I watched Max Payne last night and was not impressed. It was not terrible and as movies based on games go it was one of the better ones, but on a scale with all action movies it as nothing special. There were a couple fun shoot outs and I enjoyed seeing Mila Kunis in a different role that what she normally plays but overall I’d not recommend going out of your way to see it.

I finished up Mercenaries 2: World in Flames earlier this week. The save system was annoying and the load times were pretty long, but overall I enjoyed it. Mostly because you can blow up almost everything in the game’s world. One thing that did help was installing the game to the hard drive on the Xbox 360. It noticeably decreased load times.

You can check out my full review here, but I’d recommend renting Mercs 2.

I watched Babylon A.D. today on DVD and was not very impressed. There were some decent action scenes and while that generally is enough for me to like a movie they were to few and far between. There is just not enough action to carry the plot. Or, really the lack there of. It is not until the last 15 minutes of the movie that you find out why everything that happened previously is going on. The movie just jumps strait in and doesn’t explain why the characters are doing the things they are. If they had found a way to explain the back story much earlier in the movie I think Babylon A.D. could have been a good movie, but as it is I would not recommend watching it.

I’ve been competing in a Horde High Score Challenge for Gears of War 2 with a group of guys from AGErocks.com. Tonight we were doing our final score run on River and ended up doing great. The five of us are currently 6th – 10th on the global Gears of War 2 leaderboard for River. Only one team of five has ever scored higher than we did tonight.

As some of you guys have noticed I’ve been trying out the different workout programs available for the Wii and reviewing them as I go. Having tried Wii Fit, Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2009, and My Fitness Coach now I out together a brief overview and comparison of all three. You can check it out here.

I’m still hoping for some Wii Fit DLC to expand the available activities, but I’m not holding my breath.

I played a little of last week’s Xbox Live Arcade release The Maw. It is ok, but I don’t think it is really for me. It seems like the whole game is you running around with Maw (the purple blobby thing in the screenshot) feeding him everything you can find. Here is the description from Xbox.com;

The pinnacle of alien evolution, Maw is a cowardly fat blob concerned mostly with snacking and lounging. He can, however, absorb the traits of anything he eats, is virtually indestructible, and can grow to unlimited size. If he wasn’t a danger to all life in the universe, he’d make the perfect pet. In the action/adventure game The Maw, he’s the best friend of our hero Frank, and only by working together, can Maw help eat their way to freedom.

The demo was pretty short and I just could not get into it before it popped up and asked me to pay the $10 to unlock the full version. Anyone purchased it? If so, how do you like it beyond the first 5 minutes?

I came across three different sites running contests giving away copies of The Maw. If you’re interested I’ve posted all three links on XBLARatings.com

I’ve been playing a lot of Gears of War 2’s Horde mode the last couple weeks for a contest that we’re having over at AGE. So far my team is winning but it is pretty close between us and second.

When I’ve not been playing Gears 2 I’ve been working my way through Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. Like the first Mercs game some of the missions are repetitive, but they are all open to be completed pretty much however you want. Personally I never get tired of getting in a big truck and ramming it at full speed into whatever I’m suppose to be destroying. It has a very large open world to play in with a ton of side missions that you can do as many or as few as you want. Hopefully I’ll get it wrapped up in the next few days because LoTR: Conquest is sitting here waiting to be played.

I know that I’m frequently mentioning how much I love GameFly and how they save me a lot of money on video games. However, there are other options out there. Even free options. I can only vouch for this in San Diego County California, but there is a way to rent video games for free.

You can read about it here.

Back in November I played the Mirror’s Edge demo and and really enjoyed it. I finally got around to playing the full game last weekend. I finished the whole thing in 2 days because it has 9 levels and takes about 6 hours to complete. I loved the first 5 or 6 levels, but the last two were so hard I wanted to chuck my controller at the wall a few times. I’d recommend renting it though. The good parts do outweigh the bad. I’ve got a lengthier review over on The “Break It Down” Blog for anyone interested.