The Man Who Wasn't There

That's all.

I’ve kind of been on a board game kick, mostly spurred by some games I played whilst in NYC. I already mentioned Munchkin, which I now own in two varieties (the original Munchkin and the awesome Cthulhu Munchkin that callmesteam got me for my bday—thanks again, man) and then there’s Bang! which I purchased, as well. Now it’s Zombies!!! The Board Game. This game looks like a board game version of Left 4 Dead...if the goal of L4D was to actually leave your friends for dead. It comes with 100 plastic zombies, six plastic player figures, two dice, some event cards and a lot of tiles which becomes the playing field.

The way the game is played is that, each turn, you flip over one of the tiles, place it where it can fit (thereby creating the city, bit by bit) and then placing the number of zombies, life tokens and bullets as the card dictates. You then roll, move your character up to the number of spaces and fight any zombies you move through. Fighting zombies is resolved with a die roll, where you have to get a 4-6. Anything less can be bumped up by spending an equal number of bullets or by taking one life point in damage and rerolling until either you or the zombie is dead. Once you move, you roll the dice again and move that many zombies one space. Eventually, as the board is created, you’ll have tons of zombies milling about. The event cards can either help you (give you bullets, etc.) or hurt a friend (their shoe is untied, so they can’t move, for example).

There’s two ways to win. The first is that anyone who kills 25 zombies will automatically win. If your character dies, you start back in the town square and lose half of your zombie kills. Since the place is crawling with zombies, chances are you will die. So getting 25 zombie kills is difficult. The other way to win is reminiscent of L4D (though, technically, it’s the other way around since Zombies!!! has been out for quite awhile, is in its second edition and has tons of expansion packs) in that eventually you’ll put down the helicopter pad tile. Once that pad is down, the first person to reach it wins the game.

So there’s a smattering of strategy in how you want to win. You can either go the road of least resistance and try to make it through town alive, in hopes you’ll reach the helipad before anyone else. Or you can also go the guns-blazing route and try to kill as many zombies as possible.

There’s other zombie games out there that look equally interesting and I’ve looked at. One of them is made by the same company and its called Zombietown. This game seems to be more strategic, since the goal is to last ten days. It tasks you with rescuing survivors, taking over houses and barricading them up to survive. It sounds fun but when I looked over the rules, it also seems way more complicated and slower-paced.

The other game that looks similar is called The Last Night on Earth. This one sounds like a lot of fun, but it is sadly sold out everywhere I look. This one, like Zombietown, takes place on a persistent map (of a manor) and there’s zombies to kill. But its little twist is that there are scenario cards that are to be like “different movies.” So one might be to defend the manor against the zombies, while another might task you with something else. The other little twist is that some people play survivors while others play as the zombies. I’d like to play this game, but it’s out of print, I believe...which sucks because its expansion pack (which, of course, is dependent on owning the original) is still being sold. I’m hopefully they’re just going to refresh it or something.

Anyway, these are my new obsession. I can’t wait to play the Zombies!!! game.

When I went to NYC over NYE (ha!), one of the things we did was play some board/card games. One of the games we played was this little thing called Munchkin. This deceptive game is a spoof and semi-satire of pen and paper roleplaying games (specifically Dungeons and Dragons), but as a card game. The object of the game is to be the first player to reach level 10. You level up by killing monsters, trading in loot for gold or getting a random "Divine Intervention" card. Because of the nature of the game, you can (and will) be both cooperative with the other players and completely competitive.

For instance, if a monster is higher in level than a player, that player can ask for assistance and give something to the player to help them defeat the creature (i.e. "I'll give you one of the treasure cards we get" or "do you want this stepladder since you're a halfling?"). If a player helps out, then you combine both of their levels and gear to see if you defeat the monster. On the other side, though, you can also screw with the other players. Some cards give monsters bonuses (like +10 to their levels). So it's this little balancing game of helping versus hurting your friends, so that you're the first to get to level 10. It can get pretty funny.

So I was very excited and surprised to see Munchkin: Cthulhu waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday. Thanks, callmesteam for the awesome birthday gift!! I can't wait to try it out! :)

Because I saw a LJ friend do it and it sounds like a great idea!

BOOKS

1. Off Season.
2. Old Flames.
3. Fool
4. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
5. The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror
6. The Watchmen
7. The Full Catastrophe
8. Breathers: A Zombie's Lament
9. Blood and Ice
10. The Rite
11. Hater
12. Way of the Shadow
13. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies
14. The Doomsday Key
15. Dark Places
16. A Dirty Job
17. Cemetery Dance
18. The Time Traveler's Wife
19. Can't remember?
20. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
21. The Girl who Played with Fire
22. New World Monkeys


NEW MOVIES

1. Slumdog Millionaire (Amazing)
2. The Unborn (sort of terrible)
3. My Bloody Valentine 3D (sort of terrible...but in 3D! And fun!)
4. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (Campy, but ultimately good fun)
5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Didn't care for it...)
6. The Uninvited (Terrific ghost story!)
7. Sex Drive (Surprisingly funny)
8. College (unsurprisingly stupid and not funny)
9. Milk (easily one of two best movies of 08)
10. Coraline (scrumptious visuals; very faithful. Fun)
11. Friday the 13th (I liked it)
12. Burn After Reading (funny and surprising)
13. W. (what is there to say?)
14. The Watchmen
15. Waltz with Bashir
16. Knowing
17. I Love You, Man
18. Monsters v. Aliens 3D
19. Changeling
20. Saw V
21. Adventureland
22. Let the Right One In
23. Tell No One
24. Donkey Punch (Why the fuck did you recommend this movie, Netflix?)
25. Bolt (Why does Disney still hate cats?)
26. Observe and Report
27. Splinter
28. Nobel Son
29. Sunshine Cleaning
30. Wolverine
31. Star Trek
32. Angels & Demons
33. Up
34. Drag Me to Hell
35. Land of the Lost
36. The Grudge 3
37. The Hangover
38. Transformers 2
39. Harry Potter 6
40. The Proposal
41. Funny People
42. GI Joe
43. District 9
44. G-Force (...don't ask...)
45. The Final Destination
46.....I lost track....
47. Paranormal Activity
48. Whip It
49. Zombieland (twice)



