Iron Man 2, Kratos and Some New (old) Games

Today was the first full day I have had off from work in some time where I was left alone to my own devices. My better half works part-time at florist during holidays and will be busy today and tomorrow. So what is a temporary bachelor to do with such free time? Well first I stayed up until 3 am playing the Halo Reach Beta. Then I slept in until 10 am this morning. After prying myself out of bed and hitting the shower, I headed over to the local IMAX to check out Iron Man 2. The 11:30 am show was the only one not sold out today (apparently geeks and comic book nerds drink exessively on Friday nights. Who knew?) So I snagged a quick breakfast at home and headed over to check out the flick. I was relatively impressed with the film on its own merits, though I liked the first installment a bit more. The storyline and writing were not fully up to par, but the movie was salvaged by strong acting and brisk action sequences. Robert Downey Jr. did what he does best, be whitty and prance about the screen in a self-important strut. He definitely knows how to play narcissism. Scarlett Johansson was hot and Mickey Rourke did not disappoint as Whiplash. Sam Rockwell's character was just annoying though. Really, I just wanted Whiplash to deck him and get it over with 5 minutes after their introduction. Overall, I would give Iron Man II 3.5 out of 5 starts. If you do see the movie, be sure to sit through the credits for a teaser for the the next installment in the building Avengers film lexicon.

After checking out the flick, I headed over to Comically Speaking, the comic book store in Reading where I work on occasion to help repair and sort vintage video games. Due to my crazy work schedule of late at my primary job, I have not had a chance to spend much time there in the past few weeks and wanted to see if we got anything cool in. Things have been a bit slow there, but I was able to snag a couple of games for my collection, as well as Issue # 1 of the new God of War Comic Book.

To be honest, I am a bit dissapointed in this addition to the God of War story line. The art is rather abstract and "colored" primarily in gray tones. Given the over the top artwork and color pallettes of the video games, I find this an odd choice to depict the bloody god of war. I won't go into the story arc that this series introduces, but I will say that the material covered is nothing particularly new to the series. Bascially, more of the same depicted in a subdued style. Since when is Kratos subdued?

As I mentioned, I did pick up a few games that were not already in my collection, including Penguin Land for the Sega Master System. For those of you who grew up in the 80's arcade era, this is pretty much a port of the game Pengo. There is some fun gameplay here and I am always happy to score a new boxed Master System game as they are getting harder and harder to locate.

I was also able to snag a loose copy of Micro Machines for the Sega Genesis. This is basicially the conceptual decendant of RC Pro-AM, the NES game that which jump-started the RC/Cart Racer genre. Released in 1991 for the NES and two years later on the Sega Genesis, Micro Machines places the familiar world of remote controlled cars into some new and fun environments, such as a garden, on a river (boats taking the place of cars) and even on a pool table. Since I have a full sized arcade cab which houses a Sega Genesis console at its core, I am working on beefing up my Genesis collection. Stay tuned as I hope to start creating some video reviews of classic Genesis games as played on this machine.

Mommy's Best Games Interview Coming

Tomorrow, on Mother's Day (how appropriate!) I will be sitting down with Nathan and Amy Fouts of Mommy's Best Games to do an interview and see what they have coming up on the horizon. If you have played the Indie Games/XBL hit Shoot One Up, then you are familiar with thier work. I was able to preview their next release, Grapple Buggy, at PAXEast and must say that I was impressed. So Keep an eye on the Front Page for this interview, which I hope to have edited and online sometime next week.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndYJTx0Eaks[/youtube]