Hello Radical Dreamers –
Wednesday, humpday. At 12:30 pm exactly we reach the peak of the week, and then a’la Calvin and Hobbes we coast on down to the metaphoric hill into the weekend. I always feel awkward saying “humpday” because I keep thinking will take it to mean something sexual. I have yet to find a person who does – but still!
So last night we had movie sign! We watched the Timothy Olyphant magnum opus, Hitman! Ok, it’s not really his magna opus (we got some Deadwood fans here, right?), but it’s decent for a movie, especially a movie based on a video game. Now I’ll confess – I’ve never played a Hitman game. Back in college my roommate played the heck out of the first one and I would watch, and I have seen enough videos, trailers, screenshots, over the years to know the gist of it. I can’t really compare the game to the movie, without having played the game, so I gotta take the movie for what it’s worth.
Regardless, I don’t think Timothy Olyphant was a good Agent 47. When I look at art depicting Agent 47, I see an older, gruffer, more silent looking man. He almost looks like a character from Brian Azzarello’s 100 Bullets (wiki =
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_bullets ) - one of my all time favourite comic series. Timothy Olyphant is too……. attractive to be 47.
Regardless, the movie was
E X T R E M E L Y far fetched, but fun. Olga Kurylenko was in it looking very pretty, but I thought she looked prettier as the bond girl in Quantum of Solace. I do find this funny: dieschlinge and I were listening to the audio commentary for Max Payne when the director commented about working with Olga who said “no nudity!” and was adamant about it. What I find funny is Max Payne came out a year or so after Hitman, and in Hitman… lets just say nothing is left to the imagination. Nothing.
So while I am treated to many lovely views of this beauty,
DieSchlinge1066 only gets a top up shirtless view of Olyphant in the shower. I feel for ya girl, I feel for ya,
Anywho, the plot is convoluted and Olyphant is unstoppable and really has no hindrances in his quest, (except for his morals which refuse for him to get it on with Olga), but the movie looks sleek, and a few of the action sequences are pretty good. The sword fighting scene on the train was pretty lame though.
But I am going to use this dialog about Hitman to transition to this little jewel that looks quite Hitman-esque:
So over the weekend I was cleaning the flat, and there was this huge pile of Official Xbox Magainzes from the past few years. I went though them, cutting out articles I thought were kinda neat (there were not many) and throwing the rest away. Ditching the clutter!
Anywho, OXM I would wager is setup like many other mags: letters in the front, followed by industry news and previews, then main articles, then finally reviews. The industry news and previews section is always hilarious – every article is the same: “we were invited by xyz developers to try their new game out and oh man is it so awesome, we can’t wait for it to be released”. Of course when the game is released it gets abysmal ratings. I love it.
My favourite example of this is a preview for DefJam Rapster which the preview was all how this game was going to revolutionize singing – so of course the game comes out, the servers don’t even work, and retailers still want full price. Teehee.
This section is funny in hindsight because I get to see all these games that were supposed to come out, but never did! I had totally forgotten about Spies Must Die 3 until I was in the process of tossing this mag. I recall reading the blurb and thinking “I love the title! The gameplay sounds fun! I can’t wait until later in 2010 to play this bad boy”. And then *POOF* the game vanished. I decided to google the game, and it looks like it got cancelled, but not legit confirmation if it really did or not. So who knows, maybe it will be released unceremoniously at a budget price and be done with it.
The game did sound fun.
So there we go, my attempt to preserve this relic for future generations – a picture from my iPhone on a blurb about a game that was supposed to come out 2 years ago but never did. Bon appetite!
No achievements last night – it was all about the
Record of Agarest War . I am definitely in the final quarter of generation 2. According to the walk through, I got 9 more battles before the “night-chat” scene I am oh-so-looking forward to. I spent last night doing battles and negotiating Burgund castle and finally getting Valeria into my party (the woman I intend to marry). I ended the night making lots of magic spells.
I should explain the shop system in this game, because it is the weirdest I’ve ever seen in an RPG. In most RPGs, as you progress through the game and come to new towns, the new towns have a different and better stock of inventory. Not the case in Agarest Wars. In this game the shops all sell the same weapons, armour, items, and spells. So how do you gain new stuff? What you do is go to a blacksmith or the adventurer’s guild. In those places you have the ability to craft new weapons and spells. So like to get a fireball spell, you need X, Y, and Z component. Once you craft an object, the object is then registered to the towns so then go forward when you got to a shop, the item that was crafted can now be bought. Another way to put it, in order to purchase weapon X, you first need to unlock the ability to purchase weapon X by crafting it first.
Bizarre!
Regardless, I feel way more motivated getting back into Agarest Wars – I’m still miffed at being screwed on story, but being back into the game and seeing the political intrigue is nice.
So tonight more Agarest Wars! I predict I will clear generation 2 tomorrow night and have all the ladies wedded and bedded by end of Saturday.
Salut!
