Call of Duty 5: World at War

Around seventy years outdated.

The reason I haven't posted a blog in ten days is mainly because of the following reasons:

1. I've been sick.
2. I've been spending time with my lovely girlfriend, and have been relatively happy and not mad at the world.
3. I've been playing Call of Duty 5: World at War.

Now, for starters, I will go ahead and say that Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare by Infinity Ward is my favorite FPS ever. I still actively play it online, and have been actively playing it online for well over a year and a half. In short, I am the shit at Call of Duty 4. Stats-wise, it says I'm better at Call of Duty 5. This is a load of shit. I'm much, much better at Call of Duty 4. I am "that guy" who always kills you, and dies once or twice throughout the entire game. Very few people rival me on that shit.

Okay, now that I have that out of the way, I'll start with my review of World at War. Before playing this game, I rewatched Band of Brothers, which is arguably the greatest television series of all time. Needless to say, I was very pumped to play this game. But, unfortunately, nothing can be as good as Band of Brothers, whether it be interactive or not. There is a reason we haven't seen the Pacific Campaign in very many WW2 games. It's simple, really.

The Pacific Campaign is fucking boring.

Yes, I said it. It's the same reason a Vietnam game never worked out. That shit is boring. The jungle is boring. The Japanese Kamikaze attackers can be dispatched of by meleeing three or four times, and it gets really old. The Russian campaign leaves more to desire, but still...after Call of Duty 2, I really can't look at another WW2 game without comparing it to the greatness that is Call of Duty 2. It's like thirteen dollars now as well, so I recommend that.

There area where this game shines is the area that almost always gives me the most bang for my buck in every videogame I've ever played. Simply put, the split-screen multiplayer aspect of this game is fun as hell. The campaign mode can be played co-operatively with up to four players, and however it may be co-operative, the game allows for you to be competitive and play it like an arcade game, letting you rack up points for each kill or objective completed. It's very, very entertaining. There is something about a +110 popping up on the screen after I kill someone that is very rewarding.

Also, once the game is completed you unlock Nazi Zombies, a game mode that places you in a ran down building that you must survive in while Zombies try to force entry, and eat you. This game mode can get very, very intense. The thing I enjoy about Call of Duty 4 so much is that it's a stressful game. It can cause me to tense up and actually place stress on me. World at War online multiplayer usually just pisses me off, so it was a nice addition to get some stress with the Zombies game mode. I highly recommend checking it out split-screen, as it's very entertaining.

The mode I played most extensively was the online multiplayer mode, which is usually the most popular. I refused to review this game until I got to the highest rank, which is 65. It took me well over a day to achieve such a feat, and the act of prestieging (starting over, at rank 1, to get a new little icon next to your name), has never looked like a more ridiculous idea. This game has two things that make it completely useless in my eyes.

1. Outdated weapons.
2. Bad maps.

And I know you might say, " Well Cameron, the game takes place in World War 2! Of course there are going to be outdated weapons!"

Well no shit. What I'm talking about is whenever I'm using a single-shot rifle, and the other guy I'm fighting has a sub-machine gun with the juggernaut perk. Now, I can aim pretty damn quick and shoot that motherfucker, but the juggernaut perk gives him a little more health, so he can pretty much just shrug that bullet off. So, while I chamber a new round, he can shoot the fuck out of me, because he has 32 bullets before he has to reload.

That, right there, is the biggest load of bullshit ever. Why even include such a bullshit, arbitrary set of weapons? The beauty of Call of Duty 4 and 5 are that the online mode is customizable. You get three sets of perks, and can choose from a great deal of weapons, along with different grenade types and all this other stuff. You can completely customize your outfitting. Completely. And I love it. It is the single greatest aspect in a FPS since being able to look up. Both games also offer you challenges, and completing a challenge gives you XP that allows you to level up and unlock new weapons. So, it has a very simple and fun RPG setup to it that I enjoy.

Now, Call of Duty 5: World at War does not do this to where I enjoy it. I mean, it does, but compared to Call of Duty 4....please.

I have prestieged eight times on Call of Duty 4, meaning I have went from rank 1, to rank 55, eight different times. I have used every single gun on that game extensively, and there is one or two guns that I absolutely dislike and despise. Now, with Call of Duty 5 I disliked...

1. Unscoped Springfield.
2. Arisaka. Every single variant of this gun.
3. The German Semi-Automatic Rifle. It was decent, but only 10 bullets didn't do too much for me.
4. The Type 100.
5. The Type 99.
6. The Ppsh-k or whatever it's called. Very overpowered.
7. The PTRS-1 or whatever. Why the hell is this gun even there? The scoped Garand is a dozen times better.
8. The MP-40, contrary to every other motherfucker who plays the game.

and I'm sure there are more, but you get the gist of it. This game does not merit nearly as much replay as 4 does. The maps are either WAY too big (and dominated by tanks), or WAY too small (where I get assraped every single time I spawn). It's just bad game design. It's very bad game design in my eyes. It happened repeatedly my first times playing, and until I could counter it I was being demolished straight up. I asked a player," When does this level get fun?"

