E-mail: Mahalie729@gmail.com
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"You keep talking like a bitch, I'm gonna have to slap you like one."

August 14th, 2007 at 4:31 PM

As many of you know, both the Bioshock and Stranglehold demos are now available for download via Xbox Live. I'd like to give you my initial impressions for both.

The first thing to jump out at you about Bioshock are the visuals. You begin the game in the ocean surrounded by fire and I thought it was still part of the cut scene that plays in the beginning of the game. The environments look great. I did have a problem with the invisible walls that lead you to were you have to go when you're in the ocean at the start. It's 2007. They could have just as easily had the fire that surrounds you kill you if you tried to go through it. That would have been satisfactory. Anyway, you get in an elevator that brings to an underwater world and again, everything looks amazing. Then you'll find a radio and receive transmissions from some guy trying to help you out. You pick up a wrench and things actually get dented when you hit them, which I like. The whole thing with Bioshock is the use of the Plasmid. It's a pretty cool idea from what I've seen so far. You have to monitor 2 bars in the upper left corner. Obviously your health and then your EVE which is similar to mana or magicka in a way and allows you to use your electrified hand to shock things. Checkpoints are throughout the game in the form of these regeneration cylindrical tanks. As you continue, you'll pick up a revolver and a machine gun. Enemies don't blow apart, but you do get some terrible looking blood to spurt from their bodies. You can search corpses, trash cans, cash registers, for bullets, money, and stuff to boost your health and EVE. Beating people down with a wrench or shooting them wasn't as fun as I hoped it would be, but maybe it was too soon to tell. Anyway, I don't doubt that this could potentially be a game to purchase.

The second game was John Woo's Stranglehold, which I've been looking forward to for a while, but I was unfortunately disappointed. It's a third person shooter starring Chow Yun Fat as a cop named Tequila. I don't know why they went with Tequila. He actually drinks some Tequila too. Anyway, I could save us all a lot of time by telling you that this is Max Payne 2 with better graphics. You dive around and time slows down and you shoot people. You do some more shooting people. Stylish kills get you stars and stars build up for you to either be able to heal yourself or go into like super zoom mode so you can bus' a cap into someone's face from 200 feet away. If you continue playing you unlock 2 more things you can potentially do. There is also a couple of times in the demo where a standoff happens. In this scenario you're standing in place and have to lean away from the bullets coming at you in slow motion while simultaneously shooting your opponent. It seems like a pretty cool idea that can very easily wear thin very quickly. All in all, Stranglehold was a lot of fun, but I'm highly doubting there is much more to this game that I haven't played already. It seems like a very shallow shoot 'em up and I'm very skeptical about this being a game to drop $60 on.

Like I said, both these demos are available on the Xbox Live Marketplace, so you can check them out and decide for yourself.

August 13th, 2007 at 6:22 PM

I haven't updated in a while, but this summer is flying by. My birthday was pretty nice. I got lots of goodies, including an iPhone, which I'm enjoying quite a bit. The best thing about it is convenience. It doesn't really do much that's never been done before, but it's just such a convenient device. I was surprised with a couple of things like the battery life being longer than I expected and the camera being of much better quality than I thought. It's also a lot smaller than I expected although, I don't like the lack of online messaging.

I've seen a couple of movies as well. The Bourne Ultimatum was a potentially amazing film, ruined by the shaky/shitty hands of Paul Greengrass. I really don't understand how this guy is making movies. There was a good 5 seconds of screen time that was just a shot of the back of someone's head out of focus. It was ridiculous. Me and my friends spent a good portion of the movie laughing at the ludicrous directing. It's unfortunate because the fight scenes and car chases were spectacular from what I could see. The fights were so well choreographed, but you couldn't even tell who was getting hit. All in all, check the movie out. It's not as good as the first, but it's still probably around an 8/10. Keep a garbage bag close because you may because nauseous from all the camera movement.

I also was fortunate enough to see Hot Rod, which is definitely the most surprising film of the summer so far. I enjoyed it so much more than I was expecting to and was legitimately laughing pretty hard throughout most of it. The commercials really don't do it justice, because it was a really weird and really funny movie that's worth seeing. It was also awesome to see Will Arnett in it, although his character played the asshole. I wouldn't be surprised if this film opened up a lot more opportunities for Andy Samberg who did great in his starring role. It's also probably an 8/10.

Besides that and working, keep checking out my flickr for a glimpse of what I've been up to this summer.

