Wicked Game

Bought the Xbox 360 a few days ago and I've been playing a lot ever since. Got it at GAME for $499 plus 2 games (Viva Pinata and Forza 2) and I was damn lucky since I got the very last unit left. I'm hoping that's a good sign.

It is a lot bigger than I thought. I have a slim PlayStation 2 and compared to the Xbox 360, it's tiny. The first thing I did was to plug it in, turn it on and stare at it for 15 minutes. I was half convinced that the moment I put in a game, it would play fine then explode in a shower of red flames and leaving a small mushroom cloud behind. It's fairly quiet and it doesn't get that hot. The Xbox 360 has a notorious reputation for being loud, overheating and dying just after the warranty expires. But I think I got the new Falcon revision with a smaller CPU, so that's probably why it isn't so loud and hot.

It ended up costing quite a bit, the console pack itself was $499 plus wireless controller with charge kit, extended 2 year warranty, plus an extra game NBA 2k8. I picked up a preowned copy of Gears of War for $44 yesterday. Gears of War is proving to be great fun with co-op. My brother and I have probably finished half the game already. It's a bit of challenge playing a shooter on a console, since it's not at accurate or easy as a PC. I bought Gears of War from GAME, but I'll probably remove the "preowned" stickers and trade it in for something else, Assassin's Creed maybe? Mass Effect comes in on Monday, so I'm hurrying to finish Gears of War soon.

I also dropped into Borders at Parramatta Westfields just to see if any new books caught my eye. And one did. The Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, part of a tetralogy of books. It's the third book and seems to be freshly translated from Russian into English. I've grown to love the series. Think Harry Potter, Russian style, set in a post-communist Russia with more adult and philosophical musings. If you enjoy fantasy, you should pick this up quicksmart and the earlier books, The Night Watch and The Day Watch.


Also picked up a DVD of We Are The Strange. $40 bucks plus delivery from the US. It's a very strange film and it's definitely not for everyone. The plot is about two outcasts, a doll called eMMM and his female companion called Blue. After meeting each other, they travel to a sinister city in search of ice cream. However, bizarre monsters roam this city all apparently controlled by the evil ruler called Him. Fortunately, they encounter a hero called Rain, who starts destroying all the monsters around them. The rather vague plot does the job, but the entire movie is held together by it's amazing and alarming strange visuals.


The director, calling himself M dot Strange, combines stop-motion animation, 8-bit artwork, computer imagery and sheer strangeness, creating the visual weirdness that he dubs str8nime. Str8nime is basically strangeness + 8 bit artwork + anime. The film itself is more of an emotional ride. It's more of "what do you feel right now?" rather than "wtf is going on?". And if you subscribe to the former, then the film is much more enjoyable. Seriously, this film looks as if Pixar made while high on drugs and it's mind boggling that M dot Strange basically made the entire film himself over a period of three years. I guess the film reminds me of 300. That film had a thin plot to string together the massive fight scenes and was a primarily a visual experience. We Are The Strange is no different. Check out the homepage and Youtube channel before deciding to commit to this.



That's it for now. The holidays is a bit more manageable and the horrors of clinical practice is still weeks and weeks away. That is going to be hard.