Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

 

why is it so rare for science fiction to tackle the subject of video games head on? it seems obvious, considering we live in the year 2011 and there’s no flying cars, no household robots and no common space-travel (which are all stuck in a rut and still seem far off), but there are things called video games that would absolutely boggle the minds of people from before they were invented. Video games (along with cell phones and computers in general) are what’s “futuristic” about the modern day and yet sci fi rarely asks the question “what is the future of something that in a little over 30 years went from Pong to Crysis?”

enter Ready Player One, the debut novel of Ernest Cline, one of the screenwriters of the movie Fanboys (the original incarnation before the much publicized changes) and friend of Aint It Cool News owner Harry Knowles, that answers what video games might be like roughly 30 years from now, the answer of course, is “fucking cool”

the plot of the novel is such, in 2044 there is something called “OASIS” which is basically a futuristic MMORPG played by pretty much everyone where you can pretty much do anything, wanna be Superman? you can, wanna visit the Star Wars universe? you can, any fictional world you can think of can be visited. Five years prior the owner and creator of OASIS James Halliday died and left his giant fortune and control of OASIS up for grabs to whoever could solve his riddles, find three keys and unlock three gates and find The Easter Egg, to do so however you need to be as obsessed with 1980′s nerd culture as he was, enter Wade Watts, the only guy nerdy and obsessed enough to succeed, but he’ll have to fight a fascist corporation that will stop at NOTHING to find the prize and take control of OASIS and ruin it for everybody by charging for access

the book is jam packed with 1980′s references, if it’s at least semi well known and from the 80′s, chances are it’s referenced in this book, I always had a feeling something like this was coming considering how insanely popular 1980′s culture is these days, but thankfully Ready Player One has enough going for it that it’s more than just a list of pop culture references, what I would compare it to is The Venture Brothers, in that there’s lot of pop culture references, but it doesn’t use it as a crutch to make up for a lack of story or characters

this is a seriously brilliant book, like any great science fiction novel, a lot of it is basically a metaphor for the modern day, it captures the modern zeitgeist perfectly, the world outside of the virtual OASIS has gone to hell, wars, environmental calamity, an even worse economy, no gasoline, a weak government and a fascist corporation that has stepped in and uses sweatshop like methods here in America (let’s watch and see if something like that happens), of course there’s a big sense of ennui in America today and a lot of people (me included) find an escape into not only video games, but 1980′s culture and nostalgia, the fact that inside OASIS, a virtual reality where you can do literally anything you can imagine, people still love to play virtual recreations of old arcade cabinets and video game consoles says a lot about the human desire to escape to a seemingly simpler and better past as much as any other fantasy

I have a feeling that this book might wind up being the Jules Verne’s From Earth To The Moon of our time, that is to say a science fiction novel that’s predictions basically come true, I know one thing, SOMETHING like this is gonna happen, there’s going to be a virtual reality video game like this one day, what’s gonna stop it? video games have changed so much in 30 years that there’s literally no telling what’s in store

I cannot recommend this book enough, it might even be on the list of my favorite books ever (it’s certainly one of the best books I’ve read in the last few years), if you want a taste of Things To Come then check it out, here’s hoping the movie is just as good

I’m still alive

well well here we are again, yet another post explaining why it’s been so long since my last review, I was resistant to making another post like this, but considering how freakin’ long it’s been since I reviewed anything I figured I should let people (if there’s anyone out there that is) know that I’m not dead and the blog is not officially over, just on ice

what happened? well College happened, yup I’m officially a College student now (well a local community college, so I haven’t moved away) and the preparation for college coupled with actually going to college has distracted me from this blog, I’ve still been gaming, but I haven’t really had the time to watch any anime and that coupled with a few personal reasons has put my anime watching on hold for I don’t know how long exactly, it could be soon until I resume, it could be until next year, but it’ll be EVENTUALLY at least

basically I’ve always been a terrible procrastinator and now couple that with actual responsibility like school and homework and well….it’s not a good combo

until then though I promise to review older games (and maybe even new ones? we’ll see) along with any books I read (which is sadly not too frequently these days)

this brings me to my next topic though, I’ve been finding it hard to find the motivation to write any reviews in the first place because frankly…I have no idea if anyone at all is reading or if I’m essentially just talking to myself, I don’t expect to be famous, but I did hope that I’d at least get a handful of readers that posted comments, so if anybody’s out there please consider commenting if you want me to continue

I started this blog mainly as way to simply get practice writing and just to kind of sound off on my opinions about things, but it can be kind of depressing trying hard to write a good review and then realize that nobody’s probably gonna read it

ok enough whining

Gex 2 and 3

 

It seems like any given year and any given console generation there’s always one specific genre that dominates the marketplace, there’s always invariably some super successful game that comes along and shakes things up and then tons of imitators try to replicate the success until eventually it becomes so over saturated that things die down and it’s on to the next big thing

For this generation it’s without a doubt First Person Shooters and these days specifically it’s games trying to replicate the success of the Call of Duty series (remember when that series was just a humble WW2 shooter and not the beast it later became?)

