Review - In Deep with Sine Mora

Gameplay: 8
Presentation: 10
Replayability: 7
Overall Score: 9

Sine Mora is a modern 2.5D (2D plane of movement, but rendered in 3D) side-scrolling shoot ‘em up with the heart of a classic. If you are a fan of old-school games like Gradius, R-Type, orDarius, you will certainly feel at home with the fairly simple gameplay mechanics, frantic dodging action, and the huge mega-bosses that permeate the seas and skies of Sine Mora. The game has been co-developed by both Digital Reality (Sky Drift, Dead Block) and Grasshopper Manufacture, (No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, Chainsaw Lollipop) and is being published by Microsoft exclusively for Xbox Live Arcade.

Starting the game, there are several game modes to choose from. You can opt to play Story, Arcade, or Score Attack. Playing Story mode is, predictably, the way you unlock all the characters and ships. That’s where most of the presentation is held with it’s story sequences, prologue chapter, and threaded pilot banter. Story mode also houses the two easiest game settings, Normal and Challenging. Arcade mode ramps up the difficulty with more and tougher enemies, limits your life (here represented as a time limit) to only a few seconds, and also cuts out all of the story bits that you’ve probably seen too many times if you’re willing to jump into this difficulty level. There are two difficulty levels here, Hard and Insane, the latter boasts “FOR THE MANIAKKU OR SUPERPLAY ATTEMPTS ONLY!” It is true, this mode is soul-crushingly hard. Score Attack allows you to play a single level through over and over again, rising in rank on the leaderboards until you are satisfied with your score, then you may move onto any other level you wish to improve upon. This mode also has the Hard and Insane difficulty levels, like Arcade mode.

The action itself is some heart-pounding, side-scrolling stuff. Your ship can take a few hits, but you don’t have a life-meter as much as you do a time-limit. Displayed prominently at the top-centre of the screen, this time-limit can be increased by killing enemies and collecting certain power-ups as you progress and depletes as time wears on into the level. This tends to keep you in the action as you will want to constantly be killing enemies rather than sweeping around them to avoid their fire. There are no breaks in any of the modes other than story, where presentation plays a much bigger role in the game progression.

Your ship has three kinds of weapons. Your basic A-button fire, a secondary weapon, and a time-manipulation device. The basic pea-shooter is auto-fire (you can simply hold A to fire, rather than tapping the button repeatedly) and upgradable in 9 steps. The tutorial at the beginning calls these upgrades “permanent” but the power-ups tend to fall out of your ship when you get hit, making them very difficult to hold on to. Imagine you’ve been collecting power-ups for a while and you have just acquired your 7th-step, you come to a particularly hazardous bit of the level and the screen is suddenly filled with projectiles, one of them grazes you and all of your hard-earned power-ups go flying out the nose of your ship. Since this bit is particularly hairy, you dare not sweep across the screen to try and collect them and they all fly off-screen. What you are left with is what amounts to a squirt gun, ineffective and unimpressive. This promotes a feeling of transience in the level of your basic firepower, how very un-permanent. Since the enemies have a true life-meter and take at least a couple hits to take down with the bottom-tier basic weapon, and since killing enemies is how power-ups appear on the screen, it becomes increasingly difficult to acquire power-ups as your machinegun lowers its step.

The secondary fire is dependent on which pilot is flying your ship, each pilot has a different form of secondary fire that they prefer, so there is a little flavour in weapon selection that other similar games are lacking. In Story mode the current pilot is a predetermined value, but in Arcade and Score Attack, you can choose which pilot you’d like to have in the seat. The weapons are anything from basic seeker missiles to splash-damage bombs and some more exotic weaponry. They are generally standard fare, I nearly always choose the seeker missile to help me garner more time when I’m running low.

