Tales of the Bored

Τα 3+1 πράγματα που (ίσως, μπορεί) να μην ξέρατε για την 28η Οκτωβρίου!

2010-10-28T18:03:00.003+03:00

Από μικρός είχα μια απορία για αυτή την ημέρα. Πάντα αναφέρουμε ότι ο Μεταξάς με τόσο θάρρος είπε το “Όχι” στους Ιταλούς, αλλά σχεδόν ποτέ δεν αναφέρουμε ότι ο φίλτατος κύριος ήταν και δικτάτορας. Δεν κάνω πολιτική τοποθέτηση, απλά πάντα με παραξένευε αυτό.

Και αυτόν George τον λένε

Εν πάσει περιπτώση, δε θα έπρεπε να σας εκπλήξει το γεγονός ότι και σε αυτή την ημερομηνία συνέβησαν κάποια ενδιαφέροντα γεγονότα στο παρελθόν, τα οποία ίσως και να συνδέονται με την ημέρα του “Όχι”.

Με χρονολογική σειρά, γιατί έχω και λίγο OCD:

1704: Πεθαίνει ο John Locke

Όχι, όχι εκείνος ο John Locke. Εκείνος ήταν ο τύπος που δεν μπορούσε να περπάτησει αλλά μετά μπορούσε και μετά πέθανε και μετά αναστήθηκε αλλά ίσως και όχι και μετά σίγουρα όχι και πιο μετά ήταν στον άλλο κόσμο αλλά ακόμα χρειαζόταν αναπηρικό καροτσάκι.

Επίσης κάποιος άλλος πήρε τη μορφή του και...ΑΑΑΑΑΑΑΑ

Τουναντίον(!), εδώ μιλάμε για τον φιλόσοφο John Locke, ο οποίος πίστευε πως η ανθρώπινη φύση "χαρακτηρίζεται από τη λογική και την ανεκτικότητα". Αρκετά περίεργο, δεδομένης της εποχής στην οποία έζησε, μια επόχη που ανάγκασε τον Thomas Hobbes να χαρακτηρήσει την ανθρώπινη ζωή ως “Solitary, Poore, Nasty, Brutish and Short”. Αν δεν ξέρετε τι ακριβώς σημαίνουν όλα αυτά, καλύτερα. Τα αντικαταθλιπτικά κοστίζουν.

Ανεξαρτήτως του τι έλεγε ο Hobbes, αυτά που έλεγε ο Locke είναι σίγουρα αρκετά εκτός του κλίματος που έχει η ημέρα για τη χώρα μας. Οπότε αν έκανε πλάκα τότε το αστείο είναι κάπως κακόγουστο, κύριε Λοκ.

Οι κακοήθεις θα πουν ότι λέω ανοησίες. Εγώ θα πω το εξής απλό. Τι και αν πέθανε 200 χρόνια πιο πριν και δε μπορούσε να ξέρει τι θα γίνει στο μέλλον. Για αυτό την έχουμε τη χαρτομαντεία, φίλτατε!

Ίσως πάλι να λυπήθηκε τα λεφτά. Δεν τον αδικώ.

1918: Η Τσεχοσλοβακία ανακυρήσει την ανεξαρτησία της από την Αυστροουγγαρία

Αν είχα σπουδάσει Πολιτικές Επιστήμες,

Όχι, δεν έχω ιδέα τι σημαίνουν όλα αυτά

τότε είμαι σίγουρος ότι θα έβρισκα κάτι ενδιαφέρον να πω εδώ, μιας και η Αυστρο-Ουγγαρία ήταν μέρος του 1ου Ράιχ και είχε ενεργό ρόλο στον 1ο Παγκόσμιο, και το γεγονός αυτό έλαβε χώρα την ίδια ημερομηνία με την είσοδο της Ελλάδας στο 2ο Παγκόσμιο, ως εχθρό των κρατών που είχαν πάρει το μέρος της Αυστρο-Ουγγαρίας στο prequel του. Θα μπορούσε κανείς να ονομάσει το συμβάν αυτό και Κοσμική Ειρωνία.

Για δες, τελικά κατάφερα να πω κάτι και χωρίς να έχω σπουδές στο χώρο!

ΕΤΣΙ

1922: Ο Μουσολίνι οργανώνει την Πορεία προς τη Ρώμη και καταλαμβάνει την εξουσία στην Ιταλία

Εδώ είμαστε.

Στη λογοτεχνία, αυτό θα το λέγαμε foreshadowing...

Ε, κάτι τέτοιο είναι και αυτό το γεγονός. Βέβαια στη λογοτεχνία βοηθάει τον αναγνώστη να καταλάβει τι θα γίνει στις επόμενες σελίδες, ενώ στην πραγματικότητα όταν η γειτονική σου χώρα αποκτά δικτατορία θα έπρεπε λίιιιιγο να την ψιλιαστείς τη δουλεία, αλλά ‘νταξ’ τώρα να ‘ουμ’. Λεπτομέρειες.

Σε απλά ελληνικά, θα μπορούσαμε να χρησιμοποιήσουμε και την έκφραση “είδα το κακό να έρχεται”.

Αν βλέπετε ταινίες τρόμου, σίγουρα θα έχετε παρατηρήσει ότι ο δολοφόνος θα εμφανιστεί μόνο όταν οι πρωταγωνιστές θα είναι απασχολημένοι με κάτι άλλο, ή όταν κάποιος λέει “Ξανάρχομαι”.

Μπα

Βέβαια στην εν λόγω περίπτωση, του Μουσολίνι του πείρε σχεδόν δυο δεκαετίες για να επηρρεάσει τη χώρα μας. Οι δολοφόνοι στις ταινίες μάλλον θα είχαν βαρεθεί τόσο καιρό.

(Σε αυτό το σημείο νιώθω την ανάγκη να τονίσω ότι το foreshadowing δεν έχει να κάνει μόνο με αρνητικά γεγονότα. Απλά αυτά τα παραδείγματα είχαν πιο πολύ πλάκα!)

1955 και 1967: Γεννιούνται οι Bill Gates και John Romero αντίστοιχα

Τον ένα μάλλον τον έχετε ακουστά, τον άλλο μάλλον όχι και αν νομίζετε πως ναι, πιθανότατα τον μπερδεύετε με τον George Romero.

Γλυκούλης, ε;

Πρώτα ένα σχόλιο για τον Μπιλ. Δεν συνδέεται ιδιαίτερα με το Όχι, αν και κάποιοι κακοήθεις θα λέγανε ότι είναι η απαρχή της δικτατορίας στο χώρο του software (οι ίδιοι προφανώς που εφήυραν το πετυχημένο λογοπαίγνιο Micro$oft) αλλα αύτα είναι αηδίες. Εγώ θεώρησα σωστό να το αναφέρω ως αξιόλογο trivia.

Ο Τζον από την άλλη ήταν ένας από τους κύριους προγραμματιστές στο τρομερά πετυχημένο videogame του 1994, Doom. Ο τότε νεαρός και αλλοπαρμένος από την επιτυχία προγραμματιστής, αποφασίζει να φύγει από την εταιρεία που τον ανέδειξε για να σχεδιάσει το προσωπικό του project Daikatana και πάνω στην έπαρσή του δηλώνει πως θα μας κάνει όλους σκύλες του.

Τσκ, τι γλώσσα!

Δυστυχώς για αυτόν, το παιχνίδι του ήταν μια παταγώδης αποτυχία.

Κακή ημέρα για δηλώσεις, θα έλεγε κανείς. Είτε αν τις κάνεις αυτή τη μέρα, είτε αν απλά σχετίζεσαι με αυτή την ημερομηνία.

-

Αυτά τα ολίγα και για σήμερα. Τα λέμε στο επόμενο post, το οποίο ελπίζω να είναι πριν τις 25 Μαρτίου*.

*2014

Κόβεται η εκπομπη του Γιάννη Πετρίδη, "Από τις 4 στις 5"

2010-06-20T02:16:00.003+03:00

Δεν είναι σατιρικό το σημερινό κείμενο, ή είναι, κατά μια έννοια, καθώς αποφάσεις με τέτοια γενναία δώση ηλιθιότητας μόνο ως αυτοσατιρικές μπορούν να χαρακτηριστούν. Να γελάμε με τα χάλια μας.

H εκπομπή του Γιάννη Πετρίδη "Από τις 4 στις 5" ξεκίνησε το 1975, όταν οι περισσότεροι από εμάς δεν είχαμε γεννηθεί καν. Είναι αδιαμφισβήτητα από τις πιο σημαντικές εκπομπές στην ιστορία του ελληνικού ραδιοφώνου, όχι μόνο μακροβιότητας αλλά και λόγω ποιότητας. Σε καθημερινή βάση, ο Πετρίδης μετέδιδε όλα τα αξιόλογα καινούρια τραγούδια, ανεξαρτήτως είδους ή δημοτικότητας. Δεν πάει να ήταν Lady Gaga ή Slayer, Cyndi Lauper ή U.N.K.L.E. Οι γνώσεις του στα περί μουσικής είναι απαράμιλλες, κάτι που επίσης φαίνεται από τις μουσικές επιλογές του. Δεν είναι καθόλου μα καθόλου υπερβολή να πει κάποιος ότι υπάρχουν γεννιές ολόκληρες που μεγάλωσαν και που έμαθαν να ακούνε και να εκτιμούνε τη μουσική ακούγοντας Γιάννη Πετρίδη.

Flash-forward στο σήμερα, όπου του ανακοινώθηκε ότι η εκπομπή του κόβεται οριστικά εξαιτίας μιας γραφειοκρατικής μαλακίας. Περισσότερες λεπτομέρειες μπορείτε να διαβάσετε εδώ, αλλά πιστέψτε με όταν σας λέω ότι είναι γελοίο να κοπεί μια τέτοια εκπομπή για τέτοιους αστείους λόγους. Λίγο σεβασμό στους ανθρώπους που έχουν προσφέρει τόσα πολλά στον πολιτισμό και (γιατί όχι;) την παιδεία της χώρας μας.

Ήδη έχουν αρχίσει τα πρώτα κύματα διαμαρτυρίας ενάντια σε αυτή την απόφαση, όπως θα διαβάσατε παραπάνω, συμπεριλαμβανομένης και μιας συναυλίας που θα διεξαχθεί υπέρ του Γιάννη Πετρίδη, στην οποία θα συμμετέχουν μεταξύ άλλων ο Γιάννης Αγγελάκας, ο Παύλος Παυλίδης κ.α.

Επίσης υπάρχει και ένα group διαμαρτυρίας στο Facebook. Δεν είχα ποτέ ψευδαισθήσεις για την αποτελεσματικότητα τέτοιων group, αλλά από το τίποτα...

Τα 4+1 Πράγματα Που (Μάλλον) Δεν Ξέρατε για την 21η Απριλίου

2010-04-21T18:49:00.009+03:00

Η 21η Απριλίου 1967 είναι (θα ήθελα να πιστεύω) μια ημερομηνία γνωστή σε όλους τους Έλληνες. Αν τα γεγονότα εκείνης της μέρας και τα επακόλουθά χρόνια είχαν θετικές ή αρνητικές επιπτώσεις για τη χώρα εξαρτάται από τις πεποιθήσεις του καθενός και το πόσο αρέσκεται κανείς στο να εθελοτυφλεί.

Μα φτιάξανε δρόμους!

Ίσως πλέον η 21/4/1967 να αποκτήσει ανταγωνισμό, όμως. Πως; Μα φυσικά από τη σημερινή 21η Απριλίου, του 2010, με την κατά πως φαίνεται επικείμενη είσοδο της Ελλάδας στο Δ.Ν.Τ. Βέβαια, είναι νωρίς για να κρίνουμε το αποτέλεσμα που θα έχει αυτό το γεγονός.

Στην Αργεντινή δεν είχαν κάποιο πρόβλημα, π.χ.

Εδώ θα είμαστε και θα τα ξαναπούμε για το aftermath σε μερικά χρόνια, λογικά.

Ίσως πάλι και όχι

Κατά πόσο η επιλογή αυτής της συγκεκριμένης ημερομηνίας έγινε κατά τύχη έχει να κάνει με το πόσο σας αρέσουν οι θεωρίες συνωμοσίας, αλλά κουβέντα να γίνεται, ας υποθέσουμε ότι έγινε συμπτωματικά. Τι άλλο μπορεί να έχει γίνει στην ιστορία, τέτοια μέρα; Πολλά και διάφορα ενδιαφέροντα, και όχι εντελώς άσχετα με την ιστορία μας.

Με χρονολογική σειρά:

1509: Ο Ερρίκος ο 8ος παίρνει τη θέση του πατέρα του ως βασιλιάς της Αγγλίας, ακολουθεί το χάος

Όταν κάποιοι άνθρωποι θέλουν να πάρουν διαζύγιο, συνήθως μιλάνε με κάποιο δικηγόρο. Ή με τη μάνα τους, δεν είμαι εδώ για να κρίνω. Πάντως δεν αρχίζουν να αποκεφαλίζουν όποιον βρίσκουν μπροστά τους και αλλάζουν το θρησκευτικό σύστημα τις χώρας τους μόνο και μόνο για να μη χρειάζονται την εύνοια του Πάπα. Βέβαια το τελευταίο δεν είναι απαραίτητα κακό.

"I find your faith in divorces disturbing"

Το θέμα είναι ότι ο Ερρίκος ο 8ος δεν ήταν ένας από αυτούς τους ανθρώπους. Αν και δεν ήταν ακριβώς δικτάτορας, πολλοί δικτάτορες καριέρας θα ζήλευαν τα καμώματα του κυρίου με το νούμερο 8 στο όνομα. Και όλα ξεκίνησαν τη μέρα που πέθανε ο πατέρας του (μαντέψτε την ημερομηνία).

Με άλλα λόγια, για πολλούς ανθρώπους στην Αγγλία του 16ου αιώνα, η 21η Απριλίου 1509 ήταν η χειρότερη μέρα στη ζωή τους. Για τον Ερρίκο τον 8ο, ήταν απλώς Τρίτη (υποθέτω).

1918: Καταρρίπτεται ο Κόκκινος Βαρόνος

Ο Γερμανός πιλότος Μάνφρεντ φον Ριχτχόφεν, γνωστός και ως o “Κόκκινος Βαρόνος”, καταρρίπτεται και σκοτώνεται πάνω από τη Γαλλία.

Το γεγονός αυτό δε συνδέεται ιδιαίτερα ούτε με την 7ετία ούτε με το Δ.Ν.Τ., αλλά δεν είναι πολύ γαμάτος ο Σνούπι;

1947: Γεννιέται ο Iggy Pop

O James Newell Osterberg (Εβραίοιιιιι), περισσότερο γνωστός ως Iggy Pop γεννήθηκε σαν σήμερα πριν 63 χρόνια. Μία από τις πιο χαρακτηριστικές του επιτυχίες ήταν το “I Wanna Be Your Dog” του 1969. Έχω μια αίσθηση ότι συνδέεται κάπως με τα σημερινά γεγονότα, αλλά δεν είμαι σίγουρος πως ακριβώς.

Ηint: Η Ελλάδα δεν είναι ο άσπρος σκύλος

1980: Αποκλείεται η Rosie Ruiz από τον μαραθώνιο της Βοστώνης

Ενώ η Rosie Ruiz είχε φαινομενικά κερδίσει τον περίφημο μαραθώνιο της Βοστώνης, τερματίζοντας (προφανώς) πρώτη, βιντεοταινίες του αγώνα (ά ρε πουτάνα τεχνολογία) αργότερα απέδειξαν ότι είχε παρακάμψει ένα ολόκληρο μίλι (1,609344 km) από το δρόμο και έτσι την απέκλεισαν. Είπαμε να κλέψεις κοπέλα μου, αλλά όχι και έτσι.

Το ηθικό δίδαγμα της ιστορίας είναι προφανές, αν είναι να κλέψεις και να κλέψεις πολύ, κάν' το τουλάχιστον χωρίς να καρφώνεσαι και σιγουρέψου ότι δε θα σε καταλάβουν οι αρμόδιοι.

Τι μου θυμίζει, τι μου θυμίζει...

Ένα άλλο ενδιαφέρον στοιχείο είναι το γεγονός ότι το μετάλλιο που της είχαν δώσει ήταν μικρότερο σε μέγεθος από το αντίστοιχο αντρικό. Ακόμα και εκεί κόμπλεξ, ρεμάλια;

1971 και 1993: Όχι απαραίτητα καλή ημερομηνία για δικτάτορες

O François Duvalier εκλέχτηκε, με την ευγενική βοήθεια του στρατού, ηγέτης της Αιτής το 1957. Αφού κατάφερε να κάνει τη χώρα του Μπανανία, δυστυχώς για αυτόν (αλλά μάλλον μόνο για αυτόν) πέθανε την 21η Απριλίου 1971.

Flash-forward στην 21η Απριλίου 1993, όπου ένας άλλος ευγενής ηγέτης, ο Luis García Meza Tejada, δικτάτορας της Βολιβίας από το 1980, δικάζεται σε 30 χρόνια φυλακή για το κοινωνικό του έργο.

Ιστορική αναπαράσταση του Meza επί το έργον

Προφανώς το γεγονός ότι και οι δύο συνάδελφοι είχαν άσχημο τέλος την ίδια μέρα πρόκειται για σύμπτωση, αλλά είναι μια καλή υπενθύμιση σε όσους αγαπάνε την απόλυτη εξουσία ότι και τα καλύτερα σχέδια δεν έχουν πάντα την κατάληξη που φαντάζεται κανείς.

Ω ναι

Αυτά τα ολίγα. Ελπίζω όλοι σας να μάθατε κάτι σήμερα. Αν όχι, τη Δευτέρα με τον κηδεμόνα σας, ειδικά αν είναι MILF.

[Sports] Αντίο, Φράγκι

2009-10-11T20:46:00.002+03:00

Χωρίς πολλά λόγια, ο Φραγκίσκος Αλβέρτης αποτέλεσε μία από τις σημαντικότερες προσωπικότητες στην ιστορία του ελληνικού μπάσκετ. Μπορεί τα στατιστικά του να μην ήταν πάντα εντυπωσιακά (όπως και του Διαμαντίδη), και τα τελευταία χρόνια να μην έπαιξε ουσιαστικά μπάσκετ, αλλά η παρουσία του και μόνο, όπως επίσης και το φονικό του σουτ μπορούσαν να αλλάξουν ένα ματς.

25 τίτλοι σε 17 χρόνια, για έναν άνθρωπο που δεν είχε πρωτάθλημα Ελλάδας τα 8 πρώτα χρόνια της καριέρας του. Σε άλλα αθλήματα στη χώρα μας θα το βγάζαμε loser, αλλά ευτυχώς για όλους μας, οι άνθρωποι του Παναθηναικού ήταν πιο υπομονετικοί.

Σημαντικό και το γεγονός ότι αποσύρεται η φανέλα με το #4, για πρώτη φορά στη χώρα μας. Ελπίζω να γίνει και με άλλους παίχτες στο μέλλον.

TL;DR version:

Από σήμερα, το Tales of the Bored θα έχει posts αποκλειστικά στα ελληνικά. Αυτό δε σημαίνει ότι θα γράφω πιο συχνά από ότι τώρα (μια φορά στα 32 χρόνια) πάντως.

[Greek] Οι 100 μεγαλύτεροι μαλάκες Έλληνες

2009-04-02T22:45:00.003+03:00

Αν έχετε βαρεθεί, όπως και εγώ, την απίστευτη παπαρολογία τελευταία με την ψηφοφορία για τους 100 "Μεγαλύτερους" Έλληνες του (παλιότερα σχεδόν αξιόλογου) τηλεοπτικού καναλιού ΣΚΑΙ, τότε αυτό το blog είναι ό,τι χρειάζεστε.

Δεν συμφωνώ με τις απόψεις τους για όλους τους υποψήφιους, ακόμα και αν δεν είναι να πάρεις την λίστα στα σοβαρά. Όταν βέβαια από την άλλη, στη "σοβαρή" λίστα βρίσκουμε γνωστούς δικτάτορες, τότε τρέχα γύρευε.

TL;DR Version

Τι κόλλημα έχουν με το soundtrack του Street Fighter IV σε αυτόν τον ΣΚΑΙ τέλος πάντων?

[TV Saturday] To Galactica!

2009-03-21T15:44:00.003+02:00

You had a good run, old girl.

Shit got a bit weird at the very end, but as always, there were the moments of absolute brilliance that made this show what it is. Anders' speech beautifully captured the spirit of the show itself.

It's all about these brief moments of perfection.

TL;DR Version

There must be some way out of there.

Though dancing robots ain't it.

[Movie Monday] Slumdog Millionaire

2009-03-09T14:15:00.010+02:00

I saw Danny Boyle's latest yesterday, in the midst of all the post-Oscar hype, and as a fan of his previous work, I was prepared to like it a whole lot. Little did I know.

Holy crap, how overrated is this film? I don't mean to sound like the typical Internet critic douche, but come ON. Far from Boyle's finest, let alone the best film of 2008. Sure, it's better than the Beach, but what the Hell people.

My main gripe is the fact that it feels like there's a huge disconnect between the two parts of the movie, kind of a reverse La Vitta é Bella, in a sense. In this case, the first part is a gritty, dark and realistic drama, while the second part is something of a Bollywood farce with an old-Hollywood forced happy ending. But between the two, there's no real link, nothing that glues them together. Even the characters feel like completely different people.

I feel the need to emphasise just how forced the happy ending is. Of all the horrible clichés storytellers can use to pull their characters out of the shitholes they've dug for them, fate and predetermination are amongst the very worst. I don't mean to get all philosophical about the nature of choice and whether we are in control of our destinies, but as a storytelling technique alone, it's just lazy. It sends out the message that if you're meant to be awesome, you barely have to try. The right answer will come to you anyway. Of course, if it wasn't written that you'd be awesome, you're royally butt-fucked. Hooray!

Now, I don't mean to sound grumpy and imply that happy endings, especially forced ones, are necessarily bad. They work just fine in goofy movies such as A Life Less Ordinary (incidentally, another Boyle film) but in a gritty, realistic drama, ehhhh... that's asking too much from poor ol' Ms. Suspension of Disbelief.

Don't even get me started at the dancing scene at the end.

The Final Verdict:

2 out of 5 (Zelda) rupees.

TL;DR Version

Academy awards are becoming more and more like mercy fucks lately.

[WTF Monday] A new blog

2009-03-02T13:46:00.003+02:00

It's been a long time coming, but I've finally started to finalize the changes I was talking about in my last post here, approximately 3000 years ago.

I decided that instead of changing this entire blog into a gaming-only blog, I would start a new one, and keep TotB for those occasions my brain feels like farting. So, I won't be abandoning this blog completely, but it will definitely not be updated as often as my new one which you can visit here:

Playing With Words

Catch you there!

Happy Holidays/Merry Jesusmas

2008-12-24T22:59:00.002+02:00

Pretty much what the title says. I'm putting the blog on hold again until next year, hopefully with more reviews this time.

In the meantime, here's my favorite Christmas song. All the best.

TL;DR Version

I'm unemployed again. Best holiday gift yet. \o/

[Game Review] Samurai Shodown II (XBLA)

2008-12-11T14:35:00.003+02:00

(Rough draft version, to be updated later tonight.)
- Later update, I accidentally deleted the review and never got around to re-writing, consider the article K.I.A.

