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| Tuesday, November 22, 2005 05:56 PM |
| Plutocrats and Exarchs |
 by Fëanor |
- I'm kind of surprised this took so long: a Dead or Alive movie is finally on its way. Dead or Alive is a fighting game franchise with lots of ridiculously proportioned hot women in ridiculously skimpy outfits beating the crap out of each other. That's a cinematic goldmine, people.
UPDATE: There's already a trailer (via Cinematical, natch)! And it's even worse than I could have imagined. It looks like another Charlie's Angels movie, but not even as good.
- Werewolf by Night? Have I mentioned that they're obviously scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of comic book adaptations?
- Some interesting Superman Returns details. I'm sad that a Batman cross-over is probably not in the offing, but it's good to hear that Singer is steering clear of goofiness, and that the movie's budget isn't actually as ridiculous as we've heard previously.
- An equation for you: Danny Boyle + Michelle Yeoh + space + future + (astronauts reigniting dying sun) = awesome
- Aquaman's gonna be in a TV movie/pilot! And they're casting now! So put on your tights and start learning to talk to your goldfish, people.
- Awesome news: Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro, and another Miyazaki movie that I've never even heard of before called Whisper of the Heart are all getting the deluxe DVD release from Disney early next March. Rock! I'll definitely be picking up the first two, and I'll probably rent the third on Netflix. Now I'm glad I've held off on buying Totoro...
- Since I've been trying out all the games I hadn't gotten around to playing yet, I decided to pop in Baten Kaitos last night. This is an RPG wherein you battle with cards. Yep, you read that right. When you get into a fight, you whip out a hand of cards from a deck you've built and go at it CCG style. I wasn't sure how to feel about that. And when, soon after I started the game, I learned that I would also be expected to take photographs of my enemies in battle in order to acquire money (!!), I thought, WTF is with this game, anyway?
But surprisingly enough, BK is absolutely fantastic. Yes, I've only played it once for an hour or so, but I enjoyed myself immensely and can't wait to play again. I even considered getting up in the middle of the night and quietly smuggling the GameCube out of the bedroom (so as to avoid waking poppy, of course) for another session in the living room.
The first thing you'll notice is that the game has absolutely amazing graphics. Seriously, this is the best I've ever seen on the GameCube. It's really beautiful, next-gen-worthy stuff. As for that card-based combat, it's actually really fun and clever. It's like they took a CCG, and somehow made it fun! Your characters each have a pool of attack, defense, and healing cards which they can use to build a deck between battles. Once you get into battle, you're presented with a random hand of cards from your deck, which is constantly replenished as you continue to use cards. Fighting then proceeds in a quasi-turn-based fashion; at the beginning of each of your turns, you'll get all the time you want to pick your first card from your current hand, but once you've picked the first one, you only get a second or so to play a follow-up. Similarly, when your enemy attacks on his turn, you'll have only seconds to pick out defense cards to block him. Luckily, your hand is small, so you don't have that much of a choice, but you still have some pretty tricky decisions to make, as combining opposite element attacks will cause the elemental damage to cancel out, and you need the correct elemental defense card to block elemental attacks against you.
Anyway, so far it's a seriously fun and exciting combination of timing, action, strategy, and tactics. And, on top of that, the voice acting is actually pretty decent, and the dialogue and story are pretty funny and clever. I'll have to give the game more play-time before I give my final opinion, but so far I'm very pleased.
- Sweet!! I'm Batman! Thanks, Sarcasmo:
 | You scored as Batman, the Dark Knight. As the Dark Knight of Gotham, Batman is a vigilante who deals out his own brand of justice to the criminals and corrupt of the city. He follows his own code and is often misunderstood. He has few friends or allies, but finds comfort in his cause.
Batman, the Dark Knight | | 67% | Neo, the "One" | | 67% | Lara Croft | | 58% | Captain Jack Sparrow | | 50% | William Wallace | | 50% | The Terminator | | 46% | The Amazing Spider-Man | | 42% | Maximus | | 42% | James Bond, Agent 007 | | 42% | El Zorro | | 29% | Indiana Jones | | 21% |
Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0created with QuizFarm.com |
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