Adam’s Rambling Thoughts

When I saw the new features in Madden 10 I was pumped and, as I do every year, I went out and pre-ordered it. I’ve been a Madden player since 1994 and I love this franchise. I’m absolutely willing to spend $50-$60 a year to keep playing as that investment gets me about 200 hours or more of fun filled play time. Then I see this video:

At 1:00 in the video you see Elite mode pop up. It appears that you have to have Elite mode to play the game on All-Madden difficulty, which I’ve been doing since 1995. It appears that I paid $60 for a game, then I have to pay more to enable the difficulty I want to play it at? Is this serious? Also I have to pay more to get the most out of my superstar in my career? WTF did I spend $60 on then since you’ve only given me 4/5 of the game? THIS IS ABSURD.

Honestly I’m not sure what to do now. I’m a huge fan of football and the Pittsburgh Steelers and I look forward every year to playing this. At this point I’m considering 2010 being my last Madden game ever and I’ll just play franchise over and over like I did with 2001 on the PS1 when I had a ton of free time. All I can really say is EA, you got me. This is my favorite game and now I have to pay you $60 plus $$$ for unlocks to the features I want. I’ve been screwed. I know most people say, “Well just don’t buy it.” Well it’s not that simple for me, this is my absolute favorite game. Guess I need to find another football game….

aaltemus Entertainment, Gaming ea madden 10 micro transaction adam altemus

Honestly, I do want to try to keep this blog tech related but, I felt utterly compelled to post this review of my recent viewing of The Watchmen.  When a co-worker showed me the preview to this months ago, I was floored.  A great story done by the same person who did 300, which is one of my favorite movies in recent years.  This was a definite first weekend watch. Well, it is now the first weekend so let’s see how it really was.

The Good
The story line is great.  If you have read the graphic novel, you know this.  And, towards the middle to the end of this movie it actually shows up and you start to see why this is so great.  The acting, while nothing close to Oscar worthy, is capable.   There is some decent gore, if you like that, which of course I do.  Lastly, the music is good, it is classic rock and some really good selections at that.

The Bad
Similar to Peter Jackson’s King Kong, this movie is too long with too much attention being paid to too many things that could have been left out.  Yeah, stay true to the story but, seriously it is a movie.  Make it a good movie experience.  In a movie with a story this good I should never find myself bored silly, which I did numerous times in this three hour zinger.   Also, every five minutes you are presented with a nice shot of the d**k of Dr. Manhatten.  I understand clothing is irrelevant to him but, I want to be entertained and I do not want to spend three hours staring at a CGI p***is.  I just don’t, it is COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY.

The music, while good music if the songs are listened to standalone, was completely out of place and seemed to wander in out of nowhere and catch you by surprise in moments that left you going “WTF????”

The Ugly
Three hours staring at a CGI schlong.  I don’t want to harp on this but, it was beyond distracting and pretty much ruined the movie.

Conclusion
The Watchmen had so much promise but, left it completely unfufilled and overall I did not enjoy the movie nearly one iota as much as I thought I would. Maybe I was expecting too much but,  I won’t even rent it from Netflix when it comes out to be honest, which says a lot because I really try to pull the good out of every movie I watch because I love them so much.

aaltemus Entertainment, Humor blue, cgi, dr. manhatten, movie, watchmen