Jack Black said no drums!

I took the night off from Skyward Sword yesterday to go see The Muppets. On my way to the theatre I was jonesin’ for some Zelda, but forgot about that before the movie proper started.

Firstly, two previews really grabbed my attention. There’s a new Studio Ghibli/Disney production on the way, which looks really good. The animation quality alone made the animation love in my quiver in delight. I can’t remember what it’s called and damned if I’m going to bother looking it up, but absolutely keep an eye out for the cartoon about little people living under the floor. The other was the new Pixar flick, Brave, which doesn’t seem like it’ll be as good as Up but no less is a movie I’ll need to see.

After the previews came a Toy Story short which alone would have justified the outing. It’s hilarious, and will keep you laughing the whole way through. While Pixar could have taken it and fleshed it out into a complete movie, it’s probably best as a short. I lamented its brevity, but know deep down that a feature-length version wouldn’t have been as great.

Our feature presentation was up against some fierce competition there, but the Muppets and Jason Segel pulled it off and Super 8 had finally been dethroned as my favourite movie of 2011. The Muppets was amazing. It was everything I’d hoped it would be and more. It was hilarious almost the whole way through, and when I wasn’t laughing I was on the verge of tears. Oh hell, the ending actually did bring a tear to my eye. The way the movie was so easily able to manipulate my emotions is uncommon, and I love it all the more for being able to crack my tough exterior. Not only that, but somehow The Muppets was able to slip by my distaste for musicals. That’s how you know you’ve done something special.

The film warmed my heart like nothing else can, and kept me laughing with a constant barrage of slapstick, one-liners, and brilliantly placed celebrity cameos (their use of Jim Parsons was exquisite). It left me completely satisfied, with a smile on my face and a song in my heart. I was ready to sing and dance my way out of the theatre, and I’m very strongly considering going to see it again this weekend. I cannot wait to get this on blu-ray so I can watch it every single day for the rest of forever.

My only lament is that those are not the Muppets’ voices! I guess maybe some had the same actors, but the big names (Kermit and Fozzie specifically) were just ever-so-slightly off, and it bugged me to no end. But that’s a minor quibble, not nearly annoying enough to tarnish my opinion of the movie as a whole. In conclusion, go see The Muppets. And tell me when you’re going so I can tag along.

An open letter to snow

Dear snow,

Go away. I don’t like you and you obviously don’t like me. You make me leave for work early and make it difficult to see where I’m driving. You turn relaxing car rides into slow, dangerous chores. And that’s not the worst of it! I can deal with the slow driving, but I hate that you like to make my clothes all wet. There are few thngs that annoy me more than wet clothes. I despise walking around with the ankles of my pants all wet, in turn making my socks wet. And when I open my car door and you fly all over my seat in an attempt to make my butt wet and uncomfortable? What a horrible thing to do to a person. You constantly get all over everything and then into everything, creating wet/frozen messes. It’s like nature tried to come up with something more annyoing than sand. And it succeeded with you, snow!

In closing, nobody likes you, snow. You should just kill yourself.

 

Sincerely,

Funk Master R Valentine

Gained 23 JP! Job level up!

I think the title here sells the idea of this post pretty well. I’ve finally moved up a rung on the career ladder, and today I start my new job. It’s not really that far a stretch from what I was doing before, but there are a few differences and a lot of responsibility that separates what I’m doing now from what I’ve been doing the last two years.

I won’t lie, I’m more than a little worried that it’ll be too much for me. I know that it won’t, but I’ve got a persistent nagging in the back of my head telling me that I’m going. Low self esteem’s a bitch.

All anxieties aside, there are a few nice perks to this new position. Number one obviously being the small increase in pay. It’s not a huge amount, but there’s another, more substantial jump once I finish the training program that I’m working on. This should at least slightly assuage my fears of not making enough money to live.

