madworldThis'll be long post probably. Lot's to talk about. Burnout Paradise, MadWorld, and Watchmen. I think that's all, but there's a lot to talk about.

I'm kinda happy because I finally got a Linux assignment working. It was assigned two weeks ago. Everyone in my class was having trouble with it except one person. We had to set up an email server. This includes installing Bind for DNS server, Postfix for a SMTP server, and Dovecot for an IMAP server.

Anyways I put a lot of hours into this project and couldn't get it to work. I even had the guy who got it done to look over my settings and he didn't know what I was doing wrong. Yesterday I finally just said, "Screw it I'm gonna configure it without Webmin (which is a gui interface to configure lots of admin programs)." I still configured Bind and Dovecot with Webmin because they were working, I just couldn't send email with Thunderbird, which meant SMTP wasn't working, which meant postfix wasn't working.

So I played around with the configurartion file yesterday, and I got nothing. I basically knew what everything was because of trying to get it to work for two weeks.

Finally I just tried a new install, and configured everything except postfix. Then I changed some settings in CentOS (just the hostname actually). Went into the postfic main.cf file and changed four lines in that file. I wasn't very optimistic at this point, but I tried it... AND IT WORKED! I couldn't believe. I even replicated it just now. I'm so happy. I wrote an in depth how to so I could remember it. I'll help out my other classmates at some point in time I'm sure.

Anyways I just wanted to share my joy.

On to Burnout Paradise. I've been playing this game off and on ever since it came out (January 2008... same time I got my PS3!). Well I was at about 45% a few weeks ago, and the Legendary Cars pack was released to the PSN store, so I bought them. Cool cars. You got cars that look like the Back to the Future car, the General Lee from Dukes of Hazzard, the mustang from Night Rider, and the Ghost Buster car.

This got me interested to play it again. I'm at 99% now. I have all the cars, beat all the events, and Rule the Road on all road. I have some achievements that I need to beat to get 100% I think.

I have to say Burnout Paradise is my Game of the Year for 2008. Great graphics, great gameplay, great online community, great downloadable content, great fun, and just great everything. A 10/10.

The developers, Criterion Games, has supported the game with free updates, listening to the community (like adding a restart last event), and releasing new paid DLC like cars.

This year they are going to release a whole island! They paid attention to what players were doing online, and they basically created a giant island for doing stunts. Their philosophy for the island is "If you can see it, you can drive it." So that'll be fun.

If you do not own the game, and own a PS3, a PC, or 360, buy this game! It's cheaper now, but was defintely worth the original 60 bucks.

Back to some of the DLC for the game. You can buy the "Time Savers Pack" which unlocks all the cars for five bucks. Controveral. It's your money, you can do whatever you want. But it would take away from the fun of Burnout I think. I loved unlocking cars in that game, so I recommend you do it the old fashion way. I didn't buy it by the way.

Now the Legendary pack includes a car that has been called the "God Car" which is a super car. It's fast, and very strong. It's also very controversal. I didn't use it too much in single player, but I did test it out when I first bought it. In Multiplayer though, apparently everyone is using it. Which can kinda suck. It'd be cool if you could create a game and disable Legendary cars or something to combat this, because I know people are complaining about on Gamefaqs boards.

Criterion also released the toy car back. I didn't waste money on that yet. 13 bucks for 9 cars. You can buy them individually for a higher price. I don't know though. Would it be worth it to have toy car verisons of the cars? What advantages are there? I guess there is the lower gravity so higher jumps. I guess they are more nimble and harder to wreck too. So I don't know yet. Maybe if it were cheaper. The Legendary pack was worth it because the Jensen 88 (back to the future car) hovers! And turns the tire tracks to flames when you boost!

Alright let's check out some MadWorld action. I love the game so far! One of the first things the game asks you to do is pick up a tire, shove it over someones head, rip out a signpost, ram it into same person's head (the guy is still alive), now I pick up him, and headbutt him to make sure he doesn't squirm his way out, and carry him to a spike wall, then I rammed him against a spike... he wasn't dead yet, so just keep ramming him until he's dead. Good times.

Yes it's very violent, but there's a reason that the ESRB gave it an M for mature. There's also a reason why it wasn't given an AO rating. It's because it's over the top violence. Kinda like Tom and Jerry the cartoon. Yeah it's violent, but it's unrealistic.

