Time to get some paint buckets.

I now know what my dream room will look like.

Metacritic Taunts Me.

Something Ebert said miffed me. In his review of The Dark Knight, he said this:

"Batman" isn't a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy.It creates characters we come to care about. That's because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production.
- Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

You're wrong Ebert! "Comic books" have been like The Dark Knight for a long time now. How can Nolan's film "leap beyond its origins" when The Dark Knight is the best comic book movie to emulate its source material, it's mythos, on screen?

As much as I hate to admit it, it seems that despite movies like The Dark Knight, people still think that comic books "can't be that good."

Of course, the existence of superdickery.com proves me wrong. But that's like using Homo Erectus to point out the faults of Homo Sapiens.

All in all, I can't blame Ebert. It's his opinion after all - half the world knows Adam Wests's Batman, and the Superfriends, and the other half knows The Dark Knight Returns, The Long Halloween, and The Killing Joke.

The Avatar Weekend.

The torrents have been fruitful. Only a few more hours, and two more episodes to go. I had to choose between the Avatar: The Legend of Aang Finale (and an afternoon with the family) or an afternoon screening of afternoon screening of The Dark Knight.

Sorry Ledger, baby saliva always win.

Why I now love TED

"When you start looking for something you tend to find it. This wouldn't be like Simon Newcomb, the great astronomer, who wrote a mathematical proof that heavier than air flight was impossible and published it a day before the Wright brothers took off. I'm talking about people who found a pattern in nature and wrote several scientific articles and got it accepted by a large part of the scientific community before it was generally agreed that there was no such pattern, it was all just selective perception."
- Robert Anton Wilson

As always, guitar rifts make it sound better.

Hellboy II gets a better trailer...

When EVA's dance

I was trying to look for that video of an old dude who spoofed "Fly Me to the Moon" via a spinning Rei Ayanami doll on a fishing line, but I failed. I found this instead.



I am satisfied.

Old but still gold

Zack Kim you ass.

I feel like Cornell Oversteel. Only I'm not Canadian, or big and hulky. Big maybe, but I'm more on the pudgy side. Zack Kim, you're the reason why the "average asian" skit exists on Mad TV. You and your ultra-talented far-eastern brethren. Gargh. Before I rant any further, here's the guitarist himself last 2007, playing the Chocobo Theme on two guitars all by his onesies.

Effects vs. Gameplay visibility

See? That's why they scaled down on the falling debris...

SF2 HD Remix Bitching

Capcom, I appreciate the new HD sprites and all that, but could you have at least improved the frame rate of both the sprites AND the background animation? The sprites look smooth, but the animation on the sprites feels like it's missing a lot of frames. That and the crowds in the background animate like a two-page flip book.

Also, could you have at the very least cleaned up the hit detection? You could freeze-frame some of the gameplay trailers and see Ryu kicking thin air and Ken being close to the fucking ground and getting "hit" by a flying kick.

Old-school rocks and all that, but you could've cleaned up.

Tip: Look at King of Fighters XII

StarCraft 2: reactions, release dates, and musings

Now that the Zerg's been introduced to the world, them forum folks are once again starting to scream "imbalanced!" and all that. Sigh. Well, it's expected, I guess. I mean, you can't really expect everyone to understand what a demonstration video is meant to do right?

Look people, the video/videos were meant to show off the Zerg and highlight what they're all about. Of course they're going to seem overpowered. That was the point: sell the Zerg's bad-assed-ness.

Oh what the hell. Why care. It's been the same since the release of the Protoss video and the Terran video. "ZOMG the Protoss Mothership is insanezors! Whoa, the Terran nuclear reactor and the Thor are unfair!" Yeah, whatever.

Anyway, because all the races are now revealed, everyone's expecting a summer release.

I say bollocks to that. I'm expecting a December release.

You see, I'm willing to bet that Blizzard's going to take extra time trying to get the balance for the three races decent from the start. They can't really afford to tarnish the "fairness" of their Korean e-sport cash cow. When they release it, they have to get it right, or at least good, the first time. Otherwise, a lot of pro-gamers will be complaining.

Other reasons for my belief in this truthiness include the revealed developmental changes made to the game so far.

Take for example the Protoss Carriers. They were brought back specifically for nostalgia/iconic reasons, when originally they were set to be replaced by a Dark Templar version of the capital ship.

The Mothership's abilities seems to be going through some flux, and Blizzard seems to be a bit worried as to how they're going to balance the Blackhole ability, or if they're really going to allow more than one Mothership in the game at a time. The latest update to the official site seems to indicate that they've allowed the existence of several Motherships at once, per game.

Also, the Protoss Colossus: their weapons used to fire in a smooth straight arc that could wipe out swaths of Zerglings in one go. By the time the Zergling trailer came out their blasts now ressemble the Terran Battlecruiser's Plasma Bursts.

