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Tin Man has played out now. At least Sci-Fi channel showed one (1) episode per night. If I had to wait three (3) weeks, I'd have been pissed. For the most part I liked it. Since I'm being a critic now I guess I'm supposed to find something wrong, so I'll just say it could have been 2 episodes since some things felt like padding to flesh things out. With that said there is a lot to like. The characters tend to run through cliched dialog at times but then a perfect gem is uttered and it renews my faith in the series. I'll be buying this on DVD, if for no other reason than to see it in better definition than 480i. Having been a fan of Doctor Who I should be used to great acting with sometimes horrible special effects, but with so much good actually going on in the story, the bad effects stand out even worse. Maybe if they had another million dollars or so.
My last blog I was listing differences and mistakenly thought the Wicked Witch O' The West was Azkadellia but it turns out... SPOILER ALERT ...I was sort of right. WWOTW's spirit was sealed in a cave and through some accidents when DG and Az were kids she possesed Az. So I was right and wrong and the same time, and Toto finally showed up. There were enough interesting ideas they could have just done their own thing and not needed to use the Wizard Of OZ franchise. The weakest of the three sadly is the last episode and I felt the writers were wimping out when using magic meant holding hands while the FX guys took care of the rest. I liked everything but the ending. Too abrupt and it felt forced. SPOILER END.
I finished reading Frankenstein which is an absorbing novel, since it was written around 1816-1817. This isn't for everyone since it is mostly written in first person (Victor Frankenstein of course) Victorian. So, I'll save everyone the trouble and briefly explain the novel. The title is for Victor (not a Doctor but a college student) Frankentein and his insanity and becoming God and succeeding, but not being prepared for the consequences. The monster, that has no name, is more of a super-human intelligent zombie. Several chapters are dedicated to him and his mis-adventures. SPOILER ALERT AGAIN: A ship is moving through the frozen water of the arctic when the ship encounters a mis-shapen humanoid riding on a dog sled heading farther north. Then another sled is found chasing after the first with Victor Frankenstein, who is the worse for wear and needs help. Once brought aboard he tells the ship's master his life story leading up to this moment. Victor was born to a rich family in Geneva, took an interest in science and alchemy, betrothed at a young age to his adopted cousin, and accepted to college in another country. At college he is taught that he wasted time learning alchemy but he still believes in the dreams of immortality promised by the ancient "masters" and applies his new understanding of the sciences to "making" a new life. Without a lot of explanation it works. Victor becomes terrified of his creation and goes to bed while the "monster" runs out and hides in the woods. From this point on Victor is mentally unhinged and becomes bed ridden with a fever every time he's reminded of the "monster." It takes a couple years to recover and he heads back home to Geneva, when he sees the "monster" in the outskirts of town. Victor arrives home to find his youngest bro murdered and his adopted younger sister to blame. Vic is sure the "monster" did it to punish VF (he is quite self absorbed in the book) for creating him. Afraid the townsfolk will think him insane he says nothing about the "monster" and they law hangs the girl.
Filled with grief, Victor heads out of town to climb a mountain and commune with nature when he comes face to face with his creation. Vic goes nuts and threatens to kill it but the "monster" reminds him he's an eight-foot tall killing machine. Then the "monster," trying to reconcile with his creator/father, invites him to a secluded cabin to hear his story, and then they can kill each other. VF agrees. the "monster" ran out of Vic's lab and hid in the woods, attacked by villagers, hid under an inhabited cottage, learned to read and speak, scared more people, ran off to other woods, saved a little girl, pissed of more villagers, found "the creator's" village, killed VF's younger brother and framed a little girl. The "monster" began as a good entity but everyone treated him like crap so he decides to take his revenge on Victor, the one who refuses to even name his creation. The "monster" is lonely because nothing else is like him and requests Victor to make him a bride and then they will both disappear from the world of man (in South America). Vic agrees and heads to Scotland, with his best friend, to make another. He comes to his senses and refuses after half constructing a new one. The "monster" becomes enraged and kills Vic's companion and frames him for the murder. VF spends the next year ill and in prison until his father shows up and takes him back to Geneva. The "monster" promises to be there for Vic on their wedding day.
