Here we go again....

Ok, so, I'm mixing things up. This will be a blog (hopefully) about my ongoing (hopefully) DnD campaign. I'm looking at getting a podcast set up as well, but we'll see how that goes. The first session is tomorrow, and we are kickin' it module style with Keep on the Shadowfell. I'll be meeting some of the players for the first time as well, so this should be interesting. Wish me luck!

TNA iMPACT! July 2, '09

Welcome to my first iMPACT! review. The format is going to be very different than you will see on other sites, mainly because I disagree with the way most people review them. My philosophy is that the story is what is most important. That's not to say that the wrestling isn't an insanely close second, but neither can exist without the other. If you don't like the story you could care less about the wrestling, if the wrestling is sub par, you stop caring about the story. It's a double edged sword, and I'm going to focus on the half most people think about as an after thought. So while this will be structured semi-match like, the focus is on the story being told in interviews and in the ring. Let's begin shall we?

Quick recap from last week: The MEM(Main Event Mafia) have almost completely taken over TNA, Foley made some deals with the MEM and did a bit of double crossing, Samoa Joe joins the MEM and they expell Sting.

The show starts off with Kurt calling out Foley to the ring to answer for the double cross, booking Steiner and Booker Vs Team 3D for the spot at Victory Road instead of just getting the spot like the original deal. Foley's coming apart at the seams and I love it. The security really need to get new shirts, I mean it was mentioned within the last ep or so, so even they realize it. Also the get taken out in standard fashion, quick and painful. Even Foley knows they are useless now. This is doing a great job of setting up the MEM as the force that runs the company, which is where I hope this is going, because the story to take it back will be awesome. At the end of the sopt while MEM is beating down Foley, Double-J runs down to the ring with a guitar and clears it. Then a soon as Foley gets up, he gets it over his head, out of nowhere. The MEM are clearly very happy with where this is going. This was a great spot, lots of fun, and idd much to setup the night. My only issue is that Don West and Mike Tenay were trying to sell the guitar hit as Jeff picking MEM's side. I've been watching the last few weeks and know that is not an option what so ever with Jeff.... but then I thought the same about Samoa Joe.

Next a quick interview of Kevin Nash by Mike Tenay. The basic's of this interview is Nash likes money, period. There wasn't much else to the interview, so all I can hope is that it was planting a seed for something down the road, perhaps the Victory Road, don't know we'll see.

Next up is a long as hell recap of Slammiversary 7. It's been two weeks since the event so I really don't understand why it's here. Last week this would have made sense, but if I recall they had a segment of stills showing the recap, here it is video. I really don't understand the decision on this other than maybe a time filler.

Here we have another interview, Abyss is letting loose!!! Woohooo!!!! I gotta say I'm a huge Abyss mark, love him. Think that goes back to my Mankind roots when I was younger. Abyss seems like he is embracing the monster and is going after Dr. Stevie hard, and looks like he'll be tearing up the iMPACT Zone all night. Also can someone please send Lauren to some acting lessons.. please? Don't get me wrong, I love her and the character that she is carving out of stone...by hand..yea. I just don't believe it when I see her crying, sorry.

Next up, Cody Deaner vs Amazing Red....? Seriously why is Cody getting this push. Yea I know he lost... which considering the jobs Red has been doing since he got back was very thankful. The entire match I was just cheering for Red, and hoping he was going to win. The match was pretty good, with some nice spots. In the end I just don't get why Cody is around still. Is ODB injured and needs a break?

Abyss is going off still, destroying a set in the back. Security shows up with bats and Abyss just taunts them, beautiful. Who is the old dude? Did I miss something? He seemed to calm Abyss down for the time being.

JB!!! WOOHOO!!! JB talking to Jeff, MEM shows up. They try to sell Jeff on MEM cooperation. Jeff, like I knew would happen, throws it back in their face. Then he sets up a classic Founder match, JJ and AJ vs Kurt and Samoa Joe for the TNA Heavyweight Title!!! NICE!!!! That is classic JJ rules baby!

Quick interview with Jenna about Sharmell's challenge for Victory Road. I'm sorry but why? This is not a match that should be happening when you have a womens division that is filled with the absolute best in the business? Sure why not, oh now apparently Sojo Bolt is friends with Sharmell, that came out of nowhere. Ok, sure. Moving on.

