Like Bildo, I’ve moved to a new site.

WWW.oakstout.blogspot.com

Please update your blog rolls.  I’ll try and post a reminder here when I can from time to time.  If WordPress hadn’t gotten all flaky on my I might still be here, but since its been giving me a ton of grief over the last few months, I decided I need to try something different.

If for some reason, WordPress stops being a total ASS, I’ll try and start my blog up back over here.  But in the mean time, please visit my new site.  I know lots of people have been wondering whats up, but now you know.

I hope it doesn’t inconveince anyone by the move.

I’ve been having a lot of trouble with wordpress of late. Images not being able to load, text not showing up correctly and the last straw was last night when one of my posts made it to the feeder, but got lost on the site. Not sure what is going on with the wordpress site, but its been trashed since March, which has pretty much been pissing me off.

So, I’m going to be moving to my blogspot account. So if you have this on a feeder, you might want to change too, www.oakstout.blogspot.com. I would make it a link, but all the controls for doing that are missing right now, sorry, but you’ll just have to cut and paste. I’m done with WordPress.

One of these days I’ll throw down some cash and get my own website, but till then, I’ll be blogging on free sites. I’m hoping to have the site, the other site working by this afternoon. Right now I just have a small introduction to myself, so feel free to experience some more poor writing. lol

Again, its www.oakstout.blogspot.com

See you all there.

What makes a great MMO?  Polish?  A great launch? Different approach to an old idea?

These can be said of just about any type of game. 

But what makes an MMO great?  Is it the different race/class combinations?  Is it the questing and rewards? The way a character fights or cast spells?  Is it the graphic or maybe the sound effects and music?  Could the game bring something innovative to the genre that no other one has or maybe some thing that has been tried before but failed?

I bring all this up, because when I was thinking about my experiences in AoC, it occurred to me that this game was good, but not great.  The game lacks polish.  (Sorry to Darren and others that hate that term.)  Characters shouldn’t be disappearing into the ground, getting stuck on terrain or losing pets every time they zone in to or out of an instance.  Graphical glitches should be lower than what appears to be happening in this game.  My preception is that beta is where companies find these small problems and fix them before the game is released.  Worse case scenario the game gets released and a miracle patch is sent out to ease the pain.  Something as simple as your character getting suck on a rock or bush shouldn’t be happening the first week of release.

Classes are another issue.  Every class should be pretty much balanced when the game comes out.  I know that this isn’t always possible and some tweaking might be necessary. The fact is, we shouldn’t be see Rangers pwning people at point blank range, especially if the Ranger is getting the snot kicked out of him by a dagger wielding assassin.  I love nuking people at point blank range with my demonologist, but I also think that if a bunch of undead are beating on me, I should get interrupted a few times and that just doesn’t happen.  Worse case scenario is when they find out there is an unbalanced Feat,  Nerf it in the wrong direction and make the whole Feat line pointless, causing the player to really hate that class.  I have a friend that plays a rogue in Wow, who bitches everytime a patch comes out because of something Blizzard took away, but he still plays his character because in fact the nerfs are little and a much needed change or so I keep telling him. lol  Designers need to balance a class not over power or gimp it to the point where players won’t ever touch it again.

The in game mail, auction house and bank are still down.  These things are key to the success of any MMO.  They help drive the ingame economy.  How can people get the materials they need to build these big guild houses if you can’t sell or buy much needed items on the auction house?  Designers have lost a good bit of their end game just from this problem.  You also can’t pass off items of value to an alt or keep things that maybe useful later because of limited storage space.  This is a failure in my book.

The PvP is pointless.  I know that the PvP in WoW seems tacked on, but at least they have some way of rewarding the player for participating.  AoC doesn’t offer anything that I am aware of except at end game where you can lay siege to other guild keeps. But what about the lowly level 15 that wants to get his gank on?  I like real world PvP just as much as the next person, but after pwning people for 5 minutes it gets kind of silly.  Why grief people all day?  Especially since there isn’t a penalty for ganking people half your level or lower.  It seems like people would get fustrated after a while and just say screw this game.

From what I’ve gathered from several web sources, AoC had a flawless launch.  why?  Because the servers have been rock solid and the lag has been minimal?  I just don’t understand this philosophy.  Just because the game hasn’t had a major shut down, doesn’t make it a great game.  Look at WoW.  Right after it was launched they had server problems and had horrific lag.  Everyone was complaining and Blizzard gave everyone extra time to make up for it.  Did WoW go under because of this?  NO.  Blizzard is the top dog now and their launch was anything but flawless.  I do have to give props to AoC.  Funcom did learn from Blizzard’s mistakes and had servers on stand by to take up the slack.  A smart move on their part.  But does this mean they have a great game on their hands?

