addicted and dependent on that shit, and even if any fucking serum you actually do put into the body technically is a fucking drug already by definition?... How stupid can Lana be? WTF?...

... and I guess her stupidity really is goddam contagious, rubbing off on fucking medical students and Replicaters of all people...

I mean seriously, wouldn't it have been smarter for that MWAHAHA medical dude to just run away from Lana and the authorities, instead of just trying to murder everyone on sight at the end? Doesn't anyone find it completely fucking moronic, that his chosen method of syringe capital punishment for Lana, was exactly what she had been begging for the whole damn time? Yet she was terrified of hell of getting the injection anyhew? What the fuck kind of dumb bitch is she? WTF?...

But I guess Mr. RepliCurrie was just simply too damn moronically badass to let the SciFi broad do him in again from behind his back. Because as my friend might say? It's always great to see good ol' Fifth on April Sixth...

Didn't anyone else think of RepliCarter as soon as we saw the MWAHAHA guy with a blade in hand? Man, the guy has guts...

Bad pun for a really bad villain... from a terrible episode of a horribly atrocious show... how fitting...

Meanwhile, Lois Lane was nowhere in sight to be found. And Chloe in the meantime? While her cleavage is always welcome, she really was useless as hell. She showed a few random pictures from her computer, consoled the Goth bitch as she was conveniently found at the scene of her death bed, and then wasn't even smart enough to help Clark out when she knew Kryptonite drugs were on the lunch menu from the MWAHAHA villain of the day...

Lionel Luthor has always been the greatest character on the show. But unless his true motives and true self come out anytime soon? Even I'm started to get bored to death of his MILFing goddam act in the end... Chances are, he's not Lionel Luthor. He's just Jor'el or Zod playing out the Lionel role, maneuvering all the pieces of his chess board in place. Why else would he seemingly expose Spike the Vampire Slayer down south in Honduras?... and apparently, Jor'el is horny as hell, going for Clark's mom of all people...

But did we really have to put up with all that romancing crap Lionel's doing with Martha all over again? Didn't we get enough of that blind love shit back in season two?... Hell, even Martha just seemed completely out of whack in this episode. Why the hell is she that damn dressed up and that damn slutted up for a fucking gala? She looked like a motherfucking, mother of a ruby red whore... The only saving grace she could've brought to this episode, was if Clark had gotten to tell her what Jonathan had said to him from beyond the Smallville grave. But we didn't even get that, so what the fuck?...

Although isn't it weird, that Clark was the only person who didn't get to see his biological parents from beyond the odyssey? That actually would've been a pivotal moment in the series' history, seeing both his mother and his Kryptonian father in heaven (although I'm sure Clark still would've been confused as hell over who or what the fuck was in the caves... he's never been real bright)... That alone could've saved the season from mediocrity, but alas, I'll have to settle for Jonathan fucking Kent instead...

Still, I'll proudly admit that the one scene and the only damn decent scene of the episode, came when Clark was dead or in a fucking coma of all things. Finally, we got the father to son, death bed talk that we were cheated out of in the 100th episode. And as short as it was here, it did not disappoint... Even I'll admit to feeling some tug at the cheeks over Jonathan calling Clark a true symbol of peace. This was the speech that in the comic books, set Clark on the path to becoming the greatest superhero ever known. And it was just great to know that thank God, the very core of the Superman legacy wasn't completely ignored here in goddam Smallville for once...

Unfortunately, that still doesn't make up for the crap that we had to go through to just get to that scene alone. I mean, why the fuck do we really have to deal with Lana Lang being a fucking cat-burgler in the Luthor mansion for half an hour of shit, when we only got literally five fucking minutes instead of Clark in Honduras with his horrible Spanish accent?... Now, I doubt Kent can really run that damn fast down to South America as was shown, otherwise he would've owned The Flash in their race. But even so, the little CG overworld effect was the only true Superman moment of the whole damn episode, and also one of the few seconds where I actually was satisfied with the actual damn show...

I suppose Lex Luthor was good enough to be expected as well, although I don't really get the meaning behind the glove he was wearing. It was always nice though, that his mother seemed like she was straight out of hell, acting as bitchy as Lana Lang ever has. Oedipal Complex, much?... The thing is, has Lex even really done anything evil since that Christmas episode? In fact, the way things have been going since the Senator race, he's probably become nicer than he ever has before. Sure, he'll turn into a complete monster as soon as (we all pray) Lana fucking Lang gets killed off of the show, but still? I'd rather have the Lex of today as a fucking superhero, than the shitasstic Clark in the episodes that we do fucking get...

... because Smallville on a whole, all its powers combined?... is just never goddam satisfying...

There seems to be a goddam void in the series, and yet we just keep on watching. And I think we all know the real reason why...

Seriously, what the fuck are the writers on? Go to hell, Lana Lang. Go to fucking hell...

Because is it just me, or did Smallville almost 'prove' the existence of an afterlife here? A happy afterlife, where everything is all warm and peachy and cozy and fuzzy?...

Didn't Smallville therefore prove the existence (in its own universe, at least), of a heaven where Lana Lang is actually welcome? And a place where we viewers all pray to God she will leave us for, sooner rather than goddam later?...

"We just want you to be dead!", so say the rest of us all to her motherfucking face...

Y2kk Update: - Nintendo's / n-Space's Geist Nintendo Gamecube Review (Spoilers...) -

... well, besides outside the Nintendo Gamecube embarrassment funny pages, I mean...