JB with Kurt. Kurt is not happy about the match, big surprise. Booker asks Sharmell, to get Matt Morgan. Then JB comes in the best line I have heard in months, "Is this Jon and Kate around here? Unbelievable" HAHAHAHAH, nice one JB.

Rhino w/ Jesse Neal Vs "Showtime" Eric Young was a pretty nice match. Setting up Eric as the bad guy is proving to be a great angle. He pulls it off so believably. Jesse once again screws up Rhino's match. I just don't understand why he's still around. He just doesn't bring anything that interests me, never did.

Sharmell finds Morgan and they take off to go see Kurt. Kurt once again is leading him on. Heh, I love the Booker has to introduce him first. That was a great touch. Morgan doesn't look he will take too much more of this and he would be a bad person to have on the wrong side. Money is important to him, but pride will over come that quickly if this keeps up.

The Beautiful People w/ Madison Rayne vs Tara and Awesome Kong up next. I love the Knockouts division here in TNA. They are all excellent in-ring talent. I still have not seen a bad Knockouts match. After some back and forth Kong get's the win, and then Tara takes out a Tarantula and places it on Velvet Sky. Nice character direction. When Tara first came to TNA she didn't seem to have a character angle, now she does. Good stuff.

Angelina Love is freaking in the back, she apparently does not enjoy spiders.

Beer Money is coming down to comment on the next match, which is Team 3D vs Booker and Big Poppa Pump! Don West is kissing ass as usual. Bashir and Kiyoshi come out and attack Beer Money, then the British Invasion comes out at nails both members of Team 3D. Brother Ray is laid out in the ring and Booker is placed on top of him. I've got to say, the British Invasion is really making a great name for themselves.

Jay Leathal vs Jethro Holiday gets derailed by Abyss. Dr. Stevie is on the big screen and has apprently abducted Lauren. Abyss is being forced into going to therapy next week, this should prove interesting. Abyss is awesome on the mic. Seriously, just awesome!

Here we go Main Event!! JJ and AJ vs Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle. Definately filling time this episode, JB is doing in ring intros, wow. That's rare these days, for TV at any rate. Some great spots here, all in all a great match. Kurt wins when JJ passes out from the pain of a fully cinched in Ankle Lock!! Great finish setting up JJ as someone who will NOT quit. Very nice. MEM come down to the ring to work on JJ, AJ comes in with the Legends belt for the save but Joe comes back in and grounds him, now AJ is getting the once over. Behind the scenes, Morgan is taking out Daniels. Nash is about to hit AJ with the Legends belt and the lights go out!! Sting shows up out of nowhere and takes out the MEM. Kurt left his belt in the ring, that's a mistake. Sting grabs it, taunts Kurt and disappears. Great finish!

All in all, a very good iMPACT! If you have read any of my other reviews, you'll see I do NOT score no matter what. I feel reviews should be more organic and not be boiled down to a series of numbers. There were some great spots tonight, lots of big story pushes, and a huge finish. Good stuff all around.

Under Construction!!

Yea, so I've been kinda derailed on the whole review thing. That isn't to say that I've stopped, just a re-evaluation of the plan. One big thing I will start doing is reviewing TNA iMPACT! as I have plunged back into the world of wrestling once more, and I love it more than I ever have before.

TNA is the fresh face that was needed in a world filled with 4!!! WWE Shows, who the hell needs to watch that much wrestling just to keep up with the story lines. Thanks, I'll go over to TNA where they care about their fans enough that they won't alienate them by changing the format (ie, going to PG only, etc.) so much it has regressed to the time wrestling almost died as an entertainment medium. Thank you Jeff and Dixie, if it wasn't for your company I would never have remembered how much I love the business.

Another thing that needs to change if this is going to work for me is I need to catch up. I am roughly 2 years behind on DVDs and games. Being that I am the type of person who actually wants to play ALL the at least decent to great and amazing games out there, it will take some time to catch up, but it'll happen sooner than later.

As far as DVDs go, there is a lot for me watch there as well, if you check out my collection DB I'm roughly 200 titles that I OWN behind. There is still the DVDs in my wanted section that I haven't even looked at buying yet, but soon.

