Bla!(wg)

It's hot. It's "I want to put my head in the fridge" hot. It's "I think my eyeballs are melting" hot. Seriously, it's hot. The outer wall of my apartment faces due West, so the setting sun in the afternoon turns the place into an oven.

That being said, at least Soul Calibur 4 is some kind of awesome. The story mode is shockingly short at 5 levels for every character, and the ending sequences are pretty darn confusing for most of the people involved (at least they're cut scenes and not just a three-picture slideshow). The graphics, however, are absolutely eye-popping, and every now and then something happens that makes me just go "okay, that was flipping sweet." And in a game like SC4, the versus mode is the key to the kingdom, and it's definitely hot in this version. Full screen HD looks absolutely jaw-dropping. The first time I saw some of my favorite characters rendered with the PS3's enhanced graphics, I drooled a little on myself. Sure, Ivy's breasts are the size of a small child and her outfit probably uses about as much cloth as an average handkerchief, but man, oh man, your humble narrator isn't complaining.

The game is noticeably slower than SC2 and 3, but that just makes it more tactical. As for the inclusion of armor that breaks, it doesn't really seem to affect the game much, and the new cinematic 'critical finishers' haven't once made an appearance in versus mode. I imagine they will only show up once in a blue moon, or if someone is a complete pussy.

E3 and The Dark Knight

I have this to say about The Dark Knight: stop reading this and go watch it. It will kick the shit out of you.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's nose looks terrifyingly like Michael Jackson's. She is not a good-looking woman. That's a real shame, since every character seems to make a point of saying how good-looking she is in the movie, as though the producers were trying to convince me of something I know isn't true. And no, that's not a spoiler; the Joker says it in the trailer, and anything in the trailer isn't a spoiler.



I'll be honest: my review of E3 is a huge complaint-fest. Read this only if you want to hear me whining like a bitch with a skinned knee.

So I actually paid attention to the ultra-consumerist stack of advertisements and shamelessly masturbatory presentations that is the Electronic Entertainment Expo this year. At least, that's what I think E3 stands for; there wasn't a single indication WHAT the three E's are in this year's presentation, but that's neither here nor there. Apart from some significant website surfing, most of my information came from G4. Side note: holy crap. Watching G4 makes me feel like I'm watching a student production by a bunch of nerds on cocaine. Is there nobody on set who's older than thirty? What's meant to seem fun and random feels like a bunch of kids doing public access, except they get to interact with some real industry powerhouses, like some Bizarro world Wayne's World.

Moving along, there was almost nothing at E3 that got me excited for anything. One of Sony's few exclusive games is BigLittlePlanet or LittleBigPlanet or whatever it's called. It's so adorably cutesy I almost had to have a root canal just hearing about it, and it involves the sixaxis controller's direction sensing function. Note to Sony: get off the Wii bandwagon! I bought a PS3 because I don't give a shit which way my controller is pointing and neither should my system. So long as I'm pushing the right buttons and moving the right sticks, the controller could be up my ass, and that's fine (well, not technically, but you know what I mean). If I wanted to waggle a controller like a jackass trying to convince the system to do what I'm desperately trying to approximate, I would have bought a Nintendo.

I've been really excited for Left4Dead, but now I'm not so sure. They unveiled new footage to go with what they already showed us. The verdict? It looks like outdoor maps play just like the indoor ones, except with new backgrounds. Give me a break. This is starting to feel more and more like an endlessly repetitive, mind-numbing zombiefest that only a good multiplayer will possibly save. But I'm starting to doubt it.

Resistance 2, fortunately, made the hurting stop for a second by reassuring me that it has a multiplayer co-op mode. I breathed a sigh of relief. But wait: it's online only! If I want to play on the same console, I have to play competitively. Since I don't have any friends who own a PS3, I'm humped. Thanks, Resistance 2!

And Fallout 3 looks cool as hell (I'm already considering assless chaps and a leather facemask to get into the post-apocalyptic feel), but is also disappointingly single player. I'm starting to feel like the days of co-op multiplayer on one system are becoming a happy memory.

They were raving about Farcry 2 on G4. It doesn't look any better than games that were out years ago. Seriously, UT 2004 looked pretty comparable. It's nice of them to try to make games that will run on my five-year-old system, but there was seriously nothing in this game that set it out from anything else. It must have taken a whole trunkful of amphetimines to try to get excited about that game.

