The Man Who Wasn't There

LittleBadRomance

2009-11-25T17:14:45Z

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

On Dexter...

2009-11-24T14:49:06Z

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.

This entire season, Dexter has been struggling with familial and work
(both kinds) obligations. I'll be honest that I thought it was kind of
needless and while I've enjoyed watching this season, I still felt that
it was a bad season. Except now I understand. What the writers have
done is insidious. John Lithgow is known for playing bad guys very
well. So some people might remember him from his bad guy roles like in
Cliffhanger, I will always remember him as Mr. Henderson or
the zany Dr. Solomon, both lovable characters in their own right. Here, he is
unmistakably evil. They set that up in the beginning, with what's the
most horrendous murder shown on Dexter yet and then follow it up in
three quick successions with two more murders. So they've established
his horrendousness.

But then that falls away and we see him as a hurting individual, in some
ways like Dexter. It's implied that he's recreating the horrific deaths
of his family (father, mother and sister) and you see him punishing
himself in a variety of ways. And then they introduce his family. And
you see they have a perfect relationship. In some ways, you start to
think of Dexter and him as being very similar. Both have families, both
are murderers, both seem socially adjusted. Lithgow's Arthur seems
respected by both his family and his peers. They both had a traumatic
life as children. It eases into you so that, while you know he's done
horrible, despicable things, you still somehow...I don't want to say
ignore them, but put them out of your mind for a bit. It's fascinating
as you see him working at building houses for the homeless, giving his
prized car to his son, helping Dexter (who is pretending to be someone
else named Kyle, a lonely man who's without his family), etc. You start
to forget and think that maybe he's an okay guy...murder aside.

Last night pulled the curtain back, though. It was probably the most
uncomfortable hour of television I've ever watched as Lithgow's Arthur
smashes every single lie and illusion that's been cast over him. He's
not the loving patriarch. He's an evil, sadistic man who abuses his
family and, in one incredibly unbearable moment, breaks his son's
fingers. It left me cold and with a hard pit in my stomach. The
episode ends with a terrifying explosion of violence as his son can't
take it anymore and lashes out and Dexter's dark passenger gets the best
of him, showing itself both to Arthur and Arthur's family, who flocks to
Arthur even though he's been such an evil, evil man. It was
gut-wrenching. And every little thing that came before became
illuminated in this new light. By allowing us to get close to this
killer, the writers allowed comparisons to Dexter, who we've been
rooting for, for four seasons now. This little episode, though, was
shocking not only in the literal sense (it has some twists as well) but
also in how little we actually know.

This season went from being my least favorite to being the best, with
just a little twist and prodding. Brilliant.

Holidays and zombies

2009-11-23T14:14:05Z

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.

Demos!

2009-11-20T15:50:26Z

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.

Bye bye AVG

2009-11-19T14:07:04Z

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.

L4D2

2009-11-18T14:15:25Z

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.

Fire will cause impromptu escape passages as you end up having to
discover a way through the building as it burns down around you. This
means sometimes climbing out a window and balancing precariously on a
ledge, moving from window to window. This intensity is further
exasperated by the introduction of the special infected. Imagine a
Jockey hopping on you while moving across the ledges or a Spitter's goo
at just the wrong moment. Moving through the hotel, the fire increases
and eventually smoke will cloud your vision, creating an even more
intense and claustrophobic event where zombies charge out of the dense,
dense smoke and other zombies wearing hazmat suits simply rush through
the fires. Later in the campaign, you realize just how diverse the once
stagnant horde events can be. While based on a similar premise of
something causing a loud enough noise to track zombie hordes, these
events are special.

In Dead Centre, there's a moment where you have to race through a
supermarket to find a case of cola. You then you have to maneuver out
of the building, race up a street and deliver it to some crazed and
armed guy who is holed up in a weapon shop (shades of the new Dawn of
the Dead, anyone?). Upon doing so, he agrees to blow up a barricade,
allowing you egress. But the race to the cola and then the race back to
the guy's shop is fantastic and intense. The finale of the event has
you participating in a scavenge event, where you have to find gas cans
to fill up a sports car to escape. It's an awesome change of pace, and
a fantastic opening to the new game.