The quests are fun, the game has lots of nice action and the graphics are spectacular.  At times, there seems to be too much for the player to do.  I mean, how are they suppose to attack, switch weapons, hide and complete combos?  Not to mention being able to block attacks, lay traps and direct their pets around?  All of this seems overwhelming at times, but its challenging which was the point the designers were trying to make.  They want the player to become more immersed in the game’s action, which I am glad to say, they have achieved.  They have successfully taken the old art of combat and made it something different.

My current plan is to keep Conan as my second MMO.  But why Oakstout, you’ve all but trashed the game?  Well, to be honest, even with its faults, the game is a blast to play.  I’m not saying its better than LOTRO, but it has captured more of my attention in the short span that LOTRO ever did, even with its achievement system.  I also don’t want to be too quick in my decision.  All the issue I currently have with the game can be fixed.  Its just a question of how long it will take and if they will really make the effort to get it done correctly.

So is AoC a diamond in the rough?  No. Right now its more like a lump of coal that is on the verge of greatness, if only the right kind of pressure is applied.  I just hope it doesn’t take too long.

Did you think it was going to be that easy? You expected me to just say AoC beats WoW hands down right? Well, not exactly!

Well, I’ve been playing Age of Conan since last Tuesday (release day). Due to my heavy raiding schedule in WoW, which is a wonderful excuse, since I’ve been struggling for so long to find a great guild and I’ve have finally found one. Because of this slight unexpected happiness, I haven’t been able to get past 20 yet, but I do have several at level 9 and one at level 18.

Here’s the run down so far. The lag for me is minimum, although I did hit some pretty good chop on Saturday while playing, but I brought my graphical settings down a bit and that helped. My current machine, which i built the middle of last year is a pretty beefy machine.

• 8800GT 512MB
• Dual core 2.5ghz
• 2Gig ram
• Over 500Gig HDD space.

I can run the game on medium with a 2xAA setting, and a few other graphical effects turned on. I do love the Bloom effect, but that had to get turned off this past Saturday due to some lag issues. This lets me achieve an average of 28 - 40FPS. Not bad for right out of the box. It runs better than EQ2 did on my current machine, not to mention the scenery, characters and over all look of the game is better.

The game has been pretty rock solid since I started playing. I’ve only encountered a few issues, like, when exiting the game I get an error, which causes the game to rescan all the files before I can log in again. There is also the nasty, getting stuck in the foliage effect, which if they don’t fix soon will really start to piss me off. lol I have also noticed a few graphic glitches, like my character becoming bald while swimming in water and when putting on a frayed head cover my character looks like she’s wearing a white cat on her head, which would be nice if my character had white hair to start with. Over all the graphics respond a lot better than in this game. Basically the trees don’t move while all the extra textures are being rendered, as they do in Lotro.

Everyone should already be aware of the two types of questing once you get into the city of Tortage. The night time questing is by far the most fun. The problem is that you can only do those for so long before you hit a level block. Once this occurs, and it does for every one, you have to head out and do some real world questing to get your levels up. Not a big problem, but you end up dying a few times on the night time quests before you realize you need to level up outside. But for the most part, the Day time or Multiplayer questing is a lot of collection quests and “kill this many” quests. The drop rate on the collection quests is nice, but there is an issue doing quests that ask you to pick up stuff off the ground, especially if your with a friend or group, because the respawn for these specific items is long. Your party members also don’t get credit for it if you pick it up before them, which I’m glad WoW does.

Overall the game is a lot of fun, but still full of bugs, but nothing that is crippling to the game play. If you play a demonologist, your demon despawns everytime you zone in and out of an instanced area. This is annoying. (Oh, a really funny side note, if you have a male character, your demon is female, if your female, your demon is male.) The Trader, which is the person that handles the Auction house, bank and in game mail is still being worked on and is currently down. I’m hoping this gets resolved soon. You also can’t create chat channels nor can you change the color of your text. You can create separate boxes to filter your chat, but since you only get a few options as to what kind of chat you can filter its not that big of a deal.

Currently I’m on a PvP server and I haven’t for the life of me figured out what the purpose of PvP is at the earlier levels. You can kill people, but you don’t get anything for it. It would be nice if you got something for killing people the same level as you or higher. It would also be nice if they imposed some kind of penalty for people that are 10 levels higher than you camping your area.

