i guess i'll lighten up a bit on this post and not go after such crazy issues, eh?

alright, first things first. hang on a sec... have you ever actually thought about that expression before? what the fuck does "first things first" mean anyway? as opposed to doing the first thing second? that's some bullshit... let's start again.

so i finally watched 28 days later. IMDb has it as a 7.3, but i think i'd go with about a 7.8. overall i really enjoyed it. i love the entire idea of cities and everything just completely abandoned, sorta like how vanilla sky did with central park and NY. (interesting sidenote: vanilla sky is not nearly as bad as critics say, i promise.) the goofy film quality to it worked pretty well i thought, kinda made everything a lot more chaotic. i can see how some would prolly think it was a bit too slow or didn't have enough happening at certain points. like some others have said on the IMDb boards, the ending to it really wasn't that spectacular. they actually had 3 endings on the dvd, but the one that was ultimately selected was prolly the best. i think you could prolly do a lot more with this entire concept, it's just that it's already been done to death so many times that most people prolly wouldn't enjoy it. i like how it was more about realizing how lonely you can be and the psychological aspects of it as opposed to focusing so much on the mechanics of the virus itself. a lot of people knocked 28 days later for not being scary enough, but i don't really gauge a movie's entertainment value based on that. in my opinion it was scarier than most average teen slasher flicks these days. personal favorite was when the infected little boy comes out of nowhere in the restaurant and there's no sound at all when he does it. as rick would say, that was just swicked.

i also rented billy hatcher & the giant egg for gamecube. i sorta feel the need to say that game title again. yeah, the name of the game is billy hatcher & the giant egg. sorta mixed reviews overall online, but i remember it was highly touted for a while a good 3 months ago, so there was some speculation for it, mostly cuz it's from the same people that did all the sonic the hedgehog games. i guess if i rated it on a 10 scale like IMDb or something, i'd give it 7.2. i dunno if it's supposed to be a kid's game or what, but goddamn it's goofy as shit. some of the menu music is just this "la-la-la-la" stuff over and over. the game got big points off in the sound department for most people, but overall it sorta fit the game and wasn't that bad. the entire concept of the game, which is basically pushing eggs into things or hatching eggs to accomplish some task, is... weird. not that weird games don't work, just look at pikmin. i dunno, i just don't think it's the kinda game i'd spend more than $30 to buy. i can imagine myself playing it a lot and maybe finishing it, but not so much in a period where much cooler games are coming out.

i think right now is a kickass time to be a gamecube owner. they just dropped GC console prices, pushing it ahead of the others in current sales, Xbox isn't doing much, and PS2 is almost starting to be thought of as graphically inferior and lacking the hardware. between now and first quarter 2004 we GC owners should have a pretty great time of it. the thing is, i just figured out the next crash bandicoot kart game is coming out next week, and while most people will shrug it off and wait for the new mario kart the next week, i'm still really hyped for 'em both. me and my sister lauren played the absolute crap out of the PS1 version of crash team racing, which in my opinion (i know i'm in the huge minority here) is the best game to have come out on that system, just like super mario kart was for super nintendo. i never had an N64 so i don't know much about mario kart 64. for me, the key to those games really is battle mode. i must have spent like a good 6 months time combined just playing mario kart in battle mode, and then maybe just as much with CTR battle mode. so if for whatever reasons the 2 games coming out didn't even have battle mode, i don't think i'd even bother. so even though that'll be $100 combined for those 2 kart games, i think i've gotta get both, man. definitely psyched for that.

a couple games that just came out, ssx 3 and tony hawk's underground (THUG) look pretty promising. me and alayna love ssx tricky, so ssx 3 should be just as good if not even better with even more ubertricks and better graphics. hoang's already said it's awesome, and what more proof do i need? i've loved all the tony hawk pro skater games so far, so that leads me to believe i'll like THUG just as much. the only thing that keeps me from being really interested is that it's more story-based, and typically i didn't really give much of a shit about a lot of the story and goals in the pro skater games. the real drawback with that one is if it's just as hard as pro skater 4, i'm not sure if i'll bother. in my opinion pro skater 4 is fun as hell but goddamn so many of the goals take forever to complete, so it really slows you down. not sure which of these i'll end up getting... might be one of those things where i just blow some xmas cash on both or something.

there's also a few more that have recently come out that got a lot of hype... such as viewtiful joe. one of those i know nothing about but i'm curious to know what everybody's talking about. i should get plenty of playing time over the holidays, and i fully plan on utilizing it.

enough for now,
justin