Jurassic: The Hunted

This is a game I had absolutely never heard of until one day discovering it in the bowels of GameFly’s shooter section.  It came out in November 2009 but looks like it is two years older.  The plot is basically this – your plane gets sucked into a vortex and crashes somewhere in the Bermuda Triangle.  Time is all messed up and other people that were on the plane with you have aged into old men, having been living in this area for decades now.  The place is also plagued with raptors that need a good killing.

You can kill this.

Obviously, the story is ridiculous and the plot is not the reason to play this game.  The voice acting and character depth are trash, and overall anything related to story elements is trash.

That being said, the game is somewhat fun in an odd way.  Despite being completely linear, requiring no cognitive work whatsoever and being terribly repetitive and unimaginative, it entertains you for a brief time as a simple, casual shooter.  There are small elements that attempt to add to its depth, such as the adrenaline mode that allows you to slow-mo target the dinos’ vitals for added pain, but nothing really changes the fact it’s just a basic barebones shooter.

The whole game took me 2.5 hours to beat from start to finish my first playthrough on regular difficulty.   Once you beat the game on regular, you open up a harder difficulty for a second play.  Ironically, this difficulty ends up being easier because the game presents you with a one-hit-kill weapon about two minutes in.

Most of the achievements are fairly simple.  To get all of them, you’ll have to play through twice.  For me, that wasn’t worth it – as I didn’t regret playing the game once, but I had no interest in doing it again.  The sign of a true rental-quality game.

As a perk, it’s almost always on Available Now status through GameFly.  If you have a plan that offers more than one game at a time, this will hardly impact you, and is an easy one to rent and mail back the same day after you’re done.

Dead to Rights: Retribution

I had not previously played a Dead to Rights title before this game, so for me, this was a new experience.  I knew little about what it was before renting, only that it had modest reviews and involved guns – criteria usually good enough for me to merit a rental.

There are a lot of positives to the game – the combo gun/fighting gameplay works pretty well, the canine companion element is a fun diversion from the pace of the rest of the game, the storyline is decent and the game looks pretty good visually.  The weapon variety is nice enough, the fight sequences allow a lot of variation (taking people hostage and kicking them off a roof is joyous) and there are definitely much worse action shooters out there.

On the negative side, the AI can be ridiculously stupid at times, the game certainly has its dry points and extra drawn-out sections and doesn’t change much from level to level.  By the time the 7th or 8th of the 10 levels came my way, I was looking forward to the game being over.

This man is not having fun.

Since I type these particular reviews from a rental standpoint, I’d consider this game very worth your time.  If you had bought it, particularly back at launch for full price, it would be a serious letdown and certainly isn’t worth too much of your cash.  It doesn’t do anything new, isn’t innovative against any of its competitors and in a few years (if not already) will be a forgotten note in the slue of modern action games that involve shooting, fighting, bullet time and average-quality stories.  But as a rental, it’s an easy play, offers a sufficient amount of fun to justify its time in your home and you can send it back and move on with your life.

John Woo Presents Stranglehold

This title is practically antique on the 360, released in September ‘07.  And quite frankly, I hated it.

John Woo behind a camera is great.  Chow Yun Fat-ish main characters in gun-fu films is great.  Apparently those things in a now 3+ year-old video game are poop.  This game’s story is terrible, the voice acting is abysmal, the controls are junk and its fast-action mandatory bullet time movement gets old after about a half hour.  The graphics are terrible, the story is short and the multiplayer has long been rendered nonexistent.  I played halfway through this game before I just couldn’t take it anymore and it went back in the envelope.

Not my cup of tea.

If you read reviews of this game on IGN and GamerNode, they’re not too bad.  But they were written years ago.  I think I might have enjoyed this game much more in 2007, too.  Sure, it has its cool moments.  It flows in a very Chinese action movie sort of way.  It pretends to be a film, rewarding you for doing ridiculous action movie things like shooting guys while hanging on a chandelier or sliding impossibly across a long, set dinner table while double-wielding magnums and popping baddies in the eyes.  But to me, today, this is all novelty, and not interesting enough to make up for a game that lacks in all other areas.

Rent it if you really want to, but it’s easy to shrug off.

Clive Barker’s Jericho

Wow, talk about old and crappy.  This game is practically free to buy brand new on Amazon ($6.99), and can be rented any day of the week.  If you’re a PC gamer, you can buy it new for $0.99.  It came out in October, 2007.

And it’s worth every penny.

I haven’t disliked something with such passion in a while.  This game makes Jurassic: The Hunted look like the greatest game ever made.  I can’t even express its stupidity.

Jericho is definitely a trip to hell...

