The same games

Funny that I’m playing the exact games I abandoned a year ago – Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, Rome: Total War and Fallout. Heh.

Curse you, old RPGs.

I love old school RPG games. They can be on my VBA, or on my PC and they are good. They have this cozy, comfy feeling of being in these old graphics so that they give you an idea of where you are and what you are doing, but still leave plenty to the imagination. I especially love it when you get these literary lines during gameplay, like “(player name) walked through the pristine glade and found a druid who looked so old, he looked like he could drop any minute into the tar-black cauldron he was stirring.”

So I figured I’d download one of them old classics – I’ve already played the Fallout games (albeit I should replay them now) and I have yet to play Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment. Innocent little old games. How big can they be, I think. I check.

Let us check Wikipedia now. How many CDs would these games come on? 1 should be more than enough for a pre-2000 game, I conclude. After all, these games didn’t have 16x AA or ulta-real textures to worry about. Ah, Planescape: Torment – 4 CDs, with 2 extra since later releases.

Baldur’s Gate? 5 CD-ROMs (a DVD is also available). Now, I normally wouldn’t have a problem with 1-DVD games. But seriously, this game came out in 1998. Didn’t they have some sort of audio compression tools back then?

I suppose that leaves Icewind Dale, which packs in 2 CDs (which is still more than I had expected). I guess I will give this one a try sometime soon, or blast it and go back to good old Fallout, which I am going to have to replay anyways, considering Bethesda’s ambitious third installment is in the line.

The Stuff We Like Social Network!

I’m generally not the one for social networking, considering how they are generally filled with crap from colourful varieties. Then again, perhaps it has something to do with my hate of anything mainstream, and considering how popular these things are getting, my hate for them shall grow even more!

Dave has come up with a social network for Stuff We Like, the entertainment blog destined for eternal internet greatness. It is located here, and is hosted by Ning. It has very few members right now, but do not forget that the more members join, the awesomer the network becomes.

So get your fat ass off that chair and jump into your monitor to enter the land of eternal awesome, the Stuff We Like social network! Sign up here and we promise to ship you a giraffe that can converse in 15 languages including Bokmal!

The Judge of All the Earth

“Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right?” – Genesis, Chapter 18, Verse 25

One of the movies I’m anticipating along with The Dark Knight and a few others is Watchmen. A fan of the original graphic novel, I was both disappointed and excited by the revelation of the movie. While there is no doubt Zack Snyder can kick ass after making 300, I have a feeling that not even he can do justice to Watchmen.

As Alan Moore himself said, Watchmen the book itself was focused on showcasing how graphic novels are unique in their format – merging the depth and length of a novel with visual cues, subliminal messages and heaploads of layers. I think the novel is one of the finest examples of graphic novel literature, and like the Lord of the Rings, cannot be reasonably transferred to another medium.

Zack released the costumes for the characters and while I love the looks of Nite Owl, the Comedian and of course, Rorshach looks perfect. Ozymandias looks a little weird – I’m not sure if he can do it right.

What I’m keen to see is Dr. Manhattan himself, the ultimate superhero. How will he be portrayed in the movie? Will it have the same amount of nudity the graphic novel had? Will Zack do the graphic novel justice and make a great movie at the same time?

Memento

Just watched Memento, Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece that you have to watch twice – once forwards and once backwards. I like they way the story is told in two parallel sequences, one set that goes chronologically forward, the other that goes backwards.

And so in the latter sequence, the next scene you watch ties in to the beginning of the last scene you saw, making them an intriguing, albeit somewhat frustrating series of revelations. And despite this reverse-chronological order, the movie starts with a clean start, goes on through a detailed middle and finishes with a grand conclusion (which is actually the start of the events).

In a way, Nolan has done complete justice to the protagonist, who has a problem with short-term memory that causes him to never remember anything recent. This leads to our amnesiac hero writing doing everything, taking pictures of everything, starting every scene not knowing where he is or who anyone is except for his ingrained thirst for vengeance.

I think the movie deserves its praise – it isn’t an excellent mystery, but a great experience and some quality film-making.

