Living With a Nerd

So, I finally got a chance to check out the Brutal Legend demo a couple of days ago. I was super excited about Brutal Legend anyway…the premise seemed really cool, but the mere fact that it was squeezed out of Tim Schafer (of Full Throttle and Psychonauts fame) was enough for me to get excited about it.

After having played the demo, this is an absolutely must buy. A “have to own it as soon as I can possibly purchase it” game. Picture all the imagery created by every album from Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, every Norwegian black metal band, and Deathklok from Metalocalypse. Now throw in the signature Tim Schafer brand of humor. Then, add some God of War/Devil May Cry inspired gameplay combined with different riffs played on a guitar serving as the magic system. Lastly, toss in a dash of Overlord (you gain semi-controllable minions), a customizable hotrod that you can use to run over enemies, some great looking graphics, facial expressions that rival any CGI movie you see in theaters, and some of the best voice acting this side of Mass Effect.

Now roll all that up into a video game. That is Brutal Legend, and it is amazing.

After putting nearly 20 hours into the track “Sun Spots” for The Transient Unknown, I made the huge decision to scrap just about the whole thing.  I have kept the Reason file, but it’s going to be filed away in the “not for the album” folder.  It’s a decent track, but it just didn’t fit into the overall feel of the album.  This led to getting frustrated with the project as a whole, and I haven’t worked on it in close to a month.  A few days ago, I went back and cherry picked a few of the synth patches used in Sun Spots, came up with some new ideas, and got back to work.

Sun Spots has since been renamed, reborn, and is currently about 20% complete under the title “Solar Winds”.

This is a track that is difficult to place in the album…the imagery I’m trying to to create in the listener’s mind is obvious based on the title, but accomplishing this while positioning it between a “slow” and an “active” track has proved difficult.  Luckily, inspiration abounds for such a track, and I’ve had no problem coming up with target sounds for various synth patches and loops.  I decided to make the overall soundscape huge and slow sounding, while incorporating some Dubstep-inspired patches to invoke the solar wind imagery.

While I still have a ways to go, working on The Transient Unknown has given me HUGE respect for artists that produce nothing but Ambient Electronica.  Coming up with unique, interesting sounds and combining them with emotional and vivid soundscapes has proved to be far more difficult than I ever imagined.  I absolutely ADORE this type of music, and I’m very proud of what I’ve created so far…but after this album is finished, I think I’m going to leave the genre in the hands of those that actually know what they’re doing

I’ve never been a big fan of social networking.  To be quite honest with you, I just recently signed up for a Facebook page only after the ridicule of my friends and family for not being “hip” or “with it”.  Forgive my acrimony, but I just couldn’t see myself following the leads of the Kanye Wests and Courtney Loves of the world, and I just couldn’t subscribe to the “everyone has one and you’re not hip if you don’t have one” way of thinking.  So imagine my surprise when I recently read that older Americans (40 years of age and up) showed growths of 30% on myspace and facebook since mid 2008.  Add to that the fact that the Republican party, yes, your father’s party, has more than double the amount of politicians on Twitter than the Democrats.  When the medium for being “in” becomes overrun by the “age advanced” and Sarah Palin, I don’t know whether to feel sorry for the future of social networking or laugh out loud.  Either way, before you know it there will be something else for the Internet to hop on, but until then I’m going to see if I can add  Newt Gingrich to my friends list.

I have recently rediscovered the joy and obsession that is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.  Despite having put extensive time into it shortly after its release, it seems that there is still yet more to discover.  A few days ago, I randomly decided to pop it into my 360, just to check out my savegame (I had completed the game on the PC, but not on the 360.)  Five hours later, I was still “checking out my savegame”.

I have never been able to pin down what kept me enthralled with the Elder Scrolls series for such a long time…my play sessions with the series are by far the longest at any given time, sometimes rivaling even my time with World of Warcraft in their uninterrupted length.   Overall, they have been great games.  Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, Oblivion…all interconnected, each building upon the last, every one of them time consuming and life absorbing.  However, even  when taking nostalgia into effect, I have enjoyed Oblivion the most out of all of them, without question.

Massacring Daedra, making potions, enchanting items, spelunking and investigating long lost tombs…I can (and have) spent literally hours at a time with this.  Oblivion is one of the few games that can immerse me in its world as completely as a book can.  I find that when I pick up the controller, I’m not just moving around an avatar within a game… I feel that I truly am a living, breathing resident of Cyrodiil.

Creativity is a difficult thing.  Facilitating creativity is even more difficult.  Being creative in how you facilitate creativity, however…that is a true challenge.  Scribblenauts rises to this challenge.