Vic goes home and marries his fiancee, the adopted cousin Elizabeth, and stays awake all night waiting to be killed. But the "monster" instead kills his new wife. His father becomes ill and gives up the will to live and VF finally decides to hunt the "monster" like a Terminator. The "monster" then makes a game out of it by staying just ahead of Vic on his way to the Arctic, and leaving clues and food behind, just enough to keep VF alive. This is when Victor ends up on the ship in the arctic. After telling the tale, he becomes ill and never rises. The "monster" quietly boards the ship to murder VF but finds he already past in his bed. It then decides its reason for living is gone and it will never be accepted jumps out a window into the icy water and dies. THE END. Now I saved you $4.95 and 198 pages of reading. Next up I'm reading Journey To The Center Of The Earth.
That angry British guy who hates video games did his review of Assassin's Creed. Oddly he likes it and so do the guys at Penny Arcade. Much is being made over the low score game reviews. I think this game is good for all the reasons "real" people and not reviewers play games. I also watched the trailer for Twisted Metal on PS2. This begs the question, why the F are games still being made for this system. I like the PS2 like everyone else but I've moved on. This game just looks embarrassing and reminds me why I play the next gen games. Maybe Sony and all the other developers should leave the PS2 be and work on making a good library for the PS3. On the handheld market I was this video review of Contra 4 for DS. All the classic Arcade, 8bit, and 16bit love is there without the 3D failures of the PlayStation versions. I would buy this game just for the extras but there is all sorts of gameplay too. I wonder if the 30-man "code" is still there. There is also some new thing in Japan for the DS that reads a memory card you put in a special cartridge, and lets you watch downloadable anime. Or something like that. See you next broadcast.
The Chokepoint. Almost every game I've played has one. It can be at the beginning, like Driver, or at the end, like Metroid Prime. Heck, Viewtiful Joe is one long chokepoint. If a game lacks one I feel cheated. The game was too easy. But when I encounter one, I curse the game's creator to the 12 trials of Hercules (or at least great bodily harm). How dare he/she put me through this crap, I'm just trying to have fun here. The severity of the chokepoint is directly proportional to the amount yelling I do. I try to control myself, but somehow I firmly believe that my anger, my brief journey to the Dark Side, gives me strength to persevere. That, and what prize is on the other side. For, truly, the chokepoint is an obstacle to a greater goal; getting the next super-weapon, saving another princess, collecting a star/coin/triforce/bunny, finishing the game. And by chokepoint (CP), I mean an area or puzzle that just defies difficulty. Suddenly every Nazi on the planet knows you're hiding in that forest and shoot every square pixel of your body, exposed or not. I've seen some puzzles that require a Nobel Prize in physics, not to mention a new kind of calculus, to solve. I then ask myself, when I've calmed down with a beer, is this game worth it? I may blow the next hour trying desperately to memorize every move (ie Dragon's Lair) for a better suit of armor or a guardian fairy. Most of the time you have to beat the CP to continue, so if the game has been fun, most likely I'll continue, but if not, I'll loose interest immediately. Thanks to Achievements and Gamescore, if I get through a CP I'll get more points.
I am not unique in this, and I'm also a hypocrite. I need CPs but I hate them, because I feel cheated without them. They are like the green veggies of video gaming. However, a game needs to balance this. If passing through a CP gets me more of the same, I'm just grinding my enjoyment to a bloody, hatefilled, pulp. Another thing to consider is if there is a save point nearby or did you have to play a marathon before the CP, therefore negating all sorts of play time if you fail. This probably goes for everyone who plays, is this game worth the crap I'm about to go through. Half-Life 2 is definately that game, as are Halo, Call Of Duty, Medal Of Honor (usually) and Gears Of War. Where I have had trouble is with Fighting Games. Once you face the "Boss" in Dead Or Alive I can say I completed it. But there are all sorts of Achievements that require me to defeat the "Boss" with everyone multiple times. That's a CP I have to face 30 times. Not worth it. Fighting games are a different style of play, and I tend to prefer to play against real people, anyway. Chokepoints, you can't live with them, but you can usually shoot the hell out of everything in sight and move on to the next one. I hate Chokepoints. Apparently I'm a virtual masochist.