Dark Carnival is also pretty cool, too. You can mess around with some
of the games in the beginning of the level and before we died, we had to
race up and down a rollercoaster to turn off the sounds it makes, which
are attracting more undead. I'm in love with the game, much more so
than the first. And I think the levels will add a lot more
replayability to the game. One of the problems with the first game was
that, with a few exceptions, you were playing through the same level,
regardless of which campaign you went through. Consequently, my group
stuck to the same couple of maps which were our favorites when we'd
play. If the content continues through the rest of the game, I think
this will really open up our playstyle.

To top it off, I can't wait to dive into the additional content; the new
special infected, more survivor maps, the new scavenge mode...

Yawn

2009-11-16T14:49:57Z

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.

When I'm Under the Dome, I'll still be playing Dragon Age...

2009-11-12T22:24:15Z

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.

albedo777 @ 2009-11-09T09:20:00

2009-11-09T15:20:03Z

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: my first origin story

2009-11-05T14:58:09Z

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.

V for...

2009-11-04T15:01:18Z

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.

The problem with Bioware...

2009-11-03T16:01:57Z

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

2009-11-03T02:45:21Z

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.

Apparently, my brother almost died Saturday in Hawaii...

2009-11-03T01:12:52Z

For people asking about my brother:

On Saturday, his flight from Hawaii to here was canceled because there was a crack in the windshield. Well, he went to snorkel at Shark's Cove which is named because when viewed from the sky, it looks like a shark's jaw. Here's a pic:

Well, apparently, really high waves that would eclipse a small building started coming in and Chris was underwater, looking at the fish when it happened. When he stood up, he saw one of his buds holding onto a jagged rock and, bam, Chris got yanked under water from the undertow. He managed to grab at one of the jagged rocks on his way out of the cove. Then, as the waves went in and out, he got slammed against the jagged rocks. Apparently, a really strong wave yanked him so hard that the piece of jagged rock he was holding onto broke off and he was yanked out into the ocean. Luckily, that was the last wave and he was able to swim back to shore. He showed me his hands, knees and arms and they are really gashed up. He had pieces of coral stuck in his hand, presumably from when the rock broke and he tried grabbing at whatever he could find.

Pretty scary stuff. I'm glad he's safe.

The Financial Permeability

2009-11-02T15:57:39Z

My weekend ended on a truly bad note, which I won't get into here...sufficed to say it was bad. And while it wasn't a musical note, it was a note to myself. As Alanis has said, it is a jagged little pill. The weekend itself seemed to invite this jaggedness as it was, without a doubt, a pretty much wasted weekend. Don't get me wrong, I had a good time playing games with friends and watching TV, but for a long weekend, it felt pretty useless. I had been battling the flu all last week and by Thursday, the night of the Kelly Clarkson concert (which was a high point; awesome concert) I thought I was on the vestiges of it. Not so, as by the end of the concert, I had a horrendous headache and, I'm pretty certain, a fever. The fever continued off and on throughout Friday, causing me to cancel some fun times Friday night. By Saturday, the fever was gone, but the symptoms remained and I didn't want to infect anyone, leading towards a Halloween wasted in front of the TV. Then, came the phone call from my parents on Sunday (at 7 AM, I might add...) that my brother's plane from Hawaii to here was canceled due to a cracked windshield, which is something I'm glad they caught before flying over a body of water as large and deep as, say, the ocean. Finally, the weekend ended with the aforementioned pill that was jagged. It's not often you get something truly eye-opening as Sunday night was for me. But there you go. You live, you learn.

Hopefully.

That said, the one thing I did this weekend (and did well, I might add) was watch The Big Bang Theory. I started watching this show this summer, during reruns. It being a sitcom, I didn't feel any over-riding necessity to watch the episodes in order, so I partook of the season two episodes that were shown. When Season Three started, I continued watching it and somewhere along the line I started falling in love. So, since I was couch-ridden this weekend, I decided to catch up on the show and started from the beginning. The show is funny in a way that most sitcom's aren't. It's still attached to a laugh track (or live audience? I can never tell anymore), it still tosses out jokes by the second and, like every sitcom, whatever disaster that starts the episode is more likely than not solved by the end. It is a situational comedy, after all.