I really want to review the new stuff as close to it's release as possible. But I refuse to forget about all that I will miss if I go to just doing that. It's not who I am. SO consider this a look back at whats out there, who knows, maybe I'll review something that you may have missed, or skipped because you did not think there was much there. So keep an eye out and if you don't see a review up, at minimum one per week, then feel free to send me an email, or better yet send me a tweet asking what's up. I'm always on, someplace, have a good one all!

Video Game Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for the Nintendo Wii

I've always really enjoyed the Harry Potter universe. It just really speaks to my whimsical nature. I can honestly say that I have from time to time wished that I was a student at Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Too bad I can't say that this game fulfilled that dream. Don't get me wrong, there is a decent game here, unfortunately it is bogged down by sub par programming and unintuitive controls to be truly great.

Let's start at what I consider to be first and foremost the most important part of any game, the story. You would think this would have no problems here, I mean JK Rowling pretty much sealed that deal right? (PS, I was one of those people who loved Order of the Phoenix, one of my favorite of the series) Wrong, here's where things take a bad turn. The game is based on the movie, which is based on the book. So the means there are a bunch of things cut out from the move from the book to film, but for some ridiculous reason they also cut out things from the movie. For example, and I'm not warning for spoilers, if you haven't read the book or watched the movie too fucking bad, they've been out for years. Shit I just warned about spoilers by warning I wasn't warning about spoilers, cursed again! Anyway, Snape is teaching Harry Occulomancy, Harry get's good enough that he accidentally reads Snape's memory of Harry's father picking on him. This happens in the game but you don't see the memory, all you get is Snape telling you all of a sudden to get out, and Harry feeling sorry. WTF?? I know what was supposed to be there, hell everyone knows what was supposed to be there, so I guess the developers decided, "Eh, everyone knows what's supposed to be there, so why bother animating it". Fuck you, you lazy ass story tellers. Nothing pisses me off more than lazy story telling, especially when the STORY IS ALREADY LAID OUT FOR YOU!!! FOLLOW THE MAP YOU LAZY BASTARDS!!!

As far as presentation, it's terrific. Hogwarts is truly brought to life here, you will get lost at first if you are not using the map system. Everything twists and turns, with secret passages everywhere. They also got a good chunk of the film cast to return for the game and do their voices as well as get face scans to recreate their characters int he game. Why was all this detail spent on this and then skimp on the story? No idea, but I can't fault the presentation one bit. It feels like Hogwarts. The end. One little problem though. I know Hogwarts is full of secrets and whatnot, but I'm pretty sure students are not supposed to be falling though the floor. There are a few graphical glitches, but this is an EA production after all. No surprises there.

The controls are pretty good. You control your spells with different getures from the Wiimote and that all works fairly well...... out of combat. When you are in combat however, it goes to shit. You need to move to dodge incoming spells, but have to stop to cast, plus it's fairly frantic so you really need to keep your wits to pull off the right spell. All in all the controls are decent, but need more refinement.

On last gripe I have are the "Boss Battles". In all the end duels, during witch you control Sirius Black and Dumbledore, you have to lose the battle to continue the story, and you can't win no matter how hard you try. What the hell is the point in me getting all the way to the end to lose the damn game to win? What a load of crap.

In the end, if you are a Potter fan, at least rent the game, it's a decent companion piece to the movie. I just really hope the EA gets the next effort right or they lose the liscense not unlike they just lost the Lord of the Rings one. Here's hoping.

Video Game Review: Smackdown Vs. Raw 2009 for the Xbox 360

The biggest problem most people have with wrestling games are that they are, for the most part, based wrestling. Some people just can't get around the apparent stigma of enjoying a little WWE from time to time. But if you can get around the exterior, you will find an excellent series of fighting games. That's all these games really are, and they have been working on their formula for years. Because of that the mechanics are pretty tight in SvR '09.

This is the best wrestling game I have played in recent years, for one simple reason. It's fun. It's fun to grab the controller and smash the shit out of someone with a steel chair, or climb to the top turnbuckle and crash down into your opponent. Plain simple fun. It's easy to pick up and play with friends, but takes a decent amount of skill to master.

As far as the gameplay goes you got lots to work with. There is almost every match type I could think of in this game. From the brand new inferno match all the way to the iron man match, you have lots to work with. A very cool new feature this year is the Road to Wrestlemania mode. In RtW you play through as different superstars with full stories, voice over, and unlockables. I particularly enjoyed the Undertaker RtW, which really had a cool old school supernatural element that you just don't see in the WWE anymore (Granted I haven't watched WWE for years).

