Richard's Online Journal
[27/06/09] Transformers: Revenge Of The Zzzz
...only without the deep storyline. Want to know which robot is fighting and why? Sorry! Motion blur! Explosions! Smoke! Dust! Chaos! Impossible! Megan Fox running around without her bra on? Full-frame slow-mo that shit! Later, MORE EXPLOSIONS!
Cinematic abortion. Worst movie of the year. I have never been so bored watching stuff go boom. I don’t even see how it can be a toy advert, since most of the time it’s impossible to tell what the hell is happening behind the special effects. If Pixar’s technology is all about science in the service of the story, Bay is the exact opposite. I don’t care how technically advanced the effects are if I feel nothing - absolutely nothing - for anything that they produce. Original Transformers may have been impossible, but at least they were memorable. These masses of whirling cogs? These are not the Transformers I grew up loving. Remember those? They were cool.
(The villain gets some serious chutzpah points though. You need some guts to have even your own minions refer to you as, effectively, “The Loser”, not to mention try to persuade the universe that ‘Only a Prime can defeat me’ without any actual evidence of that. So, a railgun shot would just bounce right off, right? Sure. Nice try.)
On the plus side, the Pick and Mix was splendid. And the toilets were sparkling.
Goddamn it, I wish they’d hurry up and release Up over here…
[05/06/09] Fixing The British Political System
For many people, voting serves little purpose. You merely get to choose which almost certainly venal and corrupt bunch of career politicians gets to pretend they act with your implied blessing as they snuffle in the trough. The main parties all let us down on a regular basis. Even our scandals are pathetic, especially compared to the likes of Berlusconi. Clearly, the whole system needs wide-scale reform, but have no fear! I have three solutions, most not even involving pudding wrestling.
Solution the First: Let me run the country as an unchecked dictatorship. I promise a wide-sweeping range of policies, based primarily on how much material they’ll provide to Have I Got News For You. I plan to build a wall around Wells, declare war on the Big Brother House, and move the seat of government to Blubberhouses in Yorkshire, where the incoming nuclear bombs will simply bounce off. Or such is my understanding.
Too much? Fine. Spoilsport.
Solution the Second: We open up the voting system to allow for ‘anti-votes’. You may not want to give, say, Labour or Conservative your support after all the recent sleaze, but at least you can register your disapproval of groups like the BNP. In the event that no group achieves a positive figure, anarchy is immediately declared. However, every candidate will receive an I Cracked The Parliamentary System crystal to take home with them, along with the memories of that precious thing we used to call civilisation.
Solution the Third: Since politicians are frequently incapable of representing what we, the people, want from our rules, we clearly need to open up the race. I humbly suggest that we allow for the inclusion of fictional characters. Wait, hear me out. I’m not saying we hand over control to a non-existent entity. Why would you even think that?
Here’s how it works. First, when the word comes in that what the country really wants is Lord Vetinari from the Discworld books, we instantly launch a massive media campaign to find the closest real-world match, both in physical likeness and personality, and they become our leader. We can call it Britain’s Got Mimesis.
Should this fail, we still leave the position open, with all decisions going through the through a ‘What Would X Do? filter to determine if they’re in keeping with the philosophies of our chosen fictional character. It’s always worked for the Church. When a suitable candidate shows up, they can jump right into the job.
(Admittedly, this might fall down a bit if we elect Pacman. I’m not sure how many world crises can be helped by hiding in a maze, munching fruit and pills and answering all questions with ‘wakka-wakka-wakka’. Still, better that than Bush...)
I don’t really mind which of the three we go for - and those are the only three alternatives, I’m afraid - although I know which I’d prefer. Let the record show, loyal subjects to be, I consider you all worthless heathens and lower than the worms. But please, still vote for me. You’ll love what I’ve got planned for Piers Morgan.
[02/06/09] E3 Diary, Day Zero
7:15: Wake up. Remember that I’m not actually at E3. Diary already failing.
7:27: Pondering what kind of monster can get up at 7:27 when they can get away with waiting for a nice round number. Relax with pleasant thoughts about not having jetlag and crushed legs from endless 10 hour plane flight. Aaah.
9:30: First closed-door meeting of the day, focused on the release schedule of yesterday’s dinner. Still better than anything Sony’s likely to show.
10:34: Pay tramp £5 to pretend to be Tim Schafer. Spend half hour babbling incoherently about the amazingnessitudinity of Psychonauts until he gives the money back and stamps off to annoy some tourists.
