I'm the best there is at what I do

I was working on a draft of something to post about 3 days ago, but it simply wasn't coming along like I had hoped. So I scrapped it, and plan to return to it another day. That leaves me with little to talk about, at least until i came up with this idea.

I am an avid video game player and movie watcher (less so with movies, but I have a pretty decent-sized DVD collection). I have a pretty good library of games, and my roommate and I tend to rent the latest games when they get released. So, why not review what I play?

Before I get into this, let me just say that I do not review games/movies for a living nor do I have any entity paying me for any support/endorsement I might give. I also can only speak for myself, and do not in any way guarantee that someone reading any of my reviews will get the same experience as I did. So don't come to me crying because I praised something that you hated, because I don't fucking care! Last, when it comes to games/movies I only ask for one thing: entertain me! I don't care if I'm watching something epic like The Lord of the Rings trilogy or something ridiculous like Gymkata. All I ask is that I be entertained for the amount of time I spend watching/playing so that I don't feel like i just wasted my money and time. Now, on to the reviews.

1. The Punisher: Platform - PS2. Expectations - All I am asking for is a high body count. Experience - So far (as this is our current rental), The Punisher has met my primary requirement: high body count. The game runs fairly smoothly on the PS2, and the load times are not bad in my estimation. Levels are fairly straight-forward, as most missions we have encountered seem to involve clearing out areas of local thugs and/or mafia-types. The game designers also instituted an interesting gameplay device where you can take an enemy hostage and then proceed to "interrogate" him/her. These "interrogations" basically consist of you choosing which way you will torture your victim to "break" them of their resistance, so they will give you clues for you continuing mission. There are also special zones in the surrounding environment which act as special interrogations, where the Punisher will use maybe a wood chipper or some other device to scare the victim into talking. Needless to say, this game is not for children. However, I wouldn't call it excessively gory, just that if you have ever read a Punisher comic than you can reasonably expect the same level of violence.
2. Mercenaries: Platform - PS2. Expectations - When your commercials are centered around the idea of "blowing the crap" out of everything in the game, I better damn well get exactly that. Experience - Mercenaries is exactly like they say in the commercials. You play as one of three mercs who work for a global corporation. In the game, it seems there is a new leader of North Korea, who has decided that he is going to reunify with South Korea. By force. Your job is to work for any or all of 4 factions within the game (South Korea, China, A.N.*, Russian Mafia) to stop North Korea, and to gain as much money as possible while doing so. Now, you start out being fairly neutral towards all the factions (except North Korea, who will always be your enemy), and depending on your actions your rating within each faction will raise/lower. Also, one faction may have you do a job that will be to the detriment of another faction so there is some complexity in solving missions without being branded an enemy by another group. But enough with all this talk of missions and complex faction-building. The question on everyone's mind is, "Can you really blow the crap out of everything?" With the exception of trees in the environment, the answer is a resounding "Yes, yes you can!"
3. Resident Evil 4: Platform - Gamecube. Expectations - Hmmm ... I really didn't have much in the way of expectations on this one. I had a fond memory of my experienced with the other Resident Evil games, so as long as I was given the same kind of atmosphere then I would probably be happy. Experience - Great fucking game! This may be the best Resident Evil yet, and I have played nearly all of them. My first complaint of any RE game has always been that they never give you enough ammo. I understand that I should be scared and that I need to run away from the nasty hordes of zombies that want to eat my brains, but sometimes a man wants to stand and fight. In RE4, they give you that opportunity. Ammo drops much more frequently, much to my liking. Another area that was fixed was in the orientation of the character in relation to the controls. I knew of many friends who could not play the older RE games because of the control scheme that was implemented. Simply put, in older RE games to move your character forward you have to press up on the controller, no matter which direction your character is facing on the screen. This would confound some people, because the character may be situated so he/she is looking towards the bottom of the screen, so naturally you would want to push down on the controller to move the character in that direction but you would still need to press up because that would make the character to move forward. In RE4 the viewpoint is situated just over the right-hand shoulder of the main character in the game at all times, so pressing upwards on the controller would seem natural when you want to move the character forward. Lastly, this game looks like it will take a good amount of time to play through as well as showing off incredible graphics and atmosphere. I highly recommend this to anyone with a Gamecube.

Ja matta!