What I'm trying to get at here is that you shouldn't write off a game because of it's subject matter. SvR '09 is an excellent example of an arena fighting game, and it is deserving of more attention than "Oh it's a wrestling game, I'm not gonna play that". Go give it a rent, you won't be disappointed.

DVD Review: Knocked Up Extended and Unrated

Judd Apatow is my hero. He makes terrific movies, bar none. Knocked Up is the little film about the one night stand that got her pregnant. A great idea for a film, and an even better idea considering the cast.

Seth Rogen and Kathrine Heigl have great chemistry together and you actually can believe this girl will fall for him. The ever amazing Paul Rudd has a great part here, playing the brother in law, with the hilarious Leslie Mann as his wife. The cast really work well together and there is never a moment where you think this is a bunch of actors playing parts. You are truly drawn in and feel for these characters.

On top of having a great heart, this movie is hilarious. From the group of friends mimicking blow jobs while Ben (Seth) is on the phone with Alison (Kathrine) to the absolutely terrific Leslie Mann performing what I believe is the first female piss shiver on any sort of medium, you will laugh a lot. This is a really great film, and is well deserving of my praise, I'm that damn important.

On the special features side of things, you get a very heavy dose with this set. Roughly an hour of deleted and extended scenes, which have some really funny stuff that was cut in favor of other equally funny stuff. Then there are a bunch a featurettes on things like directing the stripper scene, and the missing roommate "Gummy". Or my all time favorite on this set, "Finding Ben Stone", which is a hilarious docudrama about finding the actor to play Ben Stone. Judd goes through all the pains of finding different actors to play Ben, and finding out that it won't work out, usually via a blow up on set between the two, then on to the next actor. All of which by the way are excellent, my personal favorite out of them all being James Franco and his truly massive blow up because he couldn't do a part he wrote for the scene. Excellent stuff.

You also get some gag reels which are self explanatory but still funny. Then we have the commentary track, with Judd, Seth, and Bill Hader, who was in all of two scenes in the movie but is from SNL so he get's a pass. Now I enjoyed the commentary well enough, it was informative when it needed to be, and really funny. But Judd calls on Bill through out the track to perform impersonations and comment on the movie in character. Which is funny at points but all in all, I'd rather you talked more about the movie instead of talking to "Al Pacino" about it. It was a little disappointing but still very redeemed by the fact the Judd and Seth are frickin' hilarious.

In the end this is a DVD that should be in everyone's collection. Not just because it's a great movie, but because it's a great movie to watch when people are over that you won't kill yourself over having to watch it again. Go get it and enjoy. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go roll some dice on the dance floor.

DVD Review: Extras Season 2

I love British comedies. The horrible awkwardness that is everywhere in them is seen no where else in television. It's an awkwardness that you can't help but laugh at, and that's truly amazing. Ricky Gervais is back again as Andy Millman and now he as brought his sitcom to fruition and is ready to start filming. But, as usual, something has gone wrong and Andy get's set off makes a blunder, like for example, unknowingly telling a mother of a child with down syndrome to keep her child quite, or trying to avoid a kiss in a play.

All in all, very funny, very entertaining, simply a great piece from Ricky Gervais. Clocking in at 6 episodes (about standard for a BBC production), Extras second season is even better than the first, the guest stars this season, such as Sir Ian McKellen and Daniel Radcliffe, go even further than ones in the first with their characters with some truly hilarious results. This is a great series and you really should give it a go.

The special features on Extras are terrific, you have a 6 part documentary about the show, which is very entertaining and still gives you a good amount of info on the behind the scenes of the show. Some really good outtakes, and featurette on the Art of Corpsing (Laughing during a scene, and being unable to stop, really funny), and my personal favorite because I am an evil man just like Ricky Gervais apparently, Taping Nigel: The Gimpening. Which is a truly hilarious piece about the editor, Nigel, and the absolute horror Ricky puts him through just because he's a little bored. A few examples, taping Nigel up to look deformed or like a "prat-apillar", or using his head as a frame for a paper head. Truly hilarious, I laughed no stop during this featurette, which runs around 30min, which makes it all the better.

My last word is that along with the true version of the Office, Extras should also be in your collection. An amazing show, with a fair bit of heart. You will not be disappointed.