Bryce's Pipe Bomb Survival Guide*

I'm typically willing to put up with a lot of design flaws, or poor design decisions in a video game, if there's enough there that's really entertaining. Lost Planet 2 is an example of a game that is simply phenomenal in many ways, but because of one design decision, I can't keep playing it. In Lost Planet 2 you play a snow pirate, who wanders around a desolate, frozen, alien world, scavenging weapons and equipment, while killing the local fauna to harvest thermal energy and keep from freezing to death. For the most part, it plays like your average third person shooter, you can carry up to two weapons, and one flavor of grenade. One of the things that is exceptional about it is the variety of things you'll be shooting at. You have other humans, of course, as well as the myriad alien life forms, all of which are hostile. You've got delicate flying guys, that come at you in swarms, and die by the dozen, you've got spider things the size of large bears that...

What can I say about this movie? It was good, and it was absolutely worth watching. Natalie Portman (playing Nina) looks like a ballerina, and plays perfectly into the role of the socially awkward perfectionist with an extremely repressed passionate side. Mila Kunis (playing Lily) also did a great job as her more carefree rival in the company. I thought Winona Ryder was an inspired choice for the older dancer forced into retirement, and I was sad that she was featured so little. Okay, I've got that out of the way, what can I tell you about the plot that won't give anything away? So, it's about a ballet company, whose star dancer has just retired (forcefully) and they're now going to move on to a new show, featuring a new dancer from the ranks moving to prominence. The show that they are going to perfom is Swan Lake , (please follow that link if you want know anything about it, because I'm only working on what I learned from the movie) But! They're going...

I finally decided to give this show a shot, and the quick verdict is total guilty pleasure. The premise is that an "ordinary family" mysteriously gets super powers. The initial problem is that this is not an ordinary family. Mom is a brilliant researcher, who can afford to put her family in a beautiful mansion of a house, and take the entire family on business trips to Brazil. Michael Chiklis is a completely emasculated police sketch artist, slash mr. mom. The children are remarkably normal, in that they're ungrateful brats, that you'd be tempted to drown in the river if they weren't your own children. One of the basic themes of the show is that when they get their superpowers, they each get powers that allow them to achieve what's been missing in their lives. Mom's a workaholic, and doesn't have enough time for her job and her family, so she gets super speed. Son's a moron, so he becomes a super brain. I'm not sure exactly what the dea...

The GX-46 Soul of Chogokin set is odd for a number of reasons. First is the source material that the mech designs have been drawn from. Traditionally the Soul of Chogokin line has been populated with robots from kids shows from the 70s and 80s, and even amongst those, the majority have been from animation. There are a few robots from live action shows, and a few of the robots from Neon Genesis Evangelion, which actually aired in the mid 90s. In contrast Dygenguar and Aubenseiter appear only in the Super Robot Wars series of video games, with their first appearance occurring in 2005. The other thing that's odd about this set is that you get two "full sized" robots out of the one set. Usually when there's more than one figure included in an SOC set, they're a good bit smaller, with one of them acting as more of an accessory to the other. Anyway, moving a long. The box is huge which makes sense considering how much is packed in there. The only other SOC box ...

Community is a sitcom that's about halfway through it's second season. My good friend would mention it occasionally, but never really said "hey, you need to watch this" So, I'm going to lay it out for all of you: "Hey, you need to watch this" Community starts off with Jeff Winger, who was a very successful lawyer, going back to school, because he lost his license due to his "Degree from Columbia" being from the country of Columbia, and not the university. Jeff is a vain, superficial hipster, who is also a world class manipulator. At any point he is typically capable of bending a group of people to his will, through sheer charisma and creative logic. Jeff is taking a Spanish class where he notices Britta, who is probably the least interesting character, there's nothing wrong with her, but she's just kind of the typical sitcom female lead, she's pretty, smart, and believes in honesty and doing the right thing, even if she doesn...

I finished the latest book by Richard Castle a few days ago, and I've been thinking about how I want to write this review ever since. You see, Richard Castle is a rock star amongst murder mystery novelists, he struck it big with his series of Derek Storm novels, but shocked the world by killing the character at the end of the last book in the series. After that, he found inspiration in NYPD detective Kate Beckett, and based his new character, Nikki Heat, off of her. Naked Heat is the second book in the Nikki Heat series. What's so weird about that? I'm sure all three of my regular readers already know, but none of these people are real, Rick Castle and Det. Beckett are both characters on ABC's crime/drama/comedy series Castle. Haven't watched Castle? For shame, I highly recommend it, it's a perfect guilty pleasure movie, a series of one and done murder mysteries, that are fairly light hearted, with a great comedy dynamic between the characters of Castle, Becket...

I feel like I've spent more time talking about SG :U than any other show on this blog, is that because I love it or hate it? I'm loving it, it's the closest any recent show has come to making me feel like I felt as a kid, watching Star Trek: TNG . That being said, last nights episode just bored the hell out of me. Spot the weakest link The picture shows the core cast members. From the left going clockwise: Camille Ray - She's a civilian administrator, the survivors aboard the Destiny are a mix of military and civilian personnel. She's responsible for the civilians, and butts heads with the military leadership frequently when they make decisions without considering basic human rights. Colonel Everett Young - He's the ranking military officer, with all that entails, he makes the hard decisions, and then has to live with them. He's also not afraid to get his hands dirty. Greer - I think he's a Sergeant, but don't quote me on that, he's actuall...