31/October/2010
"Your wife has a lovely neck."
I said I'd have an update prepared for October, didn't I? I'm really sorry I haven't anything to show. I am working on a couple of things, but I haven't really had the motivation to do as much work on them as I'd like to, partly because my attempts at improving my web design skills is also a total misery, and work is just getting me down. It's a shame, as I definitely would've liked to at least have gotten something finished. Random Hoo Haas is five years old, and I commemorate the event by being a lazy bastard.
For once in my life, I'd like to be able to live up to my promises.
I went to a showing of Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror at the Crescent Arts Centre; it wasn't just a simple showing of the 1922 classic, but a showing with live music by 3epkano! It was a very entertaining evening, and not just because Belfast was crawling with idiots in superhero outfits (though that was definitely a plus). It's actually pretty interesting to finally see the movie after only hearing about it through "top 100 scariest movies" lists and still imagery and so on. Much like how RQ87 realised there was more to Full Metal Jacket than R. Lee Ermey shouting at people, I was surprised that there was more to Nosferatu than seeing Orlok's shadow cast on walls.
I hear so many people commenting on Orlok and his rodent-themed appearance, but I had never heard any remark about him almost being the literal incarnation of plague and pestilence, rats appearing wherever he goes and generally striking down the citizens of the sleepy town with fatal illness. Orlok is obviously the main draw (I assume we don't need yet another person remarking on just how damn creepy the dude is?), but the rest of the content stands up very well. The scenes of the sleepy town succumbing to his plague is very dark, especially the scene where you see coffins being carted out of houses, and the sequence where Orlok disposes of the last two living men on a cargo ship is absolutely killer. It does kind of dilute the horror of this stiff, inhuman monster when you see him lugging a coffin full of muck around town, but when he brings his A-game, hot damn, it scares you stiff. 3epkano did a great job accompanying the film; it's not exactly what I expected when I thought "soundtrack for a silent film," but it delivered a beautiful and haunting ambiance to it. If you excuse me being a total shill, I'd say check 'em out, or at least the samples a whirl.
Today's doodle is a wonkily drawn Link. The shield's kind of awkward, at least the way it covers up a lot of detail, but I'd say I at least like the basic style I was going for. The hand weirds me out.
24/October/2010
"[...] selected participants will receive a brand spankin' new pair of Etna's panties to wear or to just admire in all of their glory!"
Today's observation: I don't think I want to hang out with the games industry anymore.
If I could just make my own games I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have anything to complain about anymore.
22/October/2010
So, before Sonic 4 sidetracked me, what newly bought game was I going to talk about two weeks ago? Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, that's what! I finished Banjo-Tooie again recently (well, okay, I got all the Jiggies in Grunty Industries, and personally that's enough of a trial for me to say I've beaten the game) so I've been hungering for more of the same. I picked this up about three weeks ago in CeX for a mere £6, and I could hardly turn it down. I'd been meaning to get the game via the Games On Demand service under the belief that it would directly support Rare... but seriously, £6! Screw attempts at generosity, I can hardly argue with a price like that.
I say I was hoping for more of the same, but I'm aware the Nuts & Bolts is basically a whole new direction for the series. It's still an adventure game about collecting trinkets to open up new areas and unlock abilities of some kind, but now the emphasis is on vehicular building. However, it's more accurate to say the game is an entirely different specimen with a light coating of Banjo slathered over it, as really, it's a whole different game.
As usual, you've got large worlds to explore and perform chores in exchange for Jiggies, but rather strangely, instead of having everything take place in one world, there are multiple versions of each world (called Acts) that have different missions in each of them. Since you need Jiggies to unlock more Acts, this effectively prevents you from exploring the world fully right from the start, and since each Act only has about two to four missions in them, this discourages me from bothering to properly explore each world. Once the radar shows there are no more missions available, I don't see the reason in hanging around, though I admit that's probably not easy to fix - you could remove the mission indicators from the map and force you to find them yourself, but given how humongously vast the areas are (and how cumbersome your trolley is to begin with) that wouldn't be a comfortably feasible task. There are also Jinjo missions where you win notes and Jinjo tokens (for some Jinjo Bingo game I haven't bothered playing), though I haven't had much incentive to seek them out.
