Instead of a longer post today, I’ll fire off a few miscellaneous items for your reading enjoyment.
I really enjoy Penny Arcade’s occasional “Cardboard Tube Samurai” comic strips. I think the most recent two part strip is especially good. Great stuff. (And as an unrelated side note, “occasional” is one of those words that I spell incorrectly every single time I use it.)
Michele and I saw The Village last night. I won’t spoil anything, except to say that I was mildly disappointed. It had some wonderful characters, interesting ideas, and a few moments of brilliance, but overall it just didn’t seem to come together quite as well as it should’ve. I left the theater thinking it would’ve made a really good short story, but not such a great movie. That said, I did enjoy it, and I’d recommend going to see it–it’s just not as good as it could’ve been. I have some more specific comments about it, but I’ll wait a bit until a few more of you have seen it before doing so, as it’s difficult to discuss the movie’s merits and flaws without spoiling some of the surprises.
Speaking of movies–every now and then, against my better judgment, I get excited about movies that I know are going to be horrible. Such is the case with Alien vs. Predator, which I’ve been reading about this morning. The odds of this being a good, or even halfway-decent, movie are astronomically low (Alien Resurrection, anyone?). But there’s just something about those aliens that keeps me coming back for more, despite the fact that the franchise is quite thoroughly past its prime. Go figure.
On to another, semi-related topic: Doom 3 is coming out soon, and I’m quite excited about it. I was even more excited this week to learn that it might even run on my computer. Genuinely scary computer games are few and far between (System Shock 2 and Undying being the two most frightening games I’ve played); it looks like Doom 3 might be a contender. We shall see.
I’ll close this post with a question: is there any pagan deity in the ancient world that even comes close to the coolness of Horus? I didn’t think so.
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The Village was tremendously disappointing to me. Like you, I thought the subject would have been better were it not a feature-length film, but rather a book. So my scorecard now shows Shyamalan flirting with the extraordinary, but periodically returning to the mediocre. (I actually liked the SciFi mockumentary, “The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan” better than the movie. :-/)
From all accounts of Doom 3, it sounds like:
– Multiplayer sucks (but it’s okay, since there are so many other good multiplayer games out there; Doom 3 is meant for fun single-player),
– Gameplay is quite good, but monotonous,
– Storyline and *feel* of the game is largely lifted from previous games (SS2, for one), and
– Everything is way too dark.
Since the only real reason I game anymore is to play online with friends, I’ll wait until this one hits the bargain bin. (Aw, who am I kidding… it’s not like I would actually keep up with the Joneses and buy a recent game. I’m still lamenting the loss/move from UT to UT2k3, nevermind that UT2k3 is SO passe now.)