Indiana Jones 4 - good as ever

Ok, since my last post was more about the "Sex and the City" premiere than about the movie I actually watched that night, I thought I better write about that one too.

I've always been a huge Indiana Jones fan - but only when they feature the one, true Indy: Harrison Ford. I love the first 3 movies and the adventure-games by LucasArts are still among my all-time favorites! I don't think I ever finished a SCUMM^TM based click-and-point adventure as often as "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis". I still had wished they would've used the storyline from that game for the 4th movie - because that game had a storyline worthy of a movie!

Anyway, I'm drifting off. I don't want this to be a real movie-critic, there are more than enough sites out there who focus on that and have "trained professionals" to write the reviews. I just wanna say how I liked the movie and what impression it left on me.

I think the movie was great. I read alot online about how it has too little plot, is too fast-paced. But I can't share these views. I've been watching the old Indiana Jones as I was young and then later as I grew older - and today I watched the latest movie and it still felt like the old ones. There are a lot of action-sequences, yes but it was the same in the old movies too. And why not have aliens in there? It's not more unrealistic than having the lost ark kill Nazi's with "god's wrath" or having heart being ripped out of ppl's chests and still staying alive... So all in all, the movie felt like a real Indiana Jones movie to me. And despite the age, Harrison Ford still is the good old Indiana, especially when he's running from something or taking hits and being beaten badly, he still looks just like 20 years ago.

Go Indy, go!

picture taken from and probably © www.moviegod.de

Sex and the City > Indiana Jones 4?

Yes yes, I know. Definitely a NO to that question from my side. But tonight at the cinema it did look like it. Premiere of the "Sex and the City" movie in our local cinema. And we decided to go watch the latest Indiana Jones at that time! We were wondering already when we looked up info that Indiana Jones 4 wasn't showing on the biggest screen they had. Of course not! That one was reserved for "Sex and the City"...

And even though I knew there probably would be alot of ppl there to watch the premiere, I didn't expect that... the place was packed! And to little surprise there were mostly women! They had additional waiters roaming around and were handing out champaign... took me like 20 mins in the line just to get my coke for the movie!

I had to take pictures with my cellphone hastely since I just couldn't believe it. Never seen that place so packed, and I was there for the Episode 1 premiere many years ago.

Fixing the terrace - one day's notice?

This morning when I left my apartment, I found a note from the building administration notifying the residents that the terraces will be repaired... starting tomorrow!

I remember my landlady telling me quite along time ago already that she found an agreement with the administration to have the terraces repaired. Actually, I didn't think they would have to go through such extreme activities. I was quite satisfied with my terrace and I think only a few smaller fixes would've been enough. There are simply several things that I don't like about this whole thing:

• The notification was really on short notice! Putting up a note the day before they actually plan to start? I just read the note today when leaving the house.
• No additional information was posted. I have no idea when exactly they will start with my place, if I have to remove everything from there (which won't be too easy since I'm usually alone and I don't have a lot of room to put my garden stuff), if I need to be home at a certain time and above all: no word about what exactly they are planning to do and when they will be done with it! Summer is coming - faster than I would like, actually - and the last thing I want is for my garden outside to be unusable!

Let's hope for the best. I'm glad to see they are doing something to fix certain shortcomings and broken stuff, but not knowing what to expect is quite annoying and troubling. I like having my peace, I like my outside-area of my apartment and I'd hate not being able to use it for a longer time - and having workers around all the time when I want my peace.

[Update]
After calling the person in charge, he assured me the work won't be taking long - that is should actually be done at the same day the person starts. It was even planned that the worker starts today but it seems he didn't get there and will arrive by tomorrow then. That sounds good. I still don't know exactly what they will be doing, if they will just fix some things or actually replace the whole floor. But as long as it gets better afterwards, I'm alright with it.
[/Update]

Amazon UK cheaper than DE?

I ordered some games from Amazon today. The strange thing is: I ordered them from the UK. Why? 3 reasons:

1. Not all games were available in Germany, either because they simply take longer to be released (localisation?) or they are not even rated yet and might be forbidden to be sold here in Germany. I'm not gonna go into details about why - I have my own opinion about this whole thing but I would just end up ranting about it.


2. Altogether, the whole thing was cheaper when ordering from the UK. They usually have a 10% off the price when you pre-order games, and almost all of them were pre-orders. So even including shipping and handling and tax, The UK order was like 10 Euro cheaper than if I had ordered the same games from Amazon Germany.


3. I prefer original language versions of games normally. Usually that means having an english version of a game. Most games are localized for the german market. That wouldn't be a bad thing, but sometimes the original language is not included anymore. And german translations aren't always the best, especially when voice-acting is involved. The problem is that it's often unclear how the german version will be and if the game will still feature the original language support until the game is actually released. And I don't like bad surprises like that.