This leads me to class balance. Some classes are just over powering. Rangers for example can pretty much pwn anyone their level if they have distance on you, but they can also do it at close range as well. What about a few interrupts? I’m beating the crap out of a Ranger with my club and he’s still able to fire point blank at me and do combos? If someone was beating the crap out of me with a club I don’t think I could pull a string back on a bow and fire repeatedly at him. I’m not asking for too much realism, but come on. I mean if I can pull down fire from above and get interrupted, then why can’t a Ranger? Like I said, some class balancing would be nice, especially if your end game is going to be all about the PvP.

Ok, thats the last of my thoughts. The game is great with the exceptions of those problems listed above, but they aren’t deal breakers, they just need to get fixed. And since they seem to be on top of things, like creating more servers for people to migrate too, I think they will get around to eventually fixing the other issues.

As a side note, If your going to PvP, I would recommend a Nostromo N52 controller. It pretty much rocks with working the combos and is a must when playing a complicated class like the Ranger. (Yes, I have an over powered Ranger. I created her when I kept getting pwned by one. lol)

If you have been on the fence about this game, i say give it a try. The real question is can FUNCOM get the game under control and fixed by the time Wraith or WAR comes out. If they can’t get it done, they’ll lose a lot of people.

Oh and just for the record, I’m not going to give up my WoW account for AoC. Its fun, but not a WoW killer. I would say its more a TR or LOTRO killer than anything else.

Like food, some movies shouldn’t be left out past their expiration dates. If left out there too long, they just go bad.

This movie is just plain awful. Truly, utterly, awful and  like food that goes bad, it smells. It’s ok to have a bad movie as a guilty pleasure, Armageddon is mine, but this movie is so unpleasing that you’ll have to flush twice to get rid of it.

The concept for the movie when it was originally written was probably a great one, then Lucas started adding his horrible dialog and it just got out of hand from there. Lucas just can’t write dialog. He just can’t and anyone that says he can is just some poor Star Wars Fanboy that thinks the paper under Lucas’s pen is sacred. Well, in this case its just putrid.

The franchise was at its best when the first movie was released. It was awesome. Everything was possible. Nothing in the movie was too outrageous. It was possible to accomplish all the things Indy did in the movie. I didn’t have to suspend my disbelief that far. It was a true action movie that had acting and heart. This time, not so much.

First, you have to can get past the terrible, phoned in acting. Its very evident that Mr. Ford just did it for the money. There is no excitement, no charisma to his character. He had his hand out and they just piled the money on. Look, the last Die Hard movie was a bit of a stretch, but its Oscar winning material compared to this crap, plus Bruce Willis spends most of the time laughing during the movie because even he knows its crap. Then you have the supporting cast, which with the dialog that Lucas wrote, didn’t have a chance.

Then you have to deal with the completely outrageous special effects action. I mean, I can think of some creative things to do in a movie, but sword fighting while straddling two moving vehicles, which, by the way, was done in one of the recent Star Wars movies, is just stupid. Especially since its been done before. Then there is the Tarzan act which, I’m not even going to get into.

Look, I’m no movie critic, but this movie is a must miss. Someone at the studio was passing out hits of acid the day this movie got screened, because it should be hidden away in a vault till some courageous adventurer comes and rescues it from Spielberg and Lucas or at least throws it on a fire. i would see Event Horizon or Sphere again before i saw this movie for free on a network.

Lucky for me, I didn’t have to spend any money on this crappola, the boss man treated all of us, but for those that are worried about spending the money, go see Iron Man again, trust me. You will thank me later.

Quick post about the new music I’m listening to these days.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve been going on a music buying spree. Normally, I listen to either talk radio or several podcasts on the way to and from work. But for some reason, I’ve been listening to more and more music, so I bought a few cd’s that I’d like to recommend.

First, I purchased, Death Cab for Cutie’s cd “Plans”. This one has been out for a while now, but since I have been absent from the music listening scene for about a year, it was an interesting purchase for me. All the songs are very dark and either about death or hopelessness. Normally, I wouldn’t be into this sort of genre, but for some reason the melodies just struck a cord with me. I pride myself on the fact that I can listen to just about anything, making this group a good addiction to my collection.