A somewhat belated review, but with the recent release of STHD, quite a lot of people have a renewed interest in fighting games.

Let’s start, as usual, with a brief history lesson. The original Samurai Shodown was released by SNK for the arcades and SNK’s own Neo Geo home console in 1993. Immediately it became a showcase for the company’s hardware and the perfect example of how a fighting game can be inspired by Street Fighter 2, without shamelessly copying it*.

*None of that World Heroes bullshit.

[Game Review] Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix

2008-12-04T13:12:00.009+02:00

Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (STHD for short) could have been a legitimate candidate for the "Game with the longest name ever" award, if not for that Penny Arcade game. It is, however, the favorite for receiving the "Most often remade" award, currently numbering... Actually, I lost count.

More importantly, though, it's also one of the prime candidates for the "Most finely-tuned and balanced competitive game ever", and that one is something to brag about.

Enough fancy talk for now, though. Time for a little history lesson. Given that the first edition (oh, there’ve been a few) of Street Fighter II, called The World Warrior, came out seventeen (17) years ago, and the last version, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, came out fourteen (14) years ago, quite a few people may have missed on the behemoth that this game was back then. Not only did it shape the entire fighting genre for years to come, as countless imitators appeared overnight, it also became a new benchmark for success in the market.

At a time when videogames were still ignored by the mainstream, SF2’s protagonists Ryu and Ken were amongst the few characters alongside Mario and Sonic to be recognised by anyone except the most dedicated of gamers. SF2 not only managed to revitalize the Arcade (the what?) scene, where it created huge lines of people waiting to play that guy “that just beats everyone!”, it was also the first arcade game to be ported (almost) perfectly in a home console, in its 1992 SNES version*.

Lastly, and perhaps more importantly, it was the first competitive game to achieve such unprecedented popularity. There were games were it was much more fun to beat a human opponent than the CPU before (*2) but never before was a game so perfectly balanced for competitive play, nor had its multiplayer aspect as its focus. I’m probably going to get crucified for this, but I’ll argue that had it not been for Street Fighter II, the entire competitive aspect of gaming would have been vastly different, and games such as Quake 3: Arena and Counter-Strike might have not been as popular.

Just look at the early FPS games, none of them had anything more than an afterthought of a multiplayer. Technological issues were obviously a factor here, but competitive multiplayer in FPS’s didn’t become a factor until after the popularity of fighting game (and SF2 in particular) tournaments.

Now that the history lesson is over, let’s take a closer look at this specific version of Super Turbo. As you may have guessed, the “HD Remix” part refers to the game being redone for a contemporary audience. The graphics were redone in High Definition, from scratch, by UDON Entertainment, also responsible for the successful Street Fighter comic books, the music themes were remixed by the people of OverClocked ReMix (*3), and the gameplay was rebalanced by long-time Street Fighter tournament player and gaming developer, David Sirlin.

This means this version is a labor of love from people who love Street Fighter and “get” what made it great back in the day, and why it is relevant even today, more than a decade since its release. Their intentions, to make this new version the best possible. The result is a game that looks, sounds and plays great, even without nostalgia clouding our judgement. STHD is a great game with our current standards.

So, without further delay, on with the lists:

Things STHD does right:

- It’s Super Street Fighter II Turbo, for the HD generation. As corny as that sounds, it’s true. Gorgeous high-definition graphics, a remixed soundtrack that works wonderfully in a contemporary environment and the tried-and-true gameplay of Super Turbo, a game that’s still being played competitively today, with some enlightened changes that make it even better (*4). It’s an amazing remake of what’s undeniably a classic game, it’d be hard for anyone to ask for more.

- Another thing about the music, the folks at OCRemix managed to make even Sagat’s theme sound good. I never thought that was actually possible.

- Yet another sidenote on something mentioned earlier, the changes made to the gameplay and certain movement inputs succeed in making the game simpler (so that you don’t have to worry about actually performing the move but rather when to perform it) but never make the game simplistic. You still have to have the muscle memory and timing needed for pulling off a 7-hit combo, button-mashers need not apply.

- The online multiplayer is amazing, which is a needed change after the atrocity that was Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting on the Xbox 360. Capcom had an entire beta test devoted to getting it right, and through the use of GGPO, they succeeded. There’s the occasional laggy match every now and then, but for the most part it’s very smooth, even when playing across continents.

- You can’t see which character your opponent selects on online multiplayer. This is HUGE. So many times people would cheese it out, waiting for you to pick a character after like half an hour, so they could pick a counter-character. One of my favorite changes.

- There’s no denying it, Super Turbo is still one of the best fighting games around, and this enhanced version only adds to that. It’s intuitive, easy to pick up yet demanding enough to challenge most players when it comes to mastering it.

People that had either forgotten about this fact through the years, or had never spent any time with SF2 back in the day, now have the perfect opportunity to remember/find out what the big deal is(*5).

Things about STHD that aren't that hot:

- For all its smoothness, there’s a few bugs plaguing the online multiplayer part. The music sometimes stops abruptly and you have to restart the game, health bars have the tendency to disappear leaving you clueless as to how much life either player has, and there’s also a few random disconnects as a fight is about to start. The latter is particularly annoying in ranked matches, as it counts as a defeat. Nothing a patch wouldn’t fix, let’s hope one is on the way.

- The animation is unchanged from the original, as this would have required remaking the entire game from scratch. As a result, it looks kind of strange at times, but you get used to it eventually.

- Being a rather delayed project, means that STHD was released very close to the next real chapter in the franchise, Street Fighter IV, which is coming out in late February. As such, STHD may be seen by some as merely a prelude to SFIV. Their loss, however.

- No other single-player modes other than Arcade (Story) and training. I confess, I’m just grasping at this point. A survival mode or such would have been neat, but it’s hardly a glaring omission. Multiplayer is the game’s selling point, after all.

Things I just don't get:

- The lack of a real demo is rather perplexing. The Playstation3 version has no demo whatsoever, while the X360 version got the Ryu/Ken multiplayer-only beta version offered earlier this year with Commando 3. Not that you need a demo for what is essentially a fourteen year old game, but it could help convincing those sceptical newcomers.

The above signify that on George's Intention-Meter, Super Street Fighter II HD Remix receives of the title of:
The Genuine Article

TL;DR version:

Seriously, just listen to this music:

If you ever loved Street Fighter 2, chances are it will remind you why it was that great back then, even if you can’t quite put your finger on it. If you were never a fan, well... what’s your excuse? As I said earlier, there’s a reason why people are still playing this game, in tournaments or otherwise, and why it makes so many “Best Games Ever” lists.

Go on, try this shiny new version. You know you want to.

* In fact, it’s still Capcom’s best-selling game, even after all these years.
*2 Hell, its prequel was one of them!
*3 You can download the full soundtrack at their website, too!
*4 I can actually do Hooligan Throw now.
*5 One thing I find particularly amazing is seeing how many people this release has brought back to this game. Styles of play differ for each version of SF2, and people using them are very distinct. You can tell when somebody hasn’t played SF2 since, say, Champions Edition, and seeing them back in a SF game just brings a smile to my face. I’m weird like that.

What (redux)

2008-12-02T01:43:00.004+02:00

Christ on a stick, November just breezed by and I only made one post. That's just sad.

I've to confess I bought the new WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King A.K.A. digital crack, but that's not really the reason for this extended absence. I haven't been playing a lot of WoW either, which is perhaps worrying. Or healthy.

Regular blog updates will adjust to my new schedule, and thus will be weekly, while random updates will occur... randomly. Also, the blog will focus on gaming from now on. It's not like it didn't before, anyway.

TL;DR version:

Then again, never trust the George to stick to a schedule created by himself, for himself.

Yes, We Can

2008-11-03T17:07:00.004+02:00

I've been neglecting this blog lately, horribly so. But with a very demanding real-life job these days, finding the time and clarity of mind to write something, anything, is a difficult task.

I decided to break this hiatus though, since tomorrow is a very important day. Perhaps the most important election for an entire generation of Americans is taking place, and I've never hidden the fact that I'm hoping Barrack Obama wins, something I mentioned almost a year ago.

Naturally, something I briefly talked about in my previous post, you should never trust politicians to keep their word. "Crooks and Liars" is an expression often used for them, and it's quite true in most occasions. However, there's Crooks and Liars and then there's Assholes and Criminals. If the difference is lost on you, stop reading now.

Much like how the only romantic love is the unfulfilled one, to paraphrase a quote heard in the latest Woody Allen movie, the only ideal president is the one that never was elected, or at least never managed to live out his four-year course. I don't expect that a new Golden Age of Humanity will start should Obama be elected tomorrow (CROSS YOUR FUCKING FINGERS!). I do, however, expect that some of the liberties and privileges we took for granted until a few years ago, will be returned to us.

After all is said and done, I'd challenge anyone to dispute the fact that this man has amazing charisma, gives fantastic speeches, and can actually inspire people, by his speeches alone. Is it enough to make him a great president? No. But it's already more than what most of the previous one had.

The obligatory YouTube video link this time is a related song that definitely inspires yours truly.

TL;DR version:

Obama '08, motherfuckers!

Just never forget the following axiom:

It's not the person that defines the chair, it's the chair that defines the person.

[Gaming] Early Fable II impressions

2008-10-17T23:34:00.002+03:00

My favorite theme in story-based videogames has always been morality and decisions based on it, yet sadly there are so few games that have explored it in a mature way that also is tied directly to the way the game plays. The original Fable promised to do such a thing, yet even its creators (as seen in the recent Edge special) believed they didn't go far enough.

I've only played Fable for about eight hours and haven't had to make any difficult decisions so far, but things seem definitely Manichean enough. However, the upcoming Fable II promises to really change the way choices and morality in games, given such examples as becoming less popular by choosing to do the moraly "right" thing, while becoming more popular and stronger by doing an "evil" deed.

Having attended the Athens Digital Week expo for two days in a row, I was able of spending some time with a playable demo version of Fable II. While a noisy expo is hardly the best place to play a story-based role-playing game, I liked what I saw.

The interface, and especially the emotes through which you interact with NPC's in the world, is a lot more streamlined and intuitive than in the original, making things much easier. Voice-acting seemed very solid from what I could hear, and combat was smooth. The graphics are quite beautiful from an artistic point of view, yet for some unimaginable reason, visual quality was seriously lacking in all games shown at the expo. The result was that from a technical point of view, Fable II looked exactly like the first game, only with a little more polish and better animation. This baffled me, but I expect the finished game to look much better, even in my sorry old standard definition television.

TL;DR version:

The newest issue of Edge awarded Fable II a 9 out of 10 score, so that's definitely encouraging.

If they do indeed nail the whole good/evil thing this time, I can definitely see this game becoming one of my favorites in recent years.

[Gaming] A different kind of trailer

2008-10-15T20:37:00.003+03:00

A common trend in trailers from upcoming videogames is the fact that most of them are fairly insubstantial. Superficial, if you will. They usually emphasize on showing off some sparkling new graphics, combined with text promising "exciting new features" such as 512-player multiplayer and so on.

Another common element in videogame trailers is an almost insufferable amount of masculinity, or what I like to call the "RARGH!" factor. Think of the movie 300, where the protagonists apparently couldn't speak like normal people, and instead had to scream at the top of the langs, presumably because their hemorrhoids were flaring up. It's fine for a while, but it gets boring before long. Going back to videogames for a moment, it's exactly this line of thinking that lead to such cockeyed advertisment as that old Ocarina of Time which boldy declared:

"Willst thou save the girl, or play as one?"

GG, as the clueless whippersnappers say. Also, I believe it should have been "playeth" for added cheese factor.

Note that there's nothing wrong with masculinity, nor with a testosterone-filled, action-packed trailer. Hell, the Street Fighter IV trailer I praised so much last Monday is exactly that. Which makes sense in this context, since it's a trailer for a game where people beat each other up senseless. You pretty much need these elements in such cases.

But if games are ever going to evolve as a medium*, they need to provide with something more than just people on steroids killing stuff dead. You may be wondering what this has to do with trailers, yet aren't trailers usually the first impression one gets from something? Not necessarily, of course, but that is often the case. Furthermore, as I mentioned in Monday's post, a good trailer can be reason enough to get someone interested in the advertised subject, even if the person in question isn't interested in the medium, in this case videogames.

At this point I'd like to present my favorite trailers of this different kind, which are more cinematic and artsy than their mainstream counterparts. Surprisingly enough, the first trailer comes from Gears of War, a game that takes the "RARGH!" amplifiers all the way up to eleven.

Still, the Gary Jules cover of Mad World combines beautifully with the action depicted through the game engine, and the result is very solemn, bleak even. Something that can't be said for the game itself** sadly, as such somber moments wouldn't have gone amiss. Enough mumbling though, more trailer embedding:

Speaking of elements from trailers that would have made the actual games better, the following trailer from Halo 3 baffles me. It manages, in a mere sixty seconds, to tell us more about the character of Master Chief (the protagonist) than all three entire games combined have! Not to mention it manages to combine both solemnity and badassery, something the games fail horribly at.

I honestly don't get why these aspects of the storyline was never explored or even hinted at in the games, that is, both the Chief's backstory and what it meant for humans to come in contact with a different civilization, only to find out they were hell-bent on eradicating us. Instead, all we got was such hackneyed phrases as "Prepare for war!"

Still, the trailer is brilliant:

Which leads me to the most recent example of this kind of trailers, which was also the inspiration behind this post, the recent Prince of Persia trailer. I never expected I'd hear a Sia Furler song in a videogame trailer, so I was genuinely caught off-guard when I first saw this. As with the GoW/Mad World trailer, it works wonderfully, and is actually a pretty clever nudge to the new gameplay system, where the supporting character (the girl, Elika) will always save you when you miss a jump and plunge to your death, for example.

Since the game hasn't been released yet, there's no way of saying for sure if the mood of this trailer will be reflected in the actual game, but there's a better chance than the previous two games, as Prince of Persia isn't a fast-paced shooter. Instead, it seems like a more dream-like experience, a high adventure that could have been pulled straight from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, which unsurprisingly was the main influence behind the series.

In other words, it seems nothing like the atrocity that was The Warrior Within and Godsmack (RARGH!) are nowhere to be found, and that is definitely a good thing.

As for the trailer itself, you can watch it here:

TL;DR version:

There's an argument to be made against this artsy kind of trailers, and no, it's not "OMG thiz trailurz r so ghey LOL!", shut up please. What can be argued that these trailers are rather pretentious since they're not closely related to the games themselves, and for that reason quite derivative.

To that I would offer the following counter-arguments: first of all, being a little pretentious never hurt anyone, and art and pretentiousness often go hand-to-hand. Moreover, a trailer doesn't necessarily have to give you a specific idea of what the game will be like. Instead, giving a vague feeling of what the game could be about works just as well. Isn't a trailer meant to arouse interest in the finished product?

Lastly I believe that trailers should be able to stand on their own, in the sense that if say the game they're advertising never came out, the trailer should still be awesome in its own right. This subject goes beyond a little tl;dr sidenote, so I'll come back to it another time.

*Not going to go into the whole "games as art" argument just yet

** Definitely not a bad thing though, I love Gears of War and its world for what they are, and I'll go into further detail as we get near the release of its sequel

[Gaming] Keeping "Street Fighter" Relevant

2008-10-13T22:19:00.005+03:00

(A.K.A., how the Street Fighter series is shaping up for a spectacular comeback)

Staying relevant for a prolonged amount of time is no mean feat, for any product, in any industry. The videogame market is no exception to this, in fact this applies to both different genres and different franchises. Platformers, adventures, role-playing games, they all had their proverbial moment in the sun several years ago, and at that time, each respective genre dominated the sales charts as well as gathering excellent reviews. Nowadays, their appeal mostly limited to a niche* audience, with the odd excellent game coming out every now and then, only to remind us that every rule has its exceptions, few though they are.

Same goes for gaming franchises that used to be huge, such as Tomb Raider. Even though TR has recovered from the near-catastrophe that was the early 00’s and Angel of Darkness, it’s nowhere near the sales behemoth it used to be in the mid-90’s.

The fighting game genre is amongst the ones that enjoyed massive success initially, only to slowly wither away with the years. Starting with Street Fighter II back in 1992, which inarguably started the whole fighting game craze and also breathed life back into the arcades scene, the genre had its last massive commercial and critical success with 1999’s Soul Calibur for the Dreamcast, a game which became the flagship of Sega’s last entry in the hardware market. Since then, it’s all gone downhill**.

That’s not to say that the genre hasn’t had any worthy recent entries, games such as Virtua Fighter 5 for example are as good as any of the classics from the 90’s, if not better. However, mainstream appeal has been all but lost for contemporary fighting games, a side-effect perhaps of the merciless milking of the genre in the previous decade.

The Street Fighter franchise is no stranger to neither declining popularity, nor milking. As a matter of fact, it was pretty much the franchise that invented milking, given that SFII had five different versions of the same game, while the subsequent Street Fighter Alpha/Zero and Street Fighter III series had three each***. That’s excluding the various spin-off series, such as the Marvel Vs Capcom and Capcom Vs SNK.

With that in mind, it’s not surprising that people were eventually tired of Street Fighter. It also didn’t help that the SF games took place exclusively in a two-dimensional plane, when 3D graphics were the new “it” thing in the late 90’s.

Another factor that played a big part in the eventual decline of SF’s popularity was the eventual sequel to the supremely-successful SFII, 1997’s Street Fighter III: The New Generation. Not only did it take Capcom two years to come up with the definitive, balanced version of the game with 1999’s 3rd Strike(*4), it was such a radical departure from its predecessor that mainstream audiences felt overwhelmed with its complexity.

To make matters worse, the majority of its characters suffered from a complete lack of charisma (an unfortunate trademark of late 90’s Capcom design), which only alienated casual audiences even more. Let’s not forget that most people are more likely to choose a character that looks “cool” than a freak show, when first playing a game.

The game itself was fantastic, and inarguably a worthy follow-up to the franchise, but that mattered little when only but the most hardcore fans could appreciate it for what it was, and also the only ones that could pull off the most difficult combinations of moves.

So how do you go about making people interested in a franchise again, almost a decade after its last appearance? Firstly, you have to remind them why they cared about the franchise in the first place. Capcom succeeded in doing this about a year ago, when they released the first teaser of SFIV, which featured the quintessential street fighters, Ryu and Ken sparring as they always seem to do.

It was enough to get several people excited, but this was only the beginning. Soon after, they released the first in-game trailer with actual gameplay, revealing to us that most (eventually this became all) of the original fighters from SFII would be featured in the game. One might accuse Capcom of playing it safe, instead of creating an all-new cast as they did with SFIII, but you can hardly blame them for giving the old fans of the series a cast they already know and love.

When it comes to maintaining relevancy, it’s always important to keep your original audience. And that audience is mainly made up of people who remember E. Honda as “That Sumo guy that does that handslaps thing”, rather than the vocal minority that knows how to spell Tatsumakishenpukyakugodonlyknows(*5).

Naturally, you can’t just stop there. SFII is sixteen yeas old and SFIII is a mere five years younger, several of the people that used to play both games frantically back then have probably moved on from videogames all together. Not to mention that the videogame market is vastly different these days, the audience is almost nothing like it used to be.

In other words, you need to reach an all-new audience, an audience that probably grew up on different games than Street Fighter. The way used by Capcom to reach this audience is two-fold.

The first thing they had to do is teach this audience why SF was simply that damn good. In other words, they had to create a game that plays like a dream and is appealing to both a novice and a seasoned player. The way Capcom went about doing this was by reinventing the old SFII gameplay, doing away with several of SFIII’s features, such as the parrying system. Initially, I had voiced my displeasure over this, since I am a big fan of SFIII even though I pretty much suck at it.

Seeing where Capcom is coming from though, it makes perfect sense. As the recent Edge review so cleverly put it, for most players a combo is nothing more than a jumping kick followed by a sweep kick(*6). With that in mind, SFIV is built around a system that is far more forgiving when it comes to creating combos than its predecessor, but is still so deep and intuitive that experienced players will always have the edge over a newcomer, as it should be.

The best gameplay in the world, however, won’t mean a thing if people don’t get to actually play your game. And for better or worse, the best way of doing that is a strong presentation. If you get people excited enough through a trailer, they’re more likely to take a further look, while if they only see a generic “From the makers of a game that was huge fifteen years ago!” teaser, they’re more likely to pass it by.

In Street Fighter’s case, it’s not really that hard to make people care given its legacy. Many videogame fans may not know that Ken Masters is Japanese and not American (true story), but most of them would have a good idea of who he is, and subsequently would be more willing to play a game with a familiar character, rather than "Generic Bulky Male #11378", given the right stimulus.

At this point, I have to confess that the above paragraph is nothing more than a pretty clumsy attempt of declaring my unrelenting love over the brilliance that was the new SFIV trailer from the ‘08 Tokyo Game Show.

While certain members of the vocal minority I mentioned earlier complained about its content being composed of mostly seen-before footage, that view is ignoring the fact that this is a trailer meant to appeal to the oh-so-important masses. It is incredibly impressive, superbly edited, with the combination of in-game footage, computer-generated segments and anime working wondefully together, and the remix of Ryu's theme is phenomenal.

It is, in other words, impressive enough to appeal to both old and new fans of the franchise, as well as people unfamiliar with it.

Watch the trailer for yourselves here:

TL;DR version:

Capcom has managed to get people excited about a franchise that hasn’t seen an update in more than a decade. That is no mean feat, and more companies should take a note of how to revisit an old, beloved, franchise.

It also helps that Street Fighter II was pretty much the game of forever (there’s a reason why it’s still being played today, and why Ryu’s theme is just that good), but Capcom always managed to build on its success, even when they were releasing new versions of the same game every year.

* Oh gods, that word again

** For example, if Tekken 2 had been announced as multiplatform during the Playstation/Saturn/Nintendo 64 years, the entire Milky Way galaxy would have exploded by the amassed nerdrage. In direct contrast, the recent announcement of Tekken 6 for the Xbox 360 was met with what can be described as a collective “Oh. Cool.”

*** There was no Street Fighter EX series, that’s just rumors spread by people made out of pure evil. There was only one game, Street Fighter EX2 and it was actually pretty fun.

*4 It’s always a charm

*5 It’s Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku

*6 Sadly, I'm one of them

[Game Review] Too Human

2008-10-10T22:29:00.011+03:00

Some people say there's no such thing as bad publicity. Of course, people say lots of things, and not all of them are right. If Too Human by Silicon Knights is any indication, they're wrong about this bad publicity thing too.

Too Human had been floating around as a concept for a good while now. Originally planned as a game for the original Playstation, one can only guess what that game would have been like. In my idealistic dreams, I like to think of it as a traditional isometric action-RPG, with the atmosphere of Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and the addictive gameplay of the Diablo series.

Regardless of what might have been, the Too Human we got is still an action-RPG, only it emphasizes more on the action part, with the ability of pulling off huge combos. The analogy I like is that Too Human feels like a (clumsy) combination of Devil May Cry and Phantasy Star Online. The emphasis on gathering more and better loot is also here, similar to the Diablo games, although the various categories of loot are shamelessly ripped from World of Warcraft, with the colors white, green, blue, purple, orange and red* denoting progressively better loot, exactly as in Blizzard's game.

