• Mass Effect: One word: Awesome. Best CRPG I have played in a long time, only topped by its sequel.
• Mass Effect 2: Beyond awesome; an absolute must.
• Solar 2: Beautiful. Kind of cool. But also a little too hard, and fairly pointless. A toy rather than a game. Buy it cheaply.
• Civilization 5: Good evolution of the franchise, way too buggy. Wait another year, then buy a discount version when the glaring stability issues have been fixed (hopefully).
• Dwarfs! Very fun but a little on the simplistic side. Again, buy it cheaply.
• Plants vs Zombies: One of the best Tower Defense games ever. Must have.
• Universe at War: Earth Assault: Very fun, but crashes so often it is a definite “do not buy”.
• Nexus: The Jupited Incident: Old game, looks like publisher is defunct. The game is a space strategy sim a little similar to Homeworld. Very fun game so far.
• Torchlight: Fun Diablo clone. Buy it cheaply.

Of these, you absolutely must get the two Mass Effect games. Play part 1 before the sequel, even if the sequel is vastly superior: Many of your choices in ME1 will affect quests and conversations in ME2.

Until I have time to write a formal review, here’s some screenshots to whet your appetite…

• Alien vs Predator 1: Watchable, if you like Aliens or Predators. Switch off your brain first though. The Weyland tie-ins are neat.
• V for Vendetta: Well filmed, a bit too predictable and hard to suspend disbelief in a few places. Good message I guess. Definitely watchable – once. Not a classic.
• Star Wars: Clone Wars. Actually the movie is just the first few episodes of the show added together. Once you understand it, it becomes cool – the show is definitely better than the prequels. Recommended for any Star Wars or Science Fiction fan.
• Iron Man: Fun bubble-gum movie. Definitely one of the entertaining comic superhero movies. Recommended.
• The Dark Knight: It could be an excellent movie, if they had left out the half-burnt guy’s subplot at the end; it was, overall, about a half-hour too long. Also, the cellphone sonar thing was dumb. Keith Ledger really did do a good job, the Batman actor was too wooden.
• Chicken Run: Watched this years ago, still a fun movie. It’s an Aardman animation (of Wallace & Grommit fame). Awesome movie, too, if you like Wallace & Grommit, you’ll love this one.
• The Mummy: Another movie I watched a long time ago; good, straight-forward Indiana-Jones style fun. Highly recommended.

The Kraken, you say?

That’s right. Hades uses “the Kraken” to terrorize humankind. I mean – come on! Hades isn’t the god of the sea (that’s Poseidon), the Kraken is about as un-Greek as Godzilla.

There are less offensive points, too. Like making the Pegasus a brown/black horse. I actually had to laugh out a few times over these screwups, and my Greek mythology is decidedly rusty.

Another criticism I have are the characters. They’re not well developed and most of them are fairly annoying. Especially Perseus’ attitude gets on your nerves after a while.

Getting that out of the way, the movie was fairly entertaining. Some of the CGI shots were neat – I loved the Olymp’s “miniature Greece” that the Gods walk over, clouds swirling around their ankles. The big scorpion beasts were neat, too. Some of the scenes were obviously created in an effort to “wow” the audience of the 3D version, such as stingers and stuff that probably shoot out of the screen in 3D.

Yeah, I avoided the 3D version, since I don’t have depth perception anyway, and those glasses are just annoying. I also feared that the glasses would just discolor the movie. Unfortunately, the non-3D wasn’t exactly crisp. The image was blurry and stuttered in many locations: It looked like many places it wasn’t more than 10 frames per seconds. While the blurry image could have just been a badly adjusted projector, the “stutter” wasn’t. Quite honestly even a regular DVD would produce better results, nevermind the Blu-Rays I have recently come to appreciate. Maybe this does explain the recent problems of cinemas I heard talked about. If even a fairly standard Playstation3 + Full-HD TV combo can produce a better image than a cinema, then why go to the cinema? The ticket price for 2 persons (14 Euro total) is about what most of the cheaper BluRays cost, and no doubt cover many rentals.