I then picked up, Snow Patrol’s CD Eyes Open. Another good album, if you can call them that these days. A bit more uplifting than Death Cab.  I’ve not had a chance to listen in depth to all the songs, but the ones I have listened to are awesome. Chasing Cars is my favorite so far, which makes sense cause its been on the charts and featured in Grey’s Anatomy, a show I regret I can’t get into. It took me a long while to figure out the show is named after a book. lol

I picked up some James Blunt. Due to it being over played on most radio stations and video shows, I got really annoyed with his first hit, “You’re Beautiful” . I actually like the parody that Weird Al did much better. But his second disc, “All The Lost Souls” is very good. The song that got me hooked was “Same Mistake“. All the songs pretty much sound the same except for maybe one or two, but its still I would still recommend it.

Now, after getting all of those discs, for some reason I just couldn’t stop buying stuff. lol So, I ended up getting Tristan Prettyman’s new CD, “Hello…X“. I haven’t gotten the chance to listen to the CD yet, as you can see above I have several new discs I need to get thru first. But I wanted to pick up her cd because I really do enjoy her song, “Madly“. Its a bit pop esq, which soots me just fine considering the other choices I’ve made recently. I’m a child of the 80’s so Pop is part of what I was raised on and its always good to listen to something lite and airy every now and then. We can’t listen to death metal all the time, where would the world be if we did?

If I had to place blame for my recent purchases, I would have to point my finger at two things, VH1 and Itunes. I have a habit of getting up on Saturday mornings and do a few early dailies on WoW. I’m on a Central time PVP server, so its always good to get up before the horde and do some questing on Taco Island, as I call it. So, to keep me company, I’ll set the television to VH1 and listen to “Jump Start”, which is usually followed the show “Fresh New Music“, which is a show featuring new artists, which is where I found Duffy, but thats another story. Then, after listening to something on either show that strikes a cord with me musically, I’ll hit the Itunes store and listen to a few more songs. If I like what I hear, I’ll take a look at the section that shows what other people have bought besides this artist. It is strange how people seem to have the same tastes.

I ended up finding Augustana this way. Another good purchase I made in the last couple of weeks. You can find some interesting things just surfing itunes.

Well, thats it for this week. I hope you find my musical choices interesting and will maybe give them a bit of a listen.

I’ll post more gaming news later today I hope. I waiting to see if there are any AoC reviews out. I’m still on the fence about this one. Its hard to make a decision, on one hand I have friends that are trying to talk me into it, and on the other, I see all the bad open beta reviews. But I want to wait and see how the released client works and behaves before I cross it off my list.

Everquest was, in my opinion, the first very, very successful MMO’s.  In it’s day, it was fondly referred to as EverCrack.  I remember sales people in stores tell customers they weren’t going to be able to sleep or eat with this game on their computers, it was so addictive.  But when the new breed of MMO came out, they weren’t called “EQ-like” or “EQ-Killers”.  They were just the next thing.  The New Generation of MMO’s.  The next stop on the evolutionary chain.  

When exactly in the gaming culture did World of Warcraft become the measuring stick?  I’m not saying it shouldn’t be the the candle we hold all other MMO’s up to, but when did this transformation happen?  I understand that having over 8 million customers is impressive, but I don’t hear people referring to other cable systems as being “Time Warner-like” or that  Dish network might be the “Direct TV-Killer”.

Now, everyone is comparing all other MMO’s to WoW.  LOTRO is “WoW” with a different interface, the questing in Vanguard is “WoW-like” and how about, Tabula Rasa has instancing similar to “WoW”.  It’s just strange that World of Warcraft is now an adjective, used to describe other MMO’s.  Even MMO’s that are coming out are being scrutinized as being possible “WoW-killers“.

Are we so caught up in the hype that is WoW that we now have to use it when talking about other games as well?  I’m just not sure when this started happening, but it seems a little strange.

Is this the year that World of Warcraft and Bliz get knocked off the top?  Will AoC and WAR really pull enough people away from WoW to cripple it?  Or, will it pull people away from Tabula Rasa, Vanguard and EQ2 to finally put them on life support? 

When I read posts about the new MMO’s coming out this year, it always strikes me as funny that people try to guess if its the killer replacement for WoW, rather than considering how much the new MMO’s will impact the smaller. less populated games like LOTRO or Vanguard.

 Who are these replacement killers really gunning for? 

 Is it WoW they have in their cross hairs or is it someone else that’s going to get caught in the crossfire?

I, like many, have a subscription to WoW and another MMO, my new addiction currently is LOTRO by the way. If AoC does preform well once released, I’m not going to be able to pay for three games a month, so something has to give.  LOTRO is a very nice diversion, but I’m not about to stop playing WoW.  Why you ask? Because I have a kick ass 70 Mage, that frankly, I’ve spent too much freaking time on, to just turn my back and walk away.  (yes, I do know that you can keep your character on the server after you unsubscribe and until they do a server wipe, but you see it was just a metaphor.)

