Heroes this week continues its streak of most WTFs per hour. Although I am starting to wonder if it might be better to go deeper on some story lines instead of jumping back and forth so much.

Spoilers and recap after the jump.

continue reading "Heroes - I Am Become Death"

Though not as many surprises as last week, this weeks episode was still pretty cool.

Spoilers and full review after the jump…

continue reading "Heroes - One of Us, One of Them"

Heroes is back and all like “to all of you haters complaining about last season we’re going to blow your mind grapes.”

My random thoughts and plenty of spoilers after the jump…

continue reading "Heroes - The Second Coming and The Butterfly Effect"

Because of the wind storm that went through Ohio on Sunday I’ve been without power for 2 days so far. The estimate on the news is that it won’t be restored in some areas until Sunday. Of course my office still has power so I have to work. Needless to say there won’t be comics until I get electricity at my house.

The running joke seems to be how sucky Vista is and how it’s better to stick with Windows XP. However, after my laptop got a nasty virus and had to be reformatted, I figured I would give Vista a shot. I had nothing to lose and could always reload XP if I had to. The laptop in question is a Dell Inspiron, about 3 years old, I can post the full specs later.

Pros:
- Install process ran smoothly with little intervention.
- All my drivers were installed automatically. In XP I would have to download network card drivers to another PC and transfer them via USB stick.
- Runs fast. This could be due to doing a fresh install.
- I like when you hover over an item in the task bar it gives you a preview window of the item.
- Network settings show you graphically if there is a problem between you and the router or the router and the internet.
- Uses a Home folder structure just like the Mac. I like having a Downloads folder by default.
- Windows look nicer than in XP.
- Haven’t had anything crash or used Task Manager to close anything yet.

Cons:
- Network options are buried. Instead of right clicking on the icon and going to properties it takes 3 or 4 menus to get to TCP/IP settings.
- New gadget bar on the right side, I haven’t decided how useful this is yet. Right now I just have CPU monitor and weather.
- The security messages do get annoying after awhile. It pops up a warning any time you change something in Control Panel or run an install exe.

I started installing World of Warcraft yesterday so I will keep you updated on how Vista runs for gaming.

I need to start out this review with a disclaimer. I didn’t think “Star Wars Episodes 1-3″ were that bad. They weren’t on the same level as the originals but they were entertaining, and isn’t that all we want in a movie anyway? I know it’s become fashionable to hate Lucas and Star Wars ever since Episode 1 came out, but I am not one of those people. That being said…

The Clone Wars is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

Had this movie been released straight to DVD I could forgive some of its shortcomings, but when you put a movie in theaters there are certain expectations. Here is why I think it should have been released on DVD:

1. George Lucas didn’t write or direct it. You may think that’s a good thing but surprise! There are worse writers than George Lucas and one was hired for this movie. Look at his credits. They are all single episodes of kids cartoons.
2. John Williams didn’t do the score, which had little of the original themes.
3. None of the original cast returned except for Samuel L Jackson, Anthony Daniels and Christopher Lee. The first of those two were barely in the movie at all. They couldn’t even get Frank Oz for Yoda?
4. The movie didn’t start out with the usual Star Wars text scroll, instead it was replaced with a voiceover from a World War II propaganda film.
5. The action scenes weren’t even that amazing. You would think with using CG as the medium you would be able to do anything you want but the battles were less interesting than the last 3 movies or the far better Clone Wars TV cartoon.

“Star Wars: The Clone Wars” has little to do with the wars themselves, but apparently the title “Star Wars: Anakin and a Little Girl Save a Baby” was too long for a marquee. The movie starts out with some battle sequences and introduces a kidnapping plot. Every line in the movie is a contest between the characters to see who can out-cliche the other one. I’m pretty sure the writing method involved setting up a tape recorder next to an eight year old playing with his toys while the writer goes to the bank to cash his fat movie check. At one point I wanted the characters to just stop talking and hit robots with lightsabers in silence.

The movie moves along at a steady cruising speed, thankfully not slowing down to explore Anakin’s journey to the dark side or his relationship to Obi-Wan. So it’s terrible but at least it’s fast and terrible. However, at the 3/4ths mark that movie starts yaking on it’s cell phone and that cruising speed goes to three car pile up on I-270 as onlookers gaze in disgust. It is at this point that Jabba the Hutt’s gay uncle comes onto the screen. With a purple hue and the voice of Truman Capote, Ziro the Hutt is so offensive he makes Jar Jar Binks look like Martin Luther King Jr.. Ziro’s not just offensive to homosexuals, he’s also offensive to Star Wars fans, fans of movies in general, conchologists, and people who enjoy not dying inside. While Ziro is on screen I can relate to one of Jabba’s goons that fell into the sarlacc pit in Return of the Jedi. I too have found a new definition of pain and suffering as I am slowly digested over the course of a thousand years.

