Author: Jason

Movie Round-Up: June 18th, 2010

Reviews

Toy Story 3:

It’s Pixar.  The closest thing they’ve come to making a bad movie, in my opinion, was Cars, and even that wasn’t so bad.  The first two Toy Story movies were awesome, and I expect no less from this third installment.  Seeing this in the theater would be a pretty safe bet, especially if you have kids.  I’m going to try, but other plans may prevail.

Jonah Hex:

I managed to see a screening of this movie and I’m glad I did.  It wasn’t horrible, but when I left the theater the thing foremost on my mind was all the potential they wasted.  I had a similar feeling after seeing Ghost Rider, which is the comic book movie I would most liken Jonah Hex to.  There were some scenes I enjoyed, but overall the film was… underwhelming.  On top of the film being a moderately entertaining squandering of potential for a good story, you get Megan Fox.  I’ve read so many people saying she is very talented and that she just needs the right material to showcase it.  If that is true, then I submit that she needs to find someone else to pick her material, because she keeps making films that are clearly unable to showcase the talent she supposedly has.  In this film she continues her career of passionless dialog delivery, inability to do accents, and blankly staring into the camera in a way that apparently turns on sections of the male population who prefer that a woman have nothing going on in her head and just look pretty.  For me, it’s the vacant stare that ruins her beauty.  I generally want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but after enough performances like this I’m going to have to assume that the people who say she has acting talent are full of shit and performances like this are all we are going to get out of Megan Fox.  All in all, I’d have to say… wait for rental.

The Gamer I Am Today

Gaming

This month’s Gamer Banter is “What was the game that made you a gamer?”

To be honest, I’ve been a gamer since my dad brought home a Pong system in the late 70s.  Then it was the Atari 2600.  The games that cemented me as a gamer were Yar’s Revenge and Pitfall.  I played those games for hours on end, entire days, flipped them and kept on playing.  Sure, we had dozens of games, but those are the ones that stand out.  We had an NES too eventually, and we got a PC.

Over the years there have been many games.  Zelda and Mario on the NES (and Pro Wresting… Starman forever!), while over on the PC it was dominated by Sierra games, from The Black Cauldron to Leisure Suit Larry through the King’s, Police, Space and Hero’s Quests, The Colonel’s Bequest, Gabriel Knight and the Manhunter games.  And Doom.

Doom was a game changer.  By that time I had discovered BBSs and had a group of friends online.  Much like I’d once bought, with my own money, an Adlib Sound Card to play games like Loom that required better sound and a 1200 baud modem so I could get online, I bought a token ring network card and then begged my parents to let me take the PC to a friend’s house.  I’d played Doom through dozens of times on my 386, but with 4 PCs in the same room, network cards and coaxial cable, suddenly we were deathmatching.  We were yelling at each other across the room, taunting each other in text chat.  Gaming stopped being something I did by myself and started being something I did with other people.

Sure, the BBSs had multiplayer door games, but this was different.  It became a regular thing, and soon it became something we could do over the Internet.

Even so, as much as I was a gamer, I still did other things.  Then along came Team Fortress for Quakeworld.  See, deathmatch was fun, but it never felt quite right for me.  But here came a game where not only were we on a team, but roles in that team formed.  I wasn’t the best player, but I was a demon on defense.  Those BBS people, we formed a clan and we played in tournaments.  We played against teams in other states, in other countries.  It was a new kind of social element to gaming.  Deathmatch had its culture too, but it was ultra-competitive, insular, everyone was your enemy.  Team Fortress fostered camaraderie.  When not in a tournament match, hopping on a public server meant you worked with your team whether they were in your clan or not.  It lead to a lot of respect on the battlefield.

Then came EverQuest.  In some ways it was so natural to shift.  From being part of a team in Team Fortress to being part of a group in EverQuest.  I was comfortable with the idea that I couldn’t win on my own.  I didn’t want to play alone.  Groups and raids and guilds, sitting in the East Commons tunnel on Saturdays looking for deals, message boards, all of it.  It was another level of social.  In the Quakeworld world after tools like GameSpy came out it was easier to track down your friends, or people you’d enjoyed playing with, but in EverQuest, anyone you played with you could put on a list and look for them anytime you were on because they were always on the same server as you.  And it was lasting.  I’m still friends with a couple people from the TF days, but I still talk daily with a bunch of people from my EQ server.

