*Whistling*....

*Subtle Cough*

Sorry, don't know what came over me.

Oh, by the way, my birthday is in two weeks...

1/8

Of all the video games that have been turned into movies, only one of them has been somewhat good.

Mortal Kombat.

The movie that comes out tomorrow, Alone in the Dark, is yet another in the "Can't wait for Metroid" category.

God, I hope that John Woo doesn't fuck up metroid.

How bad is it?

As of midnight, Rotten Tomatoes has it at a freshness rating of 5%. And an average score of 1.5.

Owww...

Some selected quotes:

• "The three stars have seen better days, but I'd like to think they could still do something classier and more dignified than this. Like gay porn."
  -- Rob Vaux, FLIPSIDE MOVIE EMPORIUM


• "Alone in the Dark co-stars perpetual party-girl Tara Reid as an archeologist. That alone should give you some clue as to how bad this movie is."
  -- Bob Townsend, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION


• "This is jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring, 'I-can't- believe-someone- made-this-crap' badness we're dealing with."
  -- Dustin Putman, THEMOVIEBOY.COM


• "If you took the 100 worst ideas ever conceived for a science-fiction film, rattled them around in a Lotto tumbler and spilled them out onto the screen at random, you could not produce a more asinine hodgepodge than Alone in the Dark."
  -- Colin Covert, MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE


• "so far off the scale bad that the only possible reaction is to laugh at it -- and I do mean at it and not with it."
  -- Steve Rhodes, STEVE RHODES' INTERNET REVIEWS

REALLY can't wait for Metroid...

2006 baby...

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

You ever think up something that sounds really cool, but can't use it?

Like a good one liner, that make a good blog title, but you just can't think of a way to use it elegantly.

Hell, someone else has already said it, most likely, but you know you gotta find a way to express it before you lose it...

GAH!

Things I don't want to hear about in the next 4 years...

• The phrase "Sanctity of Marriage".


• John Kerry


• The immorality of video games (the media has been rather nice about this recently, I have to say...)


• 9/11 conspiracy theories (you really don't want to know...)


• Ralph Nader


• Anymore delays to a Bioware, Bungie, or Blizzard game (I'd throw in Ubisoft, but then I'd lose the alliteration)


• Licensed Games, especially those based on Movies based on Comic Books


• Games based on the Iraqi War (give them some time...)


• Games based on Vietnam (unless its good...)


• Hell, lets just complete the series, and say no to anymore games based on WW2 (there's been a half-million to date!)


• Fucking intolerant shit like this


• Steriods.


• G4 shows other than X-play, Screensavers, and possibly Icons


• Steriods.


• A New England team winning a major sports event. I'm looking at you, Yankees and Pats, hell, even the Sox can live without another championship...


• Did I say Steriods yet?

Here's to hoping...

So Freaking Awesome...

Catastrophe Calculator: Estimate Asteroid Impacts Online

Lets say you just watched Armageddon or Deep Impact, and were wondering what would happen in a REAL asteroid impact.

Well, the University of Arizona can tell you!

Or, at least, a webpage hosted by the University of Arizona can give you a pretty good impression.

Tell the program how big it is, how fast its going, and what its made of, and how far away from the impact site you are, and it'll tell you the size of the crater, how big and hot the fireball would be, how huge the ensuing crater would be, the size of the earthquake and, if applicable, how much of the Earth gets melted.

Its kind of morbid, sure, but it is so fun to set up a situation, like a dino-killer hitting SF, and seeing what happens in other cities.

Video Games vs Movies

Hey Liz, wanna know one difference between videogames and movies?

Video Games released in January can actually be very, very good!

What's Tivo'ed

I got a Tivo for Christmas, btw.

Now everyone in my family has a Tivo.

Be very, very scared.

