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Monday, August 4th, 2003

Y2kk Update: Goddammit, I wanted to see Tomb Raider... it was my only purpose in life...

But I guess life is not always fair? And neither is the Cradle of Life, apparently... it's not like I've ever assumed the latest Lara Croft movie was any good or any crap like that. You'd have to be psycho to believe a movie with only 22% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes has anything decent to offer other than buffilicious bump-mapping... And it's not like I was ever crazy enough to like the first film... but still, if only for the stupid stunts and the even stupider plotline, I did want to see the latest Tomb Raider movie... but thanks to a certain, extremely-concerned-and-controlling friend and a dearly "thank you", that won't be happening anymore... or actually, the only reason I did want to see the damn film in the first place, was because I was hoping that my sister, fresh off a new job, would actually pay for my ticket. Because God knows I'd never pay to see a Tomb Raider movie... and yet I saw Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, but that's besides the point...

Considering I didn't see Tomb Raider 2 or anything last week, there really isn't much to report on my noname site this week. There is of course the guaranteed arrival of a new Stargate SG-1 episode, and although it wasn't the grandest, most epic episode to ever come out of the writer's minds, I did enjoy Space Race for the most part... Colonel O'Neil was literally only in the episode for about a minute or two, although I did crack up at his comment about the "translated" work not being our language... Daniel got a few sibling-like moments in with Carter, but besides trying to get her to admit the truth to herself, he didn't really do much. And besides Teal'c's unwillingness to do on a diplomatic mission, he was pretty much invisible in the background yet again, although his bell hop outfit somehow suited his Murray persona quite well... In the end, Space Race was really only two things: a Star Wars attack of a cloned feeling, and a chance for Amanda Tapping to literally shine, as she did look quite joyful and glowful as she basked in the corona's light... I absolutely loved her line at the start of the episode, "What's a girl to do?" It was perhaps the first ever time that I found Sam to be cute, and although it would go against her military personality if she did so, I'd love it if she acted more "gung-ho"ish from this day forth (although it was already weird enough how she was pretty much ignoring Hammond in the briefing room)... But alas, the energy that Tapping portrayed in the first fifteen minutes of the show quickly subsided, even before she got caught in fiery death dangers up in space. Up in the Serebus, she seemed neither pleased nor pissed, although at least it was nice for her to finally get another episode where she was allowed to have her fun... As for the episode itself, it had a hell of a huge Star Wars feel, as the ships were seen maneuvering around asteroids and ramming each other at finishing lines and whatnot. And the commercials, while somewhat funny, were more than annoying to me, if only because they reminded me of Robocop or those god-awful Episode I announcers just a little too much... But for an episode that basically had no action, Space Race truly did catch and keep my attention, if only because of Samantha Carter's aggressive energy. Sure, I found the rich white man racism plot to be tried and cliche, but it did make sense. And the ending of the episode was quite rewarding in the, um, end, as Carter finally got back her cute little zest once more as she admitted that the race wasn't fair... it's just too bad I'm quite sure we won't be seeing this side of the dark side of her anytime else soon... she should really give into the force more often, but that's besides the point...

And, well... That's basically it from me for this week. There's really nothing else to report. But since I've got to fill the useless space of this no-name site anyhew with something other than a race for time, I might as well just copy and past the Xbox Morrowind review that I wrote last night. It's kind of pointless to read, but considering the game was considered for best game of the year at the time?... well... my Xbox reviews can be found at this page, and my Morrowind review can be found just down below here:

"You know... I had high hopes for this game... I had heard so many damn good things about it. Hell, I even heard that it was better than Zelda and the Final Fantasies from countless forums on the net. And in theory, it looked to be a great game. I may not be a fan of non-linear RPGs, or any Western RPGs for that matter, but all my previous experiences had been with the PC, a platform that I continue to hate no matter what the game... Morrowind was ported from the PC to the Xbox, and when I saw it for just $15 US while touring around in Seattle the other week? How could I not pick up the so-called best RPG or even the best game of 2000 or 2001 or whenever the PC version of it had come out... I had heard from so many people, that either you love Morrowind or you hate it. And guess what?...

They're right. I hate it.

God, I've played through maybe ten or fifteen hours of the game, only because of sheer determination to not give up on the damn game... And while a Morrowind fan might say, "you can't judge this game based on the first ten hours of it! It's a fifty hour game! It's like judging a two hour movie from the first fifteen minutes alone!"... and, um... no... to me, it's more like judging a fifty hour damn movie marathon from the first damn fifteen hours of it, which in my opinion, is more than enough to truly know whether you're a fan of the genre or not... Now, no matter how bored I get with Morrowind, it will forever have my respect. In a sense, it has revolutionized the RPG world with its non-linear missions. I mean, it's already been fifteen hours of playtime, and yet I still haven't even touched the main quest (I've been stuck doing Fighter's Guild and Mages' Guild crap to pass the time). And I'll give kudos to this game, for being one of the first to truly use the Xbox's hard drive to the fullest potential. Although seeing weapons that I dropped on the floor ten hours ago in the game lost its zeal on the PC long ago, it's just a wonder to see it in a console game, when even games like Zelda can't manage to pull such a stunt off. And because of these two factors alone, I can see why so many people love and loved Morrowind as if it were their God... enough to forge a character in it as damn powerful as a god...

Oh, who am I kidding?... the damn game sucks ass...

First of all, the graphics are just downright rude. Sure, by the time the game came to the Xbox, it was already a year or two old. But goddammit, it's a PC game. Three years ago, graphic cards were almost as damn strong as the damn Xbox itself, and yet the game looks as bland and dreary as this? All the damn towns are monotonous in colour, and I think the hillsides are nothing more than a few original Gameboy shades of gray. The damn characters walking in the background have little to no animation, and when you do see them finally move, you can literally see the damn slowdown and lack of any semblance of frames... The sound is this game is mediocre at best. Sure, the soundtrack is epic - but wait, what soundtrack? There's like one friggin' song in the whole damn game, and the sound effects are no more sophisticated than a sword swinger on the Game Boy Advance. Even the plethora of recorded voices are useless, considering most of the game is spent reading up on massive amounts of useless character information... And the loading times? Don't get me started on the loading times! I had been told by Morrowind fans that this game had literally no loading times - that thanks to the hard drive, this game even made Metroid Prime feel clunky in nature... and yet as soon as I turned on the game, what did I find? Not only did I have to put up with excruciatingly annoying loading times from literally every single damn area that I stepped into, not only did I have to sit by my couch for five minutes straight every single time I tried to respawn after I died, but goddammit, it's just that even as I'm just walking in the middle of towns, I can literally see the damn game sputtering and spewing and painfully chugging along as its trying to goddam load on the fly from the hard drive. I mean, what the hell is that? Sure, I can hear Metroid Prime loading from the Gamecube, but does it ever slow down the game? Honestly... And I haven't even gotten to the damn bugs in this game! If only I got a nickel of my damn US money back every single time I got stuck in a wall, or saw a character clip all the way right through me, I would've already gotten my $15 back. But it even gets worse than that! The game has frozen on me six times already, and yet my save file is just 98 damn blocks large! I had heard of the damn 200 block bug, where the game refuses to load your savefile any longer, so I did the recommended thing and cleaned up all the dead bodies, and closed all the doors... And yet still, today when I was giving the game one last chance, it goddam froze right smackdab in the middle of just routine iitem gathering, and gave me a green warning message that my Morrowind disc was busted or some crap like that... And until that point, my Xbox had never completely crashed! It had as clean of a record as my goddam Gamecube, and yet Morrowind just had to give me the chills for the first time, that only Windows OE exceptions have ever given to me before... Quite frankly, I don't trust Morrowind any longer. And I don't think it likes me either...

