Nunchux

Violence in Video Games

2013-02-13T01:31:00.000-07:00

Video games are very near and dear to my heart. I've been playing them since I was very young. In fact, my very first video game was the original Mortal Kombat, and I remember being absolutely fascinated with the animations when I wasn't busy freezing all of my opponents with Sub-Zero. I've grown up with video games, and they've provided the backdrop to my entire life. Some of my fondest memories have taken place with a controller in my hand. They've told me incredible stories, shown me rich and vibrant new worlds, forced me to make impactful choices, and even introduced me to some of my best friends in real life. Since those first days in Mortal Kombat to the moments yesterday when I beat Far Cry 3 and gaped at the screen, to the many, many more years I will be playing them, video games have had their hand in shaping my life.

Eleven days before Christmas, 20 children and 6 adults were shot dead at Sandy Hook Elementary. The event shook the country in a way that it hasn't seen since the Columbine shootings. As the country recovers from the shock, we look for places to point the fingers. For whatever reason, we are not satisfied by blaming the person who walked into the school and actually pulled the trigger. In our minds, there has to be something more, something more to blame and some sort of action that needs to be taken to prevent this from happening in the future. The deaths need to mean something.

I'm always surprised at this reaction, though I know I shouldn't be. It fits in with the need we have as a culture to have purpose and for every action we take, including our deaths, to mean something. While that is mostly the topic for another blog, it is relevant to this post insofar as it becomes the root of what I find myself needing to write about. As we look for places to point the finger, my dear and beloved video games become the focus of the debate. It's always something, mind you, whether it be guns or movies or video games or books, something is always to blame outside the person who took the action.Within the last decade or so, video games have come under fire for their content pretty much any time a child turns to violence. I do not want to understate the general horror I feel any time I see a story to that effect on the news, but the point of this article is not the act, but the causes for it.

So now the debate is whether violence in video games is causing our children to act out violently in turn. This argument has always led to the debate to ban or censor games, and has gone to rather extreme lengths in this debate in the post Sandy Hook world. If the logic is that violent video games beget violent actions from children in real life, clearly the solution should be to ban violence in those games, which will lead to normal, happy kids again, right?

Let's look at really the only argument that has any logical relevance to the topic:

Kids are influenced by the media that they are immersed in.

Let's get one thing straight. I absolutely believe that the media we partake in influences our thoughts and to some degree our actions as well. In my own personal experience, I watch the wonderful Sherlock on BBC and try to find ways to be more observant. There is a fairly massive difference between something like that and something like, say, watching somebody get killed on screen, in a game, or reading about it in a book, and deciding you want to try that our IRL. It takes a certain, already unbalanced mentality to even begin to have those thoughts. You only take it one step further when you actually go out and do it.

Does that mean I think we need to ban violence in video games? Hell no. My reasons for this are many.

There is no evidence to support that there is any relation between violence in the real world and playing violent video games. In other words, playing violent video games does not make you any more likely to walk into a school and shoot your fellow students than not playing them. A quick Google search for research into the behavioral affections of playing violent video games shows any number of studies, funded both privately and federally that show no link between the two.

But let's break out the hypothetical here and say we removed violence from video games. Check, done, every video game is rainbows and kittens. Keep in mind that if you remove violence from video games, we are talking all violence. Even something as simple as Mario jumping on a Goomba is violent. The same people arguing that these games make violence OK in children's minds can just as easily argue, and have on occasion, that even implied violence can subliminally suggest the moral ambiguity of real life violent actions. So, no Mario, no Call of Duty, the video game industry becomes Peggle and checkers variants.

Sarcasm aside here, clearly violence won't stop, as it existed looooong before the idea of a video game even existed. So, what else could be influencing our children that violence is cool? Movies and TV. Ban the violence there. Music. No violent lyrics or suggestive lyrics. Where else do we see violence every day. Maybe we can start censoring the news, as it always reports on the violent stuff.

I realize I tread dangerously close to slippery slope territory here, but history has set many precedents that can reliably be used to show that societies tend to go to extreme lengths to snuff out what they perceive to be a threat to their way of life (Salem, the Crusades, the Patriot Act, so on).

A more minor argument to this point is that video games are worse offenders because it involves some level of role play - people playing these games are, in some respect, directly responsible for the on screen deaths. This is certainly true, and it has some merit, even in my mind - the interactive element of video games provides a more visceral and real experience.I can belabor the point that people far smarter than myself have conducted research that shows there is still no relation between video game violence and IRL violence, but I'm not much for repeating myself. Instead, I'll link you to the 2011 Supreme Court decision indicating that California's 2005 law banning the sale of certain games to minors was "unprecedented and mistaken", noting that "[...] parents who care about the matter can readily evaluate the games their children bring home. Filling the remaining modest gap in concerned-parents’ control can hardly be a compelling state interest."

While nothing I write here is likely to change anybody's mind about the impact of violence in video games, we can all definitely agree on one point: not all games are meant for all audiences. While video games as a form of entertainment were marketed at actual kids 30 years ago, that is no longer the case and hasn't been for a very long time. Now there are a wide variety of audiences and an equally wide variety of games for those audiences. Simply put, if parents are of the mindset that their child might be improperly influenced by playing certain games, don't let them play it. Parents can easily be involved in their children's free time and what they are doing when they're sitting in front of the TV with a controller in their hands. What are they playing? Who are they playing with? It is the parents' responsibility to monitor their own children - not the government's, not mine, not the video game industry's. That being said, the video game industry has made it incredibly easy for parents. Parents can simply look at the letter in the obvious white and black box on the front and back of every video game package that tells them what audience the game is meant for.

Clearly, a game like Grand Theft Auto is not a game kids should be playing. I am not denying that fact, and in fact, it is an idea that I support fully. Children need to grow up understanding that their choices and actions have real consequences - allowing them to grow up playing a game where mugging a cop or exploding random people on the street is rewarded with money and reputation instead of punishment is sending the wrong message. Again, I readily acknowledge that the media we partake in impacts how we view and act in the world. That being said, it is not my responsibility to take action or have it taken against me because somebody may try to replicate the GTA experience in the real world. It is my responsibility to take control of my own actions and prevent myself from running over every pedestrian I see when I am behind the wheel of my car. Each person, individually, has that same responsibility. In the case of children, it is and always has been the parents' responsibility to take control of what they allow their kids to experience in video games, the same as they should be taking control of what their children can watch on TV, what movies they can see, and what books they can read. It is not the government's responsibility, nor can the video game industry be held responsible for parents not living up to that obligation.

And this is exactly the opposite of what all these ridiculous calls for censoring video games are trying to accomplish. By asking the government to censor games, parents are effectively saying that they don't have the time or the care to take that responsibility for their own kids. In fact, it goes a step beyond that and tries to force their individual morals and opinions on the rest of society, effectively punishing the larger society as a whole for the sins of a very small few.

So, to the folks out there that think taking direct action against the video game industry is the correct way to deal with the problem, I tell you it is not. It is not your place, nor is it the government's to tell me what I can and cannot play in a video game, any more than you can tell me what to read or what to watch or how to vote. It is your place to take responsibility for you and your family to change your own lives based on the philosophies and principles in which you place value. Furthermore, in the case of an event like the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary, if you look to place blame, place it on the person or people who committed the act. Despite any outside influences that may or may not have existed, it was ultimately their choice to commit the act. Stop trying to figure out "why," and stop thinking that you somehow have the power to prevent it from happening ever again. While that's a really great dream, and I can't fault you for your hopes, the simple, cold fact of the matter is you do not have that power. Attempting to infringe upon the way the entire rest of the country is allowed to experience games is not the way to go about dealing with your grief.

A Recommendation

2013-02-13T00:42:00.000-07:00

So, a bit ago, one of my friends recommended this stand up comedian to me, knowing my love of most things stand up. So, I meander on over to this guy's site, watch a few videos that are posted there, have a few good laughs. Then, then, I discover this guy has a blog, and since I like reading even more than listening to stand up comedy, I give it a whirl. Several hours later, after many tears are had and my gut is sore from the pseudo-convulsions that come from laughing constantly for several hours, I was sad to learn that there were no blog posts remaining. /sadpanda

Fortunately, Mr. John Jacobs updates his blog rather frequently, and it's become one of my favorite websites to frequent (right up there with Reddit, YouTube, and The Oatmeal).

Anyway, point to the story, I've been offline for a while (well, not offline, just quasi-obsessing over SWTOR and new world events therein). I check tonight to see not one, not even two, but four (!!) new blog posts. Commence many minutes of reading. He wrote a very, very interesting blurb about WWE and why watching it is awesome (which it is... yes I'm older than 10). I left a comment, because I laughed rather a lot. I realized I was the only one who has done so.