GAMES

1. Braid
2. Fable 2
3. Dead Space
4. Metal Gear Solid 4
5. Resident Evil 5
6. House of the Dead: Overkill
7. Gears of War 2
8. Shadow Complex
9. Batman: Arkham Asylum

Avatar was arguably the most entertaining movies to come out this year; a year that had a couple other equally entertaining flicks like Star Trek, District 9 and Inglourious Basterds. Most action directors filming today should look back at Cameron’s career...here with Avatar, but stretching back to True Lies, Aliens, the first two Terminator flicks...even the action in Titanic. Cameron is an expert director of pacing. It’s one thing about his films that is truly noteworthy. Even when working with long epics like Titanic (or even Aliens, where the longer director’s cut is even better), his films never feel long or boring. In Avatar, I’ve seen things on film I’ve never seen before.

Cameron has created a living, breathing, breathtaking world that fantasy authors merely dream about. His world is probably the most realized depiction of a truly alien planet. If you look at what went into it, the work here is staggering. He created plant life, named it, categorized it. He hired a researcher to create the Na’vi language. Pandora feels real. In 3D, it’s even more staggering. At times, I felt like I could just walk through the screen and enter Pandora...probably a good thing I can’t, what with the fact that I’m not an Avatar and the air would kill me. Details, details.

On a purely technical level, Avatar is nothing short of visionary. Moment did creep in where I was taken out of the illusion created. Sure, there are times when the Na’vi didn’t look “real” and I knew they were computer generated. But there were also other times when I felt like I was watching real, ten foot tall blue people on a screen. Zoe Saldana’s character, Neytiri was amazingly crafted. I never once doubted that she wasn’t real. Zoe also imbued her character with more “oomf” than anyone else. In fact, she outshone everyone else in the film. The best segment for me was a tragic moment for Neytiri, where her wails and abject rage and horror melted into one cry. Moments like that had me on the edge of my seat.

Looking at it from a purely storytelling perspective...Avatar isn’t one of Cameron’s best. The quickest and the most from the gut reaction would be, “you’ve been sitting on this story since the 80s...actively worked on it for the last decade...and THIS is the best you could come up with?” Cameron’s characters have never been incredibly deep. Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in Aliens is probably the one exception to the rule, especially if you watch the director’s cut. That said, if you were to look at his characters, they are all stock characters. Archetypes. Take Aliens, which practically invented the now-too-common war archetypes. You have the tough as nails woman, who throws barbs with the best of them. You have the love interest male lead who believes the female lead when no one else does. You have the jokester. The conniving and sniveling corporation man. The cigar-chewing, no nonsense sergeant. I could go on, and on.

Avatar is no different. Each character fits into a specific archetype; some easier than others. I couldn’t take Sigourney Weaver’s Dr. Grace Augustine seriously in the beginning. She’s introduced as a walking warpath of a scientist. Instead of chewing a cigar, she chain smokes thin cigarettes. Obviously, Cameron was trying to force her into the roll of a no nonsense scientist, aping the kind of cigar-chewing aesthetic I mentioned above and it doesn’t work for her. Once her character is allowed to breathe, she does much better. I also don’t get Sam Worthington’s charm. It seems like Hollywood is trying to push him out as the next “It Action Star.” Within a year, he’s been in Terminator Salvation and Avatar; in a couple months, he’ll be in Clash of the Titans. Heir apparent to Russell Crowe? The allusions seem to point to yes. But I don’t quite get it. He has as much charm as a rock. It’s only when he gets to hide behind the computer graphics that any sort of personality shines through.

To make a sidetrack that ties into this archetypical character structure, the actual story and its themes are probably the weakest area in Avatar. A lot of people have discussed issues of racism in Avatar, which I think are apt but not maybe in the same way that people think. The story’s central position is that of the “Noble Savage.” This is a story that’s been popularized throughout the history of cinema. For whatever reason, it always seems to be a crowd pleaser. The term was coined back in 1672, in The Conquest of Granada by the poet Dryden. It’s been used as a way to compare two societies; for instance, in the famous essay “of Cannibals,” Michel de Montaigne compared and contrasted a tribe of people in Brazil with the current religious violence breaking out in France. The implication was that the tribe might be cannibals and their enemies, but it’s a matter of honor; whereas, in the Catholic church, people were being burned alive for their opinions on religion. Since then, the term has been used in a variety of ways; it’s been linked to scientific racism; as a “romantic” view of how nice it would be if we lived like “them;” as angst against imperialism or colonialism. It has always had a somewhat derogatory undertone to it.

More recently, movies have co-opted this metaphor and have used it in vaguely insulting ways. Look to Dances with Wolves, for example. White man leaves the cavalry, finds a Native American tribe. At first he is disdainful of their ways, but ends up identifying as one of them, leads them to victory and, in some ways, forsakes his prior life to live as one. Avatar follows pretty much the same story structure, almost down to a “T.” And this is where a lot of the disdain for the movie comes from. It normally comes in the line of “here we go again, another white director is making a movie in which a white character meets an indigenous tribe of people, ends up becoming their savior and throws off the chains of imperialism and his heritage to embrace ‘the noble savage.’” And you can’t fault people who levy this charge. Everything they say is true. This is a hugely obvious theme here. I don’t think that Cameron’s depiction of the Na’vi is racist; they are an imaginary and fantastical race of people living on a completely different type of planet that has probably ever been shown in movies. Who is to say that his depiction of a race that he created in his head is wrong/racist? Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.