I wouldn’t want to recommend Clash of the Titans. You can watch much better movies. Is it a terrible movie? No, there’s worse. Is it really worth-while? No, it’s not. But if someone else wants to see it, at least you won’t be bored in your seat for two hours. 2/5.

• Zone design is great, the zones look really nice.
• Quests are much less annoying – there are of course still FedEx- and kill-ten-grue-type-quests, but over all it is MUCH more imaginative, and has many nice extras (for example there’s a quest to free Murloc babies, which has got to be ones of the cutest things in a video game ever).
• Death Knights are actually a fun melee class, which I had not thought would ever happen; their starter “campaign” is also really well designed.
• Less reputation grind… it seems.

The bad:

• It’s more of the same. Really. If you have played WoW at all, you have played the expansion. Unless you are a WoW ultra-nerd, you should get tired of it really quickly.
• Inflation got knocked up another notch. My mage made 500g profit, just by questing, in three days of game-play.
• It absolutely sucks to be a new player at the moment, or to play a low level character. Unless you are level 70 or higher, and thus able to consume the WOTLK content, you will play this game alone for a long time.

Bottom line:

Wotlk gets 3/5. This is what the first expansion should have been like – Northrend totally puts Outland to shame. There’s enough to keep the old timers happy for a while, and some of the new additions are quite nice, but it is not compelling enough to warrant anything more than a “for fans” recommendation.

The young Chihiro moves to another town with her parents. As her father takes a short-cut, they end up in a decommissioned amusement park – something that isn’t very unusual in Japan. It’s deserted, but yet there are food stands, and the parents gorge themselves despite Chihiro’s wish to go. Things begin to go really weird at this point: The parents turn into huge pigs (literally), and Chihiro is trapped in a weird fantasy land. She ends up in a bath house for gods, and has to work there while trying to save her parents and escape.

To make it short, I totally love this move. It’s well-drawn, in a great style that just screams “mystical fairy tale land”. The characters are nicely-created as well, even though there are some bits in the second half of the movie that betray its Disney funding. The atmosphere is one of sense of wonder, and I kind of wish that we could explore this strange world further.

If you like fantasy movies and/or Japanese anime, you should definitely watch this movie. Even if you are not into Anime, Spirited Away is fairly mainstream… so give it a try anyway. It’s also very appropriate for children – there is some blood, but nothing truly terrifying I think.

Two thumbs up, and then some – probably one of my favorite movies.

Jumpers is an action movie about a guy who discovers that he has the power of teleportation, as well as his subsequent run-in with a secret government-sponsored organization that is set up to kill his kind. There are really not many surprises in this movie, the action is passable, and I did kind of like the premise. This is one of those movies that’s very watchable when you are stuck iun a jetliner for 12 hours, but otherwise it would be a waste of money to rent it.

The Spiderwick Chronicles is an action/fantasy movie about a house plagued by goblins. The owner, Arthur Spiderwick, wrote a book about faeries, and now the evil ogre Mograth is trying to get that book (an obviously has been for 80 years, the poor bastard needs a life). When the great-grand-nephews of Arthur move into the house and discover the book, all hell breaks loose.

As you’d expect, the premise works out to another crummy Hollywood fantasy movie. The beginning is alright but it deteriorates quickly. The design of the monsters in the book shown in the first minutes – is pretty neat and reminds me of Brian Froud’s work, but the ones in the movie itself are normal CGI fare. If I had to sum it up in a few words, I would describe Spiderwick Chronicles as a cross between The Gate and Labyrinth, and it fails at it. Again, it’s watchable… barely.

Donnie Darko is about time travel and parallel universes, and mixes a dark atmosphere and scary imagery with what almost seems like a typical high school flick (but really isn’t).

The Director’s Cut is 128 minutes and thus 20 minutes longer than the original version. The package includes 2 DVD’s, one with the movie itself and one with extras.

## The Movie ##

Donnie is a teenager with personality problems. He’s seeing a psychiatrist and taking medicine to control these, and except for sleepwalking, everything seems to be fine. Things turn weird when Frank, a creature in a giant bunny suit and a frightening mask, appears in Donnie’s dreams. He lures Donnie outside, and saves his life: In a freak accident, a jet engine crashes into the Darkos’ house, straight into Donnie’s bedroom.