I mentioned bad publicity earlier, and that's what this game was getting long before its release. Not from professional gaming journalists originally, but rather from gaming enthusiasts in forums such as NeoGAF. This in turn opened up a whole different can of worms, recall the 1UP Yours podcast with Silicon Knight's Dennis Dyack if you will, but that's not something I'd like to get into right now. At any rate, this early yet very negative word of mouth was what made the release of a demo a necessity, though it's hard to tell if the demo worked for better or worse, given the game's scope and ambition.

You can't fault Too Human for being ambitious, Hell, it claims to be the first part in an "epic trilogy"** that's to be finished by 20XX, where XX stands for "God only knows". Sadly, though ambition can sometimes be a fantastic driving force, it's also a main ingredient in any good recipe for destruction. It feels like Silicon Knights got themselves into something bigger than they could handle, since even aspects where they usually excel at (voice acting and storytelling) are surprisingly mediocre this time around.

That's not to say it's an awful game that has no redeeming features, so without further ado...

Things Too Human does right:

- Loot-based gameplay is always addictive, and quite fun. The game successfully teases you with pretty items from the first fifteen minutes, and it never stops on giving.

- Online two-player co-op is fun with a friend, if you get two classes that complement each other well. Sadly, playing the game cooperatively means that you don't get to see a single cutscene throughout the game.

- Once you get the hang of it, the gameplay is pretty smooth and fun, and once you get in a rhythm, you'll be dispatching foes left and right with ease. Sadly, it takes a while before that happens, and that is rather disappointing. Which leads us to...

Things about Too Human that suck:

- The control system. It's been discussed back and forth since the release of the demo, and some people argue that a dungeon-crawler such as Too Human just wouldn't work if you just had to mash the A button over and over.

I agree with this statement, though I fail to see how tying a bunch of moves to the right analog stick works better. It's clumsy, unintuitive and takes far too long getting used to. And this is coming from someone who played 2D fighters on the Dreamcast D-pad without problems.

- The graphics are really, really bland. Not only from a technical point of view, though the rather low number of polygons doesn't help, but mainly from a design point of view. Stages are composed of huge empty corridors, with uninspiring architecture, while the characters and enemies themselves are at best completely unspectacular, while others look utterly ridiculous. My favorite would be Fenrir, which looks more like an angry chicken than a cybernetic wolf***.

- The second stage of the game, Ice Forest, is atrocious. It's far too long, in fact it's longer than the rest of the game combined. Seriously, the game took me 10 hours to complete and 6 of those hours were spent on Ice Forest alone. To make matters worse, it's badly designed, with either huge breaks in the action, or huge segments where you don't get a second to breathe between enemy waves.

- The story likes to think it's much smarter than it really is. I can't get into many details since the game is still pretty new and I'd like to avoid spoilers, so I'll be brief. First of all, the whole idea of the Norse gods portrayed as technologically advanced individuals is not as original as it believes, and it's also presented in a very superficial manner (Odin has a secretary? Really?)

Moreover, nothing really happens story-wise until the very end of the game, where things simply get messy. Solliloquies filled with self-righteousness, enough angst to rival Kratos, an ending that leaves too many questions unanswered... You get the idea. If the rest of the game was top-notch, these would be mere footnotes, but as it stands, it makes the game feel pretentious.

- While you get fancy and shiny items from the get-go, if you want to get the absolute best item sets in the game, you'll have to grind yourself retarded. And while some people enjoy grinding, given the game's short length, I'm not sure if anyone will be willing to visit the same four areas over and over again.

Things I just don't get:

- Seriously, whose idea was it to cut all cutscenes from the multiplayer campaign? I know the game is supposed to be a loot-based dungeon crawler, but that's way too fucking cynical.

- For a game that's copying so many games which are played (either predominantly or exclusively) online, the fact that Too Human's multiplayer is limited to two players is mind-boggling. Dyack claimed this was the only way to keep the game balanced, but I'm not buying it.

Hell, balance, shmalance. If you could play this game with two more people, it would have been much more fun thanks to cooperation/communication, even if you just breezed through the entire thing.

- I also don't get what happened with the voice acting. Silicon Knights consistently provided with some of the best voice acting in the field, yet this time around, it varies from underwhelming to "just okay". I guess it's a side-effect of the silly storyline.

- Don't even get me started on the Valkyrie/Death sequence.

The above signify that on George's Intention-Meter, Too Human receives of the title of:

Superfluous Monkey

TL;DR version:

Yes, in all fairness I had already declared my opinion of this game in my review manifesto, but Too Human is an interesting case that demands further investigation. It is, in a few words, a decent game which would like to think of itself the equivalent of sliced bread.

This is painfully obvious during its groan-inducing cutscenes, which feel more like punishment and less like reward after fighting yet another wave of identical looking baddies.

*Although we never actually got artifacts ("red" items) in WoW, they existed as a concept originally.

**I dream that one day we'll never get an "epic trilogy of whatever" ever again.

***Seriously, a cybernetic wolf. How can anyone fuck that one up?

[Gaming News] Blue Ray drive for the Xbox 360?

2008-10-08T20:41:00.002+03:00

It has been making the rounds as a rumor for quite a while now, ever since the HD DVD format died I believe, but when a highly reputable and trusted site such as Gamasutra reports on it, there's obviously something here. The Xbox 360 might at last be getting a Blu-Ray drive of its own, like its competitor, the Playstation 3. The fact that it's reportedly in development by Toshiba, the company responsible for the HD DVD makes this whole thing rather deliciously ironic.

It remains to be seen if this will be used for anything more than playing movies and whether or not this is related to the incident with Id's Rage, as optional peripherals (especially the ones that cost so much) rarely become a mainstray as far as gaming consoles go. In fact, the only example that comes to mind is the 4MB Expansion Pack memory chip for the Nintendo 64, which was used in several games with varying success, but even then Nintendo had to ship it with Donkey Kong 64 rather than risk having a percentage of their customers unable of playing the game. Which of course meant that some unlucky bastards like yours truly ended up with two Expansion Packs.

Such things tend to get messy, in other words.

TL;DR version:

Figures that on the first "official" day of my new blog, I come down with the flu and as a result my mind's too messy to write a proper review/article. Oh, well.

[R.E.M. Tuesday] I also feel fine

2008-10-07T19:35:00.002+03:00

The first time will always be special, but the second time has its own charm as well:

TL;DR version:

Best free concert ever. So good I almost felt guilty I didn't pay a ticket.

[Review Manifesto] Cruel's Intentions

2008-10-06T21:03:00.004+03:00

A few years ago, while discussing video games, the following question came to my mind:

"What's the difference between a good game I dislike, and a bad game I like?"

Soon thereafter, I found out that this question applies not only to video games, but also to movies, books, TV shows, music, you name it. This made finding an answer even more important, completely subjective though it would be.

Then in Spring of 2007, during a Therapy? concert, the answer hit me: it's the intentions behind the game, movie, concert, what have you. You see, Therapy? weren't on a particularly good night that time, most of their songs didn't really resemble their studio album counterparts, and their sound was pretty mediocre. But they had loads of energy and enthusiasm, so even if their performance wasn't the best, I found myself having fun. Their performance was lacking, but their intentions were not. So I was a satisfied customer that night.

Therefore, since that day, the creator's assumed (as you can never know 100% unless explicitly told so) intentions with their finished product is perhaps the single most important thing for me, when evaluating something. Moreover, I feel that examining the intentions behind something is a good way of doing away with the level of sheer negativity that is so prevalent over the Internet nowadays, i.e "Everything sucks".

Naturally, even with the best intentions in the world, you may have a mediocre end product. This is why my reviews on this blog will be divided into three parts:

What It Does Right - What is it about the item in review that makes it work, what makes it stand above its competition?

Things about it that aren't that hot - Nothing's ever perfect, so what are its flaws?

Things That Make No Sense - " Why am I not allowed to change my character in Virtua Fighter 5's Arcade Mode after losing a match and continuing?", " Why did the writers of Heroes think that regurgitating the same plots and villains was a good idea?" and other things I just don't get.

Personally, I'm not very fond of scores in reviews, even if it's the first thing everybody (myself included) reads in one. Regardless, scores usually retract from the text itself, and are ultimately rather arbitrary, especially given how many different scales there are out there. 3 out of 5 stars doesn't really equal 60%, for example.

Consequently, instead of adding an arbitrary number at the end of my reviews, I will be instead adding my personal evaluation of what I perceived to be the creators' intentions with their product. To make matters simpler, this evaluation will belong in one of the following categories, in order of declining quality:

The Genuine Article: A creator's lovechild, the result of the finest of intentions and the highest of production values. Examples include:

Iron Man: As fine a popcorn a film as you can get, Iron Man combines incredible visual effects and breath-taking action with genuine characters you can relate to, and a plot that's not full of holes!

Portal: While some would argue that visually it is a very simplistic game, that would be missing the point. Portal is a very stylized game that manages to do a lot with so little, visually. Moreover, its gameplay is polished to perfection, it offers an antagonist that will definitely be quoted for years to come and also has a very deep storyline, told in surprisingly subtle ways.

Almost, But No Cigar: Something that would have ended in the above category, if not for a few frustrating issues, even if it begun with the best of intentions. Examples include:

Dreamfall: One of the finest storylines in a game, ever, with some of the best characters around, it genuinely tried to break from the conventions of the point & click adventure, and reinvent a genre. Also one of my favorite games. However, it's hard to overlook the clunky combat and stealth segments, as well as the oversimplified gameplay with trivial environment interactivity.

Heroes, Season One (excluding the god-awful finale): The first season of Heroes almost succeeded in doing what it promised: Present a story about people with superpowers in the real world, trying to live their every day lives while coming to terms with what they're capable of. Sadly, the fact that it was originally planned for only 12 episodes meant that Heroes suffered from pacing issues in the second half of the season, as well as mediocre action scenes due to its low budget.

Paving the Road to Hell: With the best of intentions. The creator of this product meant well, but the end result is closer to a disappointment than a success. Even so, it can still prove to be an enjoyable experience. A couple of examples:

Daredevil (the movie): At times a genuine try at portraying a more realistic type of superhero, with an actual story at that, it falls victim to the usual Hollywood conventions and Affleck's limited acting skills. I still liked the movie, to the bafflement of many of my friends.

World of Warcraft - The Burning Crusade: Blizzard's attempt to do away with the limited quests, huge dungeons and grind-happy nature of vanilla WoW, ultimately fails due to a variety of reasons. Due to the lack of a real storyline behind the journey to Outlands, quests feel unconnected to the world, the shorter dungeons often feel superficial, and the Endgame is even more of a grind than before.

Bad, and Loving it: While hardly top-notch by most standards, a product that falls in this category is fully aware of its quality (or lack thereof) and instead builds on this. Often a loving homage to its influences.

Kung Fu Hustle: A homage to wire-fu (modern wuxia) movies, exaggerated to the point of being cartoony, and totally hillarious.

The Powerthirst videos: Visual gags and puns so bad, they'll make you literally laugh out loud.

Obnoxiously pretentious: While there's nothing pattently wrong with being pretentious per se, when something gets stuck up its own ass, then there is a problem indeed. More often than not, something obnoxiously pretentious will take itself far too seriously. There can still be redeeming features in them, though they're usually overshadowed by liquid pretentiousness. Illustrious examples include:

Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy: With a storyline that degenerates from engaging to utter nonsense a few hours in, and gameplay that takes us back into Track n' Field button mashing, this game would like to think it revolutionized storytelling in video games through interactive cut-scenes. What it instead did was give people a legitimate reason for hating Quick Time Events.

Ang Lee's Hulk: It valiantly tried to re-invent the comic book movie through the use of multiple panels, remeniscent of a comic book page. Mutated pink chihuahuas and the main antagonist's transformation into a giant electromagnetic id, however, meant that the movie felt like pretentious shit.

Superfluous Monkey: Something that shamelessly copies from a variety of sources (or in extreme situations, copies an existing product completely) and has the audacity to believe that it actually surpasses them in quality. Sadly, what usually happens is that it completely fails to understand what made the originals so appealing in the first place. Eeeeeeeexamples:

Too Human: It combines Devil May Cry inspired, action-oriented combat, Diablo-style dungeon crawls and loot-based gameplay, World of Warcraft-y talent trees and storytelling reminiscent of BioWare's RPG's. And Too Human manages to botch up the majority of them.

CSI Miami: While it was created by the same people behind the original CSI: Las Vegas, in an effort to prevent other channels from making their own CSI clones, it had none of the wit and gritty charm that the original had. Amusingly enough, most the inevitable CSI clones are much better than Miami.

Cynical Cash-In: What the name (oh so) subtly implies. The lowest of the low, a product completely neglected by its creator, existing only to make loads of cash with the target demographic. More often than not, a cynical cash-in is of the lowest overall quality. Examples are numerous, but two that stand out are:

Dead or Alive Xtreme 2: Doing away with the original game's attempt at being a decent beach volley simulation, DOAX2 instead is a collection of mind-numbingly boring minigames, which only exist as an excuse for dressing the female protagonists in outfits worthy of softcore porn movies. The game's cynicism extends to the fact that its graphics (by far the high point of the original, and understandably its main appeal) are nothing special.

Spider-Man 3: A ridiculous plot, with some genuinely embarrassing moments, a retarded love triangle, a random collection of Spidey villains and visual effects straight from 2002. A kick in the nuts for all fans of the first two Spider-Man films.

[Revamp Monday] Tales of the Bored Episode V

2008-10-06T16:04:00.004+03:00

After careful consideration* and the realization that blogs are way overrated, I decided another revamp was needed for Tales of the Bored. I'm done with the mental diarrhea-type of posts, from now on my posts will be much more coherent and polished, not to mention they'll hopefully be shorter**.

This of course means that I won't be able to stick to a six posts per week schedule, given that I'll be editing my posts a lot more than writing them on-the-fly as I used to. For that reason, as of today TotB will be updated regularly only every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with the odd short post on other days if something interesting comes up, such as say aliens invading our planet and anally probing everyone.

Posts from now on will mostly be reviews and previews of games, movies, TV shows, books and the like, with the odd post related to obscure/heartbreaking news such as that old article about the Castlevania fighting game.

TL;DR version:

Oh yes, I'm still keeping these.

*That took roughly like 30 minutes, all in all.

**This sentence and the paragraph after it notwithstanding.

Nothing to see here folks

2008-10-03T19:41:00.000+03:00

Not yet, anyway.

Check back on Monday.

[No Post Friday]

2008-09-26T23:48:00.002+03:00

I haven't been happy with the direction my blog is going lately, nor have I been particularly inspired (aside from Tuesday's article, which was still kind of rough) so I'm taking a short break from blogging. In the off chance that somebody's actually following this blog on a regular basis, feel free to check back in like a week or something.

TL;DR version:

Go read Tom's blog in the meantime, he has some interesting stuff to say.

[Indie Theorycraft Tuesday] Pick Up Angry Yeti? [Y/N]

2008-09-23T19:26:00.008+03:00

Today's post is all about inventory items, and how misused they often are in games. My emphasis will be on indie adventure games, but this also applies to big-budget commercial games. In fact, I think I'll start with an example from Ninja Gaiden 2, which I was playing earlier.

At the second chapter of the game, while inside a fairly tall building with several floors, you encounter a locked door, with no key in sight. A fairly common puzzle so far, right? So you climb a couple more floors, dispatching a few enemies along the way, and personally I was thinking I'd face a mini-boss or somesuch who would be carrying the key. Nope, I had to look for it in a weird looking locked box hidden somewhere in a corner, which Ryu Hayabusa (the game's protagonist) opened with a kick.

Now Ninja Gaiden 2 is a game that's difficult to take seriously, given its dialogs and its obsession with leather and bondage, but that occurrence just baffled me. It's so utterly unrealistic, who hides a card key in a box, in the middle of a building? It reminds me of all those statue-and-gem puzzles in Resident Evil 2, which took place in a Police department. Who the hell designs buildings like that? To make things even better, the card key in question was cracked. I'm hardly an expert on these things, but I'm fairly certain that a cracked card can't be used for its intended purposes. That is, to unlock electronic doors.

However, truth be told, such things aren't a big deal in action games. They only make the player roll his/her eyes for a second and then carry on with the game. On the other hand, in adventure games, where storyline and charactes are the main focus, and the player usually has to pick up every single item on sight and then click it on everything else, poorly-thought out inventory items and related puzzles can really ruin the player's immersion.

An example is needed to better illustrate this point, and I'll pick another commercial game again, before I start discussing indie games. The offender in this case is The Longest Journey, perhaps my favorite game evaaar. During one point of the game, you meet a certain crow called uh... Crow, which later on accompanies you in your travels. How do you make him accompany you? By literally picking him up, that is, using the "Pick Up" function on him, after which we are lead to presume that the heroine of the game fits him in her pockets. A very (unintentionally) absurd moment in an otherwise brilliant game, but I always thought this was due to technological and/or budget-related restraints* anyway.

Sooo... moving on to indie games, then. I'll have to name some names, and before I do that I want to say that I deeply respect anyone and everyone who has ever dedicated a (usually big) part of his everyday time to create an independent game, especially considering that most of them charge nothing for their games. Moreover, there are some problems with design you seemingly can never avoid. That being said, the issue of nonsensical inventory items and their relation to the characters is very evident here.

My first example comes from the first chapter (and seemingly last, since the game appears to have been abandoned) of a game still in development called House of Whispers. The game starts with protagonist Jenni L'Amour visiting her friend Daffy in a local diner. Cue a convenient power shortage, and Jenni finds herself all alone in the darkness, as Daffy is missing. Jenni (and the player) decide it's best to investigate the place to find out what happened to her friend. All is fine so far.

Then, it happens. As you're exploring the near areas, you come across a human heart stored in a fridge. If you decide to interact with the heart, Jenni happily obliges with picking it up.

Wait, what?

It's bad enough that there's no obvious place that Jenni would put the heart while carrying it around (she is not carrying a bag or anything of that sort) the obvious question is why.

Why would anyone, let alone a frightened girl who has just seen her best friend disappear, pick up a human heart in such a nonchalant way**? And what would she ever hope to do with it? From a meta-gaming point of view, I as the player obviously realize that the heart is going to be used in some puzzle at some point in the game, having played so many games with crazy puzzles in the past. But that's exactly when good ol' suspension of disbelief gets thrown out of the window.

Another example comes from a highly acclaimed (and rightly so) game in the indie scene, Prodigal. The game's protagonist, Jacob, is contacted by his brother Mike, who had disappeared two years ago. Jacob decides to find and help him and this journey leads him in a spooky forest, with a very ominous cabin nearby. Once inside the cabin, he finds blood stains all over the place, in such patterns as to imply that something really nasty has happened there.

So what does Mr. Average Joe, all alone in a very unfriendly environment, searching for a brother who is apparently in deep shit, do? What is one of his (and the player's) first actions? To pick up a pair of blood-soaked boots.

Who in their right mind would do such a thing? Hell, who would even go near a pair of bloody boots in some unknown house in the middle of nowhere? I won't even touch the fact that such an object has no apparent use in the game's setting. I would understand picking up an axe for future use at that point, but a pair of boots dripping with blood? That scream you're hearing, that's the suspension of disbelief which just got thrown out of the window again. Poor thing.

Generally speaking, when interacting with my environment in a game, I don't want to think "Oh, apparently there's a puzzle later on that requires this dehydrated piranha! Maybe I'll combine it with this blowtorch and that chewing gum!***" What I want to think is that my character's actions make sense and are in accordance with everything we have seen or at least alluded to about him/her so far in the game.

Naturally, this depends on the context of the game, so while I would expect a former demolitions expert to use TNT to blow up a wall as part of a puzzle, I wouldn't expect a 12-year old to do the same. Unless the 12-year old was some kind of weird prodigee with explosives, called Arzt.

* Then again, maybe I'm grasping.

** Unless they are a doctor of some sort. Or a deranged psycho, I'm not here to judge.

*** Rubber ducky puzzle in TLJ, anyone?

TL;DR version:

Remember, not everything wants to be picked up. Some things are just fine where they are.

Another way of putting it is this rule of thumb: If you wouldn't pick something up in real life, your character had better have a really good reason for doing so. Otherwise, your character won't seem realistic, and your audience might have trouble relating to him/her.

Did you miss these blocks of text? Neither did I.

[Gaming Monday] The Mass Effect post

2008-09-22T23:04:00.003+03:00

I've been playing Mass Effect like crazy today and managed to reach the last area of the game, so if there were any startling revelations in the world of gaming, I must have missed them. I doubt there were, but I do believe that Silent Hill: Homecoming was supposed to be released today in the States?*

At any rate, today was a cold, rainy day. In other words, the perfect day for a Roleplaying Game. And Mass Effect is my favorite entry in the genre in a long while. Given that the game is almost a year old, pretty much everyone has already developed his/her opinion on it, so I won't bother praising/criticising it for the same things everybody else has (i.e. graphics/sound/gameworld/storyline Vs. crappy friendly A.I./too much text).

Instead, I'll focus on my favorite part of the game; space exploration. While there have been RPG's that took place in space rather than some parallel universe closely resembling England in the past, none of them did so in such detail. Solar Winds comes close, but the technology of its times (1993!) didn't allow for such niceties. At any rate, Mass Effect gives my inner Star Trek geek to actually go where no (well, a few) person has gone before. There's several clusters of our Milky Way galaxy to be explored, each with its own solar system and respective planets. And each planet is so unique and beautiful in its own way, it's quite awe-inspiring. Driving your space vehicle (called Mako) on an uncharted planet, as you're heading straight into a space storm makes for a pants-wetting good experience, trust me. Wish I had a screenshot of that.

I understand that some people complained about the planets, but from an aesthetics point of view, I could never agree with that**. I will agree that objectives on every planet were pretty much the same 3-4 missions over and over, and that the buildings in said planets suffered from a severe lack of variety, though.

Before I headed into the last areas of the game, I also wrapped up the extra downloadable mission, Bring Down the Sky. It's not wildly different than the rest of the quests and it certainly didn't feel like the 90 minute-long mission it was advertised to be (felt like half of that, really) but it does have an entirely new building which is beautiful, and one awesome and intense fight that takes part in this building. Definitely one of the best fights in the game.

In closing, while Mass Effect is pretty formulaic as far as RPG's go, the added space exploration and amazing aesthetics are enough to make it stand out from the rest of the entries in the genre. Yes, I'm wrapping this up quickly because I want to get back to the game now. Lawsuits at the usual address.

TL;DR version:

While the game is brilliant, they really need to fix the friendly A.I. in the sequel if they don't want to hear the (justified) bitching of players and reviewers alike. If I had a euro for every time my teammates stepped right in front of me as I was about to finish off an enemy and blocked my shot, allowing for the enemy to heal up, I'd have enough money to buy one of those discounted Arcade version Xbox 360's. Suffice to say, that is not hot.

(SPOILERS)

In case anyone is wondering, I boinked*** Liara, perhaps because she's a total dork. And I let Ashley die so I would avoid any relationship drama, because I'm petty and cruel like that.

* A quick search revealed it's coming next week, on the 30th. Oh well.

** Seriously, lay off the crack pipe.

*** Urban Dictionary has a hilarious entry for the verb "boink", check it out.

[Random Sunday]

2008-09-21T19:06:00.002+03:00

I have a terrible headache today, so I can't write to save my life. That's what you get when you sleep at 6AM only to be woken up at 9AM by somebody who has the wrong phone number. Fun fun fun.