Digging around on the Internetwebs today I came across some interesting tidbits. Since I've been analyzing the issues of the PS3, I was interested to read about the console sales figures in September. Everyone else is selling almost 4 to 5 times as many units as the PS3 is able to sell. The Nintendo DS totally outsold PS3, not to mention PS2 and the PSP.
I miss Judgment Day on G4TV, and Tommy Tallarico's critical wit as he steered us clear of trivial nonsense and showed us a truer path to gaming goodness. He's no longer on TV but I found the next best thing. Yahtzee/Zero Punctuation game reviews by web video at this site, where he reviews MOH Airborne. He seems to hate everything, and half the time I can't really argue with him. Bloody brilliant.
Halo 3 and I are breaking up for a while, have gained everything I can out of her multiplayer experience. I've gone about as far as I can with her, and I see no reason to waste more time trying to gain rank and not Gamescore. I'm a Gamescore Whore after all and I can't be tied down to one game for too long. Wow, that got weird for a second. Anyway, someone else began to have the similar problems with online play and wrote this article on suicide bombers in Halo. I have a life, too, really.
The SR-71 Blackbird is the proof of concept that engineers are the coolest geeks on the planet, and not just because my grandpa used to work with them. The reason this aircraft's top speed is classified is that it was never found. Everytime the Russians flew something faster, we just stepped on the peddle a little harder. The design was ahead of its time and now its been retired. So, once again the name has surfaced, this time controlled by Voodoo. The Voodoo Blackbird is quite possibly the most advanced gaming computer built to date. And it plays the latest Graphic-Crunching, Physics-Bending, Frame-Frate hogging game, Crysis, with ease. And, of course, being the gamer I am, I want Crysis, but I basically have to buy a $5,500 Voodoo Blackbird console for a $50 game. Or wait five years and home computers will be just as good, with Windows Vista XP 2K10 Pro or some such and 5 TB RAID harddrives to match 60 GB of MagnoNeuroRAM. If you pre-order Crysis before next week, at a Gamestop, you can get a nifty toy tank thing that reminds me of the APC from Aliens. See you next broadcast.
While playing the world's first FPS (First Person Shooter to you noobs)/Puzzle/Comedy I realized the cake was a lie. Maybe it was the hand writing scribbled on the wall, a secret communication from an unbalanced employee at Aperture Science Institute, or the passive/aggressive kindly, malevolent female voice (think a cross between Cher and Steven Hawking) of the AI directing me through each room. Image Hal 9000 guiding you through Tetris while trying to replace Discovery's not-so broken antennae, acutely aware that Frank Poole is probably dead and he's not getting any cake either.
I am of course talking about the game Portal, one of five (5) games included with The Orange Box. A shining star too short to be by itself (between 2 to 3 hours), but fits perfectly next to big brother Half-Life 2 (and it's sequels). I will not spoil anything (except the cake rumor) but the end "boss fight" is actually fun and filled with much malevolent humor. Once done, the end credit theme is the best end theme I can think of, ever, and it is done with ASCII art (circa 1980). I also completed Half-Life 2 and its sequel, "Episode 1." Now on to Episode 2 and more achievements.
MicroSoft has general guidelines about each retail game that comes out for Xbox 360, which goes something like this: (see http://xbox360achievements.org/index.php for more information) there should be no more than fifty (50) achievements per title, and developers must have 1,000 unlockable points for their Gamerscore (GS). If there are less than 1,000 points, said developers must make a download from XBL free making up the difference. Early on in this wasn't the case with release titles, but the rule holds strong now. The exception to the rule is The Orange Box, which is five games in one, so MicroSoft let Valve have 99 Achievements totaling 1,000 points. I've unlocked 47 Achievements and still have less than 400 points. Never have so many achievements been unlocked by so much play for so few points. (sorry Mr. Churchill). I was still able to cross the 12,000 GS threshold this weekend which makes me happy enough for cake.
