Frinkiac

Slate has a blog written by the women form the site called “The XX factor”.  While the other blogs on the site have a specific theme, this one basically just seems to be “here’s a bunch of stuff written by women”.   There’s nothing wrong with this on the surface, but when it leads to a post as stupid and uninspired as this one, well maybe they should come up with a better theme.

Let’s start with the basic premise, that David Cook (who apparently won American Idol) is a lot like Barack Obama.  Now, I have not seen a single episode of American Idol this season, but from this article and the accompanying picture, I can tell the following things about Cook: he’s in his twenties, he’s a singer, he’s got a fairly stupid goatee, and he’s white.  So far, I’m not really seeing the similarities.  Fortunately, the author provides us with her reasoning:

Both come off as sweet, good guys, but Cook is older and decidedly cooler. He’s a baby-faced rocker from just outside Kansas City whose performances have been unreliable. One week he’s awesome and the next so-so. He’s mostly cheerful but sometimes moody and glum and seems to expect to lose.

So, he’s older, cooler, less reliable and sometimes moody.  Man, it’s like I’m seeing double!  Four Obamas!

Continue Reading »

Sometimes I think I’m massively out of touch with mainstream gamers’ tastes.  A large part of this alienation is because I grew up as a PC gamer, and so I missed out on a lot of the original console games that gamers look back on fondly (and I have fond memories of a totally different set of games).

Perhaps the most egregious example of my out-of-touch with mainstream taste is the Metal Gear Solid series.  I bought MGS2 back in the day for the PS2 and almost immediately gave up on it.  I got that the game was wonderfully detailed and that lots of effort had gone into it, but the central gameplay just felt clunky to me, and the ridiculous story wasn’t exactly compelling either.

When MGS4 was announced, I was heartened to hear that they’ve decided to change around the control scheme and camera systems to make it “more accessible to Western gamers” (to be honest, I found the whole thing to be kind of an admission that the game was broken before).  Perhaps, I thought, I could finally see what all the fuss was about.

After this trailer, though, I’m not so sure.  That’s the new theatrical trailer for MGS4, and to me it looks like shit.  People on message boards are awed and amazed (see the response here), so it’s probably just my own hangups, but the cheesy narration, the terrible voice acting, and the ridiculousness of the plot don’t inspire me with confidence that MGS4 will do anything to change my opinion about the series.

Goddamn do I love me some 30 Rock.

The summer movie season kicked off last weekend with Iron Man, which I have helpfully reviewed on the wiki.  It’s a film that succeeds because of the central character and the performance given by Robert Downey Jr.  It’s also a film that’s considerably better when showing Tony Stark than it is when showing Iron Man.  This is a trait is shares with Batman Begins, and as in that case, it makes me nervous about the sequels.  With the origin story out of the way, the sequel will presumably focus on Iron Man’s exploits, which were some of my least favorite parts of this film.  Hopefully they can either improve those portions or find a way to make the next film focus on Tony Stark as well, because as long as it’s focusing on Stark, Iron Man is a very successful movie.

I had some elaborate buildup for this video planned, but screw it.  Go here and check out the trailer for Mirror’s Edge.  I’m not sure if the whole first person parkour thing will work out, but goddamn it creates an impressive video.  If possible, download the HD version.

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up Prey for $5 off of steam.  Prey is perhaps most well known for being in development for a ridiculously long time, turning into vaporware, and then being revived, being released, and actually being pretty good.  It’s a first person shooter that’s fairly straightforward except for its use of “portals” and its screwing around with gravity.

The portals works pretty much the same as those in the game Portal, except that sometimes here they’re embedded into objects in the game world, which can give you the very odd sensation of walking “into” a crate and winding up in a different room.  The gravity-screwing stuff comes in the form of magnetized walkways which allow you to walk along walls or ceilings, and occasional buttons which change the orientations of rooms, and allow you to traverse previously impassable places.