The time-manipulation devices are one of the main features in this game. When I first heard about this game, I thought that it would be like Braid where you need to puzzle out which things to do at the same time and use a time looping function to achieve that goal. I was disappointed with the final choices the developers made for these devices. They don’t play nearly as much of a role as I thought they would, and, while there is a time-reversal device, none of the devices are utilized as a puzzle mechanic. Indeed, there are no puzzley bits at all in this game. That might be my fault for expecting something different from what, to other people, probably looks like a very standard side-scrolling shooter, but I feel like they missed something that could have made this game stand out, wave their arms, and scream “Look at me! I’m something you’ve never seen before!” At any rate, the manipulation devices range from the aforementioned time-reversal (even after you explode in a firey ball,) to speed-up (which makes everything else look as if it is moving slowly, a huge help for getting out of tight spots,) and even bullet-reflection. Don’t ask me how bullet-reflection is a time-manipulation device, this is not exactly hard sci-fi here. The device that you select before entering a stage is displayed with your other stats on the upper right-hand portion of the screen. Interestingly enough, this gauge appears as a little tube filled with blue, rather than a group of units. This means that you can use your device exactly as much or as sparingly as you choose.

The large multi-part, often multi-screen bosses are impressive and very deadly. Once you’ve played through on Story mode and are ready for the Arcade experience, you will fight these bosses over and over again before bringing them down at these higher difficulties. Example: A seemingly impossible-to-avoid lasers that sweeps the screen, depleting your time and killing you instantly can be avoided by flying right up to the optic lens and remaining a constant half centimeter above it as is cleanses the rest of the screen in holy fire. This took me three tries to figure out and another two to actually execute the maneuver in the time between realizing that the enemy is about to shoot and when it actually does. Once I got this technique down, the boss was actually fairly easy. There are numerous patterns for all of the bosses in the game, and as a player you will likewise be trying again and again to figure out that pattern and execute it so that the bosses can be taken down.

One interesting and very useful function is the addition of a Boss Practice mode, which can be selected at the mode selection screen after you have defeated and unlocked the first boss of the game. This allows you to hone your skills for the boss battles without actually having to go through the entire level to do so. I can think of a few games which would have benefited greatly from this function. (The entire Mega Man series, I’m looking at you.)

One major gripe that I have with this game is that you can’t reconfigure the buttons. Under the “Local Capabilities” heading in the description of the game on XBLA, is states specifically that arcade joysticks are supported. Now, let’s disregard the fact that arcade joysticks are supported in ANY game which uses the D-pad in the same way that it uses the left analog (for movement.) That leaves us with either a convenient button arrangement for use on the arcade stick or input reprogramability to make it work. This game has neither of those things, meaning that when using my HORI arcade stick, the active buttons are spread out over the face button in a very awkward and clunky way. To clarify, what it does have is three control schemes. These schemes may or may not work with whichever arcade stick you currently have, so I will list them here so that you can compare them with your stick layout.

Type A – Primary Fire=A, Secondary Fire=B, Time Capsule=RT

Type B – Primary Fire=A, Secondary Fire=X, Time Capsule=Y

Type C – Primary Fire=A, Secondary Fire=B, Time Capsule=X

The story is told by way of both narrated text at the beginning of each level, and also pilot banter. The opening level narrative is entirely voiced in what sounds like Russian to me, but the text is in English. There is a distinct lack of feeling in each of these sequences. Having the Russian voice-acting seems too melodramatic a move for so flat a delivery, and I find myself skipping over these sequences quite often. On the other hand, the pilot banter sequences are quite good. They are full of character and feeling, you can feel the hatred when one pilot sincerely wishes death on another pilot with whom they are trying to pull off a mission. The character interaction is well written and executed, making for some messed up emotional reactions on the player’s part when you realize, for example, that the pilot you are currently utilizing is blackmailing another into working for him. I ended up rooting for one particular side of that tension, even though I needed to wield all the pilots to their utmost capacity in play.

The timeline in the earlier levels is a little bit convoluted as you play several different points of view that take place simultaneously through the missions. The pilots have strong personalities and are well-characterized, so playing some of them is bonding, and certain stages are memorable, not only for the gameplay and boss battles, but for achieving a goal that the pilots have set for themselves. The dialogue is used as a benchmark as you hear the same clips of conversation before and after communication is broken with some characters and then established with others, introducing new characters and new facets to the increasingly emotionally complicated story of wartime ethics and morality. Unfortunately, during the middle levels, the story is put on the backburner as dialogue doesn’t amount to much more than “I’ll kill you, you giant hunk of metal!” Which leaves us with only he aforementioned flat Russian narratives at the beginnings of each level. In the end, I ended up confused, not because the story was badly written, but because the ethics involved were confusing and I ended up never touching certain pilots in arcade mode because I truly didn’t like their character.