But what surprised me was how both accessible it was (to geeks and non-geeks alike) but also how the writers don't avoid complex vocabulary or references that could possibly alienate viewers "not in the know." It's a two-edged sword of comedy; it frequently revels in stupidity (like rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock), but it also isn't afraid to throw in complex words, concepts, ideas and, more importantly, it derives actual humor from these complex words. Humor that some viewers simply won't get (hence the laugh track signaling that yes, this is humor, to the uninformed). I found myself laughing hard at some of the more esoteric jokes or "in-jokes" (I loved the episode structured around Age of Conan). Some critic had compared The Big Bang Theory to Friends, saying that it is this decade's friends and while I can find fault in the argument, it also seems to be true, in a weird way.

I'm glad to see that Season Three has picked up new viewers, including myself. I hope that by attracting new members and gaining in popularity (it went from being ranked #42 in Season Two to being #17 so far in Season Three...not too shabby), the creators don't feel a need to dumb down the humor or make it more accessible. Accessibility is important to a point, and I think that over the last two seasons it has reached that moment. If you haven't given it a chance, do so. You might need to give it a couple episodes (I'd recommend searching for "The Barbarian Sublimation" for a good laugh), but I think it will grow on most viewers.

Left 4 Dead 2!

2009-10-29T15:05:52Z

I'm feeling much better today, thankfully. The best I've felt since Saturday. Last night, I got to mess around with the Left 4 Dead 2 demo very briefly. By briefly, I mean I played through the first map with friends and got to the end of the second map (where we were mightily destroyed) and then had to go to bed. What I saw and played, though, really sold the concept to me. In some ways, Left 4 Dead has felt (and feels even more so now) like a blueprint. It was a very fun game and had a great premise behind it, but when it was released it felt like it was a testing ground. I can understand Valve's desire to rush ahead with Left 4 Dead 2 and, having played a portion of it, it feels like a much more refined release that has that Valve sparkle. There's a lot of new additions this time around, both small and large.

On the item front...there's a lot. Almost too much to choose from, to be honest, but I'm sure that as we get familiar with the game we'll fall into patterns of what works for our playstyle. There's vials of bile (try saying that 100 times fast) which acts like a pipe bomb sans explosion but keeps the undead's attention longer, it seems. There's adrenaline shots which...do something. There's a defibrillator which, I think, makes saving downed people super quick. There's like a gazillion melee weapons like frying pans, machetes, guitars, bats, police batons...there's new guns like the combat shotgun, a different starting pistols and other types. It seems like items were everywhere, this time. The undead are more...malleable this time around, too. Shooting them causes a lot more goo. Arms, heads, legs get shot off, gaping holes appear in their torsos when they're shot with a shotgun...it's very visceral. I think the best moment, though, was a well-placed pipe bomb that caused the swarming infected to charge it. Instead of virtually vaporizing them, like in the first L4D, this time they go flying, arms and legs, body parts...it's insane to watch and I started laughing at the awesomeness of it.

Then there's the infected themselves. Of course, you know about the new special infected (the charger, spitter and jockey) but the older infected look a tad different and the common infected sometimes have differences. In the Parish levels the demo encompasses, some infected where riot gear, making it hard to kill them from the front. The best part of the level by far was the end of the second match where the so-called "crescendo" or "gauntlet" events take place. In this instance, you get to a part where an alarm triggers. Unlike Left 4 Dead where the basic concept is to just hide it out in a corner, defending until the alarm stops, this event doesn't end unless you get to the end to shut it off. So you're running through fenced areas, undead spilling over the roofs, climbing the fences and surging toward you, special infected popping up to cause problems, as you're navigating through a linear maze towards a tower that will let you stop the alarm. It's exquisite and the part where our lives were abruptly ended. I had a lot of fun with this. The demo showcases a better-looking game with a lot of improvements. I can't wait for November 17th.

One final thing...I wonder how sportscaster Al Michaels feels about being traded for Oswald, a cartoon character, all so Disney could make a video game? here's a link to an interview with Warren Spector about his new video game, Epic Mickey. In 2006, Disney traded Michaels to Universal for the rights to Oswald...it's pretty funny, really.