The second, much more immediate benefit is that I’m moving to a new branch, and it’s about half the distance from my house as compared to the one I come from. I’m pretty pumped that I gat to sleep in an extra half hour every day and that I’ll be using about half the gas that I do now. Even better is that the swap managed to happen less than a week after our first real snowfall. I wasn’t exactly looking forward to driving back and forth across the city every day for another winter.

Third on my list of exciting things is that my new branch isn’t made out of windows. Yes, it looks nice, but I’m kind of over being blinded by the sun for several hours a day. I’m not completely sure this isn’t going to be a problem, because today will be my first time ever being in my new branch. I’ve driven by it a couple times though, and I doubt the sun will bother me there.

The last big thing I’m looking forward to is that my new branch seems to be quite a bit busier than the previous one. I’m sure I’ve spent enough time complaining about how slow the old branch is, so it’ll be a nice change of pace to be busy. That in addition to all the other work I’ll be doing will probably have me singing the opposite tune before long: that I don’t have enough time to get everything done. But I prefer it that way, so awesome.

If there’s any one negative aspect of this move, it’s that I don’t really want to have to get to know a new bunch of people (again). Not that I think the new branch crew won’t be a good set of co-workers, but I quite like the old set of staff. It may have been too far from home and poorly defended from sunlight, but that branch had some of the most fun people I’ve ever worked with. Oh well. We’ll still have company events.

Dead Island

I’ve recently been spending large chunks of my weekends on Dead Island, and I’ve got pretty mixed feelings about it. For the tl;dr crowd: I like it, and I’m pretty sure that if you like Fallout 3 you’ll find much to enjoy here.

The big thing about Dead Island is that I don’t play first-person shooters very often, but Techland somehow managed to take the handful of recent FPSs that I have played and mash them all together. I haven’t played enough of Fallout 3 (about 25 hours?), and I haven’t seen any more than the cover of New Vegas, but they were quite clearly the base inspiration for Dead Island. It’s an FPS set in a big open(ish) world, where you have to scrounge stuff from everywhere to survive.

Missions are doled out one at a time to further the story, but you can strike out on your own and do as you please (this is how I spent my time with Fallout 3). Along the way, you’ll likely meet up with some people who will give you sidequests. Some will just be crazy and try to kill you. I only encountered only a single homicidal human in the first third of the game, but they become a little more common as you go along.

Like Fallout, your weapons will decay with use and become useless. Well, mostly useless. You can still beat zombies with your blunted cleaver, but it does barely any damage and any special effects (like fire or electricity) are lost. You can repair them for a fee, upgrade them for a few more bucks, and modify weapons to give them special traits once you have the proper blueprints and parts. Armor does not exist though, which is good and bad. Good because you don’t have to constantly stop to repair or find replacements; bad because a handful of zombies can tear your fleshy hide apart right quick.

Where Dead Island really departs from its cousins is in weapon selection. The first area of Dead Island provides melee weapons almost exclusively. It’s great, visceral fun, but in the first dozen or so hours I spent with it, I’d only held two revolvers and about forty bullets. Fallout 3 was fun for me because I could skulk around the landscape with a hunting rifle and pop any enemies before they had a chance. Yeah, ammo was a little more scare than I liked, but at least it was there. Games that force stealth are no fun, but when it’s an option, that’s how I usually play it. It also provided a survival scenario that I could take at my own pace. If I wanted to avoid the mutants, I hike the long way around the mountain or take the shortcut through the cave. Here, the world feels much less open and you rarely have the option to go around zombies. You’re always the hunted, and rarely get to play the hunter.

The big difference between Fallout 3 and Dead Island where maps are concerned is that in Fallout, you have one gigantic map with all sorts of tunnels and buildings to explore. Dead Island is divided into several large areas with no such “dungeons” to find. I definitely would have liked at least a couple segregated areas. There is the hotel and a couple small apartments that take you to separate maps, but those barely count. We’ll have to see what later areas bring. The majority of the buildings are just textured cubes too. A good portion of the cabanas in the resort area have proper interiors, but once you hit the town map you’ll start wondering if all those doors are just painted on.

