While technically I could say that my love of surfy, guitar-based instrumental music started when I would listen to my parents’ old Duane Eddy 45s on a cheap turntable in our basement back home, this record is the real starting point in my love of the genre. Shadowy Men had a way of taking fairly simple but catchy songs and infusing them with tons of energy and fun. While the playing is top-notch, this is a band that really excels at arrangement. Every guitar tone, found sound or “woo!” comes together perfectly. The resulting music transcends the “surf” label that they were often given and in my opinion remains unmatched (with the possible exception of Laika and the Cosmonauts who come pretty darn close to Shadowy Men quality instrumental rock).
Another solid Discworld novel with lots of vivid characters and humorous situations.
Fresh off of completing Broken Sword, I decided to continue my point-and-click adventure gaming with The Longest Journey. Like Nico from Broken Sword, April Ryan of TLJ has one of those early nineties reverse mullet hairdos, short in back and long in front, but that’s about where the similarities between these two games ends. TLJ is far more epic in scope with your standard video game “you must save the world from certain doom” plot. The game is massive, but it is broken up into smaller digestible chapters that could generally be completed in one sitting. Early on in the game I got stuck a few times and had to turn to the ‘net for hints, but once I got a feel for the type of puzzles to expect I was able to get through most of the puzzles on my own. The biggest help came when I realized that by hitting the ‘A’ and ‘S’ keys, I could cycle through my inventory without having to navigate through menus and icons. There were still a few times when trial and error were all I had to go on. In hindsight, I’ve really come to appreciate the subtle built in hinting system in Telltale Games’ titles like Sam & Max.
During game play, April and the other on-screen characters are low-polygon 3-D models set against pre-rendered backdrops. They must have only slightly upped the poly-count for the cut scene animation because April still looks and moves like a textured balloon animal. Grim Fandango predates this game by a year or two, but, because of its character stylization, looks leaps and bounds better.
Graphical shortcomings aside, The Longest Journey managed to engage me the whole time with its fantastical story telling and likable characters. I didn’t quite understand the need to insert F-bombs and other adult language into what should have been a safe PG-rated game. I thought it didn’t quite fit in with the dragons and whimsical tree people, but I guess that supposedly makes the game more serious and mature?
Broken Sword is a point and click adventure game from the ninties. You will spend most of the game playing as George, the bumbling American tourist who unwillingly gets entangled with murder mystery involving clowns, dirty handkerchiefs, The Knights Templar and a photo journalist named Nico. Nico has a mysterious back story that is gradually revealed in the opening sequences of the game. These early scenes in which you control Nico are the “Director’s Cut” sections of the game. I found it to be a little bit of a let down when the game switched to George as the main character. Nico was so much more interesting to play and learn about. With George, however, there is a lighthearted sense of humor that makes it worthwhile to listen through all the spoken dialogue.
As far as adventure games go, this one is very easy. The puzzles don’t require much thought, and in most cases you simply need to click through all your options and make sure you’ve hit every highlighted hotspot on the screen. But I was okay with the simplicity. There were a few puzzle-puzzles (ala Professor Layton) and the standard adventure game combine-this-with-that puzzles usually made logical sense. In the end Broken Sword is a well told story with a nice art style and lots of humorous characters.
I’ve already written up this CD at my Planet Pimp website, let’s just say this is decent, albeit somewhat generic, rock that gets bonus points in my scorebook for being on Planet Pimp.
The main thesis of Tyranny of Clichés begins with the notion that conservative and libertarian arguments tend to get rebutted, not with counter-arguments, but with a series of stock statements like “Violence never solves anything” or “I’d rather see ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be found guilty.” These clichés are presented by liberals/progressives (whatever is the label du jour?) as self-evident truths with basis in a pragmatic analysis of the issues. Goldberg proceeds to dismantle those positions by showing how deeply rooted in ideology these statements are, and how, with a little scrutiny, they emerge as empty words with no backing in reality. Well, that’s the idea at least. On more than a few occasions it felt like he was just tit-for-tatting about how conservatives may do this thing, but you guys do it too… but totally to the max dudes! Not there’s anything wrong with this sort of political reverse 1-upping, but it drifted a little away from that aforementioned main thesis. No matter, the entire book is written in a lighthearted tone that makes for fun reading.
Mass Effect 3 is the satisfying conclusion to the Mass Effect trilogy (ME1 & ME2). The Reapers have finally come to reap and it’s Shepard’s job to unite the galaxy against them. Along the way you meet up with old allies (the ones you didn’t kill last time around), fight with all sorts enemies and hide behind a lot of cover.
The game plays more or less the same as the last one with the linear levels and cover-based combat. The graphics are about the same but they no longer have a film grain effect on top of everything. The place where all the Mass Effect games excel is in the storytelling. A lot of gamers complained about the ending, but I thought it was good (I did play the “extended cut”… a benefit of waiting until after launch to buy a game). There’s not much more to say other than this is an excellent game and well worth the 90+ hours of play time it will take to complete the entire trilogy. It’s the best sci-fi I’ve seen since Firefly and Serenity.
This is the first Western I’ve ever read. Written in 1933, Silvertip is the story of a gray-templed gunslinger who likes spaghetti and accidentally kills the wrong man. In an effort to redeem himself he gets caught up in a feud between honorable Mexicans (can’t a guy just carve a brand into their mortal enemy’s forehead and call it even?) and ruthless, torture-loving gringos. Overall, a pretty good and exciting story with e-paper thin characters. Another great freebie from Prologue Books.
I really liked this noir-ish crime novel set in the dingy pool halls of rural Texas. Lots of great characters and a Kill Bill-esque revenge plot with plenty of brutal action sequences.
Alan Wake was developed by the same people who made one of my favorite games, Max Payne. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent to the awesomely addictive bullet-time shooting mechanics of Max Payne. Instead, the main gameplay hook is that you shine a light on the bad guys to wear them down before you can hurt them with your gun. It’s not a horrible system but it gets old really fast. Unlike Resident Evil, which mixes up gameplay on just about every level, in Alan Wake the thing you do in the tutorial to kill that first enemy if the same thing you do to defeat the foes in the last level.
What Alan Wake does have going for it is a lovely Twin Peaks vibe (all the way down to a clone of the Log Lady) and well thought out story. There are a bunch of collection achievements, but that sort of thing doesn’t really interest me as much as plowing through the main storyline.
