Transfigurmorphs

What's this? This guy on the review page is reviewing something new and happening and hip and it's all out by opening weekend. This is normally a good thing, but I am in a piss-poor mood, so hold onto your stupid little hat, Michael Bay.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the sequel to the 2007 Transformers movie featuring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, and a bunch of robots turning into things. To be straightforward, I loved the first one. I thought the soundtrack was good, the directing was good, the writing was good, the acting was good, and the action was tight. I've had arguments with people as to just how good the first movie is, and I stand by that it is still one of the best movies of 2007. I went to see it several times in theaters and enjoy watching it even now. The second movie is not any of these things. I went to go see it for a friends birthday, and I can honestly say I will almost never watch this again.

Michael Bay directed the first film, and it was really good. So tell me, Mr. Bay, why did you feel it necessary to spin the camera around and around and around and then change direction and make it go around and around to the point that several people in my party nearly got sick? If you were trying to portray chaos in the scenes where the the two new-to-college kids tried to say "I love you" you overshot it as if you were using a goddamn railgun--which I must say, putting that in the movie was pretty much the best thing about it. Plus, the way you shot the giant robot fight sequences was good. Why is it now close-up-shots-of-metal-swinging-around-so-you-can't-tell-what-the-hell-is-going-on until the end where--I get it, it's suspenseful--slow-motion moves are done when they could have been there the whole damn time and made it a whole lot easier to watch.

Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman wrote the first movie, and it was funny, compelling and good. I'm going to guess the addition to the writers, Ehren Kruger suffers from a major brain deformity because the writing was so goddamn bad the only explanation is that they felt sorry for him, and put all his ideas in the script. Hillbilly robots? Are you kidding me? A little sass-mouth Decepticon, a hot girl that's a Decepticon, main characters dying and coming back to life--ARE YOU SERIOUS?! This is all very, very bad of you, sirs.

There isn't a whole lot else to say about the movie. The acting was diminished because of the bad writing. The soundtrack was more or less the same, which isn't abd but it's very lazy--try changing it up a bit. The best line in the film was "He went to find you a tighter shirt." In an action movie. Yeah.

Do not go see this movie unless all you want to see is explosions and you have no taste for actual film. And if you care about me at all, you'll stop Michael Bay from making a third one, which I was told he can't do anyway because he already had a bit where a Decepticon throws an American flag to the ground.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Decreased Resale

I appear to be reviewing old movies, apparently, because I have another one for you. This one is another science fiction-y thing, but with different expectations of it. Early 90s again, but the budget was a bit higher for this one. Some more big names in this one, but nothing like John Leguizamo. So here it is, the latest movie review written two goddamn days in advanced because I have so many of these.

Total Recall (1990) is a science fiction action film with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone and even if y0ou haven't seen this movie, you know how it ends even if all you have to base on it is your feeble knowledge of Schwarzenegger movies. The film was based on a Philip K. Dick novel by the name of We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, which was marketed and the title shortened to the easier to remember and say title of Total Recall. Funny story, it was also what was supposed to be Total Recall 2 ended up being the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report.

The movie was filmed by director Paul Verhoeven, who was also the director of RoboCop and Starship Troopers, so he knows his mindless action movies. The writers, Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, Jon Povill, and Gary Goldman had films such as Alien, Star Trek, and Big Trouble in Little China. We'll try and forget that Goldman also wrote Navy SEALS. The team for the film did a great job, especially with the tacky 90s suspense music. Having seen the movies so many times, I still can't figure out whether its comedy is intended, especially the stupid-funny comedies that one of the writers contributed to our society, but it is good all the same.

The movie involves Mars, an oppressive government, and erased memories and Arnold Schwarzenegger rewrites the famous Harrison Ford Telling People He Wants His Family Back to Arny in Arnold Schwarzenegger Telling People He Wants His Memory Back. His acting is about as good as it gets, with actors like Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, and Michael Ironside chasing and manipulating him all the way. The story of the film is perfect for the actors and their abilities, if not the audience's attention.

Roger Ebert called it one of the most complex and visually interesting films of the time, and he doesn't like anything. The film won an academy award for special effects back when special effects weren't cool enough for most movies. Total Recall is a great movie, if you see Arnold's face and know to expect mindless heart-pumping action. This movie rules, as long as you don't expect anything intelligent (outside of the story, which probably confused most meat-heads of the time) for the next two hours.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Bird song

I haven't done enough music reviews here, and given how much music I listen to and the varied genres I go through, that seems a little odd. So here it goes, a review of the senior thesis of a Carnegie Mellon student.

