Reviews by markjazz

After reading over 400+ pages of this beast of a novel I finally had to give it up. I don't know what it was really but I just stopped caring about the characters and all the sub-plots. The only thing I was still interested in was the Hock-en-bear-eeee bits, and even then I wasn't as interested as I was in the first novel. I can't understand what went wrong because I gave the first book a 5/5 and friggn' loved it! I guess I just loved reading about this new World but after 1000 pages it started to get boring. Maybe if the story stuck to only a couple plots or was broken up into a trilogy it would have been a better read.

This game gave me mixed feelings when I was trying to decide what to write about it for this review.
Some Pro's:
*Great graphics for it's time.
*Fun game play.
*Challenging but not that piss-you-off-toss-your-controller-across-the-room type challenge.
*Ok music.
*Cool bosses.

Some Cons:
*It's only 1 player.
*More than half the weapons I find useless.
*No weapon upgrades.
*It has a total high score but a level high score would be better.

I picked this game up for $10 so it's well worth it but I wouldn't go spending more than say $30 on this if you can find it.

Every once in a while I pick up a novel at random and a couple weeks ago it was this one, along with the second book. I'm going to have to say that this is thee best novel I've ever read that I picked up just on a whim! I could say so much about it but I don't feel like writing a novel on my own here. I'll just say that this book, along with being well written, made me think. I found myself having to stop what I was reading and picture it in my mind because it sounded awesome. I was looking up material on the internet after reading chapters. I was laughing. I was just overall bloody amazed at the story and wondering how the hell Dan even thought of it in the first place. I would suggest if anyone is curious about reading something different for once than look no further than this novel. It's a mind bender and will tickle your brain for sure!

Interesting characters, great use of description, massive world. This book had a lot going for it but it wasn't the best fantasy novel I ever read. I was really interested in it for the first 500 of so pages but I soon just stop caring about the whole world and I don't feel like plugging along for the ride to read the rest of the 5000 pages in the story. The show... now that's a different story!

I have to admit I was entertained watching this movie and there were a few moments I found "gripping" and "thrilling". However, there was just a couple of items that bugged me. One will be a spoiler so I won't say it and the other was the camera direction during some of the action scenes. I can't stand that shaky in your face fast movement shot. Bugs the hell out of me and it's not needed at all. Overall it was a good watch though but I'm not really caught up in this World, which is good. I just saved myself a shit load of money from useless merchandise.

Wow! This book was a joke! I bought it because I'm a huge fan of these two authors and I wanted to see what they would do with a new series character. Well this character is the biggest load of BS I've ever come across in a book. There's so much I could go into but I would spoil a lot if I did, but holy crap this Gideon is laughable. He's a whiz with anything IT releated yet he needs help blowing up a digital image? He can speak Mandarin and Latin for some reason. He can also do magic... for some reason. Oh, and he's a slut to boot! The guy will sleep with whore's and mystery CIA woman without thinking twice! I think these two author's were trying to create a $6 Million Dollar Man version of Alex Cross but it failed big time. I get it! He likes Jazz! Enough already! The worst part about this book was the ending. It reminded me about how the Adam West Batman use to use his Batcomputer to help him solve crimes. So damn lame!

My girlfriend bought this game new for $10 and holy shit it is worth every penny. I've rated it a 9/10 but if it wasn't for a few minor things it'd be a perfect 10/10 for sure. The only negative is there's some backtracking to be done and I'm generally not a fan of that but I don't think this makes the game any worse overall. When I was playing it I was at the 10 hour mark and thought; "Ok, here comes the final boss." Nope, not even close. There's so much game play and puzzles in here and because you're dealing with your shadow it makes solving them a lot more interesting that if it was just a normal side scrolling platforming game. This game isn't fairly well known but I'm sure any lover of side scrolling or platforming games would love it. Creepy monsters, awesome ambient soundtrack, and a shit load of fun!

I'm a large fan of John Carpenter films, and his scores, and this movie is no exception. Even though it's totally different from the book I still like how he developed certain characters and I can see why he left out all the zombies from the novel as it would have made this movie well over 2 hours. The acting and transformation by Keith Gordon as Arnie Cunningham is my favorite part of the film and he does such a great job going from nerd to complete possessed psycho.

Another great thing about this movie is it has two soundtracks. There's the music from the 50's that Christine plays whenever her mood changes and then you have the score done by John Carpenter as well. I will admit that the score doesn't sound as great on CD, but I love what he did with it for the movie. Great atmosphere and I wouldn't call this a "horror" movie as it's more of a thriller and there really isn't any blood, except at the very end. Great movie overall and if they did remake this one I wouldn't mind seeing the zombie-Christine-victims in it, as it was in the novel.

Stats
TRT: 1:49:55
First Death: 4:52
Second Death: 1:05:50
Last Death: 1:41:22
Total Deaths: 10 (3 from first owner)
Swears: 73
Tits: 0
Explosions: 1
Scenes with Blood: 2
Meaningful Songs: 15
Times Christine's Name Is Said: 20
Times Christine Rebuilds Herself: 6

I expected a lot more from this movie going in but after seeing it I'm not surprised I didn't like it. I'm sick of horror movies that use cheap scares just by inserting a loud quick violin pluck here and there. It works for 14 year old girls but not for fans of the horror genre. I did like Radcliffe but he had no support at all in this film so he didn't really get to show off his talents. This movie was predictable with nothing new added in it at all. The original was much better.

This was a better than average read for this type of pulp magazine. It's sci-fi but kind of a lesser sci-fi than your usual material. There's a couple mystery stories in here and one that deals with the afterlife. I found the "The Afterlife of Reilly" by Richard Deming short story to be the best one and the punch line actually made me laugh out loud.