The graphic design is advertised as Diesel-Punk. I don’t know precisely what that means, but it ends up looking like a WW2-era cross between 1942 (the game,) Metropolis, James Cameron’s Avatar (more in the jungle level),Dark Cloud 2, and Last Exile. The game is completely epic in scale and everything big looks, sounds, and feels big. Small things are hard to hit and everything is just impossibly heavy. Deadly, poisonous insects must be navigated around or shot down, huge war Zeppelins fill the sky, floating cities with dubious yet hauntingly beautiful underbellies become the playing field for epic struggles for domination and liberty.

The characters are Furries. I’m not going to beat around this too much, they are Anthromorphs. The females are designed to look sexy and the males are designed to be hulks. I am not a lover of Anthromorphs utilized in games, but I don’t have a strong aversion to them either. I can forgive the game this slight transgression because the rest of the game is so good. I didn’t mind the cast of StarFox either, since the game was solid and even boundary-pushing for its time, the same holds true here. If you can’t stand Furries in your video games, then I wouldn’t recommend this game to you. If you either don’t mind or love Anthromorphs, these ones are well drawn and characterized. The characters are worthy of the names and personalities they are given.

The music was designed by none other than Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill, Shadows of the Damned) so be prepared for some eerie delay in the atmospheric noise and piano so soft that it sounds as if the instrument is made of feathers. There are some creepy off-key parts which honestly send chills up my spine in remembrance of older survival horror experiences. A+ music for sure.

If you’re looking for a solid arcade experience, deep characters, and an amazing presentation and find a few extra pesos in your pocket, buy Sine Mora. If you came for Braid-style, genre-shattering, time-manipulation-based puzzle gameplay, take another look at what makes up the core of this game before purchasing, though I still recommend it to everyone with a 360.

** Originally published on levelsave.com **

Review - Vessel: A Steam-Powered, Dystopian Romp

8Overall Score

Presentation:9/10

Gameplay:8/10

Replay Value:6/10

Do Fluros dream of liquid sheep? That is the unanswerable question posed in Strange Loop Games’ new title, Vessel. Combining a run-n-gun/puzzle-platformer game style with an engine built to model particle liquid effects, this game has you working out how to activate the various buttons and levers required to fix each or the 8 broken machines in this Bioshock-esque universe.

You begin the game with a cutscene, stills and text pieced together in true indie game-fashion. The opening movie tells the story of a well-meaning scientist who creates a race of unintelligent creatures known only as the Fluros. These passive creatures would do humanity’s dirty work: The hard and dangerous jobs. After a few years of idyllic, virtually free labour, people began to notice something. Changes in the way the entirely liquid-based Fluros act began to become apparent. New forms of Fluros began being sighted in the bowels of the machinery. Some were not as friendly as their engineered counterparts, and problems began to arise. The factory was shut down and our hero, the aforementioned scientist, is called in to discover the problem with the Fluros and fix the issues so that life can go on once again as normal.

Friendly Fluros always try to press buttons.. Always.

The way this game is feels, with it’s rooms and caverns filled with secret passageways and inaccessible rooms, is often reminiscent of Braid or Myst, as if a deeper meaning could be found in the basic gameplay and images left behind your eyes well after you lay down for bed. The lighting is eerie in certain parts, leading you to believe that there must be some mechanical value to the sparse, lonely lamp hanging from the overhead trolley that you are trundling along on. Unfortunately, Strange Loop missed the boat on that particular mechanic and chose instead to focus more heavily on liquid-physics and lever-pulling. The liquid itself is peculiar, looking more like balls rolling around on the screen than real liquid. I would be hesitant to call this a liquid-physics based puzzle-platformer if the designers didn’t coin it so. It looks more like sophisticated but coarse (as opposed to fine) particle-physics. The environments themselves are in a style that speaks to steampunk, industry, and dungeon-delving. The protagonist seems cut straight from Thomas Dolby’s mythical dystopia, while the abandoned factories seem to scream the word “alone” in the space between our hero’s footsteps, and the caverns drip with water from the damp ceilings. The machines are another matter altogether. These hulking pieces of metal are very functional pieces used almost exclusively to propagate and enhance the gameplay. The steam collectors, iron platforms, and water spouts never seem to quite fit into the look of the environments, as if the rooms were made first and the puzzles built to fit the room, rather than the other way around. This particular phenomenon left me with a feeling that I felt while playing The Incredible Machine. I felt that I should be able to add and remove pieces of machinery at will, which of course would break every puzzle in the game.

