Got bored a week ago and felt like downloading something. Sadly though I couldn’t think of anything I really wanted to get, so the feeling just passed. A few days later though, I happened upon a post on some blog talking about a game called Dawn of Discovery (Anno 1404 outside of the US). It said that if you’re the type of gamer who wishes RTSs were more about economy and using trading effectively and less about fighting, then this game was for you. Now this is something I could get behind. I’ve been wanting a game like this for quite a while. I liked Civilization 4 and Settlers: Rise of a Nation but they were either not intricate enough or too easy. So I crossed my fingers and got the game.

Well since I’m writing about it here it’s probably obvious that I loved this game. The first few campaign levels were amazing. Learning how to juggle economy, population, crops, and natural resources was tiring, but extremely fun. Probably the best fun in an RTS I’ve had since Red Alert when I was first introduced to the genre. I’m at the point in the campaign where I’m starting to learn about military and defending myself against hostile nations, which is a little boring for me, but I’m looking forward to the last mission which I’ve heard about. In the game’s climax you’re basically in a race with another nation to build your own cathedrals. The first one done will basically get the blessing of the pope and the other, assumingly, won’t. Or something.

My only gripe with the game is that I wish there was a huge ass map that you could play sandbox style with scores of other nations for you to ally with or fight against. I could probably spend ages slowly taking over the entire map and enjoy every second of it. I really wish more games were like this. Highly recommend to any strategy buffs out there.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you’ve no doubt heard of this movie. Produced by Peter Jackson, District 9 is touted as being a reinvention of the sci-fi genre and has been hyped everywhere, so I was very eager to see it. Saw it opening weekend with my sister and first thing I must say is wow. Everything about the movie blew me away. From the touching story to the edge of your seat action, it was a fabulous ride from beginning to end. And the CG is some of the best I’ve every seen. This is no doubt thanks to the wonderful team at Wingnut who also did the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong. The aliens were so believable that it didn’t draw you out of the experience like some other movies /coughIamLegendcough. But the thing that hit me the most was that this movie was made for only $30 million which is an extremely tiny budget for a movie of this caliber. No doubt that hiring no name actors helped with that price, but still they delivered top notch performances. This is definitely a must see. Quite a diamond in an otherwise sleepy summer for movies. Well at least for me. And I hope that the major film studios learn from this. You don’t always need a several hundred million dollar budget to turn out a solid action movie.

It also makes me sad that the director Neill Blomkamp won’t be doing the Halo movie anymore. If this is any judge it would have been great. But hey, if he hadn’t dropped Halo, he never would have done District 9. Guess we can’t have everything.
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Recently released to the Xbox Live Aracde, ‘Splosion Man is a quirky, little platformer where you control a man who.. ‘splodes. You’re basically a science experiment gone awry and you have to go through a series of levels consisting of basic puzzles, traps, and enemies. To do this you use your ‘sploding powers to jump, set off chemical barrels to propel you to greater heights, kill scientists and destroy various robotic weapons. To make the game a little more strategic, ‘Splosion Man is limited to three explosions in a row after which he’ll need to pause for a second to regain his ‘splosions.

The world of ‘Splosion man consists of 50 levels spread across 3 worlds each ending with a final boss. The difficulty curve of the game is fairly gradual. Just when you start to get used to what’s been thrown at you, the game will introduce either a new puzzle element or enemy keeping things feeling fresh. In the latter levels, they’ll combine various gameplay elements into one little section forcing you rapidly assess the situation. If you’re a fraction of a second too late with your input, you’ll die. This will get frustrating very quickly, having to replay the same section 20 plus times. Thankfully though once you reach a certain threshold of deaths the game will kick in asking if you’d like to skip the level, the only repercussion being ‘Splosion Man wearing a tutu for the entire next level.

While this is a very fun and unique platformer, there are a few cons to this game. Toward the end of the game, things come at you so fast you almost have no time to react. The levels basically become segments of repeated trail and error which tend to infuriate the player. Another shortcoming is the final boss. You’d think, like most games, the final fight would be a culmination of all the skills you used before in an ultimate showdown. But this is not the case. Now that’s not to say the boss isn’t fun. It was just a bit of a let down.

If you have $10 bucks to spare and need something to play, I’d recommend checking this game out. It’s good, clean, platforming fun.
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First things first. This is not a kid’s movie. Unless your child is the next Damien, they’ll probably have nightmares for a week after seeing Coraline. This movie will send all kinds of shivers down your spine. Maybe it’s compounded by how cutesy the animation and the characters are, but Coraline has creeped me out more than any horror movie in recent history. Saying that, I really liked this movie. All these elements combined with a wonderful “be careful what you wish for” story. Liked it so much I’m afraid to read the source material by Neil Gaiman and, considering his major contributions to comics, that’s saying a lot. There were a few changes when it was transferred from novella to screenplay so I’m afraid it might taint my experiences from the movie. Or, more likely, it’ll be a different piece of awesomeness on its own. Anyway enough of that. Go see this movie! It just recently came out on DVD which should be awesome!
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