Cough hack wheeze.

2009-10-28T13:29:43Z

Didn't go to work yesterday. Had a fever Monday night and into Tuesday. Sore throat, coughing, congestion. Ugh. It's really sucked so far. And I'm still feeling like crap. Haven't been sleeping well, as a consequence, and so last night took a sleeping pill...man do I feel groggy today. Slept a full night, though, which was nice.

Borderlands came out for the PC on Monday. I'm really digging pretty much everything about it. Its Diablo-ness, the shaded graphic style, the presentation, the humor, the classes, the gunplay...pretty much everything is awesome. Really loving it. Biggest complaint is that it plays like a console port. I expected more out of Gearbox, a studio built on making Half Life mods/games. It feels really rushed. You can't turn off the ingame mic (which has no push to talk, meaning that when you're sick and coughing, you blow people's ears out), can't skip the intro movies and all of the ingame menus look like they belong on a console and are the opposite of useful on a PC. All of us had to go into the actual files to edit out the mic and intro movie problem. I'm really shocked at how anti-PC it really is, given Gearbox's PC involvement in the past. And for all that Gearbox's CEO complains about Valve and Steam, I'm shocked they didn't rely on some of Steam's best features. You have to use Gamespy to play games online, which shirks a lot of the benefits Steam gives its players. So you end up having to refriend the friends you already have on Steam to play with them. I guess I'm spoiled with Steam. Some people have complaints with them and I can't argue with most of the good ones, but Steam offers a lot more to consumers than pretty much any other company on the PC. Someone had to do something to revitalize PC gaming and I'd rather have Valve at the lead than some other companies...

Now to just try and make it through today. I'll be the one in the corner, quietly coughing to himself.

It's been a long day, all the way...

2009-10-26T12:26:39Z

Been up since four. Woke up at 2:00, then 2:30, then 3:30 and finally decided to get out of bed around 4:00. Don't know why I couldn't sleep. It seems to happen, now, once every month or so. Usually, it's because the kitties are doing something or my nose is congested, etc. This time, I don't even know what was causing it. Kitties were sleeping and while my nose was congested, it wasn't what woke me up. I decided to just get up and, luckily, shimdic was still up. Thank you, PST time zone and your two-hours-behind- me-ness. I was planning on just crafting in Aion, but when I saw he was online, decided to see if he was actually around. So we played Aion for about an hour and a half. It was fun, we got about half a level and finished some quests. Then, I decided to stop by Vidlak's, a local "downtown coffee shop" type place and had breakfast. It's important to make the most of your early mornings; if you're going to be up, tired and you have a long day ahead of you, you might as well try and make the most of it.

My brother texted me on Friday. He's currently in Hawaii, with plans to deploy to Afghanistan in the middle of November. Apparently, he was given the ability to take leave and come home (again) on October 31st, coming back to Hawaii on the 13th to deploy on the 17th. So, Friday, I spent a good portion of time trying to find cheap tickets because that was the only way he could come home. Managed to find some and so I'll be able to see Chris again before he's shipped off to Afghanistan. Which is really cool and I'm looking forward to seeing him, but it's going to be a rough, emotional rollercoaster all over again. Just when I thought I was over it, it comes hurtling back. Small price to pay, though, to see him again.

Thursday is Kelly Clarkson.

Steam's free play weekend

2009-10-23T13:18:14Z

Starting last night and lasting until Sunday, Steam is doing another of their "free play weekends," this time offering Killing Floor. I'd been watching Killing Floor but without a demo and without knowing just how well-designed it was, I kept passing on it, hoping for a price cut or something that would entice me. So, when this free weekend started, a couple of friends and I jumped on the action last night for a couple play throughs. I think the best way to describe Killing Floor (which started as a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 and is now a fully released product) would be to say that it's the result if Left 4 Dead's gameplay, House of the Dead's mutants and Counter Strike's equipment upgrades/shopping got together and, somehow, had a baby.