The sound is really something else. Your overlarge boots loudly ring out in steel corridors and thud against wet dirt, your begoggled helmet bangs against the ceiling as you try to avoid ground-level lava in a low passageway, and the music.. Strange Loop really scored when they got Jon Hopkins (who worked on the sci-fi hit Monsters and with artists such as Coldplay, Brian Ino, and Imogen Heap.) He has created an original, haunting, full-length electronic album which is dynamically remixed into each puzzle and scene. Returning to themes from earlier levels and providing audio clues as to how to solve each problem that you encounter. If only life had such a soundtrack. The soundscape in this game is nearly perfect.

The main mechanics used in solving these puzzles are smart utilization of the Fluros, your extra hands, your super-soaker backpack/nozzle combo, and the Fluros seeds that you pick up along the way. Each Fluros (Fluro?) is made out of two pieces: 1) The liquid which makes up it’s bulk, and 2) the seed which directs it’s mass to do useful things. Liquid can be found nearly everywhere in this game, I never really found myself running out of water and the canister in my backpack was almost always full. The Fluros take on the properties of the liquid that they’re made out of. Water Fluros are your mainstay cheap labour, lava Fluros act in the same way as their watery brethren, but are much too hot to touch. If water and lava come together, they create great geysers of steam that can be used to power certain

Different liquids have different properties

machines. Some Fluros were not engineered by man and act in some strange ways. Predator Fluros will actively attempt to kill you, while one made out of globular fruit-flesh will attempt to assimilate more and more liquid until it reaches a critical capacity and dramatically explodes. Utilization of these various properties are one key to solving the various puzzles you come across. Another tool is your backpack. Made out of a canister and a nozzle, it looks very much like a self-contained fire-fighting tool, or a very primitive proton pack. This backpack has the ability, not only to shoot water, which is expected, but also to reverse the flow and suck up various kinds of liquids which can then be spat back out. This comes in handy from many different puzzles (shooting water down a drain so that it mixes with the lava below, creating enough steam to activate the collector above the chamber, for instance) but is also used as an offensive weapon against the lava Fluros when they are closing on you. A second or two of exposure to water will cool seeded lava enough to destabilize it’s body, crumbling it into a sad little pile with a doomed seed floating around in it. The seeds, yes! These products of high biological tampering are what are used to conform the water around them into a useful form. The friendly spheres with tentacles and legs are fairly fragile but used in almost every puzzle in the game, so you will learn that having an infinite supply of seeds is not only handy, but necessary. The seeds literally attract water in what was coined a “molecular attraction” by the developers. Not only does this make it easier to form Fluros, but you can also manipulate liquid even through walls. This mechanic is utilized sparingly but effectively in many different parts of the game, adding an unexpected element to a fairly simple puzzler.

The puzzles themselves are simple enough that you can retain their entirety in your working memory for days, even if you can’t make it back to the PC. I never lost any sleep going over them in my head, but I can say that coming back to a challenging screen that I’ve been thinking about and solving it nearly immediately is a very rewarding experience. The puzzles don’t ever get too hard, either. There wasn’t ever a point in the game where I scratched me head and saw no way to solve it. There was always some niggling clue (“if only I could figure out why this button is here” or “why does this door open?”) that kept me from giving up.