It’s hard to pick one specific genre in the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox generation that dominated, but I would say probably Grand Theft Auto knockoffs, games like Driver 3, The Getaway and True Crime (which ironically was going to get another sequel that was canceled by Activision, the publisher of the Call of Duty series) all tried to get a slice of that GTA pie (which these days, not counting any other Rockstar games or Saints Row, how many games do you see trying to be like Grand Theft Auto?)

But for the PS1/N64 generation there can be no doubt what was the dominant genre, Platformers (specifically 3D ones in this case), good Lord were there so many Platformers back then, it seems like literally every other game was a Platformer, you could not swing a dead cat without hitting a few Platformer mascots with lots of ‘tude, even the Tomb Raider games were basically Platformers where you played as a hot woman with big tits instead of a cute anthropomorphic animal, Super Mario 64 opened the floodgates and the genre dominated from about 1996 onward and breathed it’s final breath in 2005 with the release of Psychonauts (which even though Grand Theft Auto 3 revolutionized mature rated games, people forget that there were still plenty of Platformers in the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox generation, there were so many in fact in 2002 that it was dubbed by many gaming magazines the “year of the Platformer”)

These days the Platformer genre is completely dead, the only exceptions are the Mario games on the Wii, cheap shovelware platformers on the Wii and Platformers made by Indie devs (but those are all 2D, maybe one day those hipper than thou Indie devs will upgrade to 3D)

But back in the days when the Platformer genre dominated it was very easy for a good game to get lost in the shuffle, to get overlooked because it looked too similar to too many other “me too” games, which finally brings me to the subject of this review, the Gex series

I want you to journey back in time with me, back to a mystical era known as the “late 90’s”, it was a strange time, most people did not have cellphones, the only place you could surf the net was at home or libraries (if you even had a computer) and Titanic was the highest grossing movie of all time

It was in this era that in 1998 and 1999 two games were released, Gex 2 Enter The Gecko and Gex 3 Deep Cover Gecko, both developed by Crystal Dynamics

I’ve never played the original, but Gex 2 was the first game in the series I played on the PS1, no too long after the third game came out and I played it

The Gex games follow Gex the Gecko, he’s a wisecracking guy (voiced by comedian Dana Gould, who is a frequent guest on Real Time With Bill Maher) who loves television and becomes a secret agent tasked with taking down a mysterious villain (seriously, what was the deal with that guy?) named Rez who wants to take over the “Media Dimension”, what this basically means is that Gex has to enter a bunch of “TV Channels” that are spoofs of specific genres and collect “remotes” in each level (think like the multiple Stars in each level of Mario 64), I think a lot of people misinterpreted Gex as trying to a ‘tude filled character like Sonic, but he’s more of a wiseass and the games in general are very spoofy and geared towards a slightly older audience than most Platformers, it may seem quaint today, but the humor and wiseass nature of the games was pretty unique at the time

As soon as I started Gex 2, I had a flashback to third grade, I haven’t played Gex 2 since 1999 and I think this is the longest time I’ve gone before replaying a game (about 12 years), there I was back in Mrs. Hill’s classroom, I had an unrequited crush on a pretty blond girl named Victoria (*sigh*) and I had just gotten a Playstation 1 for Christmas, it was my best friend who suggest I check out Gex 2 and I did, I was pleasantly surprised to find a game that I liked so much and I was a bit obsessed with it for a while

However after the initial nostalgia shock of playing a game after so many years wore off, I started to notice the problems of Gex 2, unfortunately Gex 2 is not a game that has aged well or stands the test of time

Basically there are three major problems with the game, the first is that the camera sucks, of course this was a problem that a lot of 3D games from that era had and it was really only solved after the invention of two analog sticks, but Gex 2 also has a lot of levels that are basically “floating islands” over a bottomless pit and if you fall (unless you find a rare checkpoint) you have to go back at the start and the camera never helps

second is that the levels repeat themselves too much, there are only a handful of themes (horror, kung fu, cartoons, science fiction, prehistoric and outer space) and each theme has at least two levels that are just variations, now some of these levels are different enough that it’s not too annoying (like the two prehistoric levels), but other are basically the same level just with a remixed design, it gets old fast when you’re playing yet another outer space or horror level

Third is that most of the levels are not very well designed, it’s easy to get lost and you have no idea where to go to complete specific objectives (the objectives that require you to find several objects throughout the level are annoying as hell)

Lastly the game is very short, I beat it in a single night, it was still fun playing it just for the trip down memory lane, but I was disappointed to find that the game was mostly frustrating and the legitimately fun levels were few, if you’ve never played Gex 2 Enter The Gecko before, then don’t bother, the only reason to revisit it is purely for the nostalgia