Problem.

Not enough people experiencing hilarity.

Must fix.

Or at least try. So, here's that effort. I strongly, oh so strongly recommend that you go check out Mr. Jacobs' site, because you won't regret it. You'll even come back and thank me later. Fear not, I accept PayPal so you can thank me without even getting out of your chair. Very considerate of me, I know.

So, anyway, here's the link. Enjoy. You're welcome.

P.S. He updates WAY more regularly than I do - winning already.

Review - Mass Effect 3

2013-01-03T21:03:00.000-07:00

The Good
+ It's Mass Effect
+ Best gameplay of the series
+ A startling and powerful conclusion to the series

The Bad
- Lots of controversy around the ending
- Lack of Jack Wall composing the score

Spoiler Danger
Very Little

OK, so let's get this out of the way first. Yes, Mass Effect 3 has been out for about a year. No, I have not written about it since complaining about the ending (here). Much has happened in the ME3 universe since I last spoke about it. We got new, extended endings with a completely new possible ending path, we got the Leviathan DLC which further expanded on the ending, and the Omega DLC came out, which I have yet to play.

So, I've had a lot of time to think over the game, and play it again, beginning to end, and a lot about my tune has changed. Namely: this is the best video game I've played. Ever. Period.

I've loooooong been a fan of Bioware games, a love affair that started when I bought Jade Empire. I've purchased every single game of theirs since, and despite some stumbles (Dragon Age 2 comes to mind), I've never failed to enjoy their games. For me, Mass Effect 3 was their crowning achievement, and it managed to hit all the right notes.

Sure, I had my qualms with the ending at first, but everything else about the game was really extraordinary. The gameplay was incredibly tight - it seemed to be an amalgamation of everything BioWare had learned about Mass Effect combat all rolled into one very entertaining package. The cover system was nearly perfect, the gunplay was awesome, the evolution of the powers from the second game was great. And so on. Perhaps my favorite change was the fairly dramatic lowering of the power cool downs which allowed especially power-focused classes to really start spamming them. One of my (many, many) Shepard characters was an Adept, the class that is supposed to focus primarily on biotic powers. In the previous iterations of the game, I really felt that I was a gunslinger of sorts, relying on my pistol with some biotic backup. Mass Effect 3 finally had me using my biotics more than my gun, and the sharp change in the gameplay and strategies offered by that character was truly refreshing.

The music was... good. I hesitate to call it great, because it wasn't exactly great. Much of it was recycled from Jack Wall's score for Mass Effect 2. I can't be sure if this was because of time constraints or if they just found his music so perfect a fit for the environment, but either way, there was a lot of ME2 music in ME3. The new stuff, all composed by a very talented team of folks who handled much of the DLC for ME2, ranges from pretty good to awe inspiring. Clint Mansell was brought on board for some of the score, something I talked about in an earlier post. Despite my general excitement around that, he really only contributed some piano work to a few of the songs. Now don't get me wrong, the score was definitely good by most standards - they did an excellent job of capturing the sad desolation of Earth for example, but I can't help but play the "what if?" game. Given the absolutely perfect soundtrack for ME2, I can't help it. Jack Wall perfectly captures the emotion, desperation, and ultimate victory of the suicide mission in ME2 (if you don't get chills watching the suicide mission movies, I have no words for you), and I often find myself wondering how he would have musically captured the devastation of earth.

All that being said, the last moments on earth in the prologue for ME3 are just stunning - one of the greatest moments in the series - and the score for that part is absolutely spot on. Thank you, Clint Mansell.

Now let's circle back around to the story. Ah, the story. For 3 games, this has been the driving motivation behind playing these games. The conversations, the character arcs, the impacts of your decisions - all of these things contribute to the ultimate backlash against the ending. I'm quite positive that there have been few games of this or any other generation that have inspired the amount of passion and imagination it fans. The way BioWare crafted the story and the characters and the decisions really made people feel like they were in control of the future of the galaxy, that they were Commander Shepard, and that they knew Garrus and Liara and the rest of the cast. I spent many, many hours pouring over the forums for this game and reading about the backlash against BioWare for this game. Once you rule out the drivel of "I hate this now" and "you ruined everything" and "I want my money back" you really start to see a pattern emerge. People were hurt because what the ending was and how it was portrayed betrayed their passion for the game and the world they had created for themselves.

Let's get one thing straight here - the Mass Effect story is a space opera unlike anything I've seen in years. Over the course of three games, we have covered so much territory, advanced the species of the universe in countless ways, and gotten to know some very endearing friends along the way. Mass Effect 3 takes on the daunting task of closing every single character arc the first two games opened (and even some new ones that are introduced in ME3 itself). The core missions in the game are not just about advancing the galactic story, they are also about advancing the deeply personal character stories that we've come to love over the series. Some of these stories are humorous, some are painful, all are brilliantly executed. I have so many fond memories of these missions - walking Palaven's moon, staring out across not only the Reapers on the moon, but the destruction of Palaven itself. The amazing conclusion to the Krogan storyline. The Geth, the Quarians, the Council.... all of it was memorable, and all of it was powerful.

And my favorite moment in the game: shooting with Garrus on the Citadel. The moment, the conversation, the simple but emotionally-weighty choice - this is gaming perfection.

Then there was the ending. Which I hated at first. Now I love it.

Part of this was the fact that I truly believe the Leviathan DLC should have been included in the original release of the game. This part of the game did so much to alleviate the almost nonsensical information dump at the end of the boxed game that it seems weird that it didn't make it into the shipped product. Having beaten the game once, and thus having experience with what was coming, playing Leviathan on my second play through was a lightbulb in my brain. I could feel the various pieces falling into place, and as I progressed through the content, a new picture of the ending began to emerge, one that was staggering in its implications, and the revelations, quite simply, turned my opinion of what I thought the ending was upside down. As everything fell into place, I started to understand the scope of what the Reaper threat was, how large, and how important. By the time that I finished the mission, I was was positively elated that I got to experience something so novel and so epic.

The extended cut DLC provided some still shots of the immediate consequences of your saga-long decisions, but for me the understanding of the origin of the Reapers and their ultimate purpose was so overwhelming that the little extra cut scenes didn't matter at all.

It dawned on me a month or so later that there was another issue gnawing at the community, and that one I'd like to take a moment to address. What did my choices matter? What happens to all those people later? BioWare doesn't tell me.

And I'm going to tell you that that's a great thing!

Let's face it - there were hundreds of decisions, big and small, that each player made throughout the series of games. There is no conceivable way that BioWare can accurately address all of them in an ending. So, what did they do?

All along, one of Mass Effect's greatest draws was its ability to engage players on a very "imagination" level. We all imagined that we were Commander Shepard, we all imagined that we were changing the fate of the entire galaxy, and we all had the perfect ending imagined in our heads. So, instead of shoving some canned ending down our throats, they left the ending wide open, allowing us to interject our own versions. The choices presented at the end of the game are all logical outcomes to the present storyline, and we can factor our final choice into the ending we had envisioned. We all had them, and now we are free to continue to see them.

And that is powerful storytelling.

Score: 10/10

PS - I'm a bit shocked and appalled at myself for my earlier criticisms. I am usually a huge fan of open-ended closures like that. I think at the time I really wanted BioWare to tell me how each character continued after the end of the game, but I came to realize that I already knew what happened to all of them.

A Welcome Home of Sorts

2013-01-02T17:34:00.000-07:00

So yeah, hi! Long time no see and all of that.

Yet again, I'd like to try to get on board with the writing piece of my life, and this blog certainly needs to be a central part of that. New year's resolution this year... write more.

Sound like the same old song and dance as last year? Yeah, it sure is. But, this year will be different! I know it!

Despite the fact that I write for a living, I do so on a technical level, and, frankly, that part of my job is slowly being phased out. Now I'm excited when I sit down to write an email that will be longer than two paragraphs. Clearly, the writing aspect of my life is lacking, and that is especially true of the right brained portion.

So, this year will be different, this year will be one of actually making updates. I'm not going to set any goals for myself as far as posts per day or week or month - I just don't have that kind of time in my life right now. I do know that I want to update this regularly, and to have some interesting content for people to look at, even if that happens to be me venting about work in vague, obtuse phrasing or waxing philosophical about this, that, or the other thing. I hope you'll enjoy the ride.

First up, a review, and actual review of Mass Effect 3. One thing that I constantly regret about the game and my handling of it on this blog is the fact that the only thing on here is me complaining about the ending. Well, I have many more opinions about the game than just that complaining, and the game has come an incredible distance since then, so I'd like to give my overall opinion.

That and more coming up sometime soon. See you then!