Speaking of the Terran's, the changes that race is experiencing during development are also worth noting. The Raiders used to be spawned automatically, without purchase, from a specialized building. Now it seems that they have to be purchased from your Barracks.

The Terran super-unit, the Thor is also going through some bouts of heavy trial. Folks say that they're testing if it's okay for the Thor to be able to attack both ground AND air units; how tough the armor the that giant mech is going to be; stuff like that. Rumor is that at one time, you had to kill the thing TWICE! Once to disable the thing's legs, and a second kill to finish it off.

My real curiosity though, is how they're going to balance the Ghost's "Snipe" ability. Last we saw it, it was a "stance" that imobilized your Ghosts but allowed them to kill all organic units within range in one shot. The rate of fire is slow though, but still, it's a bit unfair, especially since ALL of the Zerg are organic.

Imagine, you finally managed to develop enough to finally spew out an Ultralisk that can burrow (Stealthy elephants! WOOT!) and then you hear a pop, then your Ultralisk falls dead. That would suck wouldn't it? Worse, imagine a Ghost getting in range of your Drones... now that's a shitty situation if there ever was one.

I could say more issues, but I'll stop here.

If we DO see a summer release for the game, I'd be the first to feel mighty uncomfortable about it. I'm not a pro or anything, but I want this done right too.

Good job Sony! The EyeToy is sweet, sweet tech

Remember the "draw a character and then play with it" concept in Drawn to Life? Well, for weeks now I've been reading about how Sony's Richard Marks expounded on that concept with his EyeToy.

His take on the concept makes a lot of evolutionary sense really, especially since drawing on paper with a pencil is a lot handier than drawing on a touch screen with a stylus. The thing is, I've been guilty of brushing aside Marks' EyeToy as something that's trying too hard, and is way too ahead of it's time.

Boy did Sony prove me wrong.

Check out the video below and I dare the geek in you to tell me it isn't cool tech-wise.

Forget Okami on the DS (although that would be nice), imagine Okami using EyeToy tech! You can, if you wanted to, actually invest some resources into acquiring an old-school Chinese ink brush for maximum effect!

Oh, and before I forget, here's a techy-gamers wet dream for you: imagine combining this with Jeff Han's multi touch screen technology. What do you get? The ultimate RTS!

Thank God Kotaku went to the GDC...

I feel so random today

To all those who are pissed with SFIV's new look, irregardless of Ryu's penis and all that jazz (why penis why!), here's all I have to tell you:

Also, I want the image below as a poster, or a wall scroll, or on an altar/shrine of some sort. My attempts at searching for a larger image size version was complete and utter failure. I blame the universe rolling a 1.

Intertubes time

Image-boards will never cease to amaze me. They are a surefire way to get the lulz you need from the intertubes. Surfin' around, one such site, I found this image:



Cute huh? No, the site I visited wasn't just filled with cutesy animals. It had downright weird stuff. For example, tell me, what does this image imply?

The universe rolls a 1...

and Gary Gygax dies.

At least, he went away well. I hope he did. Newsfolk say he passed away at his home. It was probably peacefull.

Nevertheless, every he fails(/makes, depending on your perspective) his final saving throw, and everyone else gets +10 sadness.

Rest in peace Dungeon Master.

Belmont vs. Jesus

Thanks to my significant other, I recently became aware of the many lulz to be found at I-Mockery.com. If you're bored and you really need your intertube fix, trust me, this is the place to go.

If the Jesus versus Simon Belmont screenshot up there isn't enough to give you a clue as to why I'm such a fan, I'll let this link to their flash-game version of Castlevania 2 explain why.

You can also go to their games page and enjoy their many other offerings like Kill the Dog from Duck Hunt, or Kill the Old Man in Zelda, or Mario vs. Excitebike. My personal faves is A Warcraft Orc lost in Starcraft. That one's a doozy.

If flash games are too web-based for your old-school bleeding heart. I suggest you surf through their hacked ROM review pages. Each review of each hacked ROM also includes a link to download featured emulation aberration. The insanity includes a "Matrix" style version of NES timewaster Elevator Action, and a pornographic interpretation of Karateka. (sort of...)

You've been advised. Now go, waste your time.

I feel the same way about Dr. Mario

It may sound like a Rockman tribute at the start, and the engrish may be jarring, but keep watching. There's a punchline in there somewhere.

Oh, and if you want something that's a bit more immediate, then here's Rock Man doing the Rocky Star:

From Nibelheim to Midgar

Isn't technology a wonderful thing? Now that it's been a few years since Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children's release, by the time Square Enix gathers enought momentum to make a remake of Final Fantasy VII, the technology they would need to arrive at a product of the quality of Advent Children would be several times cheaper than when Advent Children was in production.

