vaterite (GameSpite Issue 7…): Interesting review of Bat… Machinegun Joe (GameSpite Issue 7…): Never heard of Mythri but… Anon Ymous (GameSpite Issue 7…): Hub pages kick ass.... Chuck Franklin (GameSpite Issue 7…): Wow, the Mythri article r… Josh (GameSpite Issue 7…): Add Mythri to the list of… LilSpriteX (GameSpite Issue 7…): I have a friend who could… shivam (GameSpite Issue 7…): great start to the issue.… Machinegun Joe (Impressive... mos…): But haven't we seen the C… Anon Ymous (Impressive... mos…): I'm actually kinda lookin… PapillonReel (Impressive... mos…): Probably a few dozen shot…
This is the archive, folks. The current stuff is on the main page.
Centennial update
31 January 07 | 14:33
So yeah, now that my Wii address book is full up, the Miis are just pouring in. Less than a week after hitting 1000 I'm already beyond 1100.
This has become a matter of scientific curiosity for me -- I'm really determined to figure out exactly what, if anything, is the Mii Parade's upper limit. I expect that at some point my console is going to vomit or something. But for now it seems to be doing OK; even with my Channels 80% full from VC downloads I still have nearly half the system's memory blocks available. So you guys just keep making and mingling Miis, and I'll keep accumulating them. For science. (For this cause, I am also available to kiss any Venusian girls you may know of.)
Good thing GameVideos worked (most of) the kinks out of their video player last week, because I'm suddenly finding myself promoting an unusual amount of GV material. In this case, it's Retronauts Bonus Stage, a miniature video podcast. And unlike most nerd videocasts, there is exactly ZERO footage of the pasty people whose voices you're hearing. That makes it automatically better than the bulk of YouTube's original content, I'd say.
Yes, fine, this episode is kind of rough, and I sound like a slightly coked-up used car salesman at the start, but we're still hammering out the format and tamping down our rattling nerves. Bonus Stage will get better, honest. Much, much better. I swear! Be gentle. Subscribe to the RSS feed and collect them all!
P.S. My Wii Address Book is totally full up. Sorry to anyone who desperately wanted in on that so-hot action. I bet you'll survive, somehow.
A good long 15 years after first seeing the MST3K episode "The Day the Earth Froze," the ultimate mystery has at last been solved. I've discovered what a Sampo is.
Apparently, it's a personal shabu-shabu pot. Those frost giants may have been heartless jerks, but at least they had good taste. This would also explain why the Sampo was so highly coveted -- I can't imagine it was easy to come by Japanese cuisine in 12th century Iceland or whatever. Sorry about the image quality; I switched my phone service over to a BlackJack yesterday (since I need a smartphone and it's clear the iPhone is going to be pretty worthless for its first rev or two) and I'm still working out the specifics of its camera.
Speaking of good taste, Marillion's upcoming album is finally available for preorder. I know, I know, you don't like Marillion, or you've never heard them, or you don't care. But 2004's Marbles was one of the best albums I've ever heard -- and I will not brook dissent on this point -- so there's a 50-50 chance that Somewhere Else will be equally brilliant.
It's very strange to see how much attention that Mii Parade has netted -- something like 85,000 views. All that, for a bunch of tiny computer people running in a straight line. People's reactions have been very unusual as well, often ranging into outright hostility. I keep thinking I understand the Internet's collective mind, but then something like this reminds me that I'm just fooling myself about these angry young men. (And women. But mostly men. And men who want you to think they're women.)
But make no mistake. A thousand-Mii parade is not an accomplishment. Yet neither is it indicative of someone in desperate need of getting a life. In fact, it simply represents what might in fact be the least effort I have invested in anything, ever. I added a few dozen codes to my Wii's Address Book back in November over the course of a few weeks, and the system has done the rest for me. Even when I had the console unplugged for 10 days over Christmas break -- I came back home and turned it on to find something like 80 Miis had been queued up while I was away.
My girlfriend sometimes accuses me of being passive-aggressive, but now I have proof that I am not. I am passive-aggregative.
The massive Mii parade does seem to throw a few kinks into my system; sometimes when moving into the Mii Plaza my Wii will hang for a minute or so on a black screen -- usually when more than a dozen have appeared. And it's made me really tired of Jesus Miis, that's for damn sure.