Un Chien Andalou

So I got around to watching Un Chien Andalou, the directorial debut of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí. It’s considered to be a surrealist masterpiece, and I expected nothing less from the likes of Buñuel, whose infamous L’Âge d’Or I have yet to sample.

Buñuel himself declared that the movie, being a purely surrealist one, has absolutely no rational explanation, and instead, relies wholly on subconcious imagery and free association. And true enough, no logical storyline can be interpreted from the 16-minute film.

Still, the film is open to interpretation, in fact, a very wide range of interpretation. There is some use of symbolism, such as the cutting of the unnamed woman’s eye in conjunction with the moon being covered by clouds, or the groping man having “ants in his hands” before witnessing a woman struck by a car and groping the aforementioned unnamed woman.

And at the same time, the movie relishes its paradoxes, with random time and space changes reminiscent of dreams. And oddly enough, it is this intermingling of realism with paradoxes that generates a sense of shock and surrealism in the movie.

The movie is less of a fulfilling or satisfying sort and more of an experience that you will think about later – in your subconcious.

The Ring

Keep on Galloping!

Turns out the torrent was legit and all of the songs are present, in excellent quality. While I haven’t been through the entire album and taken notes, I can say that the album is as good as any Korpiklaani album, and that is also its biggest problem.

Korven Kuningas retains the usual, unique Korpiklaani sound, rich with violins, accordions and raspy vocals I’m still not very fond of. Still, the songs sort of grow on you with repeated hearings, thanks to their raw catchiness.

And by the way, Korven Kuningas means “King of the Woods”, which is what Korpiklaani claims is a nickname given to Finnish lumberjacks. Not a bad name, and Korpiklaani says that the album is a tribute to them, too!

I listened to Keep on Galloping first on Songza, and it’s an excellent song, perhaps one of the best on the album, maintaining a unique melody and a great riff. Most of the other songs, however, sound more or less similar, which is why I really hope Korpiklaani adds more variety in their next album, or adopts a new twist to their music.

I see that some of the songs have made their way to Songza, so here are their links:

• Tapporauta
• Metsamies
• Gods on Fire
• Paljon On Koskessa Kivia

Tim Schafer vision for Atari’s domination of the world

In a vision that reminds of how wistful historians dream of a world where Rome had never fallen, Schafer provides some info on the famed relic of old, the Atari 400:

ATARI 400 – The greatest computer of its day, with a keyboard that was so comfortable to type on, they still use it on microwave ovens today. The Atari ate Apple IIs for breakfast, and for dinner it swallowed Commodore 64s whole. It usually skipped lunch, preferring to use that hour to beat up PCs. I’m not bitter, but if Atari had won instead of Apple, they would have made something better than the iPhone by now. Or at the very least, the iPhone would come with Star Raiders.

And just what is Star Raiders?

STAR RAIDERS – The best game on the Atari 400/800, ever. Many people will tell you this. Although, to be honest, few of us can really remember why we say it. We’ve just been saying it since 1980 and it’s a habit.

What scares me is that I will probably be saying something similar in 20 years and it will be really creepy telling people about CDs, DVDs, Xbox 360 and (urp) PS3. Not to mention the PC race for better and better gear, something that the PC Gaming Alliance will hopefully get rid of.

Korven Kuningas

I see that Korpiklaani is coming out with a new album in 10 days, named “Korven Kuningas”, the meaning of which escapes me, but I have no doubt that somebody at DarkLyrics will help me solve out.

I’ve found a torrent of it here, and am downloading it now (at a shameful 1-digit speed, for some reason) – it’s in a RAR file, so I’m not too sure if its real or not. I can’t imagine a person so vile that he would release a fake of a comparatively non-famous Folk Metal band…

Wikipedia also lists that a video for Metsämies was/is to be released in 2008, but I didn’t find a link on YouTube, and if it isn’t there, it’s nowhere. Hope it comes out soon, though – I love Korpiklaani’s videos.

I also like the album art – while it has that annoying antler-horn-dude mascot, he seems at least bearable, perhaps a little cool. The album art has been hand-painted, which is perhaps why it looks so complete and well-done (all the others were done in Photoshop and looked terrible, except the first two – Voice of Wilderness looked great).

I see that a single for “Keep on Galloping” is out – I’ll go check it out now.