GTA V is coming, and we've got a smatteing o' movie news and other things...
Image found here.
Rockstar released a trailer for "Grand Theft Auto 5," which is remarkably safe for work and relatively violence free. I got fairly deep into GTA IV, but due to time and a strong eventual hatred for Cousin Roman calling you in the middle of missions and having his feelings hurt when you told him (while under a hail of gunfire) that you didn't want to go bowling. Believe it or not, it was the first GTA game I'd ever played, and I immediately discovered that the world worked in an odd way after having fired my various weapons several times in an apartment building during a mission without any apparent consequences. After said mission was over, I wondered if a door on the top floor that looked locked could be "shot" open, so I pointed whatever handgun I had at the door and fired, which immediately resulted in three-out-of-five stars worth of attention from the police. This was followed by discovering that the cops would come after you for a great many things, but driving over 100 mph down the center line of a street wasn't one of them. G4TV has a closer look at the trailer, with an interesting image down the page of what appear to be characters from previous games, including a hard-luck Niko Bellic. We'll see how its more serious (and I never thought that would really apply to GTA) sandbox does against the third "Saint's Row" game, which appears to be more of a "let your id go berserk with a hip-hop soundtrack for company" kind of item.
I also gave over a couple of hours to a purchase from the recent Halloween sale on Steam. I picked up a bundle of games from the (warning: violent trailer) "F.E.A.R." franchise. I liked the premise of being part of a kind of paranormal spec-ops team. The first game came with high ratings from critics, so I gave it a whirl. If you like first-person shooters, it delivers on combat. The foes are fairly same-y (most are soldiers, after all), but they actually employ some decent tactics, flanking, and have a habit of chucking grenades at you if you don't get a move on. I also liked how explosions and bullets that hit the scenery could obscure your line of sight with airborne debris for a time (though why didn't anyone equip me with night vision?). It did seem odd that my organization, which deals with the paranormal, didn't question me about the visions I was having. This may be due to my mute avatar probably not bringing it up, which should be against the policies in the employee handbook. The really big adjustments one might have to make for this game consist of not being able to carry every type of gun along with variable destructibility and usability of the game world. You get only three guns in your inventory, and you have to decide which you want to carry (you also dump any ammo for a gun when you swap it out for another one). Early on, this is difficult without some kind of guide or knowing if you'll be able to scrounge enough bullets from your foes for a given weapon. The second thing one has to get used to is all the boxes, crates, garbage cans, desks, and other items I'm accustomed to opening or smashing in a quest for goodies. You're lucky if these mostly indestructible background elements move when something nearby explodes. All in all, it's a fun trigger-puller with a telepathic psycho villain and a spooky ghost-girl running about. It was worth the six bucks.
Some quick movie stuff, starting with:
- Carmen Sandiego being turned into a live-action movie. Some obvious jokes about that include ones about the studio constantly finding lost footage, and the trailer premiering at the "Where in the World is the Carmen San Diego Comic Con."
- Garret "TRON: Legacy" Hedlund has formally been offered the lead in "Akira." With the budget having shrunk so much, maybe it'd be cheaper if they contracted an animation studio somewhere in Asia to make it into a cartoon, instead?
- The head of Universal Studios got very honest about some of the bad movies his studio has put out.
- A full length trailer for "Underworld: Awakening" has been released. I guess Beckinsale's character was still a vampire at the end of the first movie (I thought it was a bit ambiguous). They've also gone down the road of the (alert: TVTropes) half-human hybrid, which is kind of a given, like how,over time, the odds of aliens or the supernatural appearing in a webcomic gradually approaches one. :)
I almost hoped that, what with the "true confessions about bad movies" and so many big, dumb films not doing so well at the box office, we might be getting back to more thoughtful (and that's not too hard) fare. However, if one looks at (language warning) Michael Bay, By The Numbers, it's easy to see that big & dumb rules, especially if it explodes. I don't suppose anyone could make "Shakespeare with Explosions?"