The game is a lot like Fallout 3, but it’s also coloured with shades of Borderlands and Left 4 Dead. Like those two, Dead Island is intended to be played cooperatively online with other people. The game wouldn’t even let me start at first because it’s set by default to online co-op and I don’t have a gold subscription to Xbox Live. I haven’t spent enough time with Left 4 Dead or its sequel to pass judgement on just how similar Dead Island is to them, but I hear that the “special” zombies on Banoi island bear more than just a passing resemblance to those in Valve’s games.

Borderlands though, I have played quite a bit more of. While it’s not quite as much an influence on Dead Island as Fallout, you can’t ignore the signs. For one, weapons in Dead Island are colour-coded. Yes, it’s a thing in other games too, but the only other one I’ve played that does that is Borderlands. The major difference being that I didn’t see a second-tier weapon for hours in Dead Island, whereas I picked one up on my third or fourth quest in Borderlands.

Another similarity is that random pickups respawn in both of these games. It takes away from the survival aspect (which wasn’t a part of Borderlands anyway), but I feel like it adds to the gameplay. Yes, the aspect of running around with no bullets is thrilling for a little while, but I find that when I run out of weapons, a game that centers around killing is considerably less fun. The old-style Resident Evils play that feature properly: they limit your ammo, but enemies never respawn, so it’s almost a like a puzzle where you have to figure out where your ammo is best spent. If weapons weren’t strewn about so liberally in Dead Island, you’d run out in no time and be stuck running away or punching zombies to death. To give you an idea of how useless punching is in Dead Island, they give you the achievement for killing while unarmed after just 25 zombies.

From the start of the game, you get to choose from four characters, each which his or her own strengths and skill trees. Just like Borderlands. Did the characters in Left 4 Dead have any differences that weren’t cosmetic? While this is key to building a balanced team, the fact of the matter is that I’ll never play this game with others. So I really wouldn’t mind if there were a “single-player” character, who could choose from the entire pool of skills. Also I’m not a fan of the “skill pipe” system, where you have to pump points into unrelated skills to get to the one you want. What I’m saying here is that they should have copied Fallout’s skill system too. I’m cool with prerequisites for advanced skills, but those prerequisites should make sense, and not just be arbitrarily placed along a line. Why to I need to get the “medkits are more effective” skill before I can buy the “less likely to be noticed” skill? Healing and stealth are two totally different fields.

Anyway, I’m coming off too negative. I really like Dead Island, though I fear it will end up sitting incomplete along with Fallout 3 and Borderlands despite that. The thing that ties them all together is that they’re all so huge and open, that I get an initial rush of excitement, with the exploring and the screwing around, but then burn out before I can even make it halfway through the story. Yeah, there’s something I never thought I’d lament: games being too long and having too much content. 16-year-old Ryan would be so sad if he knew that he’d grow up into a man that had trouble finishing games that surpass a 15-hour requirement.

Dead Island has a few good things about it that weren’t key traits of other games though, and while I’d love to talk about those, there’s one thing that really bugs me about the game. I mean really boils my turnip. I usually don’t care if games with high NPC/enemy populations re-use character models/sprites. A few of my favourite games don’t even bother to recolour clothing, never mind create unique NPCs. But Dead Island really takes the cake; on the resort map, there are literally two female NPC character models: the standard one, and the one that’s a little chubbier. Female zombies are the same, but discoloured and with bits missing. Yes, their heads and bikini patterns change, but they’ve still all got one of two bodies. Oh yes, and every single female (outside of the two playable females) in the game is wearing a bikini until you get back into the hotel. It is ridiculous. Sex appeal is great; I have no problem with bikini babes. This is overkill though. The sexism line has been long since crossed. There are at least a dozen generic male character models. Would it have hurt to put some short shorts on at least one of the female models? Come on, Techland. Have a little class. The good news is that once you leave the resort there are properly clothed ladies, but I had played over ten hours before I got to that point.

