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F.E.A.R. Director’s Edition
Clone troops like this one make F.E.A.R. a game worth playing. Behaviors like this one are unscripted, and will most likely catch you off guard. These guys are serious soldiers.The weekend before last I beat F.E.A.R. and it was one hell of a game. It’s one of those games that exceeds expectations in enough ways that it’s easy to understand why so many gaming journalists were slavering over it and hailing it as the best thing since sliced Half-Life (or something). I agree that it’s setting some new standards. However, when it strayed from its strengths, its weaknesses were glaring. Fortunately, those weaknesses were more scenic and secondary as you progressed through the kinetic audio visual blast of the game’s core.
Spoiler Warning: While I don’t reveal any significant plot points you won’t already know, I will be discussing certain elements of the game that might give away some of the experience.
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Happy Halloween!
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LOST (so good, it gets all caps)
At the insistence of Rebecca and Brian, Alisa and I have been watching the first season of ABC’s Lost on DVD.
Wow. I had no idea how great it was.
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Sherlock Holm— Wait, Sherlock?
Has anybody else noticed what a weird first name ’Sherlock’ is? I mean, what the hell? I can’t imagine what his parents’ names were.
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And Unto Them Was Given a Carafe.
From the Beyond was delivered unto them a recepticle for the collection and dissemination of the holy nectar, the fruit of the holy Brewing. Long had they gone without the means to fill themselves with the holy Energies, the warmth of the spirit of the highest of concoctions.
Unto them was given a Carafe. And it was good. And from it flowed Life.
Et a mihi bibo affero.
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Who Needs Wealthy Relatives In Poor Health…
…when you’ve got friends like these?
Thank you, Jon Sung, for being straight-up awesome at just the right time. This man right here hooked us up with Season 1, out of the goodness of his heart. How great is that?
OK, that’s all for now. Must get to watching DVDs.
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Team America: World Police
This movie confirms that heavy-handed satire built on a foundation of predictable humor and cursing is still not something I find entertaining. Also, that puppets are a hit-or-miss humor tactic. There were a few genuinely funny, witty moments, because Matt Stone and Trey Parker are funny, witty guys, but this movie felt shallow to me. Their other work has a depth I just didn’t see here. I was bored by it.
Also, I’m not really part of their core audience: people who aren’t old enough to see the movie in the theatre. I have a feeling that the movie did exactly what they wanted it to, but parody should, in some way, offer more than the parodied form (Jerry Bruckheimer movies). Often, Team America: World Police was just miming in irony.
The puppeteering and set work was pretty cool, though.
MPAA Review: Graphic crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong language – all involving puppets.
Ad Exec Review: Putting the “F” back in Freedom; Freedom hangs by a thread.
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Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon
I finally finished Cryptonomicon a few weeks ago and I really, really enjoyed it. However, it’s probably not for everyone, even though it’s one of Those Books You Have to Read for certain groups.Stephenson, in this novel at least, has a very particular style, which contributes to the book’s brick-like proportions (as I wrote about previously). I found it fascinating and at times hilarious, some may find it tedious or pointless. There are about three or four main narrative threads in Cryptonomicon, but they occupy two chronological streams: the nascent days of the web as a consumer/public tool and both theatres of World War II. There are obvious connections that Stephenson gives us early on: two characters are related (grandson and grandfather), data encryption’s roots in cryptography, and mathematics. However, these connections seem more coincidental and conceptual that narrative or structural. Stephenson spins these amazing but fairly straightforward plots into over 1,000 pages in two ways: by narrating the scenes from the mental perspective of the character, who often has only a small idea of what’s happening to them, and by delving into very thorough explanatory tangents. You’ll either revel in this or be driven crazy by it. I reveled in it.
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Call of Duty 2 Pre-release Demo
Last week, Inifinity Ward posted a pre-release demo of Call of Duty 2 on their site, which was a surprise to me since there seemed to be no preceding announcements. This was probably motivated by the recent release of the Brothers in Arms: Earned in Blood demo, and the release of Valve’s Day of Defeat: Source and is more of an effort to maintain their presence in the gaming media and gamers’ heads, particularly since they’re investing very substantial efforts in a genre (WWII games) that many people are growing weary of…or so they say.
Without a doubt, I’ll be buying CoD 2. The graphics are sharp, the gameplay is solid, the enemies are compellingly scripted (in terms of A.I.) and, as always, Infinity Ward has created what looks like the next step in WWII games, and perhaps more. However, the demo didn’t wow me in the ways I thought it would, even though I’m still replaying it after a dozen times through.
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Serenity
The Firefly-class transport ship named Serenity, home of much goodness, action, and hilarity.Go and watch Firefly right now. Go to Netflix or wherever and rent all of the DVDs of the show (there’s only one season). If you haven’t done this already, you’re living a seriously diminished life. Once you do that and see how frickin’ great Firefly is, you’ll be able to understand just how mind-rendingly kick-ass the movie Serenity is.
It is that good. Imagine mainlining the Firefly series, having all of the kick-ass cool shit and great lines and laugh-out-loud, yell-with-glee scenes injected into your cerebellum like a jack into the Matrix.
Oh, it’s definitely that good.
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