Mostly, KF is like Left 4 Dead's survival mode. Each map has waves of enemies (four in the maps I've played), which each wave having a certain number of zombies (for lack of a better word) that is indicated with countdown tally in the right hand corner. There's also a red arrow on the left side of the screen that tells you where the shopkeeper will spawn. At the beginning of a map, everyone has access to the same equipment: combat knife, pistol, some grenades, a health syringe and a welder. After you've completed a wave, the shopkeeper opens shop, you have to get to her and then you have few precious seconds to purchase ammo and buy new weapons and armor before the next wave begins. That's the basic premise behind it; kill zombies, get money, stay alive, buy weapons/armor from the shopkeeper. Rinse and repeat.

Except that there are more wrinkles to it. Killing Floor has classes, of sorts, in the form of six perks. Perks include commandos, which give bonuses to automatic weapons, faster reload times, detection of cloaked enemies and a discount on purchasing automatic weapons. The Medic perk grants bonuses to healing teammates, reduced cost on purchasing a Medic Gun, reduced cooldown on using a syringe, etc. Each class/perk offers bonuses which you work towards. So, for example, to get to a specific rank in the Medic perk, you have to heal a certain amount of damage or, for the firebug perk, you have to do a certain amount of damage with your flamethrower. Leveling up perks grants better bonuses. What's nice is that you level up all perks, regardless of the one you have equipped. So you can be working on a multitude of perks, even though you're only getting the benefit from one. In this way, you feel like you have something you're working towards.

I really like the perk system in the game. It helps with teamwork (you can have six people playing at one time) and it gives you something you're working towards. That's one thing I feel is lacking from the Left 4 Dead series. There's really nothing you're working towards, outside of personal achievements that don't really give you much of anything (not even bragging rights for those so inclined since I don't believe anyone else can see them). So I feel like I'm accomplishing something in Killing Floor, other than just having a good time. I also really like the welding feature. In Left 4 Dead, your only defense against the undead is closing doors. You can't move furniture, barricade areas or do anything that I would do if faced with a zombie apocalypse.

In Killing Floor, you have a welder and you can weld pretty much any door shut. What it basically does is give health to a door in the form of a percentage. As the 'specimens' (I looked it up and that's what they are called, apparently) attack the door, you can keep welding it, effectively "healing" it. In this way you have some sort of control over which way the enemies are coming in. I mentioned House of the Dead and that's because these specimens look like HoD rejects. They have swords or chainsaws for hands, some can shoot rockets. Others are more like Left 4 Dead special infected, with one that shoots screen-covering
goo and another that has a personal AoE scream.

Killing Floor is a little rough around the edge. It's definitely not as polished as a Valve game and it can sometimes be clunky. But it's also not a full-priced game, it's developed by and indie company and it offers enough fun zombie-smashing to be worth $20. If you're even remotely interested, give the free weekend a chance.

DJ Hero and Dexter

2009-10-21T13:20:50Z

Season 4 of Dexter has been "okay." There have been some great moments, but a lot of the time I just felt like it wasn't as good as the previous season. Season 3 is the best Dexter's had to offer, in my opinion, and overall Season 4 just hasn't been delivering the goods...until episode four. I watched it last night and it completely stunned me. I knew at some point one of the things was going to happen, but the other...it was a bit shocking. I'm being purposefully vague because I know a couple
people aren't to Season 4 yet. But I was really surprised. Hopefully it gives a much needed jolt of energy to a series that has been kind of complacent this season.

I wish PC gamers were as lucky as console gamers. Borderlands hit the PS3 and Xbox 360 yesterday, but it isn't coming to the PC until next week. Seeing as how the majority of my gaming posse plays on the PC, I went with that. Also helps that I got the game for $34. Definitely looking forward to it.

I received the DJ Hero demo from Amazon Vine yesterday. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm going to review this game. Vine is a reviewing program which I absolutely adore, but sometimes the people they partner with are stupid. Activision sent a demo unit of DJ Hero and I scooped it up without knowing that it was in fact a demo and not the full game. Apparently, I'm supposed to review a behemoth of a game that has around 100 songs based on...a demo of 4 songs. That'd be like reviewing a book after reading the first chapter, a music CD off of one song, a movie after watching the trailer. So I'm stuck with trying to figure out how to not bite the hand that feeds me, but at the same time being honest and open about the game-demo-being-passed-off-as-a-full-review. What sucks is that if I post a review that mentions the little I've played of it, I'm going to get negative comments and unhelpful votes aplenty, I'm sure.