Well that brings me to Gex 3 and I’m very happy to say that this one holds up a lot better

Literally every single thing about Gex 3 is improved from Gex 2, the graphics are better for one (and for a PS1 game very good) and the camera is improved (though still a bit annoying by today’s standards)

The levels no longer repeat themes, instead every level has a unique theme and the genres they spoof are a little more creative, the level design is also much, much better, not only are the levels more forgiving, but it’s a lot harder to get lost and you usually have a clear idea of where you need to go to complete specific objectives, even the Hub world is improved, the Hub in Gex 2 was small and boring, the Hub in Gex 3 is pretty large and more like an actual level itself (it also has some cool secrets)

The humor and writing is better, one of the things that sets the Gex games apart is that Gex makes wisecrack comments during the levels (almost a bit like Mystery Science Theater) and there weren’t very many in Gex 2, but in Gex he says a lot more and they’re related to the levels he’s in more, a lot of people found his comments annoying but I always found them funny in the third game, it’s especially fun playing the game as an adult and picking up on references that you missed when playing as a kid (like Gex making fun of singer Morrissey)

So I’m happy to say that if you’re in the mood for an old school style Platformer, Gex 3 is still worth playing even if you’ve never played it before, it’s only slightly longer than Gex 2, but that’s ok

So that was it for Gex, they never made a 4th game unfortunately, supposedly they were working on a 4th game for the PS2 but it was canceled, I can’t help but wish the 4th game wasn’t canceled or that Gex would get a reboot, but maybe Gex 3 took the series as far as it could go, it’s nice that it ended on a high note

Still it would be cool to see Gex resurrected as maybe a PSN/XBLA title (think like Crystal Dynamics’ Lara Croft and The Guardian of Light), but that’s probably pretty unlikely, oh well…

No One Lives Forever 1 and 2

 

confession time, I have never played a Call of Duty, it’s not that I don’t like First Person Shooters, but Call of Duty’s brand of brown military shooters doesn’t interest me and playing online I’ve found in my case sounds more fun in theory than in practice, whenever I play a FPS online the result is almost always I get my ass completely and utterly handed to me for a few hours, then I get bored of always losing and quit, I just don’t have the super human reflex time to compete with the people who must play online 24/7, that’s the reason why Left 4 Dead 1 and 2 are my favorite online games of all time because they’re co op, working with other gamers is a lot more fun to me than getting my ass kicked by other gamers

but I digress, I do love FPSs, but I like them to be more creative, like Half Life 1 and 2, Bioshock and the subject of this review, the No One Lives Forever series

NOLF 1 and 2 have what so many modern games lack, a huge sense of creativity and fun, I absolutly love the 1960′s spy movie setting, inspired less by James Bond and more by Derek Flint, Modesty Blaise and The Avengers, it’s like a total breath of fresh air and is one of my personal favorite settings for a game ever

the series follows female superspy (not counting the MetroidPrime series, how many FPSs do you know star female only characters?) Cate Archer as she works for international (but England based) spy organization UNITY as they try to foil the schemes of the evil (and hilarious) H.A.R.M (what that stands for is never explained)

humor is a big part of the games, there’s some seriously funny stuff in both of them, one thing I love is when you overhear the conversations of the enemy NPCs, nothing beats listening to some henchmen talk about possibly retiring and then turning a corner and mowing them down

anyway No One Lives Forever is just plain great, the levels are a ton of fun, you know you’re playing an awesome when it has (mild spoiler) a whole level that’s a homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Silent Running, one level may have you infiltrating an island fortress, the other may have you wandering a posh 60′s nightclub

for a game over ten years old the graphics hold up pretty well too, if there’s one complaint it’s that sometimes the game forces you to try to be stealthy, which I’ve learned that FPS stealth almost never works (at least without any way to tell where the hell the guards are looking)

so now this brings me to the sequel, I played the PS2 port of NOLF 1 way back in 2002, which suffered from horribly long load times (I made sure to play the PC version this time) and never finished it, but I never got to play the sequel when it came and oh boy did I want to, it looked so awesome

so NOLF 2 came out in 2002 and I finally this year got to play it, that’s an almost 9 year wait, a new record for me (the previous record for longest wait before being able to play a game was Vampire The Masquerade, which was about 6 years) and was it worth it?

