my.bicycle

Peter Jackson’s new King Kong trailer. Very pretty. The movie-based game from Ubisoft is being made by the same team that did the excellent but woefully unappreciated Beyond Good and Evil.

Labels: games

If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2.
— A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope

In college I was a huge fan of Star Trek the Next Generation, but was still unable to overlook many of the episodes’ convenient glossing over of details. “If Guinan is on board, why don’t they ask her if she’s ever heard of this ancient race?” “It’s a science/math/memorization problem; why don’t they ask Data?” “Why are they taking a shuttle down? Did someone say something about the transporters? Are the transporters not working this episode?” It became a fun game among the truly devoted to try and come up with a set of circumstances, within “canon” in which the oversight actually makes sense.

That’s what this fan is trying to do with Star Wars, in reconciling the original movies with the arguably less-canon prequels.

Labels: games

Apple - Trailers - Wallace And Gromit - Were Rabbit: so happy this movie is en route. There’s a featurette on the making of it as well. Oh, bliss!

CHAIN REACTION: Japanese cosplayers cavorting in surprisingly appropriate-looking real world locations. Except maybe the train.

I have just noticed that iTunes 4.9 with integrated podcasting is now available. How cool is that?

Tsubuchi: test your schoolyard bad-boy kiai against all comers. (it’s a flash game)

Labels: games

The DOCTOR WHO Theme Remix Site includes a sassy Michael Nyman-esque version and a killer industrial one. (Warren Ellis)

11th Hour Art for Firefly: fan-based guerilla marketing for the SciFi re-airing of Firefly, and its upcoming Serenity movie. I had to bookmark these during a "bad wifi day" and can't remember where I first saw them. Only recently did I manage to see the first episode of Firefly, and it knocked my socks off. You know how the first episode of any Star Trek series sucks rocks because the characters aren't yet really defined? Didn't happen a lick. Very, very cool; let's give a communal raspberry to whatever forces kept this series from making it.

Common Tunes: community directory of free and legal music and video. Many of these are BitTorrent links, so "yay!" and some are .asx streams, which is kinda sucky, but hey. (I think this through Waxy)

Failmath offers a quiz challenging takers to recognize which gritty, realistic, urban brawler is which? I painstakingly filled in all the answers, and was dismayed at how hard it is to tell them apart. Which is right about when my net connection went down, and I can't be bothered to re-take the test now.

Labels: sf

Tom Cruise Kills Oprah (.mov) (waxy)

Grand Theft Auto III (GTA3) blew my mind. There were some game design issues, and the graphics were sub-average, but there was so much to do, and so few limitations how to do it, I really enjoyed trying to get through as near to 100% as I could manage. (The most memorable mission for me in GTA3 was killing the snitch in protective custody, after throwing a Molotov through his 2nd story window. The first time I tried it, he came jetting out of the garage and took off, and I lost him in the ensuing chase. The next attempt on the same mission, I lost him again. Finally I parked a semi in front of that garage, and when that door opened, they couldn’t get past the truck. I threw a bunch more grenades into that garage, and viola, mission cleared. I felt like all they’d have to do is release expansion packs for this game ad infinitum, and they’d have me permanently.)

GTA: Vice City came out not that long after its predecessor, but looks significantly better than GTA3. While Rockstar extolled the size of the game, all of the terrain was so flat as to make driving through it boring. In contrast, the third (and final) island in GTA3 was so hilly as to make navigation nearly impossible; Vice City overcompensated for this by seemingly performing a 10% scale on the Y-axis on all terrain. The addition of big name actors for voice talent was nice in the cutscenes, but I missed the voiceless protagonist from GTA3 -- I’d rather choose exactly how my character responds in a game that is so focused on freedom. Still, there were a number of additional sub-missions (R3) added to the game, and some balancing. Somehow though, with all the flat terrain, and over-attention to crassness overlaid on the ’80’s as a theme, I felt a bit distanced from the game.

GTA: San Andreas, somehow, has reversed this feeling, and I’m now back to thinking that I’ll buy more of the same as long as it’s not just more of the same. Maybe it’s the addition of non-urban locations, and how the countryside has been used to generate a feeling of SIZE that lends the whole game world more validity and immersiveness. Maybe it’s the way they’ve nailed the genuine feeling of location and made the popular gang-culture theme work in an interactive environment. Maybe it’s a dark sense of humor that pervades all the dialog, especially with the pedestrians. Maybe it’s the fact that they went back and re-thought some of the game mechanics and ramping that didn’t work in the last two, and revised game systems to make it all more accessible. Maybe it’s all this stuff put together. It’s been said before, more concisely than I’ve managed: “GTA is greater than the sum of its parts.”