So here's a really funny video from the Chappelle Show instead of my usual blocks of text:

TL;DR version:

Aspirins, I need aspirins! Give them to me!

[Movie Saturday] Guy Richie's Sherlock Holmes?

2008-09-20T22:28:00.008+03:00

So apparently there's another movie based on Sherlock Holmes besides the one starring Borat,* and it's going to be directed by none other than Guy "I'm Madonna's husband!" Richie.

Regarding the actors that are going to play Holmes and Watson, Robert Downey Jr. is pretty much a given as the legendary detective himself, and Jude Law is in talks for the role of Dr. Watson.

Now, as far as I am concerned**, Guy Richie has only made one good movie:

And it was fucking awesome. So awesome in fact, that a couple of years later, Richie understood he'd never make a better movie, and thus decided to remake it with a little extra something (i.e. Brad Pitt) added, and called it Snatch. Audiences, unsurprisingly, fell for it.

Cynicism aside, I'm not entirely convinced that Richie can do justice to the dry, absolutely logical world that Sherlock Holmes lives in. Richie's style is quite different, his world is one of petty criminals who make for adorable losers, and witty one-liners. Of course, this is only by judging what he has done so far, I'd love to be proven wrong as I'm a huge fan of the original novels.

Another thing I'd love to be proven wrong is this feeling in my gut that's telling me that only an Englishman could ever do the role of Holmes justice. Hugh Laurie (A.K.A. Gregory House) is too obvious a choice, but Robert Downey Jr. is a fantastic actor that really does complex roles justice with his performances. So if anyone can pull it off, I think that's him.

Truth be told, it would have worked great

As for any people that will complain about Jude Law, pull your head out of your ass before you suffocate. Watson never played second string in the novels, so it's important to have a charismatic actor for the role. Not to mention that Watson was described as a handsome man, and also that Law is a great actor in his own right, despite his "pretty boy" looks. So get over yourselves.

At any rate, I'd be thankful if the finished movie doesn't end up being like this:

* I like parodies as much as the next guy, but I honestly can't see how this movie is going to be any good.

** I haven't seen RockaRolla yet though, and that's supposed to be a return to form for him. Its name also reminds me of a Judas Priest song.

TL;DR version:

On the bright side, even if both new Sherlock Holmes movies end up sucking, we'll always have the BBC series which is magnificently brilliant:

[Internets Friday] Ahoy, maties

2008-09-19T13:57:00.002+03:00

Yes, yes, today is the International Talk Like a Pirate Day holiday (or a parody of such). And yes, this isn't exactly an Internets thing, but most people don't dare to talk like a pirate in a place where other people will see them and memorize their faces. That place? Anywhere but on the Internet.

In recent years, this holiday (of sorts) has started gaining on popularity, World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online even have a special event day for it. Naturally, this holiday (so to speak) is also a perfect excuse for certain people to make money off nonsense, and for cynics to be... well, cynical.

But meh, it's still fun. And who doesn't love pirates?

TL;DR version:

Yarrrrrrrr.

[Basketball Thursday] Gilbert Arenas -a seriously unlucky man

2008-09-18T11:09:00.003+03:00

Arenas, the 26-year old point guard for the Washington Wizards has been injured yet again, and best case scenario, he'll lose the first month of the new NBA season. This is on top of several other injuries that made him lose the playoffs in the last two seasons, and the majority of the 2007/8 season.

This is a very unfortunate development for Arenas, as teams generally only put up with recurring injuries for so long (especially when you're their most well-paid player) and are often quick to replace players with such tendencies. Hopefully he'll recover fully on time.

TL;DR version:

This sucks. Agent Zero is my favorite NBA player, he deserves better than this.

On an amusing side note, his X360 voice blog suggests he has played more NBA 2K8 than NBA Live 2008, despite being on the cover of the latter. 2K8 is the better game though, so it makes sense that way.

[Book Wednesday] I Am America

2008-09-17T19:27:00.003+03:00

And So Can You!

I finally managed to snag a copy of Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!) (from the author of I Am America (And So Can You!)) yesterday, after literally months of searching. I knew beforehand that I'd like it of course, as scientists have proven* it's impossible to dislike anything Stephen Colbert does.

While America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction** read more like an actual History/Political Science book filled with jokes that are funny because they are sadly true, I Am America reads more like a memoir of Colbert's character, Stephen Colbert. Which makes sense of course, given that each book is an extension of its respective show. My favorite bits so far are all the side notes and footnotes*** in almost every page, which help extend the jokes and remind me of my favorite TCR segment, The Word.

You can visit the official I Am America site here.

* Probably. I don't keep up with everything, you know.

** Best title ever, by the way.

*** Kind of like this one. Only actually funny.

TL;DR version:

As the book informs you, by buying it you become 25% American. Hell, I'm willing to bet that you've become more American just by reading this post.

[Indie Tuesday] The Independent Games Festival

2008-09-16T20:08:00.002+03:00

The IGF is exactly what its name so subtly suggests; in other words, as their "About" page mentions it was "established the Independent Games Festival in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers."

This year they're offering as much as almost $50.000 (which is like 20 euros, haw haw*) to the winners, including a $20.000 award for the first place. The deadline for submissions is November 1st, so there's still time if you already have a project you're working on, or you're really damn gifted. For more information, visit this page.

(via IndieGames.com)

* Yeah, I can't do jokes today.

TL;DR version:

I'm having some serious PC problems these days, I promise I'll go back to those huge blocks of texts eventually. Or perhaps I shouldn't.

I also wish I were competent enough to enter the Festival. Oh, well.

[RPG Monday] Fable 2

2008-09-15T23:20:00.005+03:00

Fable was one of those games that I always wanted to play when I didn't have an Xbox, and one I totally forgot about when I actually bought the console. I only started playing it recently, when I realized that #2 is just around the corner, but it holds up really well.

Obviously, it's not going to dazzle anyone with its graphics, but they are extremely competent for a four-year old game. The animation suffers a bit, but the graphics are really beautiful. I guess that's partly due to the wonderful art direction, which has thankfully carried on to the sequel:

It has become pretty rare to find such a beautiful game nowadays (though Mass Effect keeps surprising me with every other planet I visit) so that's one of the main reasons I'm looking forward to Fable 2. I'm expecting the gameplay to be similar to the first one, with added polish and a few new moves here and there, but nothing world-shattering. Still, when a game looks this good and has this unique fairy tale sort of atmosphere to accompany the visuals, I'm sold.

TL;DR version:

Aside from the visuals and atmosphere, I'm also hoping that Fable 2's online features will make me forget about the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion. Cross yer fingers!

[Music Sunday] Alice in Chains

2008-09-14T22:00:00.003+03:00

Having the ability to watch MTV again since... I dunno, 2000 or something, has made me reminisce about the times when I was watching Alternative Nation in the mid 90's as a teenager. While I don't expect the Greek version of MTV in '08 to have shows specifically for grunge/alternative/punk rock, it does make for a nice memory.

Also, it has helped me remember all those bands I used to love in the 90's, but kind of lost track of them in the last years. One of them is Alice in Chains, a band I started listening to because I thought that was an interesting name, if a bit S&M-ish. I won't bore you with their history, that's what Wikipedia is for, instead I'll head right to the inevitable video, in this case of a song called Would?

TL;DR version:

PIE.

[TV Saturday] House Season 5 trailer (Spoilers!)

2008-09-13T18:50:00.002+03:00

Just a few days remaining until the fifth season of House M.D. begins, and only now did it occur to me that a trailer should be out. Better late than never, I guess.

Season four was probably my favorite one (though it was the first full season I watched, plus I'm totally biased towards Thirteen), and it left quite a few issues to be resolved in the fifth season. Unsurprisingly, this trailer touches upon those, so consider this a spoiler warning. This post will be spoiler-free though, relatively

The trailer itself is good, not as impressive as last year's, but intriguing enough. I'm just worried that they're really going to act on what a character implies at the very end of the trailer, and that's a bad idea. Without saying too much, when a character loses his foil, it's bad both for the character and the storyline. I really hope they don't do it, between this and Grissom leaving CSI, well, ugh! That sucks. You think people would have learned from that time when Duchovny left the X-Files.

Watch the trailer here:

TL;DR version:

Nooooo, Wilson, don't do it!

[Internets Friday] What the?

2008-09-12T20:50:00.003+03:00

After an entire week during which an apparently omnipotent force just wouldn't allow me to leave my hometown, I finally came back to see my computer's browser(s) outright denying to load any websites whatsoever. Good times. I'm guessing I must have really pissed that omnipotent force off.

At any rate, all seems to be well right now, so as of today the blog officially resumes its daily update schedule. I've been busy with some other projects in the mean time, but more on that in the near future.

In the mean time, here's a video of Darth Vader explaining the Pythagorean Theorem. Seriously. You can't make these things up.

TL;DR version:

Darth Vader and the Pythagorean Theorem. How do you even combine the two?

[Indie Tuesday] A long awaited return

2008-09-02T15:08:00.002+03:00

No, not mine. Although that was long overdue, too. But hey, a guy has to have his vacation, even if it's like twice as long than originally planned!

At any rate, this isn't about me. Last week, after literally years and years of waiting, AGD Interactive (formerly Tierra) finally released their third, and most anticipated, remake, Quest for Glory II VGA. I, as I imagine several others did, followed the project closely for years, only to face disappointment every time it was delayed, we're talking about a game that would have been delayed if it had been released in 2004!

Of course, I'm not blaming AGD Interactive about this, they're giving us a game that's completely free and which they created in their spare time out of their goodness of their hearts; to complain would make you a tremendous douchebag. I was just worried that the project would be eventually dropped off, as more important things demanded their attention, as it usually happens.

Thankfully, the game is finally here (visit its release thread on the AGS forums here) and it's glorious. Like the King's Quests remakes that AGD did back in the early 00's, it's completely faithful to the original, while updating it for a more contemporary audience. To be frank, I don't know about you, but I rarely find 16-color EGA graphics aesthetically pleasing anymore.

You can download the game for free at the AGD homepage.

TL;DR version

If you never played QFG2 back in the day, you probably won't stomach it now. Do yourselves a favor and download this VGA-enhanced remake, and enjoy one of Sierra's best adventure games ever (Roberta Williams wasn't even involved, which is an extra plus).

[Hiatus Wed/Thursday] Closing Time

2008-07-31T03:23:00.005+03:00

I realize I missed Wednesday's update, but I have a good excuse. I was watching Leonard Cohen perform live in Athens (or near it, anyway) and it was sublime. Cohen's voice was nothing short of spectacular for a 73, almost 74-year old man, and his group was equally fantastic. But Cohen was... so honest, kind, dignified. What a remarkable man he is. Truly a legend.

In other news, I'll be taking a small break from things and I'll be gone from Athens for a couple of weeks. Updates will be sparse in the meantime. Everybody needs a vacation after all!

I decided to throw in a Leonard Cohen song for good measure.

TL;DR version:

Taram-taram-dum
Taram-taram-dum

[Indie Tuesday] ColourWise

2008-07-29T21:43:00.003+03:00

ColourWise is a game created with Adventure Game Studio, but unlike most games created with that engine, this is a puzzle game. About colors (sorry, I don't do British English), as you may have guessed. It's quite original, as far as puzzle games go, very fun, and even comes with its own level creator! Quite impressive.

(Picture stolen shamelessly from the AGS forums)

It came in third at Eegra's "First Annual Game Makin' Shindig", you can find the download page here and its site here.

TL;DR version:

There's a reason behind this post's lack of walls o' text, and that's because I can log in to Xbox Live again, whoo! I'm currently getting my ass kicked in the new High-Def version of Street Fighter 2. Damn, those people are crazy good.

[MMORPG Monday] WoW Chat Snippets

2008-07-28T21:55:00.008+03:00

It seems that these days, after the rousing success of Blizzard's World of Warcraft, everybody wants to make an MMORPG. Sadly, nobody wants to break new ground, they just regurgitate what Blizzard and everyone else has tried before, it's all grind, grind, grind, empty your bags and questlog, then grind some more. There's several big-name MMORPG's on the horizon, such as Stargate, Warhammer, DC Universe, Knights of the Old Friggin' Republic, and I'm definitely forgetting more than a few. Sadly, there's no reason to believe that they'll bring anything new, but hope dies last and all that.

All the above is just a lengthy way of saying that MMORPG's on their own aren't that much fun, as the gameplay is so repetitive. However, what really makes these games are the people playing it alongside you. There are times you'll visit a dungeon you've finished more than 20 times because these awesome people are coming with you, sometimes even grinding is tolerable if you can have hilarious conversations about all sorts of crap at the same time.

There's something I've wanted to do for a while now, more than a year actually, and that is make a collection of all (or just most) of the hilarious things I came across while playing WoW. Turns out I had to do several collections, since I had so many funny screenshots. Hopefully they'll get a chuckle out of you too, although you really need to have played WoW for some of them to work.

I'll start off with the infamous Trade chat channel. This is the only chat channel that is accessible from all five capital cities, and thus the perfect place for idiots to impress their peers. It's also the biggest victim of Chinese gold sellers.

Moving on, there's a roleplaying addon, called FlagRSP, that helps people add a profile for their character, with a surname, a title and a description of their appearance. Sadly, most people think they can use this addon as means to show the world how awesome they are, and to invite other weirdos to have cybersex with them. Here's the result of that:

A collection of random quotes, funny situations and stupid names:

A few other random stuff I couldn't be bothered to place under a specific category:

And lastly, what really made me stay in the game long after I had gotten tired of the game itself, my guild chat. Some really fantastic, yet also utterly demented, people there who made me laugh out loud (A.K.A. LOL IRL!*) more times than I could possibly remember.

* Yes, I know that's pretty sad.

TL;DR version:

It's rather telling when the main reason people would play a Massively Multiplayer Online Game is the basically the same one people visit a chatroom for. Sure, you have prettier graphics in WoW, AoC, etc., but it's the same principle.

Hopefully this trend will eventually change.

[Off-Topic Sunday] Random news

2008-07-27T22:21:00.002+03:00

The Internet monster, combined with an electrical outage ate my earlier post, but oh well. I'll just rewrite it.

On with the news then. One of my favorite games of all time, Dreamfall, has finally been released on the Xbox Originals lines of Xbox Live, even though it was supposed to come out four months ago. (via RagnarTornquist.com)

Better late than never, I guess. I've said it before, this game has a fantastic story and some of the best characters in a videogame. Play it!

Moving on, the new Futurama movie, Bender's Game, has a release date, November 4, 2008. A new Futurama movie is always good news, and I like the extra emphasis on Bender but... I hope it's better than the previous one, which I found to be pretty disappointing, even though I'm practically starving for more Futurama. (via TVshowsOnDVD.com)

And lastly, footage of the upcoming X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie has been released online, though it's hardly an official trailer. It looks... alright, I guess. You can find its two parts here and here, for the time being, but they might be pulled down rather quickly.

I'm keeping my expectations low, since X-Men 3 broke my heart (the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix saga is one of my fave stories), but this movie could be good. X-Men 2/Spider-Man 2/Iron Man good. The potential is there, with the character and the cast, let's hope the story is up to the task.

I like how they tease us with a scene of young James Howlett, I just hope the Origin references will be meaningful and not tacked on. Although, for a movie that's not supposed to be about the entire X-Men team, it sure has a lot of guest stars. Sabretooth (makes sense), DEADPOOOL, that other dude from Weapon-X I can't remember, Gambit. And was that Husk, from Gen-X? I could swear it was her.

At any rate, Wolvie is one of Marvel's best characters and he deserves a good movie. Hopefully they won't mess this up.

TL;DR version:

I hate Gambit. True story.

Also, I want a Deadpool movie. R rated, please.

[Movie Saturday] The X-Files - Do YOU want to believe?

2008-07-26T22:15:00.013+03:00

It's already been ten years since the first X-Files movie, Fight the Future. Excluding the fact that time flew by so disturbingly fast, only now have we finally managed to get a sequel to that movie, six whole years after the show's (insultingly bad) finale.

I got back from seeing the new movie, I Want to Believe, a little while ago. I really cannot be objective with this movie, as I was a huge fan of the TV show way back when (I never called my self an X-Phile though, thank the gods), so this movie was like a wish being fulfilled for me, than anything else.

Before I get into the movie itself, I feel the need to rant a little. You may skip the next three paragraphs if you're only interested in reading about the movie.

It's been an entire decade since the last X-Files movie. So many things have changed since. Back in '98, the show had just finished its fifth and most successful season ever, and it topped that with a movie that was a direct continuation of the season finale that used a better budget and longer length to really take its alien-invasion/government conspiracy storyline to new heights. It may have alienated the casual viewer, but to fans of the show like myself, it was a fantastic movie. Sadly, things only went downhill from there. The next two seasons were alright, but nowhere near the quality of their predecessors, and the last two were just plain bad, culminating to that insult of a finale that I mentioned earlier.

Furthermore, one thing I cannot overstate enough is how different decades the 90's and the 00's are. I'm not sure if it were just the result of lucky timing, or the creators of the X-Files really caught the spirit of the times. Things like alien abductions, the possibility of contact with an alien civilization, Roswell, conspiracy theories involving the government and possible cover-ups of evidence relating to all the above... Those things were huge during the last decade. Don't forget that about 2% of all Americans claimed to have been abducted by aliens in their life. Aliens and conspiracy theories were the hysteria of the decade.

This decade, however, is a lot darker and serious, our fears more mundane and realistic. Nobody cares about aliens anymore, we only fear terrorists and the fact that we might not be able to afford our next rent, or the ever-increasing price of oil, etc. Conspiracy theories seem outdated, as people don't care about Roswell anymore, everyday problems have a much bigger appeal, if you can call it that. Can the X-Files still be relevant at this time, when most people have outgrown their alien conspiracy theory phase?

(mild spoilers from here on, nothing too serious though)

These were the reservations I had with the movie prior to seeing it, and combined with the fact that early word of mouth was pretty discouraging, it made my expectations really, really low. Which, in retrospect, was probably a good thing. Because, and I'll get this out of the way now, I liked I Want to Believe, but I didn't love it, though I did try.

It was perhaps due to the limited appeal of aliens nowadays that the creators of IWtB decided to tackle a new, original story, along perhaps with the fact that it has been six whole years since the show ended and even fans of the show will have forgotten all the details. That, and also the fact that by the time the show ended, its mythology had become such a clusterfuck that nobody knew what was going on, and nobody would bother to remember. At any rate, the story of IWtB is a much more down to earth, tame kind of story.

Did it really have to be so tame, though? The mystery that Mulder and Scully face is pretty mundane, perhaps not even real X-Files material, despite the presence of gay Russian Cylons. If IWtB had aired like a two-part filler episode during the show's run, nobody would have noticed a difference, and most would have considered it rather forgettable as well. The action scenes are mediocre, and most suspensful scenes are far too predictable. There are several hints at something larger and deeper, as well as references to the show itself, but on the whole, the story feels lacking. Although the fact that the one piece of information that ultimately solves the case was taken from a real-life event (link - SPOILERS) was pretty neat.

One thing that I really liked though was the fact that the FBI had to turn to Mulder when they had run out of leads, undoubtedly a reference to the fact that, in his hayday, Mulder was the Bureau's finest profiler. It's an easy thing to forget about Mulder, given the emphasis on his "Spooky" persona, but he always was a brilliant detective and researcher.

Though, I have to ask, what the fuck was up with Scully doing research on stem cell surgery by googling the damn thing? She's supposed to be a brilliant scientist, if she doesn't have books on the subject, surely she knows what sites she should check, geebus. In my eyes, it felt like an attempt to appeal to the younger demographic, a way of saying "see, we still know how things are done!" that falls flat on its face and makes for some really poor storytelling. It's just one scene though, so I'll let it slide. Though the whole subplot with the sick kid did feel a bit uncessesary in general.

What makes this movie is its two iconic protagonists, Mulder and Scully. I can't imagine how someone who has never seen an episode of the series would ever pick up one tenth of what's going on between the two characters, which in a sense is rather strange for a movie that's trying to be stand-alone, but for a fan it's a real treat. The movie explores most familiar themes between the two, such as Mulder's belief (thus vindicating the title, despite the lack of aliens) and Scully's pragmatism, in a way that is both endearing and enjoyable. I'll be damned if Duchovny doesn't look much older than he used to, though.

I got carried away again, as if I were an English major or something, so I'll get right to the conclusion. Can an X-Files movie still be relevant today? Yes, somewhat. The fact that IWtB had a whole new plot behind it definitely helped, murder mysteries never get old after all. Add to that two characters that are really strong and deep, even by today's standards, and the foundation is there.

Sadly, the plot itself is weak and predictable, and the two protagonists will probably appeal the most only to seasoned viewers of the show. Which makes me wonder, if you're making a movie targetted mainly at fans of the show, why not relate it to the overall mythology, or at least hint to it? I don't get it. Hopefully, the next movie (if we ever get one) will provide that.

As a long-time fan of the show, I enjoyed it and I expect most other fans starving for some Fox&Dana goodness will feel the same, as long as you believe (haw haw) in it. You have to watch it as an X-Files fan, not as a casual observer. Though I can definitely understand those that will not like this movie, fans or otherwise.

My final rating is 73 out of 100 sunflower seeds.

TL;DR version:

Don't mind the fact that this movie isn't as good as it should have been after having to wait ten years for it, just watch it anyway. This way, we might actually get a real sequel to the series that deals with the inevitable alien invasion (spoilers OLOL) that the wretched episode called The Truth never got around to dealing with.

I also wanted to make a mean joke about that hospital that's being run by priests and nuns, but I'm drawing a blank. I'll get back to it.

Lastly, it sure feels weird watching a movie were snow has covered everything and it's like minus fuck-all degrees, when it's the middle of the summer in real life. Kind of like watching a rerun of a Christmas episode during Easter.

[Internets Friday] VReel.net beta is up

2008-07-25T23:18:00.005+03:00

No sports post yesterday as I was out watching The Dark Knight for a third time (it's incredible how many little details I missed out the first two times), not to mention that this has been an utterly uneventful week for sports. I'll make up for the missing post on Sunday, fingers crossed.

At any rate, the VReel beta has been around for little more than a month now, which is enough time for a decent amount of videos to start appearing on the site. While it's a bit silly to even think that it will ever have as many videos as YouTube, that might not be necessarily a bad thing. After all, following the footsteps of its predecessor Stage6, VReel is about quality and not quantity.

This quality is definitely there, with the use of the DivX codec, videos are as crisp as they were on Stage6. Content is still a bit limited, naturally, but with "more then one hundred thousand unique hits per day" according to Wikipedia, it's only a matter of time before things get interesting.

On a side note, I've tickets for the new X-Files movie tomorrow, I really hope it won't suck...

TL;DR version:

While VReel might not ever attract as big an audience as YouTube, it does have higher-quality videos, and fewer retarded comments from users. Those are two major improvements over YT.

[Comic book Wednesday] Five Batman graphic novels you should read

2008-07-23T22:03:00.010+03:00

The Thor article is postponed yet again since I finally got Mass Effect today and I really want to play the fucking game, been waiting since November.

Therefore, in light of The Dark Knight's release and all-around awesomeness (and in retrospect something I should have done last week), here are my top-5 favorite Batman graphic novels ever, and why you should read them.