Review - The Amazing Spider-Man

2012-07-15T18:02:00.000-06:00

The Good
+ It's Spider-Man
+ <-- That guy, Andrew Garfield
+ Emma Stone
+ It's freaking Spider-Man!

The Bad
- No Willem Dafoe
- ...
- I fail at "bads" in movies this year

Spoiler Danger
None

You know, sometimes it feels good to be wrong. Today, I was wrong, oh so very wrong. And it feels great. It actually feels a lot like I want to go put on a Spider-Man costume and swing through the streets of downtown. Right now. I am giddy, and I feel a lot like a little kid.

That's a pretty good way to feel.

I just got home from watching The Amazing Spider-Man, and damn it all, it lives up to the name. In all honesty, I really, really, REALLY didn't want to like this movie. By way of explanation, I'll offer up my high regard for the first two movies of the original trilogy (I don't acknowledge the existence of a third movie in that "trilogy"), my love of Sam Raimi's attention to the source material, and Tobey Maguire's rendition of Peter Parker. I disliked the removal of Raimi as director of Spider-Man after the third, admittedly awful, movie. Oh, and Spider-Man is basically my favorite super hero of all time and has been since I was sucking on pacifiers and still pooping in diapers.

A lot of that led to my general feeling of meh on the new Spider-Man. How could they reboot the series after just five years? How could they justify removing all the cast and crew? How could they?

The answer looks something like this.

Maybe not really what the answer looks like, but the picture is hilarious and I had nowhere else to put it.

Much to my surprise, I'm sitting here writing this, and I know that I actually liked this movie more than the ones I'd previously held in such high regard. Don't get me wrong, I still love the old movies, but there's just so much this one did better. I'll list off a few of them over the course of the next few paragraphs.

First - and this is a mighty big first - Andrew Garfield is a WAAAAAAAAAAY better Peter Parker than Tobey Maguire. Hands down, no competition; I've never seen this Andrew Garfield fella, but daaaaaaaamn. He knocked the role out of the park, to be cliche about it, nailing all the little awkward moments that have always endeared the character to audiences (myself included), the engaging wit, the weight of responsibility, the internal conflicts... and so on and so forth. One thing Garfield and the writers changed up a bit from the Maguire version of the character was Parker's sense of rightness, a principal he is more clearly governed by. Instead of having to wait until he discovers his powers before we learn about his ability to stand up for people, one of the opening scenes has Parker standing up for a smaller boy and getting his ass kicked for it. I loved that moment and the evolution of the character. Besides, Garfield's Parker wasn't quite as (I hesitate to use the word, but it seems to fit) goofy as Maguire's version. This brought some maturity to the role, but the writing and acting was such that I never felt we'd lost any of the quirkiness that defines Peter Parker as a character.

One of the things that has always put Spider-Man ahead of all the rest of the masked and caped types is the fact that the story, the real story, takes place when Parker is not Spider-Man. Spider-Man was the embodiment of Peter's responsibility to society, but the part that's always been most fascinating, at least to me, is the way he weights that responsibility against his real life - his school, his family, his girlfriend - and the toll that takes on him. We've seen a lot of super heroes evolve into having that kind of outlook on the story - The Dark Knight trilogy, for example, is very much centered around the psychological impacts being Batman has on Bruce Wayne - and I think Spider-Man has a lot to do with that. Back on topic, I think that Garfield does an excellent job portraying that side of things, better than Maguire, which is a very large reason why I find myself liking this reboot better than the original franchise.

The guy playing Spider-Man wearing a red suit to an opening event = win!

One of the other things I found especially awesome was that Spider-Man maintained his sense of wit even when he was in the suit. I watched the 2 previous movies before going to see the new one, and I have to say that this one did a much better job of keeping Peter Parker as himself even while in the costume. There wasn't quite as much clever banter with the bad guys in the previous two, and I am a HUGE fan of the scene with the car thief. And the cop afterwards.

Oh, and the spiderweb in the sewer...AWESOME!

Emma Stone is also very clearly a better actress that Kirsten Dunst, so that's another check in the W column for this movie. Dunst was always the part I liked least about the original franchise (emo bar dancing notwithstanding). Seeing her replaced, be it as a different character, makes me all kinds of happy inside. Even better are the just amazing scenes she shares with Garfield where all they have to do is look at each other and you can sense the chemistry. Check.

Martin Sheen. Check.
Denis Leary. Check.
Sally Field. Check.
Awesome soundtrack: Check.

The camera angles in this movie are also just fantastic. I loved the way Raimi shot Spider-Man, and this movie does it just as well... if not better at some points. Case in point, I especially loved the few times we got to experience Spider-Man swinging in first person. That was a rush in 3D.

Speaking of 3D, I'm normally not a fan, but this movie rivals Avatar in it implementation and general awesomeness of the 3D. Even more than at Avatar, this movie showed me the potential of 3D as being more than just a gimmick.

I read in one review that, for this movie, they tried to have Garfield actually do more in the suit than Maguire had previously. In the review, they said it came off as awkward and preferred the CGI action sequences. I couldn't disagree more. I don't want to say that it made the movie more "realistic" but it did. Besides, Christopher Nolan has been making me appreciate how awesome movies can be when doing special effects and stunts the old fashioned way - with actual people. Garfield (and/or his stunt double) is very convincing as Spider-Man in the flesh, and I'd argue from now until the next movie comes out that this approach is the correct one.

That's not to say the CG scenes were not good, because they certainly were. The final dash through the city right before the climax is a thing of sheer beauty and had me grinning ear to ear.

On that note, I'd also love to give kudos to the team for keeping the whole Spidey helps New York, New York helps Spidey moments going. Those scenes are always slightly cheesy and immensely heartwarming, and I positively love them.

Much remains to be seen in this new franchise. What will happen to Gwen? How will Norman Osborn, so brilliantly played in the last franchise by Willem Dafoe, factor in? What villains can they use that haven't already been done by the first franchise? I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but I will say that if they keep things going at the pace this first movie establishes, we'll have the first super hero movie franchise that can legitimately compete with the Dark Knight trilogy.

There are a million more things I could talk about here that made the movie awesome (Stan Lee scene, Parker's stupid grin when he walks in on Aunt May at the end of the movie, the incredible intensity of the whole climax, etc., etc., etc. I will, however, leave you to discover these things for yourself.

In the meantime, I'm going to go see if I can find any of my old Halloween Spidey costumes and practice swinging between the houses in my neighborhood.

Score: 10/10

The Avengers Review

2012-05-04T23:29:00.002-06:00

The Good
+ Characters
+ Amazing writing and directing
+ No super hero felt overdone

The Bad
- Um... it ended...

Spoiler Danger
No spoilers

You know what's amazing? Opening night at the movies. Especially super hero movies. Lately, at least in my opinion, the super hero movie genre has become one of the most consistent and entertaining movie genres existence. The movies are usually entertaining, and sometimes they are downright great. Opening night at a super hero movie is also an amazing experience. I'm not generally one for crowds, but I love the energy that comes with going to a highly anticipated movie that actually delivers. I haven't done it since Inception, but The Avengers made up for all my time away, as this movie delivers in spades.

To back up a second, I'd like to take a moment to really give props to Marvel for their vision in creating their movie franchises. Marvel has spent the last several years whetting our appetites for The Avengers, dropping in hints and little post-credit scenes such that even from the earliest teasers, we knew what was on the horizon, and we slavered for it. Marvel played the game patiently, giving us numerous movies that introduced the characters before finally, finally giving the reins to Joss Whedon to create The Avengers. And, boy, did he deliver.

I was a bit skeptical going into the movie. Sure, I doled out a ridiculous sum of money to see the movie in IMAX 3D, just based on my enjoyment of the previous movies in Marvel's franchises, but I had some seemingly legitimate concerns. First and foremost, I thought that the movie would end up being Iron Man 3. Don't get me wrong, the Iron Man franchise is highly entertaining, but the second movie left me feeling like they'd already explored the entirety of Tony Stark's character. I've also never been a huge fan of The Hulk, and the Captain America movie was merely entertaining without being great.

Then I remembered who wrote and directed it...

I am so incredibly happy that despite the fact that he can't keep his amazing shows on the air longer than it takes me to sneeze, Joss Whedon writes and directs some truly amazing things. Firefly is still one of my favorite Sci Fi series, and the follow up movie Serenity easily put most Star Trek movie spinoffs to shame. I hear good things about Dollhouse, though I have never gotten to watching it. The man's resume is chock full of brilliance, and after this movie, I don't think there's much more room for doubt.

Now, then, can we have more of his TV shows? Please and thank you.