I tried to give the game a chance, I really did! As a fan of Japanese RPGs, I was willing to broaden my horizons with Western broad swords... and I do like some of the freedom this game gave, as it truly is a game you can simply pick up and find your own course... Unfortunately, it took me so damn long to just find the Fighter's Guild and join in the first place, that I almost wished the game had been linear... And as for the mechanics of the freedom? Not only is the justice system in the cities completely messed up, when I was killed by a guard for just trying to sleep in someone's bed, but the characters all act like one-dimensional beings, responding to taunts as if they were robots, and attacking me even if I just accidentally steal a book rather than talk to the guy behind the counter (both are done by pressing A, and both of the two were two damn close together). And none of the characters are interesting to talk to. The only thing interesting, are the missions they give... and yet even most of those are as boring as real life, as most of the ones I've done so far have been nothing more than just search and gather crap rather than having anything to do with action... And the action itself? All I ever do is press the damn jump button and slash around with my useless longsword, using the occasional spell or adrenaline rush whenever I have to. I thought a first person RPG could be fun... instead, I find that it's so damn disorienting and so damn depressing, that I stay in third person mode and just let the damn bad guys kill me (as spinning around in FPS mode somehow makes me dizzy in this game, thanks to the horrid framerate and draw distances). I mean, at least dying is more fun than most of the rest of this damn game...

Morrowind truly is a game you either love or hate, and because of that, I will give it the benefit of the doubt. If it weren't so highly thought of, I would truly give it a failing mark, as it truly is perhaps the most boring game I have ever forced myself to play... But I will also admit, that I have given fifteen hours of work into it, not just out of desperation, but also because it is still so damn addicting to just keep mindlessly traveling between cities, learning new spells and running countless errands, deciding whether to be good, evil, or just plain blighted. There's always something to do in this game, and I will forever admire that, as it probably will keep me coming back to Morrowind whenever I've got nothing else to play... But as long as I do have something else to play? Then I pray to God, and I swear to you few no-name readers, that this game is simply and surely one of the worst games I have ever played in my life... while I can't stand the goddam preaching that Japanese RPGs enjoy bellowing out at the top of their tongues, at least I can figure out what to do in those games... at least those games have a point... And what is the point of Morrowind? Besides to be a first person, medieval version of the Sims, where you barely even get to stick the point of your sword into the pointless baddies, I simply don't know... all this game is, is a bunch of damn, dangling question marks..."

Saturday, July 26th, 2003

Y2kk Update: Back in black, and feeling fine... "We ride together. We..." ... um... ride together... yeah... um... Bad Boys for life...

If you haven't noticed yet, I'm back from my little excursion into the wilderness of Vancouver, British Columbia. And while I can't say it was the most relaxing trip or the most eventful trip I've ever had, considering probably the best part of my trip was when my brother and I got to have a posedown in front of the EA Sports building downtown, I will say that... um... okay, so maybe it was the most relaxing trip and the most eventful trip I've ever had, if only because it's basically the only trip I've ever had... but that's besides the point... and besides, those pictures of me next to the EA Sports building aren't just badass. They're bad boys II, or boys II men for life... whatever the hell that's supposed mean...

And if you haven't realized it yet, I did see Bad Boys II, Jerry Bruckheimer's and Michael Bay's new baby, while spending time with semi-helf-partial relatives in Vancouver. And while the movie did have it perks, there was certainly one other thing that happened along the way that gave me a rise more than anything in the movie ever did... Because you see, my god-siblings or whatever you want to call the children of my godparents, sort of tagged along their friends with us to the movie theatre. And while most of them were guys, a couple of them were women... or at least, I think they were women... and not in a bad way, but, um... it's just that...

They were like so frickin' tiny! They were like four feet tall, I shit you not! And they were supposed to be college students, or even university graduates! And goddammit, in a city full of twenty story high trees, they were like four freakin' feet tall! Like little dolls or something!... and God, I thought I had smelt cabbage, but honestly!... their wrists and ankles were as thick as my goddam fingers! And their heads? About the size of my fist! And what was up with their noses? They were like little freckles on their faces, or bite-sized vanilla gumdrops or some crap like that, which must have sure as hell been small considering how small their faces were to begin with... and seriously!... goddammit, I may be pretty damn handicapped when it comes to my twig and berries down below. Hell, I'll admit by all standards that I've been able to gauge, that my bits and pieces have undergone serious, irreversible shrinkage. I mean, even at full length, it looks like I'm sticking out nothing more than my pinky finger... or a pinky toe, if it gets stuck on my balls on the way up... but honestly! As pathetically tiny as mine may be, I could still goddam tell that if only I could plug their holes and thrust some more, that even I could get those girls to pop!... They literally looked so damn delicate and so damn fragile, like tiny Chinese dumplings or some crap like that, that they would literally implode the moment they were given a rise from even a guy like me... and honestly! I felt guilty just by being around them! I mean, with my sick pervertedness, regardless of their age, I still felt like a pedophile or some crap like that... and although on most days I welcome that feeling, somehow it just didn't feel right with a movie like Bad Boys II playing in the background... something just didn't feel right about being immoral, with an A-class, amoral movie blowing up shit in the background...

Ah... alack... and ay, there lies the rub, like little scrumptious noses... I remember reading up on Roger Ebert's review of the Bad Boys sequel not so long ago. I remember him starting out with a recantation of a certain scene in the movie, where Martin Lawrence and Will Smith rip apart a daughter's would-be date with the "n-word", and a gun pointed at his head... Ebert claimed that Michael Bay had to be seriously disturbed to think that audiences would be disturbed enough to actually find this entertaining... and, well... the problem is...

Oops... I liked it...

Dammit, I thought it was the greatest scene of the movie! The jokes just never stopped coming, the laughter never stopped rolling, and I actually thought the poor boy was taking it well! He simply stood there, with a slight watering in his eyes from fear, and it was brilliant! Every single damn threat, every single damn taunt, was just so goddam perfect, that even I had to agree with the Bad Boys dynamic duo at the end when they agreed that that was a hell of a lot of fun... And in the end, the whole movie was a lot of fun. Was Bad Boys II as memorable as Terminator 3 in the end? Not by a long shot... it simply turned out to be one of those by-the-book, summer blockbuster films that are a hell of a ride all the way through, but end up seeping out of your memory by the time the final curtain calls... But alas, I do miss the classic blockbuster films of summers' past. I miss The Rocks. I miss the Con Airs. And I miss the I-Don't-Know-Whats, but the point of the matter is... I miss just plain, mindless action. I miss the old Jerry Bruckheimer. I miss the old Michael Bay. And I miss Don Simpson, may he rest in peace... I want none of this Pearl Harbor shit. I want nothing of this touchy-feeling-Ben Affleck crap (although Armageddon did have its pluses and phases of the moon). All I wanted, was a movie where bullets are flying, and cars are igniting. Was that too much to ask?

So thank God that Bad Boys II came around, and not only met my expectations... but exceeded them on so many levels of gore. First of all, I'll admit here and now that this movie had absolutely the best damn car chase scenes I've ever seen. Were they original? Not really. Hell, I even saw the car releasing weapon thing (to some extent) in The Transporter for Christ's sakes... but was it entertaining to see cars used as weapons? Was it thrilling to see a motor boat spinning out of control on the highway? Give me a hell yeah to both the above... But unfortunately, there were also some negatives to the countless, senseless violence as well. I got sick of a lot of the Bruckheimer spinning shots, as the stand-off in the gunmen's house was a little too disorienting for even my tastes. And while I like a good corpse being mutilated just as much as the next R rated person, the fact of the matter is, Bad Boys II simply overused the novelty of seeing dead people a little too much. I mean, it was gross enough when corpses started getting trampled by cars in chase scenes. But it just somehow guts me even more, seeing gutless corpses being thrown as weapons (unless I imagined that in my daytime, since I can't seem to remember that in the movie anymore...). And the morgue scene just didn't work for me either. Sleeping with titties, and seeing brains falling out just wasn't my cup of herbal tea, mind you, you know what I mean? That was the kind of movie Bad Boys II was. A movie where bullets to the head are the norm, and where even dead bodies aren't safe from being killed over and over again until they die from it...