Anyway, since it seems that 1,000 isn't the limit, I'm determined to sort out precisely what is the ceiling for Parade participants. I still have a few pages blank in my Address Book, so if you've added my code and I haven't reciprocated drop me a line to goad me into action. And remember that there's a perpetual Wii code thread in Talking Time in case you're interested in growing yourself a burgeoning Mii garden of your own.
So I guess 1,000 isn't the upper limit on the Mii Parade after all.
Thanks to all who made this possible. You're the real heroes. (P.S., if the Flash player doesn't work for you, you can view the video here. You can also vote it a 10 because it's so crazy awesome.)
And hey! Retronauts has returned from the grave, complete with a theme and everything. Monday will (hopefully) also see the debut of our video mini-podcast, Retronauts Bonus Stage. It's going to be great. I think?
Also online is this week's Retro Roundup. This marks two months without a missed installment -- how unusually reliable of me. Now if only I could talk the powers-that-be into creating a hub page for the series.
Since people keep asking me about it -- much to my surprise, as I was unaware anyone actually cared -- Retronauts will be returning tomorrow with a rather lengthy podcast. I make no guarantees for its quality, as ever, but since it's a game music-oriented episode I can edit in lots of game tunes to compensate for any inadequacies. Also, the video Retronauts that we tested with the "beta" episode is getting a second shot at life sometime soon, although it'll be rather different than the "pale nerds sitting in a studio" format. Because really, that's about the worst idea for video ever. (See also: 95% of original content on YouTube.)
Our import of Wario: Master of Disguise finally arrived, about a week late. Thanks for that, UPS, you useless sacks of crap. I have been looking forward to MoD ever since I learned of its existence, although with no small amount of trepidation. Last year was a sort of platformer revival, but unfortunately they were only half-revived, and the last thing the world needs is another iffy 2D retread to convince people that the genre was better off dead. Really, world, 2D platformers can be quite excellent. You know, when developers put people who have a clue what they're doing in charge.
Fortunately, MoD seems to be mostly good so far -- certainly better than I feared when I first heard terrible rumors of touchscreen control. I'll have a 1UP preview posted later today, I guess, but it's enough for now to know that it is not an abomination. (Even though the touchscreen rumors were true.)
Another weekend gone, another chance to continue my creative endeavors wasted. Maybe "wasted" isn't the right word, since I spent most of the past two days sitting in front of a plot outline and script trying to flesh it into full prose; the spirit is willing, the brain is weak. I managed to write... two paragraphs. Great. Maybe next weekend. After that I think I'll finally hit that point where determination simply becomes denial and giving up is the less contemptible of the two options.
This week, though, I think it's more important to concern ourselves with the small matter of Hotel Dusk, a game which Nintendo hasn't done a damn thing to promote because, apparently, they're boneheaded ninnies who don't really care if their products fail. I guess 20 years of franchises that sell millions by name and reputation alone makes you a bit complacent.
Fortunately, the game's picked up a bit of interest ever since word leaked that one of my EGM compatriots gave it the vaunted 10/10 rating. Personally, I gave it an 8 for the poorly-written review that will be appearing at 1UP soon, but it doesn't really matter -- as with so many of the products Nintendo has been shipping for the past year or two, Hotel Dusk is one of those instances where the old-fashioned game review system breaks down. Dusk is as much a novel as a videogame, an adventure game that doesn't conform to the usual Western concept of the term. I guess it doesn't conform to the Japanese concept, either, since this style of game -- that is, largely dialogue-oriented with only occasional touches of "gameplay" -- is pretty common over there. But those usually have a, uh, climax that involves getting a teenage girl out of her French maid costume, or something similar.
I feel like Dusk has the potential to be just as important to the DS's fortunes as something like Brain Age; it's a well-written detective novel masquerading as a game, something that could really appeal to the "The Cat Who Improbably Solved a Crime Through Seemingly Anthropomorphic Behavior" fan base. It turns the DS into something like an e-book, except you have to use a simplified FPS interface to move from situation to situation and solve dopey puzzles every once in a while. The game is set in 1979, and its target audience is really people who were contemporaneously Kyle Hyde's age.