I did play it a bit last night. Now I'm a decent Rock Band/music game player. I can't make it all the way through expert, but I can usually hold my own for some of the songs. DJ Hero is hard. I started out on medium, thinking that would be easy enough and I struggled. Now it doesn't seem that there's a way to fail a song, because I know I would have failed on Medium if there were. I don't see an indicator like the rock meter or anything that shows how bad I'm doing. I wasn't booed off, either. But I got two stars, consistently. Once or twice I hit three stars...once I hit four.

I'm sure you've seen the turntable. It's pretty big and heavy when you get it. On the right hand side, there's the rotatable turntable with the three buttons. To play, much like in any other rhythm game, you hit the corresponding button when it shows up on the screen. The difference comes in when the notes continue with little up and down arrows. Much like strumming up and down on the guitar, these indicate flicking the record back and forth like you're scratching it, to make the songs skip, scratch or repeat. Meanwhile, on the left hand side, there's a slider, a button and an effects dial. The button is to engage "Euphoria," DJ Hero's response to Star Power. The dial is basically to change the sounds of the effects. The slider is the one you'll use the most, since it determines the crossfading of the songs.

Each song is actually a mix of two different songs, smashed together by a specific DJ for the game. At certain points in the songs, you'll have to switch the slider to the right, left or in the center to indicate which song you want to bleed through. A good picture of the sample gameplay is here, where the green and blue lines indicate which direction to push the crossfader. This adds a big layer of complexity to the game because not only do you have to worry about hitting the notes and scratching, but you have to also pay attention to the green and blue lines to switch the crossfader at the right moments. You can't just watch one, either. For example, if the green line goes to the left and then goes back to the center, if you're not paying attention to the blue line as well, you might miss the fact that the crossfader should be going all the way to the right. It continues between the two sometimes. After playing through the set the first time on medium, I felt flustered because I was slamming the slider constantly, screwing up and getting confused as to what side the slider should have been on. The step up from easy to medium is more of a jump than in Rock Band/Guitar Hero. On easy, you don't have to worry about the crossfader and you just hit notes and scratch.

Adding another wrinkle to the mix is the rewind function. You have to build up to the rewind ability and then you can trigger it to apparently rewind the song to fix errors. Great in concept but it sucks in execution. Unless I'm doing things incorrectly, you have to spin the record to trigger it...which means you have a spinning record that you have to somehow stop and get your fingers back on the correct keys. My coordination apparently sucks because I end up screwing up for a few notes while I get back into the groove of things...which pretty much cancels out the use of it.

That's pretty much all I can say about the game, though. It's interesting and hectic; it definitely offers a different game experience than Guitar Hero/Rock Band...but I'm not sold on it.

The Millennium Trilogy

2009-10-19T18:03:37Z

At lunch I just finished reading The Girl Who Played with Fire and man was it a great read. It's a sequel to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoos by Stieg Larsson. Larsson was a Swedish author who, for fun, wrote three novels and started working on more. Eventually he decided to look into publishing them and unfortunately he passed away before the first book was even published. Getting past the absolute sadness of a life cut short, the literary world has lost a truly awesome author. The Girl Who Played with Fire is probably one of the best mysteries I've read, pulling in a noir feel with exceptional pacing and some truly harrowing sequences. It eclipses the first book in virtually every way. Stronger characters and narrative, exhausting pacing, intricately plotted, more immediate storytelling. This is truly an exceptional mystery. If you're looking for a great mystery, check out the first book. It's quite excellent.

I can't wait for the finale, The Girl who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. It comes out in 2010 here in the states...but it's available at the UK Amazon right now...I might have to order it...

A Tale of Two Movies...

2009-10-19T13:44:00Z

In an amusing coincidence, two really good horror movies were filmed in 2007, shelved and were finally released this year. This is one thing that drives me crazy about production houses. They will buy a movie (or finance it), film it and have it completely finished...and then sit on it. They don't release it directly to DVD or do anything. They sit on it; shelve it away for who knows what reasons. I guess some sense was knocked into these two different production companies (Warner Bros and
Paramount/DreamWorks) because both Trick 'r Treat and Paranormal Activity finally are out for everyone to see.