To me, it's sad to think that so much of our modern gaming world today is based on bump mapping, hump mapping, high definition texturing and shit like that. What ever happened to games we simply played because we had actually heard that they were good?...

Then again, even I have to admit that I laughed after seeing the first damn screenshots of Geist in action long ago...

The franchise was dead and buried long before it even had a chance to rise from the Altered Beast grave, in my eyes at least...

And to be honest? Even in the final retail version, the presentation really hasn't been cleaned up one damn bit...

Can I really say anything positive about the graphics? Well, the blur effect whenever you've possessed an animal is pretty cool. And I guess the colours on the wall textures is better than average, even if it's all faked with no real lightning being processed whatsoever...

... and, umm... yeah, that's pretty much where all the compliments come to an end...

Let's face facts here. What we have here at first glance, is a game that looks and feels and plays like a first person shooter, a genre that even I completely scrutiny for Half Life 2 and Doom 3 calibre graphics. The problem is, Geist doesn't look nearly as decent as either of those two...

... hell, it barely even manages to hold its own against fucking Maken from way back on the goddam Sega Dreamcast...

That is what the presentation of Geist reminds me of, as character textures and wall designs are just so low in resolution, that I almost feel like I'm back in the overglorified N64 and PSX age all over again. And what's even sadder is that the framerate wasn't optimized at all, even considering the game looks like it's using at most a tenth of the Gamecube's processing power at a time. It's a horrible sight to see a blurry, pixellated, first person mess running at 20 frames per second or even less in a firefight...

You know what's really sad though? It's the loading times. Not only are they annoying between stages (for a Nintendo published game, at least), but they remind me of fucking budget Dreamcast games in the way that the background being displayed looks... It shows the face of your John Raimi or Sam Raimi or whatever Evil Dead character, half man and half possessed or whatever sort of crap. Problem is, n-Space didn't even bother to fix up that picture, as it looks horribly low res and even less detailed than your polygonal characters in-game. And yet we're forced to look upon this crap for ten or something straight seconds at a time...

A few of the cutscenes in Geist were decent, with some voice acting here and some wowing moments there. The problem is, the overall presentation of the dialogue is just so cheap, not only because of the primitive font type that n-Space chose to use, but because of all the bad character art the company produced as well...

This was perhaps the one fucking game that I actually would've advocated using full motion video on, as the horrible framerates and character animations built into the game-engine just didn't do any of the cutscenes any sort of justice. It was like watching a third party developer try to pull a Zelda: Ocarina of Time in terms of epic cinematics, except they were still using N64 development kits on the goddam Gamecube...

So yeah, suffice to say, the overall presentation of Geist is a total embarrassment. To be honest, it barely looks and feels better than a Nintendo DS game overall... Sure, you can almost feel the presence of Nintendo's own Shigeru Miyamoto at places, like a ghost hovering hints to n-Space on just how to improve their game in the end. But n-Space, lacking any sort of technical skills whatsoever, even fucked up the little "Raimi" or "Sir" sounds that each character opens up with before spouting out voice-less dialogues of text (ala Zelda 64 style)...

If Miyamoto really were dead or dispossessed (knock on wood), he'd probably be rolling in his grave right now...

Geist simply lacks polish. And perhaps for better or worse, feels like a weird ass malignation (if such a word exists) of both Western and Japanese cultures (thanks primarily to Miyamoto personally coming overseas to give a few pointers). This all results in the awful, floaty Maken feeling I get while I'm controlling... I mean, the thing is, Geist is supposed to be a first person shooter, right? So why the hell does it have absolutely the worst first person shooter mechanics that I think I've ever felt in a Nintendo Gamecube FPS to date?...

Sensitivity of the analog sticks is slow and cumbersome at best, as often times I just blindly shoot into the air (due to having unlimited ammo) simply because I can't aim worth a damn with the C-stick here. Medal of Honor: European Assault pulled it off brilliantly, so why not Geist?... Reloading is a pain in the ass for some odd reason, if only because it feels far too slow and out of place. Grenades also have some of the worst physics I've ever experienced this generation of gaming, as often enough times they bounce right back at my unfortunate ass...

And hell, even zooming in with your rifle feels awkward, as it just simply fully glances in and out automatically with one click. There's no actual analog "zooming" involved with the D-pad like we've become used to or any crap like that. And as a result, Geist just sort of feels completely outdated and unpolished in terms of the refined first person shooter controls we have come to expect from the Xbox and even the Gamecube in this day and age...

... and whoa... quickly scanning back at the rant that I just wrote, it really seems like Geist is one of the worst games ever made, now doesn't it?...

But if you think long and hard about it? Isn't all the above what a lot of gamers said about Metroid Prime as well, and yet that still is considered by critics (the noname whiner here hopefully included) as one of the best damn games of this entire generation of gaming?...

Geist is a horrible first person shooter. There's simply no denying that, as the disgustingly awful intro stage will prove beyond any sort of doubt or ghastly disbelief...

But Geist is an amazing first person adventure. Because as soon as you obtain your ghost incorporeal form, the kickass shit really starts happening...

This is exactly why Geist would probably have been better served as a DS game. And who knows? Maybe Nintendo will actually pay attention to this franchise that they've just left for dead, and port it over to their portable system that actually breeds innovation?...