The best quality this game has is the ability to play as six different characters who all have different skill sets and abilities.  Too bad that’s the only good quality.  Every single other element of this game is crap.  I don’t even want to say anything else.  It’s infuriating.

There you have it.  Happy renting.

In my review, I was pretty positive about the overall experience of buying from 6 Dollar Shirts.  They weren’t paper thin, the printing was great, the colors were vibrant and they washed well.  The order shipped in a reasonable amount of time, and keeping in the back of my mind how much I paid for the shirts, I was pleased.  Sure, there are better quality T-shirts in the world, but for $6 they are better than the Kleenex-thick bullcrap most people conceive they’d be.

So here we are, 15 months after I wrote my initial review.  The shirts were all worn regularly over the past year.  Many of them have undergone dozens of washings and none have been sitting unused in a drawer.  Whether they were worn outright or underneath other shirts during the colder months for insulation, all the T-shirts have been heavily worn.

That begs the question – how well do they hold up?  A year+ later, are they still any good?

The answer is two answers – yes and no.  In some regards, they are holding up very well.  In others, not as much.

Certain shirts have naturally been worn more than others over the past 15 months (the black, blue and neutral-colored ones, primarily).  Obviously, the blacks aren’t nearly as black and the blues aren’t nearly as blue as they were when I opened the box.  This is a reality that isn’t really the fault of 6 Dollar Shirts, though.  It’s the rare T-Shirt that can be worn near weekly for over a year and still look as good as day one.  So while it’s the case, it’s to be expected.

As far as the screen printing goes, it’s held up very well.  Not a single one of the 11 shirts I ordered has had any of its printing wear off, crack or crumble.  The ones that have been worn to death are showing some fading bleeding through the print, but nothing major.  My most-worn shirts of all (Su Suss Sussudio & Kill Your Idols) still have their lettering and imagery perfectly in-tact.

Where the shirts have gone wrong for me is with shrinkage.  They’re all still the same width, they all still have the same sleeve lengths and neck hole sizes, but I’m at the point where each time I wash/dry them, they get a little bit shorter.  Many of them are now too short to wear as an out-front shirt, because every time I move I’d be showing off my sides.  They’re strictly layering shirts now.  When I do my laundry, I wash everything on cold 100% of the time, and always dry things on low/delicate.  If I used a higher heat setting, I can’t imagine how small they would have become.

Because of the above, coupled with the color loss and fading on the more-worn shirts, about half of my 6 Dollar Shirts now look pretty junky and I can’t say I’d wear them in public.   Unless perhaps to Wal-Mart at 3am, where you can be naked with a raccoon tail strung over your penis on a dental floss cord and be as acceptably dressed as everyone else in the building.

But despite half of them being junky – I did pay $50 for 10 shirts.  Having them do me solid for even a year isn’t too bad, if you ask me.

Overall, I’d still recommend 6 Dollar Shirts as great value for the money.  They won’t last forever, but they don’t cost you much.  And hell, let’s face it – half of novelty tees play into socially current humor.  After a year or two, many aren’t funny anyway.  It’s perfect timing for them to turn into faded little cotton squares you can give a 12-year old girl who likes to show off her midriff to wear to a high school football game.

Buy a box, enjoy them until they wear out, then buy another.

Now this is a cool case. Not just because of its sleek design, black finish and fancy blue LED lighting – but because it keeps your hardware wonderfully cool. With room for tons of drives, a very easy-access control panel on the front top and plenty of space for anything you want to put inside, this case is perfect for a wide range of computer users. From gamers to media professionals, or just the average guy who likes to plug lots of things in, this case will suit.

It is big enough to build just about any system imaginable, and the design of its interior makes it so that you shouldn’t have to remove any hardware to access other hardware when you need to do a swap.

Review Intro:

The Blackhawk is packaged in a big box, because it’s a big boy. This is the type of case you need to make sure you have enough room for before you buy it. A full tower, it stands about 18.5” high and over 20” in depth.

The styrofoam padding in the box is solid and should keep it from getting damaged. It is your standard side of the box padding. The case is also wrapped in a plastic bag for scratch control. The Blackhawk is, not surprisingly, black. In fact, it couldn’t be more black. Even the wording on the control panel that tells you what each knob and button do are black.

So let’s take a closer look…

Specifications:

http://www.xclio.com/products/case-blackhawk.htm

Blackhawk is a solid chassis with powerful multi-function and unique emotional design. Its unbeatable air cooling system is the best among the industry.

Dimensions: 560 x 210 x 510mm (D*W*H)

Starting with a top-down view of the case, you can see that it has two fans on top. This top portion is made of an open-air black mesh/grill style plastic, allowing as much air flow as possible through the two fans down to the hardware. The front section of the top contains a blue LED bar and a whole mess of controls. The three knobs on the left control fan speeds, the first vertical set of buttons powers the fans on and off, and the third vertical set of buttons turns on/off the fan LED lights. Next to that we have four USB 2.0 ports, a headphone and mic jack and an E-SATA input. The three buttons on the far right are the rear LED, reset and large power button.

