Richard's Online Journal
Miss Effect
IMPORTANT! Mass Effect 2 is now out in North America, and coming to Europe later this week. Yet despite many warnings, Bioware has completely failed to address a glaring error on the box, as spotted by roughly millions of people.
Luckily, there’s an easy fix. All you’ll need is the ability to take screenshots, an existing Mass Effect savegame, a pair of scissors, and some sticky tape.
Fixed! Shephard is a girl, damnit...
For best effect, print off hundreds of them and sneak into your local boutique of electronics using whatever means or biotics you deem appropriate to ensure nobody else falls afoul of this shocking lapse in standards. As for you, Bioware, we’ll forgive it this time — but watch yourselves in the next sequel…
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…
Fallout 3
After Ending Report: Except for one of the most staggeringly poorly thought out endings in the history of all things — I’d explain more, but I need to go finish that short story about a fish who was frightened of drowning — it’s good. The main plot is depressingly predictable, especially if you’ve wandered through these wastelands before, and many of the areas badly needed a smack with the design stick, but there’s so much cool stuff to experience, I doubt you’ll care. What’s missing is sadly what I expected — the breakdown of the different towns demonstrating I was doing more than standard RPG quest-bitch duties, and that any of my decisions mattered outside of their individual tasks. Right. Back to the past…
War. War never changes. Unless you count it changing from an isometric tactical RPG to a big AAA FPS hybrid from a different development team with a totally different design style. Then it does. Quite a lot, actually…
Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog
Supervillains always make me wish I’d paid more attention in physics. It may sound childish, but as I grew up, it became more and more obvious that there are few problems in life that can’t be solved with the application of a good death ray.
Why physics? Simple. That’s the real evil’s at. In Evil Biology, you can about guarantee that your creations will turn on you, while Evil Chemistry tends to involve lots of uncovered vats in close proximity to missing railings. In physics, the worst you’ve got to fear is your evil plan exploding. If you can afford to drive to B&Q to buy some surge protectors, you too can take over the world…
“Before you go, you mind Digging up my evil plan?”
Doctor Horrible’s Singalong Blog was Joss Whedon’s way of passing the writer’s strike. Is it any good? I repeat: It’s Joss Whedon. Yay or nay, you’ve got your answer. It’s a musical about a lovesick supervillain pining after the girl at the laundrette he can’t pluck up the courage to talk to, making it quite possibly the musical event since that Street Fighter game based on Les Miserables.
Parts 1 and 2 are out, with the third due in a day or so. It stars Neil Patrick Harris, who I keep getting mentally confused with David Anders for some reason, a seriously buff guy apparently wearing a Nathan Fillion suit like the start of Men in Black, and Felicia Day, who wrote and starred in another fun web series, The Guild.
I love loveable supervillains, which is quite a happy coincidence. David Xanatos from Gargoyles, Dr. Drakken from Kim Possible… competent or not, they’re some of the most fun characters in fiction. Even if their goal is world domination, they always feel like they deserve their victory so much more than the heroes. A hero doesn’t spend twenty years dreaming and designing and prototyping for that one perfect night, or even face many of the same risks. Superman may face a death trap now and then, but he doesn’t have to get his supplies on credit from Jimmy “Pipe Cleaner Up The Penis Tube” Provenzano, or worry about spending the rest of his career watching his back over in Riker’s Island. Kryptonite? Aww. Big blue afraid of the sniffles?
Villains need ingenuity, imagination, and of course, style. They’ve got proper goals in life, proper hopes and dreams beyond simply surviving until the next day, and typically ones they’ve chosen rather than had thrust upon them by some radioactive jellyfish. Sure, they’re greedy, often arrogant, and the world merely an allotment where they plant the seeds of their own downfall… but really, what harm can they do?
Oh. Right. The death ray thing…
Evildoers, beware! It’s a young woman in a Joss Whedon show! Deploying Waif-Fu in 5…4…3…2..
There’s not a vast amount of story in Dr. Horrible, but what there is is ridiculous — and I mean ridiculous — attention to detail. There’s so many beautiful cinematic flourishes in the background, little gags to note and miss. I particularly love Horrible’s armchair, and the fact that the only picture he has of his One True Love is a carefully framed photo clearly taken from the bushes. The songs are wonderfully catchy (although Penny is oddly saccharine for a Whedon project, unless she turns out to be the evil Bad Horse or similar in Act 3) and Harris in particular is so much better than in Heroes.
Damn! Must stop doing that…
Anyway, I really like this. It’s so cool to see web specific content getting such great production values, even if things like Viralcom and Chad Vader have been upping the stakes in recent years. After a fashion, anyway. When the makers call Dr. Horrible cheap, they more specifically mean ‘under six figures’, which is certainly cheap by TV standards, but still considerably more figures than I’ve got in my pocket right now. A few more of these, and will anyone be that interested in seeing what some folks throw together in their garage any more? On second thoughts, were they ever?