The Avengers delivers in every single way I can think a movie can deliver. It's got a great cast of characters, it's got action and more action, it's got a conspiracy, and it's got Samuel L. mother-fucking Jackson. What more do you need?

Let's face it, Robert Downey, Jr. and Sam Jackson have more charisma between the two of them than any 5 other characters put together. However, all the actors did a great job of being identifiable and making sure they were not outshone by the two really giant talents. Chris Evans, in particular, had an especially large number of scenes with Downey, Jr. and not once did I get the sense of him being overwhelmed; he did a great job. I was very surprised by how much I cared about the Black Widow/Hawkeye story, and I'll admit to being pleasantly surprised by Jeremy Renner breaking the "always the bad guy" mold I know him for - though it seems that sticking him in a sleeveless shirt is a requirement of casting him.

Mark Ruffalo was just absurdly great as Bruce Banner. Like I mentioned before, I've never been the biggest Hulk fan, but I'll be damned if this wasn't the closest I've gotten to becoming one. He had the single best scene in the entire movie, which also happened to be the funniest. You'll know it when you see it.

A lot of reviews have been praising The Hulk as the breakout character of this movie, and I'd be tempted to agree with them, but I personally think that honor goes to the Cap'n. As I mentioned before, Chris Evans nailed this one, and I think he was able to take the character far above where the character was left at the end of the solo movie. And he plays off Downey, Jr. really well too.

You know who else was awesome? Tom Hiddleston. Let me explain. I'm a classic case of the dude that usually roots for the bad guys. Yeah, that's me. I like well-executed plans, I love characters that can think numerous steps ahead, and let's face it, the bad guys tend to be more diverse and fully developed as characters than their more law abiding counterparts. There are exceptions - Sipder-man, Sherlock Holmes, Detective Bobby Goren, etc. - but these are simply the exceptions that prove my point. The first person to argue with me gets a face full of Joker from The Dark Knight. I rest my case.

Anyway, I find Hiddleston's Loki to be positively repulsive. He is probably the most perfectly realized bad guy in Marvel's lineup at this point. Coming out of Thor for the first time, it wasn't Thor that stuck with me, it wasn't even Natalie Portman, it was Loki and Hiddleston's just despicable (in a good way) depiction of him. Here's a villain with no redeeming qualities - his motives are power and a need for vengeance borne of jealousy, he has very little power of his own, and he plays the most twisted mind games with people. There's very little you can't hate about this guy. Sign me up for any future movies casting him as the villanous Loki.

Oh, and the more long term readers of this blog should know that I think Stellan Skarsgard adds so much to any movie he's in, even if his role is more limited than it could have been.

Furthermore - Cobie f'n Smulders!!!!

All these characters come together over some just fantastic writing to make this movie just rock. The dialogue is just wonderful. Whedon, as the writer, gives the audience enough to keep up to speed, but he's also not afraid to show us several things early in the movie that have no relevance until later, trusting that we'll remember things that happened previously and be able to connect the dots ourselves. The story was also written in such a way that each character had his or her own shining moments, which did a lot to alleviate my earlier concerns about Iron Man stealing the show.

Granted, a high percentage of the best lines came from him, but still, even he couldn't top Hulk's crowning moment.

Speaking of hilarious, stick around until the credits are over. There are actually two easter eggs, one during the credits, one at the very, very end of them. Trust me, it's worth the wait.

Finally, the action! What would any super hero movie be without some gorgeous action? The Avengers packs plenty of action into its almost 2.5 hour frame, and the action is gorgeous. The action scenes in this movie - particularly the gloriously long climactic battle - had this very engaging back and forth mechanic. Typically in action movies, the bad guys will kick the good guys around for a while, then the good guys will come back, and the movie will end. Not so in The Avengers. There was a great rhythm to the fighting. Bad guys will win for a while, then the good guys come back, and then the bad guys come back over the top, then another Avenger joins the fight, and then... and it goes back and forth like this, and this pacing made the long action pieces really much more enjoyable. Whedon seems to have an acute sense of when the action might start to become overbearing, and he'll throw in a quick bit of humor or dialog before proceeding with the explosions. I'll also admit to having a few geek out moments when the various super heroes grouped up to tag team enemies. It felt like a combination between Ultimate Alliance and awesomesauce.

As you can see, not a lot of bad things to say about the movie. The Avengers is more laugh worthy than most comedies, more action-packed than a Die Hard flick, and more fun than most movies period.

More to the point, though, The Avengers really is Marvel's crowning achievement.

Score: 10/10

First Impressions After Beating Mass Effect 3

2012-03-09T20:02:00.001-07:00

Mass Effect 3 completes the 5 year, three game journey of Commander Shepard. It completes my favorite video game (franchise) ever. It is my favorite game of all time.

Or at least...

It was supposed to be.

For the first 37 hours at least, it was. Let's talk about that.

Mass Effect 3 takes all that was good about both of the previous games and improves them. The super-improved combat returns, complete with several fantastic upgrades (my favorite being the hot keys for your companions' powers). While we don't have a full-on inventory system, weapons are once again upgradeable. BioWare finally, finally made all the choices I made in the first two games feel like they had legitimate impact on the galaxy. They made a few gaffs here and there, like my choice on whether or not to destroy the Collector base at the end of the second game being almost entirely a moot point, but these were small issues, and I had very few problems with them.

I feel BioWare made certain judgments to allow the story to be told, and, really, certain things had to happen to get the story to this point. OK, fine, forgiven and moving on. BioWare brought back all the characters I interacted with in the first two games, and, like I said earlier, brought back all the choices too. My decision to destroy Maelin's data in ME2, for example, came back to haunt me in a big way.

Watching Earth, then Palaven, and the rest of the worlds crumble under the onslaught of the Reapers was upsetting, depressing... it was quite unlike anything I've ever experienced in a video game.

And that was what makes this game SO great! The consequences of my decisions weighed heavily on me with each plot twist and with each story thread tied up. It is this quality of storytelling and immersion that makes Mass Effect my favorite game franchise ever. And it is for this reason I am so conflicted about it now.

BioWare does well what BioWare has always done well. They introduced and made me love a slew of new characters and reminded me why I loved the characters from the previous games this much. My concerns about the soundtrack that I posted about before were laid to rest as I got into the game. Clint Mansell and team did a fantastic job bringing out the dark situation I found myself in - though I'd argue that the sheer number of tracks making comebacks from the previous ME soundtracks shows how the franchise will never outgrow Jack Wall's influence (as fitting as those reuses were). The voice overs are, as always, spot on.

I was a bit miffed that they seemed to spend less time on the character conversations than they had previously. I think each character has 4 or 5 actual conversations with you, and the rest are short back and forths like they did with Kasumi and Zaeed in ME2. But once again, I was willing to forgive that, because Mass Effect has always been about the story and the way my choices impact it.

And now, I'd like to rant a bit, because as somebody who bought the first Mass Effect on release day and has been a loyal (and spending) fan ever since, I think I've earned that right. For those who are not interested in spoiling their game experience, close the page now as THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

The ending to Mass Effect 3 has me completely conflicted. I want to like it. I really do. I've been a huge supporter of anything BioWare has created since I first laid hands on Jade Empire. I like the kind of game they create, and I'm not afraid to let them know by spending ridiculous amounts of money on them. BioWare is one of the few companies I am loyal to, I don't just buy their products, I anxiously look forward to everything they do, and I recommend their games to everyone who will listen to me. BioWare has earned this loyalty through producing a steady stream of high quality, fun, immersive games.

Likewise, I am a huge fan of the Mass Effect franchise, and not just the games. I read the books and the comics, I listen to the soundtracks regularly, and aside from all that, I've poured hundreds of hours, if not thousands at this point, into this game. Why? The story. The characters. The immersion. The drama. The game play and combat. There are a laundry list of reasons.

So, like I said, I really want to like the end of this franchise, but I just can't.

I can forgive the fact that none of the endings you choose from are particularly happy. I wasn't expecting a very happy ending, though I'd be lying if I said I didn't want one. But let's face it, this is war. War seldom has happy endings. No, what upsets me is that the ending completely, irrevocably invalidates every single choice I made from Mass Effect 1 up to the end of Mass Effect 3. None of those choices mattered. None of them, and I cannot get past that. I saved the Quarian home world. didn't matter. Legion sacrificed himself to give the Geth souls. Didn't matter. I cured the genophage. Didn't. Matter.

Mass Effect has always been a franchise that pushes what I thought possible in terms of emotional involvement with games. That was never more true than in the case of ME3. I cried as I watched people I've known from the first two games die. I laughed at their corny jokes. I sat at the edge of my seat as events unfolded. I held my breath. I cursed the Reapers. I cheered.

