Acion scenes = HORRIBLE = furiously fast changing scenes. Cutting is so fast that you do not know what it is happening. Compared to action intro from Casino this is piece of .....
Story = HORRIBLE = after few minutes you will figure out that this movie is just intermission (prelude) to third part. This movie is so different from other "Bonds" that it is not Bond anymore - Casino was the perfect exampole how to make different bond and still keep what is so typical for this series. It has nearly no ironic humor typical for all bond movies. It has too many refferences to amazing Casino Royale. Story is weak and no strong points inside.
Bondgirl - WTF?!?! No comment.
OVERALL : 2/10 (I have paid the cinema ticket but this movies is not worth it, believe me).
After two years I have manged to go on real vacation bringing with me this book. I had read lot of positive reviews of this book and the novel received several awards.
To be frank I do not find this book so stunning. It is pleasant reading, but I definitelly cannot say it is better than Tolkien´s LOTR.
I won´t go deep into the plot. You can read it anywhere else.
In short, I find the part which describes Norrell´s stay in London quite boring. Through all pages you are waiting for some action to happen. After the Norrell´s practical magic demonstration in church in the small village the book moves to London where Mr Norrell is trapped in London live full of banquets, balls and chatting.
The book than moves slowly to Mr Strange again describing his background.
The most interesting part follows as Strange is staying in Spain finghting against Napoleon. It is funny, adventurous and moving.
After his return to London the novel falls back to descriptive mode.
Some of the reviewers are reffering to love aspect of the book. To be frank it is not very romantic describing english gentlemen as a cold beings fully occupied by their interests - clubs, work, male friends. Their wives are just one piece of their household - with same importance as table or horse. so, there is NOTHING happening in this book in terms of love.
The final chapters will wake you up again for a while and they will even suprise you with unexpected story development.
To conclude, I would prefer this book to be MUCH SHORTER avoiding unecessary boring chapters. You can accept them only if you admint this IS NOT NOVEL BUT Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell´s BIOGRAPHY.
NHL09 will be here in September-October timeframe as usual...
I am PC owner without any console...
So I am as many others sentenced to the OLD GEN version of this series. There are reports saying that NHL09 will be no exception. If It is true, we will get another NHL06 based game... The price will be lower than PS3 or X360 versions but IMHO still VERY HIGH for the DATADISK or NHL06 patched version....
HERE Peter Moore complains about PC gaming market which is full of piracy and decline. And that is why he is not willing to give us same quality as to the console users.
But IMHO he has forgotten several facts in his article:
1) Who has funded EA all those years during which there were no PC comparable consoles? PC users, of course. 2) Isn´t it act of piracy and cheating by EA themselves when they are just patching 3 years old code trying to sell it every year as brand new PC game? Maybe less PC gamers would be reluctant to buy NEXT GEN NHL PC verison, don´t you think? Is the level or ways of piracy nowadays so different than 3 years ago when they stopped developing the series for PC? 3) When the PC versions are so different, why I have won my FIRST NHL08 game with the score 15:3 using difficult level of gameplay and the exactly same tricks as in NHL06 and NHL07?!?!? See my yesterdays game below playing season with the FLYERS on difficult level (each period is 10min long). Wait for the final score at the end of the video....
4) There are successful PC games which have managed to avoid first most damaging piracy waves after releasing the game - Bioshock, Mass effect etc. Why do not apply it to EA SPORTS games?
I understand business rules and cost/profit ratio which is better and easier to get on consoles, but are those creator of PC version of the Assassin Creed or Mass Effect mad to do that then? No, they know the fact that if the game is good, you will get also very good money of the PC versions of these games.
NHL PC series sucks and that is why Moore cannot expect huge sales...
UPDATE: I have just installed NHL09 and played my first game on difficulty level... Again, it is the same game as in NHL 06. Even the graphics is worse because I play NHL 08 with Reebook high resolution graphic pack See the first NHL 09 video...
UPDATE March 2009 : EA sport finally decided to cancel NHL for PC after terrible NHL09. So there will be no NHL10 for PC. But on the other hand Take 2 announced that they would make NHL 2K10 for PC!!! So maybe we (PC gamers) will receive next gen hockey after long years of starving. Lets hope .