My own self has been having fun with the script for the next ps238 book. It's about 84, and her unwilling rise to prominence among people with her Flight, Invulnerability, Speed, & Strength powerset. At the moment of this post, the villain I'm using comes from Slavic mythology, as does the "quest MacGuffin" that 84 and her companions have to find. I found that site doing a random search, hoping to find folklore that wasn't in terribly common use, so I'd have more freedom to embellish and/or "get it wrong." It wasn't until after I'd started that I realized I was using the same general pantheon that made such a prominent appearance in Neil Gaiman's "American Gods," though I don't recall him using Volos/Veles or Koschei the Deathless. A lot of new adult heroes will show up, and (for the moment) I plan to have a special guest appearance from Baba Yaga, just because I can. She even gets to be a bit of a sage instead of a scheming monster (though I imagine it's not by choice. Grin). I'm also enjoying going back to the "logic" of magical puzzles, misleading or cryptic directives from powerful supernaturals, and having a few seasoned heroes figure out that there's more to this young lady with the number on her chest than meets the eye.
I also realized, when writing a few more F.I.S.S. characters in, even as background, that I'm going to have to tread delicately around whoever was unlucky enough to be the 69th one. The only one that might be considered even less fortunate is 52, but that's only if they run into fans of the old "Herbie" movies.
Now I need to figure out a third puzzle/obstacle for 84 and company to confront before I hit the sack. Here are a few items that are probably less taxing to the psyche:
- If I ever get around to signing up for a Twitter account, the first person I'm following is Simon Pegg, and his daughter, if she can type.
- While I appreciate that small robots that can scurry into dangerous areas are helpful and life-saving, the next step for engineers is to make them look like something that doesn't make me regret not owning a flame-thrower.
- This next Tumbler blog is kind of like the IgNobel of helpful magazine advice. Life! Death! Top Tips! gives us problems that really aren't and solutions that are often anything but.
- Pursuit of Hat is a puzzle-platformer that might be cutely disturbing to some. Your doughy creature must retrieve his bowler on every level, and can pull apart bits of his body to accomplish this task.
- AOL still has 3.5 million dialup subscribers. I still have two shrink-wrapped AOL CDs, but that's because one has Darth Vader on the package and the other has Captain Jack Harkness.
- In case you missed it, (spoiler warning) Marvel Comics did something unpleasant to Thor. Don't worry, he's got movies coming up, so I'm sure he'll be fine. And no, he's not a frog again.
- There's got to be either a good story or an amazing coincidence behind the poster for the next Sherlock Holmes movie.
- After the passing of Steve Jobs, October 16th was declared "Steve Jobs Day" in California. Fewer noted the passage of John McCarthy, and this is a page about why he should get his own day, too.
- I'm sure someone out there knows what this device is called, but whatever it is, it plays Radiohead's "Paranoid Android via a strip of taped-together lettuce festooned with holes.
- Kid-book Batman is pretty awesome. Click on the other works boxes on the right for more of what looks like DC versions of old "Golden Book" illustrations.
- So now there's a Lovecraftian RPG system that uses dominoes as a game mechanic. Who's up for writing a fusion of this system and the poker-deck-using "Deadlands?"
- Two blog posts in a row featuring games about sleepwalking. If I had a therapist, this would probably cost extra. Anyway, here's Good Night, Mr. Snoozleberg, a game where you have to manipulate/move stuff to keep your sleepwalking diplomat from meeting an unfortunate end.
- The future is here, and it's brought laser surgery that can change your eye color permanently. The Fremen are reportedly unimpressed.
- Much like the head of Universal, above, Jonathan Frakes is honest about how much he didn't like the "Enterprise" finale.
- And we close with Sticky Ninja Academy, a game where you click and drag to change the power/angle of your ballistic ninja before launching him against enemies, things that go "smash," and so forth.