You kids will probably enjoy it, too. So, you know, buy it. It's good, it's different, it's satisfying. (And way better than Trace Memory, so don't let the developer connection put you off.)
Also, feel free to hop into the relevant message board thread and create some stupid photoshops of the image above. It's fun! Well, it's trite, anyway. On the Internet, that's about the same thing.
Edit: My review is online. Sorry, I was unable to resist the juicy "Hotel Detective" reference. It was bobbing there, ripe and eager to be plucked, and I am but a poor Tantalus in the vineyard of nerdy allusions.
I've decided to stop criticizing Sony's poor, beleagured PSP. I always love an underdog, after all, and the PSP is definitely that these days. I did my part to support the DS back when everyone else was like LOL DS MORE LIKE AIDS AMIRITE, so it's only fair. I guess in a way I'm a little responsible for the PSP's current predicament! Because, you know, I'm such a tastemaker.
The latest blow to the PSP has come in the form of news that the system will be receiving two Final Fantasy games this year to mark the series' 20th anniversary. That would be good news but for the fact that the games are the millionth remakes of the first two Final Fantasies. Also known as the worst two Final Fantasies. The PSP gets FF 1 & 2 while the DS gets FF12. It's a little bit brutal, really. Granted, I do have my share of skepticism about about FFXII...
...but the balance of developer interest has shifted dramatically to match the changing tide of gamer enthusiasm, and it hurts a little to watch. I don't even really enjoy using the PSP; the screen is a little too dim and low-contrast unless it's plugged in, the analog nub is awful, the optical drive makes the system awkwardly bulky yet fragile. But my sympathy circuits have been activated. So please, from now on, be nice to PSP around here. You'd be picking on the weak and unpopular... and no one likes a bully.
Post script: Now we just need to hope that Revenant Wings lives up to its potential for goodness while managing to circumvent its potential for awfulness.
Whether or not you like Children of Men, you should (at the very least) be able to appreciate it as a barometer for demonstrating just how far games have to go before they catch up, at least in terms of storytelling, with movies. Of course, in a perfect world, blockbuster games could be something other than violent chaos with B-movie ambitions. But so long as perfectly talented developers like Hideo Kojima inexplicably worship the work of directors like Ryuhei Kitamura, the popular face of gaming is doomed to be little more than Hollywood's brain-damaged little brother.
All throughout Children, I was dogged by a single nagging thought: I hope Valve is taking notes, because this movie is basically crib notes for Half-Life 3. Or HL4, if those Episodes are really supposed to be HL3. Whatever. The point here is that Alfonso Cuarón basically created a big-screen rendition of the world seen in Half-Life 2 -- a dystopic future in which humanity has succumbed to an outside force, venturing beyond the confines of a few fascist-run cities is deadly, an underground resistance with a meaningfully Greek symbol has arisen, and no one can have children -- but actually made it interesting. Convincing, even. Sure, the agent of humanity's downfall is different; it's aliens in one case, a flu pandemic in another. But the results are the same.
Part of what makes Children so much more convincing is the world itself; the film's vision of London really and truly feels like a city clinging desperately to civilization, its residents seem sincerely despairing. Something that bugged me about HL2 was its utter sterility; the world was run down but still felt oh-so-sanitary. Compare each work's respective train station sequences; in HL2, you have a few people standing around looking sad, while in Children the stations are packed with refugees being savagely abused by armed guards. Or the climactic shootouts in the ruins of rundown apartment buildings -- Children's hovels are squalid, crumbling, packed with squatters haplessly torn apart in the crossfire. HL2's are more like fixer-uppers, and even though the few residents just kinda sit there they're perfectly safe.
And that's the biggest difference, I guess. Games just don't feel dangerous. Even though you're actually more involved in the events of a game, Children was far more harrowing. The hero and his companions seemed vulnerable at every moment. You know how Gordon Freeman's supposed to be this everyman, a nerdy physicist who manages to battle his way through improbable odds through sheer adrenaline-fueled luck? Children's Theo actually is. He never so much as touches a gun, let alone collects Gordon's arsenal of rifles and rockets launchers (all of which he tucks neatly into his pants pocket when not in use, one supposes). Theo is pushed forward by a combination of desperation and conviction; Gordon keeps going forward because... well, because he has to reach the end of the level, I guess.