From this point on, Frank is Donnie’s “imaginary friend”. And he begins to order Donnie to conduct increasingly destructive tasks. Donnie, initially just accepting of Frank’s presence, begins to investigate, and finds out that there might be a time-travel connection to his “friend” and the freak accident that almost cost Donnie his life.

Donnie’s school life is also portrayed; giving the movie a kind of 1980s High School movie feel. While Donnie follows Frank’s “orders” and floods the school and burn down the apartement of the local self-help guru, he rebels against the same institutions during his dayligh hours; but not by being destructive, but by asking questions about the establishment.

It is hard to describe the plot of the movie without spoiling it. In the end, things are resolved and make sense – problem is, you still don’t know exactly what is the “truth” as told by the movie.

**Donnie Darko** takes classic elements of high school movies, horror movies, and mixes them up with time-travel and parallel world philosophy to create a thought-provoking and stiumlating whole. On the way it asks questions about reality, normalty, and authority.

The script is written very well; there is nothing in the entire film that is predictable, and yet it all makes sense. The movie is choregraphed very well, the characters are detailed and believable, and brought to live by an extremely good cast. Jake Gyllenhaal as Donnie Darko himself does an especially good job; he manages to play the “psychotic” teenager extremely well; believable and never overdone. His mischievous / evil grin speaks volumes; we totally believe the character. But the other cast members are also good. I especially enjoyed Patrick Swayze as the self-help guru with a nasty secret.

## Extras ##

There’s a bunch of extras, like a “Making of” and an audio commentary track. These are pretty interesting and a nice bonus, but I felt that they were just “normal extras”. Nothing really knocking me off my feet, but on the other hand it felt satisfying. The audio commentary was especially insightful.

## Bottom line ##

If you enjoy a parallel-world / time-travel movie, horror / suspense movies, or really strange high-school movies, then Donnie Darko is for you. But don’t expect an easy movie. It can be confusing at times. It’ll make you ask: “Huh? What’s this about now?” – Give it time, or watch the movie twice. It becomes all clear in the end. The movie is easily worth its money. The double-DVD is choke full of eatras, adding to the value. The only bad feeling I am left with is the “piracy is a crime” trailer at the beginning, that you cannot skip. The old text messages were annoying enough, but this is just too much. In case nobody at the company who sells these noticed: I already spent the money on this DVD, I am not a pirate, and I don’t want to be annoyed like this.

Still, I have to give Donnie Darko two thumbs up.

**Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer**: Not the worst movie I ever watched, but hardly a piece of art – or even very original. If you’re a guy, the blond female lead will keep you watching because quite honestly she’s very cute. Watchable.

**Rush Hour 3**: Crime comedy action movie with Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. Boring story, action scenes were okay. I think the only reason I did not hate this movie was Jackie Chan who’s pretty fun to watch even in his old age. Chris Tucker should be banned from making movies, on the other hand. Most annoying actor ever. They threw in a lot of France-bashing, which was just stupid, and the plot was the most predictable I’ve seen in a long time. (Hint: When you think “oh this guy has got to be the evil villain” you are correct.)

**Transformers**: Oh, where to even begin. This movie SUCKED. Bad. Not so much the premise, giant robots slugging it out is always a good thing to me. The plot was contrived and stupid, but it wouldn’t have been a huge problem. No, what got me was all the small, tiny errors. For example Airforce One almost certainly doesn’t look like a huge bunker from the inside. I have been in an empty 747 cargo plane and it’s not that huge. The defense secretary states that the US is on “defcon delta”. [Defcon levels](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defcon#Levels) are numbered 1-5. I guess they feared that the average dumb audience member would have said “Gee golly, Defcon One sounds kinda low”. Idiots. And don’t even get me started on the portrayal of hacking in the movie. Only watch Transformers if you’re a fan or if you are stuck on an airplane for nine hours and have nothing else to do.