And sometimes it’s not. In this case, the implication behind the white Jake Sully becoming the “simple tribe’s” savior is definitely something you can throw the racist dart at. Once again, the white person has saved the non-white group of people from both themselves and the encroaching, overly white imperialistic army. It is vaguely insulting.

That said, there’s still a lot of good ideas and concepts in the movie. I absolutely loved the way the Na’vi are literally attuned with nature. They literally plug their hair into both the wildlife and the flora. It takes a concept of being one with nature to a whole new, oftentimes breath-taking level. To see the way in which Cameron has crafted this fully-functioning society is very interesting to me. It’s both mystical in the same sense as The Force was in the original Star Wars films (before Lucas had to corrupt it by tying it to science and cellular structure) but also invokes the way in which we have become literally plugged into our manmade nature (i.e. internet and technology). Our love of technology contrasts beautifully with the Na’vi’s love of nature, down to the simple acting of literally “plugging in.” I also loved the antiwar/environmental themes addressed inside.

So there you have it. Avatar was both visionary and insulting. Both a pioneer and a copycat. Incredibly rich and rewarding, but stock filled with stereotypes (some of which Cameron created years ago). I loved it. It entertained me for the entire 2.5 hours. And I spent most of the movie with my eyes darting around the huge IMAX screen, trying to take in everything Cameron was throwing at me. In a medium where the visual is key, Avatar is tops.

So, about 36.5 hours later and I'm done with Dragon Age. I thought the epilogue was severely lacking. It wasn't very satisfying for me. I was looking forward to something epic and poignant and got, instead, brief "where are they now" type paragraphs that did nothing to ease some of my curiosity. Disappointed. :(

The ending battle, though...now THAT was epic.

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving break. Probably the best I've had, considering that friends were out of town or working or not available for online games. I actually spent a good portion of the weekend with my parents, something that I didn't think would necessarily be an "entertaining" time, since the majority of the time I do spend with them is spent watching Faux News and our only conversation being based around what supposed ills are being thrown on society. It's exhausting, a lot of the time. But not so this weekend.

I accidentally got my parents addicted to Lost.

Honestly, it was an accident. I had decided that I was going to rewatch all of Lost in its entirety, as a way of preparing for the sixth and final season (which premieres in February, wheee!). While waiting for the entire series to be delivered on the 8th, I ordered the first three Blu-ray discs from Netflix with the thought of watching them over the Thanksgiving break since most of the people I hang out with were, as mentioned above, working, busy or gone. My brother always insults Lost...I don't think he gets it. I say this not as a slight or to demean him in any way, but sometimes subtleties are lost on him and he has no patience for things that aren't explicitly spelled out to him. He has many, many strengths (some of which I completely envy and wish I had), but this is not one of them. So whenever the subject of Lost is brokered, he immediately insults it, calling it "Gilligan's Island" among other, less pleasant, things. Meanwhile, my parents have asked about it but have taken what Chris said as gospel so I thought I'd show them the first episode so they could see what it was about.

When the episode was over, my mom looked at me, her eyes wide and said, "You brought more, right?"

So, our Thanksgiving was planned out rather spontaneously. After eating at Mimi's Café (my mom understandably didn't want to cook after we made an impromptu early Thanksgiving dinner when my brother was still in town), we went back to their home, watched Star Trek and then watched the rest of the first disc of Lost. I then went over on Saturday and we watched all of disc two and most of the third disc, only to return on Sunday to watch the final two episodes on disc three. They are officially hooked. I'm curious to see how they will handle the series after the first season, when its intent turns from plain ol' survival on a weird island and goes into less tangible and more mythos-related seasons. It does get weird, but I've always found it to be grounded in great characters and interesting theories. I don't know if that'll be enough for my parents. I have more hope for my mom, since she loves bizarre stories. Not sure if it'll hold my dad's interest. It'll depend on how invested he is in the characters, I think. I'm afraid he'll start to take on my brothers' feelings toward it. But we'll see.

Right now, I'm just enjoying the fact that I have something to do with my parents. It was the first time I had a really, really great time with them in a long time. So for that, I'm grateful.

What happens when LittleBigPlanet meets "Bad Romance"? Something awesome, that's what.

Last night's Dexter was inspired and took what I thought was the worst
season of Dexter and spun it into a new light. This one episode
completely changed my expectations and also completely changed
everything beforehand. What felt like needless episodes have become
important. Dexter surprised me and left me emotionally drained. Below
is my take on this episode, which is the most brilliant and gut
wrenching hour of TV I've seen in a long time.

( Read more... )

It's the Holidays this week and so my normal gaming troupe won't be
around much. I'm sad about that since we just got into Left 4 Dead 2
and still have lots to do in both Borderlands and Champions Online.
However, I shall use this time to get caught up on single player video
games. I'm 30 hours into Dragon Age: Origins and moving towards the
final conflict. I'm on chapter 18 (of I don't know how many) in
Uncharted 2. I'm not very far into Brutal Legend. I still have the
Metroid Prime Trilogy on the Wii that I need to dig into (I finished the
prologue). And then I also have Assassin's Creed 2 which should be
delivered today. So, I have a lot to keep me busy when I'm free top lay
video games. I'm also planning on starting to re-watch Lost in
preparation of the sixth and final season. As I said on Twitter, this
is a series so rich in subtext and intertextuality that I could watch it
over and over again. I'm sure that watching it again will be an
eye-opening experience since I'm going back in with more knowledge of
where the story is heading. And if the ending of the show is as epic
and transformative as they are saying it will be, I might be re-watching
it again sometime next year when the final season is out on Blu-Ray.