Anyway, here's a list of what I've Tivo'ed:

24 (or: Jack Bauer's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day)

Veronica Mars (Dear god, this show is so freaking awesome. Its like Buffy, but with sleuthing instead of Slaying. UPN hit the jackpot for once)

Boston Legal (Take a few actors with obvious talent, but no prior major experience, add in some actors who have so much talent AND experience [Candice Bergen from "Murphy Brown", William Shatner from "Star Trek", and Rene Auberjonois from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" as Odo], and throw in some of the best dialogue ever written. EVER)

Enterprise (okay, I'm a Star Trek fanboy. So sue me)

X-play (formerlly "Extended Play", which is a video game review show)

The Screensavers (one of the few Tech-TV shows to survive the aquisition by G4, and a pretty good one, too)

Bunch of Cartoon Network animated shows (Teen Titans (US), JL Unlimited (US), Venture Bros. (US), Full Metal Alchemist (Japan), Cowboy Bebop (Japan), Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (Japan))

Odd selection, neh?

The new MiniMac

Okay, I konw that everyone has probably heard about this so far. Its a computer in a box, with no monitor, keyboard, or mouse.

However, I believe Apple has made a minor mistake with this product.

The cheapest monitor they sell is a $1000 20" flatscreen display.

Twice the price of the actual computer itself.

Whoops?

The old classics

As you may know, Square-Enix recently released "Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls". This is another in the recent trend of releasing old NES and Genesis games onto the GBA, since the GBA does have more processing power than that old POS.

I'm kidding. I did love the NES, when it worked and when I didn't have to jab a cleaning thing into the cartridge slot, which held a cartridge as BIG AS A BOOK, in order to get the damn thing working. But it was still the best thing we had at that time.

God, is that sad...

Anyway, Final Fantasy I was the game that saved Square, and spurned a series of games who's only similarity in terms of plot is the name and that most of them have the NPC "Cid", for some reason.

Still, it was an excellent RPG, the creator of the Japanese RPG sub-genre.

Now?

It isn't bad...

Now, despite the obvious flaws, like poor graphics and sound, being that it was a freaking NES game, still, it is rather amazing how far the gameplay in the genre has come in so few years.

Well, I SAY few...

For one, the plots nowadays are far more developed. Which isn't very hard.

Defeating the first boss of the game, which saves the princess, procures two rewards: 1: The king agrees to rebuild a bridge that has no reason not being built in the first place. I mean, seriously, its a bridge that's only a few squares north of the city, probably a major trade hub to the rest of the world, and you haven't rebuilt it yet? Come on!

2: A lute.

Yeah.

In exchange for saving the king's daughter, she gives you a freaking lute.

Whoopty doo!

Its not even an equippable item...

Also, the gameplay has become much more refined. Its nothing really big, but comparing FF1 to FFIX, the difference are apparant. Including speed into combat, so thieves attack more often than fighters, adding limit breaks so that you can get a huge boost of power when you need it, throwing in non-spell abilities, simple strategic options like deciding whether to target one or all enemies/allies or creating two lines of combat, stuff like that.

But the similarities are also pretty interesting. The classes didn't change much, the magic system's only change is that its learned off of items instead of purchasing spells. Random battles still pop up, leveling up is done automatically, some spells can be cast outside of battle, the basic elements. I haven't gotten far enough to discover if the elemental spells were done with the classic-yet-absurd "Fire -> Fira -> Firaga", but I have hopes.

The best way, perhaps, to look at old games is, I don't know, an unfinished sculpture. The original is good, but the details aren't there yet. Each progression refines it more and more, making a better game each time. But ten iterations later, the resemblance to the original product is clear as daylight...

Angst Poisoning

I got Prince of Persia: Warrior Within for Christmas, and I started to play it yesterday because, well, KOTOR 2 is a really long game.

But lets review PoP: Sands of Time, before I get to PoP:WW.

SoT, released last year, remains possibly the best example of an adventure game. While the combat held a large amount of strategic depth, that wasn't the beauty of the game. It was the platforming. The sweet, sweet platforming.

You go into, for example, an giant aviary, and you need to get to the top. So you jump onto a nearby ledge, run along the wall, grap on to the handy poll, swing around and use it to throw yourself to another one, then you use that poll to jump onto a ladder, climb a bit, jump across the way to a narrow ledge, then you hug the wall until you reach another ladder.

All of that was done seamlessly. You fall to your doom, and its YOUR fault. And even if you do, just use the sands to rewind time a bit and retry that tricky jump.

It was a beauty to behold sometimes, and the game's light mood was very welcome, really.

