I bought the Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii, even though I've owned, played, and finished all the Metroid Prime games. It's like being reunited with an old friend who has aged even better than you expect.

I've only played MP1 thus far on the set, but the controls really do make a big difference, and it almost feels like you're playing a different game at times. The "scan a random number of runic symbols" puzzles are way easier when you can look around freely while moving, for instance. Also, they've improved the lighting in the game a little bit, and it looks noticeably sharper at times. I was amused that they didn't bother to touch up the horribly pixelated foliage during the cutscene when you land on Tallon IV, though.

The only minor disappointment I've had is that they've removed all the individual menus for the games in favor of one master game select screen, so you don't get to hear the cool music and see the Metroid close-up in the MP1 menu. Also, I think the achievements are sort of stupid.

I hear they toned down the difficulty of MP2 slightly, so I'm interested in seeing how that game plays. Though I can't say I'm eager to play it, since I'd say it's the weakest of the trilogy.

But anyway, if you haven't played Metroid Prime and you own a Wii, you need to buy this game right this very moment. It even comes in a cool metal DVD case that looks pretty snazzy.

So I guess about a year after it actually premiered, I finally watched the end of Avatar. My (incredibly late and irrelevant) thoughts after the cut.

( This is the worst field trip ever. )

All in all, it's okay, but it will not go down as one of my favorite finales of all time.

My cat managed to somehow hurt herself yesterday. She's visibly fine, but she's having a lot of trouble walking, mainly when it comes to putting weight on her back legs. It takes her a while to get up once she's been lying down, and once she does start walking, she only goes short distances before flopping down again. More mysteriously, she's capable of jumping up on top of my couch, though I have not witnessed her doing this to determine how much effort it takes her.

I've checked her back legs and neither one seems to be broken or injured. I imagine that the problem might be compounded by the fact that she's hilariously overweight. She doesn't act strange, or act like she's in any pain when she's not trying to walk.

Anyone have any expertise in cats and cat injuries?

Also, the Avatar movie trailer was surprisingly not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. I actually felt sort of hopeful when they showed the huge Fire Nation fleet shooting fireballs. And for all the hoopla about racism, the kid playing Aang does look hilariously like Aang from the cartoon.

I didn't really like Transformers 2 all that much. I enjoyed the first one, but recognize it for what it is: a deeply-flawed movie that's still fun to watch. The sequel, however, is one of the few movies to ever give me a headache.

Transformers 2 is the culmination of the summer blockbuster. It's the peak of the pure action genre. And by that, I mean that it's essentially nothing but action, and all the "plot" and "characterization" and "coherence" are sort of afterthoughts, when they're present at all. Everything in this movie is intended to create a great action scene. There are a bazillion giant robots, none of which I gave a flip about, on the screen at any given moment. Well, except for a moment in the middle of the action where the focus inexplicably shifts from the robots to the army and becomes blatant military porn.

It really is a shallow movie, and where the first movie could coast by on the novelty of the transformations and robots being so amazing, those things just seem overdone in this movie. It's hard to find a robot particularly amazing when there are twenty in a single frame and you can't really tell them apart and, in some cases, you can't tell what they're even supposed to transform into.

I just gave up halfway through the movie. The plot is dumb, the characters are bad, and the action is sort of hard to follow. Granted, these are things that were wrong with the original movie, but for some reason, I found them to be much more grievous errors this time around.

There has to be a third movie, since this one will make enough money to pay off the national debt, and perhaps by then Michael Bay will have figured out a way to get rid of this "plot" thing entirely, since all it does is get in the way of his terrific explosions.

Terminator has been on my mind ever since seeing Salvation, and I think I've realized that the one thing I absolutely cannot forgive is that the classic Terminator theme song, perhaps one of the most recognized theme songs in cinema, is not used in the film. The percussion part is used at one point, but the rest of the theme is never heard. The main theme sounds somewhat similar to the classic theme song, but it isn't the same. It's a glaring flaw in the soundtrack, and I have no idea why Danny Elfman decided to create his own, far inferior Terminator theme.

For comparison, here's the Terminator theme from the title sequence of T2 and here's the Salvation theme from the title sequence.

The Terminator theme is one of my all-time favorite pieces of music, and I can't believe they didn't use it. Danny Elfman is now on my shit list. >:(

Let's talk Terminator: Salvation.

( Spoilers of course )

I am now a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics.

And now I have to decide what to do from here.

Star Trek was pretty good. I'm not much of a Trek fan, but I liked it pretty well, though maybe not quite as much as I was prepared to. I think the trailer might have made it out to be a little more epic than it actually is, but I enjoyed it, and it's definitely the best Trek movie I've seen (which isn't that big of a statement, I guess, since I've only seen Wrath of Khan and First Contact).

I think the beginning is a lot better than the rest of the movie. The first scene is intense and great, and I don't think the rest of the movie quite equals it. The actors are all quite good in their roles, especially Simon Pegg as Scotty and Karl Urban as McCoy.

All-in-all, I enjoyed myself, and my dad, who used to be a pretty big Star Trek fan, stated that it was the best Trek movie he's ever seen. So take that as you will.

Oh, and in less important news, I graduate tomorrow.

Today has been a day of excitement.

I finished my last exam, so I guess I'm tentatively done with college forever.

Second, there was a tornado here today. I didn't actually see it, but I could see the clouds swirling out the window and the emergency alarms came on. It was pretty exciting. I really wanted to see that tornado though, damn it.

Computer science is done, perhaps forever. I will not shed a tear if that's the case.