But when I look back on all those events in light of the end, I feel something close to anger. None of what I did mattered. None of what I had invested myself in mattered. No matter how I choose at the end, the same thing happens. I'm assuming most of the galaxy is destroyed. I've read some different theories online, but my take is that most of it has to be destroyed. Regardless of which option you choose, you end up destroying the mass relays. As the game has shown us, destroying mass relays also destroys whatever system that mass relay happens to be a part of. Nothing in the game has ever said otherwise. So, when I destroy all of them, that kills tons and tons of systems. Given that most of the galaxy's population is in the Sol system at the end of the game - a system that happens to have a mass relay - I've destroyed the galaxy's population. Never mind that I went through hundreds of hours of work and strain and sweat to unite all these races to join us in battle, they're all dead.

The other theory floating around is that somehow the relays get destroyed but don't wipe out their systems. Okay, so I went through all that work to give the Quarians their home world because... Curing the genophage mattered because...

They're all stuck in the Sol system! Much better! /sarcasm

There is just no reasonable explanation that can be applied to making the things I had done prior to the final decision matter at all.

And because of this, I feel robbed.

Ordinarily, I'd just write the ending off as a pile of rubbish (Matrix trilogy, anybody?) and move on with my life, but Mass Effect is different. It has made up such a large part of the last few years of my life, and I have been so emotionally invested in its universe for that time, that I feel like I deserve something better. So, in the same stroke, I applaud BioWare for creating a fictional universe that I care this deeply about, and I ask them what they were thinking when they robbed my emotional investment of its meaning.

Like I've said, the rest of the game is brilliant. Absurdly so... to the point that this should have been a shoo-in for my favorite game of the franchise and, thus, my favorite game of all time. Everything about this game, from the graphics to the game play, surpasses its predecessors, and I don't want to give the impression that I didn't enjoy the majority of the game. BioWare's writing and game development is top notch through the entire course of the game. I couldn't be happier with most of the game. I just don't want the last 5 minutes to taint it for me. Even with those last five minutes, though, I wouldn't have traded my thousands of hours in the Mass Effect galaxy for anything.

Now, I know that the folks at BioWare will likely stand behind their ending and justify it, but I maintain hope that they will not. This is my extremely passionate plea that something be done about the ending to this franchise. I have an empty pit in my gut where I should be feeling the exhilarating rush of just having completed one of the best stories written in years.

So please, BioWare, fix this.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T20:18:00.000-07:00

Skyrim Soundtrack

2011-12-22T11:28:00.000-07:00

Well, it finally arrived! I got my Skyrim soundtrack in the mail yesterday, and it's been on repeat in my car ever since. I'll provide a review of the soundtrack in an upcoming post when I review Skyrim as a whole, but I had a few observations about it I wanted to share.

Last night, I was driving home from a friend's house. It was cold and dark, and the snow was coming down heavy and thick. The road was covered in snow with patches of ice sticking through here and there. The night was black and white, save the golden glow of the street lights. The Skyrim soundtrack was blasting through the speakers, and it was at this point that I realized just how perfectly Jeremy Soule captured the lonely, cold, desolate feeling of Skyrim in his music. Here I was on the cold and lonely journey home, and the music was the perfect accompaniment. Granted, my adventures are hardly as epic as the ones my Argonian rogue is having in game (in fact, "epic" wouldn't be a word I'd generally use to describe any part of my life), the chilly music really fit the atmosphere of the drive home.

I keep hitting the spacebar twice at the end of my sentences, expecting it to insert a period like it does on my iPhone. Damn Apple and their convenience features!

I didn't realize until I was listening to this soundtrack how much I'd come to expect a bit of electronic in my soundtracks. Everything from Transformers to Halo and Mass Effect nowadays has some measure of electronic sound layered into the classical music. Skyrim is different in that this music is pure classical. There is some production work (such as the layering of the choral parts to make it seem like a larger group of people sang them), but by and large, the 3 discs of actual soundtrack material are straight up classical music, and I'll admit to being rather thrilled with the prospect and the results.

There is a staggering amount of material on the discs. Almost 3 hours if individual tracks on the first three discs, and then the fourth disc contains a 45 minute "atmosphere" collection. I haven't listened to this yet, but if it's anywhere near as good as the first 3 CDs' worth of content, I will love it.

This is the first time I've ever used the CD player in my car. At the moment, I'm so completely enthralled with the purity of the music experience, that I have not converted the music to my iPhone yet, for fear of sound degradation. As such, I've put the CDs into my car's CD player, and have been listening to the music that way. It's not often that I eschew my iPhone in favor of CDs. In fact, I don't think that's happened since... well since I got my first iPod back in 2003 or so. Scary.

That's all I got for the time being. I'm going back to Skyrim now; my Argonian looks like he wants to kill some more dragons.

Mass Effect 3 Score

2011-12-20T22:32:00.001-07:00

Crazy story for you. I was happily sleeping. It was the first day of my vacation, and I was going to enjoy the luxury of being able to sleep in a few minutes before getting up to help my mother car shop (a trip that turned out to be more driving than actual shopping). Somewhere subconsciously, I heard my room mate get up and start getting ready to go to work, and I distinctly remember thinking ha ha. So, I wasn't necessarily sleeping, but somewhere between blissful sleep and waking up.

Then, I sat bolt upright, suddenly certain that Jack Wall wasn't doing the score for Mass Effect 3.

Entirely true story, I swear. The night before, I was browsing around the web, trying to find a place I could purchase the score for the Mass Effect 2 Arrival DLC. I managed to find a wonderful person on YouTube who had compiled the songs into a nice video with a link to download the album. Sadly, EA has not made this album available for purchase, despite the fact that the rest of the Mass Effect DLC albums are available for download. For those interested, click this link (click!).

Anyway, in the process of browsing, I happened to notice, just out of the corner of my eye, several headlines about Clint Mansell working on the score to Mass Effect 3. At the time, I wrote this off as hogwash. Of course Jack Wall would be returning for Mass Effect 3. His not returning would be like Marty Russell not returning for Halo 3, or John Williams not returning for Return of the Jedi. Preposterous.

Yet, there I was, sitting in bed with the certainty that Jack Wall was not, in fact, returning. It was a matter of seconds searching Google that I stumbled upon BioWare's forums where Jack Wall confirms that he will not be returning (and there's also a press release).

I suppose this has been common knowledge for a while now, but I am utterly insane about not reading anything about Mass Effect 3. I hate spoilers, and I don't want them for the conclusion of my favorite game ever.

So, where does this leave us, score-wise? Well, for whatever reason, we are out the brilliant mind that composed the amazing scores for the first two games. Whether you pay attention to music in video games or not, the score for the first two games has a significant impact on how we perceive and experience the Mass Effect universe. Imagine, if you will, going on the suicide mission in the second game and not having Jack Wall's epic orchestral backdrop to it. The impact of those moments might be so lessened as to make the whole experience moot.

Perhaps that's a bit of exaggeration, as the story and writing is wonderful too, but the amount of power Wall's score has infused in ME1 and ME2 is staggering. The fact that both stand alone as wonderful out-of-game listens also speaks volumes as well.

Most of the composers that are listed in the press release have worked with Mass Effect before via the various DLC, however, I'm concerned that without Wall at the helm, the third entry in the series will feel (at least musically) disconnected from the rest of the franchise. Given how important continuity is to the franchise as a whole...

As regular readers of this blog will know, I'm a HUGE fan of Clint Mansell's scores for his various Hollywood projects (Smokin' Aces, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, The Fountain, etc., etc.), so at the very least, I'm glad that he was the one EA and BioWare decided to bring on board. I will also try have faith that he will remain accurate to his source material and work to compose a score that stays true to Wall's vision with the first two games.

In the meantime, though, I'll be listening to the amazing scores for the first two games.

A Random Update

2011-12-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

So, I'm sitting here at work, waiting for the printer to finish printing the giant posters I've been working on all day. Sadly, I didn't have much of a chance to work on any of the things I need to get done this week to go on vacation at the end of the week. Everybody's priorities are more important than mine. Eh, such is life.

I'm listening to Dream Theater's Ocatavarium right now. Not the whole album, just the song. The song, however, is long enough to be a whole album (by modern album-length standards). If you consider that the average song produced nowadays is about 4 minutes long, a song that is 23:58 is rather incredible. And that's not even their longest song!

You may be wondering why on earth I'm not listening to Chevelle's new album, and the answer is that the album sucks ass.

...
...
...

Just kidding!

At this point, I'm pretty sure that there's nothing Chevelle could do to make me hate their music. Sure, the radio can overplay "Send the Pain Below" and I can still hate that song to this day, but there's nothing Chevelle could do to make me hate their music. Besides, I don't ever listen to the radio any more, so that's hardly even a problem.