It’s not perfect. I’m occasionally stunned at how primitive some of the graphics appear, and within that, some pretty lame glitches that destroy immersiveness. I’ve crashed the game three times, and encountered other bugs that have prevented me from completing missions. This happened 5 times in San Andreas before completing the game; it only happened once in Vice City. The new “girlfriend” missions are poorly explained, very frustrating in terms of progressing the completion gauge, and generally seem out of place. It is one of the worst-implemented features I’ve ever encountered in a game I otherwise love; I should simply thank my lucky stars that they had the common sense to remove the sexual intercourse mini-game. The new Burglary missions are repetitive, and don’t offer much reward. Speaking of repetitive, this new Fat-vs-Muscle workout thing is not frequently needed, but ’s a far cry from being fun.

Still, the places where they’ve improved gameplay subtlely have really impressed me. Unlike the last two games, the fact that money is useful and means something to one’s progress. Early missions are played for Respect only, forcing the player to find a way to fund his “ammo habit.” The variation in the lock-on distances for weapons make each of them feel very different, as opposed to having a powerful weapon that can’t be easily aimed (as in 3 and VC). The idea that doing things makes one better at them is cool, and has kept me playing during sessions where I’ve raised stats, rather than just reloading, which has increased my feeling of immersion. Oh, and having earned a very high Bike Skill means that I almost never fall of the mother-fucking-motorcycle, which was one of the lamest things about the implementation of motorcycles in Vice City — and what’s more, I feel like I’ve earned that skill. The previous games had the main character gradually suffering from increased enmity from rival gangs, making it increasingly difficult to impossible to complete some missions. San Andreas takes the reverse approach; it is common to face some opposition anywhere one goes early in the game, but through Gang Warfare, players can establish complete dominance over an area, eventually leading to complete ownership of all disputable territories.

In all, GTA: San Andreas is a fantastic installment in a groundbreaking series. One can only wonder what setting, and what change in scope will be managed for future installments.

(Largely written in January, prior to completing the game, and significantly prior to experiencing the even more progressive Mercenaries.)

Labels: games

Ambitious frog meets very small mouse. Warning: Things do not end well for the mouse.

Like French café musique? Like Rube Goldberg machinations? Like large, naked women in showers accidently killing cats when they deploy from said shower? You might like the animate (very) short film Le Building.

Dave Chappelle’s Grand Theft Auto follows on the heels of “real life” GTA and Counterstrike. (thanks, Chuji)

Shannon Wheeler is selling very neat-o jan-ken-po (English name is “Ro-sham-bo,” right?) T-shirts:

He’s also making girl shirts that are black with colored ink.

whitnail: I got my antimatter in Brooklyn

TOKYO — Classrooms in Japan wil be getting some Xboxes, but not for their typical purpose of playing games. Microsoft announced today that it will be donating Xbox consoles enabled with video chat capabilities to all elementary and junior high schools in Tokyo's Suginami ward for educational purposes, starting in late June.

A total of 80 Xbox units will be given out to 44 grade schools, 23 junior high schools, and eight other public facilities in Suginami. Microsoft hopes that its donations will help educate the children to become more IT literate. The consoles will allow Microsoft to teach the students how to use videoconferencing to take online classes and communicate with other Xbox Live-enabled schools.
— News at GameSpot: Xbox schooling Japan

80 Xboxes?! That is great news; in one pass MS will increase the number of Xboxen in use by 1600%!

Once, when Roger was a young boy, his father took him to an open day at Nellis AFB, out in the California desert. Sunlight glared brilliantly from the polished silverplate flanks of the big bombers, sitting in their concrete-lined dispersal bays behind barriers and blinking radiation monitors. The brightly coloured streamers flying from their pitot tubes lent them a strange, almost festive appearance. But they were sleeping nightmares: once awakened, nobody -- except the flight crew -- could come within a mile of the nuclear-powered bombers and live.

Looking at the gleaming, bulging pods slung under their wingtip pylons, Roger had a premature inkling of the fires that waited within, a frigid terror that echoed the siren wail of the air raid warnings. He'd sucked nervously on his ice cream and gripped his father's hand tightly while the band ripped through a cheerful Sousa march, and only forgot his fear when a flock of Thunderchiefs sliced by overhead and rattled the car windows for miles around.

He has the same feeling now, as an adult reading this intelligence assessment, that he had as a child, watching the nuclear powered bombers sleeping in their concrete beds.
A Colder War - a novelette by Charles Stross

There are bits of it that are ironically humorous but it is, in the lovecraftian vein, more realistic and nihilistic than any other running theme. And it's difficult to imagine more frightening a scope than the Cold War era weapons under discussion, unless it is the frightening, unnatural symbiosis proposed through governments and an interaction with That Which Man Was Not Meant To Know.