I purposely ignore Frank Miller's run on Batman, because it goes without saying that those are must-reads, and are universally acclaimed as the best stories in the series, ever. As for the rest, in no particular order:

- Batman: Hush

I seemed to like this story more than most people. It's not something I can completely explain, but I thought Hush was thoroughly entertaining. A great mystery, a strange new (?) villain is playing with the Dark Knight's mind through the use of some of his older enemies, lots of guest stars, and amazing art by Jim Lee.

One thing I especially liked was the fact that this story is one of the rare cases where we see Bruce Wayne's more human side, in his relationship with Catwoman, it feels like if he's actually trying to act like a human being. Personally, I found it to be a more realistic approach to his character than most.

Though that stupid mutt that Superman has almost ruins the entire story.

- Batman: A Death in the Family

Robin dies in it. Shame they had to find a replacement eventually, but it was good while it lasted.

(Cynicism aside, a -permanent- death of a major character is something that very rarely happens in comic books, and it's even rarer that it's handle as well as in this story. The aftermath haunted Batman for more than a decade.)

- Batman: Arkham Asylum

Dave McKean's art should be reason enough for anyone to pick up this graphic novel, but the fact that we get a glimpse of what happens to all those super-villains once they've been arrested seals the deal. It's completely trippy, fairly demented and almost scary at times. A very different, unique, approach to the Batman universe (Batmanverse?).

- Batman: The Killing Joke

While origin stories rarely work, when they do work, they are absolutely astounding. The Killing Joke is such a success story, and with Alan Moore behind it, it shouldn't come as a surprise. It follows the nurture over nature theory which suggests that villains, even utterly insane ones like the Joker, were once normal people just like anyone of us, who one day got unlucky and had to go thorugh more than they could handle. This is what (presumably) happened to the Joker, and this is what in turn he is trying to do to the infallible Commissioner Gordon.

The Joker's depiction in this story was the main influence behind his silver screen version in The Dark Knight.

- Batman: The Long Halloween
(Don't read the Story Summary on the Wiki, some crazy nutso summarized the entire graphic novel there!)

While the Batman's is supposed to be "The Greatest Detective in the World", we so rarely get to see him practice his detective skills fully. Not so in this tale. If you exclude for the presence of Batman and some of his iconic villains, and replace them with a regular detective and run-of-the-mill outlaws, then The Long Halloween reads like a noir detective story, based on the hunt of a serial killer who only kills during holidays.

The atmosphere is fantastic, the artwork beautiful (and I'm no fan of Tim Sale), and the story is well... sublime. The "Dream Team" trio of Batman, Gordon and Harvey Dent presented at the first half of the novel is amazing, essentially it is the story of three people against an entire, corrupt, city. And for a while there, they were actually winning.

This is what makes Dent's eventual downfall all the more tragic, in a way that really affects the reader as we had seen what he was capable of, and what his potential was. Dent really was the best of the three, yet he was the one that was driven mad, the one that lost everything. In a sense, Dent's tale is a beautiful, yet sad, allegory of the tragedy that is the human existence.

On top of that, after all these years, we're still not exactly, 100% sure who the Holiday killer was.

Along with The Killing Joke, The Long Halloween was the main inspiration behind The Dark Knight.

TL;DR version:

Feel free to comment on how much my list sucks and why I'm an idiot for leaving out "Batman graphic novel 'X'".

I also think that a Batman action-adventure game based on his detective skills would be brilliant.

[Retro Tuesday] Loom revisited. Also, headaches

2008-07-22T23:04:00.004+03:00

My head is killing me today, and I am feeling seriously dizzy. It shouldn't be anything serious, but it's annoying me enough to not be able to right anything properly today. Theeeeerefooooooore, this is going to be another one of those short posts accompanied by a YouTube clip.

Loom, a 1990 game by LucasFilm (currently LucasArts) is a very unique experience, even when compared to the other great adventure games released by the company in the early to mid 90's. One of the first graphical adventures to completely abandon the use of an inventory and related puzzles, the gameplay instead revolves around the use of a distaff and the musical tones the protagonist, Bobbin Threadbare, can play with it.

From a technical point of view, the game was fantastic for its age, especially the CD version, with VGA graphics and full speech. I played the game as a kid, when CD-ROM drives and sound cards were something I'd only read in magazines about, but the 16-color EGA graphics and PC speaker grunts had their own charm back then. Though I find that the 256-color VGA version is really beautiful even today, as it has aged really well. The music is also outstanding, as it should be in a game which emphasises its use so much, but what really stands out is the use of excerpts from Chopin's Swan Lake.

Loom's plot is fairly basic at first glance, as it is basically the typical story of an unwilling young man who is tasked with saving the world, but Brian Moriarty weaved (pardon the pun) a beautiful tale around this basic premise. I can't get into any detailed analysis at the moment due to my amazing nearly-exploding head, but I will say that the story manages to surprise me with its depth and maturity even on my current (second) playthrough, sixteen whole years after my first experience with the game. The game is also quite violent at times, though the violence makes perfect sense in the context it's presented in, something that was another departure from most LucasArts/LucasFilm games of the day.

Sadly the game wasn't as successful as its peers, which presumably is a direct concequence of its unique nature. We tend to idealize about those times, but the early to mid 90's were a time when adventure games were the FPS's of today, and Sierra/Roberta Williams were pumping one sequel after the other, with the predictable results of often low quality, bug-ridden games. In that context, especially when considering that there was no fan-driven Internet hype machine at the time, it wasn't at all surprising that people preferred Sierra's by-the-numbers sequel than a completely new, and sometimes perplexing game such as Loom.

If you would allow me to indulge into a "What-if?" theorycraf rant, I'd have to say that it really is a shame that Loom wasn't a big mainstream success. Had it been such a success, more games would have copied its unique point and click system, which isn't based on such arbitrary verbs or icons for such things as "Talk" or "Use" and so on. But more importantly, more games would have copied its unique approach to puzzles, and its lack of inventory, instead of the countless bullshit inventory puzzles we had to endure over the years. You know, the kind where you have to rub every single item in your inventory of 20+ items on every single part of your screen and hope for some results. Makes one wonder how much more intuitive adventure games would have been had this design convention been abandoned, but oh well.

Rant's over, here's the intro of the game, alongside with some of the first few areas. I have to confess, listening to Bobbin's voice after all these years is a strange feeling.

There's also a speedrun of the entire game on YouTube, where some nutso finishes the entire game in 27 minutes. I haven't watched it, but it should make for an interesting watch for people who want to find out more about the game but don't want to play it. Though I wouldn't be surprised if he skips every single cutscene. At any rate, you can find said video here.

TL;DR version:

"The last leaf of Autumn."

[DS Monday] Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword

2008-07-21T23:27:00.007+03:00

After a rather underwhelming E3, nothing really topped that FFXIII announcement, it's time for gamers to return to their backlog, and the summer is the perfect time for that!

The first game in my list was the latest entry in the Ninja Gaiden series, Dragon Sword, for the Nintendo DS. The DS hardly seemed like the ideal platform for the top-notch graphics and high-paced action of the Ninja Gaiden series, but somehow Tecmo made it work. The touch controls work perfectly, combat is very satisfying and just plain fun, the graphics are really nice and the bosses are huge.

It's hardly without its faults, though. The game is very short, it took me a little less than six hours to finish, and while I will always take a short yet good game over a game that has tons of filler, not to mention there are several reasons to replay the game, I can't help but feel that they could have easily added at least a couple more hours of quality gameplay.

Then there's the issue of the game's surprisingly low difficulty. I'm using the word "surprisingly", because all recent Ninja Gaiden games are notoriously difficult. So much so that they're almost a benchmark on how difficult a contemporary mainstream game can be. I guess that Tecmo had to make the game appealing to the DS demographic, but when you can kill most bosses in your first try, something doesn't feel right. In fact, I'd say that some bosses felt easier than some other random encounters with normal enemies in the game. The "Head Ninja" (wut?) difficulty that is unlocked once you finish the game makes it feel more like a traditional Ninja Gaiden game, but not everyone will stomach a second playthrough.

Lastly, the story is incredibly, undeniably, bad, so much that it's bound to make you groan several times (it involves a demon conspiracy, 'nuff said), but that's practically a given with Ninja Gaiden games these days, so it hardly comes as a surprise.

TL;DR version:

Apparently Dragon Sword didn't sell all that well, which is rather amusing, given that people complain about the lack of traditional games on the DS, and when they are finally given a game adhering to their rules, they don't buy it. Still, it's a quality purchase for DS owners.

[Movie Saturday] The Dark Knight

2008-07-19T23:41:00.005+03:00

I watched it yesterday.

It's as good as people would have you think. It's exactly what I expected from the movie after the ending of Batman Begins and that wonderful scene with Gordon's speech about escalation and the introduction of the Joker card.

Believe the hype, especially about Ledger.

Watch. This. Movie.

TL;DR version:

There's so many things I want to say about this movie, but I'm not sure where to start. I'll give it a try anyway.

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

It really is different to every movie based on a comic book that came before it. Even Batman Begins. The Dark Knight feels like more like a serious cop drama starring a guy in a bat suit, rather than a spandex action flick. It's the perfect rendition of those dark, serious, gritty Batman graphic novels, rather than the average "villain of the week" Detective comics issue written by some random hack, which is what the Schumacher Batman films felt like, by the way.

I understand some people, and especially critics, did not like the movie exactly for that reason, that it tries to be something more than an action film with superheroes. Well, fuck me. There's just no pleasing some people, is there?

Personally, I absolutely loved the direction they took with this movie. It felt true to the source material, the graphic novels as I mentioned above, and it made for a more realistic, genuinely interesting movie. Not exactly a more "fun" movie, but Bruce Wayne was never about the fun to begin with.

Performances as a whole were amazing. People seem to hate Bale's Batman voice, but I didn't mind it. Hell, if somebody just kicked your ass and then talks to you like that, you will be intimidated. Caine and Freeman were outstanding in their roles, and their characters are excellent foils to Bruce Wayne, while Gyllenhaal did an excellent work with Rachel, even though her screen time is pretty limited. The actor who really surprised me, however, was Aaron Eckhart's portrayal of Harvey Dent and Two-Face (I told ya about those spoilers!) From being the White Knight of Gotham to the psycho killer with the gruesome face injury, Exkhart did a tremendous job. While the story of Dent's fall itself could perhaps do with a little more (just a bit) development, his performance more than makes up for it.

I loved the story of Dent's fall in The Long Halloween, but the version offered in this movie makes perfect sense in the confines of the movie itself. Two-Face wasn't set up to be a major villain, but more of a character to illustrate a point. Or perhaps two points, those being the Joker's point that everyone can be corrupted, and Alfred's warning about not knowing when and where to stop. But that is another story altogether.

I purposely didn't mention Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker so far, as I was expecting that he'd be great. I've already confessed to being a fan of his, and the trailers alone made his performance really seem like something special. Only the trailers said part of the story, and the actual performance was better than I expected. I honestly had to remind myself that this was Ledger, an actor playing a role, and not a real lunatic sociopath. He makes the role seem so natural, it's downright absurd. We're talking about a guy with a face full of makeup, wearing a purple tax, this seriously shouldn't look realistic!

And yet he pulled it off. From the way he delivered his lines ("Hiiiii!") to his body language, to his humor, to his worldview and the way he conducts things... If he doesn't get a place in the pantheon of greatest, most iconic, movie villains of all time (fuck the Oscars), alongside Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates and HAL 9000, it'll be a great injustice. His death was a terrible loss, especially after such a role which fully illustrates what an amazing talent he had. Damnit, Heath.

Seven paragraphs in, and I haven't even talked about the story. And I could easily spend more than seven paragraphs talking about it, but since it's kinda late I'll keep it to two. Much like Eckhart's performance, I wasn't really expecting the story to be so deep, so engaging. I was expecting it to have a strong story, but nothing spectacular, much like Batman Begins. Boy, was I wrong. There's so much there, so many themes, allusions, symbolism, social commentary, Hell the Joker's rants alone strike eerily, if not uncomfortably, close to home when it comes to human nature. And the best thing about all these elements is the fact that none are heavy-handed, or presented in a preachy manner.

I'll speak about my favorite examples of such storytelling techniques in a later post since I want to digest them fully before I do so, but if I were to mention one that comes to mind right now, it would be the Jokers speech on rules, plans, people's obsession with them and how that's illustrated perfectly with Harvey Dent. It was part of a plan that made Dent lie about being the man behind the Batman mask, a plan that was supposed to help them capture the Joker and ultimately lead the good guys to win. And it would have worked, had two corrupted cops decided to not play by Dent's rules, and instead betray him, ultimately leading to the death of his fianceé and his own horrible mal/transformation. Yet still, even after Dent lost half his face and his soul, he had to cling to a set of rules. He wouldn't kill the woman who betrayed his trust, because his own (new) rules prohibited him from doing so. In a way, even in insanity, Dent stubbornly based his only hope for sense in the world in his morality code, even if it were as arbitrary as the flip of a coin. And there's another point to be made about luck here, but I won't get into that right now.

Was there something I didn't like? Well, that whole cell-phone based sonar felt a bit tacky and didn't quite fit with the rest of the movie, although it did help paint a very amoralistic image of Batman. Which, incidentally, is one of my favorite parts of the story, and which I really want to get to in a future post.

(Goes to show how much I liked the movie when I mention positive things in the paragraph about the things I didn't like, doesn't it?)

Another thing would be the lack of music during some of the action scenes, I've been spoiled by the wonderful theme and would really like to hear it more often. In a similar note, I felt like we didn't hear the Joker's laugh enough times, but then again we'll probably sleep more easily this way. Lastly, the cynic in me believes that had the two ferries incident taken place in real life, at least one of the boats would have ended up exploding, and that they kind of dropped the ball with that one. Then again, I'll be the first to admit that I may be a bit too cynical, not to mention that I've been completely conditioned by the Song of Ice and Fire series, where people are dying left and right. Plus, I'm not sure that agreeing with the Joker on the nature of human beings is a good thing to do.

Did I ever mention that most, if not all, things and situations remind me of a joke? Because they do.

[Internets Friday] The Phishing IQ Test

2008-07-18T14:05:00.002+03:00

If you don't know what phishing is, you're doing it wrong already. From Wikipedia:

"phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication."

Sometimes phishing is fairly obvious, many typos and bad grammar in an e-mail, ridiculous claims, etc. But people adapt, and so do phishers. It helps being paranoid of course, I generally ignore all e-mails from people I don't know.

However, I came across an Phishing IQ test lately, and realized I'm not paranoid enough. I only got 5 out of 10 in that test, my paranoia made me think 3 legit sites were out to uh... phish me, but I was also fooled by two phishing sites. In retrospect, I should have been paying more attention.

It's a nifty test to take, though as with most tests, it shouldn't be taken too seriously, and could help most people identify phishing e-mails with more ease.

TL;DR version:

Greetings to you, I am the Prince of Nigeria. I want you to have my money, but you'll have to give me yours first.

[Basketball Thursday] World Olympic Qualifiers group phase wrap-up

2008-07-17T22:50:00.002+03:00

So far, so predictable.

There wasn't a single surprise in the entire group phase of the tournament, with Korea almost providing the exception with their near upset over Canada. However, after leading with sixteen points, they completely chocked and didn't score for almost two minutes. Otherwise, all other games had the expected results, with the favorites getting easy victories.

The teams that have played the best so far are Greece, Germany, Croatia and Slovenia. They're probably going to make it to the semifinals too, and three of them will make it to the Olympics. My money is on Germany, Croatia and of course Greece, but I'm hardly impartial.

That being said, I was really impressed by the way we played last night. A far cry from last year's snooze-fest, the Greek team offered the same type of aggressive defense that became its trademark and gave the team the second place in the World Cup of '06. If we keep this up, I like our chances at an Olympic medal. After all, the team played the absolute worst way possible last year, and still managed to come in fourth.

Beyond that, now that they've managed to get Chris Kaman, Germany has become a much better team, it seems. Rather than expecting everything from Dirk, now they have someone else to depend on, on both sides of the field. Should help the team a lot.

I was kind of bummed yesterday as I arrived a few minutes late at the game, and missed the New Zealanders' patented Haka war dance. I always wanted to see that live, and I'll miss it again tomorrow as I'll be watching The Dark Knight, finally. It's a fair trade, plus I was able to see Dirk kick so much ass yesterday, with 35 points in 32 minutes. That guy could have easily been the best player in the world right now, had he been born an American.

TL;DR version:

Dirk Nowitzki rules you.

[Fancy-word Wednesday] How to break it to your friends that their story sucks

2008-07-16T17:48:00.002+03:00

It's probably has happened to everyone, more than once too, at that. Somebody close to you has written something, and it's not really that great. In fact, it's actually rather horrible. Not just from your subjective point of view, it's objectively a piece of excrement.

How do you break it to your friend? You have to be honest, because you should be honest to friends when it comes to things like this, and it's better if you break the news to them, rather than say a publisher who will laugh at their face. But at the same time, you have to be careful and not hurt their feelings because a) they're your friend, doofus, and b) it might dissuade them from writing any further, if even their friends hate their work.

Neil Gaiman recently answered such a question in his blog, and as with most things Gaiman does, I find myself agreeing completely. You can find his answer here (scroll down a bit), my favorite part would be the following:

"And if you do decide to tell them what's wrong with their book then you don't have to tell them everything that's wrong with it."

This is great, because while you are still telling the truth, naming every single thing you hated is probably not going to win you any more points with your friend. Not to mention you'll probably look like a douche.

TL;DR version:

I don't know about you, but instead of writing, I'm now going to see Dirk Nowitzki play basketball. And after that I'm also seeing the Greek national team. Le woot!

[Retro Tuesday] The actual Retro Tuesday Post

2008-07-15T22:54:00.007+03:00

Since E3 is still going strong with quite a few big announcements, none as big as the Final Fantasy XIII one as of yet though, it's kind of hard to concentrate on anything else game-related. Still, since today's theme is retro/indie games, I'll stick to the subject.

At any rate, today's subject is the Red Alert series of strategy games. What started as a prequel/sidestory to the Command & Conquer series, as well as a thinly veiled criticism of Soviet Russia and/or a Tom Clancy fangasm, eventually became its own, independent series.

The first game came out in 1996 and had a very interesting story premise. What would happen if Hitler was killed (by Einstein, no less) before he gained power? According to Westwood, the people behind Red Alert, not really that much. The major difference would be that instead of Hitler, Stalin would try to take over the world. With tesla cannons. And jet planes. Well alright, Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe did teach us that during WWII the Germans did have access to jet planes as well, but they weren't exactly as advanced as the ones in Red Alert.

That was the main catch of this game. Einstein's use of a time machine to kill Hitler created a rift in the time-space continuum, which according to every rule of Comic Book Physics means that it's entirely possible for Apache helicopters to co-exist with WWII-era tanks, and Tesla coil weapons (which never existed in our timeline) to co-exist with ordinary flamethrowers. This meant that the developers were free to add all sorts of strange units to what was otherwise a very realistic game, much like its predecessor, Command & Conquer. The fact that the plots of these two games are connected through the character of Kane/Yuri also helped explain the level of technology available in the C&C games.

However, the sequel that came out four years later was much different as far as plot was concerned. In those four years that had passed, Westwood was bought out by Electronic Arts, and Blizzard had released their magnum opus, Starcraft, which went on to become a huge success and steal C&C's thunder.

It was perhaps a side-effect of the buyout, but while Red Alert 2's story is a direct continuation of the original game's, there is no connection to the main Command & Conquer storyline. In fact, as of this game, the Red Alert universe is supposed to be a different, perhaps parallel, one to the C&C universe. This was kind of a disappointment to some fans, me included, as we crave our Kane drama, and I was never a big fan of retcons to be honest. Later on, EA tried to tie the two universes together again, but this story has become one big clusterfuck already.

All that aside, while RA2 wasn't as good as its predecessor, or indeed its competitors, it was a really fun game and had even quirkier units than anything else. From Rocketeers and Chrono Legionnaires which erase enemies from time, to tanks shaped like giant spiders and attack... squids (I'm not making this up), the unit selection was definitely fresh and unique.

And then there was the main theme, Hell March. Inarguably one of the best themes in gaming history, anyone disagreeing will be tesla coil'd to death. Here's a really nice video compilation of movies from the games, with Hell March playing on the background:

Red Alert 3 was announced a while ago, and the people who bought the expansion for C&C3 will have access to its beta soon -lucky bastards, but so far we hadn't seen a single thing from it. While we still don't know much (will Yuri/Kane still play a role? He should, he gets around), the following video shows us one thing: There's a new faction, the Japanese! And true to the series, they have some really loopy units, such as jet planes that change into robots, Robotech style, and giant mechs. Can't wait, personally! I'm more excited about this game than Starcraft 2, in fact.

TL;DR version:

Retro, smetro. Here's a couple of shiny new things:

Disappointed by Street Fighter IV's cast so far? Capcom has now created a poll that lets fans vote for the next character to be added to SFIV's roster. While to someone jaded and cynical like myself, it seems like further confirmation of SFIV being complete fan service, it's still a neat thing, and will hopefully mean that we'll see more characters than just the entire cast of SFII. Better start mashing that F5 key.

And since my #1 game on my wish list is Gears of War 2, here's the cinematic trailer that's just as good as the Mad World trailer of the original (A.K.A. best trailer ever)

November can't come fast enough.

[Monday Post] Seriously, this is still Monday

2008-07-15T02:39:00.005+03:00

I've been trying to log in to Blogger all day long, but I was constantly getting time out errors. I think I have to blame my connection which has been acting up lately.

At any rate, I was going to talk about E3, with the regular crap as how it's not as important as it used to be, blah blah, adding a little touch of how hype can make or break anything these days, such as the Sony PS3 "$600" disaster of '06. To that effect, I'd mention BioWare's upcoming game, Dragon Age, which had one (actually two) of the worst teaser trailers ever, so utterly generic and stupid it hurt.

It remains to be seen whether the hype machine will manage to recover Dragon Age, but right now the big news is something different, something that would make my "E3 isn't as important as it used to be" statement utterly null and void.

You see, Final Fantasy XIII, one of the most anticipated games of this generation of gaming, is no longer a PS3 exclusive, as it's also coming to the Xbox 360. That's huge, as FFXIII was one of the last big exclusives the PS3 had. I'm too tired and very unsober to read through the fanboy outrage right now, and I have the new Futurama DVD to watch, but I'll savour that for tomorrow, it should be sweet.

It makes sense though, this move. Given the costs of games these days, it only logical that most games are not confined to one console anymore. Game companies are supposed to make money after all, not drown in debt. It really feels like the era of exclusives (outside of first-party games, naturally) is coming to an end.

To me, a usually-happy-but-lately-grumpy (UNBAN ME ALREADY) Xbox360 owner, it doesn't really change much. I'm not a very big fan of the series, and I generally find jRPG's boring, but this sure is a big deal, and the outcome could be huge. We'll see, I guess.

TL;DR version:

Pigs are a-flyin'.

[Movie Saturday] The Max Payne movie

2008-07-12T21:56:00.010+03:00

If there is a list out there named "Best videogames with the worst names ever", Max Payne is definitely high up that list, alongside such games as Banjo-Tooie and The Legend of Zelda: Link's and Terra's Excellent Adventure. Seriously, naming a shooter game, and even its protagonist, Max Pain... That takes balls. Huge, gigantic, balls.

Max Payne and its 2003 sequel are highly stylized third-person shooters, with a presentation that's quite different to most games, and the first game to incorporate "that Matrix slow-motion thing" effect in its gameplay. So effectively in fact that this effect has ever since been called Bullet Time, a name first coined by the developers of this game.