In truth, the new album, Hats Off to the Bull is quite wonderful. I'm not quite ready to sit down and pen the full review (that will take a while, and I'd actually like to leave work at some point), but that's coming soon.

Back to the point, I've been on this epic Dream Theater kick for many months now. They have a very deep discography, and their progressive rock stylings are just addicting. So, even when the mighty Chevelle is dropping new music on me, I still need my DT fix.

Before you ask, yes, I've been taking quite a bit of time off blogging recently (I think we're up to a week now). Two reasons for that. A) Work. Lots of it. Gotta get ready for my vacation, which starts in 3 days! Wooooooot! B) Skyrim. The game has firmly inserted itself near the top of my priority list. I'll readily admit to thinking, "I should stop playing this so I can write my blog for the day." Then I ponder about this for a moment before shaking my head and think to myself, "Nah," before refocusing on my Skyrim exploits. And there are many.

I justify this to myself by thinking about how I need to clock through this game so I can write an awesome review for this blog. Totally justified.

Yeah, yeah... I know.

Anyhoo, I'm gonna pack up and head out of here now that my printing is done (finally!). I'll try to write tomorrow and going forward, if I can pry myself away from Skyrim. No promises. Though I do promise reviews for both Skyrim and the new Chevelle coolness soon.

Until then, cheers!

Lulu

2011-12-05T21:20:00.001-07:00

Well, I'd call this post a review, but it isn't. I can't bring myself to even listen to most of the songs all the way through. This is just bad.

So, I've long been a Metallica fan. My first album was Reload, then I went back to Load, then was S&M, before I finally dove back into the discography. I'll be frank, I think S&M is Metallica's crowning achievement. I like Load and ReLoad better than any of their older albums. Master of Puppets was my favorite album of the "hair" era. Then Garage, Inc. hit, which had a few neat songs on it (Turn the Page, Whiskey in the Jar), but most of the dual CD outing was trash. Then St. Anger, which, to this day, is the only album I've ever thrown away the same day I bought it. If Garage, Inc. was trash, then St. Anger was the burning pit of talentless hell. I'd equate that CD to listening to a toddler beat on his mommy's pots. Death Magnetic was better than the previous two, but it still couldn't hold a candle to their pre-Garage days.

So, I'm already so-so on this Lulu album, which is Metallica instruments backing the vocals of Lou Reed, whose non-Metallica music I am wholly unfamiliar with. Hit the music.... and if I'd purchased this album, I'd have snapped it over my leg before throwing it away. As it is, I'm considering burning the album to a disc before deleting it so I can break it anyway.

I'll give props where props are due: the musicality is decent. It's not the Metallica I grew up loving, but it's not St. Anger either. It falls somewhere closer to the St. Anger side of the spectrum, but not intolerably so. Then Lou Reed opened his mouth.

Skip.

He starts singing in the second track.

Skip.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

And this went on for 10 of the most agonizing tracks I've ever subjected my ear drums to. Some of these tracks are epically long, like Dream Theater long, but they lack even a quarter of the talent required to make really long songs interesting. Or tolerable.

The part of this album that kills me is mostly the vocal stylings of Lou Reed. I'm sure somebody, somewhere thinks that this is the most awesomest awesome thing ever, but your not here to read that guy's opinions. The way these lyrics are delivered makes me squirm like somebody is dragging nails across a chalkboard. It's tuneless, it's off beat, it's not much better than screaming into the mic. It's less singing than narration, but if you're going to talk, at least do it to the music. Hip hop is a great pace to find lessons on talking to music without sounding awful (well, not sounding AS awful anyway).

I did happen to say that the music lacked the talent to make really long songs. See, the key to really long songs is that there has to be progression and rise and fall. Listening to 10 minutes of the same 2 or 3 lines over and over again gets dull very quickly. Metallica used to be able to write incredibly long, sweeping, epic music (instrumentals, even), but the years seem to have eroded that talent. St. Anger it is not, but it's also not that good. Decent just doesn't cut it for me when it comes to Metallica.

And so that makes 3 really bad albums Metallica has released in the last decade. Shame.

Oh, and for the record, Lars Ulrich is a dick.

In a more positive note, iTunes should be finished downloading Chevelle's new album, Hats Off to the Bull. Review for that one coming in the next couple of days.

See you tomorrow.

Let it Snow...

2011-12-04T18:50:00.001-07:00

It's been snowing here all weekend. All weekend. And the air is chilly; just looking outside makes me want to bundle up and forget about the world. What can be done about it?

Anyway, it's been a very uneventful weekend, and I blame the weather mostly. It's hard to motivate myself to go outside when everything is so miserable looking. Plus the slippery roads don't help much either.

So... this weekend has mostly been Skyrim, lots and lots of Skyrim. Hard to believe that it's 7 already, and I'm still playing this game. Suffice it to say, it's a little addicting. Plus, it's much more fun to adventure outside in the fake snow than it is to do anything outside in the real snow.

In any case, I'm booking through the game as quickly as possible to try to get a review in for it. Plus I wasn't to have it beaten at least once by Christmas so I can devote ample time to the games I'm going to get that day.

There's my update, see you tomorrow.

A Couple More Preliminary Thoughts on Skyrim

2011-12-01T23:42:00.001-07:00

I continue to dump an inordinate amount of time into Skyrim. That game is a little like a drug. Super addicting, crazy fun while it lasts, but you have a tendency to look back on it and wonder if you're sane for even doing it.

That, however, does not stop me from cracking out on my rogue, power leveling him through pickpocketing, lock picking, and sneaking around.

Bow and arrow? Check.
Double dagger awesomeness? Check.
Chest full of stolen goodies at my house? Check.
Badass thieves guild armor? Double check.

Morals? ...missing entirely. My rogue is a thief and a selfish bastard. I just started one quest line where, to initiate it, I had to lead a follower up to a certain god's shrine and kill him. Then I had to kill all the rest of the followers at the shrine. Now I have to kill the god's previous champion and the people with him. Lots of death and other ways to make myself obscenely rich.

Winning.

Did I mention that I am also a werewolf?

Tonight, I'd like to share a few thoughts on Skyrim, as posed by the fine, creative, and funny folks over at Penny Arcade.

This is amazingly true. I thought I was owning the world after having killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 dragons, then I pissed off a mammoth. To be fair, I was only walking by, it's not like I was harassing it with my suddenly-tiny mace or anything. This giant came running after me, grunting, then made a chunky, red paste out of me with his giant hammer. I have also, in fact, seen a giant kill a dragon. There is something seriously effed up about that picture.

And also:

Not picking up absolutely everything takes more discipline than you would think possible. When starting, the number of times I had to interrupt a dungeon run to hop back to sell all of my worth-nothing trinkets, it was a little absurd and just plain sad.

And finally, on an different (but still video game related) note:

That is all.

My Christmas Wish List

2011-11-30T23:04:00.001-07:00

It's that time of year again, that time of year when my parents ask for a Christmas list so they know what to shop for. I, of course, obliged, because there are few things better than getting free video games. Well, I do happen to enjoy giving gifts, so I bought my family some neat things on sale during Black Friday madness.

Of course, I bought them all from the comfort of my living room while wrapped in a blanket, drinking hot cocoa, and playing Skyrim. Sale or no, I do not stand outside in line to shop. Ever.

Anyway, on to the list!

Uncharted 3 - This is a no-brainer. Well, I shouldn't even have to ask for it for Christmas, because if I was a true Nathan Drake fan, I'd have already bought it. Alas, Skyrim won out in the "what to spend my $60 on" competition, so I'll have to wait to get this for Christmas. The third part in Naughty Dog's epic Uncharted series looks to be frigging awesome. I hope it lives up to the stellar review I gave the 2nd entry into the series, though I have little doubt it will.

Assassin's Creed Revelations - I happen to be a HUGE fan of anything Assassin's Creed, so it should come as little surprise that I want this game. I had stopped blogging prior to reviewing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, but I liked that game almost as much as I liked Assassin's Creed 2. That being said, Jesper Kyd did not do the entire score for this game (which I already own), and I don't like the score for this game as much as I liked the one for Assassin's Creed 2 (which one my best video game score of 2009). While that is a bit disappointing, I have high hopes for the game as a whole.

Batman Arkham City - Holy surprising caped crusader, Batman! Batman is getting all the love in the super hero world lately. Between Christopher Nolan's films that are good beyond words to the new and stellar video game franchise, there has never been a better time to be a Batman fan. I played Arkham Asylum earlier this year, and the game totally caught me by surprise. I was expecting "meh" and I got "OMGWTFBBQ horse radish!!!!" Batman games shouldn't be this good, but they are. And I'll be damned if I don't pay the sequel.

