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This game is just.. wow. Definitely not for the faint of heart. To be honest I’m still getting it handed to me, but oh man is this game ever fun. I’ll keep it kinda short, which is hard since there’s just so many cool things about the game.

Where to even start! This is a far cry from a clean cut, accurate, solid feeling shooter like Team Fortress 2. This is gritty, unsure feeling, all-out chaotic war. The main mode I’ve been playing in multiplayer is Rush: one team attacks, one defends. It starts with two active checkpoints (called Alpha and Bravo) and the attacking team has to blow up both (by setting an explosive charge) and once that’s done, the map unlocks a new area, and two more checkpoints become active. The attacking team has a finite number of lives per checkpoint and so to win as defenders.. you just kill.

The maps are BIG, and a lot of “extra” space for you to go find sniping spots as well as to flank. When you start and each time you die you have a choice of picking which class you want to be (Assault, Engineer, Medic, Recon (aka Sniper)) as well as choosing what weapons/items you want to use. Additional weapons/gadgets unlock as you gain experience, and some weapons can be used across all classes (like the one shotgun and a couple of submachine guns that I have).

Recon is my most played class, but I now realize that I’ve been playing it too much: It is NOT a good idea (as a noob) to play sniper when you’re either on defense, or your team sucks. You’ll either just get rocked by some close combat guy, or picked off by an offensive sniper. My kit for the sniper has the mortar call.. with it you can use your binoculars to call down mortar strikes on specific targets. It’s awesome to do on a checkpoint that the other team needs to defused, since all of them tend to rush there to defuse. Usually end up with at least one kill.

One awesome thing in BC2 you can do as recon (and as any class, but usually more as recon) is to spot people. What you do is hit the spot button and it calls them out, it puts a little red triangle over their head and also shows them on the mini map to your entire team for a little period of time. It’s amazingly useful because close combat is usually in little alleys and in general you have very little visibility.

In general it’s very chaotic.. lots of dust flies up. If someone throws a grenade.. as a sniper you’re waiting patiently for the dust to clear. Almost every wall can be shot down, buildings collapse, trees can be destroyed (I saw one guy take a tank and clear out all the nearby trees/bushes so no-one could use it as cover). It feels a lot like paintball when you see someone run from one building to another and then you lose sight of them.. no idea where they’ll pop up from. You also can only sprint forwards.. you can’t move at sprinting speed while strafing left and right, so it’s less free looking around. A lot of seeing people is based on movement.. especially in jungle/snow maps and the one night map (which is insane).. so a lot of the time you’re in your own hiding spot.. watching to see when something moves. Everyones wearing camo gear, so everyone blends into the environment.

Very cool game.. I’ve only been in a couple of squads that actually communicate.. and there’s SO much potential in an organized squad.. with all the roles you could play. Vehicles are super fun too and can be devastating if used properly. (EXTREMELY hard to pilot a helicopter)

Went to watch Legally Blonde in the last week of its 3 week run in Seattle. A number of people have seen it by now already and all the feedback I’ve heard is positive, so I went to see it with some expectations. I switched my season ticket and got a better seat – Seat F5 Left! 6th row from the stage, a little off center but that’s OK – only until the show started did I realize I’m right in front of the left rack of speakers and subs so the music was super loud for me :|.

Anyhow, when the musical opened I was a little worried, cuz the singing was rather weak for the opening number – but to my relief that was just the ensemble and none of the girls in the opening song was the lead (Elle Woods). The singing was generally well done, though none of the songs seem particularly challenging (nothing like Defying Gravity). The acting/staging and choreography was the more impressive part – there were quite a number of group dances, some of them looking quite difficult (like doing a workout routine with jumping ropes while singing).

The show was very well written – in terms of witty lyrics and throwing in additional humour (more than the movie), but at the same time cramming a lot of complex plot into musical numbers. It follows the movie’s plot line quite closely (which I find surprising, I was expecting a lot of watering down since I couldn’t imagine how you’d pack the movie into the musical), but the musical did run quite long (I think 2h 45 min with intermission). Also, the composer/librettist/book writer does a good job in moving the plot in song. A gripe I have with many modern musicals (e.g. Catch Me If You Can) is all too often the actors talk to advance the plot, and then break into song just to convey emotion – which to me misses the mark of a good musical. But Legally Blonde doesn’t fall into this “cop out” and includes a fair bit of action in its songs, making the musical more fun.