Talk about profits. I mean, noit that Advent Children wasn't made with technology, that at the time, was already two years old. Given that they've laid down a certain CG-Anime style already, they don't really have to push anything technically. They'll have more time to focus on recreating the gameplay elements and they'll have more time to think about the profits, and the marketing.

Note: Dirge of Cerberus, Last Order, and Advent Children double as extended marketing material, aside from being franchise products in their own rights.

People will gobble it up and throw their savings at the thing, if the remake ever gets done.

Speaking of technology, I found two videos on YouTube that build-up on the effect that the FFVII PS3 Tech Demo did.

You see, Crisis Core, apparently properly ends it's tale with it's hero's death. In the ending, you see Zack and Cloud in that heartwrenching moment near Midgar. Yep, it's that tradgedy where they were short of the safety of the Midgar slums by about a few hundred yards. Here's that moment as it was originally presented to in classic 32bit PS1 FFVII:

Then here's that moment in the ending of Crisis Core with spangly Advent Children graphics.

Also, here's a follow up "secret ending" bonus in Crisis Core where you see Crisis Core cut to FFVII proper. It may look like the tech demo at first, but watch it until the end. Psycho, crazy, I'm-still-messed-up-from-Nibelheim-I-think-I'm-Zack Cloud actually speaks in this.

FMVs like these, along with Advent Children, and that opening in Dirge of Cerberus that looks like Advent Children (the evacuate Midgar from Meteor-fall scene), makes it hard for any geek who's played through the first one to not hope in his heart-of-geeky-hearts that an FFVII remake be made.

Now if only they made ruby slippers for geeks.

8-bit Cross-stitch for the win

A site called Sprite Stitch is currently gaining massive popularity with the gaming community because their Luigi Hates Mario project got featured on Kotaku.

Now I like Mario as much as the next gamer alive during the days of famicom, however I prefer their Rockman bosses project. They've got stitch charts up.

Huzzah!

I have another reason to enjoy having a girlfriend who's handy with the usual home economics stuffs. Now, aside from the awesome cooking, the beautiful bento boxes, and the handy-during-emergency shirt-sewing, I can also ask her to cross-stitch me my childhood enemies.

I'll attach them to a dartboard as soon as I manage to convince my beloved, or one of my sisters to get me Cutman, or Iceman, or whoever.

You're talking about storytelling? Rewatch War of the Worlds.

I was surfing around gametrailers.com today for entertainment and general intertubes lulz, and for some reason, the several-months-old Final Fantasy Retrospective feature caught my attention.

I clicked the link, watched several of the shorts, and one particular line that was said in the short about Final Fantasy VII caught my attention. The narrator quoted Stephen Spielberg who apparently, said this:

"I think the real indicator will be when somebody confesses that they cried at level 17."

So, what's so so special about the line? Well it turns out, that at the time -- around 2004 -- Spielberg said that to a class of film students. His stand was that games weren't quite there yet as medium to tell stories.

This got me a bit miffed. So I did what I could to track down that quote of Spielberg on Google. Eventually, it lead me to an article defending storytelling in videogames and that specific videogame CG cutscene, where, it's safe to say for certain that a whole lot of us gamers cried: the Death of Aeris.

I think from the pundits -- and Spielberg's point of view -- a lot of the storytelling moments in videogames fail to stand on their own. The acting always seems off, the lines seem forced, and the camera angles all feel off, but I think the author of the article I linked to hit the nail on the head with these lines:

What has been missed here is the context for the scene that comes from playing the game itself.

The whole base of the discussion on that slide is ludicrous. His contrasting point was the opening section of Kingdom Hearts II. Who would try to compare the two to five hour mix of gameplay and scenes that make up the opening sequence of Kingdom Hearts II and a one minute clip long clip that is shown 40 hours into the 10-year-old FFVII? We don't do this when discussing traditional film. You're not going to find an article out there decrying the state of current film making by taking the "Ride of the Valkyries" scene out of "Apocalypse Now" and trying to deconstruct it without taking the rest of the film into account. And we're not going to start trying to compare the special effects with the first half of "Black Hawk Down" or "Saving Private Ryan". But the essential silliness of this exercise only scratches the surface.

Cutscenes in a game have more to do than an equivalent piece of traditional film. They don't just tell story. They have to support the game, and the game is an integral part of experiencing them.

Yep, context is pretty much paramount if you're going to squeeze any amount of emotion out of videogames.

For example, a 10 minute "History of the Legend of Zelda" audio-video piece from Video Games Live is saw on YouTube once got me to cry. Also, whenever I hear the opening theme of Final Fantasy VII or the smooth piano notes of Kingdom Heart's "Dearly Beloved," I get chills down my spine. I bet that a person completely unfamiliar with Link, Aeris, or Sora wouldn't have a similar experience.

I think that like any other medium, you get out of it what you put in. Games just tend ask for a whole lot more involvement from its audience than movies or books.