Despite the awkwardness of the map system, I won't deny that the missions are a lot of fun, and building all kinds of ridiculous vehicles for specific challenges is a hoot, especially when you've built them in such a manner that they're completely broken - how did I manage to make a car that moves backwards when I accelerate? It takes a while before building can get truly engaging due to the need to gather parts first (once you've got a jumping spring on your trolley you can get access to tons of them in the hub area), but once the ball gets rolling the variety of accessories you've got to play around with is tremendously fun. It helps that everything you add is actually purposeful - those guns and giant boxing gloves aren't just for show, they're weapons of destruction! This would be a dumb point to make if I weren't going to say that building a car was the sole appeal of LEGO Racers back in the day, but it suffered because what you built was purely cosmetic. Nuts & Bolts has a great physics system where the shape of your car means a lot, and obviously you can use your cars for more than just racing, meaning you've got a larger reign to be inventive.
However, with the constant fumbling around on the hub and the amount of opportunities you get to just fling random crap around aimlessly, it makes Nuts & Bolts feel more like a big toy than a video game. There's a lot of needless crap that seems to exist just to pad out the playtime (why do I have to get my Jiggies from a vending machine, which is different for each world, and then take it back to the town centre so they can be "banked"? Besides topping Star Fox Adventures in the time-spent-fucking-around competition, that is) and there's a disappointing lack of missions in each Act. It feels like a game that doesn't have enough game in it. You've got the confusing hub and an unhelpful interface to work with, but once you eventually find a mission to take care of, the game truly becomes enjoyable. It doesn't feel at all like a Banjo game outside of the snarky dialogue, and I personally wonder why they didn't just make it a new franchise, but I guess given Rare's track record lately, brand awareness is all they've got to rely on these days.
On more minor points, the graphics and audio are, per Rare standard, pretty freakin' awesome. Grant Kirkhope and Robin Beanland return, now armed with an orchestral approach to the game's soundtrack, and the new symphonic medleys of the old tunes are truly incredible. The graphics are similarly superb, and the character designs are actually quite refreshing. There's no point denying that I thought they looked like absolute ass beforehand, especially in the promotional artwork, but in motion they look very sharp and charismatically animated (it's almost strange to see them so lively after the endlessly-looping idle animations of the N64 games!). It is a little strange seeing everyone with so beady-eyed (I don't think Kazooie underwent the change well), especially when the N64 games were swarmed in giant, bulbous eyeballs, but given how the vibe of the series has swung from cute-and-whimsical to sarcastic-and-self-aware you could argue the redesigns fit the rather cynical perspective of the characters. The amount of bloom and glow seems a bit overblown at times (there are some crates that you can't open because they've got a lock on top, but the glow is so blinding you can barely even tell there is a crate underneath the light!), but personally I'm just glad that I've got a colourful game on the Xbox 360 that isn't Sonic 2006.
It's an oddball. I am truly enjoying myself with the game and there's a certain charm about all its quirks, but at the same time it's like they could've done more with it. Of course, I can't imagine I'm even close to halfway through the game yet, so I'll reserve my proper judgment until I'm done!
Also, hey, another plug of Ian Linn's blog! He probed me for topics to ramble about, and instead of writing up a sophisticated essay on it like I was expecting, he just copied and pasted our chatlog. Not quite as grandiose as I was expecting, but at least I remembered to use capital letters.
I hate the sight of this doodle. It's been on my desktop for god knows how many months now and I just don't like it. So what better way to get rid of it than throw it on my blog? Perfect!
17/October/2010
Lost and found? Yes, I'd like to know what happened to my weekend. October's halfway over and nobody even told me? I am very unhappy with this, you guys!
Mind you, I'm totally to blame. I've been trying to find a means of updating the Games I Own section so it'll be easier to manage and less of a jumbled mess, but so far that just results in a lot of unproductive wasted time. Could I ask for help here?
My brother picked it up on a whim from Play.com and has been raving about it, so I sat down and watched Hunter Prey - a budget sci-fi flick made for the Sci-Fi Channel. In summary, a bunch of aliens (which get whittled down to only one guy in under twenty minutes) are chasing the last human in the galaxy, who is not at all pleased that these genocidal aliens have blown up Earth. That's basically it for the whole ninety minutes.
Really.
