PAX

If you couldn’t tell from my lack of posting, life has been rough lately. But not yesterday. Yesterday was a good day.

Yesterday was the first day of the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX). I’ve never been before, but this year I’ve been plugged into more gaming blogs and the more I learned about PAX the more interested I became. What totally sealed the deal for me was this adorable story about Gabe attending a Pokemon tournament (and the warm fuzzy follow-up). These guys and their web comic are hardcore yet laid back gamers - people like me. PAX is basically a party by gamers for gamers. And I am so into that.

I’m fortunate enough to live in Seattle, so getting to PAX is cake for me. I distinguished the usually common walk downtown by grooving to some 8-bit remixes on my Zune. Upon arriving at the convention center I was immediately struck by how the place was swarming with my ilk. My heart swelled to see so many good people (albeit a bit pale) coming together to geek out over something they love so much. I guess it’s a sign of how stressed I’ve been to say that I wanted to get all teary at the sight of a whole bunch of gaming geeks milling around.

I wasn’t at the convention for more than ten minutes before I got to play Rock Band (priorities are priorities, after all). I was there early before the line got totally ridiculous plus I got bumped up to fill out a group of three that needed one more. They were sitting there, ready to go, but looking so sad because they had no lead guitarist. And I, like a true guitar hero, raised my hand as if to say “I will save you!” The song was Learning to Fly by the Foo Fighters, the difficulty was Hard (I didn’t have the balls to try out Expert on a new song in front of a crowd that large), our drummer kinda sucked (props to him for trying ), but it was totally awesome.

The Rock Band guitar feels a less solid in heft than the Guitar Hero one, although it looks way cooler. The strum has a lip to it, giving it more grip than the Guitar Hero triangle of slipperiness. The fret buttons don’t stick out, making them feel a little more like piano keys than buttons (which I think made them feel more substantial and a bit easier to slide over). I didn’t get a chance to try out the mysterious high frets. The whammy bar feels like a real whammy bar, and the guitar has an actual effects switch. If you ignore the fact that it’s way too light and seems to be made of too many pieces, it totally feels like a Fender Strat.

As that I was playing lead guitar, I didn’t really get much of a chance to feel out the drums or vocals. But the guitar portion was more or less exactly what you get from Guitar Hero. It might have just been due to my virgin run on the song, but it felt like the timing was a little more critical than what I’ve grown used to. The fret UI indicators also don’t seem to stand out as well (either in size or color) compared to Guitar Hero, but again that could just be me resisting change. All in all it felt like a solid round of Guitar Hero but with a whole band behind me.

Totally aglow from my rock experience, I wandered the show floor a bit longer until I found the Wii section… complete with playable Metroid Prime 3. I had to wait in line a bit for this one, which was made extra painful by how bad the guy was in front of me. I don’t mean to be too critical, but we weren’t resetting the demo after each player so I had to start off wherever he stopped - totally lost, 5 minutes in the opposite direction from where the action was. So I didn’t get to sample a great deal of the combat. But I can say that the controls are really smooth. This was my first real Wii shooter, so I can’t say how it compares to other games, but I can say that I never felt like I was fighting the controls. The pan regions on the edge felt a little sticky, but by the end of my run I was already compensating for that and moving around like a champ. I did spend a large time staring at a grapple point, frantically trying to figure out what button to press… until I realized that you grapple with a totally hot nunchuck gesture. Apparently I was making it waaay too complicated by thinking in terms of “buttons.”

I wandered the floor for a bit longer, and on my way out I just happened to catch the keynote. I hadn’t planned on attending, after all what does Wil Wheaton have to say that I need to hear? But I’m totally glad I went, because the speech was awesome. He basically just talked about his life of being a gamer, from dumping his allowance into the arcades to playing Guitar Hero with his kids. He was witty, funny, and completely relatable. And again I was strong by a great sense of camaraderie for all my fellow gamers filling out that theater.

I finished off my evening with wine, steak, and DotA. Unfortunately those people online didn’t seem to have heard Wil’s “Don’t be a dick” message, but it was still a pleasant way to end a pretty awesome day.

Ocean's Thirteen

We love thieves. Not some dude who breaks into your car or pulls a gun on you in a dark alley. Those guys suck. No, we love heist-pulling, safe cracking, masterminding, acrobatically flipping, car chasing thieves. You know, the kind that only exist in movies. They act a whole lot like Bond, all classy, sneaky, and above the law. But instead of saving the world they’re sticking it to the man whilst serving themselves.

Ocean’s Eleven was a great heist film. A big fancy pants cast with a nice elaborate heist and just the right amount of twists, all set to great music… what’s there not to like?

Ocean’s Twelve I didn’t care for as much. It was fine, but it got a little too elaborate and twisty for my tastes. Plus it lost the unifying goal of nailing the casinos - a villain that we can all easily unite against.

Ocean’s Thirteen is a return to the first movie. We’re back in Vegas, although this time we’re sticking it to Al Pacino instead of Andy Garcia. There are still twists, but not to the extent of “everything you saw in the last 30 minutes was a lie.” The scale is much more reasonable… well except that whole business with the Chunnel drill. The result is that the film doesn’t have a mega climax with everything is being turned on its head left and right. But I really don’t have a problem with that, I love it when a plan comes together. Instead of being on the edge of your seat, Ocean’s Thirteen is more like a laid back music video. Pleasant sights and sounds, not too much thinking, but satisfying.

Hot Fuzz

Created by the same people (and sharing some of the same cast) as Shaun of the Dead, I was totally excited for Hot Fuzz, even though I didn’t know anything else about it. Which is dangerous, because coming into a movie with expectations of any kind is basically asking for trouble. But Hot Fuzz totally delivered, and is definitely the best movie I’ve caught in the theater in a long time.