The Things That Airplanes Do by Anna Vogelzang (2007) is someone I started talking to after I started the first-ever Dresden Dolls fan community online. Her music falls into a sound found somewhere between acoustic/piano and jazz with the themes usually centered around places she's been and the weather there and what she happened to be thinking or observing during those times. I have seen her play everywhere from cafes to churches, and she is goddamn talented. The Things That Airplanes Do is her second studio album after her first, Some Kind of Parade--which I loved--and her two live albums, Basics and Sounds--which I loved. As can be expected, when I found Miss Vogelzang's newest album on iTunes, I was looking to listening to it very much.

The first thing I noticed, from having been listening to her for about four years before the newest album was released, is that she's grown up a lot. Her vocal style is a lot more fluid and works a lot better with the music--not to say that her earlier work was bad, but this album seemed to be a lot more sophisticated. Opening with songs like Hexagon, Pittsburgh, and Philly give it a really, REALLY strong acoustic based open. July starts with a nice piano and then sparks up to a nice jazz beat. Family Band is one of my favorite tracks on the album, with simple vocals, delicate piano, and outstanding writing. The Kitchen has really great music and vocals for the centerpiece of the LP. The rest of the album gets a little weaker and less memorable, but they still give you a great feeling of relaxation and intrigue. This may even be my fault, for never being in the correct setting to really pay attention to the second half of the album, but the writing and music doesn't get weaker, just the attention you give to the songs. It's kind of like when you know what songs on an album you like, and after you know those songs, you just skip through the rest, even though they are also good songs.

Her writing is one of my favorite parts of her music, with songs like Hexagon, Pittsburgh, and especially Family Band. On top of writing the songs and signing, she also plays guitar and piano for her own songs. The other musical parts of the band are back-up players but as I have seen Anna live, I know she can play most any of these songs even without the accompaniment. That, and I can't find out who actually played on the album and I don't want to give credit to the wrong people--but fear not: you're all good at what you do too.

Anna Vogelzang is currently residing in Chicago, and if you ever have the chance to see her perform live I urge you greatly to do so. Her website is theanna.com, so go and check her tour dates. You will not be disappointed.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Joint Hookup

So, Bethesda announced a while ago that they weren't quite done making expansions for their post-apocalyptic role player, Fallout 3, and that the expansions were going to come out for the PlayStation 3 eventually. Today was the day that the first of the two DLC pieces they put together was released on Xbox Live, and like every other month this happens, I got it the first day, tested it for bugs, and then went about my merry way to more post-nuclear-war-torn US.

Point Lookout once again moves you away from the Capital Wasteland and instead of Alaska, Pittsburgh, or some hidden air force base in DC, we go to Point Lookout, Maryland. The landscape is very different, as all the DLC has offered with a different look at how different areas are dealing with life in an irradiated world, and appears to be a bit bigger than all the previous downloadable areas. The swampland has grown some weird fruits, made people grow in odd ways, and made it sound like a good idea to have your brain operated on. Despite the crazy people, the small settlement at the pier seemed harmless enough. Outside of the normal folks and ghouls around, the enemies in the swamp look like they came out Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes--very weird, and I'm not sure retard strength begins to cover it. Another thing is if you just picked up the game and downloaded the Point Lookout pack, do not go there right away. The creatures here are hard to kill even at level 30, with super good stats, Lincoln's Repeater, and infallible headshots. These baddies do not like going down.

The quest-line seemed a bit shorter than usual--and all the DLC quests have been a bit on the short side. Even the exploration achievement was a bit too easy to get as compared to what I was expecting when I first got to the area. But regardless, it still rocks to have more reason to play Fallout 3. And let me tell you, some of the things that happen will make you say "Double-you tee eff, Mate!" Definitely worth the playthrough, and maybe worth the revisit if you weren't as thorough with exploring as I was and you want to level boost with the good XP amount you get from killing deformed mutant people. The added items, such as the sick energy weapon at the end of the quest, is damn worth it too. One thing this seems to be missing is a few side-quests that the other packs had that made it necessary to go back to those areas at some point, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

All in all, if you have Fallout 3 and have the other expansions, just get this one already and look forward to Mothership Zeta.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Soup-ier Cherio Hoes

Sometimes I'll watch a really awful movie just because I haven't seen it and it has a reputation of being epically bad and I'm super bored and/or drunk. I recently had such a fit of boredom, after starting new files on near all of my PS2 games and watching 3 discs of Burn Notice on DVD. This movie is so profoundly stupid that I couldn't come up with a proper title of the post that's somehow making a clever joke of the film's title or plot. Movies based on video games tend towards the awful enough as recent adventures such as Hitman, Max Payne, Silent Hill, and the Resident Evil movies--and this is ignoring the movies that were based on games that had absolutely no plot that should be auctioned as a movie: Street Fighter, Dead or Alive, OneChanbara, and the upcoming Tekken movie. This film was one of the second films based on games with no discernible good entertaining ideas unless we're controlling the head-stomping.

