Ogwaros Iwenâl

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: Ian McDiarmid is the man.

Do you remember the last dream you had?

I don’t.

I was digging through my old files and came across (among other things) an old dream log.  It only contained two dreams.  I remember the first one listed fairly vividly – a rather unpleasant dream about religious fanaticism and Dr. Phil – but do not remember the other at all despite its pleasant nature.

Dream entries used to constitute 50% of what passes for content on this site.  I have entries dating back to mid-2004.  But I can’t remember a single dream I’ve had in the past 3 months.  I’m sure I’ve had them, but I suppose they weren’t interesting enough to share or remember for more than 5 minutes after waking.

So here is to a dream tonight.  A back-crushing nightmare or uplifting fantasy fulfillment.  I don’t care.  So give me something to dream about.

Please, give me something!

I was at Target the other day looking at PC games when a clearance sign caught my eye. Lost: Via Domus was one of the marked down titles. I remembered that the game got fairly terrible reviews, certainly not worth fifty dollars when it came out.  But for today, the game was a mere five dollars.  Keep in mind that Lost: Via Domus came out February of this year, as a tie in to the premiere of season 4 of the show.  What kind of shovelware TV tie-in gets marked down to 10% of its price within less than a year?  I decided to find out (it was only five dollars, right?).

After playing the game, I can say it is very much a case of getting both what you expect and what you paid.

You play as an amnesic photojournalist who is being hunted by an assassin. It seems you took a few incriminating photos prior to crashing on the island that someone doesn’t want published.  Your quest is to piece together your past so you know why you are being stalked, and to explain the ghost of a woman that is following you as well.

The setup is fairly good – uniquely suited to a Lost game, given the flashback structure the show and game both use – but execution falls down in so many aspects.  Perhaps the most obvious is gameplay – Lost: Via Domus is an adventure game.  Or rather, it is a poor adventure game.  Most of the game consists of walking from point A to B, picking up objects and trading them, fixing electrical panels and passing intelligence tests.  Most of the items you pick up are useless except to trade for more slightly less useless items.  You must purchase a gun at one point – you may buy extra ammo, but you won’t need to shoot it more than three times during the whole game.

The other significant component to a typical adventure game is speaking with other characters.  This is an utter failure in Lost for several reasons.  First and foremost, the script is awful.  Characters randomly spout lines from the show, as if the player is supposed to gleefully cheer and think “I remember that line!”  Such lines will merely confuse players not familiar with the show and feel like patronizing fanservice (if it can be even called that) to hardcore fans.

For instance, early on John Locke randomly tells the player “I don’t want to leave this island.”  No context is given as to why he would not want to leave the island – and you are given no option to ask him why.  So if you have never watched the show, almost nothing anyone says will make sense.  If you have watched the show, there is no point in talking to anyone, except to trigger events to move the game along.  The lack of even basic conversation branching makes talking to anyone boring and tedious.

Then there are the graphics.  By trying to replicate the actors on the show, the game sits well within the uncanny valley.  All of the characters – except the ones created specifically for the game – look like horrific living-dead versions of themselves.  Marvel at zombie Hurley, who looks like a fat little midget who has gorged himself on ten too many brains!  And there’s zombie Ben, who… actually, Ben looks more or less accurate, thanks to how wonderfully creepy Michael Emerson looks.

The voice acting doesn’t help with the uncanny valley effect.  Very few actors from the show reprise their role, and as such very few of the characters sound correct.  As an added bonus, the acting itself is horrible and shows very little direction.

In fact, the less the actual Lost characters are involved, the better the game feels.  Some of the later flashbacks within the game are pretty well put together.  But when the main characters get involved, things tend to fall apart.  It does not help that the beach is typically populated with a maximum of five main characters at once.  There were 48 survivors of Oceanic 815 – where are they?  A much better game would have focused on characters we haven’t seen (such as the main character of the game) with sparse interactions with the “A-team” as Charlie puts it in the game.

I do have to give the game credit in a few places.  The music seems to be variations on the themes from the show, without reproducing them verbatim ad-nauseum.  The direction style of the cut scenes (voice acting excluded) is quite interesting and in the same vein as the show.  Breaking up the game into episodes works quite well.  And there is also a very handy “Previously on Lost” feature that recaps previous episodes for you.  Unfortunately, these are played at the beginning of each episode even if you just beat the previous episode, not just when loading the game.  They are also unskippable, which becomes a pain when you die and have to sit through it all over again.

A good Lost adventure game is possible.  This simply is not it.  Not recommended, even for five dollars.