How cool would it be to have well-made adverts for games? Check out this French adverstisment for a well-known videogame (NSFW due to breastfeeding imagery).

Labels: games

In the opening sequence of the new Star Wars movie, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, two Jedi knights fight their way through an enemy starship to rescue a hostage. Ever since I saw the movie, I have been annoying friends with a trivia question: “Who is the enemy? What organization owns this vessel?”

We ought to know. In 1977, we all knew who owned the Death Star (the Empire) and who owned the Millennium Falcon (Han Solo). But when I ask my question about the new film, everyone reacts in the same way: with a sudden intake of breath and a sideways dart of the eyes, followed by lengthy cogitation. Some confess that they have no idea. Others think out loud for a while, developing and rejecting various theories. Only a few have come up with the right answer.
— Neal Stephenson: Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out, New York Times (reg. req.)

ArmJoe is a free, 2D fighting game based on Les Miserables. Loosely based. There's a mini-Cooper in one screenshot. Pretty sure there weren't any British cars in revolutionary France.

Labels: games

Flickr Pool: The Entrance to Hell (4rthur)

In particular I like the battered turnstyles that look like it may lead to a car garage or an old carnival.

Charles Stross’ new novel, Accelerando! is available as a free download under a Creative Commons license.

Check out this interesting trailer for Civilization IV. Has this aired in the USA? Or is it a web-only ad? (thanks, TimK)

“Tokyo has been my handiest prop shop for as long as I've been writing: sheer eye candy. You can see more chronological strata of futuristic design in a Tokyo streetscape than anywhere else in the world. Like successive layers of Tomorrowlands, older ones showing through when the newer ones start to peel.”
— William Gibson, essay: My Own Private Tokyo (thanks, Timmeh!)

http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Download an unreleased Brian Eno soundtrack for a Derek Jarman film. I think it's a time-limited offer though.

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog covers the coverage and Michael Jackson supporters at the courthouse. (.mov)

Labels: comic, music

“Lucas missed the opportunity to tell a real story of a descent into evil. He could have created a Jedi order where the dark side was always present, always being played with by disobedient apprentices. The way normal teens are. Anakin could have had his own grand vision of how to make the galaxy better, not the muddled brief lines he says. Lucas could have studied better real men who became evil, or #2 evils, and their paths to it.

Instead he picks the plot that he does it for love. Problem is, due to poor acting and directing and dialogue, it’s a love the audience doesn’t believe in. Ditto for Padme dying of a broken heart, again it’s a broken heart we don’t believe in. Instead should should have died from complications from a crushed trachea. (I guess she couldn’t name the kids if she were on a respirator.)”
— Brad Ideas: Gotta have a Revenge of the Sith Review

A pro-Iraq war US congressman who campaigned for French fries to be renamed 'freedom fries' is now calling for US troops to return home from Iraq.
BBC NEWS: “Freedom fries” lawmaker’s U-turn

I have been expecting a shift in the sensibilities of the non neo-con contingent for some time. I think that the real republicans still have a conscience, and are more interested in America as a country than in empire building and adventurist military campaigns.

Check out Ken Kutaragi’s new PS3 Grill!

Hippocamp’s “Pet Sounds” now be on Banned Music. It is a mash-up style project of the Beach Boys’s Pet Sounds with a reconsidered electronic setting.

Labels: mashup

It appears that the very poorly implemented girlfriend gameplay in GTA: San Andreas at one point might have included a “Stop in for Coffee” minigame (arguably NSFW). (gamespot)

Labels: nsfw

Accomplished and thorough re-appropriation of sprite animations in Mortal Kombat vs. Street Fighter. (tokyopia forum)

A beautiful gallery of various MOC Lego by bricklovinfreakboy, including some drool-worthy fuchikoma from Ghost in the Shell. (waxy)

I may have never seen a tougher looking town than these real life shots of thug life in Nigeria.

Check out Straight Line Designs - Unique Furniture, blending art, functionality, and a sense of humor in their work. I want every other piece shown.

David Lynch reads you a weather report. Really.

Edit: But not today, apparently. Weird.

Who knew underarm protection could be so active? Check out a day in Stunt City. (.mov) (waxy)

The wave of anti-Japanese sentiment in China continues, more than a month since the first round of demonstrations against the Japanese government's approval of a controversial school textbook flared throughout the country. Diplomats and politicians on both sides have been trying to diffuse tensions in a flurry of meetings and shuttle diplomacy, but so far these methods have had only limited effect.

At this point, it might seem that a miracle is required to put bilateral relations fully back on track.

Saaya Irie, an 11-year-old Japanese girl, may not be that miracle, but she has clearly played a part in pacifying a certain segment of China’s population, according to Shukan Bunshun.

