I think it’s time I finally accept the fact that I don’t really like Infinity Engine style games anymore. I really like the idea of them: controlling a party of adventurers, exploring richly detailed worlds, and freezable real-time strategy combat. But the last few I have played have been bogged down in convoluted fantasy storylines that never grab my attention. Pillars’ story isn’t that complicated, but it just lacks focus. I never cared why I was getting visions and the main villain is a dud. Because of Kickstarter funding, the world is riddled with insipid and unnecessary vignettes that were written by backers. I guess fantasy geeks like all the lore but it just makes my eyes glaze over. Take a gander at this bit of dialogue:
It’s just a litany of unpronounceable names and garbage. Now if you are the type of person who actually reads the tomes you find in RPGs you will love this but I was just longing for one normal sounding name.
I actually didn’t mind the first third of the game. But somewhere around then I realized that it’s not going to go anywhere interesting I began to lose interest. By the time I finished, I had just switched to easy mode so I could burn through it and get on with something I liked. Wasteland 3 take me away!
Mario Bava at his absolute worst. There is so much lost in translation and editing that this is barely a movie. Apparently there is an Italian version which is a bit more well put together but features more of the worst part of this version: the annoying Italian slapstick duo. The only saving grace are the few scenes where Vincent Price breaks the fourth wall. Otherwise a complete stinker.
Hexen was another mid-nineties FPS that, I swear, I played the demo of several times but never played the full game. I only seemed to remember that first level with its stained glass windows and melee combat. It takes quite some time before you get a ranged weapon and that’s probably why I never felt the incentive to continue much farther than the initial levels. You need to give this one some time before it starts to click.
The level design is pretty great. Each section of the game is organized around a hub world. You can then move between the various sub levels in search of keys, switches, etc. that open up other sections of the hub. In some cases this involves revisiting levels over and over. This can be a pain in the early stages of the game when I was expecting run-and-gun Doom-style gameplay. Eventually, I got in the groove (still needed a walkthrough here and there).
The major ding against the game is the lack of variety. You only have a total of four weapons and it seems like you are fighting the same monsters over and over. The monsters will respawn so there is no incentive to kill ’em all. If you can, run past and pull that switch! Overall, I liked it and it seemed to hold up rather well (using gzDoom to run the game).
This one started off as a painting I made at one of those “pour and paint” wine bars. I pretty quickly sloshed it together using grade-school quality acrylic paints. It wasn’t horrible but just felt sloppy to me. The painting languished on a shelf in my house for a couple of years until I was mildly inspired to try painting again after watching a cheesy how to oil paint fantasy art program.
Drinking & Painting
I borrowed a bunch of my wife’s acrylic paints and went over everything again, adding detail and color. I then added a bunch of varnish over the whole thing so it began to look almost like an oil painting (I really dislike painting in acrylics). Finally, I added the frame and, in the process, discovered our old miter box saw is no longer aligned to correctly cut 45° angles. Grrr. After a bunch of sanding and widdling I manged to get the painting to fit and I thin it turned out pretty nicely,
One of the best looking books on printmaking I’ve seen. Printed on a think matte stock, with over 100 catalog images and equally as many details and figures. The book opens with a few essays giving an overview of the process and a general history of the medium with its place in the Italian Renaissance. From then on it dives into the details of each print. For each example there’s a page or two which follows the formula: a paragraph describing the content, then comparisons between various states and editions of the print, and, finally, the majority is dates and attribution being nitpicked over. I’m glad I switched majors after one semester, because the nitty gritty of art history is capital-B Boring. But that’s neither here nor there. We’re here for the pictures! The last section of the book is perhaps the most informative. It is a mythbusters-style play-by-play of attempting to make chiaroscuro prints today using period-appropriate processes.
This was an enjoyable fantasy about a world that’s been turned to blight everywhere except a single kingdom which seems to be protected by a tower. Not many of the details are explained here as this is slated as book one in a five part series. This was my main complaint about the book. It felt like the plot never really kicked in fully. In any event, there are scores of fun and interesting characters but I don’t quite know why they are doing the things they are doing. I hopeful that the second book, which is supposed to be coming out this fall, will start to pull the elements together. My rating may go up.
In the past (“the past” get it… oh, wait you haven’t read the next bit yet), I have tried reading history books (see, history, past, har har!) and they always seemed to disappoint. They’re always overly concerned with pinning down dates and details to the point of tediousness. 1917 is not like this. It’s an insightful look at two figures who managed to shape the course of the world. Wilson was no doubt one of the worst presidents ever to hold the office: an out-and-out racist and authoritarian who had visions of creating a perfect world. His bumbling allowed for the creation of the U.S.S.R. and laid the groundwork for Nazi Germany. Lenin, well we all know he was a monster, but at least he was honest about his motives. The book mixes Lenin’s rise with Wilson’s quest for establishing the USA as the arbiter of peace throughout the world. The two stories weave together nicely as the World War rages and pushes their destinies, and the fate of the modern world, forward.
Well, here I go down the Eurocrime rabbit hole. The plot in this one is odd. The film starts with Henry Silva and Woody Strobe playing American hit men assigned to take out a seemingly low-level pimp with the caveat that they should make it well-known beforehand that New York wants this guy dead. For the first twenty minutes you think the hit men are the heroes, terrible acting and all. But then we start to follow the pimp and that’s when the movie gets fun. There’s a great foot chase and the climax is a junkyard fight involving a kitten, lot’s of shooting, and a crane (the machine not the bird).
Another exciting Italian crime thriller directed by Fernando Di Leo, director of Caliber 9. All the characters are scum, even the supposedly innocent kidnapped daughter. The movie opens with a ridiculous mafia hit involving a movie theater and a grenade launcher shot at close range. These scenes of over-the-top violence are what make the film great. There’s another mob hit at a construction site that goes from one victim to the next in ever more silly death scenes. The movie end with a “to be continued” title but I don’t know if there is a sequel.
The concept of this movie is that all the action and camera work is scripted to go along with preexisting music tracks. That made it sound like a it was going to be a two hour long music video, but it’s not. Music choices are interwoven to become part of the plot and it all just works. This is helped by a simple, but solid story and interesting characters. The stunt driving is not as grounded as the awesome stuff you’d see in a Mission: Impossible movie, but it fits the film’s style and I enjoyed it up until the forced happy ending sequence.