These controls are awesome. The blue LEDs are fantastic looking, but are quite bright in the dark, so having the ability to power them off at night is lovely. The fan speed control knobs let you slow down the fans to the point where you can hardly hear them, or crank them up when you are doing more demanding tasks.

The side panel has a massive 250mm clear fan, of course with blue LED. This thing produces huge airflow and effectively cools nearly everything inside, focusing most importantly on the motherboard, and thus the RAM and CPU. This fan has its own power connection and is the only fan in the case that needs hooked up individually. All other fans are powered by a SATA cable running to the board that handles the front control panel. We’ll see that shortly.

The expansion bays are accessed through the front. Hard drives and 5.25” drives are inserted this way behind the fans. The fans are directly responsible for cooling them. Little mini swing doors along the sides grant you access to remove the fan and input hardware.

I’ve read that these front doors are easy to break, and the case’s instruction manual somewhat alludes to that fact as it repeatedly tells you to open it carefully with two hands. However, I had no trouble with them at all and they don’t appear physically brittle. Regardless, the number of steps involved with installing a hard drive or 5.25” increases the chances of something snapping or going wrong.

In the rear, you can note that the power supply gets mounted on the floor of the case, which when installed is a great space option. Six PCI slots, an I/O port and a 120mm fan space also exist. There is no huge fan behind that large grill unless you install one yourself, but unless you really fill this thing up with hardware, it probably won’t be necessary.

Inside the case is a spiffy little sack filled with hardware. It’s full of screws, bay rails, cable ties and one of those little speakers. There is also literature that tells you how to install certain things in the case. I didn’t photograph that because, well, who cares about a picture of an instruction manual? Certainly not you.

Here is a shot of the front bay expansions from the inside. There are two cages that hold four HDDs, allowing you to install up to eight hard drives in this case. All hard drive installations are done through the front of the case, by attaching the slide rails to the drive and putting it in. Then the connections are made inside the case. This is the same for 5.25” drives. You pop off the fan, slide the rack out, attach the rails to the drive, slide it back in, reattach the fan, then hook up the cables inside. It’s a few steps, but it all moves very quickly so I don’t find it to be a tremendous hassle. It’s not something you do every day. The time you save not screwing in tiny screws and having to remove both sides of the case is made up by the few extra seconds you spend latching plastic together in the Blackhawk.

The two fans on the top of the case, from the inside.

And the circuit board that operates the top control panel and all fans, hooked up by simply plugging in a single SATA cable.

The power supply is one of the only components you’ll install in this case that need a screwdriver. It sits on the bottom of the case and screws on very easily.

This case is large enough to support whatever motherboard you want to put inside. These pictures show an installed ATX board and a Zotac GeForce 9800 GT video card. The video card, in many cases, is quite large and will extend all the way to the HDD bay area. In this case you can see it fits just fine. There is so much room in this case that I feel the need to buy more hardware to put inside, as it just looks too darn empty.

When the fans run full blast in this bad boy, they are pretty loud. That’s just because there are a lot of them. But, you won’t always need them operating at full blast, and you have the ability to adjust their speeds or turn them off completely right from the top panel. They do an excellent job of cooling. To be honest, when I have them all running at full speed, I feel a breeze coming from the case as I sit next to it. The top fans in particular throw out a lot of air. On their lowest settings, they are still turning acceptably fast and are almost inaudible, so there’s really nothing to complain about.

My machine has been running for a few hours and has lots of programs running. Core temp is currently 30C.

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Not only do the fans light up, but the LED bar across the top panel is quite bright and functions to illuminate the control panel, and the Xclio logo glows on the front of the case. To the left of the logo, two other LED dots exist. One is constant and indicates power, while the other blinks with HDD activity.

The LEDs in the top fans don’t illuminate as much as the others, likely just a result of their positioning.

The rear LED really helps to light up the ports on the back, which is very handy.

Conclusion:

This is an awesome case that showcases a great combination of function and style. It has plenty of room for expansion for anyone’s needs, cools itself well, has a very intuitive top control panel and generally looks great. Its construction is solid and I can see this thing lasting a very long time.

I’ve really found nothing about this case that bothers me and would recommend it to anyone who spends a lot of time computing and requires a case with lots of space and good cooling.

For the price, it’s a great deal.

This vacation rental commercial shows Unitard crawling over a hotel counter stopping people from renting a hotel room. The point of the commercial, and of the site, is to let you know that you can often rent a whole vacation rental house somewhere for the same cost as a little hotel room. Granted, the idea of doing such a thing would never really cross my mind, so it did pique my interest.