In my professional life, my boss is perfect for the way that I work: she tells me what needs to be done, but leaves the detail of how it gets done entirely to me.  Scribblenauts works in a similar fashion…it tells you what the objective is, but stays completely out of the way in terms of how to get there.  Need to get a cat down out of a tree?  You could type in “beaver” and have it fell the tree…or you could use a saw to cut it down…or you could type in “jetpack” and just fly up there.  The objective is provided, however the path to said objective is yours to create.

Many games have inspired creativity…Portal has inspired people to create brain-bending puzzles (on the PC version, anyway…)  The Sim City series has inspired folks to try their hand at running things.  Games like Fallout 3 provide many different ways to approach a situation, none of them wrong.  Even things like Mario Paint inspire your creative juices to flow.  Creativity, however, has never been more fun in a game than it is in Scribblenauts.  If you have a Nintendo DS, you absolutely MUST obtain it.  If you don’t have a Nintendo DS, Scribblenauts provides a damn good excuse to buy one.

In other gaming news, Brittnie and I have been playing through Rayman Raving Rabbids for the Wii.  We are only about half way through, and I have yet to tire of hearing the various shrieks and shouts that the rabbids put forth.  Ever play Duckhunt and want to shoot the dog when he laughs at you?  This game is for you.  Many of the minigames are designed around tormenting or torturing the poor rabbids, whose numbers are endless.  The instructions before each mini game are rather vague however, and in some cases it will take a few tries before you figure out what you are supposed to be doing. 

The control scheme is designed perfectly to accommodate two people.  One person can hold the Nunchuck, while the other holds the Wiimote.  The majority of the mini games have different functions mapped to each in such a way that enables each person to feel like they are playing the game and contributing to conquering a mini game.  I say conquer because while some of the games are unbelievably easy, while others are extremely difficult.

Overall, a lot of fun, although the inconsistency between the quality and difficulty of the minigames can be a bit frustrating.

Note:  There are a couple of very slight spoilers in this review, but nothing that would ruin the storyline or scary scenes.  If you haven’t seen this movie yet, you can read this review without ruining the experience.

Horror film cliches are overused nowadays due to the lack of original and interesting concepts.  The Haunting in Connecticut is, unfortunately, a film that could have functioned very well within just the story and the idea of what was going on, but instead was filled with scene after scene of groan-inducing cliches.  It’s a real shame, because there are some moments of horror movie brilliance that rank up there with the big boys (Suspiria, House by the Cemetary, Jacob’s Ladder, etc.)…but they are almost overshadowed by uninspired and unoriginal scares.

The concept itself, a young cancer patient undergoing treatment who starts hallucinating (or not?)  due to his treatment, is quite good.  Solid.  Not much in the way of potential plot twists or anything like that, but solid.  There are some genuinely creepy moments within this movie, many of which involve no CGI, gore, or “monsters” whatsoever.   The scene in the kitchen with the plates was PERFECTLY executed; it was simple, effective, and required no “jump out at you” type of scares or anything of the sort…it provided you with just enough unease to give you goosebumps, but didn’t require any cheesy gimmicks.  Had this movie been made in the 60’s or 70’s, I imagine it would have been filled with events like the plate scene.

My main issue with this film is that the bad scenes are REALLY bad…but the good scenes are REALLY good…some of the best I’ve seen in a mainstream horror movie in quite a while.  It’s a shame they are tainted by their mediocre brethren.  It was fun seeing Virginia Madison (of “Candyman” and “The Haunting” fame) back in a horror movie,  and Elias Koteas (of “TMNT” and “Fallen” fame) does a fantastic job as a priest. Even though he looks like a rejected clone of Robert Pattinson, Kyle Gallner does an AMAZING job playing a sick cancer patient distraught from his illness and his horrific visions.

There isn’t much CGI in the film…old-school makeup effects and camera effects are executed very well.  I don’t know what the budget was on this film, but it was likely not very high.  There was very little variety between sets (although the sets are well done), the non-CGI effects were simple yet well implemented, and the CGI effects that are there serve their purpose.  Keeping the vast majority of the effects in the real world plays a huge role in keeping in the film grounded, which is part of the reason why the creepy scenes are as effective as they are.

Taken as a whole, Haunting in Connecticut is a decent horror film with some genuinely scary moments.  Take it apart and examine it scene by scene, however, and it appears to be just another generic horror film that has become the norm over the last 10-15 years.  Still, the good scenes are good enough to make the bad scenes tolerable.  I give it an “I’m glad I saw it, but I wouldn’t care if I never saw it again” rating.

I have been a longtime fan of Cannibal Corpse. I first heard of them (and death metal in general) from, where else, Ace Ventura. In that film, Cannibal Corpse can be seen performing Hammer Smashed Face with former vocalist Chris Barnes (for the record, I prefer George Fisher as a vocalist over Barnes). I went out and obtained every album they had made up to that point, and have tried to buy each one shortly after its release ever since.