Max Payne is effectively a film noir game, with its story focusing on a framed cop with an aptitude for brooding monologues. One of the most impressive aspects of the game's presentation were the cutscenes, which were presented in the form a page ripped directly out of a graphic novel, with speech bubbles and all. While the story itself was fairly convoluted and quite frankly bonkers, as a rule of the thumb, I prefer a pretentious yet witty story over a completely brainless one. And seeing a shooter with a story that's not utterly brainless was definitely a welcome change.

As I was reading through the manual of the very first Max Payne all the way back in 2002, I noticed something very interesting; it was alluding to a Max Payne movie that was already in the works and should have been released "soon". Well, fast forward seven years after that piece was written (in 2001, for you math types out there), we're finally getting this movie. It will be based on the first movie, Valkyr drug and all, with a few rumored aspects of the second game making it as well.

The cast looks solid, Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg is set to play Max and has proved himself to be a very competent actor, with gruff, brooding characters being something of a specialty of his. And then there's Mila Kunis who's... well, hot. I'm a bit worried about the director though, John Moore, who was responsible for such atrocities as Behind Enemy Lines and the 2006 version of The Omen, but I'm willing to keep an open mind.

What I'm really worried about, however, is the movie's rating, which has been confirmed to be a PG-13. I honestly do not get it. The original game is a dark, violent tale of a man's bloody and gory path towards redemption. There's a lot of violence, swearing, and everything else you might expect from such a tale. A PG-13 all but ensures that the movie will have little of those. Hell, you can't even have an actor smoke a cigarette anymore with that rating. It seems you can't do anything fun in a movie these days anymore without having the censors running after you.

Stop!

That blows my mind, really. I'm not a violent person (that incident where I broke a PS2 controller while playing P.E.S notwithstanding), in fact I abhor mindless violence. I also don't smoke. Okay, so I swear all the fucking time, but that's not the point here. Swearing and violence make sense in the context of the world where the game takes place. It's a dark place, where things aren't fair where bad things happen to good people all the time. And its protagonist is a man bent on revenge, who while on his quest for vengeance, not only becomes as bad as the people he's hunting, he arguably becomes worse.

So yes, I believe that the freedom given by an "R" rating is what is needed to bring Max Payne's dark world into the silver screen (clichés ahoy!) properly. It goes without saying that you can have a serious, violent, story with even the most vibrant pastel colors, but in the case of the Max Payne movie, it's also about staying true to its roots.

An example that comes to mind are the two Alien Versus Predator movies. While I'm far from being a fan of either one, the first movie went for a PG-13 rating that was completely out of place for fans of both original franchises, which were both really damn violent. The result was an overwhelming disappointment for most people. The sequel, AVP: Requiem, went for an "R" rating, and while that alone didn't make it a better movie, it definitely made it feel more true to its sources.

I for one liked AVP:R more than its predecessor though, and a quite fun movie on its own rights, but others would disagree. Oh, well.

And, to go back to Max Payne, if nothing else, Hell. How can you have a film noir without anyone smoking? That's just not right.

All this bitching aside, the first trailer for this movie is looking really damn good. They've captured the style and atmosphere of the games, Wahlberg is looking good in his role, and the action scenes seem suspensful. If not for the rating thing, I'd be sold on this movie already. Here's the actual trailer itself, so you can make up your own minds:

TL;DR version:

While there's still time for Max Payne the movie to fuck up everything the game stood for, The Dark Knight premieres on Thursday, and that one has been rated awesome. Not to mention that we're getting the new X-Files movie the week after this, though I'm a bit worried about that one.

[Radio Friday] Resonance FM

2008-07-11T23:06:00.004+03:00

I've always been a huge fan of the radio as a medium. I find it's appealing on a far more personal level than anything else, and there's less pretenses to be upheld too (even if that's rapidly changing over the years, sadly). If there's one good thing about the Internet, it's the fact that nowadays it's so damn easy to listen to any radio station from around the world, rather than being limited to what's offered in your area.

One of my favorite radio stations to listen through the Internet is London's Resonance FM 104.4. Instead of ranting incoherently about what makes it so good, here's a few excerpts from their About page:

"Resonance 104.4 fm is the world’s first radio art station, established by London Musicians’ Collective."

"Its brief? To provide a radical alternative to the universal formulae of mainstream broadcasting."

"Imagine a radio station like no other. A radio station that makes public those artworks that have no place in traditional broadcasting. A radio station that is an archive of the new, the undiscovered, the forgotten, the impossible. That is an invisible gallery, a virtual arts centre whose location is at once local, global and timeless. And that is itself a work of art. Imagine a radio station that responds rapidly to new initiatives, has time to draw breath and reflect. A laboratory for experimentation, that by virtue of its uniqueness brings into being a new audience of listeners and creators."

Obviously I believe those claims, otherwise I wouldn't like the station as much as I do. Tellingly, the very first thing I listened to when I first connected to their streaming server was a very interesting interview with Isabelle Allende, which suffice to say made for a great first impression.

TL;DR version:

If you like listening to the radio, give Resonance FM a try. Chances are, you'll like it.

(Hey, an actual TL;DR version for a change!)

[Basketball Thursday] The World Olympic Qualifiers

2008-07-10T23:03:00.005+03:00

If there ever were a pointless tournament, the World Olympic Qualifying Tournament must be it.

Long story short, instead of having every single team qualify for the Olympic games from their respective tournaments (such as the EuroBasket ' 07 tournament), FIBA decided to make things complicated. As a result, only a handful of teams from each continent from said tournaments, while the rest are now forced to qualify through the WOQT (my own, unofficial abbreviation*).

The result is that the teams in the WOQT had to start their preparations much sooner than the rest of the teams that have already qualified for the Olympic Games, which means they'll be more fatigued. To make matters worse for the teams that will eventually qualify for the Olympic Games, they will have to play in two highly competible tournaments, and not just one. For that reason, I can't really see a team that qualified from the WOTQ to go very far in the Olympic tournament itself, fatigue will most likely be a huge factor. After all, most players are coming from full seasons, in which they got too little time to rest already. These extra games won't help one bit.

Realistically, out of the twelve teams in the tournament, only a few have decent chances of qualifying to begin with. Brazil, Greece, perhaps Germany if Dirk feels like it, Slovenia if they don't choke, perhaps Croatia and Puerto Rico too. It makes me feel like this tournament is pretty redundant, as quite a few games will probably be a blowout. Was there any real reason for twelve teams in this tournament and not eight, or perhaps less?

The obvious answer for this is the fact that then it wouldn't be considered a real tournament, and thus it couldn't be marketed as such, of course. I just can't help but feel a bit sorry for athletes when they're used like that for nothing more than money. They should be given at least one month every year to rest. I can think of players that haven't gotten more than a couple of weeks of free time in the last five years. That's borderline inhumane, in my book.

As far as the WOQT goes though, it's not all bad, at least for the Greek national team, and me as well. The good thing about this tournament is that Greece is going to host it (although I'd really like to hear what the cost for this will be), so at least our players won't have to travel to the end of the world to play these games, which should make for less fatigue. Also, a few extra games at a high level should be good for the team in general, as it's currently going through a transition.

Several players from the team that won the EuroBasket in '05 have left, with the shunning of former captain Michalis Kakiouzis standing out as particularly rude to me, so this new team will definitely need some time to adjust. The easier games in the WOQT should be of help, so long as we don't royally mess them up, in which case this whole thing will be a disaster. Most of the new players are highly talented though, so we should be fine. My only major concern is the lack of an experienced, reliable, center. Bourousis is a good player, but he's more of a tall power-forward than a real center, Big Sofo can't last for more than ten-fifteen minutes per game, and the rest of the guys are too inexperienced. A good center is almost a necessity when attacking a tight defense, 5 on 5, and that's Greece weakest point offensively, as shown in last year's EuroBasket.

We'll see, I guess. I'll definitely watch at least one or two games when the tournament starts next week, and if our level of play is high enough I might watch it all the way to the semis. You can't see me right now, but I'm crossing my fingers already.

*Isn't it funny how the word "abbreviation" is itself quite long?

TL;DR version:

Έλα μωρή Ελλαδαράααααααααα!

[Off-Topic Wednesday] This isn't about comics or books

2008-07-09T22:49:00.002+03:00

My PC refused to work yesterday, for reasons of its own. Maybe it wasn't in the mood, because it's working fine today.

And since that huge-ass piece I wrote on Monday was enough for not one, but three days... Eh, I find myself not having the willpower to write anything significant today. I did see The Offspring live yesterday though, I was a huge fan of the band back in high school but I seriously lost interest in them after their Americana album. Still, I was pleasantly surprised, as they kicked ass and took names in their live gig last night, and it also helps that their latest album is actually quite good.

So here comes the inevitable music video, a live performance of Self-Esteem from... somewhere. Who cares, this was the song that made me start listening to the band, heck it was the song that made me a fan of alternative/punk rock music in general.

TL;DR version:

George doesn't want to write that article on Thor.

You Gotta Keep 'Em Separated

[Theorycraft Monday] The sequel blues

2008-07-07T23:31:00.002+03:00

I'm feeling them alright.

I had once said that I'd be fine if all gaming franchises just disappeared and we were left with just Zelda and Castlevania. I never finished the latest Zelda game in a home console, Twilight Princess, because I felt tired of it after a while, even though it's a fantastic game. And I'm about to give up on the latest Castlevania game, Portrait of Ruin, which I picked up one year too late to begin with, exactly because I feel burnt out of this version of Castlevania. Even if I did like PoR a lot.

However, I don't want to speak about these games today, and it's common knowledge that sequels are always risky business. We complain, for example, that we never got a sequel to say, Conker's Bad Fur Day, but we always manage to find a reason to complain about the sequels we do get. And not just because they're not that different from their predecessors, like Zelda, but also when they aren't similar enough. Amusingly enough, a famous example in this category is Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link which was criticized for that exact reason. Fans. You just can't please them.

There were two games that got me thinking all this sequel stuff again. The first one was Alone in the Dark, a game that grew on me with every trailer I saw, and intrigued me with its promises of near-revolutionary game mechanics. I was never one to fall for the hype, but it truly seemed compelling. Sadly, the game itself is a real mess. The graphics are inconsistent and the animation stiff and unrealistic, the controls are horrible, the combat annoying and the camera atrocious, the story is laughable and the gameplay rather simplistic and superfluous. And don't get me started on the driving parts.

Still, I strangely enjoyed the game enough to keep my rental copy for over a week, and I have to say I loved its presentation. It doesn't matter if the things the characters said were shit, the way it was presented to us was really impressive. Plus, you can't fault the game for being ambitious, even if it doesn't quite live up to those ambitions. Not to mention, and this is an important part for me, the people behind this game seemed honest in their intentions with trying to provide a quality product, this wasn't just a cynical cash-in.

(This doesn't include the PS2 and Wii versions of the game, which are as I'm told complete and utter cynical cash-ins).

This is the part where things get complicated, though. I understand the people of Eden Entertainment wanted this to be a good, perhaps even revolutionary, game. But did they really intended it to be a good Alone in the Dark game? Many people have said it's a departure because it's not a survival horror game. I don't subscribe to the idea that the first three games of the franchise were what we call survival horror games either. They were certainly the main influence behind the first Resident Evil, which in turn spawned a zillion clones, but at their core, they were still adventure games, with action elements.

Yes, there were a lot of combat scenes in all three AitD games, but as a purely gameplay mechanic they were superficial at best. If nothing else, as the Greek reviewer Andreas Tsourinakis showed in his review of Alone in the Dark 2 way back when, the fight scenes were so poorly designed, you could find a way to glitch every enemy in the game and never get hit. Combat was more of an after thought in these games, and you never had the problem with conserving ammo, as in a real survival horror game. I would argue that the presence of enemies in these games was nothing more than a plot mechanic, to add to the tension and suspense, and not to make them into action games. After all, all three games had several difficult, and rather ingenious, puzzles in them.

Ironically enough, the fourth game which I've avoided mentioning so far, The New Nightmare, was a Resident Evil clone itself, only with deeper puzzles (which weren't on the same level as the previous games though) and pretenses at a more serious storyline. Sadly, both its gameplay and its story collapsed near the end, with one scene at the very end especially standing out as both a very dumb final puzzle and one of the most anticlimactic cut-scenes ever. On top of this, and this was a first in the series, the game had no connections to its predecessors whatsoever, and even though its main character was still a man called Edward Camby, he had apparently no connection to the man from the first three names. Not even a distand great-grandson.

Despite the lack of success for The New Nightmare, which tried to reinvent the series (notable by the lack of a "4" in the title, after all), Eden decided to um, re-re-invent the series with the latest Alone in the Dark game. The fact that it shares the same name as the game that started it all, with no numbers and no secondary titles, could imply that they were in fact trying to reboot the whole series. A fact that would explain the vast change of setting, cast and timeline, even when compared to The New Nightmare, but then they had to make the original Edward Camby from the 1920's the protagonist again. How he managed to survive all this years and still look so young is indeed explained in the game, in an unintentionally hilarious moment, which will have you looking for your tinfoil hat.

And that's my main problem with the game. The new Alone in the Dark fails as a survival horror game because it doesn't provide with enough tension and it just isn't scary enough, as most of its scenes that are supposed to stand out are horribly scripted in the most formulaic of manners. It also fails as an action game, or at least a hybrid action game, because the controls are unintuitive and unwieldy, and the driving sections are poorly thought out. It also fails as an adventure game, because whatever puzzles are in the game aren't exactly that clever, not to mention that they are horribly limited and fire is usually the solution to every predicament. Man, if only Prometheus could see this game, he would feel so proud.

But my main problem with this game is that it fails as an Alone in the Dark game. AitD was never about vast conspiracies (a sin commited by both recent AitD games) and obscure plots that are trying too hard. The antagonists in AitD weren't bug-looking enemies that would never scare you even if they appeared behind you while you were watching Stanley Kubric's The Shinning, all alone in an abandoned hotel. And they certainly weren't, gods forbid, "Vampirz"*. AitD was never about setting fire on everything near you, or driving around, looking for an excuse to do a jump with your car accompanied by a bullet time effect.

No, the AitD games of old, the good ones, were about clever puzzles, intense, scary atmosphere and campy, yet also simple and honest storylines. Surely, the times were different and much more simple back then, but it's a risky business when developers try to completely abandon a game's roots and reinvent it from scratch. It rarely works, and in the case of Eden Entertainment and Alone in the Dark, it really didn't.

I guess what I've been trying to say here is, why not make this a completely new IP? That way they wouldn't have to deal with problems such as explaining why the protagonist is nearly 100 years old and yet looks 40, nor would they have to deal with annoyed fanboys. I doubt the name itself was a factor that would make this game a mainstream hit, as the last Alone in the Dark game came out seven years ago, and the one before it, thirteen whole years. Now if this was truly, honestly, the direction they wanted to take the series, rather than just tying up a familiar name around an experimental game... Then they should simply stop doing drugs, as some twists only work for Dude, where's my car?

Whoa, long post. I'll mention Street Fighter 4 briefly then, and come back to it later if necessary. The question of just how much is too much comes again to my mind when looking at what we know about this game. We know for a fact that it's more of a sequel to Street Fighter 2 and not Street Fighter 3, as far as both characters and mechanics go, and that's kind of a bummer for people like me who love both games. In fact, I'm still playing both and Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike. They're both good, but the evolution was already there. Why ignore SF3 completely? It just sounds... rude. And then there is this apparent rumor that Gouken, brother of Gouki/Akuma and teacher to Ryu and Ken is going to be in the game... And we're getting in "too much" territory, as I'm starting to feel that this game could be simply something to satisfy the die-hard fans of SF 2, fanservice if you will, and not a real step forward, like SF3 was.

Or, you know, I could be paranoid and should take off the tinfoil hat I've been wearing since I returned AitD. At any rate, the recent animated teaser trailer for SF4 was nothing short of fantastic, even if the artwork is a bit suspect -then again this is just a teaser, and in fact reminded me of some of the best scenes of the SF animated movie. That, and the orchestral remix of Ryu's theme is pure SEX.

I'll stop talking now, here's the trailer:

*Yes, Vampirz.

VAMPIRZ

WHO COMES UP WITH THESE THINGS?

TL;DR version:

Capcom better not fuck up Street Fighter 4, or I'll have to write an even longer post.

I enjoyed The New Nightmare for what it was, though. At least in that game the controls worked. Hell, I enjoyed the latest game too. Just not as much as I would have wanted to.

It is funny, however, Edward Camby is supposed to be the exact same person as in the first games, and presumably he should look the same as well, perhaps without the 1920's moustache. Yet most of the time he doesn't even look like the same guy from the cover of this very game. Wish I could find a good in-game shot, but google is failing me.

[TV Saturday] Veronica Mars is still awesome

2008-07-05T19:08:00.002+03:00

Yep, I'm still talking about this show. It's just that good.

Since a local Greek channel decided to start showing VM again as part of its "Summer of Reruns ' 08" special, I thought this is a good opportunity to post some more videos of my favorite show ever. I won't start ranting about the show though, so rejoice.

For starters, a promo that I may or may not have posted in the past:

Secondly, a collection of some of the funniest moments in the show. Some don't work out of context, but eh.

And lastly some bloopers, because bloopers are always awesome:

TL;DR version:

"Seriously, why do birds suddenly appear every time you're near?"

[Video Friday] A few videos for your amusement

2008-07-04T23:30:00.003+03:00

First of all, happy 4th if July to those that applies (Americans for their Independence Day, and Greeks for their "Holy Fuck We Won the Euro" day). The menu of the day has three videos and two crazy stories for you.

Let's start with the heart-worming story of Christian the Lion. He was found as a cub by two men, who then took him and raised him as a pet. Naturally, you can't keep an adult lion as a pet, which is a damn shame if you ask me, so they eventually released him. When they saw him again after several years... well, look for yourselves:

I always wanted a lion as a pet when I was a kid, now I find myself wanting one again. ;_;

(Via Neogaf.com)

Now that you're all warm and fuzzy inside, check this story out, about a man who found out that his girlfriend was an assassin. Not a ninja assassin, as I thought at first glance (for whatever reason), but an assassin nonetheless. Amusingly, this story is bound to become a Hollywood movie, but one gets the feeling that it already has been, in one form or another. Talk about life imitating art imitating life.

(Via Neogaf.com)

And since that fuzziness inside you is probably starting to dissipate, here's a really dark and gloomy PvP video from World of Warcraft, called Diary of a Corruptor. This isn't exactly a machinima like last week's In For A Penny, but it's one of those videos that people can find entertaining even if they are not familiar with the game itself.

I understand it's kind of cheating to have this video today, but I honestly think it makes for an interesting watch for everyone. Visually it's very interesting, with top-notch editing, the soundtrack is what can be described as "awesome, dude" and the mood is fantastic. It should also be of interest to WoW players as it's from the perspective of an Affliction Warlock, as rare a breed these days as the Mutilate Rogue I used to play. Sorry, I'll start using English again.

Did I mention that it has several themes from the Silent Hill games? It's part of the reason why it's here, I'm extremely biased towards those games and their soundtracks. Watch it already:

Diary of a Corruptor - Unstable Affliction PvP from Sorrow on Vimeo.

Going from the spooky to the "What the Hell?", the story that's been in the news all day today is about that pregnant man who finally gave birth to a baby girl. If you haven't heard about this already, just read the article, I can't do justice to the... irregularity of that story.

And lastly, something different to the deluge of nuttiness, an Animaniacs compilation! A few of the best lines from their "Wheel of Morality" segment:

TL;DR version:

Muffins.

[Football Thursday] Euro 2008 recap

2008-07-03T22:46:00.004+03:00

OR: How Spain won and George is eating crow.

For reference, my post from one week ago, June 26:

"If Spain goes through, I'm willing to bet a lot of money that they'll choke hard against Germany."

Yeah, totally.

So those crazy bastards did it. Even though it was the one Spanish team in recent memory that most people wouldn't call triple-A quality, and had a distinct lack of "star"-quality players, even when their fans were making t-shirts saying "Guess who's gonna get us disqualified at the quarter-finals", after all they are perennial losers when it comes to quarter-finals. They still did it.

It's funny how things work. In Euro 2004, I was waiting for Greece to eventually play like they did in this year's Euro and get mauled/disqualified. Instead they kept playing at their best, which for that year proved enough to win us the cup. Now arguably Greece's best still makes for fairly horrid football, but it was leagues above the sorry effort they put up this year. Honestly, our game against Sweden was probably the worst footbal game I've ever had the misfortune of watching.

Same deal with Spain this year. Ever since the group strage was finished, I was expecting them to choke. First against Italy, which also happens to be their arch-nemesis, but they weren't really the favorites in that game, exactly because of their history. So they won that one, even if it were in the penalty shoot-out.

Fair enough, since they were the underdog they went through so I thought that they'd choke against Russia, since now they were the favorites, and against a team they had defeated 4-1 in the same tournament. Yet they man-handled the Russians again, in a very convincing 3-0 victory over the second best team in the tournament.

Surely, then, they would choke at the final, and against Germany, a football team that has made a name after destroying young teams filled with ambition, and at their peak at that (Hungary 54, Holland 74, Czech Republic 96, etc.), right? Nope. Somehow, the Spanish team managed to defy all preconceptions/curses/expectations/call it what you will, and delivered a solid 1-0 victory over a German team that, in fact, choked hard at the most important game. All this when the Spaniards remained calm and concentrated throughout. Impressive, to say the least.

As a matter of fact, after this final and the one from the World Cup of '02 against Brazil (and perhaps the Eurobasket '05 final against Greece), I'm starting to think that perhaps this generation of German teams are starting to become chokers themselves, when it comes to finals.

All in all though, Spain rightly won by managing to do away with all their ghosts of the past, as well as being the best team of the whole tournament. Holland started out great but fizzled real quick, while Russia and Germany picked up their stride slowly, reached an impressive level, only to sink to the bottom in their most important matches again. Spain was consistant, while not exactly dazzling, and thoroughly deserved a cup they hadn't won in about five billion years.

If anything, I personally much prefer it when teams such as Spain, Greece in '04, and Denmark in '92 win such a big tournament, as it adds to the whole mythos of the Euro tournament. It's the kind of victories people still discuss years after the event, when discussions about the World Cup are rarely about its finals, as those are usually dominated by four teams in the last 30 years (Brazil, Italy, Germany and Argentina), with the exception of France in '98. Instead, people talking about the champions of Euro championships can talk about how teams can defy all expectations and win the cup against all odds.

(At this point I should point out that Spain has always been the better team, by a fairly wide margin, when compared to Denmark and Greece, but this victory was mainly a triumph against the expectations that they had been setting for themselves these past few decades).

TL;DR version:

So who do you think is going to disqualify the reigning European Champions, Spain, in the quarter finals of World Cup '10?

[Webcomic Wednesday] How to not make one / [OR] It's too damn hot to write a proper post

2008-07-02T23:03:00.007+03:00

If that's not the longest title ever, I don't know what is.

So, webcomics. According to Wikipedia, over 18,000 of them exist on the Internet currently. That's a scary number, especially if you consider that the vast majority of them is the digital equivalent of mind-numbing poison. Personally, I only follow Penny Arcade, because I'm a total nerd and proud of it, but I like xkcd and Cyanide and Happiness as well.

