Yesterday I caught a preview screening of eragon. It's the new fantasy FX-fest that's coming out today. It's also based on a book written by a sixteen-year-old. Additionally, it's probably one of the most derivatively made movies I've ever seen.
First off, you know how Star Wars, especially the first one (A New Hope), is really based so much on other movies and archetypes that it would be almost impossible to call anyone out on ripping it off with a straight face? Yeah, eragon impresses in this regard, because it straight up rips off the entire story of the first Star Wars almost scene by scene. Yes, they do mix it up a bit: for example when LukeEragon is going into the analogue for the Death Star, it looks like Jabba's palace in Jedi. And at the end when they get to the rebel base it looks like Faramir's camp from The Two Towers. And in the middle somewhere, they take the scene from Empire Strikes Back where Vader kills an Admiral and promotes his underling and play it out almost word-for-word. Oh yeah, and there is a scene where this Shade character is asking all of his minions who look like Urk-Hai (Saruman's minions in Lord of the Rings) who they serve and I was sure they were going to bust out a SA-RU-MAN!
That isn't to say that eragon just steals the entire plot and character set from Star Wars, the look and feel of Lord of the Rings, and then plays it out in a hackneyed and over-obvious way. No sir, they seem to get a whole lot of Dungeons & Dragons vibe as well, though I think that was unintentional stealing. Shittyness by association if you will.
This isn't to say that this movie won't play well to kids. Most sub-twelve-year-olds will probably love it, especially if they haven't seen Star Wars, and the final Dragon fight is pretty nice looking in a I'd-rather-be-playing-this-on-a-PS3 kind of way. Really, it's the kind of movie written for young children by trying to fool them into thinking it's a movie for older audiences. Sort of like Willow. But not as good. This is the opposite of movies that seem to be for children, but are actually for older audiences (like Labyrinth or Dark Crystal).
Anyway, if you're reading this blog, you probably won't enjoy eragon. Your 11-year-old sister might though.
Zelda review still coming
That is to say that they don't give a shit that the iTunes store isn't selling that many songs, they probably do care about the negative press that the sales downturn has riled up. You can read the story of the music store's "collapse" if you haven't already.
Just in case anyone doesn't know, Apple doesn't make money off of the iTunes music store. Well that isn't completely true, but they get, at most, a few cents on each song, and the total profits they get from it are, to use the lexicon of one Bill Gates, a rounding error in comparison to the money they make selling iPods (or Macs for that matter).
The purpose of the music store isn't to make money, the purpose is to get the record industry off its back about how machines like the iPod are only used to carry around pirated music. Of course, one could argue that the primary source of music on most iPods isn't downloaded music of any variety, illegal or otherwise, but tunes ripped from CDs. But the record industry has done its damnedest to make ripping music from CDs impossible, so that can't be true.
But that's just my humble opinion on the news. I don't have a PhD in online-musicology or anything.
Anyway, it seems that the doomsaying about the music store were a bit premature.
You may have noted that this blog has gotten a whole lot nerdier in the last little bit. That's probably not going to change. However, I am, generally, trying to write most of these entries so that people who know little or nothing about videogames can understand them and appreciate them.
I already talked about Sonic. Here are some reviews of other games I downloaded onto my Wii.
F-Zero
System: Super Nintendo
Genre: Racing
F-Zero came out around the launch of the SNES and blew away pretty much every racing game that had come before it. Using "mode 7" graphics (essentially something the SNES did to rotate 2D images to make them into a quasi 3D plane), F-Zero gave a real sense of motion. And it was fast. So, very fast.
Now, fifteen years later, it still plays fairly well, though 3D graphics have advanced the racing genre more than any other and it shows in a quasi 2D game like F-Zero. And, though the racing aspect of the game is still fun, there is nothing to unlock, and the courses get hard much to quickly. F-Zero's spiritual sequel, Mario Kart was a better game because in addition to having the Mario characters it also added weapons and the ability to play 2-player.
Was it worth 8 bucks US?: Only if you have feelings of nostalgia towards it, or are interested in the history of racing games, or are really hard up for a racing game.
Bonk's Adventure
System: TurboGrafx-16
Genre: Platformer
This is another artifact from the late '80s early '90s that I had to try out because I couldn't play it on my SNES back in the day. Much like Sonic it seems to rip Super Mario Bros. off fairly heavily. Unlike Sonic, it isn't that fun to play. Yep.
Was it worth 6 bucks US?: Only as a historical footnote.
Ice Hockey
System: Nintendo Entertainment System
Genre: Hockey
Ah, the eternal question: fatties versus skinnies. If you haven't played the NES classic Ice Hockey here it is in a nutshell: You must play as one of several countries hockey teams in a match of simple four on four hockey. Each team is made up of any combination of fast "skinnies", jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none "mediums", and powerful "fatties". Of course no one ever plays as mediums or even mixes and matches their teams at all. It's always all "fatties" or all "skinnies".
Ice Hockey actually does stand up in that it replicates not so much the game of hockey as it does those hockey-boards with the players all on twisty turn spinner things. You know what I'm talking about. And it plays much better with two people. By the way: "fatties" for the win.