The only genre that really tries to capture that sense of fragility and imminent death is survival horror, but immersion is ananthema to the Resident Evils of the world. Survival horror games are seemingly designed to take you out of the game at every turn, whether by poor controls or clumsy mechanics. RE4 and some of the Silent Hill games almost get it right, but not quite. And then their storylines are tremendously stupid, to say the least. Why not a little genuine science fiction instead of ludicrous sci-fi/fantasy hybrids?
In summary, I'm old and grouchy and don't have a lot of patience for the uncanny valley and big, dumb blockbusters. Clearly I should be ignored.
When I arrived at work today, there was a copy of Burning Crusade on my desk. That's a little like coming home and finding a dead puppy on your doorstep. It's horrible and disgusting and when I find the person responsible I will initiate hurting. If you hate me, just send me an unrefrigerated corpse with postage due, so I'm doubly insulted by having to pay money for receipt of a rotting person. Or man up and take the direct approach by punching me repeatedly in the kidneys, maybe? Either way, I'll get the message. But making hostile overtures toward my free time? That I can't forgive.
Good thing I have a high natural resistance vs. MMO. Saving throw: successful. Nice try, Blizzard, but it looks like I get to keep my girlfriend.
Sorry the site's been pretty uninteresting lately. The problem, you see, is that I've been pretty uninteresting lately. Still, it hasn't been a total loss -- I've set a new record for failed creative endeavors, which is always something of an ongoing concern here. Start a project, stick with it a while, let it fizzle and die. Last Monday I launched the first chunk of a story with the ambition of updating it weekly; this Monday... I did nothing. So that's zero to failure in... seven days.
I celebrated by going on vacation and spending a couple of nights in an embarrassingly decadent inn up in wine country. I guess that probably doesn't parse as "remorse," eh.
So I guess my award to Pan's Labyrinth for "best movie I've seen in 2007" has already been made obsolete, and much faster than I had really anticipated. Who knew that Children of Men would be so good? Oh, sure, everyone who's seen it. But you know how hype is. Alas, no -- this movie was the real deal. Intense, harrowing and grim, but never soulless. Between this and Pan, I think Hollywood needs to implement a new rule: Mexican directors only.
I knew Children was pretty much a lock for excellence as soon as I realized that Alfonso Cuaron had filmed a lengthy sequence entirely for me. It began with King Crimson, meandered through a look at art preservation, touched briefly on video game addiction and ended with a shot of an inflatable pig floating above the Battersea Power Station -- from inside the station.
That's what I'm talking about. FIVE STARS ***** BEST MOVIE EVER
(P.S., please do not confuse with "Children of Mana." Huge difference.)
I have a terrible confession to make... I bought a couple of Blu-ray movies. I know. I'm weak.
I mean, I have this PS3 that I bought because I know I'll need it for work, but so far all I've done with it is play Final Fantasy XII with uglier graphics than I'd get playing through my PS2. And that's just stupid. So I decided a few Blu-ray discs would make me feel a little less guilty about jumping the gun on adopting this chunk of hardware. Yeah, the system came with Talladega Nights, but it would be a travesty to christen a new piece of hardware with a Will Ferrell movie. It's like buying a new top-of-the-line Mac and launching Jared, Butcher of Song on it first thing to celebrate.
Much to my dismay, I was totally and completely impressed by Blu-ray's visual quality. It wasn't supposed to be like this! Next-gen formats were supposed to offer a negligible upgrade! I've got a progressive-scan DVD player that looks totally great on my TV, so I was supposed to be able to sniff disdainfully and stick with the old media. I even grabbed a copy of Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut to weight the comparison in my favor; after all, how good could a 25-year-old movie reedited with incomplete effects shots and footage possibly look good?
But no. It looks amazing, even downscaled to my TV's 720p resolution. The detail in every scene is unbelievable, the light in previously dull interior takes on a glowing luminosity, and there's no more shearing in action sequences. It makes my old DVDs look grainy and washed out. It is, in short, really quite annoying. Fortunately, there's this whole stupid format battle (thanks, Hollywood) between Blu-ray and HD-DVD that needs to be resolved, so caution tells me not to get too wrapped up in either format until the smoke has cleared and one or both are dead.