The bottom line is this movie should have never been released in theaters. I feel like Lucasfilm is the prince of Nigeria and I got scammed out of $7. I can’t even recommend buying or renting the DVD when it comes out because that would be supporting what they are doing and helping them fund “Clone Wars II: ZIro’s Big Gay Revenge”. This is the first time I’m ever going to openly advocate pirating a movie. You need to see this movie to see how terrible it is, just don’t give any money to Lucasfilm. Originally I was going to recommend the DVD if you have young children but I can’t even do that with good conscience. I will end this review on this note:

Showing this movie to a small child will make them not like Star Wars anymore.

I hope to get a comic done tonight. I got a little distracted last night with a game called Civilization Revolution. I’ve never played any Civilization games in the past but I am familiar with other strategy games like Age of Empires 2, Warcraft 2 and Command and Conquer. What interested me in trying Civ Rev is that it is turn based which I like a lot. I can spend as much time as I want researching what to do next. In those other games I listed I would get frustrated when getting attacked while learning the game. Civ Rev takes a lot of the tedious tasks out without having to sacrifice complexity. No longer do I have to click on each individual peon and tell them to mine gold or chop trees. Instead you just build cities and tell them which resource to focus on. Another thing that sets it apart is that there are multiple ways to win the game. You can dominate your opponents of course by military force, or you can win by building enough technology, culture, economy or diplomacy.

My first game I played as Abraham Lincoln in charge of America. Depending on what your goal is you research different things to get there. There is a very handy diagram that shows every skill and what you need to research to get it. Since this was my first time I was researching all kinds of things and wasn’t focused at all. I ended up going for a military victory and built a lot of soldiers. Moving soldiers is so easy even without a mouse. You can group 3 of the same unit into an army. You can also click on a square far away, it will show you how many turns it will take to get there, and you can set your army to move over multiple turns automatically. Building units like soldiers is really cool. The city will show how many turns until the unit is complete. In the middle of building a unit or building you can change to another unit, all the process you made will be applied to the new unit. My only minor complaint is that you can’t move armies through an ally’s territory, so you have to make sure you build a city near any narrow land bridges before they do. Otherwise you have to use boats to move your armies around and that takes forever.

Overall I highly recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of strategy or city building games. It’s easy enough that any casual gamer can pick up and play and yet it offers enough complexity for hardcore players to enjoy. I give this game a 5.67 out of 6 and 3/8ths.

Netflix is a pretty cool service. I can watch all these TV shows and movies that I missed the first time around. When they added the ability of unlimited video streaming my first thought was “Hot Dog!” However, once I did some research I found out the streaming video is not the bees knees after all. First of all there is no Mac support, which they blame Apple for, pure laziness. Second, you can only watch movies through Internet Explorer. Yuck! That’s like saying “here is a free Porsche but you can only drive it with your elbows and keep it under 25 mph.” Also, their “watch instantly” section is not very big. Out of the hundred movies and TV shows in my queue a dozen are available for streaming. Lastly, the video quality itself it pretty poor. It’s like better than YouTube and worse than every other video format that exists.

Despite all these reasons I would still like to watch some videos online rather than waiting for a disc to come in the mail. But how do I get these videos magically to my TV? There have been rumors of Netflix adding XBOX 360 support which would be the greatest thing ever. Until then I have to find some way to hook a PC (not a Mac remember) to my TV. There are only two working PCs in my house. One is in my arcade cabinet and is so old it was invented by Eli Whitney, also it is the more important role of powering Donkey Kong. The other is my Dell laptop that is a few years old. It doesn’t have DVI out, only S-Video (the S stands for “sucky” apparently). I plugged it in and even though the cords introduce a tripping hazard, it is a capable solution. By capable I mean if a apocalypse struck and the only form of entertainment left on earth was video through laptop and S-Video, I wouldn’t complain. So what are my options? I could buy a PC with DVI out just to be used as a media center or I can wait and hope Netflix does a 360 hookup.

The Hardest Thing In My Life is streaming Netflix videos.

I’m still looking for guest comics to put up next week. Email them to ithinkimfunny at bitsmack dot com. You have till Friday.

Have you ever read the Bitsmack comic and said “that’s stupid, I could do WAY better than that.” Well jerk, now is the chance to prove it. I am leaving for vacation in a week and I need guest comics. Because of my incredibly low standards, only the most terrible and offensive comics will be rejected. Email your comics to ithinkimfunny at bitsmack dot com by June 11th with the subject line “Guest Comic”. Keep the size under 700×700 pixels. You have the power.