PROS - stunning graphics of all characters - deep and complex story - nice music
CONS - simple (less detailed) graphics of the enviroment - planets, stations, spacecraft - not very intuitive actions part of the game - you can get used to it - you cannot highlight your destination planet connected with your task from the jurnal menu
I bought D-Link DIR-655 two weeks ago to enable free movement with my NTB around and inside the house.
The initial setup was not done in few minutes because I have already one router from my ISP.
Here is my new topology: ISP (WAN) over wifi --- present wifi router from ISP using wifi to connect to the WAN --- new D-Link router connected to the ISP router´s LAN port over its 100Mbit Ethernet WAN port --- PC connected to the D-Link router over 1Gbit Ethernet + NTB connected to the D-Link router over 802.11g
In-build connection wizard stopped when he found out WAN and LAN interfaces have the same subnet. So I had to change my LAN subnet to 10.0.0.x and leave WAN subnet at 192.168.0.x. From this point everything went well. D-Link obtained WAN DHCP (192.168.0.x range) settings from ISP router and PC and NTB obtained (10.0.0.x range) settings from the D-link router.
Everything was working fine except sometimes:
1) the browser (any) showed the message "...cannot display the webpage" immediately after clicking on the link. The refresh button often helped to display the web page. 2) the browser (any) failed to show some pictures on the loaded webpages
I have tried to change lot of the D-link default settings but FINALLY have noticed that DNS server on my PC and NTB is set by D-link´s DHCP server to 10.0.0.1 (IP address of the D-link router). When I changed it manually back to my ISP´s DNS servers everything started to work fine. There is maybe some problem with the D-link´s "DNS Relay" feature where the router plays the role of a DNS server. DNS requests sent to the router are forwarded to the ISP's DNS server.
Except the one problem with the DNS settings I am very sattisfied with the new D-Link DIR-655 router. The 802.11g performance is fine according to my needs. The router sits on my table on the first floor and I get usable -80dB on the second floor on my bed. The house has ferroconcrete walls and ceiling . I had no opportunity to try 802.11n.
4/10 CONS - Harrison Ford is old and doesn´t have Sean Connery´s elegance for playing old "heroes" - Cate Blanchett is totally inappropriate for this "evil" role. She is more to laught then to fear. And it is true that EVERY MOVIE IS AS GOOD AS ITS EVIL GUY... That is why this is not good movie... - There are no sparks between Harrison Ford and Karen Allen - what is the point looking for 2 hours at two "grannies" action movie? - The digital tricks are sometimes too evident and intrusive - There are some non-logic moments a) when Mac (Ray Winstone) is betraying IJ and he is pointing to his head with the gun, he suddenly walks to other russian guys leaving IJ the same advantage to aim at Cate Blanchett. b) When IJ destroys the jungle machine for making way through the jungle, they continue to ride through the jungle like on the highway. What is chopping the trees now? -shakycam during action scenes - headache maker -silly ending
Installation Last summer (2007) I have bought brand new PC. I have it in our living room, so I have decided to buy water cooling (WC) too to avoid noisy CPU and very noisy GPU (8800GTX) fans.
I have bought Zalman Reserator 2 with 8800GTX waterblock also from ZALMAN.
Installation was OK. I am "average" PC builder... I have built this PC by myself, so adding this WC to it was 4 hours work for me. I had to remove CPU and GPU passive and active cooling blocks and replace them with CPU waterblock (supplied with Reserator 2) and 8800GTX (bought separately).
Initial lauch was also OK. Remaining air in the tubes was eliminated by lifting Reserator 2 above the PC. Flow indicator began to rotate and everything was so QUIET.
Usage After 4 months of smooth operation the flow control began to beep accassionaly alerting me that the water flow stopped. Each time I had to push the RESET button on the Reserator or tilt it from side to side as described in the manual to force water to flow again - but you have to be near the PC during that time. Sometimes I let the PC turned on during the night and you can imagine how pleased I was in the morning returning to my PC with beeping Reserator for several hours already .
This flow failings happened randomly, sometimes it was really lack of flow, but later I noticed that more and more often everything is going fine, flow was OK, indicator was rotating and SUDDENLY the Reserator STOPPED and began to beep. WTF?!?!?