Super Mario Bros (1993) aims to feed from the fan-base of the video game of the same name from 1985. There are two problems with this movie, before any technical issues are even mentioned. A: the fan-base mostly consists of little kids playing their first video game, or if you're looking for people to be buying the DVD, people who remember playing their first video game. The latter is somewhat possible with the fact that most gamers are nostalgic (aka suffer minor brain hemorrhages) when an classic title is mentioned. I'm guilty of it myself, as I almost paid $150 for Earthbound and the strategy guide before my girlfriend gave me the copy she's had since she was a kid. Anyway...B: the movie completely fails to hit anywhere close to the movie it's premised on. It takes place in a dystopian realm that mentions Mario characters. They explain the existence of dinosaurs and turtle-people by saying the meteor that crashed 65 million years ago created a parallel dimension that reptiles evolved into the intelligent species. Holy crap. Instead of Peach, Mario is enthralled in a Brooklyn chick name Daniella and the quest follows Luigi's interest in Daisy, and Daisy being a princess of the reptile realm. Or something.

Super Mario Bros. was written by the trio of Parker Bennett, Terry Runte, and Ed Solomon--no one's getting away from this movie blame-free. Ed Solomon was also the writer of both Bill and Ted movies, which should tell you there that we are in a lot of trouble and we wish to rethink our decision. Too late, gamerkids. The trio of directors didn't help any with Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel--both music video directors--and Roland Joffe who hasn't done with anything worth a damn since.

The actors in the film really aren't half bad, so it's odd to see them in something like this. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo play Mario and Luigi, respectively, with Dennis Hopper playing King Koopa and Fiona Shaw playing his wife-thing, Lena. The rest of the cast made most of their careers as small-part extras, such as wife-of-sick-guy-on-House and parking-lot-attendant-from-Ferris-Bueler. The only other character that was really in anything was Fisher Stevens who played the Middle Eastern scientist from Short Circuit. Oh, it hurts me.

Nintendo, who usually holds onto their choices and properties in a death-grip, said in a time-line of the Mario series when mentioning the movie, "Yes, it happened. Let us speak no more of it." Later, in the Nintendo Power 20th anniversary issue, they say that the movie is a testament the the pop-culture impact the game series has had. Make up your minds. I personally vote we go Atari-style E.T. with this movie and game series. On a related note, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a stupid idea.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

i'm FAMOUS

As you may notice from reading here, I really don't have a lot to say about Sony properties. When I think about it it seems odd to me, if only because in my youth I was very against the Sega Dreamcast, GameCube and the Xbox in exchange for my PlayStation/PlayStation 2 fervor. My very first post here was my first impressions of two particular PlayStation 3 titles, and I have hardly mentioned it since. This is because, as mentioned in my second post here, that I tend to play games on the Xbox 360 unless it is a PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii exclusive. Here is one such PlayStation 3 exclusive that my manager received as a free gift from a game developer and she gave to me because she doesn't have a PlayStation 3.

inFAMOUS for the PlayStation 3 (2009) is a new super-hero sandbox by game developer Sucker Punch Production. You may know Sucker Punch from such games as the Sly Cooper series. inFAMOUS is the company's first game in four years, and it's kind of obvious as to why: it's a PlayStation 3 sandbox game, and it takes a whole room of people just to render the graphics of one of these hobos. But the game came out and I was utterly uninterested, even after playing the demo. Since I got a free copy--and instead of trading for another, better game--I decided to keep it and try it out for the sake of reviewing it for all of the fans I may or may not have reading this.

The story follows Cole McGrath, who is a bike messenger and is unlucky enough to have a package blow up in his hands but lucky enough to survive it and be granted to manipulate electricity in such a way that you can't step in water, hold guns, or make friends particularly easily. Everyone blames this explosion, which killed thousands of people in Empire City--an obvious New York skyline copier--on you. You start on a mission revolving around three big baddies, your friend Zeke, and your estranged love-interest Trish. You go through, fighting through three islands each inhabiting different gangs, and a morality system. The story is really good, and is actually affected by your moral choices. Things that hold true for evil route do not necessarily in the heroic road.

