The place is called “The Church of the Silver Ball” and if you live in the Toronto area it’s located in a desolate Missassauga industrial complex. Every month or so there is a tournament; you can also rent the place. It’s crammed full of Pinball tables and all kinds of other memorabilia from old Coke bottles to posters decorating every inch of the place. The machines range from very old to modern. Some of the older ones were a blast to play since they were a bit before my time. It’s amazing to hear your score go up with a tick tick tick sound as the flip numbers chug away.

Eventually the tournament started and that’s where it all went down hill. My friend and I had not played “real pinball” in years. Video game pinball is not a substitute for real pinball no matter how much fun you’re having. Suffice it to say, we were destroyed. For anyone who thinks that pinball is luck, think again. We would have our ball in play for 30 seconds to a minute while our competitors would have theirs in play for 5 minutes or more. Yes there are those annoying instant gutter balls, but some people have serious mad pinball skills. Maybe I’ll fair better at the next tournament. If you are in the Toronto area and like pinball, you should really check out The Church of the Silver Ball. They also sell and repair tables.

I think a lot of people want to dislike these ads because it’s Microsoft and of course it is to promote Vista, which I think is a disastrous OS. That said, I really like the second ad, and the first one is growing on me too. It’s also not only Jerry Seinfeld making these ads funny, Bill Gates is pretty cool too. One commenter nailed it, it’s just funny to watch two well known and accomplished people act silly. Will it make Vista any better? Probably not, but that doesn’t make these ads bad.

You can view the high resolution ads on Microsoft’s site, and they are in Flash instead of a windows format… wow!

1. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
2. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
3. Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
4. Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
5. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
6. Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones
7. Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Yoda in Star Wars: Clone Wars

The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones is a tough one, Jar Jar and Anakin are annoying in The Phantom Menace, but Darth Maul is pretty awesome and the pod race was cool too. Since I can’t remember much of Attack of the Clones, I’ll put it near the bottom. Clone Wars really does belong on the very bottom of the list. The Empire Strikes back is a no brainer for the top spot.

Seriously disappointing

Okay, without giving too much away here is why Star Wars: Clone Wars was seriously disappointing. First, lets start with a tiny spoiler.

Every single Star Wars movie to date has started with the epic Stars Wars intro. This intro triggers emotions like “OH YEAH BABY. STAR WARS!”, or just a jaw dropping “WOW!”. This one started out no different for the first four seconds. Star Wars music, black space, followed by the yellow Star Wars logo sliding into the distance. Okay, now I’m pumped and getting ready to read the juicy details followed by an awesome signature Star Wars pan down to a massive ship or battle scene… Wait, what the heck is this crap? I instantly see a battle and a sports announcer style voice describing the current situation in the Star Wars universe? Am I in some kind of a bad Star Wars nightmare? I think I glazed over in shock, because I have no idea what the crazy sports announcer voice was talking about. This was a huge disappointment, there was no tension, and I was not drawn into the story at all.

A kids movie?

So that was strike one, by now I’m coming to the sad realization that this is probably aimed squarely at kids and only kids and this is only 20 seconds into the film. I don’t understand why this was done, because I saw the original Star Wars movies as a kid and remember my parents and other parents reading what was on the screen to us little ones. It was way cool, and I still loved Star Wars, every kid did, why all of the sudden has Star Wars been transformed into a Disney style children’s movie I’ll never know. Yes I am sure kids will love this movie, but kids and adults loved the past six movies, so there was really no reason to dumb it down.

What was also really misleading were the Trailers for Star Wars: Clone Wars. They make it look much more serious and darker than it actually is, but they don’t really give any indication of what the movie is really like. None of the trailers have the childish voice acting found throughout this movie either. It was the trailers that made me want to see it in the first place, how deceptive.

With a few exceptions the droids in Clone Wars are more annoying than Jar Jar was in The Phantom Menace, yes they are that bad. Seriously childish and there is absolutely nothing scary about them. The movie is action packed, in fact it is non-stop action with silly voice overs and a weak side story.