And that was probably what made the ending just feel so lacklustre to me. When I saw the final drug lord boss or whatever you want to call that guy, take a shot to head and then take a mine to the body, I didn't even bother to laugh, or bother to care... somehow, Bad Boys II had done so much shit to every single character who had died, that I simply didn't care anymore when even half of them were blown off... and it didn't help either that I really started to hate the movie by the time the team reached Cuba. Not only were the American urban settings now gone that made the earlier chase scenes so damn effective, but the movie just didn't feel the same as it did before, with men now burrowing in tunnels wearing night vision goggles right out of The Rock. And by that point, the movie had been getting too damn long for its own good, as if Jerry Bruckheimer had gone trigger happy or some crap like that... I mean, Terminator 3 was too short, but two and half hours of Bad Boys II was simply too much to bear. I can only take so many explosions and so many remutilated carcasses before I start to doze off, it's sad to say. And while I'll praise Jerry and Michael Bay for finally returning to their senseless destruction roots, I can't say that I was completely happy with how far and how long they took it...

But there was truly one area of Bad Boys II that really did shine like the shiniest of shrines: the comic relief... Now, I've never found Martin Lawrence funny. I mean, I loved Black Knight, but only because of how damn stupid it was, which was comedy in itself... But honestly, the jokes just kept flying in this movie until the Cuban scenes kicked in, and in all honesty, I loved almost every single rancous, rambunctious line that the lead duo uttered with little or no discretion... Hell, I loved hearing complaints about erectile dysfunction on electronic store television screens. I loved the look on Martin Lawrence's face every single damn time his pool was pulled and shredded to ashes. Hell, I even started howling at the sight of two puppet mice fucking in the middle of nowhere... Just somehow, Bad Boys II had found the total, utter limit of how far bad comedy can really go, and I can't help but thank the writers (if the movie had writers) for putting all those nasty smiles on my face.

The plot of the movie was rather irrelevant. I didn't care much for Martin Lawrence's sister. And Will Smith, besides the comedy, didn't do much except parade around in Ferraris and Miami suits. And Martin Lawrence, while I did feel bad for him when he overheard his infamous quote from the high school yearbook, really couldn't pull off anything but the bullet-in-the-ass complaining well at all... But you see? That's the beauty of the film. None of the above matters... The acting didn't matter. The plot didn't matter. The script, next to the n-word comedy, didn't matter. Hell, even the token soundtrack in the end didn't matter... All that I and my four feet friends cared about, was the fact that pop goes the cars, and whoops goes the decapitations... Roger Ebert may have had condemned this movie to community service for its apparent lack of any sort of morality... but I on the other hand? I just can't help but feel relieved... relieved that Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay were finally back, back in black, riding together, bad boys for life. Like a Rock... although I'm not sure if that sounds good on a Best Buy plasma screen, but I digress...

Anyhew, thanks to my popping of weasel-sized, mouth-watering morsels of Chinese women in Vancouver, I missed out on watching and reviewing last week's episode of Stargate SG-1, Lifeboat... but I did read the preview of it, and at first, it didn't exactly sound very four feet tall appealing. I mean, Stargate has done the personality switch thing or whatever before, as early as the first or second seasons actually... But after watching Lifeboat? I can honestly say that although it lacks the brilliant Jack and Daniel banter of seasons past, I will earnestly admit that it had possibly the best acting since Jack was captured by Baal in Abyss... Michael Shanks didn't get much time to play the role of Daniel Jackson, but it was obvious from his other personalities that episodes like this were the reason why he decided to come back for season seven... along with the steady paycheck, but I digress... Now, some of his earlier personalities were laughable at best. I assume he was the kid at the start, terrified of the face of Teal'c, but I'll never know, I guess... and his early acting of the Sovereign just didn't seem right, even though Daniel has done the arrogant prick thing before. But Michael Shanks really shined when he was taken over by the crewmember. He was smart, and thoughtful, yet didn't sound like Daniel one bit. And when he was possessed by the child?... his facial expressions weren't perfect, naturally. But I couldn't help but feel sorry for the kid at the time, since Michael Shanks did a wonderful job or portraying a youth who felt all alone... While the other actor, whatever his name may be, who had thirteen personalities in his mind, played them all out like a schizophrenic democracy, Shanks got to truly shine by not simply being the Borg: twelve beings with a single voice... but rather twelve personalities with twelve different voices...

As for the rest of the main cast? They didn't do much... Jack just was AWOL for most of the episode, as his contract provides. Teal'c showed that he's still the man by waking from the stun blast so easily, but really did nothing but stand around after that. And Sam got to ask the questions and attach a big ass naquada generator, but she really had no interaction with Daniel, the star of the show... none of them did, except Jack with his pissed off nature (you got to love it when he's willing to sacrifice all life to save his friends), and Janet Frasier, who had her strongest episode since maybe even the fifth or fourth seasons... Lifeboat wasn't an original idea, even in terms of the Stargate universe. But somehow, it all clicked and worked in the end, as the episode seemed rather prophetic to me, rather than pathetic. I mean, I couldn't help but feel bad for the poor child in Daniel's body... not only was he picked over his own mother to survive the end of his world, but he woke to find that he didn't even know where he was, or where his father had gone... I couldn't help but feel the fear that maybe this scenario could happen to us in the future, if only Michael Bay's Armageddon were a prophecy too... Michael Shanks portrayed the child's lost innocence with the greatest of zest and affection. And if episodes like this one will continue to be written for his character, then I'm sure he'll stick around for an eighth season, and I sure as hell am sure that I'll be sticking around as well.

That's when I got a load of the preview for this week's Daniel episode, Enemy Mine, and instantly rolled my eyes and hoped that a Prometheus episode was coming up in a week or two... I mean, except for the first season episode, Thor's Hammer, I really haven't enjoyed any Unas episode out there... and yet somehow, if only because Michael Shanks is portraying his character with far more determination than he ever has before (well, since the second season, at least), I somehow ended up enjoying Enemy Mine more than most episodes from the past two seasons. And why?... because it had something that's been missing since season two or three... the inability to communicate with other worlds. I mean, sure I understand why the series has American speaking aliens on every single planet. But at least back in the early seasons, their English was mixed with their own terms, lingoes and phrases... but that all disappeared by the time season four rolled around, and somehow, I couldn't help but feel a bit of the old school, Stargate magic back when Daniel spent half the episode trying to just say hello to the Unas of the mining world. Probably my favourite scene from the entire episode, was the sight of Daniel trying to explain what a ship was to the alpha male. And just the little things, like the token trade of the fire lighter for a necklace, and the sight of the SG teams all kneeling in respect (and survival) made this episode truly seem alien and thoughtful... Normally, I hate episodes that are a modern day retelling of how wrong it was for colonials to wipe out the natives in North America. But somehow, Stargate made it all work out for me in the end, as I especially liked the ending... I was surprised as the colonel was when the Unas offered to mine the naquada themselves. A compromise was made to fight a common enemy, and it was a compromise that even I was too pig-headed to foresee... I guess this episode taught me something as well... I don't like to be taught, but I digress...

As for the rest of the cast? The first part of the episode had some brilliant Jack lines, with him ranting that he now had to find the rock finders... and I couldn't help but pause the episode, just to let out a laugh out loud when Daniel admitted to Jack in a sling, that quite frankly, he broke him... but not his arm. That was a Unas' doing, and once again, Richard Dean Anderson sat out for half of the episode, a little too obviously if you asked me... But what was up with Sam? She was in just one scene of the whole bloody episode! Sure, she'll probably have some nice Black Widow moments later on in the season, but honestly, wasupwidat?... and Teal'c once again got to stand around with a staff weapon, which is the most ineffective weapon I've ever seen. But still, at least he was on camera. His episodes will come soon enough... Meanwhile, Stargate has truly become the Daniel show, and I'm not one to complain. Enemy Mine was as I said, a well thought out and not-that-over-annoyingly preachy episode... and while it lacked any sort of connection to the events of Lifeboat whatsoever, I will admit that in both episodes, it was nice to see the old school Daniel back... even when he wasn't Daniel, but I digress...

Monday, July 14th, 2003

Y2kk Update: "Leaving, on a jet plane... don't know when I'll be back again... Leaving, on  a jet plane... don't know when I'll be back again"...