The replay of this game is hampered by the fact that once you know how to solve the puzzles, there is no challenge anymore, and therefor no satisfaction is gained in replaying the game. With 10-12 hours of gameplay, I would say that this game is priced perfectly at $14.99 on Steam and Strange Loop Games’ own website. I recommend this game to anyone who likedBraid for it’s gameplay elements or is looking for a concise, quirky puzzle experience.

There are plans for Vessel to be released on XBLA and PSN, though no timeline has been released for those iterations.

Buy the game for $14.99 on Steam, or a DRM-free version at Strange Loop Games.

** Originally published on levelsave.com **

Final Fantasy Origins: Old News in a New Package

These Square-Enix titles have been released in many formats over the years. This latest iteration, being from the PS1 era, remains my favourite version because nearly every single aspect has been modernized and beautified. Final Fantasy Origins comes packaged with updated versions of Final Fantasy I and II. Updated, that is, from their original Nintendo Entertainment System counterparts. If you enjoyed the original games on the NES or Wonderswan all those years ago, you will not be disappointed with these fairly faithful remakes.

Now, when I say this is a fairly faithful remake, I lie. This iteration has updated graphics, sound, and functionality. NES purists might have a hard time with the beautifully rendered cutscenes and Super Nintendo-style in-game sprites and landscapes. The audio has more channels, so the music is much more than it was. Also, while Final Fantasy retains it’s hardcore difficulty, it also introduced a new ‘easy mode’ which reduced the toughness of the enemies you face. Final Fantasy II includes a collectible feature so that you can be even more completist about your playthrough.

My point is that they feel similar to the originals. That feeling of satisfaction in gaining your new, shiny, very expensive armour remains the same. When you level your mage’s stamina in FFII without having her die a million times in the process, that feeling of accomplishment speaks directly to the old school of console RPGs. That’s what makes the most recent distribution of these legacy titles appealing for the older gamers out there who have the experience of playing these games with a rectangular, grey controller.

I’ve got a more comprehensive list of the more important changes from the originals which have been included in this package of games. They are as follows:

Final Fantasy I

• Updated graphics and audio. Raising the bar for Final Fantasy remakes to include full FMV cutscenes and Super Nintendo quality in-game graphics, user interface, and audio.
• An optional auto-retargetting ability has been added so that characters do not try to swipe at dead enemies anymore. This can be reverted back to the original mode under settings.
• Stores sell good in bulk. No more clamping down the A button and walking away for 20 minutes to buy 99 potions!
• Descriptions of items and equipment are available. Meaning you don’t need to guess if a particular sword is more powerful than your current weapon before buying and equipping it.
• Items are stored in a common item menu, rather than on individual characters.
• Some musical scores have been replaced with entirely new original scores.
• The game can be saved anywhere via a temporary save state. Going to an Inn or using tents and sleeping bags are still the only way to permanently save to the virtual memory card.
• Optional Easy Mode makes leveling quicker, and enemies easier to beat.
• The entire text has been re-translated and expanded from the original Japanese. This helped me a lot to clarify some plot points and reminded me more easily about some of the spell effects (ie. Xfer is now Dispel.)
• Collectible encyclopedia of monsters, geographic locations, and items is available through the title menu.
• Various bugs breaking certain spells and armour have been fixed.
• You can run!

Final Fantasy II

• Updated graphics and audio. While FFII was updated graphically from the original already, this distribution updates the game in a similar way to FFI, seen above.
• Some scores have been replaced with entirely new original scores. This is especially obvious in combat with bosses. There was, in the original, a standard “boss score,” which has been replaced by unique pieces of music for each boss.
• The maximum number if items you can hold has been increased.
• Items are described in menu for ease of use.
• Collectible encyclopedia of of monsters, concept artwork, enemies, and geographic locations is available.
• You can run!

In fact, the only problems I can find are very slight. That is, the graphics and sound, while updated from their original 8-bit splendor, are still not up to FFXIII-2 standards. But then again, this particular distribution is nearly ten years old, so that’s like comparing night and day. Also, some of the new added functionality detracts from the toughness of the games, which are part of why I played them in the first place. This last is countered by nearly all of the newer additions being optional, so it’s a non-issue.

