Thursday, May 17, 2007

Halo 3 ... finally, 28 Week's Later, and the end is near.

Well I got up yesterday promptly at 6:55 a.m. before my alarm went off, and started my wondrous adventure into the land of Beta software, and fairy tales. Went downstairs popped in my Crackdown gateway disc only to be greeted by the same 'greyed' out option as always.

The first update came on the Bungie.net homepage at 5:22 a.m. Pacific (7:22 a.m. doodah time) acknowledging the problem, and saying they had notified Live and were working on a solution. The next update on the Bungie.net homepage was at 3:55 p.m. Pacific, sure there had been some updates here and there in the forums section, but who wanted to trudge through 10 pages an hour of fanboy hate, and commentary? For a while it seriously looked like it would be 24 hours late, and not hit until 7 a.m. Thursday morning. When the 3:55 p.m. update was posted it said they had figured out a solution and were 'testing' it, and it would be implemented in 3-6 hours.

It finally hit Live evidently about 9:05 p.m. (doodah time), but I was busy watching C.S.I. New York. I was trying every commercial break but couldn't get Crackdown to update, after the show ended I did some more net reading and found that clearing the update cache on the 360 HD was working for people. About 10:10 p.m. (15 hours later than planned...) I finally started downloading the Halo 3 beta. Luckily my download went pretty quick, and didn't have any of the problems that some people were having. Right after 11 p.m. (watched Lost during the download) I started my beta experience. :)

It didn't take long for me to realize that it's been a long time since I played a Halo game. I pretty much suck online, although I did manage to pull off a couple kills in the 2+ hours I spent with it. I also got to play all 3 of the beta maps, and 5-6 different game variations (still like slayer (plan ol' death match) the best, and territory (sp?) not so much). I'm still undecided about the matchmaking setup, it seems to take a little bit to find a game then fill it with players, but it seems like you can 'tag' a group of players and you will move from game to game together. Because of the snafu with the download, Bungie/Microsoft have extended the beta till June 10th now, so a few extra days of Halo goodness.


I had some free time Tuesday after work (didn't work Wednesday (see big plans above)), so I went and saw 28 Weeks Later. I had seen the first one 28 Days Later before it hit theaters here. It was a European release and was already available on DVD over there before it played theatrically here. I had read so many good things about it that I went ahead and imported the DVD, and even watched it again at the theaters thinking maybe I missed something. It was supposed to be a 're-imagining' of the zombie movie (or at least that's what I gathered), but what I got wasn't ... that. It was okay, nothing real special. I thought the story moved kind of slow, and I don't remember it as being action filled.

Anywho I caught the preview for the new one about a month ago, and it showed promise plus I figured it had to be better than the first one. Overall it was much more enjoyable than the first, although it had it's problems. I didn't like the fast action soft focus cuts, that felt like a montage of still photos. I also didn't see that they tied it to the first movie at all (other than basic premise), but there is some grey area there as I know the DVD version had at least one, if not two, alternate endings, and I can't remember what the ending of the theatrical cut was. I think I'm remembering an alternate, and not the real one (damn, now I need to go back and watch it again...). Weeks is definitely a step in the right direction, and the ending poised this one for another follow up, maybe the third time will be a charm.


Seems like just yesterday the fall tv season was upon us, and now some of my favorite shows have already had their cliff hangers, while others have another week to go. Now that the cable channels seem to make their own seasons, at least I can take comfort in the fact that other favorites will be coming back in the upcoming weeks to take the vacant slots. On a side note I noticed Cox has added TNT HD to my box, so something new to watch, oooh maybe The Closer in HD this summer. :)

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