Or, well... okay... so I know when I'll be coming back. July 24th, actually... everybody loves the two four... But still, I just can't help remembering the last time I went on a jet plane... the only time I've been on a jet plane... I was five or something at the time, and left Florida scarred for life. My brother pretty much puked all over me after the flight, I became Mr. Hydrophobic after nearly drowning in water, and the smile that never fades away from the faces and feces of those God-awful Disney costumes, still freaks me to this day in my most Freudian of my dreams... because in a sense, they turn me on, but I digress... So obviously, I'm not really looking very forward to leaving for Vancouver, BC (before Christ, that is...) tomorrow morning... though I can't help reminiscing right now about that God-awful scene in Armageddon... Leaving, on a jet plane... don't know when I'll be back again... and uggh... I remember rolling my eyes the first time I watched that film... and almost crying the second time I bloody hell watched it... I still don't know what the hell was wrong with me - finding Armageddon nemo as the most emotional film I've possibly ever watched... What has the world done to me?!... but I guess that's all besides the point...

So before leaving for a jet plane ride that'll hopefully be better than my only lingering memory of an airplane, I've decided that I might as well give you few readers out there a heads up, and review this week's episode of Stargate before I go... Now, Revisions  was by no means a bad episode. But it wasn't anything special either. It lacked most of the comic factors and mascots or whatever that made Stargate the show that it is today. It had no Jack and Daniel banter. In fact, Jack really didn't get to do anything but humour a small kid who kept changing his mind on his destiny... Teal'c just stood around and made phone calls back home, pretty much. Daniel got to read a bunch of books. And Sam? Well, she got to tease a guy who can't remember that he had a wife (reverse Black Widow syndrome, I see). So pretty much, all in all, there really wasn't anything memorable about Revisions.

Though one thing still sticks out in my mind about this episode... Somehow, it managed to portray an old-school Stargate feel. I mean, the team goes to an alien planet, finds a race, learns of their culture, and returns them back to humanity... and in some ways, thanks to the nostalgic feel, I really liked the premise of this episode. I was terrified that Revisions would end up being a Matrix revision or some crap like that, in which sentient technology would be our worst enemy or, um, some crap like that... But I was pleasantly surprised that the computers were not sentient - but rather, they were simply following flawed orders from their builders to keep the community running at all costs... and I can buy that. The computers weren't evil. But they simply weren't human. And it indeed is a scary thought to think that computers could update our memories as easily as we update hard drive files... but it's also possible. And also reasonable, considering the ideal of the common good... communism at its best... But while Revisions had a great premise, I still wished that the script was revised to actually allow for some decent dialogue or something. In the end, the episode was better than I expected, but far from being the stellar Stargate show that earlier seasons so prominently had, as this episode so nostaglically reminded me about...

Anyhew, just to waste more writing space, I thought I should copy and paste the first few, fleeting sections of my latest noname incarnation: my final review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Fourth Season DVDs. And like I said before, below is a snippet from the full review... meaning it's a muppet of a shadow puppet to make it seem like I actually wrote a lot for my noname site this week... And with that, I suppose I shall bid you all adieu. Off to see the wizard I am, the wonderful wizard of the Id... I wish... in Vancouver, no less... and just so I don't jinx or Xbot Blinx myself by any sort of accident, I might as well wish myself here and now (and all you non-existant, no-name readers as well), a God Speed, a Good Will Hunting, and God Bless Us, Everyone...

"It's said that the fourth season marks the first season of the decline of Buffy the Vampire Slayer... meaning what? Meaning the fans didn't like it very much... And arc-wise? I guess I can relate...  Because season four has one huge, glaring problem: the first half of the season has a far too different feel than the second half of the season. While the first half was very character based , with Buffy actually going to university classes and meeting new loves for the very first time, the second half was far too plot based, focusing far too much time and atmosphere to the Initiative and Riley's loss of innocence... and besides this schism of episodic schizophrenia, there also is one other flaw with season four: Sarah Michelle Gellar simply didn't look as hot as she did in season three. I guess it's the hair really - her curls were too big for her body, which was never a problem in any previous season except the first... so alas, I didn't get to spend entire nights' worth of Watcher watchings, just staring at her fabulous face on my season four DVDs... sigh... if only...

But two chinks in the armour doth not a bad season make... Arc-wise, season four wasn't as strong as seasons two or three... But standalone episode wise? Season four truly stands above the rest... In my opinion at least, Joss Whedon and company did some of their best creative work this season, as The Harsh Light of Day, The Initiative, Pangs, Something Blue, Hush, A New Man, Superstar, and the Yoko Factor all rank amongst the best written Buffy episodes I've ever had the privilege to watch... The only problem with all the above, was that they all lacked the cuteness, ingenuity and tightness in speech that Buffy once had with her group of Scoobies. In other words, the gang no longer meshed like chicken soup for the soul as much as they once did the first few seasons of Buffy... But you see, that was the point! The point of season four was to highlight the fact that old friends drift apart once the college knell sounds. And unfortunately, most fans didn't want to hear of such a notion. Friends are forever, they say... and yes, they are. But relationships don't stay the same. People don't stay the same. That was the message in season four, a message in a Moriarty bottle that was very well developed over the course of the entire season... but alas, if many Buffy fanatics had their way, Buffy and her friends would still be in high school to this day...

Season four also marks the introduction of three of the most popular characters on the show: Anya, Tara, and my personal hero, Spike. All three at times stole the show from the core gang, as Anya provided just as much comic relief as Xander ever has, Tara demonstrated a level of cheesy romance that even Buffy and Angel could never approach, and Spike? Well... let's just say the Leather Duster is the best, and deserves to be engraved in a museum, need I say more?... And then there was Riley. I personally loved the idea of military men in the demon world. Unfortunately, the actors they got for the gig weren't as Ann lively as I hoped they would be... And while some fans complained that old favourites like Xander and Giles sort of fell by the wayside this season, other favourites such as Buffy and Willow truly got to expand their roles into the gray (and gay) areas of both morality and sexuality..."

You can read the rest of my Buffy the Vampire Slayer season four overview here.

Tuesday, July 8th, 2003

Y2kk Update: I hate to say this, but if only... if only Legally Blonde 2 was out in time... But nooo... Instead of repeating my sort of annual ritual of seeing a Legally Blonde film with my sister for her birthday, because of this whole Japanese trip of hers, she decided to force upon me the annals of anguish, by dragging me to an even worse film... Yes, I saw Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle as my birthday sacrifice to my one and only sister. And the thing was, all the reviews said this film had absolutely no sense of a plot whatsoever, that the characters are mere caricatures, that the action is pure Matrix rip-off crap, and that the movie lacks any sort of focus whatsoever... So naturally, I just assumed the sequel was the same as the original. And considering I liked the original for what it was worth, I just shrugged my shoulders and said, "hell, why not?". And Charlie's Angels it was...

But oh, how could I been so wrong? God, how could the filmmakers have been so damn wrong?... normally, I would warn you few readers out there about the spoilers in my reviews and what not. But the problem this time is, Charlie's Angels was just so damn devoid of any sort of plot, that there really is no need to put a goddam spoiler warning up! Because honestly, just by saying the girls shake their asses around and suck a lot while doing it, pretty much gives away most of the meat and bones of the goddam movie anyhew... And honestly, they couldn't even do that properly! I was groaning while Cameron Diaz was riding the bull in front of hordes of horny Mongolians. I was literally moaning (but not in a good way) in boredom as the trio of angels repeatedly whipped themselves on stage at some stripper's joint or some crap like that. And I was literally shaking my head through half of the damn movie, as they just kept on shaking their asses. I'm not lying. The film was simply that damn bad... The plot (if you call it one) consisted of a set of rings that contains the key to the witness protection program, which led to some half assed subplot of Drew Barrymore's character feeling sad that Diaz's character was moving on. And really, while I normally would rant about the intricacies and subtleties of such a fabulous moolah plotline, the fact of the matter is... the movie was just so damn forgettable, that I already forget what the hell happened in the goddam film.