So after all this complaining, what do I like about Dead Island? One thing that sticks out in my mind is the “thug” zombie. Thugs are a good foot taller than your average walking dead, and they can knock you flat with a single hook or headbutt. They are dangerous, and you learn that quickly. Encountering a thug is terrifying because you know that you’re going to be facing something that can kill you with little effort. Compounding this effect is the fact that thugs emit the most blood-curdling roar in the history of video games. It chills me to my bone, and instantly makes me stop cold in my tracks to assess my surroundings. The only thing that keeps thugs from being a total nightmare is that they move at about half the speed of a normal zombie. Still, the tension blows through the roof whenever a thug howls, and I find taking them down incredibly satisfying.

The best way to stop a thug, of course, is to remove his arms. Severing enemies’ body parts has been one of my secret favourite things to do in video games for years. I played the first level of Turok 2 over and over, never caring to progress in the game, just happy to play with the different weapons and see how they tore the monsters apart. Dead Island definitely strikes the right chords in this regard. Once you get your first cleaver or machete, you’ll never want to go back to pipes and wrenches. Blunt weapons can be used to break zombie bones (which is hilarious in its own way) and smash in their heads like so many pumpkins. Bladed weapons, logically, will completely remove the offender’s limbs. Sometimes you’ll swing at the right time when a zombie charges you, which will sever his head in one swing and put the game into slow motion to watch his head pop up while his body keep running past you. It’s quite awesome, but takes more than a little luck to pull off regularly.

Outside of thugs though, removing limbs isn’t strictly necessary, as by the time you’ve got that second arm off, that zombie’s probably re-dead anyway. Decapitation, of course, is always your best bet. They’re zombies! And they’re scary! A lone zombie isn’t much trouble; you’re equipped with a kick move that almost guarantees knocking a ghoul down, and once they’re down, they’re meat. Though as I noted before, a bunch of zombies can easily tear you a new one. I don’t know how many times now I was poking around and got mobbed by a group of four or five zombies. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but they hit hard and flail around pretty quickly. Especially the “infected” class of zombies, who are Dead Island’s version of the Hollywood zombie. Not that classifying the fast ones as “infected” makes a lick of sense. Aren’t all of them infected? Isn’t that the problem?

Anyway, I’m getting totally off-track here. My point there was that zombies are scary. Especially since they level up with you. You life bar gets bigger with each level-up, but it’s really moot because zombie arm/claw/bite/whatever strength increases at about the same pace. Infected class zombies (they move faster and hit harder) are even more lethal because if they get you, they usually get in three or four hits at a time. If you’re up against two or more infected, there’s a good chance you’re going to die. Regular zombies (“Walkers”) are considerably less dangerous, even in large groups. They have one advantage: they’re clever enough to get the drop on you. Walkers are the only zombies whose howls blend in with the ambient noises floating on the air, and they also like to play possum. I figured obsessing over tearing apart corpses to make sure they don’t get me when my back is turned was going to be a habit exclusive to Dead Space. I was wrong.

I’m sure there are other good things about Dead Island aside from zombies. There really probably are. It’s just, they’re all done better in other games. Most of them in a single game! That doesn’t mean it’s not worth playing though! If you can get over the slightly janky combat system, dependably buggy graphics, and vicious difficulty spike, you’ll have a grand old time on Banoi. Might even be better with friends. I’ll never know. I’m excluded from that world because I’m a dinosaur and prefer local multiplayer.

I like lands in three dees.

I was going to write a post about how sad I am that I only got a week to play Super Mario 3D Land. Then I realized how stupid that was. I’ve beaten the game already. Full clear, too. I really did pour every extra hour I had over the last week into the game. Yes, Skyward Sword is going to be eating up most of that free time for a while to come, but I still have lunch hours and other not-at-home downtimes to use to plug away at Mario.

Obviously, the game is worth playing again. Hell, you have to play through it two times to clear it completely anyway. But it’s a fun game! That should really go without saying. I don’t have an exact record of how many times I’ve played through Super Mario World and Super Mario 64, but I can assure you that both figures are in the double digits.