Xbox 360 Wireless Controller - Yeah, kinda boring, but I need a new one. The ability to click the right thumb stick is gone on my current one, which makes switching between first and third person views in Skyrim next to impossible. Unacceptable!

There you have it, my Christmas wish list for the year. I plan on having reviews of all those games, so I can get to the wonderful best and worst of 2011 post ASAP.

See you tomorrow!

A Post in Pictures

2011-11-29T20:29:00.001-07:00

Today, I went back to work for the first time in over a week, and I was greeted with a desk that was quite... amusing.

I have this decided hatred of anything Christmas before I've gotten to eat my Thanksgiving turkey. The other folks who work on my team felt the business end of that hatred any time they wanted to rock the Christmas carols during the month of November. Why oh why do people need to have Christmas for two freaking months?

Anyway, I came back today to this fascinating desk. Follow along as I take you on a brief, pictorial tour.

This was my desk as I saw it this morning. Very festive.

Here was my chair. Pleasantly gift wrapped for me. Thankfully, this wasn't actually MY chair, but the one for the desk next to mine. So, I was able to swap it out without all the hassle of unwrapping it. The drawers in the background, however, entirely different story.

The left side of my desk. Gift wrapped items include my tape dispenser, my pens, and my Mac Mini and monitor for it.

This is the other side of my desk, which includes such goodies as my books, my phone, and a little "Happy Holidays" bag right under the phone.

That little "Happy Holidays" bag? Yeah, it had coal in it. I think my team thinks I'm a scrooge or something. But hey, the stocking was filled with Kit Kat bars, so I made out like a bandit anyhow.

Skyrim Soundtrack and Other Randomness

2011-11-28T23:48:00.001-07:00

All right. Didn't miss today. Though I came very close. It's close to midnight, and it probably will be past that once I finish. But, I'm going to count that as a post for today, Monday.

First things first, today was my last day of vacation. Boo. It's been a great week and a half, but all good things must come to an end, as they say. In any case, in three weeks, I start another, even longer, vacation. Sometimes, not being able to take a vacation all year works out at the end of the year when I get to burn 3 weeks over the course of a couple of months.

I hope everybody reading this had a great Thanksgiving. Same to all those who haven't discovered how much fun reading this can be.

So, you may be wondering why I'm awake if I have to get up for work early in the morning. The answer is simple. I'm not tired. Yeah, I totally fudged up my sleep schedule over the last week, and now it will probably be two in the morning or so before I'm actually tired enough to fall asleep. I blame the all nighter I pulled on Saturday into Sunday. During which, I wrote yesterday's blog post. Man, that feels like so long ago.

The all nighter was a success. We were up playing Mass Effect 2 until 7, when we went to get 2 of his tires on his car replaced. He was out of work at the time (he started his new job this morning), so I ended up footing that bill, which set me back a whopping $200. Jinkees, tires are expensive.

Would you spell that "jinkees" "jinkeys" "jingkeys"?? I have no earthly idea how you spell that word. If you're not sure what it is, flash back to Skooby Doo.

So, after hoofing it around to buy tires, we went back to his place where I fell asleep on the couch for a couple of hours before going back to pick up his car, then coming back to his place to sleep on the couch some more. Wake up, go home, play Skyrim, take shower, go back to bed. That was my Sunday in a nutshell.

Enter today where it was wake up, play Skyrim, watch Raw, play Skyrim, take shower, go to bed... lay there. Stare at wall, listen to some relaxing tunes, get distracted by every little light in the room (alarm clock, iPhone, computer-sleeping-pulsing-light-thingy. Get back out of bed, remember that I haven't blogged yet today, and here we are.

Quite the life, I know.

Moving past that, I would like to take a quick second and get to the primary point of this blog. I've obviously been spending a great deal of time playing Skyrim, and I wanted to point out how absurdly wonderful the soundtrack to this game is. I'm listening to it right now (with the game on pause) as I blog all my thoughts down tonight. The soundtrack does a lot to capture the epic feeling of the game, from the unobtrusive background songs that play while I wander around the world to the epic choral greatness that kicks in when a dragon roars over my head and starts raining fire down upon my poor rogue.

Unfortunately, the game's soundtrack is not available on my beloved iTunes, but a physical CD (well, there are actually FOUR CDs in that soundtrack) can be ordered from the website run by the soundtrack's composer Jeremy Soule. Orders placed by December 23rd will come autographed by Mr. Soule himself.

I bought the soundtrack on the spot. Can't wait for it to get here. If you are interested in it, you can order it here.

I'm looking forward to beating Skyrim, because it will likely be my first video game review since Mass Effect 2. I can't wait to get my game review hat on again. In the meantime, I'll be plugging away at the massive amounts of content to be had.

Cheers.

Skyrim First Impressions

2011-11-27T04:14:00.001-07:00

Hey, y'all! Wow, I've already missed another TWO days on my write-every-day initiative. I'm on a roll... or well, not on a roll, as it were. I gotta get on this thing.

Anyhoo, it's almost 4 in the morning, and I'm writing my blog. I'm in the middle of pulling an all-nighter with my best friend. He's (finally) playing Mass Effect 2, and I'm observing, because the story is THAT good. Plus that gives me lots of time to do things like blog. And sort Magic cards... lots of things that I could've spent the last week of my vacation doing, but things like Skyrim kept getting in the way.

Speaking of Skyrim, I've got some initial impressions to tide us all over until I can finish beating it and write an official review. The game is LONG, so I'm not sure how long it will be until I finish. I run into a problem that I always want to experiment with different charter classes, so I've created about 5 characters so far. I still haven't found one I like any better than the others, which is either really good (they are all just awesome equally) or not (they are all meh). So far, I'm mostly leaning towards the former option.

The game is massive, like I mentioned before. The two characters that are furthest in the game are around 20 hours in and are just wrapping up all the side quests in the second town, at least, what I think are all the side quests. I haven't even really started in on the main story quests yet.

The beginning of the game, the introductory part before you can even start collecting weapons and such, is really epic. I have a giant soft spot for anything involving dragons, and this game does not disappoint. From the opening moments of the game, there are dragons flying around everywhere, and it makes me happy. Their design is badass, fighting them is epic, and killing them feels like a true accomplishment.

The graphics are, of course, jaw dropping. The scenery in Skyrim is beyond description. While fast traveling is available in this game, I often find myself huffing it just so I can explore the scenery. Climbing mountains and exploring forests is almost as good as killing dragons.

This is a pretty neat sample of what the landscapes in Skyrim look like. Click the image for a bigger version.

Yet more epic scenery. As you can see, walking around in this game is just amazing.

One of my favorite character classes in any RPG is the rogue. I love stealthy kills and everything that comes along with that title. This character class is one of the things that Bethesda has always struggled with. While the option to be a rogue or a mage was always available, the games always felt like they were designed with a warrior class in mind. Having played with my rogue for almost 20 hours, I can say that I haven't run into any situations that were flat worse for my rogue than my warrior. In fact, I've found a lot of the missions easier with my rogue, just based on the fact that the stealth damage bonuses are ridiculous.

So far I'm impressed by Skyrim. It does a lot to improve on a lot of the things I wasn't impressed with in Oblivion. I still have some concerns, as it relates to certain things, like the length of the main story line. It was pretty short in Oblivion, all things considered, and I really hope that Skyrim's main story quest line is much longer. We'll see.

Tomorrow, I'll let you know about how the all nighter went. Good morning.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

2011-11-23T22:10:00.001-07:00

So I don't miss a(nother) day of blogging, here's the obligatory Happy Thanksgiving announcement. I'll be up at my parents house tomorrow with no Interwebs access, so, I'm posting this bad boy early. Hope everybody enjoys eating turkey and other, assorted yummies.

So, we'll celebrate today with the best way I know to celebrate anything. Some good ol' Calvin and Hobbes. Enjoy.

See you on Black Friday!

Magic Worlds

2011-11-23T21:52:00.001-07:00

So, with the weekend being over, albeit a few days over, the final Magic: the Gathering World Championships has ended. It's a bit sad that with all the organized play changes that Wizards of the Coast has implemented lately, the biggest tournament of the year is gone. I've been reading about this for a couple of weeks now. The organized play community, that is, the people who pay to play in tournaments, are generally in an uproar about everything that's come down.

I don't care either way very much. As a strictly casual player, it's been a couple of years since I paid to attend a tournament. I usually find myself sitting at a friend's kitchen table going a few rounds of Commander format. However, I did have the goal of one day forking out the money to travel to Worlds, if only for the experience. That goal is, sadly, no more.

In a more positive light, my friend Uriah managed to make it to Worlds for its final public hurrah. Uriah's pretty neat in that he films people's Commander decks then posts them to YouTube as part of his CMDR Decks channel.