11:32: On eBay, selling Tim Schafer’s autograph. Potential buyer wants to know how he can be sure it’s legitimate. I promise signed certificate of authenticity. He accepts.
13:30: Much needed lunchbreak. Feast on the irony of spending the day reading roughly a hundred million articles on new releases, then shrugging and muttering “There’s nothing coming out.” Gamer-entitlement is awesome.
14:34: Snatching pictures of sexy booth babes. Or anyone who uses the photo booth outside Sainsbury’s, really. Note to self: some old people run fast.
15:43: Trying to get into the E3 floor-walking spirit by repeatedly smashing both feet with ball peen hammer. Walking now agony. Seemed like good idea at the time.
16:23: Desperate to see some new games actually moving, grab myself some print outs from the press releases, squint a bit, and shake them around in front of eyes. Frame rate obviously terrible, but no worse than Crysis on my old PC.
17:30: Can’t help but feel the people at the actual show have it better.
[01/06/09] Tales of Monkey Island
Oh yes. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes…
If you need to know why you should be excited, a quick look at the Team page sums it up. I don’t know every name on the list, but seeing Dave Grossman, Mike Stemmle and Mark Darin listed at the top of it is more than enough for now. Really looking forward to this one. It’s a franchise perfectly suited to Telltale’s style, even if going up against peoples’ rose-tinted memories of the original games is one hell of a challenge.
(That said, I hope the majority is spent as far away from the titular island as possible. I always felt the games took a major downturn when that damn place entered the story, even taking the cannibals and ‘rubber tree’ joke into account.)
As for the Monkey Island Special Edition, it’s one I’m almost certainly going to download, but… egads, what happened to Guybrush’s hair? If they do a similar remake of Monkey Island 2, they’d better not mess with that awesome blue coat, that’s all I’m saying…
(Note to Lucasarts: Please do a remake of Monkey Island 2. At least, the first and second chapters. You know you want to, even if you don’t...)
[30/05/09] Decor By Lucasarts
I like the classic adventure games. A lot. Does it show?
The back of my study wall is boring and dull - a plain white wall, long desperately in need of something to fill it. I’ve looked at posters before, but most posters are terrible. I don’t want logos, I don’t want words, just pretty pictures. That’s why it was so cool, quite some time ago, to see a true internet hero called Laserschwert take the old Lucasarts games, scan them in at insane resolutions, touch them up, strip out most of the logos and other cruft, and release the files for anyone to get printed up.
See and download the complete set here.
I’ve been meaning to get some of them printed for ages now, and now that I’ve finally received some, let me say this: they are awesome. The Sam and Max one came out particularly well - glorious colours, amazing detail. Still, my favourite is still probably Monkey Island 2, with that phenomenal colour work and attention to detail. I loved this box art back in the day, to the extent that I’m seriously considering sending the image back in and getting it on canvas. I don’t want to admit how long it took me to notice that the plumes in LeChuck’s hat are actually a dead bird, but it’s so much more obvious in this form. The others: The Sam and Max box, some Grim Fandango concept art (not a Laserschwert one, and nowhere near as good quality, but not bad) and a Star Wars parody of Day of the Tentacle. Together, they’re not even on the Top 10 list of the geekiest things I own, but I think they get an honourable mention.
(I’d have picked up Zak McKracken too, except for my borderline OCD dislike of words on clothes and posters. That goes quadruple for web links, Cafe Press people.)
As ever, I used Photobox to print them. I thought I ordered them on matt, but they arrived glossy. If you get some for your own, I’d recommend avoiding this - the gloss is very, very shiny. Not bad enough to reorder them, but still, word to the wise. The only other mild issue is that the images aren’t quite flush with the edges - each poster has a notable white line running down the left-hand side. Still, good enough.
If you want a set for yourself, the source images should be good for more or less any poster size. Mine are A2. Stuck on the wall with Blu-Tack. Not love. Love is the wrong kind of sticky. And I’m just not that into my games. Except System Shock.
Semi-related: If you don’t want to risk the wrath of the karma police, you can get some official Sam and Max poster prints from the Telltale Games Store. They look nice, even if they don’t have the same geeky nostalgia factor that make these ones so cool.
(Also: Yes, my god, a new post! Sorry about that. Been a busy couple of months without much of interest to say. More on their way, I promise.)