A historically common grudge of mine resurfaces in this game, that I haven't had to explain in a while: the enemy's aim is WAY too good. Their accuracy is that of the highest powered sniper rifle of the face of the planet, but their using automatic machine guns, rocket launchers, and miniguns. In the meantime, I'm scaling buildings, trying to find out where the hell I'm being shot from, and ultimately falling off the building for being too slow at both. And on the subject of climbing, why can't Cole climb chain link fences? The bitch from Velvet Assassin can climb chain link fences. Alex Mercer in Prototype, which is functionally the poor man's inFAMOUS, can climb them too so why can't electricity man? And on other gripes, what is with the soundtrack? The song playing during the credits is among the worst I've heard in a video game.

The good things about the game, other than the story, is the progression of powers. You start with relatively weak powers, but enough to excite you and keep you playing, and each of the other powers add to the excitement. The side quests of the game, which free up territories of the map and make enemies less frquent, are all repeating, but not in a way that gets boring or aggravating. The collecting of dead drop messages and "blast shards" are easy enough and entertaining, even if the "blast shard" collection can get a bit tiresome.

In the end, the game is just like every other sandbox--when it's over, it's totally over. There is less of a need to keep playing after the story is done than usual, unless you played the evil way and killed everyone and then you can just continue killing everyone, but that gets boring after a while. Collecting things, trying to level up by kicking people and then healing them and maybe fighting the odd enemy that happens to spawn nearby, and free running collecting trophies does not a fun post-game-play make.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

E3-PO

As I am never embarrassed to admit, I am a nerd. As such, I pay a lot of attention to gaming news. A few weeks ago, one of the biggest events of the gaming year happened, and I just haven't had the chance to sort my thoughts on it to write a coherent review of what I thought were the good, the bad, and the ugly announcements of the year.

Electronic Entertainment Exo 2009 (E3) was the fifteenth expo held in the history of the event, after almost being destroyed a couple years ago due to the Electronic Software Association (ESA) Terror Squads trying to make the event a whole lot less fun. Historically, the announcements at E3 could be ranged from pants-creamingly awesome to so boring you'd need to take meth just to stay awake. With the history of Virtual Boy, Dreamcast, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Metal Gear Solid one, two, Portable Ops, and four all being announced, as well as the spectacular melting of the first ever PlayStation 3 demo occurring since its inception all add to the spectacle of what was to be expected.

This year, some of the news struck me as really lackluster. Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Halo: Reach...I mean, really? How is a sequel to the biggest zombie shooter of the year a big announcement? Crackdown was good, but as with most sandbox games, it lost its appeal once it had been finished once. That, and no one bought it unless they wanted to play the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. And another Halo game? What the hell. Ugh. Just ugh. Nintendo made a bunch of blah-like announcements as well, with a new Metroid, a new Super Mario Galaxy, a new Wii Fit, and other revitalizations of dead properties. Where's Mother 3, huh? And with the dead properties, who needs a new Final Fantasy online game for the PS3?

Big announcements that excited me were a bit rarer, but they were worth it. The first thing that made me jump for joy was Team ICO's announcement that they were supposed to announce last summer at the Tokyo Game Show, but put it off for a goddamn year! The Last Guardian looks absolutely amazing, though I do not imagine it being a huge seller on the PlayStation 3. While Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are undeniably some of the best titles for the PlayStation 2, they did not sell well because most gamers spend hundreds of dollars on systems only to play the latest Madden or the easiest shooter that makes them feel badass. Team ICO does not care for these people, and neither do I. The team is completely made up of people who do not work in video games, but rather artists. Sony had the idea to diversify their portfolio with this odd team, and they rock the hell out of the games-as-art ideal that I hold. For those who played Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian was made on the idea that the relationship between Wander and Agro was something worth exploring and creating a game on, and the trailer looks fantastic, done in classic Team ICO fashion. I was so excited for this, I canceled my reserve on Saboteur to put it on this. As far as the computers at work are concerned, The Last Guardian should be out around April.

Microsoft did have one out-of-this world announcement with Project Natal. It is akin to the Wii Sensor Bar, but way better. You walk in the room, the system turns on, welcomes you by name, and one game by Lionhead Studios, Milo and Kate will recognize your emotions by your face and voice. To me, it will probably be way too expensive to consider buying, and talking to a virtual kid will get old kind of quickly, but just the fact that we have this kind of technology is goddamn sweet.

