Avatar 3D Imax, more Assassin's Creed 2, Portal and Half-Life.

So, as the title suggests, last night I saw Avatar 3D at the Imax. It was the second time I've seen the film (the first time being regular 3D) and it was still pretty enjoyable. Clichéd plot, bad writing, lots of sentimental guff but enjoyable. I don't get 3D though. I really just don't find it that impressive. Just seems like a marketing gimmick that cinemas are using to get the maximum amount of money possible from the punters. Don't particularly like the colour loss with the glasses on either. Would like to see this film in regular flat screen just to see if it's any different. I suspect it wouldn't be. Anyway, I'm sure Dances With Smurfahontas: ODST will clear up at the Oscars this year.

Over the last few days I've managed to complete ACII as well. Thoroughly enjoyed it. The plot went awry at the end and became slightly too silly for my liking in retrospect, but I let myself go and it was pretty dang cool. Also unlocking the glyphs was an excellent little mini-game and was probably my favourite new addition. Nice little unlock as well if you get all of them. Got a ridiculous amount of gamer points as well (I hate myself for caring) pretty much for just playing through the story. Not too chuffed about the missing 2 DNA sequences which are clearly going to be priced DLC and should have been included with the main game. Oh well. I will inevitably buy them though. Just like I did with all the rip-off Halo map packs and Fallout DLC. I'm a sucker.

After this I moved onto Portal. I bought the Orange Box a couple of months back and played Portal for about 20 minutes and thought it was incredible. Then I went home and couldn't play games for a month or so, so it was nice to sink my teeth back into this game, and, proudly, I managed to finish it in a measly 3 hours all on my own. Gonna get really stuck into HL2 again today, the original Half-Life being one of my seminal gaming moments having played it for the first time when I was 12 or so (which, again, is vaguely disturbing. Why did my parents let me play this? I used to play Unreal Tournament too! You could frickin' explode people's heads!) on the PC, showcasing just what a FPS with a fantastic story could do. This was kind of different to my other FPS enlightening in Halo: CE which had fantastic gameplay, but, let's face it, had a story that seemed like it was written on the bus by Russell T. Davies on a tissue that he subsequently had to use to blow his nose. I still have no idea what happened, nor do I care. The gameplay was so good that it didn't matter. Half-Life had lesser gameplay (still good) but such a great plot and fantastic characters that it really demonstrated what gaming could do, to me at least.

...That's all.