July 16th, 2007 at 1:24 PM

Now that E3 is all done with, I feel like for those of you that weren't paying much attention, I should tell you what to keep your eye on and what grabbed my attention.

G4's Best of Show award went to Call of Duty 4 and if you catch a glimpse of this game, you'll see why. I have never seen anything that looks this good. Never in my life. The visuals are just ridiculous. It's also going modern this time around which is definitely something good in my eyes, especially since 3 was almost the exact same game as 2.

I've never been a huge fan of the Metal Gear Series, mostly because I've never been a huge fan of Sony, but 4 looks pretty sick from what I've seen.

The demo I saw for Assassin's Creed showed me a lot to look forward to. There were a few little things that needed to be tweaked, but Ubisoft has the next 3 months to take care of that, so I'm not too worried.

Everyone and their mother is going to buy Halo 3, so it doesn't really matter what Bungie shows at E3 or what I have to say about it.

The environments in Bioshock looked pretty insane, but to be honest, I'm not completely sold on it just yet.

Super Mario Galaxy looks like so much fun and it's making me consider buying a Wii. Jumping around to various planets with different levels of gravity at each one just sounds really cool to me. It's being called the true sequel to Super Mario 64 and I'm hoping that's not a load of shit.

I'm not sure what's going on with Wii Fit, but hopefully there will be some third party developers wanting to use the balance board for their games. I'm praying this isn't the future of gaming.

Rock Band is a cool idea because it allows for the bass and drum peripherals as well as the singing, but I get the feeling that it's going to be way too expensive to get all of them and you'll have to end up deciding. If you and all your friends want to play guitar, it looks like you're fucked if you want to play together.

What I saw from Turok doesn't seem to be that promising, but it's not out until February of 2008, so things could change. There was some cool dinosaur head stabbing and weaponry and maybe it was just because of Call of Duty 4, but it just didn't seem to be on the same level as everything else around it graphically.

I have faith in both Bethesda and Bioware to handle Fallout 3 and Mass Effect respectively. Obviously keep an eye on those titles, as well as GTA IV and Unreal Tournament 3. I haven't been hearing too much about Stranglehold, but I've been waiting to see this game since the launch of the 360.

I may have missed a few things and I didn't spend much time focusing on PS3 exclusives like Killzone 2, LittleBigPlanet, and Rachet and Clank, but I'm sure a Google search for E3 will help you find anything else you may need.

July 11th, 2007 at 12:35 PM

It's been a little while since I've updated so I'll do my best to fill you in on what I've been up to.

I saw the midnight showing of Live Free or Die Hard and it was fantastic. It was a bit over the top, but that's really the only way action movies can entertain anymore. Pretty much everything has been done before, so the only thing they can really do is make it so insane that you couldn't possibly have seen anything like it before, except for Transporter 2. Besides that, the movie was legitimately funny. John McClane is still as kick-ass as ever and his little jokes sell his character and makes it really feel as though this is the same guy from 1988's original. Justin Long, surprisingly, doesn't completely suck and Timothy Olyphant plays a convincing bad guy with an agenda that's more than just wanting to kill a bunch of people. I never considered a Die Hard movie could possibly be bad and I was right. I give this one a 9/10.

The next week I was able to see Transformers and despite it being a Michael Bay film, was seriously entertaining. I think it's about as bad directing as you could have in a good movie. These Transformers are fucking massive and Michael Bay likes to make things seem way to frantic and out of control. In return, the viewer tends to not really see everything they would like to and sometimes not even understand what's going on. But besides Michael Bay being attached to this project, I was hoping Stephen Spielberg being the executive producer would prevent it from sucking and it did. I do like to shit on Michael Bay, but I have to admit that he gives his movies a larger than life feel to them and it makes me think that him being chosen to direct the new Prince of Persia film isn't such a bad idea, especially with Uwe Boll and Paul W.S. Anderson attempting to annihilate every video game by turning it into a god-awful movie. I've never wrote about my concerns, but these people actually scare me. Anyway, I'm getting a bit off track here, but Transformers was an excellent film and it was just a lot of fun to watch. Shia LaBeouf is his normal self and does just fine and his girlfriend Megan Fox is crazy hot. She's not a particularly amazing actress, but, well, she's just so hot. I'd have to give this one a 9/10 as well.

The good streak of movies continues as I finally got to see Knocked Up. It was really funny throughout and Seth Rogan is hilarious as always. Him and his group of friends, as well as Paul Rudd's character, who was played just about perfectly, are the majority of the movie's humor. Just close your eyes during the birth scene. Seriously, that almost ruined the movie. God damn Judd Apatow. Why'd you have to show us that shit? Nobody wants to see that. I'm tempted to give out another 9/10 for this movie, but that scene will haunt my dreams forever.