And what the hell, SquareEnix? Honestly, I shouldn't bitch about Final Fantasy XIII being on both X-Box 360 and the PS3 since I'm probably not going to plunk down sixty or seventy big ones to buy it, but seriously, I was hoping it would give the PS3 a big market boost to help it in the console wars so I'd have other, better games to look forward to. But no dice, so I'm pissed. It looks like the poor performance of the PS3 so far has caused SquareEnix to have second thoughts, so now they're in their "trial separation" phase, where they're still getting together now and then, but all they do is awkwardly watch TV until SquareEnix comes up with an excuse and leaves early, leaving Sony alone in bed and clutching a bottle of Jack Daniels, curled up in the fetal position wondering where it all went wrong.


This blog is for entertainment purposes only. Don't come crying to me if you disagree.

In which the man discusses a very un-cyberpunk theme

It's surprising where cyberpunk pops up. Yesterday, I went to the Oneida River Festival on the Bear River in Idaho. The theme of the festival was to raise funds and awareness to preserve the Bear River as free-flowing, as opposed to putting a dam on it, as the plan currently seems to stand. I'm not entirely sure about the specifics, but there you have it. Damming it would be bad for the ecosystems, and therefore we should all go read poetry and listen to live music.

It was about the most folksy event you can go to without men in tight jeans and flannel standing around saying, "Yep. I reckon." There wasn't even a jitter of cell phone reception. The music included covers of Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin, as well as an original song by a young man bewailing his change of fate since he spent his lucky quarter on buying a Coke from a machine (yes, you read that right). I wrote a poem for the event on the spot, and it seemed to be fairly well received, or at least as well as anything is received that I didn't labor and sweat over for hours. Nobody threw themselves at me.

Normally, the lack of people flinging themselves at my feet isn't a tragedy, but this one had a hint of the tragic about it. There was a lovely young woman there with beautiful bronzed skin and long, curly brown hair who danced to the band when no-one else did, in a cheap green dress and sandals. Watching her just stand there and dance with everyone watching made me think what it must have been like to watch hippies dance. She had the kind of build that makes skinny girls look sticklike in comparison, with amazing legs that had a pair of the most well-defined calves I've seen. As much as I imagine one of my characters becoming enthralled by a dancing punkette in a seedy techno club, I myself was mesmerized by this young thing. Naturally, I never talked to her. The cynic in me just kept telling me that there's no use talking to a pretty girl I'll never see again. The romantic in me just watched her dance.

But, as I said at the onset, cyberpunk did pop up. I grabbed Neuromancer to read. One of the professors from the school saw me reading and told me that she would be teaching the book in an online class in the Fall about cyberculture.

A class about cyberculture? Teaching Neuromancer? Now that is win. I'm going to have to get in on it somehow.

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (warning: "spoilers")

If you're the kind of person who whines about having had a movie "spoiled" because you learned what's going to happen, stop reading now.

Still with me? On with the show. ((Please note that this review is just my silly opinion after one viewing. I don't expect you to agree. I don't even expect myself to agree in five minutes.))

I wish I could say that this review really did stand a chance of "spoiling" Hellboy, but Guillermo del Toro beat me to it. Normally, I hate to blame one person for the failure of a film, but since Guillermo directed it, wrote the screenplay, and shares story credit with Mike Mignola, I think it's safe to say his fingerprints all over it, for better or worse.

It's not fair to say this is a bad movie. It's much more complicated than that. You see, I have the full story, as told me by my good buddy Guillermo himself.

Guillermo del Toro was walking along the beach one day in his native Spain, gazing out over pristine water while feeling the sand between his toes. Just then, as he watched the setting sun brilliantly illuminate the water and cover the sky with gorgeous, vibrant colors, he had an epiphany: he was going to make a wonderful fairy-tale movie in the same vein as Pan's Labyrinth, and he was going to call it The Golden Army. The plot was beautiful, mixing folklore and social commentary: a war between humans and mythical creatures long ago was ended when the king of the mythical creatures commanded an invincible army of machines (the Golden Army of the title) to defeat the humans. (I think the king and his family are meant to be fairies, but that was never quite clear, which I assume is because if you say 'fairy' to an American audience, they picture something sparkly the size of your thumb, with wings). Saddened by watching the slaughter of even greedy humans, the king divided the magical crown of Golden Army-control into three pieces and gave one piece to the human as part of a truce. The humans would stay in the cities, and the mythical creatures would live in the wild places. The king's son did not trust the humans, so he went into exile, vowing to return when the humans broke that agreement. And now, with urban sprawl and deforestation and everything, they have, so he comes back.

