From the Brow of Zeus

With Herculean effort, I put the finishing touches on a story that took way too long to edit. I feel like that guy at the end of "The Raft", who swam to shore, looked back at the lake monster and screamed, "I beat you! I beat you!"

Granted, that was right before the flesh eating blob jumped out of the water and swallowed him whole. But for a second there, he was pretty dang happy.

Right now I'm editing a short story I originally wrote back in 2003. It's about a man who wakes up to a world that is somehow horribly changed. His girlfriend looks the same, and children still play in the streets -- albeit not quite as nicely as before. But now there's nothing reassuring about their smiles, and everyone around him has gone inexplicably hollow.

It's a fun story, short and scary, just the way Rita Perlman likes 'em.

"This is so bad it's almost good. "
"This is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again."
- Ghost World.

As a confessed ironic consumer, I buy things that no one in their right mind would actually want. Today I picked up something that will no doubt send your heart fluttering, provided you're a teenage girl from 1987.

Kirk Cameron: Dream Guy. Tagline? "The Real Story of America's #1 Heartthrob!"

The look of surprise, then horror, and finally sorrow on people's faces when I show them the book is totally worth it.

I'll be back later with KIRK'S VITAL STATISTICS and, if you're nice, KIRK TRIVIA. But if you want KIRK'S WORDS OF WISDOM, you'll have to buy the damn book yourself.

Labels: misc

Labels: videogames

Rock, Paper Shotgun has a fun rant about locked doors in video games:

Locked door, I hate you.

I hate the way you are resistant to knives, to guns, to sledgehammers, to rocket-propelled grenades, to weapons that rewrite the very laws of physics, to dark unearthly magic, to punches that can knock a man’s head clean off.

...

I hate the way I’m expected to give up trying to open you when I see the words “this door has been locked from the other side” or “this door opens elsewhere”, as though they’re a command from God himself.

...

I hate the way you so often lead to nowhere, how you are nothing more than decoration for a wall.

Labels: videogames

Gamer's Discord just ran an article called Top 10 Games to Play When You're Bored.

Boredom. It can strike even the most hardcore gamer. It happens to the best of us - sitting on the couch, staring at the consoles and gaming pc, pondering which game to play. Shooter? Racing? MMO? Strategy? Whatever the choice, it’s got to be a good one, promising hours of entertainment and replay value.

It's an awkward premise -- games to play when you're bored, as opposed to, you know, when you're actively involved in something. But I think I get what he's saying. Sure-bet games that might have flown under the radar, solid titles that don't spring instantly into the mind of the average gamer.

Maybe I'll find some undiscovered gem I haven't heard about, that's been keeping other gamers entertained for years now. Right?

...wrong.

1. Left 4 Dead
2. Halo 3
3. Empire: Total War
4. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
5. Killzone 2
6. World of Warcraft
7. Gears of War 2
8. Fallout 3
9. Warhawk
10. Burnout Paradise

Woah, really? World of Warcraft? I haven't heard of that one. Halo 3? What's that? Hey, Killzone 2, is that a game to play when I am bored?

Yes, they all have good replay value, but they're also completely mainstream. These are the games people are already playing. Where are the puzzle games? Like classic arcade titles, puzzle games are perfect for drop-in-and-out gameplay. They pass the time without getting you involved in a winding narrative. There's rarely a save system, so you don't worry about "making progress." Like a mugger dressed like a clown who just won the lotto, they're fun and they demand nothing from you.

Why isn't Tetris on the list? Tetris is cool. Show me a gamer who doesn't like the occasional game of Tetris and I'll show you a dirty android who just failed the Voigt-Kampff test.

It seems like he just took a list of the the best selling games or most popular games right now and ran with it. The only remote surprise is Warhawk, a PS3 release game that slipped under the radar due to janky Six-Axis controls.

He might as well have called this article, "Top 10 Games."

Labels: videogames

I'm really bothered by the washed out colors in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. The first game had characters as bright and vibrant as their comic counterparts, but the sequel's faded art design is downright ugly.

If you want to make a game look serious, simply washing out the colors isn't going to do the job. It's just as hard to take a six foot muscle bound "hero" dressed head to toe in ass-hugging red spandex seriously regardless of whether he's vibrant Daredevil or washed out Daredevil.

The faded costumes come off as self-conscious and rather desperate. Especially when you take a look at the latest Daredevil comic, which manages to dress Daredevil in blood-red attire AND look like it was written for mature audiences.



Plus, there's bound to be serious issues with the gameplay. Like Dungeon & Dragon: Heroes taught us, when you make your characters the same colors as the background (in D&D's case, brown), it starts to look like a game starring brightly colored Froot Loops.

Colored rings highlighting player characters may be handy for multiplayer games, but when all you can see is the rings, because the characters themselves blend in with the washed out techno-hallways they're fighting in, there's a serious problem with the art design.

Labels: videogames

After a couple of weeks dealing with the various problems you have to deal with when unexpectedly changing web hosts, things are finally back to normal.

We've now got daily lookalikes going on at VideogameLookalikes.com, so be there or be Square-Enix.