In conclusion, both long-time fans of the series and current-gen initiates can find an incredibly cache of value in Final Fantasy Origins. With its classic gameplay and feel, as well as it’s modernized and accessible functionality, there isn’t a whole lot that can be used as fodder against this distribution by the Final Fantasy fanboys and fangirls out there. I had a hard time tearing myself away from the quest of the lightbearers to write this review, but I’m glad I finally got around to it.

On my way to see Bahamut now, wish me luck!

** Originally posted at levelsave.com **

Review - Jolly Blast: Soccer

**Originally posted on levelsave.com **

Overall Rating: 3
Educational Value: 6
Age Appropriateness: 2
Enjoyment Factor: 1

I am a great lover of childrens’ literature. I have rows upon rows of picture books intended for an array of age ranges, and I can often be caught with my nose in some beautifully illustrated fairy tale or pop-up books of dinosaurs. My collection of books is steadily growing larger, and they are practically used in my work with small children all the time. There are a few programs that I am enamoured with as well. Good childrens’ interactive fiction (and non-fiction) is useful in educating kids, has replay value, challenges the child, and even remains fun, and that’s exactly what Jolly Blast: Soccer tries to achieve. Unfortunately, this app falls flat in several of these areas.

Jolly Blast: Soccer is well-intentioned and educational, but doesn’t serve to capture the imagination or even hold attention. It’s purpose is to teach it’s users about the basic concepts of soccer, as well as the vocabulary used. It does this aptly with the more interactive pieces of the program. There is a glossary of soccer terms which is quite informative, and one bit where shapes are associated with different parts of the soccer field which goes into more detail about rules. These parts are well-done from an educational perspective, but they have none of the fun involved in capturing and holding the attention of children. These good pieces are more a reference that can be checked for definitions and clarifications.

Where this app falls flat is in the fun and replay value, as well as the lack of attempt to put forth any appropriate challenge to the child. First, the font is too small to be read on my iPhone. I found that both my daughter and I had to squint to read some of the text, and some of the dialogue bubbles were nearly unreadable for their tininess. I would have been happy if there was a font-scaling function, so that if this game is bought on an iPhone 3GS (which does not have as high a resolution as the iPad or iPhone 4) it wouldn’t be nearly impossible to read. There is also the problem of the main story’s length, amount of text on each page, and the complexity of the language being used. It would seem to me that the content within this story is aimed at very young readers, but the sophistication of the actual words on the screen would be more suited to someone with a bit more aptitude in the art of reading. This can lead to either a frustrated younger one or a bored (or worse, insulted!) older child. The saving grace here was the voice-over function, which allowed the user to listen to the story audibly. This will ease some of our child’s frustration, but won’t allow him to practice his reading.

Also, children know how to use iPhones. The controls are as intuitive as shuffling papers around on a desk. Swiping to go to the next page, or to trigger an event on-screen in this kind of app is a no-brainer. Children will utilize their current understanding of how an iPhone works and try these things out first. The problem here is that Jolly Blast: Soccer does not utilize this native control scheme. I found myself tapping nearly everything, even when the item on-screen needed to be dragged across a surface or when I needed to flip pages. The tap-detection boxes are very, very small, as well. I was constantly double- and even triple-tapping one of the sparkling auras which signify an interactive item. This led to more frustration and even anger on the part of my daughter. iOS devices are expensive things, and personally, I wouldn’t want an angry child holding my $500 piece of hardware.

Tony Gonzalez, Tight End for the Atlanta Falcons is featured in this game. He has a video that can be navigated to via the main UI in which he details.. something. And here’s the thing, the audio for the video is much, much too quiet to hear. This negates much of what makes having an iconic sports presence in the app a benefit, and is yet another satellite of frustration orbiting this dead rock of an app.

None of this even mentions that there is no part of this game in which either my daughter or I were having any fun. This game is simply no fun at all. Well.. We did make fun of it a little bit, and that was quality father-daughter bonding.

Honestly, I can’t recommend this game less. Not only does it fall flat on it’s face in most respects, it also confuses it’s intended age level. I can’t even tell you which age this app is really intended for, and I have been to school to learn all about child development. Don’t waste the $1.99 required to own this interactive story. Put that money towards either a good, informational book about soccer, or just get your child a real ball.