It throws a curveball occasionally, but it never takes long for the basic cat-and-mouse game to resume. The most notable instance is when at one point a bounty hunter swoops down to take the human for himself. I was under the impression adding a third party to the scuffle would make things interesting. The dude gets shivved not even five minutes later by the alien, and aside from his ship getting used later on, the bounty hunter contributes just about nothing to the story. He did have a cute prickly goatee and some neat space goggles, but I'm not lying when I think he could've been dropped without much difference to the plot.
So, yeah, there's very little plot, and most of the first act is taken up with the aliens bickering amongst each other before getting unceremoniously killed. On the bright side, it spends most of the running time doing beautiful panning shots of the fantastic desert location, which I am always a sucker for. I've referenced the movie dozens of times by now, but Beastmaster was a great film because it constantly wasted time on location footage.
During the final act the alien and the human get to interact more, and basically they both intend to wipe each other out - the human has a ship full of explosives he's going to ram into the alien's planet, and there's some mild debate between them discussing "is this how you want the legacy of your race to be remembered?" The alien claims that the human should settle his score with the warriors, not his entire race, and plays the got-a-wife-and-kids card at one point to dissuade him... but then he retracts it and reiterate his point that his race is indeed a totally unapologetic genocidal race, and I got the implication the human had no beef with blowing the twelve hells out of their planet.
While I love me some escapism fiction, the thing I hate most about it is how a majority of stories make their villains belong to a non-human race and every member of that species is evil, violent, loathsome and generally despicable. From a storytelling perspective it's nothing more than a cheap shortcut: "Don't worry, I don't need to justify why they're bad guys, they're inherently evil!" It's said that the aliens' reasons for enslaving/destroying other races is part of some religious crusade (subtle parallel, fellas!) and the alien repeatedly states that he doesn't think these feelings - he knows. The human criticizes them for blindly following the elders' laws and uses that as a good reason to exterminate them. To use an awkward analogy, some dogs are vicious baby eaters, but not all dogs are vicious baby eaters. Surely there's a sensible, modern-man solution for expressing peace to a race that's all about slaughtering everything else in existence and a way to pacify them so they can function in an ordinary, non-murdering society?
In the end the alien lets the human get away in his escort's ship and allows him to track the coordinates to his home planet, and apparently has no real beef with the human blowing up his world. In an earlier conversation the alien admits that he does care for his people, though it's implied he just doesn't like the way things are run, and that suggest he allows the human to launch his attack so a new order can rise. Problem is, I got the impression that BAM KERPLOW, the human's plan will result in the freakin' wholesale destruction of the planet. It's kind of hard to start a new way of running your government when your world's been blow to shit.
I suppose this whole issue could've been solved if the movie had some proper story in the first two acts before cramming it all into the last part. Mind you, throughout all of the humans-vs-aliens discussions I couldn't help but think to myself, "can't we just settle this like gentlemen?" That's why I don't write war stories, see. If I tried to write a story set in World War II it would probably be summarised as "everyone sets aside their differences and gets together for a big picnic."
This doodle's been sitting around since the beginning of the year, nearly. It's a crude rendition of Edmund the Bastard from The Continued Adventures of Space Aladdin (see December 23 2009 entry!); I had once attempted to draw all the major characters, but that obviously never fell through. I definitely want to pay tribute to the play in some form or another sometime!
I will say, those legs weird me out - are they just outrageously lopsided or is that coat making a poor attempt at covering them up? It's rather sad when I can't even make out the details of my own drawings.
13/October/2010
I was going to talk a little about some games I've been playing lately (two recently bought, one I haven't played in ten years), but then I realised, whoops, Sonic the Hedgehog 4 is out and I haven't made any cynical remarks on it yet!
Well, it's intriguing. To go on an extended recap, I kind of like the 2D Sonic games. Sonic 3 & Knuckles is a blast to play, I'm very fond of Sonic Advance, and while I won't deny I found Sonic Rush to be a letdown (it's rather damning that the very second game I get for the DS didn't excite or engage me at all) I did feel it had a fun gimmick and a reasonably competent engine. SEGA seem to have been listening to fan demands that 2D is the way Sonic should stay, and thus have been shoehorning it in everywhere: Sonic Wildfire is little more than moving left and right to avoid incoming objects, Unleashed had completely pointless 2D segments that added nothing, and Sonic Colors looks to be the same.