Last night, we played the Scavenge mode of Left 4 Dead 2. We played it
three on three (the human group would kill the computer-controlled
character...poor Rochelle) and went through a few games. I lost track
of time. This mode is such a fun pick-up-and-play play style that I
think I will spend more time on this than any other mode. It's
basically a capture the flag mode, L4D-style. In the center of the map,
there's a generator and the survivors must hoof it around the map to
locate gas cans to fill up the generator. The way it works is that
there's a timer that starts at a minute and a half and starts counting
down. Each gas canister adds 15 seconds to the timer. Meanwhile, the
Infected team is trying to stop them from succeeding. The game is
played out best of a certain number (which you can change) and it's not
about how many gas cans you collect, but that your team collects more
than the other. So if you get 7 and the other team gets 3, your team
wins the round and that's it. It's not a running tally or anything.

Playing this mode created some awesome scenarios. In one level, there's
a gas station with a billboard directly behind it. The survivors
climbed up the billboard, each one grabbing a gas can, and then hopped
off the billboard onto the roof of the gas station. I spawned as a
Smoker behind them and when the last one was about to jump off the roof,
I grabbed him with my tongue. He died before anyone could do anything,
because they were all on the ground and running to the generator. Then,
my other teammates pounced. One of the cool features of this map is
that if you drop a gas can, it becomes combustible to Spitter goo. So,
luckily one of my teammates was a Spitter and launched some goo at
people (one of whom was downed by a Hunter and therefore dropped the gas
can). The goo not only hurt the Survivors in it, but it also ignited
the gas can and caused a huge fire. So while I was strangling the poor
sap on the roof, the others were burning on the ground. It was an
awesome moment and showcased some of the exciting gameplay
possibilities.

On the flip side, one game was so evenly tied (1 to 1, with one more
match to go) and in the last match, it was four gas cans to three gas
cans. We just needed one more gas can, but the time was almost gone.
shimdic was racing toward the generator, gas can in hand while
the rest of us were trying to provide help but were also being caught
and pulled back. The match literally came down to the gas can and the
Spitter. The Spitter, unfortunately, won.

Left 4 Dead 2 is such a fantastic game. I don't know if I could ever go
back to the first one again after playing it.

I played two demos last night with two vastly different outcomes. Sega was offering a demo for Bayonetta for those who signed up on their site. Me, being the sucker I am, did sign up and I downloaded the demo last night. Additionally, various companies are offering a preorder deal for God of War 3 where you can get access to the E3 demo; since I preorderedthe awesome-looking "Ultimate Edition," I also got the code for that demo. My impressions are below.

First up is Bayonetta. I just do not know what to say about this game, other than it's batshit crazy. From what I gather, you play as Bayonetta (at least I'm assuming that's her name...), who has four guns, in her feet and hands, and attacks with...her hair. Apparently, her costume is completely made up of her hair so when you do attacks or get hit, it starts to uncover pieces of her body that was being hidden...by her hair. The level I played had me standing on what looked like a piece of Big Ben that was falling endlessly down a huge chasm. Winged monsters started attacking me and I had to, much in the way of Devil May Cry, juggle them with attacks, gunfire and throws. As you defeat enemies, you build up some kind of torture bar and once it's filled, you have the option of summoning some kind of torture device (I summoned both an Iron Maiden and a guillotine) to do some kind of over-the-top fatality-type move. Once in awhile, I'd apparently hit the right combination of buttons and a giant (I mean GIANT) stiletto boot would appear out of a portal and kick the offending baddie in the face...well, in the entire body, I guess since it's so huge. Or a giant pike would thrust out of the ground and obliterate the enemy.

...oh, did I mention the giant ass stiletto and the giant pike were made...of hair? Because they are. Everything is apparently made of hair. I wonder what kind of shampoo and conditioner she uses.

After dealing death and destruction, the piece of Big Ben crashed on the mountain and I found myself flipping to another piece. Oh and while all this is happening, some giant ass dragon is floating around and as I move to another piece of falling debris, it starts shooting fireballs, swinging it's huge tail and landing on the piece of debris...while I'm still fighting flying monsters. It's all a little chaotic and I had a hard time figuring out what was going on, I'm not going to lie. The camera was pulled out for this moment and I sometimes got lost in all the zaniness that was going on. I found it virtually impossible to dodge the dragon's attacks and I was about to give up when apparently the level ended abruptly. Then I'm ported to another level, set in a castle/cathedral type area and the camera is more manageable, a la Devil May Cry. This level had a boss where I finished him off by summoning some giant dog-like monster out of the sky (that was composed...of hair) that chomped him in half.

Bayonetta is directed by Hideki Kamiya (Viewtiful Joe and the original Devil May Cry) wanted to focus on "sexiness" in attacks and wanted the entire thing to focus on "constant climax action." It's crazy. I felt like I had popped some acid or something prior to playing. I don't think I'll be jumping on this game's bandwagon because it was too much. It's true that it's not like anything I've ever seen before from a presentational perspective, but sometimes that's not a good thing. This was a bit ridiculous.