And as Guillermo del Toro had this grand dream, he got a phone call from his agent: "Guillermo, you DID remember you have to be working on the Hellboy sequel, right?"

Mierda! thought Guillermo, but no worries: he would just wedge Hellboy into the story and everyone would be happy.

What everyone actually winds up getting is a very mixed affair. The fairy tale story and the visuals are absolutely fantastic; Pan's Labyrinth, but even more spectacular. Top hole. Hellboy and company, on the other hand, are just as mangled as they were in the first movie. Yes, we did lose the annoying British accent for Abe Sapien, played by Doug Jones, but he remains weirdly effeminate and has psychic sensors in his hands. He also listens to classical music and memorizes poetry. Liz Sherman, played by Selma Blair, looks like the actress just took it on faith from her agent to take the part in the first movie, and is now just in it for contractual obligations, even though she never had a clear idea what was going on. Watch any interview with her about the movie, and you'll see her looking vaguely nervous/concerned, probably because she's worried someone will figure out she doesn't know a thing about Hellboy. She looks the same pretty much the whole way through the movie.

"Did I leave the gas on?"

And Johann's suit looked cool, but they really could have gotten someone who actually speaks German. Hint to Hollywood: go to France and go east until you find people wearing lederhosen. These people are called Germans, and most of them speak with something very like the accent you're looking for.

"Hilfe! Mein Deutsch ist kaput!"

As for Hellboy, Ron Perlman does fine, but the script keeps him more or less as the vaguely stupid, wisecracking, immature character of the first movie. I'm no Hellboy expert, but that just doesn't feel right to me.

That being said, let's go back to the fairy tale. The creatures are creative, the plot is actually very touching, and the visuals are fantastic. Prince Nuada, the king's son I mentioned earlier, may well be the most complex and charismatic character in this movie, particularly if you pair him with his sister, Princess Nuala (yes, those are their names; get over it). You can't help but appreciate his English accent, his slick moves, and the deep pathos of his desperate quest to save what's left of the beauty and magic of mythical creatures in this increasingly mundane and banal world. Thumbs up for the movie called The Golden Army.

You might find yourself wishing this guy would just kill the shit out of everything on screen. This feeling is natural.

Hellboy and crew, however, are a source of constant groans and head-scratches (Liz is pregnant via Hellboy, while Johann is a Teutonic stereotype who insists on running things by the book). Everything felt cliche, predictable, or just plain bizarre to me. Hellboy and Abe Sapien have a duet singing, "I Can't Smile Without You" by Barry Manilow while getting drunk, providing some very odd attempts at humor. I wish I could make this crap up. In the first scene, two BPRD agents get eaten alive by 'tooth fairies,' while Hellboy and friends are more concerned about the bad press. When Hellboy discovers the picked-dry skeleton of his former cohort, he says something along the lines of, "Huh." Thumbs down for the movie called Hellboy 2.

The film mentions several times that the Golden Army numbers "seven times seventy" mechanical soldiers. It doesn't take a math genius to figure out that we're talking 490, which is respectable, given their size, strength, and indestructibility, but hardly a massive army. Put in rows and colums, it makes for roughly twenty by twenty-five Golden Machine-Dudes. Try to count how many you see on screen at once in the big finale. I guess maybe they've been breeding ever since they were placed in storage....

Now, if only someone explained to Guillermo del Toro that for gears to work, the teeth have to actually lock into something else, usually other teeth, rather than there being just a big, pretty gear turning in space.

Random note: Tecate beer features so prominently in this movie that I have a feeling the working title of the project was Hellboy 2: Tecate Golden Army.

Final word: Better than the first one, but not as good as Constantine, which remains the best Hellboy movie (even though it didn't have Hellboy in it).

What did we learn today? Mike Mignola should stick to making comics and Guillermo del Toro should just make the movies he wants to make.