The main complaint was that there was no real boss, but even then that wasn't an issue, since the last boss was the last level. SImply traversing it was a challenge in of itself.

PoP:SoT didn't sell well.

So, what do they do? Tone down the platforming a bit, boost (and improve) the combat, and make the Prince one angst-ridden SOB.

How angst-ridden?

During the first boss fight, against an enemy who's outfit couldn't be more impractical (think bondage-style, but with nothing covering the rear save for a strap), once you get her health down to a certain point, the game goes to a cutscene, in which she cuts the prince on the face and he utters the two most telling words ever:

"You bitch!"

Yeah.

*cough*

Even though they have deemphasized the oh-so-wonderful platforming, it is still there. The combat is a lot more fun now though, and the addition of boss battles and the Dahaka, the big bad evil thingy that you have to run away from, forcing you to think quickly as you use the prince's platforming abilities to survive, make it an excellent game.

There are some other problems, though. There's a LOT of backtracking, and while each room has two versions, a past and a present version (you do some time-traveling...), it gets old pretty fast. The wonderful premonition aspect from SoT was canned for WW, so you aren't always sure where you're supposed to go, but these issues aren't really major ones.

The big question is, of course, would I rather play SoT or WW?

Well, right now, I'm not sure. The story and mood are much better in SoT, and the platforming is more emphasized, but I do like the enhanced combat system.

So its sorta a toss-up for now. Lets see how I feel when I finish it...

Playing: PoP: WW

Today has not been fun...

Okay, today started off with dad waking me up at 9 telling me that the grapevine, the mountain route the I-5 uses, is snowed in. So they closed it. Wooo.

This meant that I had to take the 101 down to the 405. Can't be a huge increase, you think. Well, I'd say 50 freaking miles is pretty huge. Also, 101 goes through a lot more urban zones than the 5, so you can't hit 80 as nearly as often as you can on the 5.

It took me 6 hours to just get to the 405. I can get to Irvine in 6 easy.

Then I had to bail liz out by dropping off her gift certificate and phone charger at her apartment. Normally, that'd take 15-20 minutes. But, because of massive road work on Fairfax, it took me a freaking hour to get there and back onto the 405.

Joy.

It can only get better, right? I mean, sure, I arrive in Irvine at about 7, but I manage to unload my stuff relatively easy. I get everything out of the car, bring it up to my apartment, and go back down to get my jacket and backpack and suitcase out of the middle seat.

So, I drop my keys into the passenger side to free my hands, grab the stuff, and close the passenger and side door.

Oh, by the way, for some freaking annoying reason, whenever I close the side door, it locks all of the doors.

Remember how I dropped my keys?

Yeah.

Locked the keys in the car.

Whoopty fucking doo.

So I call insurance people, they send someone to open it up, and I learned something very good about my car.

Its very hard to break into.

Of course, when you need to force open the door, it can be a little... inconvenient.

Oh, and of course my power locks only LOCK the doors, the unlocking feature doesn't work for some reason.

GREAT.

So, ten minutes later, we manage to open it up, turn off the freaking alarm that was going off quite well, and I manage to get out of there.

Oh, and because of my weird ass cable set up, my Tivo won't work until I call them tomorrow...

Oh, yeah, and its been raining pretty much consitently all across California.

...

Playing: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within.

Right freaking now.

More gaming ranting...

I got two games for christmas: Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords.

I've beaten KotOR 2 already, throwing about 30 hours of gameplay into it. Not the longest RPG's I've played, but that's no small chunk of time. The game is excelent, the characters are deep and well-played by the voice actors, the combat system is nearly unchanged but has some beautiful new animations and some clever additions that, while not especially useful, still are unique enough to warrant some experimenting, and the battles have both some memorable moments and can be especially difficult at times. Not to mention a new upgrading system that can allow you to make some special, powerful weapons. The game is just truly wonderful.

Well, all that's true for most of the game.

Like KotOR 1, KotOR 2 follows a three-act style of environments. In act 1, you are restricted to a set path upon which you learn of the crisis and build up a large part of your party, as well as learning a lot about the state of the Republic. In act 2, you can go to a variety of different locales, in any order, to find the crucial elements that will allow the Jedi and Republic to weather the storm, and at the end of it you learn a crucial element the makes all of the pieces fit into place. And in act 3, you go fight the big bad evil guy.

