Also…

I haven’t done a FFWD dump post in a while. Recent, semi-notable pieces include a review for Hold on Now Youngster (Los Campesinos!), and reviews of Oscar-winners The Counterfeiters and Taxi to the dark side. The rest is local theatre malarkey that will be irrelevant in such a border-transcending electro-space.

More uninformed rambling about storytelling

Image ripped handedly from 1up. If you are from 1up, and would rather I didn’t so blatantly steal press stills from you, please get in touch and I’ll take it down. Click image for a link to 1up’s GTA4 recap story.

It’s been a while since I wrote something about videogames, and I’ve got the itch. I’m also putting off doing a pretty lengthy transcription–that most baleful of freelancer’s tasks–so this is really the perfect opportunity. Click the magic blue text if you’d like to read some completely uninformed speculation on the upcoming GTA title.

Origimar’s Lament

I couldn’t sleep so I wrote a silly poem:

Origimar the Burning Blade

Cut them down and burned their hay

He rent their flesh and cleaved their bone

And dashed their brains against the stones

The peasants ran, their children cried

The flame was fierce within his eyes

But despite the blood that stained his sword

Origimar lamented: he was bored

How much blood, how much hate—

‘Til the Arctic Gods would be slaked?

As he plucked the hearts from children’s chests

He checked a pouch within his vest

It seems that’s all, he thought with joy

Though he had to confirm with Leroy

“i thnik thassit” his partner said

“lets turn this in. i’ll check wowhead.’

The cultural revolution was bullshit

I’d just like to take this opportunity to denounce the cultural revolution.

Sins of a Solar Empire

The game that has absorbed the last two days of my life. After I managed to get over a pretty unforgiving learning curve and some unintuitive UI decisions, I fell madly, madly in love. It’s the bastard offspring of Homeworld and Master of Orion with all the modern graphical shinies.

Mad Money

Okay, so I lied about the update. It isn’t like anyone reads this frequently enough to care, anyway.

Anyhow, the other day I was asked to review a film I had absolutely no interest in seeing, I saw it, and it turned out to be every bit as bad as I thought it would be. My original review gave away the ending, so I was asked to rewrite it. But, lucky for you, I’m now including the original here, unedited, for your reading pleasure.

After the jump, obv.

Assassin’s Creed – Dissapointment?

Yes. For all the reasons discussed in detail elsewhere. But especially the ending. God, what a stupid ending.

More robust update tomorrow, probably.

No Country for Old Men

More like Awesome Country for Hard Men.

What an astoundingly stupid thing to write.

Crysis Demo

Is wicked.

After playing through it thrice, I found the difficulty file and tweaked the suit recharge times to make it a little more… god powered. Running across the map at super speed, then punching a cowering soldier fifteen feet into the air is exactly as much fun as it sounds.

I wrote a Timeshift/Crisis demo impressions/God of War retrospective that discusses the use of superpowers in games, how they affect game balance and how they can remind the player that they are, indeed, playing a videogame if they’re used improperly. If I’m able to publish it (with some luck and tenacity), I’ll post the link. If, more probably, no one is interested, it shall be posted here in full.

And now, back to boring old theatre writing. Not nearly enough people get punched into the air in theatre.

Bad Education

This had been sitting around in my pile of “movies to watch” for quite a while now, and I was in an Almodovar kind of mood last night so I flipped it into Ye Olde Disce Spinner. Every bit as great as I expected it to be, with one bit I didn’t expect: Gael Garcia Bernal makes an uncomfortably good looking woman. Has my passion for Spanish cinema and Japanese RPGs actually gone and given me The Gay like my dad always said it would?