yes, yes it was, NOLF 2 rocks and it rocks hard, in many ways it’s better than the original, for one thing the graphics are stunning, even in this day and age, it’s the texture work that holds up so well, the textures are so sharp, it almost looks as good as Half Life 2, I love the graphics of PC games from this general era (Max Payne 2 being one example) because they were all about sharp, realistic textures, too many games these days rely on fancy lighting effects and other pizazz at the cost of low quality textures (Alan Wake is a perfect example of this), that’s why to me Portal 2 doesn’t look dated at all (but that’s another story)

other than the fantastic graphics NOLF 2 is just a little more refined than the original, it would unquestionably be the better games save for two issues, one big, one minor, the minor issue is that in some levels enemies will endlessly respawn if you sound an alarm, this can be annoying if you want to forgo stealth for running and gunning

but the biggest problem is that NOLF 2 is just too damn short, a lot shorter than the first game, so short that it seems like you don’t even get the opportunities to make full use of some of the gadgets , I have a theory that the developers Monolith crammed every spy movie cliche they could think of in the first and thus were short of ideas (some levels in 2 are similar to levels in 1) or maybe it was a question of time and money I don’t know, but after waiting almost 9 years it sucks to beat a game in just a few days, I had a blast while it lasted, but it was just too brief, it doesn’t help that the ending of the game is a total anti-climax

so unfortunately what should have been a big series ended at 2 and the developer Monolith moved on to the F.E.A.R series, which has never really interested me (the combination of commandos and the ghost girl from The Ring has always seemed a mightily strange one), although I did enjoy the original Condemned

No One Lives Forever seems like an absolute perfect series to resurrect and who knows, it could happen one day, I wouldn’t be too surprised

System Shock 2

 

us gamers tend to have a serious problem, we have a serious problem of what’s called “nostalgia goggles” (or rose colored glasses) where we lionize an older game as being better than any of it’s successors or better than it actually is, there’s plenty of games that may have been great in their day but have not aged well and the only real way to enjoy them is by the nostalgia they produce, now there is absolutely nothing wrong with playing a game for nostalgia, but you should also keep a subjective mind and realize that a lot of games tend to age pretty poorly (games that age well are the exception, not the rule) and that instantly having the mindset that everything older is instantly better is not really true

games are a funny medium because they age differently than any art form, paintings don’t age, books don’t age, classic paintings and books are timeless no matter what year it is, people will still be reading Charles Dickens centuries from now for example and with movies, the only thing that really ages are special effects, but even so there are countless movies that are timeless (The Wizard of Oz being one example)

but games are unique because the technology changes so quickly and so drastically, what was once cutting edge can become flat out old school very quickly

so I find it absurd how so many gamers lionize older games that have certainly aged and turn their noses up at newer stuff, I mean there’s plenty of games that have aged well and while there’s certianly things about the modern gaming world I dislike and things that I miss (but that’s another subject), I wouldn’t say gaming is “dead”

one example of this mindset is the Fallout series, the first one I played was Fallout 3 and I loved it, last year in preparation for New Vegas I went back and played the original Fallout 1 and 2 and while they were good games (but very old school) and I enjoyed them, the fact that so many gamers said that they blew away Fallout 3 is laughable

so this brings me finally to the subject of this review, it’s a cult classic game that has a very die hard following that insist it’s one of the best games of all time, I’m talking about System Shock 2

Bioshock is one of my favorite games of this entire generation, few games have such a fiercely creative setting and thought provoking story, but there were a lot of gamers who insisted that Bioshock’s spiritual predecessor System Shock 2 was DRASTICALLY better (Zero Punctuation being one example)

so after years of planning on it, I finally got around to playing System Shock 2, eager to see the origins of Ken Levine and Irrational games and expecting something really awesome

and it’s time for me to make a controversial statement, I thought System Shock 2 is way overrated and that Bioshock is far and away the superior game

I’m honestly confounded why this is seen as being so much better than Bioshock, now keep in mind I’m not saying System Shock 2 is a bad game per se, I just think that everything it does Bioshock does better

the cyberpunk style plot and setting of System Shock 2 are ok, but pale in comparison to Bioshock’s and I’ve also heard that System Shock 2 is one of the scariest games of all time, it has it’s moments, but the original Silent Hill which came out the same year blows it away in terms of horror

the first thing I noticed is how similar the games are, other than the setting and story differences obviously the key difference is that System Shock 2 is 100% more complex than Bioshock

some will say Bioshock is just “dumbed down”, I would call it streamlined, more user friendly and a lot more fun, System Shock 2 is a perfect example of a game that’s complex just for the sake of being complex, overly so

everything in System Shock 2 is a pain in the ass, upgrading your stats, your skills, finding ammo, maintaining your weapons, repairing your weapons, the limited inventory, the whole game is designed to be as complex as possible and even after beating the game I didn’t fully understand, there is a difference between a game like Deus Ex, which is complex but not overly so and this

the result is that I could never fully get into the game, the more I played the more it felt like a chore, there were fun moments but they were few and far between

oh and the backtracking, good lord the backtracking, there was certainly some backtracking in Bioshock, but nowhere near as much as in this game, most of the game is spent wandering around the same environments and seeing the same stuff over and over, it gets old

so yeah, how dare this mother fucker slander the timeless classic that is System Shock 2? why I must be a dumbed down casual gamer who only likes Call of Duty and Guitar Hero! not quite, I’m not saying this is a bad game, I’m sure for 1999 it was impressive and I’m very happy I finally got to play the game, all I’m saying is that I think Bioshock was an improvement, not a de-evolution, that’s all

on a side note, here’s looking forward to Bioshock Infinite!