The highlight of Geist is the fun you have of possessing pretty much any inanimate object out there. Now, the one best known is obviously from the Penny-Arcade comic, where Gabe or whoever complains about having to possess a dish of dog food at E3...

The thing is, was I the only one who noticed that that comic could've gone both ways? If PA had just drawn a smile in their final frame rather than an angry obnoxious man, using the same damn words of dog food shit that they did? The comic still would've worked, and probably would be more true to reality than it is...

It's a weird concept, I know. But trust me when I say that there are a hell of a lot of kickass things to possess in Geist that I would've never thought of before... The obvious ones include mirrors which make reflections look like zombies, or faucets that run blood red. But who would've thought of the little things in life, like soda cans that pop out and burst at your enemy? Or sprinkler systems that go all haywire in the women's locker room showers?... ahem...

I guess it's a valid complaint though, that Geist is a bit linear. Now, while you do often have a huge variety of objects to possess and choose from, whether they be simple paint cans or fucking rocket-guided missiles (which you can control in flight, mind you)? The thing is, to possess a human, you need to first scare the living shit out of them. And in order to do so, it normally requires the firing of scripted game events, usually by possessing a specific object of the closest vicinity to the poor, unlucky asshole...

In that sense, there isn't much exploration at first glance in Geist, except to collect multiplayer stage collectables and health power-ups off to the side (ala missile expansions in Metroid Prime). But the thing that really gets to me about Geist, is that if only thanks to the overall atmosphere and mood of the game (created by some creepy ass music here and there)?...

It really is thrilling sometimes, to keep scanning your surroundings for every single fucking inanimate object you can find to possess. And the feeling you get, the first time you become the inside of an LCD computer monitor screen, or view the puny soldiers down below from the first person target sights of a fucking security turret? They're all simply welcome innovations to the world of first person shooters today...

Now, I'm not so sure if I'm that big of a fan of taking over humans, even though scaring the shit out of them is always fun. The thing is, most of the are generic, and often lead to horrible combat missions against demons and imps and shit like that with the horrible FPS control layout of this game...

But I will admit one thing at least. Just like with Metroid Prime, Miyamoto made sure that Geist is a puzzle game at heart. And it really damn shows in a Half Life sort of way (more than Metroid), of having to always find the way to open a lock or get access to a different room (normally by possessing a new person)... It's a first person shooter that literally makes you think before you shoot. And while I normally despise and loathe such crap in my FPS games, Geist really comes up with some clever puzzles that do somehow feel rewarding once you figure them out...

I mean, IGN gave the example of a locked security door that requires a password. The solution was to simply float around as a ghost until you encounter the keypad on the opposite side of the door, possess it, and fuck around with it until the soldier on the other side inputs the real keypad combination to shut you the fuck up... What's even cooler, is that since you're seeing stuff from the view behind the keypad lock? You have to decipher the numbers he inputted in backwards. Not like that was hard at that point or anything, but things definitely did get even more interesting later on...

And c'mon, who here doesn't find the possession of people to be amusing, to say the least? There's just something so prideful and cocky, about possessing a soldier at one point and gunning down a ton of guys, only to leave his body (to be shot on sight... poor unwitting bastard...), then possess a meek little scientist or cute doctor off to the side, and just walk right on past the remaining guards undetected? It's a thrilling experience to say the least, if only because I haven't quite experienced it ever in this way before...

... sigh... I've always had a thing for smart girls with glasses... even polygonal ones, apparently...

Because if I ever got to possess a girl like her in real life? Then who the fuck would care about saving lives, escaping or any of that shit?...

If I was in her fucking body? If I was in her underwear? I'd just fondle my titties and finger my loins where it moists most all fucking day...

And then find another fucking hottie with glasses, possess the fuck out of her, make her irresistibly horny as hell, and then have both of my girls doing it long and hard to one another all fucking night long...

I mean seriously, hasn't every guy wanted to feel at one point or another, what the female orgasm really is like on the fucking inside? Let alone thirty fucking eruptions of the G-spot in one fucking hour alone (... I assume you can possess individual parts of a woman as well? Because God, then those randy bitches will never get any rest...)...

I guess I am indeed a lesbian trapped in man's body... but alas, that's a story and a geist for another day and life...

Short story short, let's just say Geist has brought to my mind a hell of a lot of tantalizing prospects...

And that indeed is a hallmark of both an innovative and successful game in the end, in my honest opinion at least...

Sure, I wish that Nintendo and n-Space had just done their homework on what makes a first person shooter tick. I mean, they even put horribly lame boss battles into the game to make the controls feel even worse. How the fuck am I suppose to dodge five fucking spread shots in a row when I can barely strafe without running headfirst into a wall? Not to mention the fact that demonic enemies literally seem to take thousands of bullets before ever biting the big one (and some even regenerate their power until you find a way to stop them, much to my chagrin...)...

And if only the presentation of this game had gotten the proper treatment, perhaps it wouldn't have been ignored so?...

Hell, if only we gamers could actually figure out how the fuck to pronounce its name?...

Y2kk Update: - Electronic Arts' Medal of Honor: European Assault Nintendo Gamecube Review (Spoilers...) -

Because whatever it was? Then I hope for the sake of all gamers, Electronic Arts takes a hell of a lot more of that shit...

Now, any long-time Y2kk reader out there can instantly tell that I've never been a big fan of EA. For years upon years, if not decades upon decades, they have produced absolute crap and bought out every single decent studio out there, just to turn them to more crap for good measure...