I, personally, am not too keen on this idea. On one hand, it's nice that SEGA are attempting to listen to the fans, but like everything they do, the results are generally half-assed and unremarkable, and their new games just seem to be getting cheaper and cheaper. Remember Sonic Adventure and how it felt like a real, proper action adventure game? I liked that, and think that's the direction the series should take - yes, bias aside, it's a wonky and cumbersome game that didn't place enough focus on the good characters (as much as I love Big as a character, I don't think I can forgive having freakin' fishing in a Sonic game), but obviously with further attempts to patch it up and improve the formula I feel it could've been something fantastic. Problem is, it looked like Sonic 2006 was meant to be their more direct sequel to the formula, and it completely freakin' blowed. Since then, it feels like SEGA have been going out of their way to make the Sonic games smaller and more confined, and Unleashed felt like the perfect embodiment of that (yes, I know I played the Wii version, but still!). That's not progress, guys, that's just being backwards!
And so, here we are. Rather than trying to get a better grasp on the 3D realm, we're getting uninspired 2D stuff shovelled at us. Hooray for whining fans?
But, yeah, Sonic 4! As I said two paragraphs ago when I was meant to be reviewing this thing, it's intriguing! Its overall vibe definitely evokes the classic games in a very blunt manner - I'm talkin' sledge hammer subtlety - as each level is basically a repeat of one from an older game (Zone 1 is your typical Green Hill retake, Zone 2 is Casino Night, Zone 3 is Labyrinth Zone, Zone 4 is Metropolis/Scrap Brain, and Zone 5 is that final boss rush level from Advance). I could snark about this being a further demonstration of SEGA's laziness, but personally, I'm just content that there's some comprehensible level design again. Seriously, how hard is it? Sonic Advance, despite its slightly cumbersome engine, made some decent stages with alternate paths and hidden corners, but it seems since then it's just been forcing you to rush across straight lines and curves to the exit. It's not incredible level design, and quite often there seemed to be level features that were thrown in as a cute reminder of the old games, and then promptly forgotten (like the coloured bouncer burger platform things in the casino level); and I'm still not fond of the reliance on bottomless pits (it's more original to have spike pits!), but as I said, it's a slight relief from the wonky nonsense you ran along in Rush.
I'm rather perplexed by the physics, though. Through all the 2D Sonic games, no matter how crap, there's usually been some sensible resemblance of gravity, momentum and other such vital elements of the everyday shenanigans of a faster-than-sound hedgehog. Sonic 4's engine is very strange. If you spindash off a ledge, you lose all momentum and your speed quickly plummets to zilch, and even at fast speeds in midair it's possible to let go of the D-Pad and, you guessed it, drop like a horizontally-unmoving rock. It's like inertia hits you like a supercharged bulldozer (did I use my limited science knowledge appropriately?). The game seems to constantly require you having your thumb glued to the D-Pad for any kind of movement, even if you'd think the simple momentum would keep him going. For instance, the casino level has a "U" shaped pit we've seen before in the series where you have to roll up and down on both sides to pick up speed - but if you just roll into a ball and let the momentum do its work, you'll gain no speed. Instead you have to start pushing in the direction you're moving to build up speed. It sounds like a nitpicky complaint and rather akin to the usual "IT'S A CHANGE FROM THE OLD GAMES THEREFORE IT SUCKS" complaints you hear, but we've seen that they've kept simple little elements like this in the games even in 2005 with the release of Sonic Rush. Why drop it now?
I will say, the game looks good. It feels like a long time since the 2D games have actually been attractive - Sonic Advance was decent but the later games just had abstract and odd-looking environments, the levels of Rush felt very empty and lifeless, and I don't think it's even worth getting into why the 2D parts in Unleashed look bad. Using 2D foreground pieces with 3D backgrounds and a pleasant dose of layering, the levels really do look nice. They're colourful, they're detailed, and it might sound like a stupid comment, but they look like more believable environments. They don't look like flat stretches of land pasted against a backdrop, there's a roundedness to them, something that I felt the 2D games have been missing lately. Sonic's model does look a little odd since his head seems more humongous than usual, but the retro Badniks and the final boss (Sonic 2's final boss, actually!) all look fantastic in 3D. It's just a pity you can't see them in more detail.
