Just checked out "The Mist," a new movie based on an old book by Stephen King.

Yes, another movie adaption went awry. Why is it that King’s books always seem to get bastardized? By the way, that simple fact is why I never, EVER want to see The Dark Tower made into a movie.

But back to The Mist.

This movie suffers from the same problems other King movies suffer from, mainly being poor acting. The story in and of itself is pretty interesting.

A violent storm and mysterious mist envelops a small town, trapping several dozen people inside a general store. As they grow impatient waiting for a rescue which never seems to come, groups brave walking into the mist only to be beaten, bloodied, severed, bludgeoned or worse.

You don’t have to wait long to see what lives in The Mist, though. They are gigantic insects and tentacle monsters. I was tempted on more than one occasion to research the designer of these bugs, figuring it was the same guy who designed the Gremlins. They look THAT bad.

But I am still not sure what is worse, being trapped in a building by bugs, or being trapped in a building with the idiots in this movie.

You have rednecks, old people, a pretty boy, a hardcore grandmother with a potty mouth and a religious nutball - and thats just the main characters! The reason i didn’t include "hardcore grandmother" with "old people" is that this lady actually rocks. She had the best line in the movie when she called the religious nutball a "miserable pussy."

Very Stephen King, in other words.

The whole time you just want to see the religious nutball get killed. If you looked in the encyclopedia under "abortion clinic bomber" you’d see her picture. Fortunately, Mr. Upstanding Store Owner blows her brains out with a gun. (And the crowd cheered)

But about the bugs? Where do they come from? Another dimension, of course. No, it isn’t really explained, just accept it. Some military experiment that went bad, thats all you really need to know.

The ending was laughable. After the main character, who by the way looks like a younger version of Highlander, blows all his friends brains out in a mercy killing believing that they will never survive the mist, the mist suddenly clears and everything is fine. The whole US Army just appears out of nowhere to save the day.

This movie sucked. Don’t see it if you care about the memory of King’s original The Mist short story.

So yesterday my Chumby arrived. I am going to go out on a limb and guess that most people reading this aren’t sure what a Chumby is. So before I spend a lot of time telling you why I like mine, I will explain.

From the Chumby.com website

The chumby is a compact device that displays useful and entertaining information from the web using your wireless internet connection. Always on, it shows — nonstop — what’s online that matters to you.

Now, my even simpler definition

Chumby is a bean bag with a 3.5 inch touchscreen that is connected to the internet.

My Chumby, or Little Chef as it is affectionately called, is displaying all kinds of useful information right now. I have the weather from the three cities I care most about right now (Seattle, Fort Collins, CO and Phoenix). I also have my Twitter friends feed, Facebook friend statuses, photos from Flickr, the latest pictures from College Humor and of course, The Onion.

As my friend Francine twittered yesterday after receiving her Chumby, the out of the box experience is incredible. You plug Chumby in and immediately you are greeted by a tutorial that shows off the touch screen and motion controls of the device. While you are playing with Chumby you are actually calibrating it. Very clever.

Setting up Chumby’s network was straight forward. It just worked for me right away, which was nice.

To personalize Chumby to your liking you need to set up an account on Chumby.com. From there, you can create channels and add widgets to those channels. There are quite a few widgets already developed for the device and a pretty active developer community working on more. That community will be critical to Chumby’s success, ultimately.

I even used Chumby as my alarm clock last night and fell asleep watching it display the latest stories from Google news. This is an internet geeks dream!

There is just one thing I want to get off my chest about Chumby. For all of its great features, there is one thing that really bothers me about it.

Apparently, the Chumby.com widget site is going to be ad supported. There can (and will) be widgets pushed out to your Chumby that you don’t control. As I was writing this I noticed a video player pop up on the screen. I didn’t add any video widgets so I pressed the play button and saw a public service announcement for a Say No To Drugs campaign. At first I thought it was part of College Humor!

I don’t like the concept of ads on my Chumby, especially when the device comes with a $175 price tag. I feel like it is already expensive for what it does. Now I know that the alternatives to ad supported content can be a subscription service. Seriously, I’d almost prefer that to the alternative because I don’t want to be seeing commercials while I have Little Chef on my nightstand.

Ads aside (and to be fair, I have only seen one so far), Chumby is a cool little device. If you are a widget or information junkie you might want to check it out.

When I tell people that I believe Mass Effect is the best game ever made, they stop and say "Wow. Are you sure? Thats a really bold statement!"

The answer I give in return is, "Yes and Yes. It is a bold statement and yes, I am sure. Mass Effect is just that good."

Over the past few days I have posted some impressions of the game. Now that I am finished with it, I can do a full review. It will be spoiler free so don’t worry about that, although there I’d love nothing more than to discuss the ending, which in a word was epic.

The game starts off with asking you to build a profile for your character. You can play the game as John Shepard, the character you see on the box art and on the commercials. Alternatively, you can create a customized character, either male or female. You’ll be asked some basic questions about your upbringing and your military experience, all of which form the basis of an elaborate back story. Even from character creation, you will be influencing the development of your character and how the NPCs in the world react to you.

It won’t be long before you’re in the middle of the Mass Effect universe - which actually is our current universe, just in the future. Human explorers discovered alien technology on Mars which was left behind by the Protheans, an advanced space faring species that is shrouded in mystery. That technology unlocked advances in space travel which pushed us to the stars and beyond. The name given to the technology to connect humanity to the furthest reaches of our galaxy? Mass Relays.

