They should have sent a poet...
I LIVE AGAIN. Before we get into the news, though, I'd like to give mad props to God for making good with the snow I've been asking for all winter -- I've already been out cross-country skiing twice... if you're in the southeast Wisconsin area, the conditions are great for that sort of thing right about now, so if you ski, grab this opportunity while you can.
It's been a while, so I've got quite a bit of ground to cover. Before I forget to mention it, happy new year to everyone, too. And props to Chris Hazard on graduating. Besides those couple things, chilling with my cousins, seeing a giant "M" first-hand, and Dave Thomas dying, I really don't think anything has happened, which means it's time for movie/game reviews.
To lead off, there's the Fellowship of the Ring. Wow. Best movie I've seen in a long time, and it certainly does the book justice. Scenery: Rivendell, Lothlorien, everything... wow. Characters were cast well and acted out well. Another wow. And the special effects... yeah. Wow. There's really not that much more to say, really, besides some more babbling praise, of which I'm sure you've already heard enough.
I saw Vanilla Sky, too, just last night. I've heard mixed reviews, so if my opinion on movies means anything to you, I liked it. It's your classic "Don't know what's going on and then when you find out it all, like, fits together" movie, and even though there's quite a number of those movies out right now, I'm not tired of them yet. I'm ready for more. Bring it on! Booyah!
Now here's the long-awaited game reviews. Some new, some old but new to me.
First off, there's Spyro: Season of Ice. Every big series has a game like this: Zelda II, Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest, whichever Mario game you didn't particularly care for (this seems to be different for everyone)... even Pac-Man has Pac-Man World. Which is not to say that it's a downright bad game, just that it really didn't fill the big shoes I've come to expect from the Spyro series. The problem is that it brings new meaning to "just not the same." They changed the number of dimensions, first of all, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but is, in practice, very seldom a good thing. And then they went and got a different team to do it... this, I figure, is where they went horribly wrong.
Then there's Luigi's Mansion. This was a fun little game, more fun than I expected. My biggest complaint is that there really isn't much game there -- you can finish it off in 8 hours no problem, and by the end of those mere eight hours it's bordering on repetitive. But then, you could argue that Luigi's Mansion was never meant to be a game so much as a grandiose piece of eye candy, and what big, juicy, scrumptious eye candy it is, and if nothing else, this game has gotten me a bit excited anticipating what they'll do when they set the wondrous effects around a game with a bit more substance to it. I think this game (along with some others I haven't really played or seen yet (I'm thinking of Final Fantasy X)) shows us that realtime 3D environments have really grown up since their inception. Sure, there's been some good stuff before, but it's really only now that you can do stuff in realtime 3D that's anywhere near the caliber of what you can do in realtime 2D. [I'm sure some people in the audience think I'm absolutely mad right about now, and if you're one of them, you might as well stop reading this post and go play Tomb Raider or something because your taste in games is so different from mine that reading my game reviews probably won't benefit you very much.]
Next on my stack is Vagrant Story. Not new, but I'd never played it before. Now, reading an interview with the creator of both this game and Final Fantasy Tactics, I somehow got the impression that Vagrant Story was in some way, shape, or form, similar to Final Fantasy Tactics. Well, it ain't. It's still a great game, though. It took me a while to warm up to it, but now that I've figured out how to play it I'm hooked. The gameplay is a bit odd, not at all like your traditional roleplaying game. You get to do a lot of interesting things like customize your weapons at workshops and make chain attacks and stuff like that that you just don't get to do very often in RPG's. The graphics could've used some work, but that's about all bad I have to say about the game.
Next up is Ice Climbers. This game is anything but new (it's older than my sister, in fact, and if you're wondering why the hell I'm just playing it now, much less reviewing it, just be patient.). Old school fun. Try to find it if you can.
Last up is a game that's I don't own yet because it's sold out everywhere, so for the time being I make do with stealing it now and then. Super Smash Bros: Melee. This game is just fun beyond compare. Masahiro Sakurai has really outdone himself on this one... there's really not a whole lot to say, other than the game kicks ass -- both for multiplayer bashes and even lots of single-player options, too. You will have so much fun playing this game that you'll want to play Zelda 2 again. If you've played the first game, here's some comparisons to give you an idea of what SSB: Melee is like.
Smash Bros: "Hey, cool, you can see King Dedede floating in the back
of the Kirby level!"
SSB Melee: "Hey, cool, you can watch the entire end sequence to
Majora's Mask in the back of the Termina level!"
Smash Bros: "Samus is in the game. Metroid rocks!"
SSB Melee: "You get to play through the ending to Metroid in the
single-player mode. Metroid rocks!"
(Speaking of Mr. Sakurai, when the heck is the AIAS gonna put him into their hall of fame? I mean, they've already got Miyamoto, Meier, Sakaguchi, and Carmack in there, and instead of adding Sakurai they add Will Wright for 2002? :( Oh well, I guess he's alright too. (Will Wright's the Sim City guy. I learned that today. You should know the other four, though.))
I think that's about it -- oh, wait, I almost completely forgot! I've been reading a couple new webcomics lately, hacking through their archives.
One is called Schlock Mercenary (www.schlockmercenary.com), I've actually been reading this for a while but never posted anything about it. It's a science-fiction/humor comic where the main character is an extremely violent amorphous green blob.
The other new one (I just started on the archives this week) is called Acid Reflux (www.acidrefluxcomic.com). The main character is God. I dig it.
While I'm plugging webcomics, I might as well bring up Unicorn Jelly again (www.unicornjelly.com), especially since Jennifer (the author) brought back Unicron J-L-Y.
OK, *now* that's it, really this time. Bye.
-- Ky