So when I think about it, I'm usually better off ordering from the UK anyway. Just surprised me today that the whole thing actually is cheaper than I thought. But ohwell why not? We live in a globalized world, right? Well, might aswell go with the advantages of that.

Comic Salon Erlangen

Today I finally was able to spend alot more time at the Comic Salon in Erlangen. I've been looking forward to it alot and I was not disappointed.

I held back with spending money - which wasn't easy. I only got a Kasumi-figurine, a "Monster des Alltags"-mug and a book abotu the Monsters.

The highlight was that I also got the 2nd "Nicht lustig" book by Josha Sauer, and I was able to get him to sign it for my sister! Will be a birthday-present for her. I'm sure she'll love it. I had to wait in line together with Armin way over one hour, but it was so worth it! After I told him that it's for my sister's birthday, de drew such a funny picture!

Later that day, we watched "Chronicles from Earthsee". I liked it! Calm subtone, nice backgrounds and wizards! :) With glowing staffs!

D&D final boss pwned!

Yesterday we fought the boss-mob of our current D&D adventure. It was an interesting fight indeed, mainly because of two reasons:

1. The fight was way too easy for us and we owned the mob totally

2. The things we had to do in order to get the mob to appear were more troublesome than slaying the guy afterwards.

The thing that I liked most was that I felt really useful and had an easy time playing out my character's evilness. By luring a poor child as bait and by torturing her and getting her killed. Then I was the one to use the special stone/spell to bind the entity to our plane. And what's even better: without me, the fight might've been alot harder, everyone agreed on that afterwards. My haste-spell already is the alltime-favorite for everyone in the group, and as I even manged to finally use my highest-level Necro-spell "Enervation" to de-level the bossmob by 3 levels, that guy was a piece of cake!

And as always in D&D, it all could've gone very very different. The boss casted a silence-spell right at the start and I made the saving-throw! Without me being able to cast, this would've been a really tough fight for us all - and a quite boring and annoying one for me.

But of course, it was not just my doing that we finished the mob off. Everyone did their share, but it simply felt good to feel so useful - and very powerful! Casters might seem weak, especially on lower levels but I can slowly see how this is about to change now... I'm becoming more powerful!

more games coming up

After some time passed now without me buying new games, there are more and more coming up on the horizon that I simply want to have. And strangely, they are all coming out for the 360. Ok, not really surprising. It just makes me realize that I really don't need a PS3 - except for like 1 or 2 games perhaps and as a Bluray-Player.

Anyway, here are some more games I'm looking forward to.

Soulcalibur 4 I've loved all Soul... games so far. Starting with Soulblade/Souledge on the old PSX. That game back then was actually the reason I got myself a PSX. Soulcalibur on the Dreamcast was a milestone concerning graphics and playability in my eyes, while Soulcalibur 2 was more solid - it didn't blow me away that much, probably because it was released on the PS2 aswell and I was spoiled since the Xbox was able to deliver much nicer graphics at that time. The 3rd sequel didn't make it to any Microsoft-console, so now that the 4th one is announced, I'm really looking forward to it! From what footage I've seen so far, they can't really do much wrong anymore. Looks nice enough for me. Now I only hope for 2 things: same playability as the old games and let Taki be part of the cast! Then I'll buy this game without even reading a review.

Star Wars - Force Unleashed I can't say much about this game yet, cept: Looks cool and very promising! It definitely does, and as a big Star Wars- and lightsabre-fan this surely caught my attention. Now lets hope they get the rest of the ingredients for a good game together aswell, then this will be one hell of a game!

games I'm looking forward to

In the past I used to be more hyper about games coming out that I wanted. Maybe it's because I haven't been playing games too much recently. But there are a few new titles coming out that I'm quite eager to get

Ninja Gaiden 2 No big surprise since I've always been a big fan of the series ever since I played the first one on the good old Xbox. From the footage I've seen so far, nothing much got changed but rather everything revamped on the newer hardware. Which isn't neccessarily a bad thing. Don't change anything that's working well, and since the first one was pretty flawless in my eyes, I don't see much they could've done better... to be honest, I can't see how the graphics can even be much better. But maybe it's like with many older games: you remember them to look better than they actually do once you look at them again when you are used to the next generation of consoles.

Grid More surprising is my interest in Grid, a racing simulation with amazing graphics and a physics-engine to behold! I'm usually not into racing-simulations, especially not when they are too realistic - I love Burnout, I never played PGR. But the game looks quite amazing and like it would also be fun for me. I know my friend will get it anyway, I'll probably try it out then and see if I want to get it myself.

Update: The demo is now available even for non gold-members on Xbox Live, so I'm gonna use that to see if I'll like the game.