There were a couple of pluses in the film though, to save it from complete mediocrity... Probably the only surprise in the entire movie came when that hair obsessed, Matrix assassin from the first film came back as Barrymore's very short stinted badass boyfriend. I strangely enjoyed the scenes depicting his orphan childhood with his psychotically enraged hair cuts, though I'm not sure why... And the only other thing decent about the film? John Cleese... I already was in snicker mode when Cleese came in as Lucy Liu's father. I even found the little chipmunk or whatever gesture that Lucy pulled off as almost half humourous... But the real sparks flew when Lucy Liu admitted her life with Charlie, and explained how she just took on ten sailors... The look on John Cleese's face was priceless, and alone saved this film from being utter, urban trash. But two decent moments in a film does not a, um, film, make... so to speak... And quite frankly, even as a birthday gift to my sister, I'd rather have my money and life back, thank you very much... sure, I'd probably just waste those two hours of my life again, but still, if only I could go back and change time...

And even more sadly, I still found Charlie's Angels to be better than Matrix Reloaded. Go figure...

And you know what? A funny thing seems to have happening on the movie forums that I tend to read... Most of the fans who dream of changing time and eliminating that god-awful Matrix Reloaded from history, ended up liking Terminator 3. And those who somehow defend Matrix Reloaded against all sanity (even though they claim the Star Wars franchise has sunk to the bottom of the Titanic in the sea), seem to find Terminator 3 as some stupid-ass, redneck film that nobody with a brain would ever enjoy... and, um... Well, after reading through about a hundred of these posts, it finally dawned on me... the dawn of the Machines... the rise of the Machine... and the rise of a certain body part at the sign of Kristanna Loken's naked ass jiggling in the limelight... That quite frankly, I hate Matrix Reloaded. Ergo, I love the Terminator. And therefore, I love Terminator 3. And you know what?...

Hmm... polar opposites I guess... I hated Matrix Reloaded so damn much, that it must have pushed my opinion of T3 all the way to the top... Because quite frankly put, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was absolutely the best movie I've watched this entire year, and possibly the best movie I have ever watched since I started reviewing films on this noname site of mine. There was not even a single moment that I didn't find worthwhile in the film, as everything just seemed to click... But I'll admit it here and now: I'm a huge Terminator junkie. Terminator 2 still ranks as one of my favourite movies of all time, and if only Aliens wasn't so damn good, I'd label the original Terminator film as James Cameron's second best flick. But you see, that was the problem... James Cameron turned down the director's chair of Terminator 3. And when I first heard that so many moons ago, I panicked. I freaked out. And I swore upon seeing the first, god-awful T3 trailer, that Terminator 3 would be the end of my love for the series. With no James Cameron on board, and with no Sarah Connor returning, I knew things were screwed. I knew Judgement Day for the series was upon us. And after watching the second T2 trailer, my opinion didn't change. The movie still looked like a turd. It still looked like a film that would do so much injustice to the series that I loved, that I would never, ever forgive Hollywood for milking the franchise to death (like we all wish we could do to Kritanna Loken)... But a new world order and a new world view started dawning on me by the time the final trailer showed up on Apple.com. The thing was, the trailer still sucked... but it finally hit me, like a rocket in a graveyard to the head... Every movie that I've watched recently that had a good trailer, pretty much flat out sucked in theatres... and knowing all that, I knew something was amiss. I knew some sort of reverse psychology was playing with my wits. Because afterall, the T-800 is built with basic psychology subroutines... And so I walked into that Terminator 3 movie, half expecting to throw up in disgust half way through, and half expecting to be giving the film a bloody standing ovation by the time the final credits were rolling stoning their way through... and... well?...

I loved the film, and I simply could not believe when it was all said and done, just how much I damn loved the film. Was it Terminator 2 quality? Perhaps not. But it was the damn closest that I've ever seen an action movie come to since... First things first, Nick Stahl didn't really get to show much acting variety in this film, but he played his role to perfection nonetheless. He really did look like a frightened child, lost without his mother, and lost without the father figure that killed himself for his future. The opening scenes of the film though didn't exactly catch my attention like the last ones did. It was kind of pointless for a deer to be the thing that gets John to a veterinarian shop for some shots, but from that point on, John Connor sure as hell went on a hell of a ride. Now, he didn't get to pull off many one liners, and he really didn't do anything in the film besides whine. But I just can't help but sympathize with a whiner, you know what I mean? I couldn't help but think that this John Connor was a lot like me... except he gets to brandish a machine gun pistol, and unleash his load on a femme fatale who just keeps on coming for more, but that's besides the point... And besides, how can I possibly not love a character who watches a girl take down a computerized fighter jet, Halo style, and openly comment and commit, that she reminds him of his mother?... if only that was considered romantic, I would have a girlfriend right now...

I just love Oedipal stories, and I love the girls who star in them. And quite frankly, Claire Danes as Kate Brewster added a hell of a lot to Terminator 3 that even Sarah Connor couldn't have provided. Some critics complained that Danes was a single dimensional character, but considering the story took place over just a couple of days, I wasn't expecting much character development in the first place. But what development was there, was simply great. I loved her squealing when the Terminator asked her in the back of the truck whether she was alright. I loved the look on her face when John Connor saw the burial place of his mother. I loved the look of disbelief and horror when she saw her fiancee in the graveyard, smiling like only an Austin Powers villain can. And quite frankly, she reminded me of Sarah Connor too, when she took an assault rifle in arms and took down the flying sentinel as if she had been totting guns on her titties for years... She was the ultimate femme bot, even more so than the T-X, and I loved every minute of it. Although Claire Danes probably did a better job in the Mod Squad (and dare I say it, Romeo and Juliet... uggh...), I have to give her nothing but credit for making Terminator 3 as spectacular as it was. Without her there to provide the naive voice that Sarah Connor did in the first film, and John Connor did in the second, the film just wouldn't have felt like a Terminator film.

But you know what would've made the film really feel like it wasn't a Terminator film?... if there were no Terminators... or more simply put, if there was no 'Ah-nold' or T-800 or whatever cool kind of crap. And seriously, every single Terminator film has been made a classic by everyone's favourite bodybuilder, and Terminator 3 didn't just feel like his comeback film - it really felt like an old set of Arnold shoes, complete with the sweat we all know and love. I mean, the action in this film was simply stupendous. The chase scene with the T-800 stuck to a crane was simply awe-inspiring, completely using widescreen to its fullest, wide-load advantage... The sight of one of the Terminator's hydrogen cells igniting a desert storm was actually quite a sight to behold as well, and left me oddly in shock, even after seeing it in trailers. And honestly, who here hasn't dreamed of a battle with urinals? Honestly, urinals are the next best thing to goddam aliens with friggin' lasers on their frickin' foreheads... But probably the best damn Arnold moment in any Terminator film, was when the T-800 finally got to pick on Terminators more primitive than itself. And goddammit, I wish I did scream... I honestly did feel like hollering and hooting when Arnold ripped the head off of one T1, and fired a thousand mini-gun rounds into the chest of another. The feeling of lead piercing steel was simply priceless. This whole damn film was simply priceless. And it just wouldn't have been the same without the old Arnold swagger and wit. It just wouldn't have been Terminator, without the man who would be Terminated.

Some people complained that the T-800 (or the T-101, as he calls himself in this film... which according to a website, means he's a T-800 version 1.01 or some crap like that) was simply too comical in this movie to be taken seriously. And although I admit that the "talk to deh hand" moment was a bit too cheesy for even my tastes, I can honestly say that I wouldn't have taken back a single one of the Terminator's jokes. I loved the film right off the bat for the parody it progressed - I even think my brother and I thought hard long time ago, at what would've happened if the Terminator ever visited a stripper bar... And the shades? Oh, God, the shades! We Terminator fans have always known that the heart and soul of every T-800 lies in its shades, and it was simply great how T3 played around with this obsession of ours, by making it an obsession of the Terminator's as well. And simply little moments like this, where the Terminator was explaining who John Connor was to Kathryn Brewster in the car, or the reverse psychology or whatever he worked on Nick Stahl in the graveyard, were all so perfectly mixed and intertwined with piercing action, that if I were to recommend a single movie to represent the absolute best ways of dishing comic relief, I would definitely point this film out, if only because it was Ahnold with a tumah at his best... Was the comedy for everyone? Probably not. But for us Terminator fans, it was rold gold, utter perfection.