And no, I have never been a fan of the Medal of Honor series either. In retrospect, I suppose the first incarnation along with Allied Assault were decent at best. But Frontlines and Rising Sun were just complete embarrassments not only to the franchise but to World War 2, every Allied veteran, and all the first person shooters that have been based upon that era as well...

The thing is though, what the fuck was with EA in the fiscal year of 2004? Electronic Arts was absolute crap in 2003, even worse in all years prior, and somehow even outdid their former shit selves come 2005 and now the fucking year 2006... unfortunately for us modern gamers...

But in 2004, that one goddam anomaly of a golden renaissance year for the company? With titles such as Freedom Fighters, Hitman 2, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, and Need for Speed Underground 2? Not only were these all surprisingly quality games, but they were fucking fun games... a concept that not only EA but most of the video gaming industry has forgotten and begotten in so many years prior...

Medal of Honor: European Assault technically came out in the year 2005, but it was being developed in 2004 along with that one fucking golden crop of Electronic Arts miracles. But the thing was, I hesitated to ever really give this newest incarnation of the series a chance regardless, if only because of just how much crap each and every single one of its predecessors had been beforehand...

Medal of Honor: European Assault is not only the absolute best game in the series since at least the original, but also one of the most enjoyable World War 2 FPS I have ever experienced this entire generation of gaming. Sure, it's still a far cry away from ever toppling Ubisoft's Brothers in Arms series in my eyes. But considering how much I loved those two on the Xbox? Then it's absolutely still a huge badge of honor for EA to come in second fucking place...

Thank God that the company went back to the drawing board after their horrendous outing in Rising Sun. Now, obviously EA doesn't have a fucking creative bone in their fucking bodies, and simply modeled European Assault as a fucked up combination of Call of Duty and the Brothers in Arms series. But there's simply no denying that even as an obvious clone, European Assault still kicks some ass and takes some names...

In this game, you control a squad of four (including yourself). The issue being, these guys are no brighter than a fucking light bulb... or an average American Marine soldier really...

While in Brothers in Arms, your troops will automatically take cover and provide suppression fire? I've noticed my mice and men here from EA seemingly walk right into the line of fire of a fucking tank shell multiple times in a single stage alone... While in the BIA series, my men would do directly as I instruct them to do, and stay exactly where I order them to stay? My men here in European Assault sort of just take cover for a while, then run right back to me like little stray dogs, completely ignoring all the bloody bullets and Hail Mary artillery fire between them and I...

Brothers in Arms is definitely a tough act to follow, considering it has some of the best fucking teammate AI I've ever seen in a fucking game before. And while obviously European Assault can't measure up in that regard, especially due to the fact that you're essentially guiding disposable red shirts in your squad? It's not like your men are completely useless in the end...

They cover my back pretty well, whenever they follow you around like a puppy dog. And there's simply no denying that the name of the game is fun, whenever you send your men around a corridor corner on a suicide mission, just to see if the coast is clear for yourself...

The way that European Assault makes up for its lack of teammate AI, is by having a fuckload of AI teammates. By taking a page out of Call of Duty's war manual, EA has made EA (European Assault, I mean) into a fucking hectic warfare filled with dozens of random Allied soldiers fighting by your side... And the thing that makes it even more addicting, is that all these extra soldiers aren't really just staged events and props like Call of Duty has, but more along the lines of Halo. The more you protect these men, the longer they'll keep fighting by your side. While nothing can ever replace a great four man squad like we have in Brothers in Arms, the next best thing is to multiply your fucking squad numbers by four, and let the CPU do the rest...

But the thing about a squad-based game is that always at its heart, you're still playing a first person shooter. And I simply cannot tolerate first person shooters that have horrible controls (which happens more often than not, in this Sony-created dual analog world, at least...)...

European Assault simply amazed me in the fact, that it literally has the best fucking FPS controls I've ever experienced on the Nintendo Gamecube. Does it match up or compare to Brothers in Arms or the Halo series? No. But it's just amazing how damn easy it is to snipe Jerries as a desert rat in Africa, or blow the brains out of a motherfucker with an overpowered shotgun...

I have never experienced a GC FPS (not like there's much competition, mind you) where the L and R buttons feel so fucking precise when it comes to sniping. I was shell-shocked as hell, that EA managed to make the C-stick for aiming so damn stable... And while obviously the GC controller lacks the number of face buttons that an Xbox controller has, it actually works to its advantage that your adrenaline and medkit buttons are safely stored on the D-pad, away from any real chances of accidental activation...

Are there problems with the controls in European Assault? Absolutely, considering we all know the GC pad was never designed with first person shooters in mind... Using B to crouch and Y to stand up does get confusing at times, mostly because I'm used to having to hold down a button to crouch (ala Halo). And having to press A to reload normally works well, except for the fact that picking up weapons off the ground and healing your squadmates with health packs, also require just tapping the A button the same damn way (although the mix up could've easily been fixed, if EA had just forced us to hold A for a second before swapping weapons or whatever sort of crap)...

And I absolutely hate the fact that grenades in the game are considered a weapon just like a gun, as far too often than not, it takes way too long to cycle through even my three weapon inventory with the X button in combat...

At first, I thought it was a dumbass decision not to use the Z button for grenade cook tosses, until I realized something. In the end, the Z button (in the Commander control scheme, at least) was absolutely the most comfortable and natural place to put the target commands for your squadmates... While I still would prefer the ability to just customize my damn controls? I still must admit that EA definitely used the Gamecube controller layout in much improved ways than any other FPS has beforehand, including their own feeble past attempts...