God of War 3, though...now that's a demo that impressed me. Right from the beginning, its presentation is bar none. I've always found the God of War series to be visually impressive, but this one takes the cake. The details in Kratos' face and body is phenomenal and then you start to see the environments and enemies and everything is as jaw-dropping as it should be, given the new equipment. In the past, giant enemies are always in the background (unless it's a boss fight). Like Ares waging war on a city in the background. Right away, a Titan is attacking the city where you're at, and he's in the foreground, throwing punches at the wall while the god Helios is flying around like a large fly, tossing balls of fire at it. The action is vintage God of War, except even more gory. Disemboweling a centaur is crazy gory, with its intestines spilling out on the ground. Or leaping onto the back of a Cyclops and using your swords to control its movements until you're finished...and by finished, I mean the camera closes in on the Cyclops' face as Kratos reaches in and pulls out his eyeball! The platforming takes on familiar cues, except this time you can also use harpies as makeshift platforms. You can leap from one, kind of control its flight pattern and then leap from it (tearing it in half, in the process) to another harpy to cross chasms.

Once you down Helios and get over to him (using the Cyclops to beat away his small army that has put up shields around their fallen god), you tear off his head and it is grisly. His head becomes a flashlight. Before you know it, you're jumping into air vents and propelling yourself forward in a kind of upward flying minigame where you have to steer away from obstacles. Eventually, you reach the top of the mountain and in glorious high definition, see the giant Titan. As you swoop downward, Blades of Athena drawn, you clash into the Titan and the logo flashes up, ending the demo. This was a perfectly executed demo. Not too short but definitely not long and it gave you a great indication of what's to come. It looked fantastic, moved fantastic and played fantastic. It looks to be a very fitting end to Kratos' story and I can't wait for March/April.

The last two or so weeks have been driving me absolutely insane whenever
I tried to play video games on my PC. I'd be playing whatever game
(Dragon Age, Borderlands, Left 4 Dead, etc.) and about 25-30 minutes
into the game, it would minimize. That's all it would do. Just
minimize and I'd have to open the window again and hope that it wasn't
at a bad time. This happened constantly with, I began to realize, like
clockwork, every 30ish minutes. I googled it and didn't get anything of
note back. Sure, people said it back in 2004 that the issue was either
spyware or malware. Maybe a virus. Maybe it had something to do with
missing registry functions. Well, I started experimenting, trying
everything. I ran Spybot. Downloaded Adaware and ran that. Ran my
virus scanner a couple times. Even download a registry fixer and had
that do its thing (it fixed a lot of errors, by the way...like 400 or
so). I ran through my Task Manager to see if any errant processes were
running. Ran a program called Highjackthis and took a look at the log
it produced. Sent both the log and a screenshot of my Task Manager
processes to two friends and they combed through it, too. Thought maybe
it was my fancy Logitech keyboard or the Logitech Gameboard, so
unplugged them and tried it. I literally went through everything, as
did my friends.

Well, then one of my friends discovered something. AVG, my antivirus
software, apparently was causing it. She discovered in the AVG forums
that people were complaining about games minimizing and that it was
happening about every 30 minutes. So, I uninstalled AVG when we played
Left 4 Dead 2 last night...it didn't minimize. I ran my stopwatch and
we played for about an hour without the game minimizing once. This
isn't the first time AVG has given me grief. I got nearly to the end of
Bioshock when AVG suddenly decided that Bioshock was a virus and
quarantined portions of it. This gave me more trouble than I could have
anticipated because one of the files it said was a virus was the
uninstall file. When I tried to uninstall it through Control Pad, it
wouldn't let me do anything. It took me quite awhile to actually get
the program off of my computer and then AVG wouldn't even let me
reinstall it! I was so mad. Later, it did it with another game, I
don't remember which one. Then, this year, it told me that iTunes was a
virus and it FUBAR'd that program, too, which was also a pain in the ass
to fix.

And now this. Goodbye AVG. As much as I've appreciated your free and
helpful protection, you are not game friendly to me. I'm going to look
into Avast, which I've heard is also decent. I'm just tired of dealing
with AVG's quirks.

Because of the troubleshooting last night, we didn't have a lot of time
to play Left 4 Dead 2. We got to the same part we did the night before.
And guess what? Dark Carnival hurts us. :( The rollercoaster part is
hard, hard, hard. What makes matters worse is that we're trying to cart
around that stupid gnome from Half Life 2. That makes it very
difficult...but we're a sucker for Achievements.

Left 4 Dead 2 is awesome. It's not a "full priced expansion." It's not
too soon. It's not anything, except awesome. The differences between
the two games are night and day; it feels as if the first Left 4 Dead
was simply the blueprints to a fantastic game. Left 4 Dead 2 feels like
the finished product. Last night, we played through the first campaign
and almost the first three levels of the second campaign before our
untimely deaths and my need to sleep. Dead Centre, the opening
campaign, has more diversity in it than all of the first game. The
first level is endemic to the thoughts behind Valve's game design. You
begin on the top of a hotel building, bringing to mind the small
apartment complex of the first one, but the differences are specific.
This building is on fire and it has more context-driven events
than...well, than the entire first game, at the risk of repeating
myself.

( Cut for possible gameplay spoilers )

I've been up for awhile now and I'm dragging. Today is going to drag.
I know this. My brother left for Hawaii this morning. I went with my
parents to see him off, which necessitated in my waking up at about 4
AM. It was good to be there when he left, though. And this time it
wasn't as hard as it was the time before. When he left before, he was
leaving to be deployed shortly after to Afghanistan. Well, because of
his recon corpsman training's schedule, he missed Mojave Desert
training. Since he missed that, he couldn't deploy, which we found out
two weeks ago. So as of right now, he won't be deploying until May or
so next year. Consequently, his leaving this morning, while emotional,
wasn't as drastically emotional as it was last time. Especially for my
parents, who haven't exactly been the most optimistic. It felt good to
see him off this morning, even though I'm paying for the early wake up
right now. I'm drinking coffee like it's going out of style.