The excitement does taper off towards the end of Act 1, but picks up strongly throughout Act 2. Overall its a fun and festive musical that reminds me a bit of Hairspray in terms of style. Unfortunately no super memorable song from the musical that I can hum the morning after, so I’ll give it 3.5 stars… or adopting sadd3j’s new rating system, 3.5 rolls:

On recommendation from YFA, Sam and I rented this through iTunes. After the Olympics and learning that the MacBook could output properly to the TV, I felt like it was finally worth it to rent since there was a way to watch it on the big screen. We only got the SD version, but it was more than good enough. Anyway, onto the movie.

A super short review, since I’m not sure what to really say about it. Technically speaking, it probably would have been more aurally and visually impressive if we watched the BD or something, instead of an SD version with only stereo sound.

After watching Up in the Air, I found it to give off a similar feeling of satisfaction. I guess I don’t want to say why, to not ruin Up in the Air for YFA, but despite the very different subjects, they were kind of the similar. The first few bomb scenes of the movie made it very continuously intense.. and in the end, it really made me want to play Battlefield Bad Company 2 :p

I give it a 4 out of 5 TPRolls

Never thought I’d use the Apple Genius Bar since I’m quite the genius myself (har har ;)), and since I don’t expect you guys to either 😛 I’d describe my story with the Genius Bar.

So the story begins with a regular browsing of SD (the American RFD) and I noticed a thread along the lines of “Apple recalls HDs for Macbooks from mid 2006 to 2007”. Since I bought my macbook in June 07 (wow it’s almost 3 years!) and my hard drive has died (twice), I went to read the thread… basically Apple is doing a recall on dead HDs for that generation of macbooks. Wee! Basically I have to bring my macbook into the Genius Bar for a repair, and it’ll be completely free of charge. Alternatively, the program does mention reimbursing any “out of warranty” repair costs. Since I didn’t repair my HD with Apple but ended up fixing it myself by purchasing a new HD, I was wondering if Apple would reimburse the cost of that HD instead… so I called CustomerCare, who told me to talk to the Genius technician… who knew nothing about the reimbursement part, but it seems like the “out of warranty” repair must be done with Apple if I were to get reimbursed, so I went ahead with just a simple HD replacement.

So on a Friday evening, I went to my local Apple store at Bellevue Square (good thing it is close… not like Yorkdale far). I went to the Genius bar and one of the staff roaming around the store checked me in. I arrived at 8:15pm and I had made an appointment for 8:30pm (the place was surprisingly busy, considering the store closes at 9:30pm), and I was half expecting them to be able to help me earlier since I was there with my laptop, but alas, apparently the floor sales aren’t all geniuses 😛 and there’s actually a very small number of geniuses at the store. So I told them instead of waiting for my appointment, I’d come back at 8:30pm.

After shopping for 15 minutes, I came back and waited…and waited… and no “genius” was able to assist me until almost 8:45pm. (Again, very surprised at how busy they are). Also apparently there are two queues at the Genius Bar – one for iPhone/iPods, the other for macs. And good thing I made an appointment, because their display was saying “No more new appointments for the day”, despite having a whole hour remaining before the store closes. Finally a genius came to the bar to help me, and I pulled out the printout of the recall details from the Apple website, and then pulled out my macbook. (At this point, I had re-inserted my original, busted HD into the macbook, and kept the HD that I bought at home) So the genius said he has to run some tests to verify the problem and then determine if I’m eligible for the recall. He plugged in some external USB HD thing and attempted to boot externally, but to no success – at which point I told him it is obvious my HD is dead since you can actually hear the clicking sound of the HD upon bootup, and he said then the boot sequence won’t work and it won’t be able to boot from the external HD (not sure why, but I’m not questioning his judgment as long as he is putting me through the recall program). So he took down my mac’s serial number and such, and he also noticed the infamous chassis crack, and he said that can be replaced for free as well! sweet! :D. He checked his computer and found that they don’t have any replacement HDs in stock (my original HD is 80GB, which they don’t make anymore, so he’s forced to “upgrade” my HD to a 160GB… though in reality the HD I bought for myself is 320GB). He asked if I want to leave the macbook with them and he’ll give me a call next week when the part is in and they’ve finished the repair… at which point I surprised him by saying “No, can I come back and drop off my macbook when you’ve the part in?” He must have thought I’m really dumb or something to want to keep a non-functional macbook, but in reality I do have a working HD at home and I do need the macbook on Monday night for worship practice. So he took down my contact info and said he’ll call me when the part is in.