The pinnacle of the Protheans technological legacy is an enormous space station dubbed The Citadel, a place you will spend a lot of time in while playing the game. It is the seat of political power and cultural diversity in the universe and your base of operations as a member of the Alliance Navy. It is from the Citadal you will interface with your mentor in the game, Captain Anderson (voiced by Hollywood alum Keith David). You will also have to return there from time to time to complete quests, buy equipment and report to the Citadel Council (think of the UN but in space).

With the setting now, shall we say, set - it is time to talk about why Mass Effect is the best game you will play this year (and for some, ever).

Conversation System

With Mass Effect, Bioware has raised the bar for interactive gaming. Just as Halo 2 revolutionized online match play, so to has Bioware revolutionized the art of storytelling through games. There has never been a system so intricate and yet, so simple to use, for establishing relationships with NPCs. You hear so much these days from PR types within gaming companies talking about digital actors but rarely do their games live up to the hype. Bioware has achieved true digital acting in this game though, and the results are spectacular.

I played through the campaign following the path of a Paragon (good aligned class). Now that I have finished, I am playing it as a Renegade (evil aligned class). It is amazing how much different the game plays, especially since on the second run through I already know the plot. I don’t know how many thousands of lines of dialog were recorded for the game but it is obvious that Bioware intended people to play the game many times because it continually surprises me.

As I developed alliances and fueds with NPCs in the game, it made me wonder how much better Halo 3 could have been had it adopted a similar conversation system. I learned more about the Mass Effect universe in half an hour than I did about the Halo universe the entire time I played the game.

Questing in Zero-G

There are essentially missions and assignments in Mass Effect. You can choose to work on them in any order, or skip them entirely. Both move the story forward, but assignments are considered secondary. Some reviews have praised the story missions in Mass Effect as being inventive, original, immersive and epic. Those are all words I’d use to describe them too. And while the side tasks are sometimes cookie cutter in nature, they can also be very diverse. Sure, surveying planets for gas and mineral deposits can get tedious, but what about infiltrating a colony of biotic extremists or defusing a nuclear bomb attached to a long forgotten space probe which crash landed on a planet now friendly to the Alliance?

Throughout each you will be challenged - from sporadic attacks from aliens to hazardous environments on untamed worlds. Doing the side quests also give you the experience, credits and equipment you need to take on the more challenging plot missions.

Essential plot related missions receive yet even more polish - more dialog, more cut scenes, more twists and turns. You will learn early on that there are three planets of particular interest to you, and each one contains hours of "edge-of-your-seat" action.

Just make sure to do side quests in this game as they not only add to the overall story, but help prepare your character for what you find later.

Combat Evolved?

Halo carried the moniker "Combat Evolved" but really, it was more of the same. Mass Effect, on the other hand, has a truly revolutionary combat system. In subtle ways you can see traces of role playing games, first person shooters, tactical squad based shooters and cover shooters such as Gears of War.

Depending on the class you select you will approach each fight differently. As an Adept (on my original play through) I used biotic skills to disable enemy shields, push groups of charging enemies over guard rails (or even cliffs) or lift them into the air while I shot them from range with my pistol.

As a soldier class playing through a second time, I am charging the enemy myself, shooting first and not bothering to ask questions later.

Cover is essential to the game for most classes though, so you will want to make sure to duck behind crates, walls, rocks - you name it. Remember, if you run and gun in this game you will probably die. It is important to note that Mass Effect is NOT Halo.

Each time you begin a new mission or land on a planet, you will have a chance to pick two other members of your crew to join you. Each crew member has strengths and weaknesses, so choose wisely as you are stuck with them until you complete the mission. And depending on who you bring, other missions or assignments may be unlocked to you. Sometimes the right companion can mean the difference between a firefight and a negotiation.

Mass Effect is the Entire Package

I recant my original comment about it having very good but not great graphics. As the game moves from one environment to another you can’t help but be impressed with the games graphic engine. Whether your traveling across windswept dunes in your Mako ATV or traversing catwalks above molten lava, the visual appeal of the game is obvious.

As I already said, the conversation system and story are what you’d expect from a groundbreaking Hollywood film.

The soundtrack in Mass Effect is also spectacular. In fact, I am listening to it as I write this review. It really brings you back to the game and its universe.

Mass Effect is also one of the most re playable RPGs I have ever seen. How many games have you played, ever, which after spending 40 hours to complete you immediately restart? How many games really feel like a totally new experience the second time? Mass Effect delivers on re playability.

So is it the "Best Game Ever?"

For me it is an unqualified yes.

The ending of this game (which I will not spoil) is absolutely epic. If there was a word beyond epic to describe it, I might just use that word as well. So many games have an ending which disappoints. I can guarantee the ending of Mass Effect will not disappoint you.

It isn’t a secret that the Mass Effect story is fully developed over the course of 3 games (a trilogy). Even so, you are left with a conclusion that makes you salivate over the possibility for Mass Effect 2 and 3, but not empty about what you have already accomplished.

But the magic of this game isn’t just the destination, it is also in the ride getting there. I finished the game with mixed emotions. After 40 hours of play I was happy to see the end, but also sad that I hadn’t finished all of my quests and that my time with my character was over. Sure, I could replay the game from an earlier save, but I decided to restart the game (pretty much immediately) and go at it again from the Renegade side of things.

About that Bioware MMO

In closing, just let me say that I pray that Bioware turns its Mass Effect IP into a MMO. Seriously, this game has a richer back story than Star Wars. SW is tired and old, put it to bed. Bioware, please - consider making Mass Effect into a MMO. It would be tremendous.

In fact, I feel very confident that a Mass Effect MMO would dethrone World of Warcraft. It is just about the only thing I think that could.