" Oh, you just have to unlock that sub-machinegun you get at rank 47" or whatever. Why in the hell? It seemed like that was the gun that every single son of a bitch was killing me with, and I wonder why...

It was bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. My K/D ratio on Call of Duty 4 is 1.47. My K/D ratio on Call of Duty 5 is 1.58, or 1.60 or something. How in the fuck did I do better? Sure, the players in Call of Duty 4 are a lot better than they used to be, and the learning curve for the maps (because they're actually good) takes awhile longer, but the game is a superior FPS in almost every aspect. I'm not going to lie and say I'll stop playing World at War online, because that would be a lie. I love pwning noobs and kicking some ass....but this game fucking sucks.

Stick to the split-screen, or competitive campaign, or Nazi Zombies with some friends who you know you're going to have a good time with. The online on this game felt broken if you ask me. The obscene amount of useless and arbitrary perks and weapons took this game too far. I mean, you get the only semi-automatic rifle at the VERY end of things. At rank 65! What the fuck?

It's some weak-pussy ass bullshit. And yet I'll probably go online and play a few matches after I post this. But here's the thing. I'm not addicted to the game, by no means. I'm addicted to killing noobs, because Call of Duty 5 is full of them. Call of Duty 4, on the other hand...not so much.

Oh well. You probably didn't hear it here first. But you should've.

Tell your friends.

Watchmen (Movie)

Who's watching the Watchmen?

Corny, I know. But whatever. My efforts to see this movie were...well, efforts. No one, and I really mean it, no one that I met in person enjoyed this movie. I talked to six different people (I'm sure there were more, but six have stayed in my head) and four of the six walked out early. All six complained of Dr. Manhattan's penis. Yes, Dr. Manhattan is nude in both the comic and the movie. I got over it fairly quickly. All of these people told me the Monday after the movie was released. I'm a very avid Totally Rad Show fan, and I almost always base my expectations off of those guys. But, it comes out every Tuesday after school.

So, I had to spend two full days at school listening to how awful the movie is. I got the comic book on Thursday, so I knew next to nothing about Watchmen except that it was very critically acclaimed. Hated by movie-goers, and loved by comic book fans. Apparently there was a criticism between the movie and the book, and how close in nature they stayed to it that lowered reviews, but I'll get to that later.

Needless to say, those two days were very nerve-racking. Having been requested to review the movie, I finally wanted something positive to say. I wasn't going to let a huge blue penis get in the way of me enjoying a film that I felt I could respect. However, the Totally Rad Show goes prevailed, and all three of them approved of the film. Jeff Cannata and Alex Albrecht went so far as to say that they loved it. However, they brought up something that really threw me off guard.

If you have read the comic, then the movie so closely follows the comic that you are not being presented a story, but instead are being shown how it is executed. So, I had to take this into consideration. Having unexpectedly obtained the graphic novel on Thursday of that week, I managed to read all of it besides the final fifteen pages. So, I went in being shown how the story is being executed aside from the final ten to fifteen minutes.

That right there, is my bias. The movie literally has frame for frame shots of the comic. I can open up a page in the book and point at a frame and say," That exact frame is in the movie. That EXACT frame," and I can do this more than just a few times. Watchmen is the closest, and most true book to film adaptation that I have ever seen, and as far as I know, that has ever existed.

Unfortunately, it is a film, and due to time restrictions the movie had to be shortened. But, every major scene is in the movie. Every fight scene, every very important line. All of the memorable moments that will make a fan of the comic book smile, are right there in the movie.

Now, how did I feel about the movie? I loved it. I do not see how it could have been done any better, aside from finding a different actor for Miss Jupiter. The Totally Rad Show guys also pointed it out, and they were the ones that brought it to my attention. She is not the worst actor, but so many of her lines seemed forced. But, the performances of both the actor who played Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan made up for it tenfold.

Bottom line is that this is a great movie, but it's a movie for people who think. It's a movie for people who appreciate a good, dense story, and most importantly it's a movie for people who are going to sit there and pay attention for the entire three hours. The biggest complaint I got from people who viewed this film was that it was too long, too slow, and they didn't understand it. Oh, and that they didn't want to look at Dr. Manhattan's huge blue cock the entire movie.

Well...