I didn’t really chuckle at Unitard, but at the father’s reaction to him after he left. For me, that was the highlight. I adore stupid comedy more than anything, but Unitard focuses a little more on stupid and a little less on comedy. I’m not sure the commercial convinced me of anything, but it did tell me there’s a possibility of renting homes when on vacation.

What do you think of Unitard? Does this amuse you, or is it dumb? Have you ever rented a house when on vacation? Did you even know you could?

It does have one thing going for it… any commercial is better than this one.

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Yeah, I guess I’m pretty serious about things being slow.   That’s two weeks worth of articles.  Yikes!

And, if you’re interested, here’s a sponsor link, presented to you so I can buy food: Kayden Kross on Blake Logan.  It’s an adult link.  Be warned.

And then…

PowerMat Wireless Charging Unit

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Review: Left 4 Dead 2

Wow, that’s it? I’d better get writing. Seeya!

The Hamilton Beach SmartToast 4 Slice Toaster is a wide-slot toaster with a few fancy settings.  It comes in stainless and black versions.  From the picture, your clever mind can figure out which one I own.

Right out of the box, it works like a toaster.  You put bread in it, and it comes out as toast.  This is a good thing.

I’ve read some other reviews that say the thing stops working after about 6 months, or starts dropping the handles on its own and starting up the heating elements.  One of the things I like about this toaster is how easy it is to lower the handles – on that same token, it does make the claims about the handles dropping themselves more believable.  They do move very easily, so if their mechanisms ever weakened, I could see how that would be a possibility.

But, my toaster has yet to prove itself a fire hazard.  As such, I’m a big fan of it – especially since it upgraded us from a cheap Wal-Mart Durabrand toaster that was about $8 a few years ago.  It does a fine job of making toast without burning, and the intensity knob works well.  If you have it set to 2, you’re not going to get toast as black as a 5 when it comes out.

The toaster’s control panel has a lot of settings.  If you don’t push one, you’ll get standard toasting.  If you do, you have the option of frozen bagels, frozen toast or regular bagels.  The toaster is fancy enough to know what to do with each type of product to toast it properly straight from its frozen state.  This isn’t that useful for toast, because not a lot of people eat frozen toast, but frozen and un-frozen bagels are pretty common.

The crumb catcher trays slide out from the front and slide back in super easy.  There is no unhinging some magic door on the bottom of the toaster that drops all the crap or anything complicated.  You don’t even have to pick the toaster up off the counter to get the crumbs out.  Just slide out the tray, dump it in the trash and slide it back in.  There is one on each side and they’re just dandy.

So yeah – that’s as much as I can possibly say about a toaster.  For a gadget that runs around $35, it does a really good job and I’d recommend picking it up.  Until mine catches on fire or starts turning itself on, I’m not going to put a huge amount of stock into negative reviews.  It’s a nice-looking toaster that makes toast, and quite frankly, that’s all I could ask.

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Anyway, here we’ve got the Emerson Coffee/Espresso/Cappuccino Maker.  So far, I’m a big fan – particularly since I was upgrading from a basic Mr. Coffee 12 cup coffee maker.

For something that runs under $100 and boasts both a standard coffee maker and a pump espresso maker, it’s a steal.

The coffee side is a standard 10 cup coffee maker.  While the carafe is a little weak and dribbles when you pour, that’s really no big deal.  The thing makes a great cup of coffee.  Inside the water tank, there is a cool ladder-like plastic thing that lets you know how many cups of water you’ve poured in, which is a great help in making sure you’ve added the right amount.  It brews fast and does a great job.

The espresso side works very well, too.  Preheating only takes a few minutes, and then once you add the espresso it’s on its way out within seconds.  I have no trouble packing the grounds into the filter, locking it in place, and turning on the pump.  A small espresso style cup fits easily under the spout and there is a nice little drip catcher underneath for easy cleaning.  It makes a cup of espresso as good as I’ve ever had anywhere else, so I couldn’t be happier with having the ability to brew such quality in my own house.

Overall, it’s a fine product.  I’m not going to give it any silly “9/10″ rating or anything like that.  Simply put, if you’re a friend to coffee and want the ability to brew coffee, espresso and froth your own milk for a great price, pick up this unit.

Which leads me to another thought…

Wedding presents.  We’ve got quite a few.  A substantial number of them are household and kitchen electronics/appliances.  I figure, since I’m a product reviewer and all, that I might as well type up a little review of each one as I open and use it.  Nothing huge, and not a full, in-depth review, but at least a little insight as to what I think.

So, expect that.  First up will be the Emerson coffee/espresso maker.  Yum.