The purpose of today's blog was twofold.

Bitch a little about Worlds going away.
Link to to CMDR Decks.

With the first goal covered in the first couple of paragraphs, I just need to link you over to the CMDR Decks channel, so here it is.

All righty, with that bit of advertisement out of the way, I'll let you get back to your Thanksgiving celebrations.

Games and Things

2011-11-22T20:00:00.001-07:00

Sooo, yeah, less than a week into this new initiative, and I miss not one but TWO days' worth of blogging. I am pathetic.

To rationalize: I posted twice on the 19th, so that makes up for not posting on the 20th. Yesterday was my birthday, so there you go.

Today, I'm back with a new post... and a lot of randomness.

My primary character on WoW is level 77. Almost to level 85. So close, I can taste it. End game content, here I come.

I started playing Skyrim yesterday (happy birthday to myself). Despite my general lack of interest in Oblivion, I find Skyrim to be highly amusing. I put numerous hours into it yesterday, and I still haven't made it out of the first major town. There are so many side quests. Oh, and I'm a werewolf. How about that?

I will admit to enjoying Skyrim a lot more than I thought I would. I forgot how deep those Elder Scrolls games could be. Let me put a few hundred more hours into it, and then I'll give you a review (all of which are conveniently filed in the review category now. Awesome, huh?).

What else is going on? In plans for the future, I plan on taking up blogging two topics about which I am particularly passionate: wrestling and Magic.

I've been a fan of wrestling since before I can remember, and it is my longest-held interest. Being such a longtime fan has made me both passionate and opinionated. For those of my readers that are interested, I watch Raw every Monday and I live tweet my way through each episode. Follow me on Twitter (@nunchux) if following along interests you at all. There's a great wrestling community on Twitter, most of whom live tweet through Raw as well, so get in on the conversation.

Magic is another one of my longtime passions, by far the more expensive of the two. I've invested a lot of money into the game, and I've always been fascinated by people who write about it. So, that being said, I'm going to try my hand at it. More on that coming soon.

Anyhoo, I belief this fills my post quota for the day. See you tomorrow.

Review - Mumford & Sons - Sigh No More

2011-11-19T17:57:00.001-07:00

NOTE: This is a post I started many months ago, and am just now getting around to finishing and publishing it. That sorta makes today a bonus day: 2 blogs!!

Good evening. It feels... strange to be blogging here again. It's been a rather long time since I've taken the time to do this. Seriously. Wow.

I'm not sure I even remember how to write.

Nevertheless, I'm in a writing mood, so I figured I'd sit down and write for a bit. Today, I want to tell you about this amazing album that I'm listening to right now. It is about the best damn album I've put money down for in a long, long time.

The album is Sigh No More by Mumford & Sons. It came out sometime last year. I was turned on to it by, of all things, SGU, which used the song "After the Storm" at the end of the season 2 premiere. I was swept up by the beauty of the song in that episode, and it became my personal quest to find out who was responsible for the song. Thankfully, the Internet exists, so my quest was rather short-lived.

Mumford & Son's album can best be described, I think, as a folk album. It combines interesting guitar/banjo lines with some metaphorically deep lyrics to produce helluva CD.

Soon after hearing them on SGU, a local radio station that specializes in a fun mix of current alternative rock and chart topping 90s pop-rock started playing "Little Lion Man". It didn't take me long to purchase the album so I could give the whole thing some listening time. Thanks again to the Internet, I impulse-bought the album within 10 minutes of hearing "Little Lion Man" for the first time. Yay for instant gratification.

I downloaded the album to my iPod and promptly started listening to it wherever I went. The first couple of listens were full of doe-eyed discovery. I'm not usually into the whole folk rock scene, but this album simply blew me away. It's been a long, long time since a band has struck me as Mumford & Sons did over that first couple of days. The songs range in emotion and tempo, fast and slow, sad and angry. It was a whirlwind of heartbreak and fury.

It wasn't until a few listens later that the true power of the album really started to dawn on me. The power of the lyrics, clever ways the band uses their instruments to help tell their stories. Even now, literally hundreds of listens later, the album is still mesmerizing.

Eventually a pattern starts to emerge, the way the songs are composed, their slow build to a powerful climax. The album becomes like a roller coaster, mellow, intense, up, down, moving, furious.Despite the similarities between each song's composition, the range of stories the band tells through their songs, and the power with which they tell those stories, keeps each sing fresh and interesting.

Many bands - I'd say nowadays, but this has held true since the dawning of the more modern, single-focused music era - seem to use their instruments merely as background for their singing. Heck, even some of the bands I like are guilty of this sin. Mumford & Sons defies this in most of the songs on this album. The instruments are just as much a part of the story and the feeling of the song as the vocals. The instruments communicate the pain of the songs, the rage, the joy. You can't just listen to and understand the emotions on the album - you are taken on a journey, you feel the emotions, empathize. A wonderful example of this is the aforementioned song "After the Storm." give me the chance (and a lot of time) and I'll tell you all about how beautiful that song is, the poignancy, the power that is carried through those 5 minutes of music. But for the purposes of this paragraph, I'll restrict myself to just the way the instruments add to the song. The guitars are simple, quiet. The vocals are stirring, rising and falling in an eerie and emotional cadence. Then there's the bass drums, that hit at just the right moments, just ratcheting up the power.

So good.

I really could go on (and on and on) about how awesome I think this album is. Even after the months of listening between when I started this blog post and now, I still crave listening to their album as one might crave a drug. It's addicting, and once I start listening to a song, I really just end up putting the whole album on shuffle. It is that damn good. I highly recommend checking it out.

A Very Nice Chat

2011-11-19T17:21:00.001-07:00

Not to get into too much of a trend of repeating myself on this blog, but I wanted to share again one of my favorite TEDTalks. For those of you who aren't familiar, TEDTalks are where visionary people share their opinions, their skills, and their thoughts. They've started posting these to YouTube, and some of them are quite remarkable.

Anyway, my 2010 new year's resolution revolved around one of these videos. This was one that I discovered through friend on Twitter, and it is still one of the best ones I've found. The talk is funny, educational, and motivational. Take a few minutes and watch it.

Tomorrow, I'll post something entirely original. Probably.

A Late Celebration

2011-11-18T21:28:00.001-07:00

Soooooo, how many people celebrated the Fifth of November this year? I sure did, and I did it the best way I know how. I watched V for Vendetta, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. The message is simple and effective, plus there's a lot of stylish action to entertain us while we listen absorb that message.

The movie constantly serves to remind me that of a lot of things I believe, and things that I sometimes let get away from me in the bustle of day-to-day life. For those of you with about three and a half minutes to spare, I'd like to share with you V's television speech. I would argue that it is one of the most relevant, one of the most important moments in the history of movies. It speaks not just to the government in the movie, but also to what ours is becoming.

I'll save the ranting political commentary for another night. I'm really tired, and talking politics is A) long and B) unproductive. Instead, I'll let Hugo Weaving do the talking for me.

Not Moving After All

2011-11-17T18:29:00.002-07:00

About a year ago, when I was chatting about coming back to blogging again, I mentioned peeking around at other blogging platforms to determine if Blogger was still the home for me. Well, last night, after posting my World of Warcraft blog, I jumped over to a fwe other blogging platforms. After an hour or so of research, I settled on WordPress. My work on ColonelEz.net gave me a taste of what you could do with WordPress, and I think their dashboard control area is about a million times more advanced than Bloggers.

I spent many more hours building a blog over there, going so far as to actually import the contents of this blog over there. I played with the themes, read about pages, made a few of my own, and generally had a good time with it. I enjoyed the amount of customization that WordPress allows.

Not to mention, I was severely disappointed by the utter lack of customization available within Blogger's new dynamic views.

Thing is, I kept running into this problem with WordPress. Namely, there'd be some detail or another I didn't like about a theme, but I wasn't allowed to change it. You see, WordPress is actually a pay to blog service, or, at least, pay to get the most out of your blog service. Want to change fonts? Pay for it. Want to run off your own domain? Pay for it.

Many of the things that WordPress wants to charge me for (and they want a LOT of money sometimes), Blogger gives me for free. As a result, I've decided to stick around Blogger for now, but bear with me as I goof around with carious themes and skins as I try to find the right one. The dynamic view angers me with it's zero customization options, so I'm going to try to find a better one.

Until tomorrow!

EDIT: After several hours of goofing around with themes and layouts, I believe I finally have one I like. Plus, I finally have pages that function almost how I'd like them to eventually, thanks in HUGE part to fiddling around with the code provided from this blog. Yay. More categories coming soon, if all goes according to plan.