New stuff? Of course!

I've tried this over and over again: to have a blog that 1. people care about and 2. that I care enough about to update regularly.

And obviously, it hasn't worked very well for me. But not this time.

This time will be different. Why? Because both I, Bryce, and my partner in crime, Matt, will update regularly with posts about our opinions. Yes, we are going to shove our opinions down your throat mercelessly, and there's really nothing you can do about it.

Starting next week, look for a regular schedule of review on movies, video games, and more!

The Cake is a Lie!

Having spent last night with my brother at his house in Kansas City, I learned three things. One: Brad Pitt in Snatch is almost understandable. Two: Westport Coffee House is one of the coolest places ever. And three: You are pants on head retarded if you have not played and do not love Portal. If you have been living on Mars or in a foreign country for the past year and have not heard of Portal, allow me to give you a brief (brief) overview.
You start out in a laboratory bedroom and for some reason, you decide to leave. A female computer voice follows you around telling you what to do for the game and how to do it (at least for the first 15 levels). Eventually, you acquire what is commonly referred to as a Portal Gun and you have shoot a blue beam at a cement wall to make a passage to where ever the orange beam hit. Later on (about level 10), you obtain the second gun and now possess the ability to shoot two portals and create your own ways around.
You might be thinking at this point, "Wow, if they hold your hand through the first 15 levels, there must be 100!" Well, as logical as that is, it nevertheless, is incorrect. There are 19 real levels, as stated at the beginning of each stage. Although it is true that the maddeningly generic computer voice, as well as diagrams on the floors and walls, tell you what to do through most of the levels, the latter stages become intensely difficult and you could be stuck in one room trying to figure out where to shoot the orange portal until the government considers you legally dead.
As you might expect, the game revolves around portal based puzzles. What you might not expect is the freedom you are given. At multiple points in the game, I found that I completed an objective in a completely different way than my brother did. My way was often the harder and more complicated way, but that's the beauty. As long as the cube goes on the switch, or the laser ball thingamajig goes to its destination, it doesn't matter how it got there, allowing for creativity when jumping through portals.
The game has certain qualities that I think more games should have. For one: at the start of each floor, you can see what you might encounter via a mall directory like board on the wall, allowing you to be mentally prepared for what might occur. Also, the game is filled with some of the funniest but cynical humor I have ever heard from a video game. Games like Paper Mario had cute, funny, little "Oh, ha ha," jokes in it, that fit within the context of that cute world, but used anywhere else would likely get you stabbed or shot. It's refreshing in a way to know that video game developers actually understand that we enjoy dark humor as much or more, than we enjoy porn.
I'll leave you on this note. Buy Portal.
Some expressions were taking from a brilliant review known as Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw who actually did a review on Portal (The Orange Box). Check it out here!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Movie)