In a first person shooter, the layout of a controller is always secondary to the feeling you get when you fire the fucking trigger. And I for one was amazed that everything felt more natural here in European Assault than it ever did in the Call of Duty console series... Nothing felt floaty, completely unlike Timesplitters 3 for instance. A large part of that is due to the fact that quite a few of the weapons absolutely kick ass in this EA game. My weapon of preference has always been the MP40, but even the STG sort of feels like a sturdy predecessor to the P90 here...

I'm not a huge fan of the rifles in this game by any means, but even I will admit that the iron sight on the Kar98 and the Garand are vastly improved here than in any Medal of Honor game beforehand. And I really do have to give EA huge props, for probably being the first WW2 FPS to ever make the US Bazooka and the M1 Thompson into usable weapons that don't completely feel half-assed and "American-car-like" in the end...

... and goddam, you just gotta love those free-falling physics, every time bodies soar when you toss a well cooked grenade into a bunker...

If there's really any one complaint about Medal of Honor: European Assault that I've heard a lot? It's that the graphics don't seem to be on par with other first person shooters of this day and age. And with that, I guess I can agree... The first time I saw France depicted in European Assault, I noticed that the colours were plain, the buildings were blocky, my fellow soldiers looked either anemic or anorexic, and German Tiger Tanks looked like boxed cars from the Dreamcast era at best...

But I also noticed one other thing at least: the graphics were sharp and clean on my fucking Gamecube. I could actually see the enemy and see the light shows of action going on, completely unlike the muddy and washed out textures I was forced to deal with in Rising Sun... As a result, sniping Germans even up in apartment windows became a breeze, if not an effortless enjoyment. And some of the particle effects, like the sight of a fucking tank shell being rammed right down some poor red shirt's throat, are simply jaw dropping at times...

What's even more important? Completely unlike any other Medal of Honor venture on the Gamecube at least, the framerate was solid in European Assault. I couldn't fucking believe me eyes, that EA had produced a game that wasn't trying to make me vomit from motion sickness... Of course, the game does chug below the 30 fps mark from time to time. But I don't think I've ever experienced a moment of gameplay that was too damn choppy for its own good, which was awesome considering I've seen literally ten or so soldiers all firing their MP40s at me at once...

Let's face facts though - Medal of Honor has never been about the graphics really, but rather about the overall atmosphere of the game. I swear I've heard so many Sony fanboys in my life, all claiming that the first stages in Allied Assault were just as realistic as Saving Private Ryan's attack on the beaches of Normandy (then again, I've heard N64 fanboys like me claim that characters in Goldeneye last generation looked just like real life, and we all know the truth about that...)...

Allied Assault may have sucked, but there's no denying that at least European Assault has some of the best damn music and sound effects I've heard in a WW2 game to date. Some of the voice-overs are cheesy, some of the epic music is over-the-top for such a generic V2-dirty-bomb plotline, but there's simply no better experience out there (save for Brothers in Arms, perhaps) for listening to the sounds and fog of war at night... The aural experience is simply surreal, as the bullet zingings and all the cries for mercy are absolutely amazing even in Stereo sound. The overall audio presentation of Medal of Honor: European Assault is absolutely one of the best of any EA games I've ever experienced before...

The atmosphere of a game also requires decent backdrops and a variety of stages to shine, which is more than what the past two Medal of Honor efforts managed to produce, to say the least. Now, while sometimes the levels in European Assault do seem forced, in the sense that your American hero of "Holt" is being shipped everywhere across the globe through FMV sequences? I do appreciate how many different level designs that EA managed to program into the game in the end...

Obviously, Electronic Arts did their absolute best to copy Call of Duty to the letter T in that regard, as we even got battles in North Africa and fucking Mother Russia as well. The thing is, unlike Call of Duty at least, I actually enjoyed playing in these stages in the end, if only because things were far more open-ended and far less scripted than the former...

In European Assault, you only need to complete your main objective to finish the stage, which is why one complaint has always been that the game is simply too damn short. I mean seriously, if you rush through it, this Medal of Honor entry should only take you three or four hours at best... But thankfully, there are just so many secondary objectives in each stage that I didn't even notice the first time through, all of which literally do produce a ton of extra replay value to the single-player aspect in the end. Enough to definitely extend the playtime of European Assault to the eight or ten hours prescribed...

If I have any real complaints about European Assault? It's that not only are the multiplayer modes pretty lacking in the end (on the GC, at least), but EA just couldn't resist putting in a lot of their own dumb usual crap to ruin the atmosphere of the game as well...

All the mini-boss battles are lame, as it just isn't realistic or really fun to keep shooting endless bullets at generic German generals with floating name-tags. I feel like I'm playing Wolfenstein 3D half the time, without the kickass Hitler in a robot suit at least... And the Adrenaline mode? While it's always fun to pull a Matrix Neo and become slo-mo invincible, it just doesn't suit the more realistic and epic approach that the European Assault developers had intended for the game...

But goddammit, none of that changes the fact that not only has European Assault become my favourite first person shooter on the Gamecube at least? But it's also become a fucking candidate next to the Brothers in Arms series, as the best World War 2 first person shooter of this entire generation of gaming...

