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So I went into this movie expecting nothing but a bunch of ridiculous CGI everywhere in my face with a kind of funny Jack Sparrow and perhaps some funny side characters.  Well, I didn't get shit.  In fact, this entire movie was a giant kick in the balls.

Jack isn't interesting at all anymore.  The new characters suck.  The old characters suck.  The plot sucks.  There wasn't enough cgi to make me say "well at least it was visually appealing".

Also, I never had any idea what the hell was going on or what anyone was doing, everything was a rehash or a cop out.

2/10.  I expected a 5/10. 

Fantastic movie.  Best so far this year.

9.5/10 for sure.

Also, the original score by Hans Zimmer was mind blowing and really added something special to the action sequences.

So, if you follow cinema, you will know that the nominations for the Academy Awards have been announced.

The front runners are Avatar and The Hurt Locker.  Now, I have not seen the Hurt Locker, but I can tell you, Inglourious Basterds was much better than Avatar.  I mean...much much better...I mean its fine that Avatar wins for special effects but some people call it the best movie ever made.

Anyways,  I predict the Hurt Locker will win although I feel Basterds should..

so, thoughts?

Somebody PLEASE tell me what the fuck is going on with this?  This bill, what does it do.  Before I do any debating, tell me..is it giving free healthcare for all?  Or what?

Is this universal healthcare?  Or just reduced costs?

The news is making republicans look like fucking pricks with their protests. 

So I've recently started buying movies.  I've always downloaded but I really think some movies deserve to be bought.  Right now its fairly small but what I've got is simply best, except for a couple.  So here they are.

Star Wars Episodes 1-6.
Die Hard 1-4
Raging Bull
Goodfellas
Reservoir Dogs
Pulp Fiction
Terminator 1-3
The Untouchables
True Lies
Predator
The Lord of the Rings 1-3
Speed
Shane
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

So someone please, name me a movie on that list that isn't a classic epic win, except Star Wars 1-3...those don't count of course..they were good movies..just not classic.

So back in 2005 a long video was shown at GDC.  Will Wright, the head of Maxis and mind behind the Sim franchises, displayed his new project called Spore.  From the video, seen here: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8dvMDFOFnA

So, take a look at that video.  It looks amazing doesn't it?  This video probably caused me several orgasms back in the day and I watched it multiple times, fantasizing about the day I would be to play Spore.  That day never came.

Over the years, Spore was delayed several times to the dismay of the gamers following Spore.  However, since this game was seen as extremely ambitious everyone knew this was necessary to make sure it didn't turn out to be a buggy pile of shit.  So I continued to wait patiently forever.  I watched Will Wright make several more presentations where he would say "um" and "procedural" a million times.  At the time, he may not have been lying, but at one time during the development...something odd happened...

There was another delay and suddenly...the videos...were different.  There wasn't any blood and the graphics were suddenly cartoony...ok, well, this sucks, but the gameplay we were promised should be there.  So I remained optimistic and began to like the graphics.

Now, Will Wright continued with his presentations, he even made one at NASA. 

Then, Spore was announced to be released on September 7th, 2008.  Great news, but still several months.  In June 2008, the creature creator was released, a free version, and a full version that costs $10.  I was so excited that I went out and bought the $10 version so I could upload my creatures.  It was pretty good.  Despite some animation flaws, the game still looked promising and I remained excited.

The reviews started coming out and the 8 range scores weren't what I was expecting, but an 8 is still good.  So I downloaded the game for free.  It was fun, actually it was amazing.  So, wanting to share my creatures with my friends, I bought it.  I soon realized, Spore was a big piece of shit.  A big lie, a hoax, a dumbed down money whore.  The gameplay was fun for a little bit, but its so shallow that its impossible to pretend this is the game you were waiting for.

I never planned to play the cell stage for long and I think that is the way it was intended but its actually pretty exciting and gets you pumped for the main game.  When you get on land, you realize the graphics are shit.  They're just terrible.  Worse than you could have imagined.  They say it was designed so anyone could play it on their shit PCs.  Fine, ok, but at least give us the fucking option to have a textures that aren't a cesspool of BLUR.  And creatures and buildings that are smooth.  Nope, there is no option for AF or Anti Aliasing.  Whatever, graphics don't matter unless the gameplay is GOOD.

