Tag: Death

They ARE out to get you!

Gaming

One big topic of discussion when it comes to any MMO game is its “death penalty”. Mostly this is because people want to know, up front, what’s going to happen when they are too stupid to live, but the other side of this is that most MMOs are specifically designed to kill you.

Its the one thing I find lacking in online games as oppose to the pen and paper games I enjoy with my friends. Yeah, Brian is actually out to kill us too, but he’s generally nicer about it so that at least in part its our own damn fault. But in online games, there are so many encounters that get designed to be killers, to the point where playing a game is more of an exercise in triage than an adventure. You can hear it in the uber guilds as they lay out their tactics in which they are actually calculating losses. “When the first tank goes down…” Not IF the tank goes down, WHEN.

To a degree, this is acceptable, when you are leading an army against a god, you should have some fatalities, but this attitude leaks over into groups as well, and sometimes you can even see that it leaks into the developers as they design expansions. Of course, the developers may just be reacting to player tactics.

But, is introducing permanent death and encouraging player fear of death the answer?

Well, yes. But not alone. The best thing about real life is that not everything kills you, even muggers. Sometimes you just get hurt, incapacitated and left alone. This should happen more in games. Why is everything not only out to get me, but wants to kill me and lick my bones clean? Why can’t some of them be happy with knocking me unconsious, stealing my money and leaving me pantsless in the woods?

I think designers really need to get more creative with defeat. Death shouldn’t be the only answer.

Final Destination Trilogy

Reviews

Thanks to Allison I went last night to a marathon screening of the Final Destination Trilogy. That’s right, all three movies back-to-back-to-back. Well, with little intermissions as well, but close enough for government work.

The first film plays mostly like a suspense film. If you don’t know the story, a group of students are going to France for a school trip and one kid gets a vision of the plane exploding, he freaks out and a total of seven people end up getting tossed off the plane. The plane indeed explodes, and now Death is stalking the survivors who were supposed to die on the plane. They figure out, too late for most of them, that if they pay attention there will be signs and they might be able to continue cheating Death. I say its a suspense film because there is no physical Death, he’s not hunting them with a scythe or anything, and the weight of the film falls on seeing the signs and wondering from what angle death is coming at them. Its a pretty good movie, though I don’t recommend watching it before getting on a plane. I’m not really scared of flying, but seeing this film originally the night before I got a plane to Mexico made me a little edgy. The crash sequence is that ‘good’.

The second movie plays almost more for comedy. This time, one year after the plane crash in the first film, a girl gets a vision of a horrific car pile up and decides to use her car to block an on-ramp for the highway, saving the lives of a bunch of people. Once again, too late for most of the survivors, they begin to understand the signs… well, they know about it pretty early, but no one believes until half of them are dead. Most of the deaths in this movie are somewhat funny in ways, people actually laughed through a bunch of it, and it even ends with a death that almost fall-out-of-your-chair funny. Once again, a good movie for slightly different reasons even one kinda nifty twist, but I don’t recommend watching it before or while on a road trip. The car pile up is… disturbing.

This leaves us with the new chapter, openning today, Final Destination 3. Once again a girl gets a vision of impending doom, only this time its of a gory roller coaster accident. Ever been afraid a coaster might jump the track? Yeah, well, this is worse. Way worse. Like the previous films, she flips out and ten people get thrown off the ride, which has its accident according to plan. And as usual, Death needs to even the score and people start dying. Of the three films, this one, by far, is the bloodiest, goriest, splatter-festiest of the bunch. Some of the suspense from the first one is missing, and the comedy of the second is gone. This movie is people being viciously brutalized, kinda like at this point Death is very angry that people keep screwing up his plan. It was a good movie for what it is, but similar to the other films, don’t watch this and then run off to Six Flags or some other amusement park. Come to think of it, after watching this movie there are a number of things you might be a tad squeemish about doing again, at least the first time or two.

Overall, the Final Destination Trilogy is good, not-so-clean, fun. Two thumbs up.

The Station Agent

Reviews

I’m an avid Netflix user, and because of the over 1500 movies I’ve given ratings too, I get a pretty good list of recommendations. That’s when ‘The Station Agent’ popped on to my list.

“When his only friend dies, a young dwarf named Finbar McBride relocates to an abandoned train station in rural New Jersey, intent on living the life of a hermit. But his solitude is soon interrupted by his colorful neighbors, which include a struggling artist coping with the recent death of her young son and a talkative Cuban hot dog vendor.”

It just sounded… well.. weird. But interesting enough to drop it in my list. Curiosity got the better of me, and I bumped it to the top of my list.

The movie is slow. Its pacing is just… well… slow. Its not a bad thing. I never felt like I was looking at my watch, but it was just such a mellow pacing… it was borderline. But it was funny. Not howling in gut ripping laughter funny, but odd funny. In a strange way I felt myself identifying with Fin. He’s a good guy, has his hobbies, and doesn’t want to bother anybody or be bothered… but he gets bothered, and begins to enjoy the company.

In the end, it was a decent enough film, however, I’d be wary to recommend it to anyone I didn’t know really well. Its not for everyone, but I enjoyed it.

The Death of Innovation

Random Thoughts

There is an article on CNN… Here. And what I have to say only deals with it abstractly. The gist of the article is, a number of years ago, to raise awareness of the ostracizing and belligerent treatment of homosexuals, GLSEN came up with the idea of a “Day of Silence”. People supporting the cause would choose to not speak for an entire day, the idea being that if enough people do it, then perhaps those that treat gays (and other) kids badly might see what its like to be separated from the rest. The article isn’t about the Day of Silence, but about the “Day of Truth” being organized by ‘the other side’. Religious folks and whatnot who are going to use the day after the Day of Silence to wear loud T-shirts and hand out pamphlets, and basically be anything but silent about how being gay is a sin and is harmful to humanity as a whole.