I also just had my orientation for Stony Brook yesterday. I took my ID photo and scheduled my classes. I also got to hear about AIDS and all that good stuff. It was pretty boring and most of it was bullshit. I had about 2 hours of sleep. I woke up at 7 and didn't get home until after 5. They could have cut that shit down to like 3 hours if they didn't fuck around so much trying to make it fun. Besides that, the campus is gorgeous and I'll probably get lost a few times because it's so fucking massive, but I can't believe a school that looks this good is so inexpensive. C.W. Post looks like ass and is around 5 times the price.

I just hooked up my old Nintendo in my room. There's nothing like playing Base Wars and Ninja Gaiden on a big screen TV.

Keep checking in on my delicious and Flickr. I try to update them as often as I can.

June 26th, 2007 at 4:51 PM

Well, I'm officially done with high school. What an accomplishment. I could have done it with my eyes closed and one hand in my pants. Well, maybe the second part.

I finished season 3 of 24 and although it was facing the impossible task of living up the second, it did well. It wasn't as good as either of the other 2 seasons, but it was still 24 and it still kicked ass.

I feel a whole lot cooler now that I have both delicious and flickr accounts. Check out my flickr here. I must warn you that looking at those sexy pictures of me may impregnate both male and female viewers.

I'm going to see Live Free or Die Hard tonight at midnight. I've been waiting for this movie for years. My next update will probably include a short review.

Man vs. Wild is such an awesome show. Bear Grylls is probably second to only Jack Bauer in toughness and he's real, so yeah, watch Man vs. Wild.

I played Guitar Hero yesterday and now I'm dying to play again. I've resorted to playing Frets on Fire, but it's just not the same.

It looks like the inventor of the Crippler Crossface, the worst move since the Mandible Claw, killed his wife and kid and then hanged himself. All those flying headbutts must have fucked him up pretty badly.

June 17th, 2007 at 8:31 PM

The second season of 24 is one of the greatest seasons of any show I've ever seen. The first two seasons have been dropped to just $20 each at Target. If you haven't checked out 24 yet, you'd be an idiot not to do it for this cheap.

June 13th, 2007 at 11:31 AM

I got a chance to see Ocean's 13 on Monday night and it was a definite improvement over the second. Well, they basically could have made a 20 minute film of each character taking a dump and it would have been better than the second. Either way, I'd recommend checking this one out. The cutting of Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta Jones was a fantastic idea. I'd give it about an 8/10. For the record, Ocean's 11 is a 10/10 and 12 is a 6/10.

I made a trip to Best Buy yesterday and bought A History of Violence along with the 2nd and 4th seasons of 24. A History of Violence is rated a 7.5 on IMDb so I had some high hopes for it and it was pretty good. I'd also give that around an 8/10. After that first season of 24, I'm pretty excited to get into this next one.

I also got a chance to check out the 5th season of Bullshit. It's similar to all the other seasons, which, of course, is a good thing, so check it out if you have some free time.

I can't help but get goosebumps whenever I watch the new Die Hard trailer.

June 6th, 2007 at 3:48 PM

There are plenty of good games coming out for the 360 that I'm anticipating. Everyone knows about Halo 3 (September 25th) and GTA IV (October 16th), but I personally can't wait for Mass Effect. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic was one of my favorite games of all time and I'm expecting great things, yet again, from Bioware. Assassin's Creed is yet another one on my list and for anyone impatient, Bioshock is set to come out August 21st. If you don't remember the sick ass trailer for this game, here it is for your viewing pleasure.

June 5th, 2007 at 4:40 PM

I saw Pan's Labyrinth and the Science of Sleep. I'd give them a 9/10 and an 8/10 respectively. They were both pretty weird, but definitely worth checking out.

I also got to check out Ozzy's new album entitled Black Rain yesterday. It was released May 22nd. It's 10 tracks and I consider about 6 of them to be really good, so download it or buy it or whatever.

More importantly, I've been watching Kitchen Confidential. I talked about this show when it was on the year a couple years back but it never had much of a following as it lasted only 13 episodes. It was yet another great show canceled by Fox, mainly because they're a bunch of douche bags. Either way, it's an amazing show that is worth buying now that the DVD is available on Amazon.com for only $20. Here's the first 7 minutes of the pilot episode.