And if there was ever a perfect villain, it would be the T-X... did Kristanna Loken live up to the immensely high standards that Robert Patrick left behind? Probably not, but she did a hell of a job herself to establish a new criteria for evil in movies... Some critics complained that the T-X shouldn't have been able to control the police cars and firetrucks, considering steering wheels are not controlled by computers. But simply put, she has nanite systems, right? Can't they handle the mechanical jobs for her?... The thing is, the T-X was perhaps a little too strong for her own good. While the T-1000 could be easily stunned, the only thing that even flung the T-X a few feet back was a rocket to her head. With liquid metal on the outside and an endoskeleton on the inside that can survive a helicopter crushing, even the trusty shotgun of Terminators past couldn't phase her, and in a sense, I was sad to see that happen... I wasn't sad to see a bitch with a built in plasma cannon and a chemical flamethrower though. It was nice seeing Skynet finally bringing in the big guns or two... The T-X definitely was menacing right off the bat, as she did look rather evil when she was asking oh so politely for that Lexus of hers, now wasn't she? Although Loken doesn't exactly rise to my tastes in women, I will fully admit that a she-Terminator proved herself to be just as menacing as any male Terminator could ever provide. My only complaints were that 1) her death scene sucked. I thought it was rather uncharacteristic for a Terminator to scream like an animal banshee at death... although how can I really complain about a girl taking a hydrogen blow job in the mouth?... heh... and 2) her ability to control machines was seriously underused. She could've taken over the internet or something, but I guess she didn't want to interfere with Skynet's plans. And although activating all the Terminator prototypes led to some damn cool moments, her reprogramming of the T-800 did not. I found the scene rather lacking and cheesy as the Terminator learned to make a choice... he shut himself down... after beating up a car for no reason... The scene was rather anti-climatic after a heart-thumping race through a magnetic labyrinth, but all was forgiven when the Terminators decided to one-up each other with a little helicopter horseplay later on...

The thing was, if there was anything that I disliked about the film, it was the final scenes. There was no major battle against the T-X in the end. Taking on its T-1 cronies was smooth as mello yellow hell, but I really was expecting some sort of an epic final scene to always be remembered like T2 had... And as for the ending itself? I won't spoil it, because it definitely was a shock to me. But let's see if this spoils it... It just didn't feel real to me. The ending, I mean... because it didn't happen in real life itself... The thing about the previous Terminator movies, was that nothing in them had happened on a global scale yet, so for all we knew, the films happened somewhere in real life... Call me insane if you will, but T3 fails in one aspect: that it simply did not feel real in the end. And if you allow me to rant a little longer, there's more than one reason why... The original Terminator film dealt with the idea that fate cannot be changed. Or more exactly, that travelling to the past will only cause the future to happen. By sending the T-800 back to kill Sarah Connor, John Connor was conceived, and the T-800 CPU was used to design Skynet... The second film completely ruined the first film's idea though, as Judgement Day was stopped (Dyson wasn't dead in the T-800's timeline, but he sure as hell is now dead in ours). But I didn't care about the grandfather complex in T2, simply because it was such a damn good movie... But the thing in T3, was that the writers just couldn't make up their damn minds on which side of the time travel paradox to take. On one side, two of John Connor's future lieutenants were killed. They're gone. Time has changed, as there's no way dead men can become lieutenants anymore. And on the other side, the writers played with the notion that time can change a little, but inevitably the things meant to happen will happen. T2 postponed Judgement Day. It didn't prevent it. And that was my biggest Francis Bacon beef with Terminator 3... it tried to claim fate is inevitable, but also that there is no fate but what we make. And honestly, is it me, or is it that if the damn Terminator just skipped his whole damn speech about Judgement Day being inevitable, that the team could've got to Skynet headquarters fast enough to stop the father from ever pressing Yes? I mean honestly, can't John Connor just sent a memo to his future self, to please reprogram a T-X for him to play nightly with, and send it back to blow the hell out of that computer terminal before that Austin Powers wannabe commander is stupid enough to press Yes?... time travel has never made sense, but at least movies normally take a stand...

But strangely enough, I didn't even care one damn bit about the whole time paradox thing in the film... Hell, I barely even cared about the disbelief and discontent I had for the ending until I finally got out of my seat... because short story short, what makes Terminator 3 the best movie of the entire year to me... is that simply put... it made me believe... It suspended my disbelief like no film ever has for years, science fiction or not. I didn't care that the T-X could control police cars, whether it was possible or not. All I cared about, was that on screen, there was damn cool chase scene going on, with a Kate Brewster bouncing and frolicking in the back... I never once thought that the Kate Brewster being shot with a machine gun was the T-X in disguise, or the fact that the real Kate got into the building undetected. All I cared about, was the look on the face of the father, when he saw his little girl take a hundred shots in the breasts like a good little girl, and still stay standing... And I didn't care whether it was weird or not that the T-800 seemed a lot more human than Arnold ever did in T2 until his CPU was modified. Because all I cared about, was that the film was seriously kicking ass... Because all I cared about, was the little things in this movie that made it so damn great. Little touches, like the sound of newly formed glass crunching underneath the weight of the naked T-800 in the desert. Just the sight of the flying T-1, approaching the heat signature of the missile it just fired, rather than being smart enough to figure out that it missed its targets... And simply just the little, thoughtful changes from T2, like the idea that the Terminator follows Kate's orders now, not Connor's... and especially the stony silence in the stormy faces of the future couple, when they learn of who John's killer will turn out to be... Even though that brilliant idea was never carried out further in the film, and even though the father-son relationship from T2 was just a footnote in this film, it didn't matter to me... unlike in almost any other film ever Connor conceived, it just didn't matter to me... Because what was there... everything that was there in this film... was brilliant... sheer, liquid metal, shiny brilliant...

Call T3 a popcorn film if you will, but I will simply call it genius. Call it nostalgia if you will, but the truth of the matter still stands... I enjoyed Terminator 3 as much as I did for one reason and one reason only: because I watched it with my brain turned off. Because the movie was so damn good, that it made me want to shut my goddam CPU off... Some critics just assume that's a bad thing, that a movie has to be totally intellectual to be totally groovy... but to me? Being able to sit back and finally enjoy a ride?... it's the greatest thing that's happened to me in the longest damn time... I felt like a child in that AMC theatre, watching with wild, yonder eyes as the T-X and the T-800 first appeared on screen. Even with the new director, I felt like I was living out my first watchings of Terminator 2 all over again, with all the joys and spells that came attached with the total package... And regardless of whether this film will stand the tests of time or not. Whether or not I will watch T3 on DVD with my brain on, and realize that it's not the same film that I watched in theatres... whether or not... still... the fact of the matter remains... that when I left the movie theatre the other week, I felt more satisfied with a movie than I have ever felt in years. And that's something that I can never ever forget, and never ever forsake. And if only... if only I could forgive myself, for ever once believing that this film wouldn't make me feel the way it did... if only I could forgive myself, for ever losing faith that this film would ever fail to terminate my fears and doubts...

... and if only I could forgive myself, for ever watching Matrix Reloaded, but that's a story for another day... hopefully, for that series too, the third time will be the charm...

Tuesday, July 1st, 2003

Y2kk Update: I've had a long and rocky and bumpy, Warthog road of love and hate history with Halo... sort of like the 60s... I still remember how much I damn wanted Xbox at launch, just for this game... and eventually, I got what I wanted... not the Xbox, but rather the game... Not that I had the game mind you, but you know what I'm saying... I was at my sister's apartment, and her boyfriend had just gotten the Xbox with Halo from a friend... I still remember that weekend at Bernie's of mine, as if it were the night I shot Barney the Dinosaur as he slept... or as I slept... Because I was sleeping at the time, as was logged in my Tweakui update of that week. The fire alarm was new in my sister's condo, so it kept going off at the most inopportune of intervals. Eventually, my sister got fed ex upped with all the crap, and decided to give the management boys a piece of her mind... Flash forward three hours later, and I see her finally returning to the apartment. It seems that on her way down to the office, she remembered that the exits to the stairs get locked during fire alarms, and she got stuck out there like a lucky monkey in the middle ever since she left... it was great...

