[No Post Friday]

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]

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

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]

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!)

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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.