I watched Death Race last night and really enjoyed it. It was a good, mindless, car chase movie. Just enough plot to string together a reason to have the chase sequences. Frankly, that was fine with me. I like Jason Statham is movies like this and Transporter. I’m not really generally very critical of movies; either I like them or I don’t, but in this case I thought the whole cast did really well in their roles. The movies is a few fights, lots of car chases, and the “good guy” winning in the end. I watched the Unrated version so I’m not sure how different it was in the theater, but there were a couple bloody/gorey scenes, but they were not so bad that I was bothered by them. If you’re looking for a good action movie with lots of car chases this one is perfect. Nothing to serious or sappy. Just lots of racing and chasing.

I thought I’d give everyone a heads up that GameFly is running a lot of sales until the end of the year. I’ve seen quite a few pretty recent games at great prices.

For anyone interested here is the link.

Jigsaw hc

I have been playing a lot of A Kingdom for Keflings the last couple weeks since it released. It is quickly becoming one of my favorite Xbox Live Arcade games. Which is saying a lot considering some of the other great XBLA games already out there. You can read my full review here. If you have not already tried A Kingdon for Keflings you really should check it out. It is well worth the $10 price.

I’ve been looking for Wii games to try out since I own only 3 Wii games currently and I’d like to get a little use our of this system. So, I rented Geometry Wars: Galaxies since Geometry Wars Retro Evolved is one of the most popular Xbox Live Arcade games that has been released. I’m not really that big of a fan of the Xbox Live Arcade version. There is nothing wrong with it, but it is just not my style of game. I was hoping it was be pretty fun on the Wii using the Wiimote and Nunchuk, but really it had pretty much the same feel as the Arcade versions. I played for a while and then it just got to repetitive for me.

If you’re not into Geometry Wars on the Xbox 360 then this is probably not for you because it is more of the same. But, if you’re a fan of Geometry Wars I’d say you’ll probably like Geometry Wars: Galaxies. And for only $20 it is a pretty good deal.

I finished playing Fracture last week and while it is not a bad game it is not that great either. I had fun playing it, but a lot of that was from hunting for all the data cells in the game (kinda like looking for orbs in Crackdown). You can read my full review here, but I’d recommend renting it before you buy it to see if it is your kind of game.

I rented Guitar Hero: World Tour over the long weekend last week and played through the guitar campaign, a big chunk of the bass campaign, and a little of the drums. My wife checked out the vocals for a bit and we tried a little online. I’m probably expecting to much after playing Rock Band 2 for a few months, but overall, I’m found myself frustrated and annoyed with GH:WT. Before I start ripping on all the stuff I did not like there were a few cool parts.

– I like playing the bass and having open notes to play (with no fret buttons pressed down). It made it feel a little more like playing a real bass.
– I also liked how you can stop after any song in the middle of a set in the campaign and it saved your spot. It would nice to have that for some of the 8 and 12 song sets in Rock Band 2’s tour mode.
– The other nice little touch was the ability to change difficulty mid set if you’re having trouble. It came in hand when I was playing drums and hit a song with a lot of bass pedal action.

While there were a few bright spots I was mostly just glad to when I finished the guitar tour and returned to Rock Band 2.
– The overall graphical style of the game drove me crazy. I much prefer Rock Band’s simpleness. I know that is just personal preference but it still bugged me.
– The song selection in GH:WT is lousy. Even my wife asked where all the good songs were. I probably only knew half of the songs in GH:WT and the half I did not know were not that fun to play. in Rock Band 2 the songs I did not know were still pretty fun.
– Even on songs I know and like the note charts feel weird. Like I’m not so much playing the song as trying to hit notes to the rhythm of the guitar. Rock Band 2 does a much better job of making you feel like you could actually be playing the song in my opinion.
– The music creation portion is brutally hard to use. Unless you’re really wanting to make your own song in GH:WT and have a lot of time and patience it is not worth the effort.

Unless you’re a hardcore Guitar Hero fan I’d recommend skipping GH:WT and getting Rock Band 2.

Hope everyone is enjoying a long weekend. I’m planning on spending a lot of time with Gears of War 2, Guitar Hero: World Tour, and A Kingdom for Keflings. I’ll try to get my thoughts together on GH:WT and AKFK early next week. But for anyone curious as of right now I’d recommend AKFK and not GH:WT…more on that soon.

I took a departure from Wii Fit recently and tried Jillian Michael’s Fitness Ultimatum 2009. What a pile of crap. You can read my full review here, but it boils down to this. It pretty much stinks, but it could be worse I guess.

I’m not going to do a full review of Gears of War 2 because there are plenty out there. I will say I really loved the campaign (other than a couple weak boss fights). Horde mode is tons of fun and I’m really enjoying the multiplayer. If you’ve not tried Gears 2 you should really at least rent it and try it out.

I started writing up a quick L4D Demo impression last night and it ended up being quite length so I made it a full review. You can read it here if you’re interested.