I just saw a commercial for Guitar Hero III, which still seems like coordinated air-guitar with a prop, where the "air-guitarist" punk teen played so well that Slash (from G&R, duh) unzips the skin of said teen from inside out and keeps playing guitar. It was at once cool that Slash promotes the game (which probably doesn't need him) and sad that he needs the extra money, apparently. I guess he's in the game, but so is Eddie Vedder and he looks like a Super-Deformed Muppet, in previews I've seen, and he ain't doin' commercials. I've probably completely missed the point here so I'll just need to play it, since my buddy EmpTas (you know who you are) loves the second one.
This weekend I added Ace Combat 6 and Lost Planet, an older title, to my collection. It's a good thing I don't officially review games for anyone right now 'cause I'd be so far behind. I always get hung up on a title squeezing all the achievements I can out of it. And I want to play Front Mission for Nintendo DS (which I also bought), a Square Enix (formerly Square Soft, my favorite game developer) to see if it compares to Front Mission 3 for the PSX. Front Mission 3 was the first game in the Front Mission franchise to reach America from Japan. A turn-based giant robot tactical combat game, all battles take place on a grid with different elevations and you move your mecha around trying to out maneuver the "bad guys." A key moment in FM3 decides whose side your on, so you can play through and be either of the two (2) factions available. Very clever (and confusing because the second time through the "enemy" is now on your side) and included a fairly deep Internet simulation. You could go online in the game to an internal Internet Square Soft made and learn background details about the game, flesh out the history of the future, and hack different sites to gain special information and special parts for your mecha. I don't expect the DS version to be all that, but I'm looking forward to a little mech-on-mech action.
One of the science channels was showing a tornado special with "Storm Chasers" (those guys/gals rock), but there really wasn't anything during the show I didn't already learn from the movie Twister. A Michael Crichton (see http://www.crichton-official.com/) written/Spielberg produced action flick about a couple getting a divorce on the worst tornado day in Oklahoma. That's a lie, it's about a group of kick-ass "Storm Chasers" who hunt down every tornado in site and barely manage to survive each encounter. There's this love story thing but it's not important (of course it is, I'm being facetious). The main characters are all meteorology geeks that would do anything for their not so geek appearing leader, Bill "Game Over Man" Paxton. I must have seen this movie 20 or 30 times and this is the first time I noticed Dusty wears a Daredevil baseball cap, well before Ben Affleck tried to ruin the "double D". I probably can't totally blame Affleck, since I watched the director's cut and I liked it. Ben Affleck should just stick with Kevin Smith and leave it at that. This is a great movie showing how functional a gaggle of geeks doing their thing is. Each Storm Chaser is shown his own geeky obsession, including a brief Star Wars reference, but I think Dusty is more an adrenaline junky than anything. Of note is Captain Harriman of Enterprise-B plays Rabbit, the navigational geek, a role I enjoy on vacation.
I've never really been a fan of the collectible figure games like Mage Knight or even D&D, probably only because I don't know anyone who plays (okay, I own some Mage Knight). I did get into the Star Wars Starship game (I love Star Wars and all their little ships) and found the game decent, but figures take up way more space than card games or comic books. It's a pitiful complaint but I have to draw the line somewhere. Star Wars is a special case since I will collect almost anything Star Wars. Against my better judgment (what little I have) I bought a pack of the Pokemon and a pack of Halo figures. Pokemon looks f-ing confusing but Halo looks decent. I think I should develop a mix where Ash & Pikachu can face off against Master Chief and Grunties. "Cortana, I choose you." A Flood-infected Pikachu would make an awesome figure.
I've rattled on enough tonight. Nothing much on the Star Trek front except looking forward to "The Menagerie" in theaters, and the 2nd Star Trek manga is out. In high-school I used to wonder what Trek would look like if done by Japanese artists and I finally have my answer. Now lets see if they do an Anime version of Star Trek. I'll have to wait another decade or so. In the future I will start reviewing anime since I'm a huge Otaku (uhh, fanboy). Keep your wireless charged and see you next broadcast.
