Legos + Captain America = Makes The Punisher Look Tame

OMG, Lego Cap is hardcore.

Playstation VITA

I’d been planning on getting a VITA when it comes out in a few weeks, however those plans were put on hold last month when my center’s closure was announced and I’d be laid off. So I was a sad panda…

This past Monday however I had  a shiny new import VITA sitting on my porch along with Uncharted and an 8GB memory card. I’d won a raffle from cheapassgamer after a donation to the Child’s Play fundraiser awhile ago. Yay!

Movie Quickviews

I thought I’d make a few comments on some recent movies I’ve seen. Not reviews per se…

Super 8 – Boring, catch ET instead.

The Smurfs – Not as bad as you’d think.

Horrible Bosses – Pretty good though a bit darker than I expected. You go into these movies expecting wacky hijinks and life lessons to be learned, instead we get actual murder.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Stranger Tides – Yawn. I think we’re done here.

Bad Teacher – They accidently had a funny part when she’s grading papers. Otherwise movie is dull and boring. I’m also unsure if we’re supposing to be actually rooting for Diaz’s character. It’s not that she’s a teacher with a few vices, she’s a repugnant human being with no redeeming qualities at all.

Tucker & Dale vs Evil – Catch the red ban trailer, all the good parts are there.

I caught a few older movies as well recently:

The Hunt for Red October – Still awesome.

Air Force One – Another one that holds up quite well, logic leaps aside. Glenn Close really should’ve signed the paper.

I’m Still Here

Rants, depressed musings and reviews incoming. I swear.

WoW Sweatshops

No this isn’t a gold farming thing.

I was Silvermoon training tailoring when I noticed stairs leading down, on a whim I jumped down to see what was there. Now I fully expected to see a mana loom, what I found instead was the elves’ dirty little secret. They run a sweat shop of leper gnomes. There’s even a succubus whipping them back to work if they fall asleep. ‘Fo shame Blood Elves, fo’ shame.

Blizzcon Day 1

So obviously I haven’t been playing WoW as much as I used to, but I’m still a big Blizzard fan. I hop into WoW from time to time, I’m on my 4th SC2 playthrough and I’m awaiting Diablo 3. So yes, I got virtual Blizzcon.

I must say the interface has been vastly cleaned up this year over last. Last year they used an ‘enhanced RayV Player’. If enhanced you mean ‘prone to buffering’ it was the most enhanced media player since RealPlayer. This year we have a simple FlashPlayer and I had no problem whatsoever.

The big news is of course the announcement of WoW’s next expansion, Mist of Panderia. It’s funny I remember the rumor a couple months ago. Blizzard denied and it seemed to go away, now of course it’s been confirmed. I’m a little excited to see a lighter tone as, let’s face it, Azeroth can be downright depressing what with the zombie invasion and death dragon destroying everything. Now we get kung-fu pandas and beer! Yay!

The other big announcement was Diablo 3 being free with a 1-year commitment to WoW. You also get a new mount that appears to be a reskinned star pony. It looks fairly badass, like a flying pally mount really. Also according to the FAW if you also shell out for the collectors edition you get 4 months game time. I’ll most likely do this as I had every intention of not canceling WoW anyway.

A couple of minor notes:

• Blizzard DOTA includes Stitches!
• The Diablo 3 big bad from the trailer, Azmodan(sp?), looks kinda lame. Still, the Diablo design is so classic, where do you go?
• The Panderia preview panel had a screen shot that made me laugh. While in all likelihood a placeholder and not final, a quest being turned in had for rewards ‘30 Valor points, 10xp and 2 copper’
• Speaking of, Valor points were mention several times as rewards. At this point you may get Valor points for logging in
• In general it sounds like quest design is being scaled back towards a BC modeland away from the Cataclysm hand holding. Great, I think that was once of my biggest turnoffs to Cataclysm
• Monks, playable by all races except Worgen and Goblin, are leather wearing tank/healer/DPS hybrids… monk/druids FIGHT!
• Challenge mode dungeons initially made me groan feeling Blizzard had officially endorsed the ‘gogogo’ assholes.
• The Pet Battle System reminds me of another game. Or was it a TV show? Or a movie? I seem to recall a yellow lightning mouse with rosy red cheeks. During the presentation I kept waiting with each slide change for the devs to shout ‘Just kidding!’. And then it went on for another 10 minutes. It’s October, not April right?
• Talents are getting another major revamp. Hopefully it’ll go better than lasttime when it destroyed my groove with Space*
• 2 of my 3 picks in the costume contest won – yay!

Alright, GSL final starts in minutes. I’m out after the rant.

*Pallys have 3 interrupts now? WTF. Back in my day if a paladin wanted to interrupt something more than once a minute he brought a rogue along. Or healed through it. Or bubbled. Damn homogenization, stop crowding my action bar and give me back consecration.

Star Wars on Blu-Ray

By now I’m sure everyone’s heard of Lucas’s further fiddling with the original trilogy. On one hand I’m torn because while Lucas is getting a lot of flack of this, artist reworking their creations is nothing new and Lucas is hardly the only one.

• Stephen King rewrote several scenes in his classic The Stand to update the time period
• After The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien had intended to rewrite several things in The Hobbit to make them more cohesive. He sent a sample chapter 1 to the publisher who did not respond, thinking they were interested Tolkien dropped the plan. However the publisher thought the proposed chapter 1 was the only change and used it the next printing
• Apocalypse Now Redux adds so much new content it’s generally considered to be a separate movie
• Spielberg changing guns to radios in E.T.
• Musicians and ‘remix’ go together like banana peels and kart racing

Lucas’s problem isn’t that he’s making changes (for the most part), it’s that certain changes are stupid. For example there is little outcry over replacing muppet Yoda with digital Yoda in The Phantom Menace. Why? Because digital Yoda looks better.

However take The Revenge of the Sith. Regarded as the best of the prequels, the one scene reviled by most people is Vader waking up after being rebuilt and shouting ‘Nooo!!!!!’. So what’s Lucas do? He has Vader shout ‘Noooo!!!!’ in RotJ. Because, obviously that’s something fans are clamoring for.

OH well. I’ll get them anyway, though I WONT be getting any 3D version that may materialize. I wonder if RotJ would be considered a horrible movie if the original script called for James Earl Jones to shout ‘Noooo!!!’

Lastly: here’s samples of the changes straight from the blu-ray with no alterations. I swear.*

and…

*I’m a big fat liar