While I suppose EA will have to settle for second place in this competition at least, I don't really think that's such a bad thing in the end, considering Brothers in Arms is currently my second favourite first person shooter series right next to the legendary Halo games. And that's definitely saying something, especially coming from an EA hater like myself...

So the question beckons and arises once more, how the fuck could Electronic Arts of all companies go from shit like Rising Sun, to producing something as grand and epic and most importantly, fun, as European Assault?...

... and then back fall back to absolutely vomit-infested dribble like Goldeneye: Rogue Agent for the goddam PS2?...

What the fuck were they on when they produced such short but fun classics like Freedom Fighters, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, and now European fucking Assault?...

Because seriously, whatever they were on, whether it be pure adrenaline or not?...

Because in my honest opinion at least? European Assault is really the first game and the only game in the series?...

Goddam, it's just been so long since I've seen this film in theatres, that I literally blanked it from memory...

... and if that doesn't say something about the quality of this movie? Then I don't know what will...

To be honest? The only thing I really do recall right about now, is what I noticed a couple of minutes after I had left the downtown theatre that night...

There was a couple walking on the opposite side of the street from me. I was in the downtown financial sector at the time. So I suppose if it wasn't for this film? I wouldn't have even had noticed the 80 year old rich man with the 20 year old blonde gold-digger draped across his shoulder...

... sigh, as Ali G might say?... what I would give to be in his shoes... and in his woman, but I digress...

The thing is, I couldn't help but think of Harrison Ford as soon as I saw this old has-been trying to actually act natural with a fucking young bitch on his arm. It just didn't look right, you know?...

And something didn't feel right about Harrison Ford's performance in Firewall either. I mean, if an award has go to the actor who simply won't let go of his past successes with action movies over a fucking decade ago, then it'd definitely be a tough race between Ford and ol' Gov'ner Ahnold...

Air Force One was perhaps the last Harrison Ford action movie that I actually enjoyed, and I only did so because it was both smart and completely stupid at the very same time. I was hoping for more of the same from Firewall, but the movie was just too schizophrenically dumbass, even for my particularly and peculiarally IQ-absent tastes...

The first half of the film seemed like it would actually seem intelligent, with some odd-ball but actually somewhat realistic methods of robbing the computer vault of the bank that Ford belonged to. Some have questioned whether an iPod can actually be used to store bank records and crap like that, and there's absolutely no question that an 80GB version can. Hell, I've actually use my brother's goddam old MP3 player myself as a backup hard drive for the past five years, don't you know...

The first hour or so of the film was not a bad thriller, with Paul Bettany proving to be a decent though cliche villain in the end. It was the simple little things he did that seemed effective at first, like offering the stupid kid some cookies that potentially could have fatally allergic nuts or whatever sort of crap...

Some of the other villains didn't do so badly either. It was over-the-top for Bettany to go and off one of his own men just for screwing up at one point or another, but at the same time, at least you could almost feel like that was a turning point for the rest of the hired goons. Some of them started to look like they were second guessing their place there, others looked like they were showing signs of guilt. They didn't seem all that one-dimensional anymore. Not at that point, at least...

And except for the pure innocent stupidity of the son, the rest of the family wasn't so bad either. Virginia Madsen was just a prop in the background, but even she got a good moment or two in when she tried to stage her coup in the garage... And the daughter, whatever her name was? Her constant teen angst definitely did grate on the nerves, but for the most part, she simply just froze there as the pretty face. And that's all I ever want from a fucking teen in a movie...

I thought that Firewall had some potential at first, at it really did have some decently terse scenes. Paul Bettany and Harrison Ford did play off of each other in decent ways, such as the force firing of the bank secretary, whatever her name was... Hell, even the switching of the pen cameras provided some sort of entertainment factor to the bloody hell movie. As Harrison Ford still definitely can provide the acting goods and chops, whenever he's trying to be a cerebral character and not the fucking action hero of the goddam flick...

Why the fuck did Paul Bettany, after proving that he's a ruthless killer by sniping one of his own, decide to just trot Harrison Ford's family away, safe and sound in a fucking minivan, to his fucking evil lair? Why didn't he just kill even one of them over the phone, just to prove his fucking point?... Instead, he does the most boneheaded thing possible, playing the James Bond English villain and just assuming that framing Harrison Ford would all work out just fine and jim dandy. He leaves one fucking inept bodyguard to kill Jack Stanfield when he had the chance, and then just assumed all would go according to plan? WTF?...

That's exactly when this fucking film turned into the dumbest goddam action movie I have ever seen in my life. It literally consisted of Harrison Ford, recruiting the fucking bank secretary that he fired, to follow the GPS scent of his dog and fucking beat the living crap out of everyone involved... I mean, I had thought he would actually have a plan in tackling the enemy, considering they were holding his fucking family hostage or something. But instead, he just goes in there fists blazing, against a fully armed enemy corps who has his family at fucking gunpoint? WTF?...

Jesus fucking Christ, the last half hour or more of Firewall, was literally just Harrison Ford beating on Paul Bettany's fucking moronic ass, as if he was dealing with goddam snakes on a presidential plane or some crap like that. There was no strategy involved, no intelligence to be mentioned whatsoever. It was just old skool Harrison Ford, pretending like he was the still the goddam action hero of the goddam 80's...

I'm normally a fan of completely dumbass action films. Hell, I even enjoyed Elektra to some extent, enough to watch the movie three fucking times...

But I'm sorry, Firewall was just so fucking stupid in the end, that even I couldn't enjoy it for what it was...