Trick 'r Treat has an interesting history. It was written and directed by Michael Dougherty, who isn't exactly a familiar name to most people but I bet you everyone on my friendlist has seen his movies. He wrote the screenplays to arguably the best X-Men movie, X2. He also wrote Superman Returns. In 1996, he did a short film entitled Season's Greetings, which eventually turned into Trick 'r Treat. Trick 'r Treat is a perfect Halloween movie. It's an anthology film in the same vein as Creepshow, but it probably has more in common with movies like Go in which the stories intercross, have the same characters and affect each other but each story could be told on its own. It has four stories, each one taking a cue from Halloween traditions like wearing a costume to blend in, checking your candy, giving treats to trick or treaters, not blowing out the candle in a jack-o'-lantern, etc. One story is
about a serial killer, another is about a group of kids uncovering a local urban legend, another is a very smart and fun take on the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale and the last one is about a cantankerous old man who is haunted by a strange kid. Each story shares some characters, they are take place in the same town on Halloween night.

The story flits between them all, interjecting some of each in every single story. The timeline changes and by the end of the movie, we're back to where we
started. It's expertly filmed and just a fun, great film to watch. Seeing it a second time helped cement the storylines and I picked up on some things I missed. I wouldn't say Trick 'r Treat is necessarily scary. It has some gore, some bad language, some nudity and one or two suspenseful moments, but it's more of a playful homage to Halloween, filled with winks and nods and some surreal humor. I really enjoyed it.

Paranormal Activity, on the other hand, was also filmed around the same time and shelved. It's premiered at a variety of horror fests and its lineage has grown since then to an almost hyperbolic level of hype. It's, frankly, been hyped way too much. And Paramount is smirking to themselves with their marketing technique: make fans "demand it" before they let it go. They opened it up very limitedly at a variety of
college towns, only at midnight showings. Once those showings started selling out and word of mouth grew, they slowly opened it, using a site that made you demand it. I even fell into this trap, thinking it was a third party site that was helping to bring a variety of movies, not just Paranormal Activity, to areas that wouldn't normally see these types of films. And so when it was finally released to the masses, it had a huge engine built on hype to help it along. I'm really happy for the
filmmaker, though. Here's a film that he made in one week, filmed at his house for about $11,000. It has basically four actors, minimal sets and basically a stationary camera that films the actors when they sleep. And this weekend alone it made $20 million. That's very cool.

Paranormal Activity is like Blair Witch, in that it's based on "found footage" and played for real, even though, unlike the events leading up to Blair Witch, it's not cheap trickery to make you think you're watching a real video about real people. This film is about a woman who has been haunted all of her life. She recently moves in with her boyfriend who thinks the haunting is fun and decides to start filming
it. He decides to set up a video camera in their room to watch them sleep and capture anything zany that happens. And of course it works, more so than either of them expect or want. What follows is a video catalog of their daytime trials to understand what's going on and resulting anger and their nighttime woes, some of which occur when they sleep some of which after they wake up at three in morning. Like Blair Witch, the horror is understated and there will be people who just
shrug. Unlike Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity can be very scary at times. Never has so little caused so much fear because, honestly, for a good portion of the movie nothing truly frightening really happens. And yet, there's enough so that, in my theatre, whenever the night came with the "Night 16" title cards, people started slouching in their seats, awaiting whatever next horror would be coming. The ending is awesome and the best part of the film. There are also some ingenious camera
tricks and one in particular that, after I got over the shock of seeing it, made me wonder how they did it.

It's a really well done film, especially considering the budget limitations. I'd recommend going to see it, but I'd also recommend you see it in a filled theatre, with fans who want to have a good time.

Metroidvania...

2009-10-15T13:20:13Z

I am going to have to start locking my new cat, Zoe, up in the second bedroom at night. I can't take it anymore. She is the most rambunctious cat at three and four in the morning. She takes off down the halls, careening off of furniture (and me) and makes a HUGE racket. To make matters worse, Shaido feeds off of her energy and she goes crazy, as well. Shaido's never misbehaved this much, but she is driving me bonkers. The guy below me has no sense of adventure when it comes to even the tiniest noises and I don't want to have a problem. But more importantly it's seriously starting to affect my sleeping habits. I've been up since 4 AM and I'm dead tired right now. So for the time being, I think I'm going to have to separate them. For my sanity.

