Welcome to Hyboria / Meet Iron Man!

In the warm Spring hours with Summer at my doorstep, what better pasttime is there than wasting hour upon hour inside at my computer monitor?

At the moment I am trying out a beta version of Age of Conan - mostly because I am just curious. I have no plans to fall into the whole MMORPG trap all over again, but it does still have some allure.
I have created a few characters so far, and while my current prime character belongs to the class Bear Shaman, he looks more or less like a hangman on a bad day.

Extravagantly clad in a loincloth and armed with a broken oar, you, a lowly slave who is the sole survivor of a shipwreck, goes into the jungle to give some pirates a good old beating.
Of course, if you are a female character (which tend to be strangely lithe and generally well-shaped) you'll find yourself wearing suspiciously dirty underwear, though I guess the developers are merely hinted at womens' value as slaves in a dark pre-medieval world where everyone's favourite hobbies are sex and violence (sometimes both at once).

Now I can't say too much about the combat system yet because my less than awe-inspiring level 5 character does not have a whole lot to add to this topic apart from the few simple combos he has gained so far. But I suppose I generally like this system a lot more than the one in, say, WoW and LotrO. It seems more real-timeish and feels more real. With the variety of combos and other abilities you can gain later on and the number of different classes available I think there is a fair deal of potential.
They still have to work on some framerate issues and loading times, but hopefully they will have that ironed out by the time the game is released (one can dream).
Still, I will file no complaints with the ones who designed the female models, and I am sure that female gamers won't be complaining about the muscular male avatars either.

Female demonologist at work. Too bad the flames conceal her boobies.

Now for something completely different. Iron Man the movie rocks. I know I mentioned it in my previous post, but I do not think it can be stressed enough: Unless you are an utter fanatical comic book deadbeat who incidentally has no sense of humour, chances are you will enjoy the ride, which is full of special effects, gadgets, bad guys that get knocked over and a very surprisingly sexy Gwyneth Paltrow who does a subtle and delicate performance.

Even if some of the elements in the movie are a bit ridiculous. Such as the magnet that is supposed to keep grenade shrapnel from his heart. I am not a science expert, but wouldn't a very powerful magnet painfully draw out the shrapnels rather than keeping them in check?
Still, it is one of those nonsensical things that you just accept because you don't want it to spoil the experience (like the battleships in Star Wars Episode III that behave like we are still in the 18th bloody century. Yeah, I even heard the commentary, they thought it was a good idea!).
Jeff Bridges did a stellar job as the evil industrialist who wants to keep the war machine going so he can profit from it even more. Even the computers that main character Tony Stark uses to build his gadgets have personalities of their own and caused enormous laughter in the cinema with their little quirks.

Terrence Howard, not that I know much about the actor, was however pretty unconvincing in his role. I don't know if he just had a lot of bad days, but it was like there was no enthusiasm in any of his lines. Other than that the cast consists mostly of anonymous arabs and slutty reporters who will do anything to get into bed with Tony Stark. But Paltrow still overshines them by far with her delicacy and grace.