It's like witnessing an eighty year old man doing it with a fucking twenty year old gold-digger...

Now sure, I would give anything to be in that man's shoes and in that man's fucking woman...

But I sure as hell don't want to be on the outside looking in, watching that fucking horn-dog with the corn-dog go at it...

... which is why, quite frankly?... I've firewalled all traces of this film from fucking memory...

When I first heard of the title, "Inside Man", long ago? The first thing that came to mind, was a clever heist movie...

All I do know, is that Inside Man is absolutely the most straight-forward heist movie I've ever seen in my life. I mean, there is literally only one small twist at the end of the movie (which I won't spoil here, otherwise there would be zero reasons to go see this movie in theatres), while everything else is spelled out for us as the directors and writers hold our hands...

I know, I know that Clive Owen in his opening soliloquy even pointed out the fact that this wasn't really a film about the who's or what's or where's or why's, but really about "how" it all went down in the end... making Inside Man about as damn exciting as a late night news broadcast, really...

Seriously, Inside Man is simply two hours worth of Clive Owen and Denzel Washington just jarring at each other, as both sides try to bide their time for absolutely no payoff or dividends in the end whatsoever...

I'm sorry, but the characters in this film were just plain stale and dull at best. I mean, I thought that Jodie Foster would've at least managed to lighten the mood a bit, considering the make-up artists did do the Basic Instinct 2 job on her and tried to hide every single wrinkle on her face... She played Madeline White, dressed all in white, but as down and dirty as bitchy as any Lana Lang you've ever met beforehand. The thing is, she didn't actually do or achieve anything in the movie, past her one generic line of, "my bark is worse than my bite"...

Let me just lay the whole plotline of the story out for you. Clive Owen and his merry band of Robin Hoods decide to loot the first bank created by Christopher Plummer back during World War 2. And if WW2 doesn't start up the Cold War sirens for you, then I don't know what will... Basically, Clive Owen wants nothing to do with the money in the vault, as probably his only decent line in the film came when he called the paper and supplies room in the building basement as "beautiful". His character basically calls himself a martyr, wanting to use the heist to expose Plummer's WW2 guilt to the police and the rest of the world after so many years of cover-ups...

You'd think that Spike Lee would've saved some sort of surprise for later, yet we learned all the above shit within the first half hour of the movie alone. Then comes in Madeline White, the queen bitch of the show who WWE fans might refer to as the Tyson Tomko of the film, the "problem solver"...

She has a completely vague and ambiguous role, in the sense that she merely has so many connections that she was easily partitioned by the mayor right into the thick of things, to cover things up again for Christopher Plummer's character when push comes to shove. The problem is, her role went absolutely nowhere in the end, as besides just a hardy chat to chat with Clive Owen? She didn't actually do a damn thing for her job as a sexy, hired goon...

Clive Owen did have a few moments, perhaps. He got a few chuckles (and a few hell yeah's) from the crowd when he asked all the hostage women to strip down to their undies. Or at least he got those cheers, until he gave the same orders to the 80 year old women there as well... But Spike Lee had spent the whole movie trying to make his character of Dalton Russell interesting, even going so far as to make the Englishman quote the Bard in what we were led to believe was a prison cell. But I'm sorry, but considering a) there was absolutely zero twists in the movie whatsoever, and b) his fucking name was "Dalton" of all badass names, why the fuck should we care about his character again?...

It was obvious from the getgo what he was trying to do. The only true mystery was what they were doing with the paper storage room, and that's about it... Besides that, why the fuck would we care about a heist movie when the goals and objectives were all outlined in fucking bold letters and bulletpoints, the very moment we got to hear Clive Owen begin to suck up to the damn children of hostages? He was a nice guy, plain and simple, and wasn't going to hurt a fly. He was a bank robber, perhaps, but his agenda just became far too predictable and far too slow the moment that he showed us that Nazi-branded symbol from the safety deposit box...

And any movie with the fucking Sony PSP in a starring role?... has just got to die a horrible, horrible death in my goddam book...

Simply put, thanks to god-awful scenes of Clive Owen showing concern for the violence-obsessed youth of the world, we knew he was stalling for time, just to get the police outside to keep asking questions. The problem was, Spike Lee decided to almost run the damn film in real time in the fucking end, forcing us to over two fucking hours of length of just the two sides of the war sitting around, getting fatter by the McDonald's moment, as they contemplate the meaning behind the weight of currency at Grand Central Station...

If there was one saving grace to Inside Man, it was Denzel Washington. He certainly didn't put on a Training Day performance or anything, but at least he put on a lot of weight for his role as a donut-loving police detective... The thing is, despite all the little moments of his inner workings, when he was thinking long and hard for just what the fuck Clive Owen was getting him to do? Even Denzel was wasted in his role, by having so many of his scenes taking place in the future (so to speak), with piss poor humour as he kept drilling all the suspects from the scene of the crime on just whodunnit in the end...

Fuck, it's sad that his best scenes came with Willem Dafoe, the police pylon in the background. God, wasn't Detective Frazier supposed to be smart, yet he never once noticed the Green Goblin jackass acting all suspicious in the background?...

Well, that's the thing that I expected from Inside Man. Did Willem Dafoe do it? Did Jodie Foster do it? Did Christopher Plummer somehow orchestrate it all with a plumming wrench in the diner? Was Denzel Washington the man to blame? Where are the fucking clues?...

