The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition

A few years ago a friend of mine introduced me to The Curse of Monkey Island, the third game in the Monkey Island series of adventure games by LucasArts. It looked really fun, so I got a hold of the game and  have since played through it several times. A bit later I played the first game, The Secret of Monkey Island. It was very dated, as it was one of the first games LucasArts developed using their SCUMM engine; lots of chunky pixels and minimal sound. It was still quite fun, if maybe a little more difficult than number three.

Now, 19 years after the release of the cornerstone of this popular series, the classic has been given a new face. It’s still very much the same game, although the size in bytes has increased by a few factors of 10; new crisp artwork and sound overlays the original animation code to keep the feel of the game while making it seem much more current. The voices are the same as those in The Curse, which I’m pretty happy about.

The only difference in gameplay is the omission of the actions and inventory screens from normal play. In the original, they were always present, making interacting with the puzzles pretty easy, barring somewhat confusing pixels. Now you have to hit keys to bring up the two panes, although the actions can be accessed individually using keystrokes. Still, there is at least one point in the game that switching to the old interface (an awesome thing to be able to do) is pretty much necessary in order to solve a puzzle, since the new inventory screen always closes whenever you use an action on an item, no matter what. It’s a little annoying, but it makes room for the beautiful new art.

Even after playing it before, I still had to consult a walkthrough once in a while to get through it. Some of the solutions are just too clever for my feeble mind to conjure. Anyway, massive props to LucasArts for refreshing this classic. Go pick it up on the Steam platform  for a mere 10 smackers.

Public Enemies

So. Johnny Depp and Christian Bale. Can’t go very wrong there, can you? Not really.

This is a good movie. It is not a great movie. There’s a good amount of tasty gun fighting and some rather odd romance, and Depp is a great character actor as usual. Bale plays his part well, although it’s something of a lame part most of the time. The story is based on truth as far as I know, so that’s pretty neat.

However. The thing most people seem to be focusing on, including myself, is the use of new digital cameras in the filming. It is extremely noticeable. The frame-rate is much higher (at least it seemed so) than usual, so everything looked very real. You’d think this would be a good thing, and it’s probably what the cinematographers were going for; but it takes something away from the movie. It loses some of the fluidity that motion-blur brings to the big screen. This, coupled with a lot of the increasingly popular shaky-cam technique gave the movie an almost soap-opera look. A few sudden transitions and a bit of nasty sound editing also detracted from the experience.

Again, it’s a good movie. It probably would have been better if it weren’t one of the first films to use this new technology and had the resources to make it look good.

I’m looking forward to seeing Depp in the new Gilliam movie The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, including the late-great Heath Ledger in his final role.

Trine

Trine is a beautiful side-scrolling physics-based fantasy platformer puzzle game. Yeah, that’s a lot of adjectives, but that’s what it is. It feels a lot like Little Big Planet, although I can’t be sure since I’ve never played it. Being physics-based it has a lot of the same elements. Lots of see-saws and water-wheels all over the place. Another big part of the game is the significance of “Tri” in the name, which of course means three. You switch through three characters throughout the game, each with a separate and necessary skill-set. The one I used the most was the Thief, whose grappling hook helps a lot in getting around, and whose bow can eventually become a very powerful weapon. The next most useful character is the Wizard, who can move a lot of objects around with telekinesis and can also conjure up three different kinds of objects for getting around or kicking skeleton-ass. Finally, the Knight is your basic tank, although he dies pretty easily.

There are of course a variety of magical items scattered throughout the maps, and there is a rudimentary leveling system too. The game is pretty short so you don’t level that much, but each advance in levels brings some pretty cool new abilities and improvements. Getting to the items is often the most fun part of the game, as that’s where the trickiest puzzles come into play. You often need to use the Thief and the Wizard equally to solve them.

The only part I didn’t really enjoy was the finale, as it was one of those nasty rising-lava bits. Not a fan. Lots of dying. Still, it was a very fun and engrossing game over all. Thumbs up.

iwrestledabearonce – It’s All Happening

This band is fun. Lots of people hate them, and a bunch of people, including me, like them. The reason they are maligned is they don’t give a shit about those people. Their image tends to group them into the “uncool” kiddy-metalcore scene, which the tr00 metalers can’t stand. They also don’t stick to the 100% evil requirement of metal, so they suck.

