Slowly Learning...

So I've had the game for over three weeks now, so time to share my thoughts. So let's dive in, starting with the single player modes...

We still have the multi-man brawls, the homerun contest, and events to work through, as well as the classic mode and unlockable All-Star mode and Boss Battle modes (almost all of which are playable with a friend, a nice touch). All of those are rather nice, and fun to play through (I especially enjoy the event matches). And then there is the story mode which has been expanded from Melee...greatly, and without all that much success. The old story mode was a nice little change of pace, but that "little" was the key point. If I am going to spend that many hours playing through a story mode style game, then I want to play a good one, not a half-ass platform experience. The only reason that I completed it was that it was the quickest way to unlock most of the characters.

So let's get onto the characters! First off pretty much the entire Melee crew has returned (with a few adjustments). Some people will try to tell you that there are 15 new characters, but that's a bit off. First of all, Toon Link is not new (he's just a new skin on Young Link), Ike is basically Roy (and by that I mean exactly Roy), Lucario is simply Mewtwo in a new skin, and Lucas is just a minor adjustment on Ness (who still remains as well). So with my count there are 11 new characters (11.5 if you include Lucas). And as for the new characters...

The Good: Pit, Metaknight, King Dedede, Wolf
The Interesting: R.O.B., Pokemon Trainer, Olimar
The Undecided: Diddy Kong
The Completely Out of Place: Snake (not even close), Sonic (why force in outside characters?)
The Annoyingly Immature: Wario (when will Nintendo finally kill off what amounts to a running fart gag?)

In the end the character select screen looks like a gigantic cluster fuck, but I guess with more usage it will become manageable, and should I really complain about a wider selection of playable characters? I guess not. But having 31 "new" stages, 10 Melee stages, and Create-a-Stage (not nearly as nice as it sounds, since you are given a very very limited number of locales and pieces to use) gets a little unwieldy. And I'm sick and tired of so many overly busy stages. At least they kept some of the good ones from Melee.

In the end though, this game comes down to the multiplayer game. And while I haven't had the chance to have any real Smash parties, I have played some, and I'm not impressed. It's not bad, but it's not the leap that Melee was from the first game. In fact in a lot of ways it's a step back. The controls don't feel as tight, throws are now all but pointless since they do pretty much no damage at all, and slipping...Who the hell thought it would be a good idea have the players randomly slip and fall over?!? That is the stupidest idea ever in a fighter. Those people should all be fired and black-balled from ever getting a game design job ever again.

And this game proves just how far Nintendo still has their head up their asses when it comes to online gaming. I know that they have a younger audience, and that Nintendo wants to keep them "safe" from online people, but needing a friend code to communicate with anyone on your Wii, and then needing another code completely to play with friends online in Smash is just lunacy. Why would you need this? And half the point of playing online is to meet new friends to play with, which you can't do. And the other half is to have a good time with your friends who aren't in the same city as you (and to taunt them as you do), but there is no voice chat available, and from what I've heard most internet games lag like crazy. Good going Nintendo!

And as a side note to the online problem, when will Nintendo ever hop onboard? I mean what would have made a better MMORPG with a chance of hooking and reeling in hordes of gamers than Pokemon? A world where you can run around capturing pokemon, battling your friends, testing your luck against strangers, or having world-wide tournaments? That would have been a smash hit with all the poke-fanatics out there and would have helped reestablish Nintendo in the world-wide gaming market. Now all they have is a system, that while popular, is far inferior to both the PS3 and Xbox360 and is based purely on a gimmick (that will more than likely eventually fade into the background). And please Nintendo, we know you have this nice gimmick with the wii-mote, but you don't have to base every game around this. That definitely is one of the bonuses of Brawl, they didn't try to force the wii-mote into it.

But back to the matter at hand...

Brawl is by no means a bad game. There is plenty to enjoy here and it entertain most fans of the series, but it's no where near as impressive as Melee was when that was released. And that is a major disappointment after all the waiting as well. There are no real improvements in this installment. Like most every Nintendo game it just feels like a retred of a game I've already played. Even with all the new characters to choose from I'd much rather play the old friend that is Melee. In the end I'd have to give the game a 6 (7 on a good day).

Posted by Thom at 8:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So I am 2 for 4 in grad schools:
- Accepted to Univ. of Wyoming (no word on money yet)
- Assistantship from Washington State (no word on acceptance yet...)
- Denied to Univ. of Washington
- Denied to Univ. of Wisconsin

All in all not too bad yet. I'm figuring I'll end up above .500 when all is said and done, but in any case I at least have one of my top schools offering me money.

Also side note to all you Wii owners out there. I now am a proud owner of my very own Wii (and a copy of Smash Brawl), so if you wish to friend me my code is 8822 2809 6137 1689. And since Nintendo is stupid, my Smash friend code is 2277-6326-8229

Posted by Thom at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"I've never thought about it...so it can't be that important"

Two things that I noticed on campus today:

1 - You can tell you are getting towards the middle of the semester when all the prissy girls who looked like they get up at 5 am just to spend 3 hours primping in the morning to catch the eye for all the cute boys in class are too stressed out to care anymore and stop wearing makeup and "cute" outfits and start showing up for 1 o'clock class hair a mess in pajama pants and baggy sweatshirts. It really comes at you all of a sudden too. Sort of like the looks of an Asian woman. She always looks beautiful and young (quite often well into their 50's even), and then one morning she wakes up and suddenly look like they aged 40 years over night and now look 80.