Wait!

THE GAMEPLAY SUCKS.

Every stage sucks.  Its all terrible.  Its all barely fun, not at all what was promised.  You can't do shit in the space phase.  You fly around from generic planet to generic planet talking to creatures that give you the same tedious shitty missions.  You're constantly getting attacked and you can't even walk on the planets.  What a disappointment.

Its so dumbed down.  It was designed for casual gamers.  A Quote from Will Wright:

    We were very focused, if anything, on making a game for more casual players. Spore has more depth than, let’s say, The Sims did. But we looked at the Metacritic scores for Sims 2, which was around ninety, and something like Half-Life, which was ninety-seven, and we decided â€" quite a while back â€" that we would rather have the Metacritic and sales of Sims 2 than the Metacritic and sales of Half-Life.
    â€"Will Wright

No, Spore does not have more depth than Sims.  The creatures are awesome, I must give you that, but the gameplay is balls.

Now a lot of gamers are upset over this on the Spore forums.  Its been found out that during the development there was the "science side" and the "cute side".  Will Wright was on the science side.  Chris Hecker was on the cute side.  Chris has said that will would bring something that looked like something from a petri dish and he would tell him "yuck" and then redesign it to make it "cute".  What an asshole.

Obviously EA and Maxis are money hungry.  They've already released a terrible "Creepy and Cute" parts pack which is terrible, it costs $20.  I pirated it, it sucks.

Now they plan to release an expansion where you can actually go onto the planets but I expect its just the same repetitive gameplay as creature mode, though it will open the space mode up a bit, I'll probably pirate it.

So for now, I've lost all respect for Will Wright and Maxis.  Their game just plain sucks, and we deserve the Science Spore.  The one that looked good.  The one with a water stage, good animation, good graphics, science based evolution and science based space.  Science based gameplay. 

Fuck you Chris Hecker and the rest of the Fag Team.

Pretty amazing. 

Almost as good as Oblivion, almost.  The engine is better in this one, as you can shoot off limbs and such and VATS is amazing!

It says I've played about 19 hours so far which is more than most games.  I doubt it will catch up to Oblivion, which I've put 325 hours on.

Go buy it.  Also, I love how its a Windows Live game which means I get xbox achievements even though I'm on the pc

my video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2twj_yRi3bg

Ok, it would be really great if someone could attempt some viva pinata music.  These are amazing games and if you listened to the music I'm sure you would like it.  Though the music is the same between Viva Pinata 1 and 2, unless I haven't heard the new ones in 2 yet.

Ok so the main ones I would like to see are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAvKErugz7k&feature=related  Night 3.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFlZ6a04JRk&feature=related  Day 10.

Also, if you would like to listen and try any other pieces look at this youtube channel.  http://www.youtube.com/user/DemyGod  sift through the youtube poop to find the soundtracks.

Thank you all very much, would be great to see some of this done.

edit:  this one is good as well http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31ZGcua2fvo

I wish I could find the Costalot's Store music.

EDIT:  DO THIS ONE!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtshU9syR7Y

[My Current Family Computer:]

My Current Family Computer:

17inch CRT monitor.

ATI Radeon 9600.

1.5gb of RAM.

2.4ghz CPU.

40gb HDD, plus a 160GB HDD

Now, my new computer that I should have by the end of the week:

22inch LCD Monitor!

Nvidia Geforce 9800GX2!

4gb of RAM!!

Intel QUAD CORE 2.4ghz!!

500GB HDD!!!

Razer Barracuda Gaming Sound card!

A sweet gaming case.

A good motherboard and some other good stuff.

Will post pics when I get it up and running!

Because someone didn't make backups (JaMaHa!  Beat him!)  We lost the Post Your Thoughts of the Moment thread and all of its glory!

Here it is, the greatest thread of all time.

The Post Your Thoughts of the Moment Thread 2!