Funland by Richard Laymon

well unfortunately it looks like Leisure Books has given up on Richard Laymon, all of his books have mysteriously disappeared from bookstores, his website has disappeared and Funland, which was supposed to be published in paperback last year only got an Ebook release

I have no idea what happened, it’s bizarre, maybe some sort of contract expired and his books didn’t sell well enough so they decided not to renew it or something? I can’t find any info about it at all on anywhere on the internet, either way it looks like the only place to find Laymon’s books now is either in used stores or Ebooks, which is a shame, especially since they’re are still quite a few books that never got re-published, I guess it’s lights out people, the party’s over

it’s a shame, but there’s still plenty of books that I haven’t read yet that I can as Ebooks if I want to

anyway I was really intrigued by Funland so I decided to borrow my mom’s Kindle and read it that way, making this the first Ebook I’ve ever read

let me be straight with you guys, Laymon is far from high art, his books are unashamedly pulpy, the best way to describe them is they’re like 80′s horror movies in book form, I read for fun so this doesn’t bother me, but it may not be everyone’s cup of tea

so Funland tells the story of the titular boardwalk amusement park in the fictional Boleta Bay California, this park has a serious problem, it’s plagued by creepy homeless people (called “trolls” by the locals) who constantly bother people asking for change, especially at night

fed up with this is a group of teenagers led by a beautiful and blond (of course) lifeguard calling themselves the “great Billy Goat’s Gruff” who stalk the park at night and wait for a “troll” to ask them for change and then proceed to beat up and humiliate the troll in question as a way of hopefully scaring off the others, however what they don’t realize is that the park contains a dark secret related to the supposedly abandoned funhouse and it’s quite scary indeed

the book has a large cast of characters for a Laymon book, probably the largest out of all the ones I’ve read, the best of which is a young woman named Robin who’s a drifter that plays the banjo for money who wanders into the town (bad idea of course)

to be honest, there’s some stuff that I found kind of offensive in this one, it’s glaringly obvious that Laymon hates the homeless, like wants to stuff them all in a rocket ship and blast them to the moon hate, almost all the villains are the seemingly endless group of homeless that live in the town and almost all the horror stems from everyone’s inherit fear of them and their craziness and nastiness, none of the homeless are portrayed as sympathetic, the closest would be the drifter Robin, but it’s pretty quickly established that she’s not like “one of them” and the one character that does sympathize with them is a cartoonish stereotype of the “bleeding heart liberal” (which confirms what I’ve suspected for a while, that Laymon was a conservative, which is strange because I thought conservatives didn’t really approve of horror and gore and the like)

it’s pretty damn effective yeah, this is actually one of the scariest books that I’ve read by him, there’s plenty legitimately scary imagery and moments (like for example the fact that most of the homeless live under the board walk in the shadows and hiding, yeah, that’s creepy), but ya know it just seems a bit harsh to me, most homeless people are either mentally ill or drug addicts or people just plain down on their luck, yeah they might not all be lovable Boxcar Willie types, but still

but whatever, regardless of the books questionable morals it’s still trademark Laymon and one of his scariest, so I had a good time reading it

Jurassic Park and The Lost World by Michael Crighton

 

hey there, I’m finally back again and what can I say? the anime marathon just didn’t go too well, it turned out to just be too much of a time sink to try to cram in so much anime in so little time, but I still plan on watching anime one day at a more leisurely pace and I still plan on continuing this blog, so I figure I’d better write something just to show I haven’t died

anyway Jurassic Park is my generation’s Star Wars, as a 21 year old child of the 90′s I ate slept and breathed Jurassic Park as a kid, it is in fact the first movie I have a very vague memory of seeing in theaters way back in 1993 (can you believe it was almost 20 years ago?) I don’t think there was a boy alive back then who WASN’T a fan of Jurassic Park, like I said it’s pretty much the Star Wars of the 90′s, a huge grossing blockbuster adventure movie that was a big hit with kids and thus had a ton of toys