1. I felt that this movie was not too long. It did not feel long. I was entertained the entire time, even having already seen the material on paper. I knew exactly what was going to happen the entire time up until the last ten to fifteen minutes, and aside from my girlfriend making a comment or asking a question, it had my full attention.
2. Did not feel slow to me at all. The pacing was perfect in my opinion. Every line held significance, and every scene was significant to the progress of the film.
3. This is where I am biased. However, I saw this movie with three people who had not read the graphic novel. I had to answer maybe two questions altogether, and they all understood the movie. Why? Because they paid attention. Hell, my girlfriend almost fell asleep (she was tired, fuck off), and she still understood it. I cannot comprehend what there was to not understand.
4. No. The thirty seconds of huge blue dick was not two hours and forty-three minutes of huge blue dick. Nice try.

So, there you have it. This movie will make you think, cringe, smile, and maybe even cry. And frankly, if a film can convey such actions, then for the most part I feel that it's done a good job. Still, Alan Moore is not happy.

Rorschach's Journal. 5:19pm.

...But not American Love.

It's been the craze lately. For the longest time it was all I heard about. Far back in my past, perhaps a year and a half ago, I first heard of the graphic novel famously titled Watchmen. I have to say that it interested me, but not enough for me to actively seek it out. The birth of the movie made this available to me, as a friend of mine in my English class had purchased, and read the graphic novel. She loaned it out to a friend of mine, and I told him that he had two days to read it.

" I need two days to read this, because I'm watching the movie Friday and I want to review both," I told him, and my urgency was answered. I used to be a comic book addict. It wasn't just a hobby. It seemed like every time I left the house I had to buy several of them, and knowing the hours of every comic book shop in every city I went to like the back of my hand became the norm. Star Wars was what I was into, and I believe I gave up before purchasing all of the Boba Fett series. So I had some experience when it came to comic books, but taking Watchmen into consideration, I was way above my head.

I'll give a little more background information as to how this became a reality before I begin both reviews. Once again, Watchmen linked back to my English class. A student there asked the teacher if a girl would be interested in seeing it. I promptly told him," Well, Jeff...My girlfriend asked ME to see it."

At the time I was just being a prick, as per usual, but the significance of that didn't really dawn on me until recently. Watchmen was becoming such a phenomenon that my comic book virgin girlfriend asked ME to see it. I felt overwhelmed. I don't have to go into as much detail regarding the book as I do the movie, and how my views might've been biased, because as far as reading the comic went, I was not biased at all. I just read it. I knew it was something I would enjoy and be interested in, and as far as things go, that was what I was expecting.

I'll go ahead and start this by saying that Watchmen became my favorite graphic novel/comic book series that I have ever read. Except for the sole exception of Boba Fett: Agent of Doom (Which was a standalone comic), this is the greatest form of graphic literature that I have ever experienced, and I doubt it will be rivaled until I ultimately take on the task of reading Preacher.

Watchmen has everything that I strive to have in my writing, and deep characters is one of those things. Rorschach is bar none one of the single greatest characters I have ever experienced. I'll go ahead say that I did very much like Dr. Manhattan and later on ended up liking Dan Dreiburg quite a bit, but Rorschach blew me away.

The genius of Alan Moore, the writer of Watchmen, can be seen through the character of Rorschach alone. He is proof that Moore himself is a fucking genius. Rorschach is this emotionless character that seems very alienated from society, and yet it is the most realistic and believing interpretation of that character type I've ever seen. The back story involved was breathtaking, and as a character he felt chilling. Even through simple text and a hand-drawn image, the character of Rorschach was able to make me convey emotion that made me want to be weary of such a fellow.

You see, in Watchmen, upon the arrival of fictationous superheroes, there came a batch of costumed adventuerers, so to speak, that ran around and fought crime. They formed together to join the Minutemen, and Watchmen takes place, and stars the next generation of the Minutemen: The infamous Crimebusters. Unfortunately, the government passes a law in 1977 stating that masked vigilantes have been outlawed, and as such all but three of them go into retirement. With this, a man with actual super powers, Dr. Manhattan, is introduced, and this changes not only the tide of things, but how the world is and how events unfold because of this. Needless to say, the story is very, very deep, and as such this makes it a very difficult thing to review.

The character of Dr. Manhattan is also very interesting, as he can decompose the genetic makeup of anything, changing it's atoms and rearranging the matter that makes up absolutely everything. He also sees time from different angles than human beings, being able to see the past, present, and future simultaneously. He describes time as a jewel, and human beings can only see one side of that jewel, while he can see all of the sides. Each issue in the comic stars a different character (with Rorschach getting a little more airtime), but the issue that stood out the most to me was definitely Dr. Manhattan's.