The game is in black and white and red and some yellow because it's comic book style, and unrealistic. Speaking of which, the black and white works very well. Don't ignore this game because of the graphics, because the graphics actually add to it.

The premise of MadWorld is that a reality show called DeathWatch took over an island, and released glorified murders onto the island to compete for fame and fortune. You play as Jack (the guy that makes Marcus Pheonix from Gears of War look like a pussy... yeah he's that awesome... I liked Marcus Pheonix a lot so that says a lot... I though I needed to explain that and make this side note really really really really really really really really long). Jack shows up onto the island three days late, but gets a sponsor (who is XIII) because XIII's contestant was killed two days earlier. Jack is mysterious, but he's a killing machine and is bringing up ratings so no body cares. Oh and Jack has a Chainsaw for his right arm! Awesome!

You earn points for killing other contestants with fashion. Like the example I mentioned realier gave me 60,000 points. You can pick up weapons like a spiked baseball bat, and send people flying. It's a good time.

Speaking of the controls, they are good on the Wii. They use the Wii controls very well. Takes a little time to get used to them, especially if you are used to other games, but they work well. Chainsaw is fun too. The Chainsaw has to recharge if you use all of it's juice, to prevent you from over using it. I actually use the enviromnet more than my chainsaw though. Except on bosses which the chainsaw works well.

Each stage is timed, but it's 30 minutes so it's fine. You have to score a certain amount of points before you can fight the boss. I have fun though. Discovering the layout of the stage is probably the hardest part because you are worried about the time limit, but once you figure out the lay of the land, it's just using the environment to racking up points.

Then the mini games. Oh the mini games. The Black Baron introduces these, and he usually says some pimp stuff, and gets thrown in the death machine for the mini game by a lady in a spiked outfit. Speaking of funny moments, the announcers are funny. Greg Prups (from Whose Line is it Anyways) is one of the announcers which made me happy.

Next up I wanted to talk about Watchmen. I have not read the graphic novel yet, but plan to. I watched the movie last night. Wasn't a horrible movie... but it needed a few things to make it a good movie. It seemed like they shoved a bunch of stuff into a 165 minute movie. Maybe splitting it into two movies would be better. Everything seemed to go by really fast. Especially at the beginning.

The thing that bugs me though is that they thought it was a good idea to put a pointless 5 minute sex scene. I can understand if the sex scene would make sense to the plot. There was a couple moments that seemed extended and were pointless, and they could have replaced those pointless scenes with the extended relevent scenes. You know what I'm saying?

I thought the acting was good. One thing I think director did well is, yes, everything was flying by fast, but I was able to pick out the charcters to care about, without reading the graphic novel. But the director seemed to be showing off some things that I didn't need to see. Seeing Dr. Manhatten's (i spelt that one wrong) junk, a lot, was the director trying to be different. Yes, he's naked. We get it. Yes you CGI'd a penis. Good job.

Also the director slow mo'd pretty much every fight scene. Now the ones with the guy that can fight twice as fast as anyone, makes since (I dont want to look up his name and it's something that I would boch up the spelling of), but your just showing off if you slow mo an average fight scene.

Also the director seemed to go for the shock factor even more with the injuries. Showing the bone snapping out of the skin when someone broke another person's elbow, looked painful and made me cringe and is something I didn't want to see! Niether a saw going into a skull, or sawing off someone's arms! You using shock facotrs! The point I'm trying to make is the director was just showing off.

But like I said, it's not a horrible movie. I hear the graphic novel is very psychological, and they captured that in the movie. Again, the actors are great. The guy that played the Comedian, Jeffery Dean Morgran, plays the Dad from Supernatural, and was awesome as the comedian. I mentioned him specifically, because I was going to say something, but it's kinda a spoiler.

David Hayter apparently cowrote the screenplay. I didn't know he was a writer. If you don't know who David Hayter is, he is the voice actor of Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series. Speaking of writing, the writing was good. But Rorschach's lines seemed very cliche. Like a 1950's private detective narration. I think in the graphic novel it was suppose to be like that though. But it seemed like every time he spoke, I wanted to make fun of his line. But then he kills a lot of people in violent ways in the movie, so I keep my mouth shut.

In the end, I'd say watch it once. I'm glad I watched the movie, but I probably won't go and see it again or buy it on DVD. Make your own opinion of it.

Anyways, I'm gonna end this long post.

Bye.