I must’ve seen Jurassic Park close to a thousand times in my lifetime, I watched my beloved VHS tape (which I still have) on an almost daily basis as a kid and sometimes more than once in a single day, whenever I was tired of playing and there was nothing good on tv, chances are Jurassic Park was going into the VHS player, I watched it so much as a kid that I started to do really weird stuff to mix things up, one of which was talking during the T Rex attacks and adding my own dialogue from the perspective of the pissed off T Rex, Mystery Science Theater 3000 style, I also did two things that I can’t for the life of me understand why, I once rented the tape (yeah, the tape I owned) from the public library and watched it, I think it was because I was so fascinated by the novelty of renting tapes from the library for some reason, the second time was when I watched it on thanksgiving night on NBC (although I think I quit because I got tired of the commercials)

so you can imagine that when The Lost World came out it was the biggest event of my life up until then, the idea of finally getting something NEW Jurassic Park related was mind blowing, of course I soon learned that it was nowhere near as good as the original, but I digress (I haven’t seen The Lost World in forever, so the recent Nostalgia Critic review was interesting)

ok so all these paragraphs are just leading up to the main event, which are reviews of the books, not the movies, unfortunately I haven’t actually watched Jurassic Park in over 6 years, I made a conscious decision to let some time pass and now I’m just waiting for the blu ray with bated breath, I’m so sick of waiting for the blu rays in fact that I decided to re-read the books of Jurassic Park and The Lost World

I first read Jurassic Park back in 2004 and I didn’t really get a whole lot out of it, it was in fact the first adult novel I ever read and I was pretty new to reading as a whole (I was the only kid who skipped reading Harry Potter), however this time as a much more avid reader coupled with how much of the book I had forgot, it was almost like reading it for the first time

so you know the story to Jurassic Park of course, during the 1980′s an eccentric billionaire named John Hammond spent tons of money on both a private island theme park and cutting edge genetic tech to clone dinosaurs, finally in 1989 (which was the year I was born interestingly enough) the park is just about ready, but nervous investors force him to give a tour to a group of qualified individuals to give their thumbs up to the park, do I really need to list the characters?

well long story short I had an absolute blast re-reading Jurassic Park, as great as the movie is, they left out a lot from the book, they still did an excellent job adapting the book, but as is often the case the book goes into waaaay more detail about things

there’s also tons of awesome sequences that feel like Michael Crighton wrote them with a movie in mind, there’s a lot more stuff with Grant and the kids out in Jurassic Park, including a part where they get on a river raft and the T rex swims out into a lake and tries to eat them! it’s like Jaws meets Jurassic Park, there’s also an aviary with dangerous Pterodactyls in it (which they did save for the crappy third movie)

generally there’s only one major character in the book that’s not in the movie, but some of the characters that die in the movie survive in the book and Vice Versa, you really don’t know what to expect, one of the biggest differences is the character of John Hammond in the book, in the movie he was a jolly old grandpa figure, one who had noble intentions, but was still blinded by his hubris and later realized his mistake, in the book however he’s way more sinister and not really sympathetic at all, he’s pretty much the villain

lastly what else is awesome about the book is it’s “deeper” than the movie if you know what I mean, I’m talking of course about the “chaos theory” of Ian Malcolm, which is touched on in the movie, but is the core of the book, there’s some really fascinating ideas and discussion in the book, which I found tedious when I first read it, but fascinating as an adult

overall is was great experiencing something that you loved and were so familiar with as a kid and on a different and deeper level, it really reignited my passion for Jurassic Park (I’m looking forward to the game)

next up is The Lost World and there’s not really a whole lot I can say about this one, it’s not terrible, but it’s not as good as the first book

the premise is clever, the whole Site B stuff, in the movie I think it was where they studied the behavior of the dinosaurs, but in the book it was actually where they created the dinosaurs in a huge factory sized laboratory (you see it takes a lot of tries to clone a dinosaur before you get one without any birth defects) and it has a small town where most of the staff lived

however the book doesn’t really do much with the idea, it’s just an excuse to get people on an island with dinosaurs again (no fences this time), it would’ve been more interesting if more secrets were revealed than just “this is where they made the dinosaurs and they had some trouble”, they could’ve at least explored the houses

I haven’t seen the movie in a long time, my clearest memory is the Nostalgia Critic review, but I can tell you the book is completely different, there’s no trip to San Diego at the end and instead of Ingen (which is bankrupt in the second book) sending a whole posse of guys to try to round up and capture dinosaurs with cool Humvees and stuff, it’s rival corporation Biosyn (ha, BioSIN, do ya get it?) that sends just three guys to try to steal dino eggs, which makes more sense, but wouldn’t sell as many toys I guess

that’s actually one of the coolest things about the book, in the first book Biosyn is the company that hires Nedry to steal the embryos and Lewis Dodgson is the guy that came up with the idea, Dodgson as you may remember was only in the “DODGSON! DODGSON! WE GOT DODGSON HERE!” scene in the first movie, but he plays a bigger role here and that’s cool

lastly the characters just aren’t as good as the first book, I’m not sure Ian Malcolm really works as the main character and there’s two more kids again that just feel unnecessary, by far the best character is Malcolm’s girlfriend Sarah Harding

overall while all of Jurassic Park keeps you on the edge of your seat, parts of The Lost World are kind of tedious, it does however have a cool finale that makes it worth reading

