Adam's Interweb

I finally finished the main story in Mass Effect just a couple of days ago. I think I have about 15 hours of game time in…which is pretty short, but I didn’t do all that many of the side missions. The story was really excellent. There were quite a few surprises along the way that really made things move along nicely.

I think Final Fantasy 7 is still the best RPG I’ve played, but I would say Mass Effect is in my overall top 10 games list. The only thing that never really clicked for me was all of the equipment. Sure, you can buy fancy weapons and and all kinds of upgrades, but I barely did any of that and the game wasn’t that hard to beat. I suppose I could up the difficulty level and maybe all of the equipment would matter more.

In any event, it’s a fun game if you like more action oriented RPGs. Depending on your choices, it may feel a little too much like a FPS for some people, but the balance seemed just about right to me. Now I can start watching for Mass Effect 2 information…I’ve been trying to avoid it until I finished this just to make sure I didn’t see any of the ending before it was time.

I noticed Amazon had a $0.99 sale on a couple of new movies I had been wanting to see (Ghost Rider, 300, Shooter) so I decided to give it a try – after all, no shipping, no tax, means you can’t beat the price.  My setup is Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit and an Xbox 360 with wireless adapter (I stream the movies to the HDTV via the 360).  My initial impressions:

The Good

Install and movie purchase was quick and simple overall (however, it is a tiny bit less simple for 64-bit users…more on that later).  It was dead simple to stream to the 360 – if you already have the media center connection setup, then you’re ready to go.  The quality is on par with DVD – it’s certainly not HD, but I was watching on a 56″ HDTV and it looked as good as any DVD I have.

The Bad

When I first installed the software, I got a message saying something was wrong with my computer’s DRM configuration.  My only guess is that it has something to do with being on a 64-bit – but I really don’t know.  The Unbox software offers to help troubleshoot – so I did that and it found a patch to automatically install…after that, everything went fine.  The download speed is a bit slow – I rented 5 movies the first night (you can keep them for 30 days) at around 10pm.  By 8am or so the next morning, 4 of the 5 movies were downloaded.  The files are between 1.5GB – 3GB – so it’s certainly going to take a while to download them, but the speed could be just a tad better…but it’s not a huge issue – just realize that you’ll need to wait about an hour or so after you rent the movie before you can start playing it.  The biggest issue I have with Amazon’s Unbox service is the lack of 5.1 channel audio – the audio quality is decent, but it’s certainly not on the same level as a DVD and there is no true surround sound.

Conclusion

There’s no question that Unbox is a great deal if you find a movie you’d like to see for $0.99 – it’s the way to go at that price.  I’m not sure I’ll be using it for full price rentals though ($3.99) – for that price, I can get NetFlix or Blockbuster Online (and better sound quality).  If Amazon can drop the price to $1.99 for a one day rental, I’d be doing a lot more Unboxing.

So I went to see the new Fantastic Four movie – I hadn’t planned on seeing it since I wasn’t terribly thrilled with the first one.  I never read the comics, but I do know some of the FF storyline somehow (a cartoon maybe?  can’t remember…).  Anyway, a friend said he saw some reviews that said the movie was pretty good – so I decided to tag along.

The first hour or so wasn’t all that great.  It was almost entertaining, but not quite.  I think the little bit of the silver surfer story that I did know ruined this part for me – they spend so long trying to figure out what is going on that it just gets plain boring (not to mention the fact that it never really goes into detail about what IS going on…).  I would say this part of the movie was a little worse than Part 1.

The second half (more specifically, the last 20 or so minutes) was where the good stuff can be found.  I actually liked end quite a bit – much better than the first movie.  I won’t go into any details or anything, but it was entertaining.  I don’t know that it made up for the entire $8.50 I spent to see the movie, but it certainly helped.

If you’re a FF fan, then maybe you’ll love the movie.  If you’ve seen the other movies out right now, then might as well see this one too.  If you’re looking for the most entertainment bang for your buck, well, this probably isn’t the film for you.

I saw Shrek 3 this weekend – I wasn’t sure what it would be like…but lemme tell you, it’s good.  It was really funny – most of the humor was for the general audience, but there were the occasional parts that only the adults will get.  All in all, the storyline was decent enough – it’s more along the lines of the second movie instead of the first…basically expect more humor with a so-so story line.  There weren’t really any big surprises, but it was really entertaining.  I think my favorite part was when they meet the wizard (a close tie with some of Puss’ jokes).   If you liked Shrek 1 or 2, you owe it to yourself to see Shrek the Third.