PAD #2: Days of Blunders Passed

As I said, I was hoping to go see the new X-Men movie today, and I did.  My thoughts?  Eh... it was okay.  I tried my damnedest to not let the plot bother me, but there were just so many times when I was stuck wondering about this or that inconsistency.  If you're not one to get too caught-up in the plot, then you'll probably enjoy it, since the strongest moments of the movie were when they tossed the plot aside to have an action sequence.  The crowning moment, at least in my eyes, being that movie basically said "Never say that creating portals is a shitty power".  Blink gets to indirectly kick a lot of ass during the future scenes; including one part in particular that you could be excused for thinking took it's queue from Portal.  Seriously, if you're a gamer, you won't be able to watch that scene without thinking "Now that's thinking with portals".  Given that we live in a world that would usually dismiss her powers as "lame" and not give her anything to do, it was a joy to watch her be awesome.

I guess that's something to be said up front... a little after the fact in this case, but up-front from this point forward at least.  I tend to be very critical of movies, and really just about anything.  At least more critical than the average person.  The slightest plot inconsistency can really niggle at me, so if the movie doesn't make-up for it in other ways, it can be the bullet between the eyes that kills the whole thing for me.  This isn't to say that I'm quite "Honest Trailers" or "Cinema Sins" stickler, I'm willing to allot some degree of leniency if the movie is good enough on the whole, or if it's a movie where I'm basically expecting the plot to take the back seat, like a sitcom where the plot is really only there because otherwise it'd be a stand-up skit. *Ahem*  In any case, I tend to hang on details that the average person wouldn't care about, if they even noticed it, is the point I'm getting at.  So if I absolutely slam on a movie, take it with that grain of salt.  I might be nitpicking at a detail that you won't give a crap about.  Case in point, I hated the latest Spiderman movie, most of my friends enjoyed it.  What can ya do?

I'm thinking I should start making it a point to keep a notepad and pen on me at all times.  Seems that when I'm not at my computer is when everything that I could be talking about tends to spring to mind, or made apparent to me.  Being able to scrawl it down and then reference it later when I'm actually able to sit down and articulate my thoughts seems like it would be a prudent thing to do.  Either that, or there's more than likely an app I can get on my phone that lets me jot-down notes.  It'd be a little on the slower side while I queue the app up, as opposed to the pen and paper being right there, but it'd probably be a little more discreet since most people would assume I'm just sending a text or some-such.  Meanwhile I could picture people seeing me scribbling in a notebook and insisting on wanting to know what I'm writing down.

PAD #1: Introducing the "Post-A-Day" Challenge

Bleh.  Seems every time I want to revive this thing, I fall back off the wagon.  Maybe I was just feeling too pressured to write about relevant content that I ended-up just not writing at all.  I dunno.  In any case, I've decided to start a new challenge: the PAD, or Post A Day.  Basically, I want to start logging onto here once per day and just write.  About whatever (though I'm going to avoid politics as much as possible, because it's just a headache to discuss with most people).  Usually it'll be something nerd-related because hey, I am who I am.  My hope is that I can ramble at least 3 paragraphs-worth of stuff, and that it'll lead to me wanting to elaborate more on something that I mentioned during a PAD, which will lead to me creating more coherent and focused posts about stuff that people might actually want to read.  So I can't guarantee that every PAD will be interesting, but this is a little more for my sake than anything else.

So Transistor finally came out this week, and frankly, I loved it.  Loved it!  I love the music, I love the art design on the levels (just the art in general, really), I love the skill system, I love the story, and I definitely love some of the little touches that technically don't even do anything, like being able to press a button that causes the main character to stop and hum along with the background music.  This isn't to say that the game is flawless, just that the flaws that it does have were smothered under all the other things that I adored.  Seems the big controversy with the game (if you can take games seriously enough to use such a serious-sounding term, but it's a thing being discussed a lot among the community, so the term fits) is that it's a bit short for the price.  Admittedly, yes, it is a short game.  I don't mind that so-much though.  It's one of those things that got smothered under all the good.  Is Transistor short?  Yes, but it's such an amazing experience for the time that it lasts that I'm not bothered by the price.  It's a short game, but it's a game that I've already beaten twice, and am still itching for another run-through.  To me it's a matter of quality over quantity, which is why I always hate when people start talking "time to beat" as a means to measure whether or not a game is worth buying.

X-Men came out today.  Hoping to go see it tomorrow, and my hopes are still on the low side.  On the plus side, MovieBob gave it a not terrible review, though I'll have to see if I agree with his observation of how the X-Men movies have apparently been time-locked in the era when the first movies launched.  His point basically being that despite a decade's-worth of movies having passed between now and when the first X-Men movie was launched, the most recent one feels like it could have been released in that same year.  On the one hand it isn't necessarily a bad thing, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" as the saying goes.  On the other, it's worth noting that the first X-Men came out when movies were still too afraid to embrace their comic book nature.  Bear in mind that it predates everything related to The Avengers, a movie that basically proved that comic book movies can look like the comics and still appeal to a massive audience.  So I dunno, I guess we'll have to see.  Maybe I'll be watching the movie and feeling like it looks a little antiquated despite being a brand new release.

And with that, I feel this is a good place to close today's PAD.  With any luck, this will have me well on my way to getting used to sitting down and just typing.  I also hope to improve my spelling and grammar a bit, because I can't be a grammar pirate if my own writing isn't up to snuff.  And if anyone sees a topic they'd like to see elaborated further, feel free to comment and I'll do what I can.