Silent Hill (the whole shebang)

so over December while waiting for Christmas I decided to replay Silent Hill 1-4 and play Shattered Memories, which I was meaning to play since it came out

I last played Silent Hill 1-4 in 2007 and had been planning on playing them again, but something inspired me to go ahead and do it, what exactly? well nothing other than The Real Silent Hill Experience http://www.youtube.com/user/TwinPerfectChannel

if you’re a big Silent Hill fan, this documentary will totally change your perception of the series, it’s sort of like “Penn and Teller Bullshit” for Silent Hill, in it three fans describe the stories of the games in what they believe to be the most correct interpretation possible and then express their thoughts on the past games, the current games and the series future, it’s pretty long, but well worth watching

so…..Silent Hill….what can I say? it’s a series that’s both well known and a cult classic at the same time (couldn’t that describe a lot of video game series though?) in case you somehow happen to be unaware of the series, the basic premise for it is this, there’s a town called Silent Hill somewhere in Maine, long ago it was a scared place for the local Native American tribe, who saw that the area had some sort of potent “spiritual power”, but then the white man came and over time that spiritual power became corrupt by an evil Cult that resides in the town, until the events of the first game cause all hell to break loose, the result is lots of scary shit, monsters and the town changing into what’s more or less hell

I wont go into too much detail for Silent Hill 1-3, but I will that say that they are excellent games that stand the test of time, some of the best games ever made in my opinion

even Silent Hill 1, which turns 12 years old this month, holds up well, it’s still scary, still fun and still worth playing, even the dated graphics have what I like to call an “old school charm”, the only downside is poor voice acting indicative of the era

2 and 3 hold up even better, 2, despite going on ten years old, still sports impressive graphics (it has great texture work and I find games that have that are the ones that age the best) and will scare the shit out of you, no matter how old you are, play it on hard and you WILL be afraid, very afraid

and 3, shit, the graphics in that game could almost pass for current gen, especially the character models

4 however is the black sheep of the Team Silent Silent Hills, while not a terrible game it suffers from being waaaaaay too tedious for it’s own good, it’s still worth playing for the story however

sadly after 4 the original Japanese developers departed and that’s where things go downhill

first you have the Silent Hill movie, which I haven’t seen since 2006, but I didn’t like it, I thought they took the premise and aesthetic of Silent Hill and made your average loud, unsubtle American horror movie out of it that fails at capturing the spirit of the games and throws in monsters from the game for simple fanservice even though story wise it makes no sense (Pyramid Head anyone?)

Silent Hill Origins and Silent Hill Homecoming I have not played recently, but I thought Origins was mediocre and hated, hated, hated Homecoming, man did I hate that piece of shit, it’s like a perfect guide for how NOT to do Silent Hill, plus it has terrible graphics with characters models that look like poor Xbox 1 quality stuff and is about as scary as an episode of “The Big Bang Theory”

so I had pretty much lost hope for Silent Hill, but then it was announced that Climax (the makers of Silent Hill Origins) were doing a remake of the original game for the Wii, needless to say I did not have high hopes and as the release date passed me by I contemplated just ignoring it

but wait! I noticed that it was actually getting good buzz over time and decided to dust off my Wii (literally) and give it a shot

and much to my surprise, I actually liked it

Silent Hill Shattered Memories proves that there is still some life left in the series, the guys at The Real Silent Hill Experience didn’t like it, but I’m not so sure their criticisms hold water, it’s the only part of the video that I totally disagree with

their biggest complaints was…

1. the game’s puzzles were too easy, while I agree that placing all the keys very close to the doors was dumb, they flat out ignore some of the really good true blue puzzles in the game, why?

2. they dislike that the game’s story and style is totally separate from the previous games, this is what I actually really liked about it, I think if Silent Hill is to continue on then the developers should be allowed to put their own spin on it instead of trying and failing to make it fit in with the stories of the other games

3. they dislike the psychiatry vibe and psychology system, I dug the psychiatry vibe myself, while I never really felt like the game was personally getting into my head, it’s still a spooky idea and gives the game a lot of replay value, plus I just enjoyed hanging out in the Dr’s office and performing his tests

4. they dislike the game being split into two parts, the exploration segments and the “ice world” segments where you’re chased by enemies, the exploration segments of the game were my favorite part, I loved exploring and finding the “memories” will my phone, uncovering all these subplots, most of which are totally separate from the main story, they add a lot of detail and attention to detail is something that was missing from Origins and Homecoming, it helps to think of the game more as an adventure game with segments where you can die

5. lastly they dislike the story because it only uses the same characters from the first game and the story is completely different, I will concede that the use of the characters from the first game feels a tad gimmicky (especially Lisa’s glorified cameo) I think the story gains something from playing with your expectations of the first game instead of just having totally separate characters

now I’ll be the first to admit that Shattered Memories aint got nothing on 1-3, but I still had a good time playing it and for me it shows that the potential is there for a western team to make a decent Silent Hill, now let’s see how the next one turns out