In the issue, Dr. Manhattan describes several events, and as such they are viewed from the past tense, present tense, and future tense. So, you get three different stories simultaneously, giving you a somewhat accurate representation of how life would be for him. Examples like this can be seen all throughout the comic, and veterans to the comic book franchise will really take notice of the perfect that is the layout of the comic, and small details such as how Rorschach's speech bubbles change depending on whether or not you're viewing a flashback or not.

There is so much I can say about Watchmen, and to really get a grasp of just how epic and dense the comic is, I would have to be sitting down and talking with you one on one. It's difficult for me to not recommend something like this, and if you have any interest in comic books...then this really is one of the greatest things you can read. Not only that, but thanks to the movie you can find copies of the trade at most Barnes & Nobles, Borders, etc. It's really, really easy to find now, and you don't really have an excuse not to check this out.

Now for the movie review...

Safari 4 Beta

Web Browsing for Ballers.

Granted, I dislike Apple. But, as a human being, I can overcome full-blown hatred and hate just a small section of certain things. Like, for instance, I don't hate Vitamin Water, but I do hate that shitty yellow citrus Vitamin Water. I absolutely despise iPods and iTunes, and as such, I'm a little bitter towards the company as a whole.

But when it comes to making an OS, Apple is king. I've been wanting to mess with the Macintosh OS for quite some time, but I've never had an opportunity. Because of this, I felt it was necessary to download the new Safari 4 beta for Windows. Unfortunately, I use Vista, and I missed out on upgrading to the Windows 7 Beta, which I wouldn't mind upgrading to come August time, when I hope it's released.

Now, Safari 4 has a top sites screen, as the image above shows. What this is, essentially, is a list of your most frequented web sites, plastered and displayed elegantly before you in a large, easy to read shortcut list. You can choose from a small, medium, or large size, and with such you can have more of your frequented sites, or less. Problem is, I'm often times going to myspace, and then being redirected to myspace or some bullshit, so I have several windows of the same website. So, instead of using the top sites as a bookmarking tool, it's just like that little tab over in Mozilla that I use to navigate forums to find a topic I was just recently at. All in all, this feature looks gorgeous and is very easy to use, but whenever it comes down to it, I just can't find the customization options I'm looking for, and as such several of the boxes are wasted with the repetition of the same website.

When checking your history, you have a nice iTunes like album-display interface, only instead of album art you have websites. I hate iTunes, so I don't think I will ever use this. An annoyance for me was how you couldn't navigate through your history using the arrow keys, and instead had to click the icons. Not a bit deal, but it's something I expected to happen.

Apple claims that Safari 4 is the fastest browser, and thus far I can't really disagree. It is relatively quick, and between Mozilla and Safari, I can tell a minimal difference in speed, with Safari probably edging ahead. Still, that's with several add-ons I have for Firefox, which Safari doesn't offer.

When it comes down to it, I very much enjoy Safari 4, but it's still just a beta, and as such I've had several problems displaying websites and frequent crashes (only lately, though) dealing with their support for Flash. Still, Safari was the new and exciting browser I was looking for, and I can see myself using it in the future for several things. Besides, it looks sleek enough to where I don't have to maximize it, and I just leave it centered along my desktop without distorting the page at all.

I'll probably continue to use it from time to time, but Firefox is and always will be my primary choice of browser. Still, it's all opinion, and I can't really argue and say that Apple hasn't done a good job here.

My boxer briefs are FTL.

Literally.

Over the course of several days, I consumed what was left of my boxer supply. As such, I found a pair of boxers in my drawer that weren't exactly boxers at all. I'm assuming they were a product of the 90's, and for good reason. When my brother moved out (years ago), he left with me several pairs of underwear that he did not enjoy, or simply forgot about. A few pairs were handed down through the generation, but I have a suspicion that these briefs were just complete and utter shit.

Getting back to the spirit of reviewing things, I haven't watched a damn thing worth reviewing in weeks. Hell, I'm sure I could come up with a few things, but whenever it comes down to it, the most urgent prospect in my life just so happens to be these nuthuggers that are destroying my stylish and comfortable gait.

As my friend said, briefs are like getting a hug. All day. The entire time. I mentioned this to a friend and he said," With a mouth?" Why the fuck did he say that?

Anyway, I did a little research and this particular pair of boxer-brief was manufactured by fruit of the loom, of FTL for short. The acronym further backs my belief that these boxers are from the late 90's, because internet lingo surely would've made any dumbass steer clear of the new "for the lose" boxers.

And they are. For the loss of my FUCKING MIND. The support that these things give me is mind numbing. Sitting in class was one of the most unpleasant and uncomfortable experiences of my life, simply because a piece of elastic fabric would rather my genitals be inserted into my anus, instead of being exterior like they were FUCKING DESIGNED TO BE.

So thank you, Fruit of the Loom. How can you sleep at night?