The Jolly Blast website can be found here.

I've spent the last few days with inever and it's been a lot of fun. We went to a gay bar on Friday, or whatever day that was, and danced with various people. I saw the queen who I thought was cute from when she was working the bar the Wednesday before, except on stage. She's such a hot slut. ¬_¬ inever got really close with this girl who seemed to be having issues with her boyfriend.. very close indeed. 

We saw The Dark Night last night and it was better than your average super-hero movie. I don't get all the hype, though, aside from it being BRANDON LEE'S LAST FILM.. I mean.. Whatever. It was really a pretty average action movie, which is to say it had an immature plot and lots of splodey stuff. The Joker was played pretty well, ~lick~ but he spoke a bit like Jack Nicholson's Joker at times, except without the commanding boom that Nicholson can project. The Joker's fleshed out thought-experiments made the movie a little tedious, since there were several of them. I still liked Batman Returns best.

I ate too much yesterday, and now I feel terrible. Here's a muxtape for you.

I've been playing Halo 3 on multiplayer campaign mode. The design of the game reminds me of Alien in a vision of a futuristic pragmatism in war sort of way, except that the ringworld is absolutely beautiful. It's worth mentioning that Halo is based on the Ringworld series by Larry Niven. I have yet to read them, but I may just order them from Amazon sometime soon.

The combat NPCs aren't absolutely retarded except if they're driving and you're shooting. They seem to hang back a bit too far, which I think is just an over-caution to make up for a lack of any real intelligence, and to make you feel like they are, indeed, the Master Chief's followers. I like shooting them in the back of the head with a grenade launcher and laughing when one of the survivors utter, "he was on our side :("

The enemy, the Covenant as they are called, seem to be following a crazy leader bent on the annihilation of all life, or something, so they fight with a religious zeal that is actually kind of impressive. My favourite enemy in the game, so far, has been the giant mechanical spiders that come lumbering over the sides of oddly-shaped buildings firing their huge lasers at your tanks. I had a hard time pulling those things down even with a friend helping me. 

I always thought that Halo was a silly, shallow series with awkward controls that was made for the lowest class of gamer, Madden fans. I've come to discover: It is that, but that blasting these shrewd bugs is actually pretty fun. I'd like to get a four player campaign going, I've only experienced two player, so far, so that I can crank the difficulty up to 11. Anyone interested?

Last night, neVer and I watched the Woody Allen movie, Scoop. In it Allen plays a successful stage magician who meets his co-star, a promiscuous, would-be journalist, during his act, calling her up on stage for a disappearing trick. While she is in the "de-atomizing box" she meets the third star of the movie, a famous dead journalist, or his eternal spirit. 

This is one of Allen's better plots, being a cohesive murder-mystery, but lacks the aesthetic beauty of some of his earlier works, although there are some rich-looking shots on an English estate. This is not to say I didn't like it, in fact I laughed more at this movie than I have for years, and in places Allen wanted his audience to laugh, at anything that wasn't a predictable, trite, and badly-written script.

One question I have about this movie is: Is Woody Allen the one talking into his co-star's breasts, or is it his character, Splendini the Magician? I get the feeling that it's a little of both, as sexuality is always a strong device in his movies.

The third installment of The Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind, has been really exciting to play. Based in an ever-changing landscape and in real time, rains fall to different degrees, sandstorms ravage the parched mountain terrain, pea-soup fog inhibits your vision sight, all while travelling through a world that actually feels alive and dangerous. 

I had a taste of this feeling of danger when my character was out on a lonely, wild paths, trying against odds just to find a place to rest until morning in a relatively safe spot where no beasts might find me and take a bite. The sounds of distant winged atrocities echoed in my ears as I lay down last night for some sleep. It didn't come easily as i thought of strategies I might employ to steal my character out of the treacherous mountains he unwittingly fumbled into. 

The history of the world is full of colour and is very in-depth though as I play my barbarian norseman to his fullest I find he is an illiterate brute and most of the books that come his way are left by the roadside, unread, as he stumbled onto another fight. 