Looking back and looking forward, the kind of gamer I am is one that enjoys active social interaction with his game.  This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that reads my blog as my biggest complaint about most MMOs is when they lack a good social aspect or community.  My Venn diagrams summed it up pretty well I thought.

I was always a gamer, born into a gaming world, but I’d have to say that Team Fortress and EverQuest are the games that made me the gamer I am today, and the gamer I will probably be for the rest of my life.

This post was part of Gamer Banter, a monthly video game discussion coordinated by Terry at Game Couch. If you’re interested in being part, please email him for details.

Other Gamer Banter participants:
carocat.co.uk: A Trip Down Memory Lane
Yuki-Pedia: A Tale of Two Games
gunthera1_gamer: Early Gaming Experience
Extra Guy: Ah yes, I remember it well
The Average Gamer: What Made Me a Gamer
Sivercublogger: Uncovering Lost Treasures
Master Kitty’s World: Gaming Through the Years
Gamer Unit: What was the game that made you a gamer?
Game Couch: Karateka
Next Jen: What Made Me into a Gamer

I didn’t shoot you…

Gaming

… you walked in front of me while I was shooting the bad guys, dumbass.

One thing playing Red Dead Redemption has shown me over the past couple of weeks is that some people simply refuse to learn how to play with other people.  It isn’t hard.  First off, if you are going to group with people in a posse, then how about you get out of your private chat with your buddy who isn’t playing this game so we can actually communicate.  Second, if I get there first and go in first, I’m first, until I’m dead.  When I die, you can be first.  So, until I bite the big one, how about you stop running in front of me?  Am I moving too slow?  How about you tell me that and say, “I’m taking lead.”  Of course, you’d need to be talking to me first.

Next, when I kill you because you are a dumbass who stepped in front of me, coming back and knifing me, and then shooting me, and then shooting me again, and then finding me and shooting me again, and then waiting until I get into a room and blowing me up with dynamite is not “making it fair.”  It was your damn fault you got killed, killing me 47 times and slowing us down isn’t going to cure your stupidity.  We are in a posse, doing this hideout together, quit being a tool and start killing the bad guys.

And when I get fed up, switch to the sniper rifle and sit at a safe distance killing everything so that you don’t get killed, don’t yell at me.  Don’t tell me I need to come in.  See the scoreboard at the end?  I got 47 kills and 29 head shots.  You got 6 kills.  All my deaths?  That’s you killing me.  Your deaths?  That’s you stepping in front of me and also repeatedly charging into the fort.  There are like twenty five guys in there.  How about you stay back here and help me kill them instead of charging in.

When I quit your posse, don’t give me a bad review.

Sigh.

Movie Round-Up: June 11th, 2010

Reviews

The Karate Kid:

I’m not a big fan of remakes.  That said, I don’t mind when someone takes an old story and changes it up a bit, because, you know, that’s sort of what all stories are since the dawn of time.  Everything can be boiled down to “it’s a love story” or something similar, the important part is where the story goes, the details.  The trailers look decent enough, and having recently watched the original I can say I’m glad someone is remaking this to get the themes of the film out there to a new audience, because honestly no kid today would enjoy watching the original.  The hair alone!  Oh, the humanity!  I’ll probably see this on DVD because there is only one movie I will see this weekend and it is…

The A-Team:

I’ve probably watched the trailer to this film a few dozen times.  I’ve seen all the old shows, in fact I’ve watched all five seasons through Netflix Instant in the last year.  I hum the theme song whenever I make a plan because “I love it when a plan comes together.”  I was excited for Iron Man 2, but this is the film I’ve been dying to see.  As long as the trailer is indicative of the whole, it looks like they’ve captured the spirit of the show extremely well.  The action, the comedy, everything.  So, yeah, I’ll be seeing this one this weekend.

What’s wrong with Free-to-Play?

Gaming

The short answer: nothing.

Seriously though, as a person who likes to try out different games and hates have to cancel and resubscribe every time I jump, games without barriers to entry are awesome.  The latest rumble in the Internet is Turbine taking Lord of the Rings Online “free”.  As an observer of the MMO market, it isn’t hard to see why they might do this.  Some reports claim that Dungeons & Dragons Online experienced a 500% or more growth in revenue with their switch.  LotRO has always been a decently performing game, but if the switch gets them more players and more money while also making the game easier to try, well, more power to them.

And before people go off half-cocked calling them money grubbing or greedy, making games costs money.  DDO has had several content expansions since they went “free” and that is entirely due to the influx of money.  If companies don’t keep an eye on the bottom line, they can’t afford to make new stuff, and without new stuff people quit, which just leads to less new stuff.