Weirdly, I'd sort of like Blu-ray to come out on top, and not simply because I already own a player. I just feel sorry for Sony these days -- the company's ineptitude has become a thing of mythic proportions, culminating in this week's absolutely embarrassing Emmy debacle, and they really need a win somewhere to boost their self-esteem. They're certainly not doing too well on the gaming front. Besides, after the grim deaths of Betamax, MiniDisc, UMD and (inevitably) Memory Stick, I figure they deserve a victory just for trying. Blu-ray: The "Most Improved Player" award of the format wars.
In other news, SF MUNI's new light rail line opens today, which is approximately totally great. This strikes me as a fairly big deal given that (1) it's delightfully un-American to favor light rail over much cheaper buses and (2) it provides fairly high-quality service to a corner of the city which tends to be given short shrift due to the fact that it's largely mired in poverty.
Mostly, though, I'm happy because it means the train line I ride every day should adopt a much more predictable service schedule. Sorry, my social consciousness is all a horrible sham.
FORUM FUN:Nintendo Super Squad 15 has been belched into existence and confirms pretty much everything we knew to be true about Lakitu. Out of curiosity, do you guys pronounce his name LA-ki-tu or La-KI-tu? I discovered recently that the former seems much prevalent. I've always gone with the latter, but I'm pretty sure that's because Elton John's "Nikita" was always on the radio when Super Mario Bros. was at its peak of popularity and for some reason I kind of mashed the two together. "Oh Lakitu is it cold/In your little corner of the world?" Yeah, that's probably more than you needed to know about me.
Also, someone at 1UP's forums mentioned that IGN took a swipe at EGM this week about fact-checking, which is, all things considered, pretty ironic.
It's Thursday, and Thursday means it's time for massive human rights violationsfree pudding another Retro Roundup. No Retronauts, though. It's sometimes difficult to work up the wherewithal to record a podcast when you are inherently introverted.
It occured to me as I was working through Lunar Knights that Boktai is living proof of Hideo Kojima's burning jealousy.
Kojima's baby is Metal Gear, of course, but clearly he feels hemmed in by his connection to the series since he announces that each and every chapter will totally be the last one overseen by him, no really I mean it this time. What would he do if not post-modern militarism? Obviously, the man wants to oversee Castlevania. But no, they gave it to some newcomer instead. Oh, how it must have galled Kojima to see the apple of his eye handed over to the comparatively inexperienced Koji Igarashi, all because he was tied down by the corporate mandate to make the Arsenal Gear sequence as verbose and inscrutible as possible. Imagine the wailing! The gnashing of teeth! The reserved, anal-retentive fury!
Yet what could he do? Metal Gear Solid 3 was in the works, and even if he was sick of being the series overlord he still couldn't bring himself to leave his baby in someone else's hands, even if it meant a shot at adding metatextual commentary to the next Castlevania. After all, if he let someone else direct MGS3, how could he be sure the game would hit its quota of crotch-grabbing and jokes about Eve's breasts? And so he stayed with Metal Gear, though it galled him.
But an outlet came in the form of Boktai. But since Konami already had a platform series about killing vampires, they were like, "Why not make it like Metal Gear?" And he was like, "But I'm totally sick of Metal Gear." And they were like, "But we'll give you a vanity label." And he was like, "Ahhhh yeah." Well, that's how I imagine it went. I wasn't there so some of the specifics might be off.
Anyway, Lunar Knights has two hot-swappable playable characters, one of whom is a physical powerhouse while the other uses spirit-based ranged attacks. And there's a level called 13th Street. So, basically, it's an isometric Portrait of Ruin.
I've mentioned before that my girlfriend and I watched Alias in its entirety last spring; in a bout of freakishly good timing, we worked through the first four box sets and torrents of the fifth season just in time to reach the actual airdate of the final two episodes. All told, it was a pretty good show, and I think people who detest the later seasons would probably do well to watch them in rapid succession (seaons three through five start off on shaky ground but come into their own a few episodes in).
In the ensuing months, she's often expressed her fondness for the show. As in, "I miss watching Alias." So for Christmas I bought her the complete series box set, which was probably worth it just for the stunning excess represented by the packaging. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that this would turn me into an enabler for a terrible addiction. She sat down last night to watch "part of an episode" as we ate dinner. A few hours later, she changed discs. An hour after that, I went to bed. Around 6 I woke up and heard the sound of voices coming from the other room and found her still watching -- not asleep in front of the TV as I had expected, but wide awake and who knows how many episodes in. I'm thinking of staging an intervention.