Act 1 and 2 of KotOR 1 were pretty good, but at the end of Act 2 the surprise basically threw you for one hell of a loop. Similar to the Vader thing at the end of Empire. In KotOR 2, the surprise is sorta obvious, but still a little bit of a shock in some ways, but still, Act 1 and 2 of KotOR 2 in many ways surpass its predicessor's, especially when you visit Nar Shaddaa. But Act 3, and in some ways towards the end of Act 2, the game falls apart.

For one, the game becomes too easy. While you spend most of the time at the end of the game with only the main character, your character is going to be over level 20 by then, throwing down with a prestige class that just makes you even more powerful. While I was using a KotOR 1 build that has always been absurdly powerful (stunning/stasis force powers, Master Speed, and Master Power Attack is overpowered to the extreme), I was still able to breeze through almost all of my enemies with little resistance. I had over 300 hp (note: This is based on the D&D core rule set. Since most weapons deal 10-20 max damage, 300 hp is pretty absurd). Also, my mana was regenerating so quickly I was never in trouble of running out. And while the final battle was fairly difficult, the enemy wasn't nearly powerful enough to reduce my hp enough that couldn't be counteracted by using my rediculously powerful medpacks. Then again, I was majorly twinking my character out.

Oh, and remember the new item upgrading system? This just compounded the problem. While weapons weren't a huge issue, it sorta gets weird when my character, only wearing very light armor so he can take full use of his jedi abilities, can mod out his armor so that the only thing that has a chance of hurting him is lightsaberes by giving his armor tons of damage reduction against physical damage.

The biggest disappointment was the story, though. For one, the big surprise is rather obvious. No deft touches like in the first game, you can pretty much see it coming. But, also, once you enter act 3, PC-NPC dialog mostly goes away. While a male character has three choices of romantic interests, there's no real resolution involved. None. No kissing, no "I love you", nothing. I have a feeling that there would be a similar thing for female characters.

And the ending is pretty much crap. After you reach the final level you never see the rest of your party again. You learn that they do indeed survive, but its not made clear how that happened. BUT YOU NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN! You do learn what your character has to do after the game, but without talking to the other party members there's no more resolution there, either.

So why am I ranting? Well, the KotOR 1 came out last year (2003), and KotOR 2 just came out during the big 2004 game splurge. The fact that all of this new content was added in just the last year is amazing, but they failed on a number of fronts:

1: The old super-power builds remained horribly imbalenced. When you make a sequel you fix what was wrong with the original! (Such as in Halo 2, they nerfed the best weapon from Halo, the pistol, by taking away the scope)

2: There were a number of bugs that, while having little affect on the gameplay, still were annoying and easy to find.

3: The story crashed and burned about two ways of the way through.

4: No resolution for the characters or the story.

5: Even without twinking, the game was probably too easy.

So in short?

They didn't finish the game.

Is it a good game? Hell yeah. Its the best traditional RPG to come out since KotOR 1. But it could've been a lot better. Lets say they take an extra 6 months to work on the game. That way it comes out in the summer. While not prime shopping season, it ain't bad. They fix up the bugs, finish the storyline to the point where it retains the depth it showed in the early parts of the game, add some resolution to the love interests, and balance it out a bit so that it remains a challenge throughout, or at least until you find a new uber strat.

This is going to be a problem with the gaming industry for the years to come. They are so interested in hitting the winter release window that they are willing to ship an incomplete project. There are some companies (Blizzard and Valve, for example) who don't have set release dates. They take the "We'll release it when its done" mindset, and Blizzard is one of the most successful companies, with games that define genres, while Valve took their time to release a Half-Life 2, which in any other year would easily have been the #1 FPS of the year. But, they went up against Halo 2, which was worked on for 3 years before being released with absurd success.

The problem is, though, that Blizzard, Valve and Bungie are the heavy minority compared to the rest of the industry that must release products on deadline.

Deadlines are good. But when deadlines start to get in the way of good products, then there's a problem here.

Five bucks that the PC release of KotOR 2 is going to have everything I listed above...