Back in February of 2009, Cannibal Corpse released Evisceration Plague. I FINALLY got a chance to obtain it, and after giving it a thorough listening, this is possibly my favourite Cannibal Corpse album yet. The music is by far the most brutal they have put together, and some of the songs contain highly technical or strange time signatures. I’ve always admired Cannibal Corpse’s technical abilities, but they reach new heights with this one. The title track from Evisceration Plague is possibly their “heaviest” sounding song they have recorded, besting even Five Nails Through The Neck and The Wretched Spawn. I know I’m late to the party (again), but if you enjoy death metal, be sure to check out Evisceration Plague. It’s a brutal work of art.

In other news, I picked up Turok for the 360 over the weekend (originally released in early 2008), and am a little under halfway through it on Hard. The odd thing about Hard mode in this game is that it really isn’t all that difficult…you can still take a huge amount of damage, enemies don’t really take that many shots to kill (two, sometimes even just one in the head)…yet somehow, I keep dying. I never tried the game on “normal”, so I can’t attest to how much more difficult the game is on Hard…but there is no way it’s that big of a difference. If there is, Normal must be no challenge at all.

One issue I have is that the weapons don’t feel very “grounded” as they do in Bioshock or CoD4, leaving them feeling a bit disconnected from the player. This is surprising, as every weapon in the Turok series usually feels very much “in hand”, instead of just a textured image displayed on the screen. Still, they serve their purpose and are well designed from an art and sound perspective, a Turok series staple. The bow is made of even more awesome than it has been in the past, and the knife in this game is well-utilized for one-shot kills of dinos or humans. I wish the range on the one-shot kills was a LITTLE larger…as it is, you have to be literally right on top of your target. The worst part, however, is if your target moves, you slowly stab downward at the air, leaving you open to attack for a few precious seconds. Still, it’s a great melee weapon, and I find myself using it quite frequently.

Graphically, it’s fairly decent looking. It’s not going to win any awards, and sometimes the “walls” that enforce the extreme linearity spoil the atmosphere, but you occasionally come across huge vistas displaying the extensive vegetation of the planet. The sound design is excellent, with dinosaur shrieks and roars chilling your blood every time. Overall, it’s a fun game, worthy of carrying on the Turok tradition.

Oh, and don’t forget: tomorrow is 9/9/09, the ten year anniversary of the Dreamcast!

Upon initial inspection, Batman Arkham Asylum doesn’t do anything that hasn’t been done before…but somehow, the presentation is such that Arkham Asylum feels like entirely new territory.

Presented as a third-person Metroidvania-lite style game, Batman Arkham Asylum provides a setting well known to comic book fans. At times, the gloomy atmosphere is so thick that it seems to wrap itself around your throat and start to squeeze. Exploring the sinister history of a wide variety of enemies that have appeared throughout the Batman universe, as well as Batman’s own tortured past, this game is a far more twisted presentation than it appears. Once again providing the voice of the Joker, Mark Hamill’s performance is possibly the best voiceover work I have ever seen, in any media format. While his previous experience (and my nostalgia) of his voice as the Joker certainly is a part of my opinion, his performance is still unrivaled in this game. He truly manages to bring the character to life, in a more twisted, slightly more perverted way than he did on the show. The unexpected surprise of Tim Kane providing the voice of Jim Gordon (as well as using his “Mr. Herriman” voice for Quincy Sharp) is delightful.

With the exception of unlockable combo moves, combat is restricted to an attack and a counter button, as well as the use of certain gadgets. However, combat flows like a river, enabling Batman to seamlessly and realistically move back and forth between enemies, going around his enemies attacks and countering smoothly. What amounts to a button masher is still somehow EXTREMELY satisfying. The brutality and efficiency of Batman’s fighting style is on full display here, with nary a wasted motion or action. Swooping down in the middle of 10 guys and being the only one to walk away 20 seconds later is a great feeling. As many game reviews have stated, however, you truly feel like Batman when you swoop in, knock somehow out, and abscond back to the shadows and watch as his terrified comrades shuffle about, unsure of what to do.

Unlike many Batman iterations, there are deaths in Arkham Asylum…many deaths. Naturally, Batman does none of these killings, but it was still refreshing to see mortality explored in a Batman tale. Aside from the huge number of fatalities, the story itself is standard Batman fare, and doesn’t break any new ground…but its presentation and pacing provide enough motivation to continue moving on to the next group of henchmen to brutalize.

A contender for game of the year, and certainly the best Batman game to date, Arkham Asylum is proof that you can take old ideas and present them in a way that makes them feel brand new. Overall, a fantastic achievement for everyone involved. Do yourself a favour and get this game; it is worth paying full retail rather than waiting for the price to drop.