Over the last year, I've gone from utter disdain to mild curiosity to
overwhelming affection for Lady Gaga. When I first heard about her, it
was from fricknfrackfan who saw her as the opening act for New
Kids on the Block (I believe). And the only thing I knew about her was
that she wore "wild fashion" and, when she took the stage before New
Kids, she wore granny panties on the outside of her clothes. But, as
the year went along and I actually started hearing her music, I grew
more and more interested. Here's a pop starlet who has her own
identity, can actually sing and is actually interesting to watch/listen
to. I bring this up because I really, really like her new single and
accompanying video Bad Romance,
which is all over the place and actually invokes Hitchcock. When her
deluxe edition of The Fame Monster releases next week, I think I might
take the plunge since it includes her first album The Fame and 8 new
songs, including "Bad Romance." Speaking of next week, for those in
love with pop music, it looks to be a huge week. Rihanna, Shakira, Lady
Gaga, Adam Lambert and others all release next Monday. Crazy.

This weekend was busy with mostly unfun activities. Friday night was
fun, going to Mics Karaoke. Saturday morning, went to the gym, went
shopping and then spent the afternoon cleaning and doing massive loads
of laundry. Took a break, though, to go to dinner which was fun and
conversation-filled. Sunday, got my haircut, went grocery shopping,
some more laundry, spent time with my family and then capped the early
night with Dexter with my brother. Last night's episode of Dexter was
fantastic. This season has been really uneven; lots of up and downs in
storytelling and retreading. But the last two episodes have been great
and I'm really curious to see how the story will end this season. John
Lithgow has been an awesome and incredibly inspired addition to the cast
this season and I will be sad when he, inevitably, gets offed.

At lunch today, I cracked up the monstrously huge Under the Dome by Stephen King. This book is gargantuan in hard back. I knew it would be large (after all, 1,088 pages isn't exactly going to be "thin"), but it's a massive monster that would probably be illegal to take on an airplane, on account of it probably being a very good bludgeoning weapon. Considering its length, I assumed the book would take a bit of time to introduce characters, introduce the town and give us a semblance of normality before the metaphorical (and very literal) wall came crashing down, but no. Within the first three pages, a plane has crashed into the invisible wall, sending body parts flying, and death and destruction have quickly become the norm. Smartly, King accomplishes two feats in the opening passages: he introduces his characters (some of whom are quickly offed but are still given actual depth) and sets a pacing that, so far, hasn't let up. I'm about 80 pages into it, but I don't want to put the big book down. So far, I'd say that it's probably the best opening of his I've ever read (...well, aside from "The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed" of course). I'm really curious to see where the story will go.

Another gargantuan story is coming to a close, I fear. I'm about 26 hours into Dragon Age. I have one more of my four main quests to do before the "point of no return" starts to happen, from what I've gathered. I expect another 10 or so hours from the game at the most. I really would like the ability to respec my character. When you first start out creating a Mage, you don't necessarily know where you want to go, skill-wise. So I made some choices like the earth armor-type spell and the mana drain spell that I hardly ever touch. Now that I've had time to play around with the skills, I've really found my niche on this character. I specialized in Blood Magic and Arcane Warrior, creating a really powerful hybrid. With Blood Magic, I'm able to create an Area of Effect (AoE) spell that stuns my enemies and gives them a damage of time (DoT) that, in story terms, causes their blood to boil from what I've gather. I'm also able to control some enemies (the best is when I controlled an Ogre and sent him smashing through my foes), steal some life from my companions to heal myself (since Blood Magic drains your health instead of your mana) and wade through my enemies, dressed in heavy armor thanks to my Arcane Warrior specialization, and swing my sword with disdain. I'm really loving my mage character, but I wish that I had realized earlier how I wanted to play him so that I didn't waste points on useless skills.

I still don't think the story is "omg wow," but what's here is a very polished, timeless story that Bioware has been telling for years now. It's simply been sharpened to a point, now. The characters are great, though I wish Bioware would get away from the "telling" and do more "showing." It's not great character development to have your characters break into uninterruptible monologues about their backstory. It'd be more fun to introduce some kind of showing aspect to it. Not necessarily a cut scene, but tell the story in more visually interesting ways. An example of the good way Bioware told some background exposition was in the premium paid content "Warden's Keep." You are asked to go to the keep to help someone uncover his heritage and once you enter the castle, you start to see snippets of the past because the connection to the fade is very strong in this area for reasons which are explained as you progress through the keep. This is a better (not the best, though) way to show the past because it's creative. There's still characters rambling on about their past, but the presentation makes it more immediate and visually stimulating. I get enough talking heads when I go over to my parent's house on Sunday and they're watching Fox News. I don't need it in my video game.

That said, the gameplay and the entire structure is tops. Not many games leave me begging for more, but I find myself saying "just one more quest" or "let me just turn this in before I quit" or "well, I want to wrap this up so that tomorrow I can focus on..." quite often. It's the reason I hit 20 hours over last weekend: I couldn't stop playing. From that aspect, I think Dragon Age is probably the most successful of Bioware's games. It feels much more fleshed out than Mass Effect, less clunky than KOTOR and more interesting than Jade Empire. Even when I curse Bioware for sticking to some completely outdated tropes and presentational aspects, I find myself unable to look away or stop playing. And that's a sign of a good game. Chances are I'll actually play through it at least once more. I definitely want to see all six of the origin stories and I'll probably play my Human Noble character that I've already started at least through most of the campaign.