I don’t think they suck, at least not most of the time. I suppose they primarily fit into the metalcore genre. However, they cram in stuff from the electronic scene, 80s pop, grindcore, and technical death metal. Not all that different in concept from the insane Japanese group Maximum the Hormone; just a bit more leaning toward the metal side. Also, all the vocals are done by a girl. Not a common thing in this kind of music. She’s pretty impressive most of the time. A little bit of the clean singing falls flat once in a while, but she does a great job on the grunts.

Their tagline is “Metal just got gay!” I don’t think this has anything to do with homosexuality, just the attitude; it’s not evil metal, it’s fun metal. Chaotic pummeling with interludes of cheesy pop. They have awesome track titles too, like “Tastes Like Kevin Bacon,” and “See You in Shell.”

Anyway, this album isn’t as good as their self-titled EP from last year, but it’s still quite enjoyable. Enjoyable enough that I actually bought it when I saw it on the shelf at Best Buy today. I’m gonna be rockin’ it in my new car tomorrow. Check it out if you don’t give a crap.

Mass Effect

I don’t think I’ve ever played a real RPG, and this is about as close as I’ve ever gotten. Bioshock is probably the next closest thing. However, just from this experience, I have confirmed my suspicions that a MMORPG or its ilk would completely destroy my life.

Mass Effect is mostly boring. There is lots of lame dialog exposing the seemingly massive collection of lore the studio dreamed up, and quite a bit of time is spent just getting from point A to point B, although I guess that can be fun sometimes. However, the RPG elements of self-improvement and decisions affecting your development seem to drag me in like a freakin’ Sarlaac. It could have something to do with the promise of hot blue alien sex, which was actually pretty disappointing.

I chose the Sentinel class, which turned out to be kinda lame; the only gun you can use with any accuracy is the pistol, and relying on “biotics” for all your combat doesn’t really work. I still managed to kick a lot of ass though. I seem to enjoy inventory management.

I had a few technical problems with the game; at one point a boss threw me off the map, and I just started floating around, unable to even access the save/load dialog. Also a few times throughout the game my gun would overheat and not cool down, forcing a save and reload, which can only be done in non-combat situations, requiring retreats. It even happened on the final boss, with no option of retreat. Thankfully I was able to avoid the overheating by waiting around a while before shooting. It still sucked though. These problems might have been fixed in a patch; I didn’t have any patches.

So, this game is really addicting despite the lame story and often boring mechanics. I stayed up until 7:30 AM last night playing this crap, and then spent most of today finishing it off. I will never play WoW.

Deathspell Omega - Fas - Ite, Maledicti, in Ignem Aeternum

"Divine law - Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire!"

Another black metal review. This album is from 2007, so it’s not breaking news or anything, but I was reminded of it a little while ago and remembered how awesome it is. Also, I haven’t reviewed anything from this fantastic band yet, which somehow seems wrong.

Deathspell Omega are a secretive group of metaphysical musicians with burning-church-loads of talent. They started out as an orthodox (i.e. lo-fi and rather crappy) black metal band out of France. Then a few years ago they started making good music, most notably with the most excellent three-track EP Kénôse. It was filled with avant-garde churnings of brutality, chaos, and somber ambience that left the listener dazed and amazed. Two years later, this album was released with a similar sound in 46 minutes of chaotic glory.

This is by no means orthodox BM. It’s dynamic as any classical composition. There isn’t very much structure to follow, but it flows very nicely when it isn’t tearing from one section to another and ripping your ears out (in a very good way). The vocals are top-notch for the genre, very much like the angry barking of some vicious dog. I don’t know what any of the lyrics are, but I’ve heard they are quite intelligent and philosophical, of course including the satanic themes ever-present in this kind of music. The title is actually a Latin translation of a line from the biblical book of Matthew, which is pretty neat.

Anyhow, the music is just too great. I’m generally not good at descriptions so I don’t think I’ll go any farther with it; instead, check out the opening track for a taste.

A Nothing Post from netbook land

I just got an Asus EEEPC and holy junk it's hard to type on this thing. There will be no more typing corrections past this sentence. I'm writing this post using WIndows Livce Writer because it was insalled by defaulkt on the machine , and I felkt likt etring it out. It seems pretty nice I guess, but I don't think it[s much better than using the bklogger interface,. I'm voing rto try putting in an image.

Seemsto work alrighyt. Maybe it is a little nicer; I guess I[ll leave it instlled for bnow,,. Bigday tomorrow, going to Virginia for an interviewwith Lockheed Martin. Wish meuck, dudes!

--edit--

Just installed Windows Live Writer on my desktop, as I’m actually a bit impressed with it. All you crazy bloggers can check it out here if you want. I’m not currently using any other Live software, but this is pretty nice. Kudos, MS.