The Goonies

so here I am finally with my first movie review (something I may do more of in the future) and ah yeah, I’m talking about The Goonies

The Goonies is such a ridiculously lionized film among people around my age that it can be hard to separate the movie itself from it’s reputation (I find this to befall a lot of 80′s classics as a matter of fact), few kid’s films from the last 30 years inspire such warm feelings, it’s easy to see why it’s so well regarded because it really is a great movie

I really don’t need to explain the plot do I?

anyway it’s been a long time since I’ve last seen this movie and I consequently forgot most of the beginning of it, although I remember the movie after the kids reach the caves pretty well unsurprisingly, I of course saw this movie a bunch of times as a kid, I remember thinking it was one of the best movies I ever saw, second only to Jurassic Park (which I watched my beloved VHS of on an almost daily basis)

watching The Goonies you can see elements of all the lame kid’s movies to come afterward, but what makes The Goonies a classic is the simple fact that all the young actors deliver great performances that really make them seem believable as real kids, there is a little cussing (nothing worse than shit), but it only makes seem more believable because that’s how kids really talk, it’s also hilarious to see such a young Josh Brolin in the movie

lastly when they discover the pirate ship is such a great sequence, it’s comparable to when the main characters in the Hayao Miyazaki movie Castle in The Sky, it’s a fascinating and exciting place that makes you wish you could explore it yourself, all the skeletons on it who apparently died in a struggle tell an interesting untold tale and the fact that the whole ship is a real pre CGI set only makes it cooler, as a matter of fact I do wish there were more scenes of the kids exploring the ship

as a bonus I’ll throw in a quick review of another beloved 80′s kid’s movie The Monster Squad, like The Goonies, Monster Squad is a childhood favorite for many, but it also happens to be way more obscure than The Goonies, I never saw it as a kid and only just saw it for the first time earlier this year on blu ray, my overwhelming thought watching the movie was “man, I really would have loved this as a kid”, but it never played on television and I never stumbled upon the VHS in any video store, I’m actually curious how so many people managed to see this one as kids

it’s very hard to have an unbiased opinion on which movie is better since one I saw as a kid and the other I didn’t, but Monster Squad certianly holds it’s own against The Goonies and is rightfully regarded as a classic, for one thing Monster Squad is definitely edgier and more politically incorrect than The Goonies, it has just as much cussing, a scene where one of the kids spies on another kid’s teenage sister in her pink underwear (a scene I definitely would have found particularly fascinating as a kid), there’s even a scene where one of the kids flat outs shoots and kills one of the monsters with a shotgun! can you even imagine a scene like that in a modern kid’s movie? plus it treats the monsters (Dracula, The Wolfman, The Mummy, Frankenstein and The Creature From The Black Lagoon) as legitimately scary threats (save for when Frankenstein becomes friendly later on) and not just silliness

overall both are great, but I think I’m gonna have to give the nod to The Goonies for having a better score and better acting

Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt

imagine if you will, an insane mix of a classic late 90′s Cartoon Network show (Dexter’s Laboratory/ Powerpuff Girls/ Cartoon Cartoon) with Dead Lives, a dash of FLCL, a dash of Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi, a dash of Invader Zim and toss in elements of movies like American Pie and Ghostbusters and what do you get?

you get the hilarious and gloriously perverse Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt!

to describe the premise of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt will make me sound like I just got through smoking some of that reefer, but here goes, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt follows two girls, Panty who loves sex and spicy food and her sister Stocking who loves sweet food and candy, who live in “Daten City” and under the command of an afro’d priest named “Garterbelt” fight evil ghosts that infest the city by turning their underwear into weapons so they can obtain “Heaven coins” for….some reason

the American cartoon influence is pretty apparent, not only in the art style which perfectly blends east and western styles, but in the episodic format with two stories per episode, that is something that’s common in American toons, but I have never seen an anime that has two individual stories per episode, you really almost feel like you should be watching it on Saturday morning while munching on extremely sugary cereal, save for the constant toilet and sex jokes

now this is the first time in fact that I’ve ever followed an anime while it was being released on the internet (how behind the loop am I?) so I’ve only seen the first 7 episodes, but I’ve already fallen in love with this show, I love it’s unpredictable nature, you really have no idea what you’re gonna see next, whether it’s shit ghosts, puke ghosts, one episode even switches to “little Tokyo” has a bizarre art style caricaturing real life and let’s not forget the awesome villains Scanty and Kneesocks, bottom line this anime makes me laugh a lot, if Matrix was here, he’d laugh too

the cherry on top is the awesome techno soundtrack, I especially love the ending theme

so there you have it, Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt is awesome, I can’t wait for the remaining episodes