The number one realization that you're playing a game too much? When you start dreaming in the UI. I had a dream I was in Dragon Age: Origins...but it was being presented like a game. So I had to choose dialogue choices, give gifts to my teammates to increase their (visible) loyalty bar and then also pause the action to give them orders. Holy cow. The second, more immediate realization is when you keep telling yourself "one more area" or "one more quest" and then another hour goes by. Friday night, I didn't have any plans so I decided to play just a little Dragon Age. Before I knew it, it was midnight. Saturday, I did some cleaning and watched some TV...then decided to do just a couple quests in Dragon Age when my entire afternoon flashed by. Then again, yesterday, another afternoon, killed. I realized around 8:00 that I was hungry. Oy. I haven't been this obsessed over a video game in...well, forever. I don't know what it is about it. The complaints I've dictated over the last two posts are still there. The story isn't very surprising and is almost too familiar. The dialogue is still monologue material and I still hate that my character doesn't have a voice. And yet...there I am, playing more and more and more. I've clocked in over 20 hours so far, most of which came from this weekend. I need to take a break from it for a bit.

Saturday, we went to see Men Who Stare at Goats. It was...okay. Had some humorous parts but felt a bit listless and didn't really have much of a point. It was missing something. However, the movie isn't what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about the theatre. Omaha has a new theatre, Midtown Cinema. Here's a picture of what the theatre looks like from the outside. It's nestled in this new area in Omaha, Midtown Crossing and it's pretty fancy. It has two bars/lounges and a restaurant. One of the theatres has a lounge attached to it, where you can order adult beverages while you wait for the movie. Here is the view from the top most lounge where you can see a baby grand. You can take your drinks and/or appetizers with you into the theatre.

The seats in our cinema were first class. Tan leather, with a little mini-swiveling table attached. Each chair has a button you can press to summon a waiter to order more drinks or an appetizer. We sat in the VIP area, where you pay $15, get specific seats and get a $5 voucher to spend on drinks and/or food. The level below us was the so-called "CineDine" which includes tables and where you can eat full menu items.
It truly felt like we were going to see a play or an opera and not Men Who Stare at Goats. The whole place oozed fanciness and seemed like a place I'd love to go to see movies constantly. I can't wait to go back.

Dragon Age: Origins came in the mail yesterday and I eagerly installed the game, downloaded my free extra content and created my first character, a mage named Albedo (surprise!). The game is about what I expected, so far, though there is one added change that I didn't know about and don't care for. My character is silent! I hate silent characters (unless they are mute); hate them with a passion. Conversations happen, but I never feel a part of it because all I do is select what I want to say and someone responds to my wordless voice. Instead, my character just tilts his head, gesticulates and otherwise looks like an idiot who's not really understanding what's going on around him. This goes back to my previous post about this game, where I feel Bioware has taken a step back from Mass Effect. The Mass Effect dialogue system wasn't the greatest, but it made strides in improving just the same complaint I have about this game. My character spoke! There was a vocal connection between them. This, I feel, increases my ire with the already monologue-infested dialogue system. So now all I do is hear people yap yap yap, as if they were performing a soliloquy that I happen to hear.

Otherwise, I'm enjoying the game so far, even though the entire thing feels a bit...underwhelming in a story sense. Playing the mage role, I felt that there weren't any surprises. I immediately figured out what was going on in The Harrowing, the mage test the origin starts with. I imediately knew what was going on with my friend, but went along with it anyway and then, of course, I knew how the whole thing would end and I'd be inducted into the Gray Wardens. It's not very surprising so far and feels very "samey." I hope it gets better. Maybe the mage story isn't as powerful or good as some of the other origin stories. It went by really quickly and didn't really offer me much "meat" other than exposition. And soliloquies. I know some of the stories deal with more life-and-death/heavy themes, so maybe I just picked one that wasn't as strong as the others.

From a gameplay perspective, I do love Dragon Age. What I enjoy about it is the fact that you can play it a couple of different ways, especially on the PC. You can zoom in close to the characters, which makes playing the game more like a third person RPG a la Mass Effect. You can also zoom out the camera, to the point that it plays like a top-down RPG like Baldur's Gate. This flexibility allows for a much more strategic game than Bioware has created in awhile. Don't judge me: I am playing on easy. The only reason I'm doing so is that I want to be able to throw around AoE spells with wild abandon and there's unfortunately no separate control for friendly fire. On the console side of things, Normal is automatically friendly fire off simply because it doesn't allow the same camera control (you can't zoom out, which makes placing non-friendly-hurting spells and effects difficult). If the game's too easy, I will definitely switch the difficulty up a bit to normal. But, I'm telling you, playing as a Mage, I want to throw a fireball, shoot lightning or flood an area with spell effects without hurting my team. I've been playing the game mostly through a third person perspective because it's the camera I'm most comfortable with. I'm sure as the game goes along, I'll probably switch things up and move to the more tactical vantage point when things get more strategic, with the pausing and giving actions, etc.

Right now, it's about what I expected. So far, I don't think the game transcends what's come before, but I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would. I knew I'd like it, but what I feel is a few steps above "like," right now.

I'm a little curious about the Visitor metaphor being used in V. I watched the first episode last night and here's what I got: Attractive, charismatic (not to mention telegenic and young) aliens come to earth, promising hope, change (which is hard), universal health care and appeals to the world's youth. Obvious parallels and metaphors abound in the previous sentence. All they needed was a cool-looking sign with a big "O" and/or giant, colorful letters spelling out "Hope" (or is that hOpe?) for it to be truly, unequivocally on the nose. Then, of course, it turns out, these attractive aliens are actually wanting to debilitate/destroy/devour the world.