The law of pretty much any good heist movie, is that the one who did it?... is always the last person you would expect...

Y2kk Update: - Smallville: Hypnotic small Smallville Week in Review (Spoilers...) -

The only fucking way that I could've ever enjoyed this episode, was if either a) Chloe was giving me a blowjob...

"Simone had her chance to sexually hypnotize both Chloe and Lois Lane in the end, and yet all we got instead was the seduction of Ma fucking Kent? WHAT THE FUCK?!?"...

Fuck, Simone wasn't even hot in Hypnotic. She had the complete look of a whore, which just doesn't seem to work in the overly pubescent world that the Smallville writers have created... And seriously, she strips down to her undies and then asks Clark to make "love" to her? Not only does absolutely nothing happen between the two that night, but she also never asks the guy to just fuck her during the countless hours they spent together later on? WTF is this? The Victorian Age?...

Is it any wonder, that everyone's favourite former vampire was stealing blood samples of all things?...

Old habits die hard. The undead die even harder... Why am I somehow not surprised?...

As always, Milton Fine was absolutely the best part and the only good part of a Smallville episode. At first, I was confused as hell as to how he possibly could've survived his destruction in the Fortress of Solitude. But even I felt a sense of dread upon seeing three or four copies of the Kryptonian AI all working in unison, all with the same exact powers as the lone Brainiac had beforehand... Not only am I curious as to what the fuck that alien ship is doing in Honduras, but I gotta also assume that at this point, Superman is fucked...

But alas, that was the extent of everything decent in the fucking episode. Even Lex's appearance in the Vancouver-like jungles of Central America fell flat in the end, as the guy just looked like a doofus for believing Fine was actually a secret government operative (unless Brainiac had planted that information as a ruse)... Why the fuck was Lex such a pussy? After spending so much fucking time tracking down Milton Fine (and surprisingly actually finding him, unless he wanted to be found), he then discusses a few extraterrestrial stories over a hot cup of tea, and then just quietly leaves back for his mansion where it's obvious that Simone would try to take him out? WTF?...

Seriously, how many fucking times can Clark Kent throw the man across the room before Lex fucking gets a hint?...

You gotta love Clark Kent too. He was hypnotized to kill fucking Luthor, yet he instead decides to take his time and toss him around the room all over again instead of just frying his brains out with his heat vision in one damn stroke... nice...

... even without his free will, this kid ain't exactly the brightest bloke on the block, now is he?...

But then again, what else would you expect from the guy who was still dating Lana fucking Lang of all bitches, even after they had broken up how many times now? For what, three episodes in a row? WTF?... Why the fuck are the two crazy kids back together yet again? Are their memories on the show that damn short and that damn brief, that Lana still is fucking horny enough to keep repeatedly asking the man of steel to strip down to his boxers?...

I hate Lana, I really do. And maybe the writers have finally gotten the hint, that the actress can't play anything but a broken hearted, cruel bitch in the end... I was actually clapping and cheering and laughing my ass off at the TV when she walked in on Clark supposedly doing it with Simone. Not only did the fucking Lana bitch have that kind of pain and punishment duly coming to her, but it was absolutely ridiculously amusing to watch Kristen Kreuk actually try to act in tears when all was said and done. Because I mean, the bitch actress can play a fucking demented vampire better than she can ever pull off a soft-spoken, broken hearted, innocent little girl...

She ain't so innocent anymore though. Because was it just me, or did the actress somehow seem happy when Clark officially broke it off with her the umpteenth time at the end of the episode? Ma Kent even tried to spin things like a Sonybot later on, telling Clark that perhaps he never revealed his secret to her because she simply wasn't the one (while completely ignoring the fact that Clark did tell Lana his secret and even proposed in the 100th episode... guess that slipped his mind as well...)... Apparently though, Lana proved herself that she wasn't the one with her slutty ways just one episodic second later. She went crawling right back to Lex Luthor's corruptive sort of comfort, and it's only a matter of time until she ascends her throne again as the queen bitch of the series...

At least Chloe was semi-cute? But besides tossing around some kryptonite while Clark was throwing Lex around like a ragdoll, what the fuck did she even do? She may have pulled a Clark with her quick exit after saving Lois Lane, but I never really did give a damn about her ace reporter, heroine moments and all...

All I did care about, was that Simone was fucking touching and rubbing herself (in the hypnotic gem at least...) as soon as she saw Chloe there. And honestly, in an episode where you have an evil bitch just begging for a wardrobe malfunction, and you have fucking porn-star quality actresses like Erica Durance and Allison Mack, all revving and horned up for a paycheck? Then how the fuck could you not hypnotize the two, to at least stay off your back by fucking you up the feminine ass? WTF?...

At least Tom Welling did what was to be expected from him. He not only broke Lana's heart, but he broke Lex's back in the process as well. How can I really fault him for that?... Sure, it was Tom Welling episode #346 where once again, he strips down to his underwear thanks to being under some horrible spell. But at least this time, unlike the last time the three witches produced the worst fucking television in the history of the world? At least it made sense why he was being made to be the funky, fluky, flunky boy in the first place... Lex wanted Clark and Lana to split up. Mission accomplished at least, which was perhaps the only intelligent and legible thing in the entire fucking episode to mention...

... and at least we got the return of Milton Fine back, right?... but really?...

It's just sad, that the one and only thing that turned me on this episode?... was Simone seducing Marth fucking Kent of all bitches...

[c. visitors too bored to return...]
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