Other short but good announcements were things like Metal Gear Solid: Rising and Tatsunoko vs Capcom. Good games coming from good companies, especially the latter, which has gotten really good reviews over in Japan. New Metal Gear games are always good, I just don't have a PSP and can't get really excited for Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.

A big flop of an announcement to me was the PSP GO. It has the potential to revolutionize the gaming industry, but it won't. It can't, really. People like selling their physical games for credit, as stores like GameStop prove. Amazon.com has instated a trade-in program, as other stores starting to sell used product. Taking away the physicality of games and making them all downloadable, it A: hurts the games that people already own that inevitably will have to be re-bought in order to play with the new system, and B: it will hurt sales on the older PSP models if games stop coming out for it and are only downloadable, especially since a lot of customers still don't practice downloading content on a regular basis. If they cancel the PSP 3000 production for the PSP GO, the Sony portable system will almost definitely crash and burn, such as the Virtual Boy.

E3 had some really good stuff, a lot of mediocre stuff, and some down-right bad ideas. But thats what sharing ideas is about: weeding out the crap.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The Biches

I used to work as a desk receptionist before I got my cushy job of working as a shift manager at a video game store and writing reviews for absolutely free and boy would I love it if someone decided to pay me for doing this. Anyway, working the desk job was super easy, as all I did was listen to music and deal with college students. The problem was there were two brand new shows that I really wanted to watch. One of which was The Black Donnellys, which I blame my lack of viewership on the completely preposterous cancellation as it is one of the best shows I have ever seen. The other show was an FX original, much like another one of my favorite shows, Rescue Me. I have recently gotten the two seasons of the show on DVD as gifts, and decided to review that while I pick away at inFAMOUS for the PlayStation 3.

The Riches (2007-2008) is a show about a family of Travelers, which basically mean they're Irish con-men and thieves pulling stunts across the country. It's two adults and their three children, starting when the mother is let out of a two-year stint in prison. The outline is basically them stealing from the family bank, running away, being party to running two rich people off the road, stealing their lives, trying to keep up the lie while avoiding being arrested, killed, or found out by the other Travelers, people who knew the people who's lives they stole, or by pretty much anyone ever. The couple they killed were Doug and Cherine Rich.

Eddie Izzard plays Wayne Malloy with Minnie Driver playing his wife Dahlia. Their three children are Noel Fisher playing Cael, Shannon Marie Woodward as Delilah (DiDi), and Aiden Mitchell as Sam. The ensemble cast is basically Todd Stashwick as cousin Dale who is pissed at the rest of the family for stealing, leaving, and not cutting him in, Margo Martindale as the "Rich's" neighbor Nina, and Gregg Henry as Hugh Panetta, who is "Doug Rich's" neighbor, boss, and eventual partner in the show. Everyone's acting is out of this world good. Eddie Izzard acts a lot in the same way as he does stand-up, which makes sense as he's a writer and producer for the show as well. Driver plays the drug-addicted-but-ashamed wife while living a life she doesn't want as opposed to the thieving and conning which got her arrested in the first place. The kids all have their personalities that don't quit, save for DiDi changing a lot towards the end of season two with her attitude towards sex. Dale is a sociopath, which also weens away a bit in season two, but it works with what's going on closer to the end.

The writing in the show is great. The Traveler terminology and vocabulary is very nice touch. The writing as a whole is very engaging and drawing the viewer in, if being a little predictable. The predictability is less hokey than, say, Seinfeld, but is instead really nerve-wracking. The show is an off-balance of 90% drama to about 10% comedy, but that seems to be deliberate, as Izzard has wanted to move to drama for a while. The show was canceled after its second season, which was done during the peak of the writer's strike with its short-sighted seven episodes. The whole series ran a whopping twenty episodes, which is really not good enough for such a show. The show ended with so many questions that needed to be answered--not as many as The Black Donnellys, but a lot.

There is good news for The Riches, however. Eddie Izzard said in an interview that he is working on a script for a movie to tie up all the loose ends and to pick up right where it left off. The problem I see with that is that the film won't pick up a lot of box office success unless the people going to see it saw the television series--which is very difficult to pick up in the middle considering how convoluted the story can be with all the things carrying over. Also, the place they left off is a very awkward place to try to wrap it all up in two hours or less. It would not work as Firefly's Serenity--it couldn't--despite how much one would like it to be.

