Mass Effect 3 is stellar

I've had my head in the stars all week playing Mass Effect 3, and now my review is posted on al.com! Let me know what you think.

Skyrim review

Everybody please jump over to Techcetera and take a look at my review of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim! It's quite likely to be my game of the year, because I can't quit playing it. Right now, all I want to do is go home and play it some more.

I had an ancient Nord helmet that I found at a tomb, and then I got bogged down with too much gear and sold it, and now I want it back and can't find it! Any ideas? I can't remember which merchant I sold it to, but their stock changes a lot anyway.

I know a lot of you will be getting Skyrim, too. What do you think of it?

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine review

Finally, the long wait is over! Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine is finally here, and I LOVE IT. It's what a great game should be. Please take a look at my review, and your comments are welcome!

Here's my review of Space Marine on Techcetera. Please give it a look!

Ready to Enlist in the Space Marines

Pushing forward to our next objective, the next thing on our gaming map is THQ's Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. The free demo came out this week on Xbox Live and PSN, and it is a blast! The multiplayer promises to have incredibly deep customization options, which thrills me, so I hope many of my online friends will join the Emperor's cause.

THQ released an appetizer on Xbox Live Arcade called Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team, which is a top-down shooter. Check out my review of it on Techcetera. It's a lot of fun!

The full game will be released Sept. 6.

Conan the Barbarian Movie Impressions

Conan’s bloody rebirth on the movie screen is a fitting time to renew my Sythbane Squadron blog. I had been looking forward to the new Conan the Barbarian. I enjoyed it greatly on opening weekend, and it vexed me to see snarky reviews by people who have contempt for the genre steer too many people away from the theater. What follows are some of my impressions of the movie. I tried to reveal no spoilers, other than what you might glean from the trailers:

• The new movie reads like one of the original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard. They are fast-paced tales, laced with lurid action, without much emotional depth. They are adventure stories. In this vein, the movie emulates its source material very well.

• Jason Momoa plays Conan with terrific ferocity. In one scene, Conan swipes his palm up the flat of his sword with a bloodthirsty, snarling laugh that I think Howard himself would have cheered! I can think of no one else who looks so much like the great barbarian. Frank Frazetta, my favorite artist, painted the quintessential images of Conan. Momoa doesn’t look quite as gaunt and grizzled as Frazetta’s Conan, but he sure captures his savage spirit. I wish Frazetta had gotten a chance to paint Momoa as Conan!

• Momoa’s Conan is more true to Howard’s original hero than Arnold Swarzeneggar’s, classic though the 1982 Conan the Barbarian is. Too many people think the 1982 movie is the “original,” when the original is pulp fiction written in the 1930s. Arnold’s movie has many virtues, but it is no sacred relic. I disliked how Arnold played Conan as slow-witted. Momoa’s Conan is smart and wily.

• Likewise, Momoa is physically a better Conan than Arnold. Howard often described Conan as having the supple grace and power of a big cat, like a panther. Arnold was awesomely powerful as Conan, but he lacked the barbarian’s fluid, cat-like movement. Momoa is like a deadly dancer with his sword, combining his imposing bulk with lithe lethality.

• The athletic young actor who plays Conan as a boy, Leo Howard, is great! He is expressive, conveying Conan’s intelligence and confidence, as well as his precocious physical prowess.

• Ron Perlman adds an essential Ron Perlman elixer to the movie. He is grand as Conan’s Cimmerian father and combat mentor, Corin. Scenes between the father and son are the most emotionally powerful in the whole movie.

• Some of the slave girls who Conan rescues in the movie are appropriately attired, in the manner of Conan stories. Which is to say, they are appropriately and pleasingly unattired. The actresses are officially credited as “Topless Wenches.” This I applaud. In fact, if the movie was really true to Howard's vision, the leading ladies would have dressed more like the women of Frank Frazetta’s paintings. A Frazetta woman typically looked like she was going to a Brazilian beach wearing a few bronze earrings for a bikini.

• One of the snarky reviews of the movie said it was like being hit on the head for two hours. By this the writer apparently means that Conan isn’t boring. The movie is unburdened by tiresome chick-flick parlor dialogue. Bloody, frenetic action sustains it.


A Few Disappointments

Conan the Barbarian is a satisfying action film, and a solid foundation to restart the Conan franchise, yet there is room for improvement:

• Momoa, while perfectly cast as Conan, rushes across some of his dialogue and is sometimes hard to understand. I would fault the director for failing to recognize this problem and have Momoa deliver Conan’s growls a bit more slowly and deliberately, with suitable barbaric enunciation.

• Rachel Nichols is a beautiful actress who is fiery and splendid as Scarlett in G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, but she seems miscast as Tamara in Conan the Barbarian. She could have been made up as a wild, Celtic priestess, but as she was presented, she was too waspish. An actress with a more exotic, sultry look would have been more fitting. There seemed to be little chemistry between Momoa and Nichols, so their characters’ relationship fails to fuel much emotion in the latter part of the movie.

• The young actress who plays the youthful witch princess Marique, Ivana Staneva, was scarier than Rose McGowan. Now, I am a fan of Rose McGowan, but the character wasn’t allowed to be quite scary enough. She looked like a Trill from Star Trek, with her splotchy temples and forehead, which was almost comically distracting instead of scary. And furthermore, the witch princess’ armor is way too demure for a Conan villain. Rose should have worn a much more scanty, sexy witch princess outfit. Once again, I would call the director’s attention to Frazetta paintings and Heavy Metal magazine for inspiration. And to my great disappointment, Rose never once lets her armor down!

• The story needed more epic weight. The story needed to be bigger and grander.

Overall, though, the disappointments are minor. Conan the Barbarian is a fun film. Jason Momoa is born to play Conan. He has the mighty thews. Live, love, go see Conan, and you will be content.

Medal of Honor Dusty G.I. Joe

Here's a G.I. Joe I outfitted recently as Tier 1 operator Dusty in Medal of Honor. Not all the details are exactly right yet. I plan to get some Oakley shades for him to more closely match the character, and his scarf is red instead of tan, but I think this is a good start on a custom video game character. You might recall my customized Ghost G.I. Joe from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in a previous post.

Here's my review of Medal of Honor on Techcetera.

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Here are two more takes of Dusty. I tried a low-saturation shot like the game box cover, as well as a some with and without the scarf. Which do you think looks best?

With scarf:

Low saturation:

Halo: Reach beta - Spartans on the ground!

The Halo: Reach multiplayer beta hit this week, and I've been playing it every night.

Click over to Techcetera and read about my first impressions of the beta. I've been playing several nights with my friends Still Suit and Buzsaw01. We're hoping that some of our Call of Duty friends will join in for a tour of duty in Reach -- hear that, TFH 5, Bama Breeze and Smokin' Buddy?

My clan tag in Halo: Reach is SBS1. My Sythbane Squadron friends are invited to join me!

Here is a slide show of screen shots of me, Still Suit and Buzsaw01 knocking some heads in the beta:

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Battlefield: Bad Company 2 veteran



Before I started dropping hammers on people in the Halo: Reach beta, I've mostly been playing Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

I really like the multiplayer. I recently finished unlocking EVERY weapon in the game. Now I'm working on completing my set of pins and awards, and getting gold stars for proficiency in my favorite weapons.