May 27th, 2007 at 11:31 AM

It's been a big month for movies. Spider-man 3 is breaking records despite being a huge disappointment in my eyes. Shrek the Third also had a strong weekend. It was probably held back a little bit by Spider-man 3, but either way, it did well. What I don't understand is the amount of money these movies are costing to make. Shrek the Third is a fucking animated movie and it cost 160 million dollars. I just don't see how thats possible. Spider-man 3 cost 258 million and Pirates tops them all at 300 million. There must be some scene where Johnny Depp sets fire to a pile of cash because thats the only way I can think of to use that much goddamn money.

Besides that, school is almost over and I'm looking forward to the summer.

Lastly, I love Scrubs. I like you less if you don't watch it.

May 19th, 2007 at 4:55 PM

I've been playing MLB 2k7 more and it turns out to be a really good game. The learning curve is good and I've gotten a hell of a lot better. I went from letting up like 11 runs my first time playing to pitching a 3 hit shutout last week.

I got to see Oldboy yesterday and it was awesome. There's really nothing more to say. You should see this movie.

Scrubs season 5 comes out on DVD the 22nd, so I'll be picking that up. The season finale of Scrubs and the Office were last Thursday. Scrubs is, in fact, doing a 7th season, so thats pretty awesome. It may end up airing on ABC though.

May 10th, 2007 at 6:39 PM

I played MLB2k7 yesterday. My initial impression wasn't that great, but I didn't play for long. Maybe it was because I sucked, but either way, I didn't enjoy it very much. The visuals were easy on the eyes, despite Matsui's Godzilla size ass.

Dom's birthday is tomorrow and the Rangers and Devils are out of the playoffs.

May 1st, 2007 at 4:47 PM

I finished the first season of 24 in 4 days. It was fucking awesome. I'm a little frightened to get into the second season yet because I know I won't be able to stop.

The Devils lost yesterday so they're down 2-1 to Ottawa. The Rangers are playing tonight at MSG and are also down 2-1, but they've been playing well lately.

If you haven't already, check out the Angry Video Game Nerd.

April 24th, 2007 at 9:27 PM

I just got home from seeing Hot Fuzz. It was almost as good as Shaun of the Dead.

I've been watching Red vs. Blue lately, but I also bought the first season of 24, so I'll start working on that soon.

April 20th, 2007 at 6:55 PM

I saw Disturbia last Tuesday. It was pretty intense and I enjoyed myself much more than I thought. I'd recommend it. I also got to watch Run, Lola, Run, yesterday, which was pretty awesome. It's short, less than 80 minutes, but it's constant action and well directed. It's in German, but that shouldn't stop you from checking it out.

I don't think I've ever mentioned City of God on this site, but it is one of the greatest movies ever made in my opinion. It's in Portuguese, but again, it doesn't stop it from being absolutely amazing. Everything is done just about perfectly.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317248/

Hot Fuzz came out today, so I'll probably be checking that out soon and let you know how that is.

April 11th, 2007 at 3:52 AM

Well, it's rather late, but I can't sleep. I have to get up for school tomorrow. Oh, well.

I saw Grindhouse opening night. It was so ridiculously good and it was probably the most fun I've ever had watching a movie. Yesterday I saw Blades of Glory. It was really funny and much better than the trailers lead me to believe. You should check out both.

Oh my God! My gamerscore is so high!
http://live.xbox.com/member/Mahalie

March 12th, 2007 at 10:32 AM

I saw the 300 on Friday. It was amazing.

I've also been trying out the Wii lately. It's pretty fun with a bunch of friends. I still don't know if its something I would buy. Maybe once Mario comes out. The visuals are definitely underwhelming, but it was still fun. If it was HD compatible, that would make my decision easier.

February 11th, 2007 at 12:19 PM

The Departed is out on DVD this Tuesday. It's only $15 at Best Buy and on Amazon.

I got accepted to Stony Brook University. I think I'm going to be dorming there.

I just saw The Big Lebowski last night. It was pretty good.

January 13th, 2006 at 10:24 AM

Well, 2006 is in the books. Christmas Eve was really nice. I got to see a lot of family I haven't seen in a while. Christmas was alright. New Years was okay. I spend most of it with my brother and his drunken girlfriend. Sarah and I spend the majority of the night watching Green Bay bitch slap Chicago in the final game of the regular NFL season.

I just got my 4 wisdom teeth removed yesterday. It isn't much fun. I took off from work this weekend though so I could relax and recover.

I saw Children of Men. It was great and the directing was some of the best I've ever seen. Very Gears of War like. You'll understand what I mean when you see it.