See the movie:
I went through several forums and I have read many stories of this Reserator 2 where people indentified BROKEN FLOW CONTROL which STOPS the Reserator INSPITE OF THE FACT THE FLOW IS OK.
As I have mentioned these failings were random at first but few days ago it got worse and and the flow control failed to analyze real WATER flow at all and after few seconds of PC running flow control immediately began to beep. And after RESET AGAIN and AGAIN.... It was so annoying that I prepared myself for several weeks of PC outage and for calling my vendor to replace this Reserator under warranty conditions. I have ended up with adhesive tape over the RESET botton to force Reserator to RESET "automaticly" without my finger on it...
My last chance before claiming new Reserator was to replace the water inside, because I have also noticed few small blue object in the water tubes near "IN" sign of the Reserator.
I have bought new anti-corrosion liquid ZM-G200 and enough of the destilled water. When I opened the Reserator and poured out all the coolant I was very suprised to see the sediments and pieces of the agglutinated coolant inside on the walls.
So, I have tried to clean it all with destilled water and I have reassembled the Reserator agian with new coolant. But with no luck. The flow control was failing again on regular basis. So I have applied my sticky tape and played some game...
After aprox. 15 minutes of flow control failing and reseting IT STOPPED to fail and no beeping occured SINCE! Maybe the flow control was dirty and confused by sediments and replacing the coolant cleaned it after 15 minutes of forced operation with immediate RESET.
So now I am happy again looking forward next followin 6 months of operation till the collant´s sediments "damages" the flow control again...
JULY 2008 UPDATE I had to clean the Reserator´s tubes again because sediments were blocking the coolant flow and the flow control was failing again. I will have to definitely find different coolant which does not agglutinate.
I have installed like millions of others new 3DMark Vantage.
Sry, but this is 2008 cutting edge graphics? This is DX10 capabilities pushed to the limits? Those two trial version 3D tests are absolutely HORRIBLE... 3D Mark 2007 or even 2006 are more visually attractive... This also proves how todays games graphics is stagnating. What can you say to the fact that my 8800GTX is still after 1,5 years of its existence one of the best performance graphic card on the market.... I think we will have to wait quite a long time for the revolution which 8800GTX and Core 2 Duo has brought to us in terms of the performance boost...
Anbd BTW, my 8800GTX, Core 2 Duo E6700 with 4GB RAM achieved 4655 3D Marks.
My wife has bought me this game (PC version of the Assassin´s Creed = AC) today.
To be frank I didn´t experience any WOW effect during first minutes of play.
I am playing at 1900x1200 on 26" screen with full details at 40fps and to be frank I like TES:Oblivion outdoor graphics more. In Oblivion It was worth to climb to any high spot and enjoy the view. But here in AC it seems to me, that there are lot of empty deserted places with nothing else than ugly polygon rock.
The story is good so far, but not so intense as for example in the game called "The Witcher". The Witcher catches you and it is hard stop playing. Here in AC I do not feel this way... The story is moving from the past to the present times, but when you play ancient part of the story, you always see futuristic artifacts on the screen - blue numbers etc. It destroys the encient atmosphere and it always reminds you it is only a memory visualized by the machine.
The game interface is console like interface. So, you cannot save wherever you would like, you have to click MANY times to quit the game (I have already seen some YouTube videos showing that "feature - I can´t quit you"). ALT-TAB and ALT+F4 is highly recommended here :+/. You cannot load any checkpoint in the memory slot (chapter). Once I have loaded the game and suddenly I have appeared on the place (checkpoint) where I was never before.
Following days The game is VERY repetitive and LINEAR... Lot of other game are too, but here it more obvious. You are always doing the same thing... You arrive into the town, climb the view point, receive limited range of tasks (steal, time limit, assasinate, protect citizen), assasinate main target, escape. On each location you can search for the flags, but it has no meaning except you can feel satisfied after finding them all.
Through the game you are developing new fighting skills (some of them have very nice animations) and to be frank the fights are the most entertainy things to do in the game. The difficulty level is increasing through the play. There more soldiers on the roofs and their fighting skills are also better later in the game.
The graphics has some minor texture errors which could be seen from the view points.
.
. 
(0%)
WIDGETIZE