I watched “King Arthur” yesterday, and actually quite liked it. My background on the tale is near non-existent, which might’ve helped (or not). It’s got a nice sweeping score, and the general friendship among the knights came across well.
I was surprised to see Til Schweiger in it, but he fit the role very well. The cast in general was good, but I have my doubts on the accuracy of Keira Knightley’s “war dress”, though.
Picked up “Mario Golf” and “Phantasy Star Online Episode III” for the Gamecube on Saturday. Haven’t played much (PSO III is way too expensive online compared to XBox-Live — so I doubt you’ll see me there), but both of the are a nice change of pace from all the racing and FPS games I’ve been / am playing. Mario Golf (Eurogamer review) looks surprisingly nice and is easy enough to pick up.
PSO III in contrast seems rather complicated (not having read the manual) and I’m not entirely confident I have completely understood how it works…
After being really bored yesterday, I decided to watch “Dodgeball” yesterday (in spite of Ben Stiller). It’s allright, but I just wish that Miramax had the balls to finally release “Shaolin Soccer” which is so much better (though equally predictable). If you liked any of these, you should definitely watch Ping Pong (whose Region 2 release has English subtitles) and Waterboys — a film about an all-male synchronized swimming group ;).
After having finished the “career” mode of Project Gotham Racing 2 (on bronze admittedly), I picked up Rallisport Challenge 2 this Friday. I was a bit afraid that changing from a city-racer to a rally game would cause problems, but these fears were unfounded — after about 10 minutes the new racing model took hold and always feels right. The graphics are amazing to say the least: I don’t know how DICE have managed, but it runs at a rock-solid 50 (or 60) fps and is at least as pretty as PGR 2 (which runs at half that). I have never spent this much time in a game just watching the replays of my driving. The particle effects in particular are awesome.
The sound is very nice (but at home I don’t have my 5.1 setup but I expect it to be fine there as well — no Xbox game has yet disappointed me in that regard). I wonder why my Ford Focus is squeaking when I release the throttle, though… 😉 The music is very fitting as well (heavy-ish) but there could be a few more tracks for aural variety.
The damage model looks nice but doesn’t seem to have much of an influence on the actual driving, and the driving itself is focused on fun and not gobs of realism (though I can’t say for sure as I’ve never played any of the supposedly more realistic Colin McRae-games). You still need plenty of skill in any case (so I’m glad PGR 2 taught me the value of proper braking).
In the past two days, I’ve finished the Amateur- and Pro-Championships and enjoyed that immensely. The races in Nordic countries are rather difficult because it’s hard to see the course, night-time races are similarly difficult (but the headlights look amazing), but both never cease to be fun so far.
Haven’t touched live or multiplayer, but there’s not much that can go wrong there. Highly recommended.
I have finally taken the time to watch the last four episodes of this show, and it is one of the very few series I have seen recently where the ending perfectly suits the series. It has a sad undertone — which is evident throughout (by concept as well as by execution) — and quite cleverly avoids the mistake of having to have a “big bang action finale”. All throughout, the artwork is very good and pays huge amounts of attention to tiny details.
Recommended, but beware of the leisurely pace.
If you’re looking for a (properly) scary movie, I can very much recommend the new “Dawn of the Dead”. I’ve also seen “Hellboy” and found it to be well-entertaining, but as I have never seen the comics I cannot really comment on the conversion.
After the easter holidays, I took 4 days off but then used most of those to refurbish the ceiling in a flat in Hannover. That didn’t stop me from picking up a new toy: a Sony Clie UX-50 Palm PDA. Having owned a Palm before (Sony’s first, the Clie PEG-S300 IIRC), the transition was easier for me than for Alex and Patrick who have only used Pocket PCs before. It is a very nice machine, good (bright) screen, surprisingly usable keyboard, bluetooth and wireless LAN (which eats up the battery rather quickly).