So, how many people with two subs are going to stop WoW to play AoC as opposed to their other alt game?  Hence, the problem.  A lot of people just assume there is going to be a mass canceling of WoW subs and I’m thinking that it will be the other games people start dumping first.  

There are some games that won’t get impacted too much, like EVE Online or even Tabula Rasa, only because they are different from the fantasy game settings.  People play those games to get away from fantasy world based games, if anything they will pick up AoC and try it for 30 days, then leave.

Players have to remember that what impacts WoW will also impact the other MMO’s as well when a new game appears, which could be devastating.  WoW has over 8 Million players, none can boast those numbers.  Blizzard could even stand to lose a few people when the ”Killer Replacements” start to get released, especially on some of the more congested servers. Honestly, I would think that the impact on games like POTBS or Vanguard would result in a more subtle thinning of the slowly growing MMO herd, by causing servers to merge and others to possibly shut down.

The wonderful thing about WoW is that because of its cartoon graphics, it should be able to still compete with other games for years to come.  The only issue that I see would be if the new game designers find a better way to execute the end game aspect, then it would be over for WoW.  Until then, nothing is really going to damage the game.  Course, this is my opinion, but I’ve seen people who blog how bad WoW is and then not more than 6 months to a year later they jump back in. (You know who you are!)  The game must have some redeaming qualities, I mean, over 8 million people think its fun and easy to play, apparently they can’t all be wrong.

The problem is going to be all the collateral damage that the new games bring with them.  WoW might take a small hit, but the gun fire may damage a lot of smaller ones to the point where they might just have to come off of life support, and finally be allowed to die.

Well that’s what the Beatles believed.  Right?

I believe they were right and here is why.

This week, I managed to get my mage into a very good guild.  To start with, I need to stress that I am not a leader type person, I’m a follower, so basically, followed the players that got the raw deal in my “Closing the Door” blog to the guild they had migrated too.  I have to say that so far, I’m very impressed.  They are very well organized, they have rules and information posted on their website that spells out just about everything you might expect to have a question about.  Ah, to be in the land of sanity and reason again.

 I also figured out a very scientific new test to see whether a guild might be a good fit for me.  Seeing as how I’m pretty picky about guilds and the people in them. 

First you have to login pretty early in the morning and hang out till just a few guild members are logged in, maybe 2 or 3.  Then say “hello” in guild chat.  If they say something right away, it means that they are pretty friendly, especially if its a monday morning.  Now if the chat goes beyond the cordial series of greetings and works up into an actually conversation, then you know you have a pretty decent group of people.  With this new guild, I had to break off the 30 minute conversation I was having so I wouldn’t be late for work. lol

Every time I would log in to my last guild be it morning noon or night, I would always say “hello” to the guild.  It usually took them around 20 minutes for someone to say hello back, and that’s if they even noticed.  Busy people with their own busy little lives.

Anyway, I feel that I have finally found a good guild. Currently, because I am a new member, I’m in a probationary period that will last two weeks.  During this time, I won’t be eligible for loot on any of the 25 man raids, unless no one wants anything.  But that doesn’t bother me, because they have a pretty decent loot system.

Instead of DKP, you have to get classified as “Hard Core”.  ”Hard Core” status allows you rolls on loot first or you can pass.  To achieve this status, you have to get points by running raids.  So, if I run Kara, which is 1 point and then I run a 25 man raid, which is another 2 points, I will have 3 points for the week.  Three points gets me classified as ”Hard Core” which means the next week, I get to roll on gear thats for my class. Once the “Hard Core” players decide if they want it or pass.  If they pass, then it goes down to the “Casual” players, then the Alts and last the guild newbies.  It seems like a pretty good and fair system.  It encourages weekly participation without making it a system where you can fall behind.  If I take a week off cause of work, I only have to work 1 week of raiding and I’m back to “Hard Core” status.  

The great thing about this system is it only applies to the 25 man raids,because all of the current 10 man raids are on farm status, so, If I run Karazhan, then I still get to roll normally if I need the gear. 

Speaking of Karazhan, I managed to run one last week with a bunch of players from my new guild, before I had actually joined and got all the way to Prince for the first time.  It was pretty sweet and we downed him on the first try.  I collected a bunch of Badges of Justice.   I also ended up with two new pieces of gear, Trial-Fire Trousers and Collar of the Aldor, which is my T4 head piece.  I then preceded to get them socketed and plastered with glyphs, so now I’m very broke. lol

It was really nice to find a group of players to hang out with, even if it was till the wee hours of a work week, that now happen to be my new guild mates.  Isn’t that extra special?   