The show is absolute worth watching. It may not be worth the fifty-some-odd dollars it may cost to buy the two seasons on DVD, but it is definitely worth checking out on iTunes or Hulu or something. The acting, writing, and really nice story all lend themselves to each other and should not have been canceled. FX assholes better not cancel Rescue Me, or you bitches are dead to me.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

What is that, velvet?

Renting games from work sometimes isn't as easy as it sounds. There are games I want to play, but we need to wait until we get a used copy before we're allowed to actually try it. And then, when we get a high-demand title, we have to wait for a second copy, and then if I'm really into a game, say, UFC 2009: Undisputed, then it's hard to motivate myself to try something new. But when I get so fed up with the same ground-and-pound/submission filled minutes, I need something new, even if I fear it will suck.

Velvet Assassin (2009) is developed by SouthPeak, who in recent memory have developed some of the worst games around. Two Worlds, X-Blades, and Legendary--the only game with an original story being the last listed, as the first two were complete and horribly done rip-offs of Oblivion and God of War respectively. I figured Velvet Assassin was a preemptive rip-off of the upcoming Saboteur, which is an artsy World War II stealth action game, just as Velvet Assassin is. Upon playing it, however, it is actually closer to a rip off of Hitman: Blood Money.

Now let me say, the Hitman series is one of my favorites, as you can do whatever you want in regards to stealth or going in guns a-blazing. Velvet Assassin does not let you do this, which is fine for me, because since playing Metal Gear Solid 4 so many times, I've gotten accustomed to restarting the checkpoint every time I'm spotted, but I can imagine this is not what some people want. But what everyone wants doesn't concern me.

The story is as follows: you play British assassin Violette Summer in a hospital as you have memories of some of your best throat-slitting moments, a la Agent 47 being all deadified and coming back in wakeful gun-fire at the end. Where Hitman lets you do pretty much what you want, you MUST be stealthy in Velvet Assassin, which makes the mandatory shotgun segments not make much sense. You can take very little damage, so a straight up gun fight usually leads to reloading. A lot of the gameplay is artificially lengthened making you go all the way back to the beginning just to get a combination for a safe.

All in all, the game was a lot more enjoyable than I thought it would be. The stealth was done pretty well, if a bit trial-and-error at times. The graphics are cool, as is the "oh crap" morphine button, that lets you fix whenever you get spotted by one--and only one--Nazi. What I found odd is that the Nazi's didn't seem to care for their fallen comrades until near the end, when they all of a sudden figured out they weren't just sleeping. But the game was fun, and I would consider playing more of it if I had it for longer.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Who's on Fifth?

My family travels a bit without me sometimes, because I'm in school, work, or otherwise can't be bothered to pack into a SUV with my parents and two younger siblings and they on occasion come back with tales of how I should have gone because relative X was so cute, or museum Y was so cool. During their most recent romp to Washington, D.C. they discovered a restaurant that "has the best burgers ever, omg." That's a hard sell to me, being someone who kind of enjoys beef. Then the chain opened up in Swampscott, a neighboring town in Salem, not too far over the border in a place I frequent for restaurants anyway, so I decided to check it out opening week.

Five Guys started in Arlington, Virginia in 1986, which gives it some staying power, at least. However, this did not sell it for me. When I got there, it was packed. Like, stupid packed. This may be because President Obama said something about how they're more or less awesome, or because it's been opening week. The line moved pretty fast, though.

Ordered the food, and then waited. The wait wasn't too long, and was accompanied by complimentary peanuts, which are kind of a bad munchy food--so much refuse for so little edibility. Anyway, then the order was up. And I'm happy to say that mine was the only burger of the party that actually was what I ordered. Everyone else got something completely different from what they had asked for. That kind of put of a buzz kill on the whole experience, as my friends and family were forced to go get their food fixed while I dined on my burger. Which was not "omg, best burger ever"--not even close. It was average. Better than any fast food joint, to be sure, but not worth all the hype.

I think working there would suck pretty hard, too. There were so many people behind the counter, preparing burgers, fries, hot dogs, and everything else, I actually saw a girl getting her eye bandaged for some injury I'm not even sure what it was, but I felt bad nonetheless. Behind the counter at a fast food joint should not be that busy, and I hope the girl gets a lot of money for an eye injury. I'm sure most of the people who I saw working won't be there past the month because they were mostly there to feed the huge crowds, but once they novelty of the new place dies down, they won't need so many people anymore.

In closing, this isn't a restaurant I will be frequenting, nor do I think I will ever really go there again. But why would you listen to me? Obama said it was good.

Your loyal Democrat:
-Evan "Dez" O'Connor