I have only just begun playing this game and already I am in love with it.

Also, I have begun a food review blog.

I have been listening to newer Metallica recently, you know, post-Black Album. I've never given it a chance before, though now that I listen to the three proper albums they've released since '91. I can't give them an entirely horrible review. They've changed since my teenagehood, certainly. They're not metal anymore, it's more like blues rock with some obvious country influence. Your typical bar band sound is what they've being going for, I think, though they are obviously Metallica, you can't mistake the lead's voice. They're using more blues riffs and more typical timing in their tracks, and more consistantly, too. Some of Kirk Hammet's lead guitar (i'm talking about a couple solos and a lick here and there) is still beautiful but that seems to clash with the general sound of base rock that they've managed to create. They're still using punk/metal muting and rhythm a lot of the time, though, which confuses me and, I think, blunts the whiskey-and-oak imagery I feel when listening to Load.

By the way, I really dislike the newest album because it has a digital sound, like linkin park or something. The guitar and everything is much, much too clean and very obviously digitally altered. I have no problem with digital production of songs and tracks, but only when you are using it to enhance your existing sound (i am speaking here of bands who use live instruments,) not when you are creating a whole new sound using the digital technology. You begin to lose the feel of your finished product if you change it so much it sounds like flipping switches, rather than pulling strings. The human element got lost on their last album, is what I think I'm trying to say.

Load and Reload, while having silly names, are alright albums. I approve.

I've rearranged the living room into something more practical and aesthetically pleasing. This act was seeded by the sight of my daughter covering the screen for the glare coming off the pc. My pc is not even IN the living room. Well, whatever. 

I've been playing a game called Planetarian which is basically a sickly sweet account of a post apocalyptic scenario involving a female robot "always willing to serve" on her last week on earth and a guy who feels protective of her and somehow sad for her. The Japanese have labelled these types of games Kinetic Novels which is usually a fancy way of saying Dating Sims, Eroge or H-games, (PORN GAMES for those of you not paying attention to japanese media.) This one is not exactly a porn game though, since there are no nude scenes that I have come across and there is none of that silly multiple choice selection stuff that passes as flirting in these types of games. It's an emotional story in a depressing-and-then-uplifting sort of way, though I haven't completed the main story arc yet so take it with a grain of salt. It is rather singular in that it is just about the highest quality "Kinetic" or Visual Novel that has been translated into english from it's original Moonspeak, I am withholding saying that it's a completely average story with no devices or metaphor to speak of until after I have actually seen the ending. 

I'm also playing the infinitely more appealing The Dark Eye which is a point, click and watch (others might call it "adventure") game based on a couple of the works of Edgar Allen Poe and which utilizes the queer overliterate dead anti-idol himself, William Burroughs as one of the main characters in the story. Indeed, he plays possibly the most interesting and fleshed-out character in any video game I have played to date. The overreaching story is an original one, if rather incohesive at points, which borrows heavily from certain Poe classics.

I get the feeling that this Hideshi Hino's Theatre of Horror is a sucky TV hour in jp just as Friday the 13th is in N America. I saw Lizard Baby from the same line of movies and it was terrible. It wasn't suspenseful and reminded me of an ep of the Twilight Zone except it didn't have a twist at the end. Maybe I will try watching the Ringu series or Ju On next instead of subjecting myself to this series.

I have been watching a show called The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱) and it's really pretty interesting about a girl named Haruhi and her obsession with supernatural occurrences. Haruhi seems like some kind of catalyst for a larger plot involving alternate space, time travelling and the Earth coming into existence four years ago. At any rate it is still airing in jp and I have four more eps to watch before I am caught up to the current story line (the last ep aired was 13.) It's based on the Nagaru Tanigawa's Suzumiya Haruhi series of novels which I haven't read and, indeed, don't even know if it's been translated officially, unofficially or at all. Though if I actually do enjoy the TV series enough I will seek them out. I am actually learning a bit of jp. じょうずじゃありません。。。 But I'm not very good. If I get good enough I am thinking about doing some translation for a fansub group or two.