But what wasn't so great, was my first impressions experience with Halo that night. Before that whole condo-on-fire-only-not-actually-on-fire fiasco happened, I just happened to have wasted my entire day away watching the Playboy channel with a friend, and running through as much of the Halo single player campaign as I could on Normal... the Playboy channel eventually got boring (there's only so much of Cleopatra in the future porn that one man can take...), but the thing about Halo, was that it never got exciting. The weapons were all of the best variety that I've seen since Goldeneye, and the music was epic as hell. The sound effects were all of the best sample quality I had ever heard (except for Cortana, who still sounds awful in stereo sound for some odd reason...), as even the noise of the shields recharging got stuck in my head like the sound of music... The only problem was, that the bad guys got repetitive over the long while, and don't get me started on the stages... or at least, don't get me started on them yet... And by the time it was time to finally settle down for slumber, I had gotten my way all the way to the introduction of the Flood. I never did make it all the way to that 343 Guilty Spark guy, but I got to watch that dumbass Aliens video clonehead at least... And considering I've heard only great things about the Halo single-player storyline, I was devastated that my Halo campaigning days were abruptly over. I had to see the ending, because it just had to be good, considering the parts of the plot that I had seen were Half Life crap... so a few months down the road, before my brother quit his job at Blockbuster, we rented an Xbox, and on the very last day we had it, Halo finally showed up back on his store shelves. So fully knowing that I only had a few frickin' hours to finish the entire game, I selected Easy difficulty this time, and literally ran my ass threw every single damn stage, only stopping to shoot bastard Convenant out of boredom... and, well...

You know, the funny thing was... the ironic thing was... I FRICKIN' ONLY GOT TO THE SAME DAMN STAGE AS I ENDED ON BEFORE!!!@!... I mean goddammit, I only got 2 hours of goddam Halo playing time before I had to give that goddam, larger-than-any-VCR-I've-ever-seen crap box back to the store, and honestly... honest Edly... although making it through five or so of those massive stages in just two hours was quite an accomplishment, what wasn't an accomplishment (or if it was, it was an ironic one) was that I goddam ended on exactly the same damn stage as I did my last time through!... And ARGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!... I was just so pissed that I would possibly never be able to see the uber ending of what I still believed to be the best plotline for a first person shooter ever, that in my desperation, I looked up story spoilers on the net, and before I knew it, I had finally found the truth... the truth and reconciliation... and now I'll have to reconcile with the fact that... quite frankly put...

Halo's storyline sucks.

Flash forward a whole year later... As soon as my brother and I bought our Xbox the other week, I just knew that I needed Halo as the first game in our collection... so I lent him the money to get what he considers to be the "best game ever made", period... and what was the first thing he said when we popped the disc into our Xbox's slot?... he was so damn excited... because Halo has the best plotline in any game, period... and ugghh... After the game was finally over (we played it through Normal in co-op mode), he could safely and soundly say as I could and did, that Halo's plotline reeks of suckiness. It sucks at everything but suckiness... The plot was done in Aliens, it was done in Metroid, and it was pretty much done better in both... storyline wise, at least... But if you few readers out there haven't noticed yet, this is supposed to be a review of Halo: Combat Evolved the game, and I really haven't talked about the game yet, now have I?... but short story short, if you want the brunt of the grunt of my review right now, I'll honestly say that while Halo is a great first person shooter, it definitely isn't the revelation of the reckoning or the be-all-end-all of all games as even my brother claims it is. It's hardly "Combat Evolved"... at most, I'll say it's "Combat Involved"... but it's pretty damn fine combat at that...

First things first, the single player campaign sucks in this game. I've now played through it four times (I'm beating it on Heroic co-op as we speak), and I can honestly agree that this game was definitely rushed to be an Xbox launch title. The stages themselves are bland, with the same room being Metal Gear reduxed or whatever over and over again. This was apparent enough in the earlier stages, but at least in those, the designers tried to shake the trend with an odd outdoor scene or two in the mix. But really, the stage of The Library is a perfect example of why Halo's single-player barely holds a candle to its Goldeneye and Perfect Dark predecessors. All that goddam Library stage consisted of, was a linear path where endless hordes of Flood zombies come at you until you die from just getting bored and laying down your guard (to hopefully get laid by Cleopatra... but, um... too much porn for me...)... I'll give credit to Halo, for having only short bursts of loading times despite having the longest damn stages I have ever seen (although I'll take my credit back for having the damn longest loading screens before each and every stage...). But the fact is, the stages are too damn long... Even my brother was waning off by the time that goddam Monitor got to a bloody cut-scene, as fifty damn minutes of damn senseless killing was even too much for him (and checkpoints don't save in co-op)... honestly, except for maybe the Truth and Reconciliation, which has the two-punch variety of the sniping exterior and the Covenant ship interior, I can safely say that every damn stage in this damn game doesn't just suck. They all lick balls... Hell, even the final stage had me rolling my rolling thunder eyes. It was a pain to blow up the fusion cores, as the damn Sentinels kept coming out of nowhere. And it was a damn pain to drive that Warthog out of the ass of the ship, if only because... um... I can't drive...

But all because the stages suck in the game, doesn't mean the game was boring... Because literally almost every single mechanic built into the game didn't just feel realistic... they felt, well... fun... They felt like they were made for the Xbox controller, both the large and the S versions... First of all, I can't rave enough of how damn great the flashlight is in this game. Not only is the sound of switching it on and off enough to keep me tapping the white rabbit button, but the simple fact that it literally affects everything on screen (with lighting... not sure about shadows) makes it an amazing effect that even PCs might not be able to handle... And the aiming in this game? Even before I got used to dual shock controls, I already had the aiming in this game down pat. At sensitivity level 3, I could already take out everything in the skies but the best of Banshees and the most hidden of Covenant snipers. And I've heard of a few who can play at control sensitivity 10 better than even most Counterstrike PC players that I know... And just the fact that Halo is a console FPS is great enough for the simple fact that simply put, Master Chief doesn't run as fast as a damn, Cheetah lunatic on Cheetos. In PC games, army men and terrorists run insanely fast Quake 3 speeds, just to make some damn challenge for an Optical Mouse user. But honestly, games like Unreal Tournament 2003 and Counterstrike just don't feel "real" when you're jumping around in strafing circles at 70 mph... and although the alien environments in Halo are the last things I want to call "realistic", the fact is that Master Chief's speed is the most realistic fighting speed since Goldeneye first appeared on shelves. Sure, PC fans will always shout about the game being too damn easy or having too damn slow walking speeds in that sense, but a PC FPS is not what I want. Ever since Perfect Dark, I just wanted a console FPS that just felt right... and now I have it... with Combat Involved...

I've already commented that the single player stages and most of the bad guys (grunts, ghosts, hunters, all flood bastards) all suck in the game in my opinion... they're tedious to repeatedly kill, and rather monotonous at times with their strategies... But what counts most in a FPS to me at least, are the weapons... and God, Halo is a godsend for weapons. The sniper rifle is dead strong and accurate, as using the right analog for the zoom scope was a brilliant idea. My only problem is that the left analog doesn't toggle between crouching on and off, as it really is annoying to hold down my thumb just to get a steady shot (I end up losing my shot instead...)... And the alien weapons, with possibly the exception of the Needler, not only have a real alien feel to them (my brother whines that he's betraying humanity by using Convenant weapons), but also are damn hell useful in combat. Hell, even on Normal difficulty and especially higher up, human weapons are useless on the Covenant. And it really is damn fun to power up the Plasma Pistol, Samus Aran style, as unloading it on an unsuspecting Elite (who are the only cool Convenent badasses if you ask me, especially when they're cloaked) is just pure orgasmic joy. The weapons that the Elite carry are pretty damn nice as well, as they rarely overheat, and even if they do, it just feels so damn nice to switch between the two weapons you have before the Convenant ever have a chance to recover...