2 - I was glancing around the room during geometry today and noticed that someone had taken twist off caps from pop bottles and put them on the feet of every chair. While this is a brilliant idea (cheap and effective way to stop that horrid metal feet scraping on tile floor sound), I had to wonder, who actually took the time to do this? There are easily 35-40 chairs in the room, meaning they'd need to have around 150 bottle tops, not to mention the time it would take to accomplish it all. It does almost sound like something I would do while bored, so I salute the individual. However, at the same time it did bother me, seeing as how there was a mixture of blue and white caps, placed in no discernible pattern throughout the room. And the obsessive compulsive in me was having none of that.

Posted by Thom at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Two months later, and three new reviews...

Definitely, Maybe -
Yes, this is a chick flick. And no, that didn't stop me from going alone (the girl was out of the country at the time). All that being said, I was rather sure that I'd enjoy the film (I figured Ryan Reynolds and Abigail Breslin would make up for any predictability that came with the romantic comedy tag), and I really did. Much like Teen Comedies, I occasionally have a soft spot for well done Romantic Comedies, and this was one of those.

The quick plot line is that a father tells his daughter the story of how he met her mother (his soon to be ex-wife), but includes two other women in the story, so the daughter has to guess which is her mother. That was a nice little twist on the tired boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back route that seem to litter the RomCom field. Top that off with a lovable performance by the always funny Reynolds (I like his acting skills, but he has to be put into some form of comedic role, see Blade III) and a great supporting role by Breslin (as much as I loved her work in Little Miss Sunshine, thank god they didn't try to force her into more of the film when it was a story of flashbacks to before she was conceived). The script, while still rather predictable, was clever and well done enough to make it believable and engaging, while still being funny and entertaining.

All in all it was one of the best RomComs I've seen. And as for the three love interests, I'll leave you with the mystery of guessing which one I find attractive and would have gone for.

RATING: Worth a Full Price Admission (even if they are up to $9.50 in Rochester, I can only imagine what they are in other cities), Worth a High Netflix Rental

Charlie Bartlett -
Like I have said time and again, I have a soft spot for teen comedies. Take some young actors, some old plot line (sometimes with a minor twist), an unbelievable high school locale (who really goes to school in a gothic castle and finds a date to the prom with the hottest girl in school a week before the dance?), toss in a collection of pop-punk/pop-ska songs (approximately half of which are covers) and out pops something that I will tend to watch at least once, most likely will enjoy, and almost most definitely should be embarrassed to like. Well Charlie Bartlett isn't quite there. It treads a strange middle ground. It has most of the elements of a typical TeenCom, but then it seems to also draw inspiration from other films such as Art School Confidential, Rushmore, and Igby Goes Down. Two of those three I find to be fantastic films (you can probably guess which two). However, Charlie Bartlett is closer to the third of those three. It is still entertaining, but it never quite feels at ease with itself. I guess in a way that could be a clever ploy of Jon Poll. An unsure story of teens who are unsure of themselves, but I think that would being giving the same man who made Cabin Boy, Scary Movie 3, The Beautician and the Beast, and Dunston Checks In too much credit.

Kat Dennings give a solid performance (realistic, if not a little bland) and Anton Yelchin was fabulous as Charlie (one of the better performances in a TeenCom that I've seen). And Robert Downey Jr. did a great job as well, but playing a partially washed up alcoholic seems about as much a stretch for him as playing a paranoid druggie in A Scanner Darkly was. Still you have to respect the man for being able to keep getting work and plug along (and not be dead from an OD or something by now). But apart from that everyone else seemed rather bland.

RATING: Worth a Cheap Ticket or Matinee, Worth a Middle of the Road Netflix Rental (but put the other two films I mentioned ahead of it if you're in the mood for a deeper comedy featuring teens, or get 100 Girls or 10 Things I Hate About You if you're in the mood for a TeenCom)

In Bruges -
Here is another movie that fell prey to a lack of focus. The trailers all present the film as a fun (partially) dark comedy, and while those elements are there, there is also a lot more to the film. Unfortunately, the "lot more" doesn't feel like it meshes with the dark comedy elements.

I really did appreciate the range shown by both Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, and it was nice that they were allowed to show that off (I always knew Gleeson had it, wasn't so sure of Farrell), but throwing in the more serious stuff knocked the whole film off balance. To be fair though, the serious stuff felt a little more natural. While sitting there I felt like I was watching a bastardized version of a drama somebody had written. I couldn't help but think that originally all the zany bits were missing (save a few humorous moments here and there), but when it got to the producer/director/etc. they thought, "Hmm, these funny bits play really well. We should go back and put more in!" but didn't think of the consequences of what it would do to the flow of the film as a whole.

Maybe I was expecting too much, but what I'm trying to say is that I would have loved to see a British Comedy with some dark themes (so basically a British Comedy), or a serious piece with a few jokes thrown in for good measure (and I think that this cast was talented enough to handle either beautifully), but the combination of two just did not work in the end and I was left watching a bi-polar flick in need of some serious lithium.

RATING: Worth a Dollar Viewing, Worth a Low Netflix (but don't think you're really missing anything if you don't catch either)

Posted by Thom at 12:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)