The real tragedy here is that between Mario and Zelda, I’m going to be completely ignoring my recent-ish purchase of Bit.Trip Saga. I talked a bit about Runner not long ago, but hadn’t played any of the others until I picked up the collection. The other games are generally just as good a Runner, with the exception of Core, which I like a little less because I’m terrible at it. They’re not the most robust or feature-packed games, but they are fun and addictive, which is really all you need. As fun as they are though, I don’t have enough drive to play them over other games because they’re high-score games. A game can be super fun, but if there’s no sense of progression I will most likely leave it by the wayside. Runner is the only one that really has any complexity to it (beating stages and collecting gold), and I’ve already played the WiiWare version of that one to death. I guess Fate is a little more complex too, and that’s probably the one I’ve played most via the Saga.

The other game I feel bad about neglecting here (and let’s ignore that list I posted two weeks ago) is Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked. I got it for my birthday and have been slowly making progress in it over the last couple months, but I’ve sort of hit a brick wall. The SMT series has a reputation for being hard, and knowing that I chose to play the game on easy mode, yet I’m already running into battles that I’m barely making it through. And I’m really not very far into the game. So the reason I’m shying away from this one is the difficulty barrier. It’s not so much that I don’t like hard games, it’s just that I don’t really have time to learn hard games. The back half of Super Mario 3D Land is downright evil sometimes, but it’s all just reflexes. You’ll never fail because you didn’t take into account what element goombas are weak against. Whereas I’d revel in games like Devil Survivor back in the day (see Final Fantasy Tactics), spending hours learning and breaking them, I just can’t afford to fight a battle multiple times just so I can pin down the right team I need to win. This isn’t a detraction from the game itself of course! I do really like it, but it’s just not likely going to see completion until I decide to sit down and focus on it and it alone.

And there ends my complaining about not having enough time for my favourite hobby. For now. I’ll be far to entranced by new Zelda over the next few weeks to care. I’ve also taken the liberty of scheduling a couple articles on the next two Sundays. Yeah, articles. Not sure if those really matter now that I’m WordPressin’ it up. Ehhh. I’ll keep it a thing for old times’ sake. Maybe the next time I reinvent the site I’ll just mesh them in with everything else.

The inconsistent hype train

I think it’s a tad odd how excited I am for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Well, I mean, no, it’s not odd at all. A new console Zelda is always a huge deal for Nintendo fanboys. What I mean is that it’s a much bigger deal for me than Twilight Princess was. Maybe I was so excited about the Wii launch that my hype for new Zelda was diminished a bit, but I don’t remember being nearly as excited for it as I am Skyward Sword. I know for sure that I wasn’t counting the days.

Then again, I don’t think I’ll ever be as excited for a game launch as I was for The Wind Waker.

Last week I did have the privilege to play the Skyward Sword E3 demo via my cousin’s husband’s (There’s gotta be a word for that. Cousband?) Homebrew Channel. Needless to say, it only served to get me more excited for the full game. And then they invited me over to play a leaked copy of said full game the next night. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever said no to, but the demo was already more than I should have played. Legends of Zelda are big things, and I decided to save myself so that I could savor it properly. I had a big ol’ sex metaphor ready to go here, but decided against actually typing it. You can see where I was going, so it shouldn’t be hard to figure it out yourself.

Anyway, I’m really kicking myself for not saving one or two vacation days for this. Yes, I’ll play all day long on Sunday, but after that I don’t even know when my next chance to see it will be. Thursday? Stupid work. I wish it would just go away for a while.

And for old times‘ sake: ZELDA COUNTDOWN : 4 DAYS REMAIN.

Holy peanut butter, Batman!

Years ago I would have tried to type up at least 1000 words about this sucker. Now I realize that the photos tell you pretty much all you need to know (and they’re worth approximately 3000 words). Except maybe the fact that eating one of these by yourself in a single sitting is probably a bad idea. That one should probably register under “common sense” though.