And really, that was perhaps Halo's greatest innovation. The two weapon system or the two towers system or whatever the hell you want to call it... When I first heard of it, I scoffed at the idea that I wouldn't be able to scroll through 20 different weapons that my magic belt buckle would magically be able to hold... But honestly, not only does the two tier or whatever idea add a real strategic element to the game, of deciding which two weapons are the best for each situation, but it also is damn fun to scrounge around for a new battery to replace the old Covenant pistol every few baddies or so... And while this isn't the greatest innovation, honestly to me, the best done feature in Halo just has to be the damn Covenant plasma grenades. Although I wish that shooting with a gun afterwards would set the flares off early ala Timesplitters 2, there's no denying that it's damn funny watching even badass Elites jumping out of the way of a little smoking flame... There's no denying that it's damn delectable to smack a damn grenade on the back of a Hunter and watch him squirm. And honestly, simply the effect of seeing a chain of grenades blast a bunch of dead grunts off a bridge platform and all the way down to the abyss below, is simply one of the most damn satisfying  FPS moments in any game, period... and still manages to make me maniacally laugh to this day, but I digress... I've always been a fan of grenades, and especially grenade launchers. And I can honestly say that no game has ever done the grenade feature better than Halo has. Sure, it's annoying at times when I accidentally tap the L button and a grenade sticks to my foot, but honestly... the sight of seeing me fly in a brilliant white explosion of fire is worthy enough of the sacrifice in all its splendor...

But you see, that's also the problem... Convenant weapons are just so damn gullibly good in this game, like a damn gorgy lullaby, that... um... it makes the human weapons look comparably bad... or in layman's terms: the human weapons flat out suck... And I'm serious. While the Marine pistol is shockingly accurate from long distance, it is absolutely useless in this game except when a zoom scope is needed. And while the rocket launcher does serious damage to any Convenant tank, it's simply too rare in the single player campaign to be of any use... And the frag grenades? The problems is, they don't bounce enough. While the plasma grenades always damn land where I want them too (normally and nominally in the middle of unsuspecting cloaked Elites...), the damn frags never bounce off walls the way I intend, or ever cause enough damage to be useful other than blowing up my own men (I want my Granada grenade launcher back...)... But oh, the worst of the worst, and the sole reason that I still shake my head and fist at Bungie today... is the damn Assault Rifle... I mean honestly, here we have what I consider to be the first damn machine gun ever done right in a FPS, on any platform, since Goldeneye... hell, with rumble on, the Halo Assault Rifle is possibly the best damn feeling machine gun ever made in a game, period... But then Bungie screws us all over for what they consider fucking "game balance", and makes the damn Assault Rifle the damn weakest weapon in the whole, friggin' game. It takes long enough to kill grunts with them on Heroic level, but to kill an Elite? Short bursts help curb the recoil, but honestly... it should not take two damn clips of 60 damn bullets each time to kill one damn bad guy, that one damn shot from one goddam plasma pistol can take out! And it's frustrating! It's absolutely frustrating, that my favourite gun in the game, of any game, possibly of all time... ABSOLUTELY FRIGGIN' SUCKS CRAP!!!... it has no sniper scope, it has no long range, and I have no frickin' laser beams attached to my head!... The only damn thing the rifle is good for, is taking out Banshees and occasionally the odd Ghost or two, but that's about it. And I will never forgive Bungie for this... never... And honestly... Jebus, seriously! Geez!... I know Aliens set the precedent, but still... it just irks me at times that humans 500 years from now, with interstellar travel all mastered and everything, still use goddam guns that can't hold more than goddam 60 bullets at a time! I mean goddammit, we had better weapons in fucking Vietnam, for Christ's sakes! You can buy better goddam guns at fucking Wal-Mart! ... but I guess, umm, that's besides the point...

There's three other things about Halo's single player that I'd better report on, otherwise I'd get flamed for being an ignorant fanboy (not that anyone will ever read this review, mind you)... Besides the grenades, probably my favourite addition in Halo to the FPS genre has been the regenerative shielding. Not only does it look damn cool to get hit, and not only does it add a bit of strategy to back off and guard whenever shields get low, but I can't get enough of screaming to my brother, "Shields are done to 15%, captain! She can't take much more of this!!!", but, umm... I guess that's besides the point too... Anyhew, moving along... literally... Vehicles have been implemented in FPS games on the PC multiple times, but I honestly could never get into them... literally... I could never figure out how to goddam work them with the goddam keyboard... And while I'm no fan of the Warthog or the Ghost controls myself, the fact of the matter is, the dual analog implementation is the most intuitive FPS vehicle control scheme that I've ever been privileged to use. While certain vehicles are more death-traps than blessings (Ghosts get shot down way too easily, the tank's machine gun sucks more than the Assault Rifle, and I keep flying into walls with the Banshee, but that's besides the point), I can't deny the fact that I've seen players who can drive the Warthog better than a real car, and man can they floor it while firing... and the other thing that Halo does so damn well?... the AI... hell, they even took a page out of Andromeda's book by having a female, computer AI for the ship (except I want my Lexa Doggie Style!... um, sorry... I meant, "Doig"gie style...)... And honestly, I've already mentioned the way Elites jump for their lives at the sight of a grenade at their feet. But after playing through the game on Heroic, I can honestly say that I'm noticing more and more the ways that Elites cower behind rocks and bunker behind walls, only to strike 2 fast and 2 furiously when you least suspect them to do so. It's amazing at times to see grunts cover each other as one prepares a grenade "down in front", and it's just as satisfying to see my own men leap for cover like a bunch of rag-tag losers holding the worst assault rifles in history... and I've only heard even better things about Legendary difficulty, which I'm scared to try, if only because those damn laser-sword bastards kept killing me in one damn hit on even Normal of all difficulties... but if there's one problem I have with the AI, it's with the humans. Because let's face it - they flat out suck. I would kill them myself if they didn't turn on me, not that that's much of a problem, considering they suck so damn badly that they all usually die from my first damn frag grenade... People always talk about how damn great it is to fight with forces on your side. Even my brother used that as an excuse as why Halo is the best game ever made... but while it adds a hell of a lot to the atmosphere, just to here the Sarge order men around or to see cowardly soldiers shooting a little something extra at dead Elites that I've killed, the fact is... once you get over the novelty of having an army at your side... well... I'd rather just kill them for their ammo. They can't do anything productive, or useful, and whenever I face a tank or a hunter, they're dead within a second... no wonder Earth is losing the damn war...

And I would talk about multiplayer mayhem, except for one thing... I haven't played any of it yet... I haven't tried a LAN game, which reportedly never gets boring. And I've never tried XBconnect or GamespyArcade, as laggy as they supposedly are, as I don't have two NIC cards in my computer right now... But I can definitely vouch for one thing: the co-op in Halo is not only the best damn multiplayer in this generation of gaming, but absolutely the best damn thing to return from the SNES days ever. In single-player, I get bored after shooting just a couple of those damn thousands of Flood brain bastards... but on co-op? Sure, it helps that we never die (considering my brother and I always manage to respawn), but even without that... it's just so damn satisfying to shout to my brother, "grenade!", or lay out out a plan to attack a Hunter from two separate vectors... and I'm sure LAN parties would be just as grand with Halo, as even if the game isn't Combat Evolved, it truly does make Combat Enjoyable.

To wrap things up, I'll be up and front, with the brunt of a grenade: Halo is not the best game ever made... It is even not the best first person shooter ever made, as Half Life set real standards for AI during its time. And it's not even the best console FPS ever made, as Goldeneye had a far better single-player campaign and arguably better multiplayer stages. And I'd even argue that Perfect Dark would've been a superior shooter, if only it wasn't plagued by slowdown and N64 graphics... But Halo: Combat Evolved truly is a defining moment for this generation of video games. It is without a shadow of a doubt, still the best damn game on the Xbox today. And it's arguably the best damn multiplayer game on any of the next generation systems, even without Xbox Live support... But while my brother will still shout at me in the showers (shudder asunder...) that Halo deserves to be higher than Zelda on the Gamerankings chart, I'll simply shrug and know in my heart what I consider to be my own truth and reconciliation... that Halo has all the right tools to be the best in the business. It has the right weapons, the right storyline basis, the right badass bad guys, and most importantly, the right controls... the entire foundation of the game is remarkably sound, not to mention having probably the best damn sound effects period, and possibly the best damn foundation for a game ever made, period... but while it perfects in polish, it sadly and sorely lacks in pure, unadulterated, combat content...

Which is what a sequel is for... which is why I personally can't wait for Halo 2... I even want it more than the next Zelda, or even the next Metroid Prime... but don't tell my brother that...

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