The problem with webcomics is the fact that they're so damn easy to make. All you need is spare time, the illusion that you possess something resembling a sense of humor, and the ability to draw a straight line. And it's a blessing that I don't possess the latter, as I would have definitely been tormenting humanity with my unfunny webcomic already.

But that's exactly the reason why there are so damn many webcomics out there. They're easy to make, and the successful ones amongst them are so unmistakably so that most others want to steal their glory, have a piece of the pie, and other horrid clichés like these.

For these reasons, I was glad to see that a genuinely funny and witty person like Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation decided to make a video targeting webcomics and their lack of quality. His description of webcomics is right on the money:

"How to make millions of gamers happy with the minimum amount of effort."

The video itself acts as a hilarious guide on what to not do if you insist on unleashing yet another webcomic on us weary readers, as well as a satire of already existing webcomics that have become famous without any apparent reason.

It might not be as funny as it should be if you're not familiar with webcomics in general, and with a certain soul-crashingly bad one in particular, but it should at least get a chuckle out of you. Watch the video here.

TL;DR version:

Filler post. Just watch the video.

Do answer me this, if you can, though: Why do people like VGCats?

[AGS Tuesday] Engine update and new games

2008-07-01T21:13:00.003+03:00

I've talked about the Adventure Game Studio (AGS for short) engine before, but for those that weren't around, it's a freeware game engine that one can use to create (bet you can't guess it) adventure games. It was primarily designed to create Sierra SCI games, but it's customizable enough to create all sorts of variations of adventure games, including direct control, text parser-based and other nifty stuff like that. In fact, some people have even created platformers and fighting games using this engine.

Now that the intro is out of the way, last week (approximately) saw the release of the latest version of the engine, V. 3.0.2. As one would expect, it sports a number of changes and fixes from the previous version. For the full list and a download link, click me.

With that, I thought I'd mention a few of the games that were released lately. I haven't really finished them yet as my backlog is already huge and it's catching up with me (Soviet Russia and all), but it's obvious they're all quality releases.

Quest for Yrlog: A fantasy adventure with a twist. Your master has devised this devious plan, only to have a warrior, a rogue and a sorcerer show up at his door and threatenin to stop him. As his faithful imp minion, it's up to you to stop them before they do so! For more information, screenshots and a download link, visit this thread.

Dread Mac Farlane 2: Yes, this is a sequel. You can find the original game here. As with the original, it's based on a French comic book I've never heard of, but French comic books are good, no? It features the story of a girl who "grows up in Neverland with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys, who wants to become pirate like her father she never knew." The graphics are amazing for an indie game, so it's worth dowloading it, so check this thread.

Space Quest IV.5: A game created in the same style as those SCI games I mentioned earlier. Fans will appreciate the retro feeling. Check out its thread here.

Nanobots: This was the AGS game I was expecting the most, and it pains me to admit I haven't really gotten the chance to play it yet. It's by the same people that have brought us games such as Spooks and What Linus Bruckman Sees When His Eyes Are Closed, so it's bound to be interesting. I'll get back to this game next week, with (hopefully) detailed impressions. In the meantime, you can learn more about it in this thread.

TL;DR version:

In This Post: Free games, and a freeware engine to make your own. If you're even remotely interested in adventure games, knock yourselves out.

(I'm a bit bored right now, does it show? Hurr).

[WTF Monday] Oh Konami, where art thou?

2008-06-30T22:37:00.006+03:00

I swear, if Konami were an actual person instead of a gaming company, right now I'd be thinking that somebody had kidnapped and replaced him with his evil alien cross-dressing clone.

What's the reason behind such a colorful remark, you ask? Quite simply, the fact that they've apparently decided to create a Castlevania fighting game (via Kotaku.com).

It was a real Death-Star-Destroying-Alderaan moment, as countless fans of the series held their collective breaths when heard that Konami would make a new Castlevania game for the home consoles... only to learn that it's not an arcade-adventure-RPG-platformer like the previous iterations, but rather a game in a genre that Konami hasn't touched in more than a decade. And that was probably a good thing.

Hell, I'd go as far as saying that Konami has only made two good fighters. Yi Ar Kung Fu, which came out more than 20 years ago and is not playable any longer (seriously, get over it), and this little gem:

This reminds me, I need to get a copy of this game again.

But I digress. On to the offender in this case, Castlevania: Judgement being its name, and the Nintendo Wii will be its home, if it ever gets one. The ugly little mutt. Truth be told, we don't know enough about the game yet to pass judgement on it, but... The whole thing reeks of Masters of Teras Kasi...ty. I'm not sure what's up with that pun.

At any rate, it feels like the exact same thing as MoTK. A half-assed attempt at milking a franchise, rather than trying something genuinely different. And to make matters worse, at least Star Wars: MoTK came out at a time when 3D fighters were still big in the market. Nowadays, people have moved on and the genre has lost its mainstream popularity, which is another reason why this move makes little to no sense. It's as if Namco decided to release a Tekken Point n' Click adventure. A good franchise and a good genre don't always make for a good combination.

Whatever Konami apologists will tell you, such a move does not promote progress or trying out new ideas. If the company was so sure they had a good fighting game engine in their hands, why not try out a new IP, instead of wrapping it around Castlevania characters*? It's not about making progress, it's about being lazy.

And speaking of lazy, you've probably heard already about Diablo 3. Not the most surprising of announcements, to be sure, but at least it was one that pleased all fans of the series. Undoubtedly, people are preparing their spreadsheets already in sheer glee. Me, that's not my cup of tea. I liked the original Diablo way back when, but I was a teenager back then, and much more impressionable, especially when it came to things that were gritty, dark and violent. I openly confess to playing Diablo 2 simply for the story, graphics but mostly those jaw-dropping cinematics. The game was... eh, but oh my gods, those cinematics were amazing.

I predict I'll play the same game for the exact same reasons, provided that my PC will be able to run it. I'm sure a lot of people will go nuts over its hack n'slash gameplay, and obsess over its items and whatnot, but I really can't bring myself to care about those things anymore.

Can't really blame Blizzard for giving people what they want, though. People have been bitching forever... I mean wishing that this game would be eventually released, so it's a win-win situation. The fans get what they want, D3, and Blizzard execs get what they want, i.e. huge piles of money.

Now if only somebody would think of what us disaffected and picky elitists want, we would finally get our Lost Vikings sequel on the Nintendo DS. One can only hope.

Until we get that, feel free to drool over D3's cinematic teaser, it's worth every drop of saliva:

I wanted to write a mini-review of Alone in the Dark, but this post is already too long. Something for next week, I guess.

* I refuse to mention the parallels with the Smash Bros franchise, since that's a discussion I don't want to get into.

TL;DR version:

Konami execs seem to have gone batshit insane, while the ones at Blizzard seem to be right on the money. Literally.

(Ha, ha. I doth slay me.)

Seriously though. The Lost Vikings DS. The Lost Vikings Touch. The Lost Vikings Whatever. Make it happen!

[TV Saturday] Boston Legal

2008-06-28T23:15:00.002+03:00

Not a lot of TV-related news this week (aside from a god-awful teaser for the third season of Heroes with which I won't bother), so I thought this was a good opportunity to post a Boston Legal video.

Boston Legal, a spin-off of The Practice, is a dramedy that premiered in 2004 and follows the lives of Alan Shore, Denny Crane and their co-workers at the law firm Crane, Poole and Schmidt, most of which are characters that first appeared in The Practice. The series emphasizes both on the court action, with several wacky cases in a lot of episodes, as well as the personal lives of the lawyers from Crane, Poole and Schmidt, and their interaction with each other.

I only started watching this show about three months ago, and I haven't even finished the second season yet, but so far I really like it. It has several rather obvious flaws, for example the supporting cast is largely forgettable and they don't tend to stick around for too long, the resolution of several cases is highly improbable, and several of the characters are very inconsistent as far as their morality is concerned. Even for lawyers. Hurr, hurr.

The heart of the show, however, is its two male protagonists, Alan Shore and Denny Crane, portrayed by James Spader and William "Cpt. Kirk" Shatner respectively. It's the relationship of these two remarkable yet also incredibly quirky men that makes the show so interesting to watch. From Crane scolding Shore for being a Democrat, to Shore bailing Crane from yet another of his fuck-ups, the bond between the two is really strong, and most importantly, it feels real. I'd go as far as to say that it's one of the best portrayals of male friendship I've seen in several years in a TV show.

It's not always as serious as the above paragraph may have you thinking, however. In fact, I'd say that the show is first and foremost a comedy, despite the fact that there are several "serious" moments in every episode.

Not to mention that I never thought I'd end up respecting, and even liking, William Shatner as an actor. He might be impersonating, well, himself (I wouldn't know, but that's my best guess) but he really does an astonishing job at bringing the character of Denny Crane to life. Surprisingly, he's at his best whenever Denny stops acting like an (adorable) asshat, and instead reflects on his life and what he has become. I really wasn't expecting such a performance from Shatner, but life is full of surprises, I guess.

Instead of an epilogue, I'll end this post with a video (now this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone). Sadly, I couldn't find a better Alan/Denny video, as this one is a bit tacky. But I guess it's not bad either.

TL;DR version:

"Denny Crane."

[Machinima Friday] In For A Penny

2008-06-27T14:28:00.005+03:00

While I haven't played World of Warcraft in about five months (my name is George and I'm OKAY), I'm still following the machinima scene. There's several projects that are worth watching even if you're not in the game, even though several just dissolve into Manowar-style epiccy bullshit, like Tales of the Past and such.

(Oh, I went there.)

You see, I much prefer the comedy machinimas, as well as the completety trippy ones like this one. The one I'm presenting today, In For A Penny falls in neither category, but it's an attempt at a noir film using the WoW engine, and for that reason alone I have to recommend it. That, and the first part has a Tori Amos song in it.

Personal biases aside, In For A Penny is a really well-made machinima. The editing, atmosphere and voice-acting are all of very high quality, and the story is quite interesting as well, so far. Keep in mind that this is all the work of just one person, which makes the result all the more commendable, if you ask me.

Having a machinima which emphasises on atmosphere and story-telling over action and "RAGH!" yowls is a refreshing change after all those testosterone-filled, overly melodramatic nonsense that came out for a while. It doesn't come as a big surprise, then, that In For A Penny was created by a woman. Under the alias Selserene, she's the person behind this series and you can find her blog here, along with her other work besides the IFAP series. Her slogan, "Turning Blood Elves Straight Since 2008" cracks me up every time.

Now that I'm done ranting though, let's get on the videos themselves. The first part is a prologue, and features no voice acting, but it has a fantastic atmosphere. Selserene's description is as follows:

"When a young blonde stumbles into the wrong room at a seedy nightclub, her panic leads her to escape into a world not her own."

IFAP-720.divx

(Full Warcraft Movies page, including download link, here)

The second video, entitled "On All Eight" has voice acting for all characters (and that Tori Amos song I mentioned above) and is the real start of the story. Which makes sense, what with being Part 1 and all. Aaanyway, on to Selserene's description again:

"In For A Penny- Part 1 ‘On All Eight’” picks up where IFAP: Prologue leaves off. It is the first of a multi-part series which follows Thayle – a man falsely convicted, a fugitive from the law, a gambler who places his bet on the woman who holds the key to both his freedom, and perhaps his heart."

IFAP1-HQ-16x9-sub.mp4

(Full Warcraft Movies page, including download link, here)

TL;DR version:

In For A Penny is a noir machinima with Blood Elves. Go watch it already.

Also, make sure to dissuade me from buying Wrath of the Lich King, whenever it eventually comes out.

[Headache Thursday] So like, Euro 08 and stuff.

2008-06-26T22:58:00.004+03:00

My head is killing me today, so this post will be really short.

Basically, I think that this year's Euro 08 championship has been alright, but nothing special. Yet most others seem to disagree and think that it's the best competition in years. It's definitely better than any of the recent World Cups I've seen, but eh, I'm not feeling it.

Last night's match was a good one, the first semifinal: Germany Vs. Turkey. I was kind of hoping Turkey would win so all the nationalistic pricks in this country would go crazy, but that striker dude Turkey had was so damn obnoxious with his "Shh" celebration after every goal he scored. Don't ruin the move, ass.

Plus the Turks, who have been pulling crazy comeback after crazy comeback in this tournament, made the mistake of scoring first. You just don't do that against the Germans, they're the people that invented the comeback.

As for the second semifinal, Russia Vs. Spain, it's currently on the 60th minute and Spain is up 1-0. Boring game so far, which is a shame because you'd expect more from two teams that are so good offensively.

*Update* So the score is 3-0 now, damn, the Spaniards bitchslapped the Russians again. I wasn't expecting that.

If Spain goes through, I'm willing to bet a lot of money that they'll choke hard against Germany. It sucks, since I don't like the German team, but I guess the old saying is true:

"Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win."
Gary Lineker

TL;DR version:

Score, you damn Russians. (so much for that)

[Book Wednesday] A Preorder of Dragons

2008-06-25T21:51:00.011+03:00

My puns keep getting worse. Way worse.

According to an article from Publisher's Weekly (via Tower of the Hand and Westeros.org), the upcoming new entry in George R.R. Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire, entitled A Dance With Dragons, is planned to have an initial print of 350,000 copies. Not a small amount to be sure, and apparently an increase over the previous entry, A Feast for Crows.

This is very interesting, as it shows that people still have a great interest in ASOIAF despite the general concencous clearly naming AFFC as the weakest entry in the series so far, and the numberous delays for ADWD, which was originally planned to be released in 2006.

The lack of a definitive release date is a bit troubling, especially given that GRRM still hasn't finished the book, but hey, patience is a virtue of the few, as they say. Plus I can't hold a grudge against the guy for wanting to live a little. Nobody should work when they're practically on vacation.

Next Wednesday will probably be the day when I'll finally post that article on the new volume of Thor, hopefully I'll have finished my comics backlog by then.

TL;DR version:

There won't be any dragons dancing any time in the near future, but when they do, it's gonna be a fucking party. Also, never forget that good things come to those who wait. Now if only good things came to the people that avoid reading spoiler chapters, then I'd be all set.

[Indie-gaming Tuesday] Limbo of the Lost (LoL)

2008-06-24T23:00:00.009+03:00

Never before has the abbreviation "LoL" worked on so many levels.

I'm certain that the Internet-savvy among you have already heard about Limbo of the Lost, the game that so blatantly copied its graphics from about half a billion games. Seriously, they're so many that people have made a Wiki where they collect all the games Limbo of the Lost stole from.

I won't detail the whole story behind this game since the wiki does a really good job at it, but here's the gist of it: The game was "created" by Majestic studios, which is basically comprised of three people in their mid-to-late 30's from Kent, England, with their (now defunct) official site being a Geocities account. Wait, it gets better.

These three have been apparently been working on the game since the early 90's, since there's even a handful of screenshots from an Amiga version around. Which I find highly amusing, as those screenshots, and especially the main character, have nothing to do with the released version of the game on PC's. If anything, this raises the question if these people were indeed working on the game, or just waiting for more sources to steal from. I'm mentioning this especially since the current version of the main character looks exactly like Edward Norton's character from The Illusionist, a movie that's only a couple of years old.

As for the old version of the protagonist (seen here), I could swear I've seen him before, even though I can't quite say where exactly. I want to say I've seen him in Shadow of the Comet, but I know that's not right. I also feel like he was some sort of native American in the game where he originated from, but again I'm not too sure about that. In the off-chance that I'm wrong and he's an original creation, well, mea culpa.

(credit for this picture: Xabora from NeoGAF)

To make matters worse, the actual game is, according to most sources and from what we can see from in-game videos, an absolute pile of shit. The original graphics are atrocious (unaltered Poser models are unacceptable in free games, let alone retail ones), the voice-acting is worse than a House of the Dead game, and the gameplay and story seem to be unintentionally hilarious. I don't make a habit out of judging games without playing them, but some things are obvious. See for yourselves in this video which includes the intro sequence and the first 10 minutes of gameplay.

What makes my mind boggle is how this game ever managed to find a publisher. Assuming that nobody noticed how bad this game was, or perhaps that they did notice and decided it'll sell as a cult-"Oh my gods this game is unbelievably shitty"-hit, how could this game have passed whatever passes for quality control these days, when it has so obviously stolen from virtually most of the big-name games in recent years? I really can't wrap my head around that.

Whatever the truth behind this story is, we'll probably never find out since the people responsible for this mess have seemingly disappeared. I don't blame them for that, and I don't offer any sympathy for them as they deserve whatever comes to them, but I have to say I do feel kind of bad for their families. C'est la vie, I guess.

I could easily imagine that after reading all this, you'd be somewhat intrigued by Limbo of the Lost and the story behind it, if probably for the wrong reasons. I've been there, myself. Trust me when I say that life is too short to waste time and money on something as shitty as this. For that reason, here's a video of the game's ending, hopefully it'll satisfy your curiosity and you'll move on to other, more worthwhile things.

On the bright side, this catastrophe of a game release has inspired some people to get creative and give us some laughs. It ain't all bad!

In other news, I rented the new Alone in the Dark game today, and while that's been receiving some fairly bad reviews itself, I'm still looking forward to playing it. Alone in the Dark 3 will always be the definitive game of the franchise for me, though. If partly for nostalgia reasons.

TL;DR version:

Remember kids, stealing and plagiarism is bad. Especially in this era, where Internet sleuths investigate every little detail about you and your products. So do yourself a favor and don't end up like the dumbfucks responsible for Limbo of the Lost, a game worthy of ridicule and little else.

And if you're a douchebag and still decide to steal assets from other games, thus helping to give the indie scene a bad name, at least make sure your game is actually decent. Do us all a favor, or the universe will most likely assplode as a result of having two games like LoL around.

[Adventure Monday] Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice

2008-06-23T22:08:00.008+03:00

I've never tried to hide the fact that I'm a huge fan of the Ace Attorney series. Even though it's been only two years since I played the first game, then called Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, it has become one of my favorite series in gaming, among other long-time faves such as Castlevania or the Legend of Zelda.

No small feat, to be sure, but since apparently today's post is all about honesty, I have to confess I had set my expectations rather low for the latest entry in the franchise, Apollo Justice. Not only because changing the whole cast from previous iterations is an idea that rarely, if ever, works, but also because thanks to a major fuck-up the publisher's part, the previous entry in the series, Trials and Tribulations hasn't been released in Europe yet. So basically us Europeans jumped straight to the fourth game in the series from the second one. Thanks for that, Capcom.

The following is my first impressions after having played through the first case and most of the second one in the game.

I have to say, the (almost) entirely new cast was what worried me the most at first. Aside from a couple of returning minor secondary characters, we're only treated to cameos of former protagonist Phoenix Wright, and Emma Skye, who played a central role in the fifth case of the first game.

And these characters... Nick and Emma have changed, perhaps a bit too much from the previous games. Apollo Justice takes place seven years after Trials and Tribulations and while that's enough time for a person in real life to become bitter and melancholic, but this is a game, and these are characters which were introduced as cheerful and optimistic to us. Seeing them all brooding and cynical feels a bit strange, to say the least.

As for the rest of the cast, they certainly lack the charisma of their predecessors. Apollo is funny, but lacks that special charm that Phoenix had, with his "Chords of Steel" tag-line especially making me want to bathe myself in H2S04, and while Trucy, his sidekick, is quite adorable, she feels almost a carbon-copy of Maya. They not only share a rather quirky personality, but they also share several mannerisms to the point that, at times, I could swear that the creators took Maya's sprite and repainted it as Trucy. The secondary characters are as nuts as ever, and they get the job done, but nobody really steals the show.

Naturally, since I haven't finished the game there's still a good chance I'll be pleasantly surprised by the time it's over. I won't be holding my breath about that, though. If anything, I'm still slightly worried over its writing. One case in specific really stood out to me, as the whole "mission" where you had to find 15-year old Trucy's stolen panties, with her making all sorts of awkward comments on how "My customers will be waiting to see my panties at night" and somesuch felt a little bit too much like Pedobear territory for my taste. While I did laugh at times, it was also rather embarrassing to go through. And videogames, especially good ones, really shouldn't make their audience feel embarrassed for playing them. I'm looking at you, Soulcalibur IV, with your scientifically-enhanced balloon animals, I mean female warriors.

Lastly, I can't help but think that removing an excellent character like Phoenix Wright from the spotlight of the series was a bad move. Nick had that certain something that characters like Guybrush Threepwood did. Guybrush wanted to be a pirate, in other words an adventurer, and Nick wanted to be a lawyer because he believed in truth and that it's worth fighting for it. Both things most people can and will relate to. Apollo just comes off as a scared kid who's trying his hand at something that looks cool, and the difference between the two really shows.

TL;DR version:

George is missing virtual characters from a game he played like 17 months ago, and also hopes he won't have to search for any more panties before he finishes Apollo Justice.

The game is still pretty fun mind you, despite my bitching.

P.S.

I've apparently been banned from Xbox Live, and for no apparent reason. That's great.

[TV Saturday] Daria

2008-06-21T23:04:00.007+03:00

Since all the major TV shows have ended their run for this season, I figured I'd kick off the first TV Saturday with something a little older. Namely, MTV's Beavis and Butthead spin-off, Daria.

I'll openly admit that I hated this show when I first saw it, all the way back in 1997. I was 16 back then, visiting Athens (the only place in Greece back then that had MTV) on a short vacation and expecting to watch Beavis and Butthead, like the male teenager that I was. What I got instead was this show about a girl, with a sense of humor a lot more sophisticated than the one in Beavis and Butthead, and for that reason, a lot less interesting to my 16-year old self. When I decided to give it a second chance however (on the following day, no less), I found myself charmed by the misanthropic Miss Morgendorffer and her misadventures in teenage life.

In a sense, Daria was a defining part of the latter half of the 90's, with its strong, completely apathetic and unsocial female lead, the dry, sarcastic humor and its fairly realistic/negative depiction of school life. We may take several of these things for granted nowadays, but don't forget that back then it wasn't as common for a show to have a girl as a main character (one of the reasons it struck me as so odd the first time), and especially one as, shall we say... unusual? as Daria.

Naturally, things have moved on in the eleven years since Daria debuted, so the show doesn't have quite the same impact nowadays. In fact, it might feel a little too much by-the-numbers to a new viewer. For example, Daria is so incredibly apathetic that it might seem implausible to some, not to mention the fact that the supporting cast is for the most part made up from glorified stock characters, though this is most likely intended. After all, the show is all about its protagonist, and Daria doesn't care about them at all, why should the viewer?

More importantly, however, since Daria can seemingly never do anything wrong, it could be argued that the show overglorifies the "outsider" type of person, which has since become as much an annoying cliché as the sports jock. Not that Daria is responsible for the emo kids of today, not even remotely so. Daria is a witty misanthropist and a strong, invidivual character, and not a whiny kid overreacting about every little thing in life. I thought I should clear that up.

At any rate, Daria should be judged for what it is. A witty, inspired, just-plain-amusing cartoon back from the era when MTV wasn't afraid of promoting and supporting alternative music/shows/lifestyle in general, and less about sucking ass. While it may not have the same appeal to somebody going through their teenage years in the 00's, it's definitely worth watching for anyone who grew up in the 90's and still reminisces those years.

TL;DR version:

(Meh, I keep forgetting to add this part lately.)