Was it worth 5 bucks US?: Yeah, actually. It's quite fun.
Gunstar Heroes
System: Genesis
Genre: Shooter/Platfomer
This is one of those classics that no one actually played, for whatever reason, but the small number of people who did absolutely swear by. I was fully expecting to be underwhelmed by the game, as many of these classics-that-no-one-has-played end up having a slough of neat ideas and then falling flat when criteria like "fun" or "playability" are factored in. Boy was I wrong. This game is totally boss.
Gunstar Heroes isn't really like any other game. It's sort of a hybrid between a Shoot 'em up (or shmup as they have become known) and a Mario style platformer. There are definitely elements of Contra in there too (it was made by the guys who made Super Contra, except you only have one life, but you don't die after one hit.
All I know is that it's amazing. This is the most fun I've had with an old-school game (that I hadn't played before) in a long time, and I'm still amazed at how well something this old can make me smile and go "damn that's cool". I think specifically when I first got to the level two boss "Seven Force" which is a series of seven very creative boss fights all in a row.
Was it worth 8 bucks US?: It's probably worth closer to 20 or 25 even. An amazing game.
Next up: a review of Zelda.
I never played Sonic back in the day. I was a Nintendo kid. I had a NES, and then I had a Super NES. So the first time that I really played a Sonic game was when I played through Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast.
I always wanted to play Sonic, just to see what all of the fuss was about. Though, even then, the games struck me as being more attitude that substance.
After purchasing the Wii and having the requisite $8US to download the game to the console, I decided to give Sonic a try.
I've played it for a while, and it certainly is one of the best non-Mario platformers from that era, but it certainly doesn't come near to even being in the same weight class as any of the old Mario greats. Though it is quite fun in a 1991 kind of way, almost everything that it does well is copied verbatim from Super Mario Bros 1 and almost everything that's clunky (such as combining the concept of "coins" with the number of times you can get hit) is a Sonic innovation.
It's also notable that it doesn't rip-off concepts from Super Mario Bros 3, probably because it was mostly through being designed by the time SMB3 came out.
Now I want to play Sonic 2 to see if they fixed most of the annoying bits in Sonic. I'm sure it's coming out on the virtual console eventually.
I already posted how I got my Wii over in the comments of this post at the Crap Shack, but it's repeated below my review of the Wii hardware at the bottom of this post as well.
Just over two weeks ago Nintendo released its fifth system, the Wii, and I was able to snag one. As you probably know the Wii uses a controller that looks much like a remote control. The controller acts as a pointer on the screen as well as a motion tracker (with tilt, roll and yaw).
Also, you can attach a little dongle onto the bottom of the remote that looks like a nunchuck called, creatively enough, the nunchuck. It allows the use of an analog control stick. Most of the games are designed around the controller.
Here are some more info-bits.
• The graphics are like Nintendo's fourth console, the GameCube, but maybe a little bit better. If you really care about graphics this isn't the system for you. However, the graphics certainly aren't distracting.
• It seems the most fun when played in groups. The included game, Wii Sports, has an almost perfect recreation of bowling, and a fun recreation of tennis. They can lead to hours of fun in a group, though they get a little bit boring solo.
• The Zelda game that came out with the system is truly excellent, though a bit easy. If you haven't played a Zelda game since Ocarina of Time or even Link to the Past, this is a great game to try out, though it doesn't really use the Wii controls that creatively.
• The interface is very elegant and iPod like. In fact it's probably easier to use than most Apple products.
• The Virtual Console download service allows you to pay a small fee and download NES, SNES, N64, Genesis, and Turbo Graphix-16 games. You can play most of them by turning the controller sideways. The emulation is for the most part, excellent, better than almost anything you can get on a computer, and probably the best way to play old games on a newer TV.
• It generally seems to be the perfect system for people who haven't owned a Nintendo system since the Super Nintendo or NES days.
• If anyone else has specific questions about the system, I can answer them in the comments.
Here is the story of me getting the Wii.
People were lined up for the Nintendo Wii all night. Although they didn't need to be. Here's my story of getting one:
My friend and I went to Best Buy/Wal-mart/Superstore/Future Shop Sunday morning at around 1am to guestimate how early we would need to line up. The fact that there were almost 100 people at the Best Buy and almost as many at the Wal-Mart, but that other lines weren't full made us ballsy enough to decide that we didn't need to get anywhere until 8am. So, anyway, I went home and watched Battlestar Galactica and then went to bed at like 4am.
We got to the Superstore on Calgary Trail at 7:50 or so and there were only about 20 people waiting. Cha-Ching. Or so we thought. It turned out that there were only 12 units at the Superstore. So we went to the London Drugs on 51rst. No one was there. The lady at they door asked why we were lining up (at least 5 people from the Super Store came with us). We said we were waiting for the Nintendo Wii. She said "what's that?" and then went to see if they had gotten any. Now this place had gotten five PS3s so we were pretty certain that they would have Wiis. As it turns out that certainty was ill placed. They aren't carrying the Wii.