I've been on a "Metroidvania" kick ever since I tore through Shadow Complex. It hit me that you don't really see many of those types of games anymore and, when you do, they are mostly on handhelds. I really hope that Shadow Complex's success will show developers that you can release those types of games on consoles and not only on the DS and PSP. In the meantime, I downloaded Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for my PSP Go. I love that game. Even today, it doesn't feel dated. The graphics aren't as crisp or pixel-filled, of course, but the design and the art style is still stellar...the only negative (and it was a negative when it was released as well) is the voice acting. Oh man, it's "All your base are belong to us" bad. But I've been playing it and loving it all over again. The nice thing is that it's been almost a decade since I've played it so I don't remember much. I remember certain bosses or locations, but that's about it. I never did get to the "inverted castle" when I played so that's my goal this time.

I also bought Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia when Amazon had it for a Lightning Deal. Then yesterday I found two cheap used copies of the previous two DS Castlevania games (it's impossible to find a decently priced new one) so I'll have those coming. That should satisfy this need. I still have the Metroid Prime trilogy to tear through at some point but until I'm finished with Uncharted 2 and Brutal Legend, all other console games are going to have to wait.

Speaking of handheld games, I'm really looking forward to Half Minute Hero, a new game for the PSP. It's out on UMD and coming to the PSN next week. It looks like a hilarious send up of 8 bit games, playable 30 seconds at a time!

Me likey more

2009-10-14T15:23:04Z

Brutal Legend is not what I thought it was going to be. Oh sure, it's funny, has a good story, tons of witty humor and is has a perfect voice cast. That I knew and none of it has changed since I played the demo. But the gameplay...it's not what I was expecting. If you've played the demo, you think you know what the game will be like...and you'd probably be wrong. I've played for a couple hours now and I have to say that slowly everything that was setup in the beginning of the game is disappearing. One of the first missions is to free some head bangers who have been forced to work in mines, using only their heads to crack rock. Here is where the fact that the game is actually an RTS comes into being. You command these troops by playing a solo and then you're given RTS-lite controls (push up to make them attack, left to have them follow you, etc.) to have them fight for you. It's kind of like Overlord except much, much more simplified (at least right now).

Since this first mission, only one mission has been Riggs by himself (and that was an awesomely-designed creepy spider lair). The others have used a small group of characters in RTS-fashion. From what I hear, that will only increase as the game goes along. Which is not hinted at in the demo. I'd heard pre-release discussing the RTS aspects, but I didn't know that would be almost the entire point of the game. I thought I was getting into a kind of Legend of Zelda-esqe gameplay, judging from the demo. And instead I'm getting a console RTS...but it's still quite a funny game and I'm definitely glad I bought it. Must support Schafer!

That said...my solo gaming time is being completely and utterly devoted to Uncharted 2. Here's a game that in almost every single way has eclipsed the first one. It's funnier, better voiced, better acted, better designed, more cinematic, more exciting, more intense more...MORE! Me likey more. I'll have something a bit more...intelligent (?) and not random fanboyish later. Right now, I'm just a drooling mess, looking at the clock and wanting to play it more...

albedo777 @ 2009-10-11T14:29:00

2009-10-11T19:33:35Z

Friday night we went to see Rob Thomas in concert. It was an outdoor concert. In October. An outdoor concert in Iowa in October. Who else sees a problem with this? It was cold. My phone told me it was 38 degrees at one point, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was cooler where we were. That aside, it was a pretty awesome concert. Carolina Liar opened first and they were okay. Then it was One Republic and I have to admit I was pretty impressed with them. They were really polished, sounded great and did a good job of getting the crowd into it. And, of course, I do like Rob Thomas and his concert was cool.

Okay, I'm a nerd. Arguably the best part of the night was when Rob Thomas tweeted me. Very cool.

Tomorrow night is Kings of Leon. I'm really looking forward to hearing them. Tomorrow should also be the ship date for Uncharted 2 and Brutal Legend. I hope they actually do ship tomorrow...