The final wasn't that bad, and parts of the exam were actually taken directly from a practice exam. I still feel like I'm going to get fucked over somehow, though. Just as long as I pass...

Probability final is on Friday and will probably be pretty hard, but I've done pretty good on everything else in the class and I have a day to prepare. It's all downhill from there.

I recently bought all of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (I actually bought anime, best check to make sure that the world hasn't ended and/or hell hasn't frozen over) since you can find it pretty cheap now, and it's merely reinforced the fact that I love cop dramas. I do hate the Tachikomas something fierce, though. And something that has bothered me more this time around than when I watched it in the past is the Major's lack of pants for most of the series. In a series that mostly prides itself on presenting a realistic vision of the future, I have a hard time buying that someone of the Major's rank could get away with prancing around in a leotard. And it's especially glaring since no one else in the show dresses ridiculously. I guess I understand why they included it from a business standpoint (durr hurr fanboys love the Major's ass), but it's a glaring "anime" aspect of a series that is mostly the anti-anime in terms of usual anime bullshit that makes me dislike the genre as a whole.

Crank 2 is a great film that everyone should see. Well, everyone except for the easily-offended.

Haha, I love Mass Effect. There's a quest where you can help a drug addict by getting a stimulant for him, but you can buy a downer instead and give it to him, and he starts cursing at you with slurred speech.

Anyway, in the real world, which is far less interesting, I'm worried about my computer science class. I think it's a foregone conclusion that I'm going to make the lowest grade of my life in this class, and whether or not I'm going to pass is still up in the air. The grading is just so draconian. I got a 15 out of 100 on the second project because I could never get it to quite work right, and given that I put something like 20 hours into the project, I just don't really know why I bother anymore. It's like the professor grades in binary: you either get a 1 or a 0 on these projects.

I wouldn't be quite as angry about this if the teaching in the class was better. The professor basically tells us the concepts, and without giving any actual code examples while ensuring that the code in the book is nigh useless due to the rules for the projects, he expects us to come up with hilariously huge programs that work perfectly. No credit is given for trying, or demonstrating that you were at least understanding the concepts but could not get the execution down exactly right. Which is sort of ironic, given that he only teaches the concepts, after all.

I have another project due at the end of this week. I know I can get it to at least partially work, but there's an aspect to it that I have no idea how to implement. We'll see how things go. I know I'm definitely not going to put 20 hours into this project only to fail.

I finished Mass Effect last night, and I found it to be a pretty exceptional game. I would rank it as one of the best RPGs I've ever played, up there with Paper Mario 2 and Neverwinter Nights.

( Stuff about Mass Effect )

I'm having a resurgence of video game-playing.

Besides Red Alert 3: Uprising, I bought Mass Effect off of Steam, since I watched a friend play through the most of the 360 version and it seemed interesting enough to warrant shelling out $20. The only problem is that I harbor concerns of my laptop overheating while playing it. The game runs just fine (with the detail turned down so the characters look like shit), but the CPU gets upward of 150-160 degrees while playing it for just a short amount of time. I've invested in a cooling pad, but until that comes, I'm playing sparingly.

The "create your character" thing is the bane of my existence. I went through and created what I thought was a kind of cute, yet badass female soldier, but the more I look at her, the more I think she looks like some sort of deformed monstrosity. I kind of like it, though. She walks a fine line between okay-looking and repulsive.

I'm also thinking about buying Beyond Good & Evil, since that showed up on Steam and you can get it along with 3 other games for $10 in this special deal they're running. The only issue would be if it's a game that needs a control pad, since I don't have one. I don't think I'd have any trouble running that game.

Things going on in my life:

I had a probability test today that I think went pretty well. I studied long enough for it.

Two of my professors are out of town, so I don't even have to go to class tomorrow. It's awesome.

I've been playing Red Alert 3: Uprising. I feel like it's been getting a bum rap from fans and reviewers. It doesn't have multiplayer, and a lot of people are faulting it for that. But it's like someone at EA went "Quick! We have to make an expansion just for this 'Nat' guy! Include everything he could possibly want!" I don't play multiplayer (because I'm absolutely terrible at the game and couldn't hope to compete against other humans), and if you give me a set of weird challenges involving goofy characters, I'll be hooked for hours. And that's exactly what the expansion gives me.

( More stuff about RA3 that you probably don't care about )

I hate shoulders!

The latest development in the ongoing saga of the weight training injury I got back in October is that the motherfucker still isn't better. It has this nasty habit of popping very loudly when I'm doing something that would strain it, followed by a sharp pain that turns into soreness that lasts a couple days before disappearing. It's almost like it tries to pop out of socket or something.

In any case, I'm going to the doctor about it when I got back to Asheville at the end of the semester. I don't trust the doctors in the health center down here after they went "herp derp it seems fine, nothing we can do durr hurr" last time I went about my shoulder.

In any case, it's getting irritating not being able to do anything because my shoulder tries to self-destruct. I quit weight training and started swimming instead, but I had to stop that as well after my shoulder gave out halfway across the pool.

Let's talk about Watchmen.

( spoilers )

I took a friend with me to see the movie as an experiment. I wanted to see if someone who had no knowledge about the comic would find the movie enjoyable. He liked it, citing "Rorschach is awesome" as one of the reasons. I had to explain some of the plot points to him afterward, though.

And ultimately, I know I listed a lot of things I didn't like, but I think it's a good movie and it's worth seeing.

Hooray, Spring Break! There's nothing like being home and relaxing in the... snow.

:|