Saturday, October 24, 2009

New Purchases


Here's what I have bought these past few weeks. First is Guitar Hero Metallica for Xbox 360. I actually didn't buy this, I got it for free through a relative along with the Wii and PS3 versions of the game (which I sold on ebay). I already beat the guitar career on hard and am starting the expert career, and I think that so far it is my favorite of the Guitar Heros because I listen to a lot of metal music.

Next I got two PSP games. The first one, Hot Pixel, I bought at Fry's on clearance for $2.13. I haven't played it much, but It's just okay. It's similar to the Wario Ware games because it is made up of over 200 minigames that usually take less than 4 seconds to beat. The other PSP game I got was Gran Turismo on sale for $19.99. Considering it was only released a couple weeks ago at $39.99, this was a great price. So far I have played it for a little over an hour, and it is one of the better PSP games I have played. It has very realistic physics and over 800 cars. Gran Turismo is very different from other racing games like Midnight Club and Need For Speed in that it is very realistic and has a pretty high difficulty level. While there is no career mode, there is a long challenge mode and a single player race mode as well as multiplayer racing. Expect to replay some of the challenges multiple times, because even the first few are extremely difficult to master. By winning races and challenges you earn credits to buy new cars, but there is a limited selection of cars that you can choose from each day. This means that if one day you see a car you want but don't have enough money for it, you may not have the chance to buy it again for quite some time. Overall, I would highly recommend Gran Turismo to anybody who has a PSP and at least a small interest in racing games.

The first of three movies I got is Jackass: The Lost Tapes. Jackass is my favorite series of all time, and I own just about everything they have released. Of all the movies I own, my Jackass, Wild Boyz, and other dvds with Jackass crew members, have been viewed more than anything else. So, I was highly anticipating the release of The Lost Tapes and bought it as soon as it came out. Overall, it isn't as good as other Jackass releases, but it has more than enough moments that made me laugh out loud. All of the segments on this dvd were never on any of their other dvds, so if you are a fan of Jackass this is a must own. The only thing that really disappointed me was that there was no commentary track. I never listen to commentary tracks on any other dvds except for Jackass dvds because they are usually just as funny as the main feature.

The two Blu-Rays I got are Trick 'r Treat and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen Wal-Mart-exclusive IMAX version. Trick 'r Treat was a blind-buy for me, and it's probably the best blind-buy I have made all year. It is a horror anthology like Creepshow, but in the end the connections between all of the stories are revealed. There is such a great Halloween atmosphere throughout the whole movie that just captured my attention from start to finish. I enjoyed it so much while I was watching it that when it ended, it felt like I had just started watching it. I almost wanted to rewatch it as soon as it finished so I would have a new perspective on it since I knew all of the twists. The picture quality is great for a darker movie, and the audio is good as well. Next is Transformers ROTF. This movie has such a bad reputation, but I thought it would be alright since I loved the first one. I was wrong. The plot is almost nonexistent, which is okay for some action movie, but I was just not able to get into this movie. The action scenes were great, but Michael Bay decided he wanted to put in more comedy elements that did not seem to fit at all. There's a seen where Sam's mother eats a weed-brownie and gets high that was just awful and made me cringe. There's also a scene with John Turturro showing his bare-ass in a thong, which disturbed me. Michael Bay had Megan Fox in his cast, yet he chose to show Turturro in a thong instead of her??? ROTF was also way too long at 150 minutes and started to drag after the first hour and a half. Maybe if a re-cut version without all the terrible comedy attempts was released, it would be a better movie. The picture and sound quality on the Blu-Ray is reference though. Transormers ROTF is definately one of the best discs I own in terms of picture and audio, too bad it's not a very good movie. I got it at Wal-Mart for only $14.97 though when the sticker and ad said $19.99, so I'm pretty sure they made a mistake. I would recommend it as a Blu-Ray disc for its picture and audio alone, but not the actual movie.

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Recent Purchases




I haven't posted for a few weeks because I have been ridiculously busy. These are most of my purchases from these last few weeks (there are probably 5 movies I got that I didn't put in the pictures). Sorry about the picture of the blu-rays, I can't get it to flip no matter what I try.
First I'll talk about the HD DVD's. I bought a lot of 7 new HD DVDs on ebay for $15.00 total. The other three movies not in the picture are Hot Rod, Transformers, and Face/Off (I already had Transformers & Face/Off). The only ones I watched so far are Hot Rod and Zodiac. Hot Rod was just okay with pretty bad picture quality. It seemed like it wanted to be Napoleon Dynamite. Zodiac, however, is amazing. I watched it last night and I was blown away. The movie is incredibly engaging, and the picture quality is in the top 5 best that I have seen on HD DVD. There are also a lot of interesting special features including documentarys on the real zodaic murders. I would highly recommend that you buy Zodiac on HD DVD or blu-ray.
The blu-rays I bought recently are Snow White, Death Race, Mad Men Season 2, and 10,000 B.C. Yesterday I watched Death Race, and while it wasn't as good as I expected it to be, I still enjoyed it. I don't think that I have ever seen so many explosions in one movie! It has good picture quality and excellent sound quality. The movie reminded me a lot of Gamer (which I reviewed in an earlier post). If you are a fan of Jason Statham or action movies, I would recommend checking it out. Yesterday I also bought the new release Snow White at Best Buy for $10 after a coupon and a price match. Based on the reviews I have read so far it should be an excellent disc. It has an insane amount of special features and comes with the DVD version of the movie as well. Snow White never was one of my favorite Disney movies, but it is hugely important in the history of animated movies, and there was no way I was going to pass it up at $10. I also got Mad Men season 2 in the mail yesterday from ebay. I still have to finish the last two episodes of the first season, but I can't wait to start season 2 of this great series. And finally, I got 10,000 B.C. for less than $8 from somebody on a forum. I saw the movie when it came out in theaters and thought it was okay, but I haven't watched the blu-ray yet.
In my next update I will try to show some of the other movies I bought that I didn't talk about here and the movies I plan on picking up next weekend.