If anything about Saaya is miraculous, it’s her body -- she wears an F-cup bra, though she has yet to reach her teens. So when a photo of her in a bikini was posted on a Chinese Internet forum called “100,” she immediately caused a sensation.
The Japan Times Online

YOKOSUKA, Kanagawa — Despite having labeled a man as “worse than a pervert” for performing indecent acts on his 7-year-old daughter and then e-mailing images of his deeds to friends, a judge allowed him to walk free.
‘Pervert’ avoids jail despite incest conviction: Mainichi News

PukiGame is the trench sequence from the old Star Wars arcade game, combined with evil tiki dolls. [joystiq]

Labels: games

One reason being the wireless nature of multiplayer games is verboten on a plane; another good reason is that Bomberman DS allows you to throw a bomb in it by shouting “BOMB!”

...and if you can find them, maybe you can hire some Mercenaries.

While I’m tempted to wait until after writing my review of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, especially since the two games are so similar, I am having too much fun in the game right now to resist talking about it while it is still available on shelves. Admittedly, this is somewhat selfish; it is my fervent hope that Pandemic will be given a chance by Lucasarts to make a sequel to the game, and if there’s any way I can push a few extra sales of the game to happen, so much the better.

Mercenaries has been called “Grand Theft Auto: Pyonyang” and that’s pretty accurate. The basic gameplay mechanic of a 3rd-person, over-the-shoulder camera, while alternately running around on foot or driving/piloting any vehicle you can find your way into, is the same. However in this, its first iteration, Mercenaries offers numerous changes in the execution that make it an evolutionary improvement over what GTA has accomplished in three (or five, if one counts the top-down GTAs).

First and foremost among these improvements is the breadth of freedom in achieving mission goals. The last two GTAs have found the player led through a series of scripted goals, A then B then C, and a lengthy trip back to the boss to restart any mission, as well as re-arming or reloading the game to deal with equipment loss. In Mercenaries, each mission consists of one or more goals, some of which can be achieved only with difficulty, or at the sacrifice of subtlety in the need for efficacy. Achieving the more difficult goals awards appropriately higher bounties. There are frequently additional goals added during the course of a mission, which can be completed for extra cash, or left unaddressed with no detriment to the progress of the game. Best yet, if the mission fails, a penalty-free Retry Mission option is displayed, taking the unnecessary and un-fun mechanics out of the loop, and allowing players to get right back into it.

While the post-GTA3 installments of that game basically start from a premise that the game is perfect, and the only benefit that can be added is larger size, more mini-goals, and simple fine-tuning, Mercenaries clearly isn’t adopting that conceit as a given. So many of the fundamental gameplay elements that remain unaddressed after three iterations in that game have been re-thought and implemented better in Mercenaries. Were I at Rockstar North, I’d be thinking about recruiting those Pandemic designers for some fresh insight.

If you have enjoyed GTA, or if you thought you’d like it but had avoided it due to the gangsta-flava, check out Mercenaries right quick. It’s way good.

Labels: games

But Lucas doesn't care about his script, under which gelid wodge of pork fat he immures the cast, especially Natalie Portman. They suffer like the damned frozen beneath Cocytus, mouthing clunking, mud-brick dialogue — “wooden” dialogue is several TLs above this stuff — that Nat Levine would have cut in a heartbeat from any serial on the Republic lot. (Lucas’ admitted fondness for Republic serials may be why he retains such power and skill in twenty-minute action sequences with no dialogue more complex than “Open all ports and drag fins!”) Only Ewan McGregor and Ian McDiarmid, in the great tradition of British paycheck-cashing thespians, force their heads above the goo long enough to actually act, if one classifies McGregor’s by now blatant (and obviously intentional) Alec Guinness impression as acting.

At first, it seemed like he did. Lucas started the story with A New Hope in the middle of things -- in medias res, a time-honored literary device that served Homer and Vergil (among others) well. It just drops you into the action and expects you to keep up, a little exposition from Menelaus here, a little flashback action to the fall of Troy there, and everything eventually comes into focus. Lucas didn’t give us a whole lot of background on Vader, because he didn’t need to; Vader is the enemy, he’s all in black, and once we find out that he turned evil (versus being born that way), and that he’s Luke and Leia’s father, voila, depth. It could have stopped there, and probably should have.

Hardcore cosplayers in the Batman oeuvre at Gotham Public Works. Oddly, I find the comic book inspired version of Catwoman does more for me than the Tim Burton movie version. Meow! (sdemory)

Labels: comic

Kotaku is running size comparison pictures of all the next-generation iron. Unless Kutaragi is four-fee-tall, that PS3 looks pretty damned big.

Ooh, and Joystiq has a shot of the first Xbox next to the 360.