This stuff is notable, but by far the most standout thing about Prey is how disgusting it is.  The entire game takes place in an organic alien spaceship, and you might think that giant pulsating veins and gooshing sounds everywhere you step would be enough to get that across.  You would be wrong.  Instead, you get those things and also sphincter doors, sphincters that barf on you as you pass, sphincters that disgorge gibs (it’s a sphincter cornucopia!), and creatures that emerge from … well take a look (note: it might not be a great idea to look at that picture if your boss is over your shoulder.  it’s technically safe for work, but …).

I have to say that the game is fairly clever in its level design, it’s never frustrating, and it’s got good variety.  Also, it certainly sticks to its “gooey and disgusting” aesthetic, all the way down to organic guns, but I still can’t quite figure out what went through the designer’s minds when they made some of this stuff.

Having recently obtained Assassin’s Creed from Gamefly, I figured it was my responsibility to review it. I have done so, but I’m still not positive exactly how I feel about the game. There are moments, even stretches, of greatness in the game, but there’s also a thick layer of repetition and annoyance. I would say that for the first 4-5 hours the game is very, very good, for the next 4-5 hours it’s good, and for the last 4-5 hours it’s maddeningly monotonous.

It’s annoying because there are a lot of things about this game that I think people should experience. The free-climbing, when it works, it exhilarating in a way that’s rare to experience in a video game. The large, open world and detailed cities are spectacular to visit, the setting is unique in gaming, and the combat is not your usual action game fare. Unfortunately, most people won’t get those experiences because of the repetitiveness and glitchiness of the game.

Assassin’s Creed has one of the worst reputations I’ve ever seen online, and I think that’s a bit unfair. It’s not a terrible game by any stretch of the imagination, and it’s certainly more interesting and ambitious than 90% of the stuff out there. It’s not a completely successful game, but it deserves some consideration for how much it attempts and how much it manages to get right.

Looking at the number of replies to the previous two days posts, it’s clear that you guys want more HD to DVD comparisons and fewer rants about crazy Japanese architects. Let it never be said that I don’t pander to my audience.

The subject today is The Fifth Element, a fine 1997 film from Luc “La Femme Nikita” Besson. The Fifth Element, in addition to being a very weird film, also introduced many of us to Chris Tucker and is therefore partially responsible for the Rush Hour films. Despite this, I have a soft spot in my heart for the film because it’s completely ridiculous and pretty damn entertaining.

Continue Reading »

Reading this story about two architects and their ridiculous house (note: NYTimes, so login required), I started off annoyed and became more infuriated as I went along. I suppose this is a particularly severe reaction, but really the level of bullshit here is almost too much for one man to handle. The story, about a house designed to “oppose death” is just ridiculous on every single level.

Here’s the full intro to the article:

THE house is off-limits to children, and adults are asked to sign a waiver when they enter. The main concern is the concrete floor, which rises and falls like the surface of a vast, bumpy chocolate chip cookie.

But, for Arakawa, 71, an artist who designed the house with his wife, Madeline Gins, the floor is a delight, as well as a proving ground.

As he scampered across it with youthful enthusiasm on a Friday evening in March, he compared himself to the first man to walk on the moon. “If Neil Armstrong were here, he would say, ‘This is even better!’”

Continue Reading »

I have quite an extensive collection of DVDs. At last count, the number was somewhere north of 700. The sad part (well having 700 DVDs might be sad in itself, so let’s say the sadder part) is that I paid full price for the vast majority of these DVDs, and with the release of HD formats, they’re suddenly obsolete.

Or are they? I decided to take a look into what really is the difference between those DVDs and the new HD discs. Obviously, I can only compare films I own on both formats. It’s fortunate, then, that my reckless spending, while driving my wife and I into the poorhouse, has given me a relatively good selection of “double-dips”. Using these discs, I decided to do a little work and make some comparisons.

Continue Reading »