One of the guys in who was waiting there with us said that EB in Southgate might be getting extra units beyond the 15 they had set aside for pre-orders. We thought it was a long shot, but what the hell, it was only about 5 blocks away and the hard part wasn't waiting it was the getting up early and we had already done that. So we went to Southgate and went in the door (now this is key, since it was only about 8:20 at this point and every door to the mall was locked except for the one we tried, although we didn't know that at the time) and we made our way inside to the EB.
There were two guys waiting there already. They worked in the mall and had used an employee entrance. We sat down and started waiting. The EB manager showed up and told us that he didn't know how many units extra he had, but there were certainly enough for the four of us.
In the end they had 26 extra units and you could have gotten one if you had shown up at around 9:30 or so (although the line was full after that). Beyond that most of the waiting was waiting for the EB guys to get done ringing in the presales.
I was driving home today and as I crossed Whyte Avenue (between Chapters and When Pigs Fly) I saw something that I'd never seen before (in Edmonton): two homeless men on opposite street corners arguing over territory.
This just shows how much the Albertan economic boom is effecting everything here in Edmonton. Not only is the starting rate at Taco Bell $9.50 (a rate at which they still can't find enough people to stay open past 9pm), but the number of unemployed and unemployable have risen as well. You notice it here every day, because Edmonton has classically had a very low hobo to not-hobo ratio in comparison to cities of its size (especially in the winter). Another hot-spot for activity is in front of the Mac's on Whyte. Without hyperbole, nine times out of ten you will be accosted by someone on your way in. Last night there was a guy with a just a blanket shivering and asking for funds to everyone going in.
Now to those of you who live in big cities this will seem somewhat quant, but in Edmonton it seems like there's an extra layer of desperation as the homeless who came here seeking greener pastures in the summer realize that it gets really fucking cold here in the winter.
If you ever get a craving for chocolate, but don't actually want to eat chocolate, do yourself a favour and buy a bag of Whoppers.
Whoppers always seem like a good idea at the time, but after you have about three of them, and taste the rather unappealing malted centres and wax like "chocolate" coating, you don't want to eat any more of them and don't really want chocolate anymore. Yet the next time you want chocolate the bag is still there, and just like a meal at Ho Hos you forget how much you disliked them the first time around.
Man I could really go for some HoHos.
Final Fantasy XII has been reviewed in numerous places (like here), so I'll just rifle off some points about the game that aren't covered everywhere else.
• The new battle system is really the same underlying engine as the old one, but with an entirely new system of how that engine interacts with the player. It really reminded me of Knights of the Old Republic, only that the Gambit system of assigning tasks to your characters (such as "heal if your ally has less than 50% health") gives you much more control over the proceedings.
• Although the different races you find in the game world have different basic temperaments, there is a great deal of variety in their presentations. For example the Banga race have characters as varied as an evil group of bounty hunters who chase you to the lovable merchant Migello. This is different from the basic "Vucan's are all logical" examples of races given in most games.
• The world is huge. This is partially because of the fact that most of the zones are designed in a relatively non-linear fashion, and partially because there's simply so much real estate to cover. Although the large zones are broken up into several smaller ones hurting the seemlessness of the world, (an area where, say, World of Warcraft or Dragon Quest VIII beat FF XII), that doesn't stop everything from feeling quite expansive.
• I like how the "hunts" are optional and nicely compliment the easier story missions. It simply makes the world feel more intricate since there is so much more to do in it. The hunts are pretty hard to do when you first get them (especially the elite hunts), but it adds a challenge to the game and you can just pass them by and come back later if it gets frustrating.
• I like the fact that the different classes of weapons do generally different things in different ways. Though it's sometimes hard to figure out what their actual damage-per-second is, as opposed to simply what their attack power is, it's nice that they give you different types of stuff for different characters with different stats needs. Not that you'd easily find out what the differences are between the weapon types in game.
• This is the first FF game that I can remember where the characters aren't all emo all the time. It was refreshing.
• The game is long. It took me twice as long to finish this one as to finish a regular FF game.
Overall FF XII feels like a game that has evolved with the breakthroughs in the genre in the last five years since FF X came out. You have to remember that in that time period two Elder Scrolls games, KOTOR, and Dragon Quest VIII have all come to consoles, notably altering what people expect from a console RPG. I'm glad that FF XII has followed the series tradition of always reinventing itself to remain relevant.
So do you remember how last month I said that I was going to compete in the NaNoWriMo? Yeah, well, about that. That didn't work out so well. Despite the fact that most people assume my failure was due to to the launch of Final Fantasy XII and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess this November, I personally attribute my failure to the freelance projects I took on this month. Not that they took up that much time, just that I when I was procrastinating about doing writing for the freelance project, I couldn't be doing other writing. It's a shame I didn't get further into it too, because the Edmonton WriMo community seems fairly active.
So, when the next unofficial NaNoWriMo happens in May, I'll be all over that.
I've moved Electric Dreamstate to blogger beta, which is a much more versatile service. You can still find the old Electric Dreamstate archives at electricdreamstate.blogspot.com.