On Sleep, Sleeping, and Sleeper

I love to sleep. The only thing about it I don't like is that it takes time out of the day to actually get some sleep. Otherwise, you could say, I'm addicted to sleep. Having procured new, softer, more sleeplier sheets for Christmas this year, I now look forward even more to dive bombing onto my place of rest each night. Of course, my patterns of sleep are extremely erratic, and I never seem to go to bed at the same time on any given night. Indeed, much of my sleep must be forced on with heavy drinking or a heroin binge.

The title of this post has nothing at all to do with the post itself, I just wanted to make that the title. As I'm the one making the decisions here, I'll stand by them as long as I remain sentient enough to do so. Onward.

I started paying for a new service this month called Gamez n' Flix. As the name would suggest, it is an alternative to Gamefly and Netflix which rents both games and films. This sounded wonderful to my pallet, as I did not wish to pay for both, but I felt that both services should be offered. Indeed, I even had a dream once that I had started a similar business, but I had spent the acquired business loan money on mass quantities of cheese-its instead of leasing out a building and starting a website. As such, it is perhaps, in better hands. I began the service a week ago, and set up to receive 1 movie and 1 game at the same time. The service, while not offering a cheaper start up fee, is actually a better deal than the other two services, and it offers both in one convenient package. As I alluded to previously, there was, what you might call, a snow storm here in Oklahoma, so I'm unsure if that had any effect on my receiving the two items later, but the arrived a couple days ago. My first two choices were 1) The Descent (DVD) and 2) Viva Pinata (360). So, on their nifty little queue system, I made my selections and logged off, with those two items at one and two on my list.

The next day, I received an email saying that The Descent had shipped, and so had Sonic the Hedgehog (360). For a moment, I was flabbergasted. Sonic was about tenth on my list on the queue, and I wasn't planning on renting that one until I had pretty much exhausted all my other options. According to their site, the other stuff I had in queue should have been available, but I guess it wasn't. Anyway, I'm not particularly angry, as I did want to eventually play Sonic, but I'm sort of wondering if the list I made will have any actual baring when it comes down to it. I know Gamefly and Netflix function, because I have friends who use the two services frequently. The main complaint with Gamefly is that its only distribution center is supposedly somewhere in California, meaning that those of us not on the West Coast have to wait a little longer than we should for our rentals to come in.

Another oddity about Gamez n' Flix is that it features thousands of movies and games, but there are some pretty big name releases completely missing from the site. I was unable to find Crank (which just came out on DVD) and The Thing (not a new release, but my personal favorite Sci Fi masterpiece) were both missing action. Some other searches turned up empty with a few other big name releases. I'm hoping maybe they just haven't gotten a full library up yet as the service is new. They do have plenty of 360 games for me to choose from, and enough movies to keep me using the service for at least another month or two. If things don't get better, I'll probably switch over to one of the other two. Still, this is a cheaper alternative to buying, and it saves me from having to deal with blockbuster's bullshit.

The Descent
I feel I should write about the Descent because it is worth at the very least, some recognition of existence. It is a reasonable horror film marred by an almost useless first half. There are no male characters, save the one that is impaled at the start of the film. Don't ask me to explain that, as it really is quite pointless to the whole movie, but it happens, and it's gross. Maybe if people in England didn't drive on the wrong side of the road, it never would have happened, but they all suffer from a form of acute retardation when it comes to things like that, so they do, and it did. Anyway, the film finally picks up when a group of empowered women go spelunking. No, ladies and gentlemen, this is not the good kind of spelunking, but the kind where you crawl through caves on your belly and sometimes have to fight off demons. Or something. Yeah, there are demons I think. At least, I guess they might have been. The empowered girls deduce via some crappy paintings on the wall, that there were people in this cave before them, and that instead of dying, those people must have evolved into cave creatures that see by hearing and hunt stuff above ground at night and then return to their cave. Yeah. That's the story. So, I'm going to pretend they didn't offer an explanation, because that makes the demons that much cooler.

Bottom Line
If you like horror films, it's worth a rental at the very least, so you can either a) laugh at the terrible writing or b) watch some of the goriest shit you will ever see in a film. There are some pretty sick moments, and some of the movie is even very well shot (if you're into that kind of thing), so I guess it has that going for it. It's also slightly scary. I guess.


Sonic the Hedgehog
Oh Sonic, what happened to thee? You used to be a blue hedgehog that we could all identify with. Running around at light speed in flashy red shoes picking up golden rings and then dropping all of them if you ran into a robot created by an evil doctor shaped like an egg. You broke societal bonds and let us know that you were just like us, that we too could lead a normal life. Then, Sega decided to make this game.

There are two words I think that surmise what Sega has done to Sonic over the last ten or so years, and they are the following: Butt and Fuck

Imagine a game that already has the perfect formula. It's already fun to play, it looks great, and it has likable characters without any real story to speak of. Not even Mario could move as fast as this guy, and he looked cool doing it. Now, fast forward. Twenty bad games later, Sega is still unable to capture what made Sonic so great in the first place, and I just can't understand why. I guess the most plausible explanation is that somewhere along the way, they forgot what makes a game fun. The first level of Sonic 360 is a pretty awesome throwback to the original done in 3D. There are minor annoyances, but otherwise, it's pretty cool. It goes down hill from there.

The game tries to offer the illusion of a GTA like city (albeit an extremely tiny one) that ends up looking more like a direct copy of Mario Sunshine with a far more linear attitude toward game play. Add in the fact that Sonic and friends are existing in a world with humans, a dash of absolutely horrendous voice acting, and load times that occur more often than the number of times the kids swear on Southpark, and you've got a terrible video game. Don't forget the terrible cut scenes (you can skip them, praise the flying spaghetti monster) that take 30 seconds to load and when they're over, another 30 seconds to load the game back up. I'm not sure where all the loading comes from, as the game doesn't even really look that great. It has moments, sure, but nothing that can even come close to comparing to a similarly styled game (Viva Pinata). Oh yeah, and you have impossibly stupid boss fights where the game is so hopelessly bugged, you'll probably get so frustrated being killed unfairly over and over that you'll fly to Sega headquarters and pee on their front door.

Bottom Line
I essentially want to drop trow and let loose on this game. Or leave it out in the street while it rains and cars run over it. Or drop it out of an airplane. Unfortunately, it's not even worth any of the above effort. Don't play it, don't rent it, and above all, please don't buy it. You will not be happy with the purchase.