To be honest, the only issue I have with the current trend of F2P games is that I feel the term is less and less accurate.  Sure, technically all these games are free to play, to a point.  But all of them have velvet ropes for subscription and/or item stores and more.  A better term, in my opinion, would be to call them “Pay What You Want” or “A La Carte” games.  The reason is that, for example, if DDOs 500% revenue growth is true, I doubt it is an even distribution.  Some players probably pay less now than they did when it was a subscription game, some pay nothing at all, while other players may be paying ten or twenty times more that the original subscription.

For me, I say, “Bring ’em on!”  Games with a low barrier for entry get my time and have a better chance of earning my money.  Heck, the game I spent the most on in the last year is Wizard 101 as I play through and buy content as I need it, playing and paying at my own pace.  I’ve been playing Puzzle Pirates for years and I’ve never invested a dime into it… but I’ve traded earned cash for bought cash (Pieces of Eight for Doubloons) that someone else had to buy, so my playing has earned them money.

I see nothing but win in this trend…  Games that are well designed are worth playing no matter the pricing structure.  Games that are blatant cash grabs will (should) have a short life.

Reading is Fun

Random Thoughts

It is summer, or close enough.  Schools are out.  In some places it just gets too hot to do much of anything.  All good reasons to pick up a book.

Personally, I love reading.  I may not do it as much as I’d like, but I also love video games, TV, movies and a bunch of other things.  Even still, I read at least a chapter a day of whatever book I’m currently working on.  For me, the best part of reading is letting my imagination fill in the blanks, to build the world in full that the author outlines.

Heading off to college in the fall?  Or perhaps you are sending a kid off instead?  The National Association of Scholars recently put out a report analyzing 290 summer reading programs for incoming freshmen.  The links to the report and the list of books from the programs are here.

Of course, those books aren’t for everyone.  Most of them are about broadening the world view of incoming students, and few of them are books many people would pick for fun.  I’ve only read two, maybe three, books on that list.  On the other hand, Amazon has put together their summer reading page which includes lots more popular fare.

For me, I’m reading Boneshaker now and then I’ve got a pile of books, most of them you can find in my library here on the site.  And I’m always open to more.  So, what are you reading this summer?

Zombie Economics

Random Thoughts

You know, it isn’t often you hear the shambling masses of the living dead used in economic theory.  But Nicoholas Colas, ConvergEx chief market strategist, is not afraid to invoke the word zombie.  The best part is that he continues through with the analogy, covering the spread of infection and the inevitable need to close the door on someone outside calling for help surrounded by the undead.  I don’t normally talk politics on this blog, but this particular item leaped out at me (for obvious reasons).

It is a harsh thing to think about, letting the economy of an entire country fail, but I think sometimes we are better off air dropping supplies or tossing them over the wall instead of entangling and dragging everyone down.  There is a point where the financial end of government needs to step away and let charitable and private organizations step in to help the survivors get back up on their own feet.

Finding my ‘Why’

Random Thoughts

Nearly two years ago I had an idea.  A tool to build, a website.  But no matter how much time I spent on it, I never really got anywhere with it.  I wasn’t inspired to finish.  When I first watched yesterday’s video nearly a month ago, it got me thinking about my own project.

Originally, the idea had just been about making money.  I was working a contract job that was running out and all my attempts to find new work were failing.  I had one of those moments where I realized that it was entirely possible to create a job for myself rather than rely on finding one.  Despite the idea I had, which I still think is a good one, I found that I didn’t have the drive to work on it.  The potential for money wasn’t motivation enough.

After watching the video on starting with why, I asked myself, “Why do this?”  I figured, if I couldn’t state why I wanted to do it then there was no point daydreaming about doing it.

I found it.  I know “Why”.  Stay tuned…

Saturday Cinema: THEM!

Random Thoughts

Saturday Cinema will be, every Saturday that I’m able, me picking a movie available for streaming on Netflix, watching it, then talking about it in the comments.  Won’t you join me?

This week I’m going all the way back to 1954 for THEM!

The inhabitants of a small Southwestern town feel the fallout when radiation from bomb tests creates giant, mutant ants that descend on their community. Facing human extermination, a team of scientists scrambles to figure out how to stop “them.” Filled with creepy creatures large and small, this 1954 sci-fi spectacular is one of the most influential horror films of all time — and also captures America’s mood at the dawn of the Atomic Age.