Entertainment-ogoplex

Ah the ways one find to distract, entertain, mellow, or enjoy- my latests adventures into escapism leave no stone unturned other than the stones I was unable to turn.


DVD: Finally saw "Knocked Up"-Lives up to the hype by being crass, obscene, funny and sweet all at once. My fiance and I spent a good amount of time mumbling about how accurate the married couple reflected our relationship-very funny movie and highly recommended. The banter about "Back to the future" between the male leads is worth the price of admission.

"Happy Feet" is a gloriously animated, wonderfully voiced movie with a big heart. I really enjoyed the crap out of it and even though my finace turned to me at the end and asked "it makes no sense:why would they let him go?" to which I replied "you have a problem with the internal logic about singing and dancing penguins?" I found the movie well made. The last act does seem to come out of nowhere, hammering home the already unsubtle point that humanity is destroying the world, but it is a lesson well learned nonetheless. Great movie.

GAMES: "BIOSHOCK" is easily one of the best games ever made, though the story runs off the rails late in the game, building to a climax too rote for a game this original. Like the lamented "Psychonauts (GREAT GAME)" Bioshock is literally (no pun intended) overflowing with ideas, so much so that by the end of the game, it feels like the designers simply ran out of time to finishing exploring what they had set in motion. A major character is introduced early and while has a powerful and lasting effect on the gameplay, they are never fleshed out, remaining a disembodied voice to the end. No simple twitch shooter Bioshock forces a player to consider stratagy, even while fleeing grotesque mutant residents with murderous intentions. It will be a landmark game graphically for the next gen as every frame is like a painting from an art director's desk. Game as art finally has a foothold.

"HALO 3"- The opening alone makes up for the ass ending of Halo 2, returning the Master Chief to his place in badassery. While the story, such as it is, is needlessly convoluted and often ill-explained, the gameplay remains the tightest, most responsive FPS experience on the any console to date. Unlike Bioshock which is an art director's wet dream, Halo 3 rides the line of stylized realism, albeit with aliens. HDR lighting is well used in the game, adding to the immersiveness as the gamer moves from area to area. The framerate is steady and smooth while the graphics have moments of dazzling beauty and spectacle, yet are uneven in quality, ranging from lush jungle vistas to 2d poorly painted space backgrounds. Playing on Heroic difficulty the game has not gotten my better until now, a massive battle against the flood within their own enviroment. No idea how to get past this one, so I may have to bite the bullet and drop the difficulty, but I promise to raise it, once past these vermin.