On Tuesday, July 10th, I saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Now, I am a big Potter fan. I am mean it, you might think you are...but you aren't. I dress up for the release of the books, go to Barnes and Noble and wait there, until Midnight, just so I can get the book before most people...yeah, that's what I thought.
Now, being the big fan that I am, I am going to enjoy the movie no matter what, but that does not mean that I think it is a good movie. For example, the first two movies, were enjoyable, sure, but they were terrible! Everything was all golden and brown and happy-go-lucky and blah! Ew. Christopher Columbus does not need anything to do with the other Potter movies because of what he made Sorcerer's Stone and Chamber of Secrets. Now, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban was the best movie in my opinion. Alfonso Cuaron did an absolutely amazing job directing. You could literally feel a step up in production from the second to the third movie. The Harry Potter series has grown more from a happy children's story and the movies need to reflect that, which is exactly what happened in the third one. The Goblet of Fire was directed by Mike Newell, but Cuaron helped in the production of it, which is why it ranks second for the movies. Now, The Order of Phoenix, directed by David Yates, was not a bad movie. It accurately told the story from start to finish. I did also like the special effects they did with the magic, that was cool. What I did not like about this movie was Yates' lack of experience. He had only ever done made-for-TV-movies before this one, not giving him the biggest clout with which direction to take the movie in and decided to take the safe and easy route rather than dazzling us all with brilliant film work. Now, I think this director got a little carried away with his montage sequences (for those of you who don't know what montage sequences are, look them up on Wikipedia or Google). You also had to do a great deal of unexpected reading in order to catch the story line.
That the sheer fact that Yates didn't really have his own style didn't take me out of the movie theater and bring me into a world of unlimitless possibilities like Cuaron did. Now, if you are reading this, you are probably thinking, "Geez, man, it's just a movie," "Get a life," "Get over it," well, ha, this stuff really matters, maybe not to you, but when people have to pay 6 or 7 dollars to see this movie, it better be as good as it can be. Yates is also directing the sixth and, just recently, the 2 seventh movies (to my huge disappointment). Cuaron wanted to direct them but I guess the public doesn't want good movies, just mediocre ones. I will see these movies just because of the huge fan I am, but I can tell you right now, unless Yates grew a backbone and a brain in the past year, they will not be good.

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

You've wanted it...you've waited for it, and now it's finally here. The next edition to the hand-held Zelda crew and the first to hit the DS: The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. This game picks up immediately after Wind Waker, which will throw off anyone trying to keep track of the already confusing time-line. When you start out the game, you'll get a recap of a few things that come up in Wind Waker (you'll have to play that game to get the whole story). The fairies come back into it along with their "Hey"s that'll make you want to strangle them just like Navi. The controls take some getting used to and you'll want to use the D-Pad lots of times to run around but this game is completely touched based so get used to it now. Overall, I think this game fits in well with the legendary Zelda family.

So I MAY Have Been Wrong

So, last month when I said that the war didn't have an end in the near future, I didn't think that I would be wrong. Unfortunately, I was. Seems that HD wasn't profitable...or something like that. I suppose that I'm not the most knowledgeable on that particular subject, but I can't really see Toshiba's reasoning on simply stopping their production of HD DVD players.

Not that I'm complaining. The end to this war means that I, along with many other wary consumers, now feel free to spend our hard-earned cash to veg out on the couch in a more realistic way. I love communism.

Edit: I mean consumerism. Consumerism.

Warner Bros. Goes Blu-ray.

Crap. This again?

For any nerd, geek, or techie, it is a well known fact that Microsoft and Sony don't get along well. The Xbox 360 and PS3 are huge rival systems, with large fanbases with each.

It seems, however, this new war is much bigger than video game consoles. This newest format war is one that we have rarely experienced before. Microsoft, backing Toshiba in the format of HD-DVD, is a real power player. Sony, on the other hand, has a very poor track record of introducing ill-fated formats (see: betamax, UMD).

Now it seems that every major movie industry is taking sides in this High-Definition war. Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD. Microsoft and Toshiba vs. Sony.

The format war is something that many people in America have never experienced before. VHS fell to DVD due to sheer power. Records gave way to 8 tracks, which gave way to cassettes, which gave way to CDs. But now, there are two very similar formats which seem to have equal backing. Up until this point, just about every major movie company had chosen a side, apart from Warner Brothers.

Warner Brothers had equally backed both, releasing movies in both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD, being virtually the only company to not pick a side. But in recent news, Warner Brothers has announced that they will be going with Sony's Blu-Ray.

With no clear victor in sight, it only gives way to reason that consumers that want movies from multiple film companies will have to fork out extra cash to get separate players for each format. And if that happens...

This war doesn't have an end in the near future.

More Albums

Check it. I haven't been able to stop making these things! Here are a few more fake album covers I've created.

So THAT'S How the Music Industry Does It!

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4.Use your graphics program of choice to throw them together, and post the result as a comment in this post. Also, pass it along in your own journal because it's more amusing that way.