Although Hot Fuzz covers different subject matter than Shaun of the Dead, they are very similar in that they succeed at both honoring and satirizing their respective genres. Just as Shaun of the Dead made a good zombie film, Hot Fuzz is a good action film. It makes good use of the same sort of rhythmic tension building transitions that Shaun had, and the action scenes are simultaneously awesome and hilarious. The characters also get a good amount of development, and are very different characters from Shaun, even though the actors are the same. It’s a movie that manages to be many things, but the one thing that it never compromises on is being flat out fun. Seriously, it was awesome - go see it.

The movie was preceded by a trailer for another Simon Pegg movie. And although the trailer pretty much told me nothing, I’m already excited to see more.

Why We Fight

It’s been entirely too long since my last post. Work has been very demanding lately, and it’s left me tapped. All my critical thinking has been dedicated to my professional life. And I’d bore you with that, but I’d have to kill you afterwards. Which given the general anonymity of the internet is a task that I just don’t have the energy for.

So I’ve been coasting along day to day. And invariably in a time like this the fluff in my Netflix queue sticks me with a bunch of heavy stuff. I’m loathe to switch the brain back on, but eventually I have to succumb. At least afterwards I never regret it.

The film this time was a documentary called Why We Fight. On one level it works to answer the question of how we got to where we are today in Iraq (which is summed up quite well, and you can watch it on YouTube here). But on a deeper level the documentary is an analysis of our gradual slip from an isolationist nation into the self-appointed global police force and what the implications of our militarization has on our social and political structure.

At the heart of the film is President Eisenhower’s farewell address, which is startling in its candor… especially in the context of the modern world where our president is a complete tool. Seriously, I ache after hearing real public discourse like that - the kind that builds real confidence in our nation and its future. But one of the key parts of the message of Why We Fight is that there is no villain. The problem lies not in a person but the military-industrial complex - a interdependency of defense industries and politics that’s good for business but bad for people.

While it seems that Michael Moore’s documentaries lose a good deal of their bite by trying to blame the world’s problems on a single person (be it Charlton Heston or George W. Bush), Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight comes out a lot more sensible. Even Dubya comes off as a victim in this huge military machine that we’ve built for ourselves. Unfortunately that also makes the solution more complex: there’s no motivation in the system to stop, so I guess it’s up to We the People to say that spending more than half the budget on defense is officially ridiculous.

I’m finding myself so frequently frustrated with politics these days. I wish that the political wheels turned without having to be so carefully monitored. I realize that I get the majority of my information in entertainment form, but it seems to be the only honest filter out there. I don’t have the heart to take it straight. Wrap it up in a joke, work it into a narrative (I caught Syriana a couple weeks ago, which incidentally is another (well told) story of shitty foreign policy)… just do something with it. Well, something other than spread it out over 24 hours of “crap your pants” fear-mongering that is at the same time both too serious and not serious enough. Wait, I take it back - maybe I can take it straight. It’s just sad that my only reference of what that would be like is footage of our president from 50 years ago.

Guitar Hero II

Played on Xbox360

It’s hard to really explain how much I love Guitar Hero II. But I don’t really have to, because everyone else seems to as well (reviews: GameSpot, GameSpy, GameRankings). It’s one of those games that anyone can play and have a blast. I played the first Guitar Hero for the PS2, which totally rocked, but the sequel’s arrival on the Xbox 360 is a distinct upgrade. The graphics are totally better, although that’s more a feature for the spectators, not the player. There’s a cooperative mode where one player can play lead and the other can play rhythm or bass. There are more songs. As a 360 title there are achievements, which are well balanced. There are also leaderboards where you can size yourself up against your friends or the whole world (I’m currently ranked around 13,000). The gameplay itself is more of the same, but no one’s complaining about that.

There’s no doubt that Guitar Hero II is a great game. But its popularity opens it up to high scrutiny, and there’s a lot of controversy around some of the features. Two of the most obvious additions for a 360 based Guitar Hero would be wireless controller and downloadable content. The lack of a wireless controller I’ve come to terms with, since real guitars aren’t wireless. But there’s been a ton of controversy around the pricing of the downloadable tracks. If you applied the pricing they’re using to the 50 songs that came with the game it would cost over $100 to download them, yet the game with the guitar was only $90. You can debate how much one of these songs should cost, but no matter what number you arrive at it sure shouldn’t be more than the current box price. I want downloadable content, I do. I bought the tracks that are available, as overpriced as they are. I will happily re-purchase all the tracks from the first Guitar Hero, because I see the value of having them instrumented for coop and whatnot. But I’d rather not get gouged in the process.

As I’ve mentioned before there’s also some controversy over Guitar Hero II’s unlockable content. I personally felt the pain of that the first time I tried to plop down on a different Xbox and play multiplayer. Your experience is pretty limited when you start out with only a fifth of the songs. And you can’t unlock new songs via multiplayer - you have to go antisocial and unlock them in singleplayer first. There’s supposedly an unlock all cheat code, but I could never get it to work. The best way I’ve found to handle this is to put your save game on a memory stick and carry that with you. But even then only one person gets credit for coop unlockables. Coop is an absolute blast, so it’s a shame they didn’t iron out more of the kinks.

The problems are minor in the grand scheme of things as they don’t prevent the game from being fun. I guess it just gives the developer some stuff to smooth out in the software for Guitar Hero III. My only question with Guitar Hero is when can I get more of it? Are we going to get more downloadable tracks? What about the awesomeness that is Guitar Hero 80’s? Is their strategy to sell yearly discs or to rock the downloadable content? It honestly doesn’t matter to me, as long as I can get my fix. So far it seems my appetite for Guitar Hero is insatiable.