The music kinda blows, though. Yeah! Again, usually even the bad Sonic games have decent music, and if it's considered "bad" it's usually a matter of selective taste (I'm quite partial to the Rush soundtrack). Sonic 4's music looks like it's trying to ape Mega Man 9's style with a close approximation to chiptune, but it's most definitely not chiptune (or FM synth if you want to be pedantic), and it just feels... old. Not a retro old, but a "totally incompetent" old, like an old toaster that bursts into flames when you turn it on and isn't even nice looking. It can be identified as music (much like how the toaster, although it cannot toast, is still a toaster), but it's just not very good or stylish or anything. It's a real letdown. I'm going to be miffed if it turns out Jun Senoue was behind it, because that guy has done some great stuff. Do Crush 40 even do music for the games anymore?
Woof! A lot of words for a game I haven't even fully finished yet (I reached the last boss but didn't have the patience to beat him after four deaths). In summary, some dicey elements, most definitely not an incredible revival to the series but otherwise pretty average. If you're absolutely starved for more rambling, my chum Ian Linn has basically summarised my thoughts in a more professionally-worded (and professionally-presented) manner on his blog. He's been complaining to me that people only look at his stuff when it has something to do with Sonic, and I'm not doing him any favours!
Have an unfinished doodle. This fellow never got any arms and one of his legs never got full shading. He appears understandably miffed.
06/October/2010
What horrible events have prevented me from updating the blog in a whole week? Not much. I've just been a bit of vegetable, really. You've heard it a dozen times - I want to be productive, but being a lazy bastard is just that much more appealing. Didn't I say I was going to have something made for the site this month? Ooer!
Back in September I was still determined to continue from where I left off from this little escapade and find a way to get GameCube functionality for the Wii Classic Controller. I've seen Classic Controllers online that have GameCube plugs online, but usually they're on the dodgiest of dodgy sites and the ones on eBay aren't exactly inspiring either. Of course, I've thrown cash towards all manner of shady places for poorly-thought-out needs, so I ordered one for a mere £4. And surprisingly, it actually arrived this time!
Why did it surprise me that the thing felt as cheap as chips? I don't know what I was smoking that I believed that this bootleg product would not only be on par with an official first-party Nintendo product, but even for a knockoff controller I'm a little taken aback. The D-Pad is loose and sunken, the face buttons are unresponsive and the presses feel too soft (while every other button, shoulder triggers included, are exceedingly stiff), the Home button functions as the Start button, and most amusingly, the goddamned control sticks don't work. Yeah, because that's not going to be important, right? It's not like half the reason I bought the thing was to finally get it compatible with F-Zero GX or anything!
In a way I'm not too miffed, because although nobody likes how expensive game controllers are these days, I'm at least thankful they don't break on you within six hours of play (hello, every third-party N64 controller I ever used!), but you're really asking for trouble if you think £4 is going to get you a decent-quality product. On the other hand, dude, how hard is it to just make a Classic Controller work on GameCube games and not have to leech off a Wii Remote in a process? It's not something I'm frothing at the mouth for not having, but I simply find it more comfortable than regular GameCube pads. I still see officially licensed GameCube controllers being made for the Wii, and a fair number of games still use it, so it'd be nice if when a company is going to produce it they just try being imaginative and use a different design.
What's particularly bothersome is that of the feedback the seller has received, only one person has complained about the product... because it doesn't connect to the Wii Remote. Everyone else is "great seller, excellent product!" and I'm like, are these guys being polite or did they actually get products decent enough to be worthy of busting out an exclamation mark? The knockoff controller is held together with a mere four screws, though, so I might crack it open and see if it just needs some re-aligning to make everything more responsive. If I do go ahead with it (and don't just let the idea drift away while I spend another week sitting around in a vegetative state), I'll be sure to give a second assessment of it.
I haven't really been in the mood to gush about what movies I've watched lately, so here's another round of summaries.