I will say this, I was pretty lonely when I wasn’t in a guild.  Not sure why I felt that way, because in my old guild, I didn’t really have anyone that I hung out with or chatted with.  I still have friends outside of the guild that would be on and we would chat, but I guess there is something about seeing the guild chat race by as people are arguing or discussing the next raid that seems comforting.   Or it could be just me. lol

I’ve also managed to get in a little bit of CoD 4.  Its a very good first person shooter that I would highly recommend.  I think it’s better than the Battlefield series, but don’t tell Scott I said that. If you have a 8800 GT card it just looks fantastic.  The single player game had me before the credits even started at the beginning, but it was the multiplayer aspect that really captured my attention.  By far, it is probably the best part of the game due to its originality.  Its this kind of “outside the box” thinking that MMOs need to use when designing end game content.

When you start playing online, you get a bunch of generic kits, submachine gunner, demolitionist, sniper, etc.  As you participate, you gain experience.  This earned XP works towards raising your characters rank.  As you go up in rank, the game unlocks more weapon options and special abilities.  Ever wanted to be able to get in a last shot once you knew you were dead, now you can, its an ability you can earn. lol

Pick up the game, you will like it.

Thats about it for now.  Never fear, I am still playing LOTRO.  I’ve managed to get my little Lore Master to 14, and still having fun.  I managed to pick up the new fishing hobby and work that in when I can. A friend and I still managed to group up on the Landrovel server.  We play once a week so we don’t get burned out.  Somehow he managed to become leader of an almost extinct guild, but we aren’t actively recruiting till its needed.

He also managed to get a Minstrel up to 20 without dying. Course he did it without grouping with me, but once he does, he’ll really start to die. lol

Well, thats it for now. (Didn’t I say that already?)  I have another blog sitting in my draft box that I haven’t found the time to work on yet.  I have it pretty much written, just need to create some art for it.  For some reason, having a little picture at the top of the page seems to make my blogs look a bit better, even if they aren’t the best pics.  At the least it distracts from my bad grammar and spelling.  I had my wife read a blog of mine recently and she had to stop, because my bad sentence structure was driving her mad. lol  Well, if my new hero Stephen King can get away with it, why can’t I?

I was a huge comic book fan when I was in college.  I think I had 14 long boxes full of comics by the time I got married, which is over 2000 comics easy.  While reading thru all these hero books,  I would often wonder if they would ever be able to reproduce what was written and drawn on paper for the big screen? Would they be able to make you feel like you were actually watching a comic book and seeing its characters coming to life on the screen?

There have been some successes, like “Batman Begins”, “Superman Returns” and the “Spider-man” series, all of which managed to take the characters off the page and do them and their creators a great justice, although “Spider-man 3″ wasn’t as good as the other 2 in the series.  Then you have the “just ok” super hero movies like “Fantastic Four”, “X-Men”, “Dare-Devil”and “The Punisher”.  Not great movies by a long shot, but still a bit entertaining, even if they were produced only to scam a few bucks out of the public, who is always expecting a good super hero movie.

Course the flops like “The Hulk”, “Elektra”  and “Cat Woman” where the producers and people involved should be sentence to read comic books their eyes pop out and they get it.  Apparently they don’t take the time to understand the comic book or its hero before they decide to butcher them up on the big screen and cheat you out of your hard earned cash.

So, the reason I state all this is because, as I have stated, there truly has only been a few really good super hero movies, but nothing that is a spectacular as “Iron Man”.

“Iron Man” is the movie they should have done “First”.  It is by far the best comic book movie I have seen to date.  The story is well done.  It places a lot of lore in the movie that the average view might miss, but gives any comic book fan the sense that the producers of the film have actually managed to take a favorite super hero character straight out of a comic book and placed him on the screen without losing anything in translation.  I have never felt that they were true to any of the heroes in other movies, but this time, they got it right.  

I was riveted the whole time, which meant, I never sensed any areas that dragged on too long.  The music was pretty good and the casting was just superb.  Like I said, it was like watching a comic book up on the screen.  These people really got it.

I would not change a thing and I’m really hoping to get the chance to see it again, just incase I missed some background stuff.

Please see this movie, you won’t be disappointed.  Also, as a side note, make sure you stay thru the credits, especially if your a true comic book fan.