Honestly, I really believe that people can do whatever they want, as long as they don’t hurt people who don’t want to be hurt. (Surprisingly, there are a number of people who for one reason or another, in one form or another, actually WANT to be hurt, and I feel they are free to do so.) So neither the Day of Silence nor the Day of Truth will have any real affect on me. But, when the Day of Silence was conceived at least it was original… the whole approach was fresh, and different. It was kinda neat. But these people with the Day of Truth, they couldn’t think of anything other than “Let’s do the opposite of them!”

Come on, you right wing religious zelots! Get out there and show us what you’ve got! Be original! Be imaginative! Be innovative!

Letting Go

Random Thoughts

Normally if you ask me about current events, I’ll have no idea. I really hate the news because most of the time it bad. Horrible people doing horrible things to each other.

But I’ve been following Terri Schiavo’s case for a while now. If you don’t know, the short of it is that Terri had a heart attack 15 years ago, during which her brain was deprived of oxygen for a number of minutes resulting in massive brain damage. Most of the doctors agree that the damage to her brain is so severe that even though she does respond to some stimuli, that she is in a permanent vegatative state, never to recover beyond that of about an eleven month old. After a period of time, Terri’s husband said that while no living will existed Terri had expressed a desire not to be hooked up to tubes and machines indefinately. So he decided, after what I’m sure was a long period of serious deep thinking and probably a considerable amount of prayer, to have the machines turned off and let her pass away.

Terri’s parents don’t agree. So, for many years now, they have been fighting. Terri’s husband wants to let her go. Terri’s parents refuse to admit she is beyond help. There has been a considerable amount of legal tug-o-war in this. Terri’s feeding tube has been removed and replaced a number of times.

A little over two years ago, my mother was brought home from the hospital. The cancer had spread, and a complication of the cancer and another surgery’s healing left her unable to pass food completely and consistantly. They had gambled to stop the cancer treatment to let the other surgery heal, and the cancer took that opportunity to spread into the lymph nodes. There was nothing more medical science could do. She came home to pass away surrounded by her family. In the end, I hope she was aware of us and our love for her, but unaware of the pain of the cancer and death.

If anyone were to ask me if I had ever seen someone starve to death, the answer would be ‘yes’. If they were to ask if I would have preferred her to live unconscious for 15 years unable to communicate with anyone, trapped in a body she couldn’t control… the answer is ‘no’.

My mother is going to miss my wedding, and every other important day of the rest of my life. But sometimes in life, you have to be willing to let go when its better for the other person.

Kill Bill Vol. 2 & The Punisher

Reviews

It was a weekend of revenge at the movies.

First up, Kill Bill Vol. 2. Volume 1 was a spectacle of kung-fu and splatter style gore. Arms and heads removed with ten foot arcs of blood. The body count was high. The story was interesting, uncomplicated, and above all else, action packed.

In Volume 2, the death count drops, in fact, unless I’m mistaken, only 4 people die in it. This volume spends more time focusing on the back story of Black Mamba (Uma Thurman), and how she became the woman she was. As I overheard someone say, "Quentin saved all the talking for this one." And they were right… the story here is thicker, sometimes slow, but still cool enough to keep me watching the screen and not my watch.

The two movies really are an excellent pair, and one day when they make the special collector’s edition DVD with an hour or so of extra footage, it will find its way into my collection for sure.

In another tale of revenge, The Punisher brings to the screen the Marvel Comics character of the same name. And while they changed many of the details of his original (Vietnam Vet just doesn’t fly as easily anymore if you want to set the story in current day), the changes made didn’t detract from the character. Frank Castle is a man whose family is killed by criminals, and he decides that with the life he still has he will stop as many of them as he can.

Its not revenge, its punishment.

While I did find some of the earlier scenes of the movie, mainly those setting up for the death of Frank’s family, to be "laying it on a bit thick," once the action started, it was mezmerizing. The fight scenes, both hand to hand and gun battles, were well done, with the right touch of violence without being overly vicious (some on screen stab wounds were paticularly unsettling, but most finishing shots on wounded victims were done off screen).

As long as Marvel keeps putting out quality films like this for its properties, they can continue to count on my hard earned movie dollar.

Monks: A New Alternate Advancement Ability

Gaming

AA Ability: Embrace Death
PoP Ability, cost 9 AA, requires level 63 and Rapid Feign 3.
Duration: 1 minute
Reuse: 20 minutes

Feign death is a skill that all monks possess that allows them to fake a
death like state. Unnatural stillness, slowing of the pulse, shallow
breathing. The highly trained monk learns to embrace the death-like state
in such a way that is beyond doubt. He is able to bring his pulse to a
halt, stop his breath, lay still, ignore pain, and even reduce his body
temperature. This state is so believable because for 1 minute the monk IS
dead.

—

This would be a 100% complete mem wipe. Since we don’t have mana, it must
have a reuse time that makes it a choice to use it over a regular feign.
The duration is because there needs to be a limit on it due to what I’m
about to suggest….

This would be exactly like being a corpse. It is a 100% mem wipe,
everything believes you have died, and for up to 1 minute (you can
deactivate it, but still have to wait the full reuse time to do it again)
nothing will break the feign. No spells.. nothing. At the end of 1 minute,
you stand up automatically (the shock of your body getting no oxygen and
no blood pumping for a full minute is quite a jarring experience).

—

But that’s just my idea… *shrug*