They should have sent a poet...

Random IdHOP News Update for 1/18/02


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