Fido: In a version of the 1950s where radiation caused the dead to turn into zombies, a company called ZomCon have found a way of disabling their flesh-eating urges and utilise them as workers, servants and dogsbodies. A kid called Timmy befriends his family's zombie, naming him Fido, and numerous shenanigans happen, namely when their ZomCon representative neighbour takes Fido away because of an accidental flesh-eating incident. Despite the fact it's about zombies, it's actually a very cute movie that barely takes itself seriously - the kid accidentally causing a zombie outbreak in the neighbourhood is treated in much the same manner as Dennis the Menace accidentally wrecking a neighbour's garden (the American one, of course - the British one is more of a guffawing git). There are some great scenes, the greatest one being two ZomCon boy scouts tying up Timmy and Fido so they can shoot him, and then claim it was an act of mercy by putting down a feral zombie... only for one of the scouts to accidentally shoot his brother and then hides in a shack, Fido chasing after and gobbling him up. ... yeah, I just described this as a cute movie, didn't I? A lot of it doesn't really work in text!
Problem is, I just found it a bit shallow. It's cute and amusing, but it's rarely laugh-out-loud. The horror aspect is rarely played up (though that doesn't mean there aren't shots of gore and beheading) so gore fans likely won't care, and although there's a few interesting ideas brought up, I felt the movie didn't explore them enough. Fido is originally just a regular zombie, but through loving attention from Timmy and his mother, grows to express fondness for them, and even without his anti-bite collar he expresses no ill will towards them. Does that mean the true cure to violent zombies is simply by giving them some love? Who knows, because every other zombie is just shot in the head. Fido also retains attitudes from when he was alive, such as his love of smoking, and Timmy makes several comparisons of Fido to his grandfather early on - does this mean that most zombies retain memories or elements of their past selves, and are Timmy's assumptions true? We never find out, as all the other zombies are just... zombies.
It's not bad and I'd dare say it was an amusing watch, but in a way it was almost underwhelming, like there wasn't enough truly engaging content to fill the running time.
Tiny Toons: How I Spent My Vacation: Frig yeah! I haven't watched this thing in years, we're talking over a decade here, and it's still witty, entertaining and truly engaging. I don't know what that implies when most live-action movies get an "okay but forgettable" rating from me, but a children's cartoon with snarky pop culture references gets top marks. I remember a lot of the scenes, but since I'm a little less of an idiot than I was over ten years ago I can better appreciate the jokes and references. I was well and truly blown away by the animation - it's crisp, it's smooth, it's colourful, it's full of character, and it never felt cheap. Heck, even the painted backgrounds during Buster and Babs' segments were beautiful! It has spoiled me a little, as I tracked down the Spring Break TV special and its animation felt rather stiff and awkward by comparison, but it served as a healthy reminder that although most 2D animation I see nowadays is lifeless and dull, you can get some positively beautiful results if you have a sufficient budget to throw around.
The Happy Centrifuge is still freaky, though. It's a throwaway glimpse, but seeing cartoon theme park goers reduced to a gooey, groaning sludge leaves an impact on you at any age.
Wanted: This doesn't count. I watched a bootleg DVD (IT WASN'T MINE I SWEAR) and had to turn it off after ten minutes because it was just so terrible. I seriously thought the camcording-the-cinema bootlegs were just an exaggerated joke, but Christ and his bunions, this was bad. It didn't even get the full screen! When a character's face was meant to be in the centre, you'd only see the right half of him. Sound was loud and a pain to listen to, and it just came across as a waste of time. See, that's why I like and support buying DVDs and going to the cinema - you can actually watch the fucking thing. Ten minutes with this terrible bootleg really spoiled my evening. I'm not lying. I would've been happy to march over to Xtra-vision and rent the real deal, but I was just too bitter and unhappy to bother trying.
I Am Legend: Actually, this is the book. It was a pretty good read! Having discussed it a lot with others in the past I'd already spoiled the twist ending and the general events of the story for myself before I'd even started, but that was no concern. I will admit at first I was a little turned off by the simplistic writing style, but given the context is makes sense, and it never felt lacking - I'd dare say it fitted the atmosphere and the character perfectly. It did feel a bit short, though. I knew the ending was coming, but I was almost expecting a little more. Oh well!
I'm running out of decent doodles to throw in, so here's one related to a personal project I'm kinda sorta working on. I won't deny that I'm sick of seeing my uneven MS Paint lines (I should probably try and learn to use vector graphics sometime), and the feet and hands on the green fellow really gave me grief, but I'm pretty happy with it. Positively loathe the right arm on the blue girl, though. I redrew it three times and all of the attempts looked awkward and uneven, and I only settled for that one because my patience had run thin.