Was there anything good about this movie? Well yes, I thought the art direction was fantastic, but some will disagree. The light saber battles were engaging even though none of them had a climatic ending. Unfortunately eye candy alone does not save this movie, it’s seriously a dud in my opinion and pretty disappointing.

It seems Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the two guys who created Scrabulous voluntarily took the site down contrary to mainstream media reports of a forced shut down by Facebook. 48 hours later they have a reworked the application and called it Wordscraper which aside from the new name also has a new look and feel to it. I have only quickly tried the game and it has a custom game rules option and a random rules default when setting up the game. You can tell it’s the same Scrabulous interface, but the look is quite different. I will have to play a little more to see how similar it is, but congrats to the developers for getting this out so fast, I wonder if Hasbro will still be able to take legal action.

Lost opportunity

Hasbro’s own client is said to have many problems and be very slow. I can’t believe how blind this company is. The developers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla breathed new live into Scrabble. Would Hasbro have even though of a Facebook application? Probably not for awhile, but once they saw someone bringing back a great game they were quick to squash it.

The part I can’t get is why did they not offer to buy out or work with these guys. Work on scrabble branding and come out looking good with a huge user base? Instead they pissed off a lot of die hard Scrabulous fans, released a supposedly buggy Facebook application and still have the competition of Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla. I really hope Wordscraper turns out to be great and that everyone switches to it. I understand intellectual property rights, but seriously, these two developers turned a whole new generation of social media junkies to Scrabble.

Blizzard’s site has a long game play video and a cinimatic trailer up. The entire Diablo III site is very cool. Game news sites and the blog sphere are buzzing right now, so check out your favourite game site for more news. Diablo III looks fantastic! I have some screens below, but be sure to check out Blizzard’s site for a lot more.

The polish on this game is stunning. The AI is great, the graphics are fantastic, the fun level is through the roof, what more could you ask for. The attention to detail is what blows me away the most. Things they didn’t need to add, but did anyway, like dripping water when you come out of a lake, or mud tracks on the beach. Hilarious politically charged commentators on the TV and radios. The sound track should have something for everyone too. Let’s not forget the helicopters, bikes, mopeds, buses, trucks, boats, and who knows what else awaits.

If you are still on the fence about this game, GameTrailers has a fairly in depth review.

Now for a second take there is the BigDog Beta. Don’t watch this until you have watched the original BigDog video as it won’t make much sense. Without giving too much away, the BigDog Beta video had me in stitches.

The book title may sound silly, and if you have read The Zombie Survival Guide by Brooks you may even be expecting some humour, but you will find very little in this book. This is a much more serious and tragic novel about a writer who is chronicling a factual book about the Zombie outbreak 10 years after it has occurred. This writer also put together the official UN reports and felt that he needed to write a more human account of the tale.

Without giving too much away, the entire book is made up of short chapters sometimes only a few pages long chronicling the lives of individuals and their experiences throughout the Zombie War. The book is fantastic, and there are plans to turn it into a motion picture. Every story is well thought out and most of them are very believable and convincing.

If you have ever watched a Zombie movie or even read Zombie books, usually they are fairly hokey or they deal with one small isolated situation like a mall or even a city. World War Z covers the entire spectrum of the planet and many different scenarios. The book delves right into the politics and how badly many governments screwed up, but it also covers many other situations. Ever wondered what would happen to the oceans during a worldwide Zombie outbreak, or the mad rush to flee cities? What about the internet addicted shut in who follows the entire outbreak from the illusional safety of his room in Tokyo right up until the Zombies knock on his door? What about someone who is blind with no one to help them during the chaos. The book covers many personal stories like these.

This is every Zombie fans must read book and most have probably already read it by now, but because it’s so different from the run of the mill Zombie genre, I think many non-Zombie fans will really enjoy this book too. I guess it’s classified as horror, but it’s really not that scary and actually far more emotionally tragic.

• You Suck at Photoshop #6
• You Suck at Photoshop #7
• You Suck at Photoshop #8

I really can’t get enough of these, if you haven’t heard of them yet, check out my original post on “You Suck at Photoshop“. You can also keep an eye out for more on the MyDamnChannel YouTube page.