Come Monday afternoon, I was hoping the Apple Store would call me to tell me I can bring my macbook in, as I was planning on dropping it off after worship practice at 9pm (store closes at 9:30pm), since I was in the area. Since they haven’t called, I decided to call them instead at 5pm, at which point I was able to confirm the HD is in and I can bring my macbook in for fixing. So after worship practice that evening, I swapped out my HD again and rushed to the Apple Store to drop off my macbook. I got there around 9:15pm and the staff was already cleaning up (apparently they clean all their monitors and screens of all their device before store closing). No genius was around to help me (again) so I ended up dropping off my laptop with the store manager. He looked at the work order and marked “no KBB” on it – signaling that when they replace my cracked chassis, don’t replace the keyboard. 🙁 He said the store will call in a few days when the repair is complete. As I was leaving the store… it felt a little strange since I didn’t get any receipt that I dropped off the laptop or anything, so what if they misplaced my laptop or something? But Apple won’t screw me over right… and so I left.

Tuesday at work, I received a call saying my laptop repair is done and ready for pickup, so I decided to swing by after work to get it (which makes the 3rd time I’m dropping by the Apple Store in 5 days, good thing I live close to it!) I went around 6:30pm, and it is super busy inside as usual. One of the floor sales asked if he could help me, and I told him I’m only here to pick up my laptop after a repair, at which point he pulled me aside to one of the iMacs, logged in as himself to some store management website, and entered an order for some 1 year AppleCare plan, and then he asked me what my laptop was as he was filling out the form. I got a little suspicious and reiterated to him I’m here to pickup my laptop… not to buy AppleCare… but he said that was the system they use to get the repair guys at the back to bring out the laptop :|. So after that is done, he just asked me to wait… and so I entertained myself with the iPod Touches playing Flight Control for a whole… 20 minutes 😐 After that super long wait, they brought my laptop out and called my name, checked my ID and got me to sign papers etc etc. and gave me back my macbook.

Getting home, I checked my repaired macbook – the chassis is fixed, and the keyboard AND trackpad is both replaced! 🙂 The hard drive is fresh as well, and apparently they put snow leopard on it as well, so now I somehow have a free copy of snow leopard. Did a quick check on system info to make sure they didn’t switch my laptop with someone else’s (since I upgraded the RAM in it myself), but all is in order. Looking at the bill, the total cost of all the repairs came to somewhere around $360, all of which I got for free :). Definitely no complaints about the repair itself (not that it was anything challenging) but the store definitely could use more “geniuses” and have better ways to streamline their workflow, imo.

Sam and I, amidst the snowstorm last night, went to catch Up in the Air playing at Silver City Richmond Hill. It was way in the back of their theatres and there was only one couple and one other person aside from us. The screen quality was dimmer, more traditional, almost like there was a vignette around the whole screen and the contrast was too high, but it kind of added to the movie (unless it was the actual movie itself, but I don’t think so).

The movie itself was excellent, I can’t really say much more than that since I wouldn’t want to ruin it as I experienced it, but I highly recommend it. I would also recommend not reading any synopsis, because it was really great watching it with no preconceived notions or any idea what would happen and watching it unfold.

I’ve wanted to see it since I first saw the previews before TIFF and finally lucked out that it’s playing so close. I walked in not even knowing if it was a semi-documentary, or what, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It’s out on DVD March 9, and I’ll probably pick up a copy somewhere down the road.

4 out of 5 TPRolls