What kind of mad scientist builds 8 robot masters every year in order to wreak havoc on Utopia? What kind of mad scientist would name all of his robots “___ Man?” What kind of mad scientist would frame his rival for the destruction he has wrought?

A jerk, that’s who.

Sure, Mega Man can fly through Wily’s robot masters in under 10 seconds flat each. But when faced with a flying dragon robot that spits explosive eggs, which starts shooting parabolic gouts of flame in its second form, poor Mega Man is out-matched.  What kind of robot creature is this anyway?!  What jerk builds a dragon robot that spits out eggs?

Dr. Wily, that’s who.  And should Mega Man beat the robot-that-makes-no-sense, Wily pops out in his flying saucer and zaps Mega Man’s shiny blue ass with energy orbs of death.  Why not bring out the big guns in the first place?  Why make Mega Man slog through a fight bouncing explosive eggs (seriously?!) back at the dragon and dodging flame with last minute jumps when you can just kill him with a few shots from your magic flying saucer?  To give him hope?

What a jerk.

The idea is simple.  Recut footage of a movie into a trailer that totally misrepresents what the movie is really about.  There are a ton on the YouTube, but most just aren’t very good.  It takes skill at editing, good use of music, and good footage to take from to make it work.  Here are some of the better ones I have come across (many are NSFW):

Home Alone:

The Ring:

Office Space:

The Big Lebowski:

The Terminator:

And perhaps the best of all, The Shining:

I got carded yesterday.

Buying Bioshock.

Perhaps perpetually looking 16 has something to do with it… Or silly store policy.

Sense: this ad makes none.

(P.S. – the cake is a lie…)

I bought a new computer with a Bluray drive on Saturday.  By Sunday, I was ruined on DVDs.

I wasn’t too impressed at first.  The first thing I popped in was Stargate Continuum.  Overall, not too shabby looking, a definite improvement over DVD.  But I wasn’t wowed at all.  In particular, the all CGI shots of the Goa’uld motherships in space had enormous amounts of noise in them.  Didn’t really make any sense to me.  The live action shots looked fine and, occasionally, really good.

Then I watched Gattaca.  I had only ever seen it on cable before, so the added resolution brought out new details I couldn’t see before.  But they only put so much effort into restoration effort.

Batman Begins was next, and it looked shockingly good.  Of course, it has the luxury of having been filmed fairly recently and of being a big-name title.  So of course it looks great.  And then I noticed they included the opening bank robbery scene from The Dark Knight as a bonus.

…

Absolutely gorgeous.  Unbelievably gorgeous.  Not a hint of noise, not a hint of film grain.  Stunning.  Insert more adjectives here.  If the full release of the Dark Knight can hold up to that image quality… wow.

The menu systems Bluray uses are also a lot more fluid than DVD.  I don’t really care if I can access it while the movie continues to play, but not having to put up with transitions and loading times every time you want to use the menu is definitely a bonus…

Now if the movie companies could release some more worthwhile content.  And no, Jumper and Under Siege 2 do not count.

It’s no secret that I hold a great love for lame completely awesome 80s and early 90s movies.  Goonies, Short Circuit, you name it.  Particularly the Gremlins series.

So imagine my joy when I came across this video of Gremlins spliced into other movies.  Done in the style of the Gremlins 2 joke cut away sequence no less.

1408 understands the idea behind the Silent Hill series far better than the Silent Hill movie did: a malevolent presence, represented as a place, feeding off the psyche of its victims.  1408′s greatest strength is the build up – Samuel L. Jackson is nice as the hotel manager, for what little of the movie he is in.  And the very slow burn of things going wrong within the room keeps things nice and tense without resorting to sting scares.  The room has this devious habit of giving the victim exactly what they want and then ripping it right out from their arms.  It’s sort of like the bad endings to the Silent Hill games – the victim doesn’t find redemption or penance for their past misdeeds, only sorrow and death.

Contrast this with the Silent Hill movie.  There were scenes that were done right (the bathroom scene) but for the most part any sort of psychological terror is thrown out the window.  It’s all about the monsters out to get our hero, be they otherworldly or stupid cultists.  Really disappointing overall.

Unfortunately, though, 1408 goes off the rails about halfway in and never gets back on track.  In the end, the “evil fucking room” is just that.  Early on it’s ambiguous if any of what is going on is actually real.  Towards the end, it starts interacting with the real world, making it clear that this is just another run-of-the-mill poltergeist horror film.

Not recommended.