Instead of reiterating what I said above, and especially for those of you who have never watched a single episode of this show, here's the first part of one of my favorite episodes from season 1, Cafe Disaffecto. See for yourselves why a show based on a misanthropist is always a good idea, and why the 90's kick the 00's('s?) sorry ass. You can find the rest in YouTube, as well.

Tales of the Bored, Episode IV: A New Hope

2008-06-20T22:10:00.008+03:00

First of all, let me get this out of the way real quick: I'm no longer in the army. I won't post the how's and why's here as it's too public a place, but those of you genuinely interested in finding out, you know how to contact me.

Now then, out with the useless, in with the useful. I've decided to re-create this blog into something more... coherent, I think is the word.

For the past two years, Tales of the Bored has been a random collection of all kinds of stuff, from being a repository of things I like, to long-winded rants closely resembling mental diarrhea. And while at times I liked what I posted, it always bothered me that this blog lacked a defining something, a factor which sometimes prohibited me from taking the whole thing seriously.

And in those cases, my rants (not unlike this one) were pretty damn painful to read.

However! As of today, this changes. While I still like too many damn things to focus simply on one of them, I've decided to add some method to this madness. By that I mean that, from now on, each day will have its own theme, with a discussion/analysis/what have you relevant to the theme of the day. More specifically:

Mondays will be about contemporary gaming, in general. From the X360, to the DS, to MMORPG's and so on.
Tuesdays will be about retro and independent games. I'm a huge fan of retro gaming, so I need one day exclusively to complain about why they don't make games like "X game from the 90's" anymore, and I'm also a big supporter of the independent scene.
Wednesdays' focus will be on comic books and literature in general. Where "literature" means "stuff about the 'Song of Ice and Fire' series and anything written by Neil Gaiman".
Thursdays' theme will be sports, with a mockery of the Greek national football team as a recurring theme, most likely.
Fridays will focus on news and stuff from the Internets. From funny videos to annoying memes and more funny videos, in other words all those useless stuff I usually post when I'm not in the mood for a real post.
Saturdays will feature analyses of TV shows and movies in general. The reason I'm doing this on Saturdays is so that I'll have time to comment on the latest Battlestar Galactica, in case you're wondering. Which you probably aren't.
Sundays will be a "free topic" day about whatever I feel like on that day. Which on most occasions will probably be simply nothing at all.

Does this mean that Tales of the Bored will be updated on a daily basis from now on? Weeeell. Hopefully. And that's all I'm saying. Hopefully I'll learn to be more laconic this way, if anything. But I'll try to stick to the plan, regardless.

To that effect, today's Internets-related news is about Vreel*... wait that's not working, so today's news is about... Firefox 3.0! You know Firefox already, a very reliable and pretty stable (as stable as anything can be on a PC, really) Interwebs browser, and 3.0 is the best version yet. Opera remains a pretty good alternative, but Firefox has a better name, so get to downloading it already!

*Curses, my plans, foiled! Vreel is supposed to be the new Stage6, and the beta was supposed to go live yesterday. However, besides the 404 error, right now I can only access their bulletin board. Oh well, something for next week, I guess.

TL;DR version:

George is making his New Year's resolutions a bit early this time around, and also makes lame references to popular movies. Missed me? I didn't think so.

An interlude

2008-06-09T07:14:00.005+03:00

Why, hello there. Long time no see, etc.

I could talk about a lot of things; Obama winning the primaries after so long, the NBA finals and how a new Celtics Vs. Lakers feud could be the best thing to happen to the league since Jordan left, the new Indy movie (which is awesome, and if you didn't like it then you suck), the Lost season finale or the situation in the army and how utterly pathetic it is.

But I won't. Mainly because I don't wanna. But also because I still haven't seen the Lost season finale.

Instead, I'll do what I usually do: post a video. A video from the best episode of season 4 of Battlestar Galactica, an episode that firmly cemented BSG's place in my "Top-5 best TV shows ever" list. It's that fucking good. It's a video of a song that's playing throughout the episode, and its glum, waiful mood kinda works well with mine these days. Though I still have both my legs.

Gaeta's Lament (S04E07)
Uploaded by anna-molly

'Till later.

A farewell, at least for now

2008-05-09T04:27:00.002+03:00

I really did not feel like blogging lately. I came back from my vacation about five days ago, and while I did stumble across some interesting news, not to mention thinking about revisiting a few ideas from before like that Thor article... I really did not feel like blogging lately. Feeling like shite will do that to you, I guess.

Which is not to say that I like to act like a spoiled brat, I'm hardly the first/last person to ever join the army in this country, but the whole issue is rather more complicated and more personal than I'd feel like sharing in a public place such as this blog.

Ah, but I'm ranting, the kind of personal, angsty, rant I always wanted to avoid when I started Tales of the Bored. So I'll stop here. I'm not sure when my next post will be, and what its subject is going to be. Probably some angry rant about the terrible condition of the Greek army, I doubt I'll have the frame of reference needed for anything else. Also, given the fact that I won't have access to a PC for a good while yet, it's really hard to say when I'll be blogging again.

So a farewell is in order, to anyone (?) still reading this blog. Hopefully, after this whole malarkey is over, I'll have a renewed interest in this blog when I come back. In the meantime, and as always, remember to smile, ya bastards.

TL;DR version:

George is acting like an emo kid. Laf.

The army still sucks, though.

Scheduled downtime

2008-04-22T14:31:00.001+03:00

Easter vacation is finally upon us in the Orthodox world and one of my best friends is getting married in a few days in my hometown. So these add up to a good excuse for me to visit that hellhole. I'm not exactly thrilled about it, and I'm not sure how long I'll stay, since I'm supposed to join the army on May 12. We'll see how it goes.

As a parting gift, here's a leaked trailer from the new X-Files movie, though I wouldn't be surprised if it's pulled off YouTube in a few hours.

TL;DR version:

Cookies.

Stop the press! Edgeworth is back!

2008-04-21T17:45:00.004+03:00

Miles Edgeworth that is. If the name still doesn't ring a bell, I feel sorry for you since it means you've missed out on the Ace Attorney series of games. You can't really see me right now, but this is me mocking you. Ner ner!

The Ace Attorney series is arguably one of the best adventure game franchises in recent years, and the games themselves are without a doubt the best adventure games on the Nintendo DS. Excellent dialogs, great balance between comedy and drama, clever gameplay, I've been through it before.

(Ner ner!)

What came as a surprise to me is the fact that Capcom is going to release a new spin-off based on the series, starring none other than everyone's favorite Prosecutor/Antagonist/All-around Badass, Miles Edgeworth. Since Edgeworth is one of my favorite characters in the series/genre, I'm personally thrilled.

(Ner ne... all right, I'll drop it.)

The game itself looks to be different from the main Ace Attorney franchise as these screenshots from Famitsu show, since it will be sporting a third-person camera, and perhaps even two playable characters? At least that's what I get from seeing Detective Gumshoe follow Edgeworth around, and his "Objection!" screenshot.

Apparently, there won't be any courtroom scenes in this game this time around, which is kind of a bummer, but I guess a little change is always good. Not to mention that it needs to differentiate itself from the previous games, which were all about the courtroom drama.

There's also a short trailer available, and while it doesn't really show much, it's enough to hype people up. I really love the art in this game so far.

Looks like a lot of characters from previous games are making a comeback, yay for Franziska!

TL;DR version:

Release Ace Attorney 3 and 4 in PAL-land, Capcom, please. Willing to grovel. Thanks.

Things that blow your mind

2008-04-20T22:24:00.008+03:00

I came across a thread in the NeoGAF forums today that's been around for a while, with the subject of things that blow your mind. Several really do live up to their name, for example this picture, or perhaps this one (not a .gif!) or rather this one that is guaranteed to make you feel like a small, insignificant gnat.

Or better yet, the fact that Hugh Laurie, the guy playing Greg House in House M.D., played the role of the father in the Stewart Little movies. I said "what the fuck."

But then I tried the beer I picked up at a local place yesterday. It's called Timmermans and it's cherry-flavored.

"But cherry is for sissies!" I can hear some dickbags shout already. Fuck right off, is my response.

Yes, cherry flavor is not the first thing I associate beer with, but damn. This thing tastes like cough syrup, you know, the kind you had as a kid, the one that tasted so damn delicious you had to pretend you were sick so you could drink some more. Only this baby also has alcohol, which makes it even better by default.

In fact, it's the combination of these two that make this beer a strong candidate for the Best Thing Ever award. My lone cause for concern is the fact that, due to its sweetness, this drink is deceptively strong, and you tend to drink it rather fast so it gets to you even faster. Of course, this is not necessarily a bad thing, so you know.

TL;DR version:

Laugh at George as he gets a bit tipsy on a single bottle of beer, but don't neglect to try this beer for yourselves. Seriously. I'm not even using italics, that's how serious I am right now.

A Siren, of the Forbidden kind

2008-04-18T23:26:00.006+03:00

Forbidden Siren was a 2003 PS2 survival horror game created by a subsidiary of Sony, made up from -amongst others- former Silent Hill employees. As such, it sported a fantastic atmosphere, an engaging storyline, and lots of scary moments. However, the gameplay itself was somewhat lacking. Still, it was a radically different entry in the genre of survival horror, which had by that time already begun to feel really stale.

The game emphasized mostly on avoiding confrontations with enemies altogether, rather than killing them. In fact, enemies could not be killed at all, which was a genre first I believe. Of course there were certain unkillable enemies before, such as the Nemesis or Pyramid Head*, but this time you couldn't even kill Zombie Joe Average. This made for more intense sequences of stealth, frenzied attempts at running and hiding from the shibito, but they were perhaps a bit too intense.

Having the constant fear that your enemies will eventually rise up and hunt you again, even after bludgeoning them for the 50th time, knowing that there's no real safe place to hide from them as they can also open doors and effectively seek you out wherever you be... It certainly makes for a more frightening experience, but it's not really fun. And while it could be argued that Silent Hill 2 wasn't exactly all about the fun either, there was some form of entertainment to be had there, perverse though it may have been. This wasn't the case with Forbidden Siren, however, on the contrary it was more of an annoyance than anything. Not to mention that a whole village made of unkillable entities required a far deeper suspension of disbelief than I was willing to indulge myself in.

A sequel was eventually released, and though it addressed many of the flaws of the first game, it didn't really sell that well. Which was a shame, but what can you do?

On the brighter side of things, Sony is preparing a remake of the first game for the Playstation 3, which hopefully will also address the flaws of the original version. Its name will be Siren: New Translation and while that's not the catchiest name ever, I'll have to repeat my point from my last post, it's just a name.

Judging from the first trailer, they certainly got the scares right... I think this is easily the spookiest game trailer I've seen so far. Hopefully the finished game will be just as mind-fuckingly scary.

TL;DR version:

George gets scared by a simple trailer of a videogame and cries like a little bitch. Siren: New Translation is a name worthy of yet another translation but what can you do. In the meantime, George decides to kill some demon fools in Viking: Battle for Asgard so he can feel like a man again. Italics.

* Yes, both were eventually killed in their respective games, but not before the very end, before which they always came back to... well you can't really call it life, but you catch my drift.

The Truth Will Be Out There, soon

2008-04-17T00:25:00.004+03:00

The official title for the upcoming, second, X-Files movie has been revealed. Its name? "I Want to Believe"

Truth be told, it does sound a bit corny. But as a long-time uh... X-Phile (first time I've ever used that term, I swear), I like it. It's one of the key phrases used in the series, it's almost catchy, and it just feels right for an X-Files movie. Not to mention that it's just a damn title, and most titles suck to begin with. Attack of the Clones, Sanity's Requiem, The Forbidden Kingdom, hell even Fight the Future, which sounds almost as bad as "war on terror."

Though X-Files: Cultural Learnings of Aliens For Make Benefit Glorious Planet of Earth does have a certain ring to it.

Also, never forget, bitches:

The name is fine.

TL;DR version:

New X-Files movie has a slightly less-than-common name, but at the end of the day it's a new X-Files movie. Stop doubting, start believing.

Internet neutrality

2008-04-15T22:55:00.004+03:00

I'll be the first to admit I'm not too fond of CEO's. For no real reason in particular, really. Perhaps I was sexually molested by one of them in a previous life, I dunno.

When a dude like the new CEO of Virgin Media makes a comment such as "net neutrality is a load of bollocks" then I'm not likely to change my opinion any time soon, at least as far as this guy is concerned. It gets better, as they "claimed they're already doing deals to deliver some people’s content faster than others. They would then put websites and services that don't pay Virgin in the "slow lane", meaning those sites would load slowly and cause most users to give up using them, feeling forced to use whatever Virgin wants to push through their network."

For more, including a rarely seen serious video from patently-unfunny Internet pseudo-celeb Athéne, visit this website. As you may have gathered, I don't particularly like Athéne either, but this time he and his gang are right. If anything, I respect him more after this.

Obviously, given that this is more of a U.K. issue this doesn't affect me on a personal level (for the time being, at least) but that's some Orwellian shit right there. Even if this has to do simply with a U.K ISP for the time being, who's to say that more companies won't adopt this policy in the not-so-distant future?

TL;DR version:

People suck, and Virgin CEO's even more so. Big Brother says "Hi!" George is being cryptic, but still wants a PS3.

No Italics were used in this post. Must be a first.

Oblivious

2008-04-14T23:06:00.007+03:00

I've been playing Oblivion lately on my 360 (as you may have noticed if you paid a visit to my 360 Voice Blog, an utterly silly but somewhat amusing thingymagig) after hearing a myriad things about it, ranging from lavish praise to accusations of being the worst game ever.

The truth for me, shockingly, is somewhere in-between. It's definitely a highly accomplished game from a technical point of view, especially given its age. It sports a gameworld that is absolutely huge, there's a bazillion of quests to be finished, and some of them don't even suck! Especially the Thief Guild/Dark Brotherhood ones. Though the selling point for most people was the fact that it feels like an offline MMORPG, by offering a huge world that you're free to explore, without having any Alliance/Horde douchebags dance on your corpse every five seconds.

Yet at the same point, that's also its biggest failing. It shares a lot of the most common tedious aspects of an MMORPG, namely myriads of NPC's that lack any sort of personality, a storyline that has no real depth, repetitive locations (honestly, if you've seen one cave in this game, you've seen them all) and objectives, not to mention that the gameplay can be a little grindy. Grinding which of course is as fun as shoving diamond-tipped forks in your eyes.

However, quite amusingly, Oblivion's biggest failing is what has been called its biggest success. It's an offline MMORPG, without any other real people than yourself. And it's this lack of fellow people that, in my eyes at least, hurts the game more than its peculiar leveling system or its repetitive nature.

Y'see, people (myself included) are usually pretty quick to overlook said repetitiveness in MMOG's when they have other people to speak about the game and its failings, ask for hints or just plain boast and show off to. Because, let's face it, the most important part in any RPG is to make your character so badass and pimp that you can brag about it to your friends, be they real-life or otherwise.

But killing the same wolves/boars/brigands over and over, with the only reward being some ugly-looking piece of armor that you can't even show to a friend in the middle of Shattrath? That's just not right.

I do not mean to say that Oblivion is a bad game. Naw, that'd be too harsh. There is some fun to be had here, but to me it feels too much like the typical Western RPG with clanky PC-style combat. Not that I mind Western RPG's, I actually like the ability to shape my own character -usually by stealing everything and being a prick to everybody. Or at least the people I (arbitrarily) decide not to like. In contrast, the completely linear nature and narrative of Japanese RPG's is something I can't stomach anymore.

The only real problem I have with this kind of games (long sentence ahead, take a deep breath), and especially massively open-ended ones like Oblivion, is that since there are so many things one can do and steal, I find myself playing them for such lengthy sessions at a time that they leave me with a feeling of self-discontent for spending so much time on a game by the time they end. Which is also why I rarely play these games, I guess.

I'm rapidly reaching Mental Diarrhea territory at this point, so I'll stop here before the smell becomes overwhelming. Until tomorrow*, then.

TL;DR version:

George tries a 2-year old Massively Singleplayer Offline Roleplaying Game, gets addicted for a short while, feels guilty for not spending all that time on Geometry Wars instead. Hey, high scores don't make themselves, you know!

*Tomorrow in this context meaning "any time in the following 300 years."

The World Needs Only One Big Boss!

2008-04-09T22:07:00.002+03:00

I have a horrendous headache today, so this'll be another one of those short posts.

I stumbled upon the following video while searching for the new song from Metal Gear Solid 4, Calling to the Night, and it's one of those "Orchestras meet gaming themes" kind of thing, which is really not my cup of tea. Most of the times, the music comes of as too pompous and tacky, and sometimes the music itself is not orchestra material. Super Mario Brothers, really?

However, in the case of the Metal Gear Solid theme, it really does work. I'd say it's the perfect way to hype yourself for the upcoming release of MGS4 if you wish to remain completely spoiler-free, aside from playing the previous games again of course. Which is a thought that has crossed my mind more than once these past few days, but I'm too lazy to bring my Playstation 2 back from retirement, and Twin Snakes on the Gamecube can be a bitch.

Oh well. Enjoy the video:

TL;DR version:

George wants a Playstation 3. Donations at the usual address.

Rejoice, ye faithfu... hey, wait a second.

2008-04-08T22:03:00.017+03:00

The rumor has been going on for about a week. Rock Band will finally be released in Europe on May 23, though only for the Xbox360 at first, with a subsequent PS3 release in late Summer/early Autumn.

Earlier today, IGN reported that this is indeed the case. Being the happy owner of a X360, I was thinking to myself, "Haha, suckers!" To make things even better, and to make up for the huge delay, Rock Band EU will feature the following exclusive songs:

English

"Beetlebum" by Blur
"Rock 'n' Roll Star" by Oasis
"Monsoon" by Tokio Hotel
"Hysteria" by Muse

German

"Hier Kommt Alex" by Die Toten Hosen
"Perfekte Welle" by Juli
"Countdown to Insanity" by H-Block X

French

"Manu Chao" by Les Wampas
"New Wave" by Playmo

When I first laid eyes on the list, I could only see one thing:

- "Monsoon" by Tokio Hotel

- "Monsoon" by Tokio Hotel

- "Monsoon" by Tokio Hotel

WHAT.

GET THAT SHIT OUT OF HERE.

It almost ruined the game for me. Then I saw this:

-----> "Hysteria" by Muse <-----

And I felt better again. Little did I know that things would get much worse...

You see, despite the fact that the Euro has been gaining over the Dollar for a while now, games are still more expensive over here, and best case scenario is that there will be a 1:1 Euro/Dollar ratio when it comes to game prices.

However, in this case EA decided to keep a 1:1 English Pound/Dollar ratio. So that means that Rock Band European Edition will cost one hundred and eighty pounds. That translates to two hundred and fourty Euros, or three hundred and fifty three Dollars. Two hundred and fourty fucking Euros. For a game. Regardless of its undoubtedly great quality, that price is simply insane.

Hell, I'd buy a Wii with that money.

In fact, I'd go as far as to say that whoever buys the game at this price is a complete dumbass, as they're giving EA a carte blanche to price their future games whatever the fuck they want, since we'll still buy them.

I'm a self-proclaimed sheep, I own both the regular and the special editions of the LotR DVD's for example, but even I'm not that big an idiot.

TL;DR version:

EA reveals launch day (May 23) for the European version of Rock Band, with the pricetag being a pound of your flesh, a litre of your blood or half your immortal soul. George cries, curses anyone and everyone that would buy it at that price, loses faith in everything.

Ολοι θέλουν να επιστρέψουν στη φύση. Απλά κανείς δε θέλει να πάει με τα πόδια.

Help make the world a better place

2008-04-07T19:30:00.006+03:00

As of today I'm adding a tl;dr segment to all my posts, regardless of length.

I'm not sure how many people in the world are familiar with a certain German director called Uwe Boll. He is responsible for some of the most unintentionally hilarious, comically amateurish, downright awful movies in the history of the multiverse. It should be noted that most of his movies so far have been based on videogame franchises, though none of them were what we call triple-A quality titles. His credits include House of the Dead, BloodRayne and the only movie to ever make me lose my appetite, Alone in the Dark. AitD was so depressingly bad, I couldn't find the will to speak, or even eat, while watching it. And as anyone who knows me will testify, there's precious few things that can make me lose my appetite.

As with most bad things, there's always some who will suggest that his movies are so bad that they're actually good, some weird sort of odd comical masterpieces. On that specific subject, I say bullshit. I'll admit I giggled at the train wreck that was House of the Dead, and during the first few moments of BloodRayne I thought the movie could be something of a dark, guilty pleasure, but it, along with the rest of his movies are just plain bad. Not good bad, Jesus-Christ-I-can-feel-my-brain-rotting-away bad. And there's so many of them!

It was funny the first time around, when House of the Dead was first released on the unsuspecting world, but the joke has gotten old now. In a sense, it was worth watching HotD just to see just how bad a movie can get, but with every consecutive movie it's becoming painfully obvious; Uwe Boll movies aren't worth watching, even if it's just for shits and giggles. It's like those jokes that people feel the need to continue on making, even though somebody killed it several minutes ago. Perhaps a 30 minutes long fart joke, if you will.

Not to mention that it seems like Uwe Boll himself is a colossal jackass. Back in 2006 he staged the "Raging Boll" event, where he, former light-weight boxer, could take on people who criticized his movies, i.e skinny Internet geeks. Naturally, it takes balls of steel to kick the living shit out of scrawny teenagers* but that wasn't the whole story. Boll was offered an actual fight by another former boxer, and creator of the Broken Saints series, Brooke Burgess, and the way he reacted to that, well... You should read the whole story as offered by Burgess himself in his blog, the article is called Raging Dickhead.

Now that you have a good idea of who we're talking about, let's get to the point. As mentioned in this article, Boll has claimed that he will quit making movies if one million people tell him to stop. Unsurprisingly, there's already an online petition about this, with a 5-digit number of signatures already. I have to confess I don't believe that Boll will go through with this, even if the petition reaches one million signatures, which in itself is also unlikely. I also hate online petitions, as I've probably mentioned in the past. But hey, this is a good cause, so get to it!

Also unsurprisingly, a number of Uwe Boll apologists have appeared throughout the Interwebs, claiming that if people don't like his movies they can just not watch them, and also that this is just gamers getting their panties up in a bunch because they're afraid that Boll will "discredit" their favorite medium. First of all, the "if you don't like it, don't bother with it" argument is as old as the counter-argument "the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing" and both are equally shitty, so that's all I'm going to say on that one. As for fears of Boll discrediting games through his movies, that is completely unfounded. Not only because games and movies based on them are different entities, but more importantly, most movies based on videogames are already complete turds, regardless of whom they've been directed by.

It does seem that Boll has his own sort of fun while directing these atrocities of his, so I am not going to suggest he should stop making movies altogether, I'm not that mean. However, instead of finding inventive ways to fund his movies and luring good actors and actresses in them, effectively staining their names for all eternity, he should do what all other talentless amateurs do: Gather a bunch of friends, find a handycam and post the results on YouTube. He could even become a cult icon in that cesspool of humanity. Everyone's happy.

(Unless he becomes such a cult hit that he goes back to making movies. I doubt the world is that cruel, though.)

TL;DR version:

Douchebag German director says he'll stop making his shitty movies if enough people tell him to do so. Help prove that humanity isn't beyond redemption by signing this petition.

* That is to say, I don't condone the level of abuse some people have given Boll, which borderlines on stalking. I do think he needs to stop making movies though.