Don't worry, I checked the writing credits: it wasn't written by Glenn Beck.

But it still makes me wonder about the politics behind it. Just because I don't believe the politics behind the Becks of the world doesn't mean that I'll automatically poo-poo something like this. In truth, I found V to be a pretty good beginning to a show that could, potentially, be killed before it even gets a chance. ABC only commissioned four episodes so far, which they are airing right now. Then there's the Winter Olympics and, if the show is doing well, they'll commission more episodes to be aired in March. Not exactly comforting. Because of this fear, I think the creators went a bit overboard with their opening episode. It has a breathless urgency that carriers the hour programming from set piece to set piece, doesn't let up or allow you to take a breather and then before you know it, it's over. Good pacing, overall. But the problem is that the show felt really rushed, both from a story perspective but also from a realistic one. Right after the aliens arrive, the military is in the streets, NYC is cordoned off and everyone is being told to remain calm. It almost felt as if the military was prescient of the aliens coming and so set up barricades in advance. It moved too quickly. Hell, by the end of the episode, the resistance group had been started, we know that the aliens are really lizards underneath and all of the setup seems to be in place. In about 40 minutes.

Lost, this ain't.

On one hand, this kind of kinetic pacing is a good thing, but it also feels like the producers also have the prescience to know they are going to be canceled and are going for broke, to tell this entire story in four episodes. It doesn't feel like the beginning of new series. It feels like a TV miniseries (which the original one was, prior to being picked up for one season), one that is moving too fast, even for a
miniseries. It was a slick, fun ride, though. One that I am definitely going to tune into while it's on the air. Maybe it will fill the void left by FlashForward, a show I was looking forward to but left distaste in my mouth. Honestly, though, I just want Lost to be back on the air. I need closure.

First of all, a PSA: The Left 4 Dead 2 demo should be out for everyone today. So if you haven't preordered it and haven't already been playing it, go out and download it. I think it's worth your time.

Dragon Age Origins is out today. My copy should be arriving tomorrow or Thursday at the latest. A lot of my friends are excited for this one but I'm kind of...undecided. Bioware is like Valve, in that their fans are very devoted and outspoken. So, I feel like I'm kind of jogging a narrow cliff when I say this, but...in some ways, Bioware is a one trick pony.

Don't get me wrong, they do that trick very well. But once you peal away the trick, the game's always feel a bit empty to me. When I look back at KOTOR and Mass Effect, for instance, I find two games that share the same exact structure. There's some kind of inciting event, then the world opens up (or in this case, the Galaxy opens up) and presents you with three different worlds to go to, in any order you want. Once you've exhausted the content in these worlds, something "epic" happens and then you're facing a linear story that ends with a climax. Mass Effect tried to hide this by presenting side quests and a multitude of planets you could either explore physically or get information from, but when you look at it, it had the exact same structure as KOTOR. This is a common thread between all of their games.

The one thing that has annoyed me from day one, playing Baldur's Gate, is the dialogue system. It's so boring. Up until Mass Effect, you simply select a response and then watch as the two characters converse in stationary, stilted talking head fashion. One will go on for forever in a monologue, followed by the second character's super long monologue, and so on until you reach the end of the conversation. And instead of being a dynamic cut scene, it's two people, gesticulating with their arms, flabbing their mouths and basically having a conversation like those you'd see in a news program. Not exactly thrilling. Mass Effect threw some complications and changes to this conversation system, with you picking more moods and ideas and then watching the cut scene play out. Bioware did a better job of making the conversations feel like real conversations and not like those you read in a novel.

Unfortunately, it still resulted in talking heads and gesticulating hands. Boring and not cinematic at all. With a good dozenish games under their belts, Bioware hasn't really done anything to truly evolve, outside of adding beautiful graphics.

I was extremely disappointed to hear that the dialogue system in Dragon Age was going back to the "see your response, choose your response, watch the long ass monologues" way of conversation. Conversation is extremely important in Bioware games because, when you're not killing monsters or looting, you're usually talking to someone. And in this day of interactive fiction, seeing "novel dialogue" and not "movie dialogue" is really unpleasant to me. It feels like developers aren't trying hard enough. They're just coasting by.

Before grabbing your pitchforks and torches and google-mapping me, know that I enjoy Bioware games for the most part. I think they usually tell an epic story filled with memorable characters. I still love Minsc and his miniature giant space hamster, Boo. I just feel that, recently, Bioware has been resting on their laurels, so to speak. They haven't really done anything completely revolutionary for a time. I was hoping that Dragon Age would spark their creative juices, but some of the reviews I'm seeing are pointing out the things I've been thinking and saying for awhile now. Like Bit Tech. I got excited when I learned that Bioware was taking influence from the gritty, realistic fantasy fiction by George R.R. Martin. Things like political intrigue, truly mature themes (unlike the puerile and juvenile things I've seen associated with Dragon Age), sudden, often violent, plot twists and lots of gray areas are the tenants of A Game of Thrones and so I was looking forward to playing through a similar thematic game...but from what I've seen, the story is fairly pedestrian with its demon army in the distance and having a lowly hero rising above his origin to become the savior of the world. Tried and true. But safe. Too safe.

I'm sure I'll enjoy Dragon Age for what it is, but I don't think I'll be completely satisfied. In the meantime, I'm going to change my address.

At the Kelly Clarkson concert, she covered a few songs. One of them (well, technically two) was a mashup of "That I Would Be Good"/"Use Somebody." It's a very well done mashup. I loved it. Here's a video someone took.



She also covered "Seven Nation Army" and it, too, was rocking. The DJ introduction was pretty cool, as well.