Anyway. I may have thrown in the towel when it comes to comicking, but Talking Time's very own unofficial comic (I guess, since this seems to be the only place the author is publicizing it) has just updated again. Warning: Nintendo Super Squad is nerdy, violent, vulgar and occasionally stupid. This is of course why it's such a good read, but consider yourself warned anyway.
I feel like I sort of owe SF MUNI an apology for yesterday's story. Not that MUNI is a stranger to frothing hatred, I'm sure, but the fiction I posted yesterday does not actually represent the full range of my opinions about San Francisco's public transit system. It's actually one of the better metro systems I've used, and it doesn't really smell like a cat box most of the time. It certainly beats the public transportation where I grew up, which could basically be summed up as "doodly-squat." I was a little spoiled after enjoying a week of Tokyo's system at TGS, but I guess reliable trains are one of the perks that come hand-in-hand with the world's highest cost of living.
Oh, look, I've finally launched my comic in earnest. Except it's not really a comic. It has little comic bits in it, sure, but mostly it's text. This presentation format is hardly an original idea, since Dave Sim already did it for much of Cerberus. The difference being that I lack Sim's talent, and I won't be launching into misogynistic diatribes. It's a tradeoff, you see.
ToastyFrog (the story) will only be updated once a week, and there's not all that much art going on. See? Not a comic. It's okay if you don't like it. I'm really only doing this for my own satisfaction, which is why it's tucked away in a little corner of the site rather than being published here on the main page. Anyway, you can read the first part. Or you can skip it and wait for me to go back to talking about video games. Suit yourself.
Hey! My official Izuna preview -- official in the sense that it was part of my day job, not that it's endorsed by the publisher or anything -- is now online, for those who read the previous entry and wondered what precisely Izuna was all about. Hint: oh-so-mysterious dungeons. The forum kids are getting all tingly about some very naughty official art which apparently came from Atlus' Japanese site, but based on what I've seen of the gameplay all rumors of hot ninja-on-ninja action are, thus far, wholly unfounded.
In other dungeon crawling news, I polished up the elderly Brandish "Gauntlet of Pain" piece a bit since it appears that Kurt has linked to it in a new article and it's terribly embarrassing to be caught with my CSS down. Something horrible happened to my stylesheets in the server transition and most of my wiki articles now look absolutely awful, so there's quite a bit of tidying up to be done within the murky depths of this site.
Aaaand to complete the Trifecta, I'm slowly making further progress into FFXII. This morning I made my first genuine foray into the Zertinan Caverns -- that's "genuine" in the sense that I didn't step inside, encounter viciously overwhelming bad guys and immediately turn tail. I was going to say genuine meant I knew what I was getting into, but clearly I didn't since I unexpectedly came face to face with a beast who took me roughly half an hour and an awful lot of abuse of the "revive and heal the reserve party" trick to defeat. If nothing else, FFXII excels at keeping me humble; I was starting to feel maybe a little overly confident after totally breezing through the encounter immediately after acquiring the Sword of Kings, but Zertinan certainly knows how to divest me of any sense of self-confidence.
2006: a year so crappy I almost didn't eulogize it. But no. I come to bury 2006, not to praise it. And then jump up and down on its grave, laughing madly all the while. For a quarter, I'll even let you micturate on the headstone.
Yeah, yeah, calendars are just arbitrary markings of time that affect nothing important. That doesn't make the new year any less of a relief. The old one was mostly a blur of work stress funneling downward into the low point that was my grandfather's death. Certainly the latter put the former into proper perspective -- it's hard to get too flustered about work in the wake of something like that. It also made the frothing Parish-hatred of the hikikomori much easier to ignore than ever before -- reeling from a genuine loss, I found the childish threats and whining of emotionally underdeveloped shut-ins because I didn't like a video game to be far too pathetic to be taken personally, or seriously. I suppose that means that for all that 2006 sucked, it was the year I graduated from the Internet. So that's good.
The new year has started off well. Among other things, former roommate and current famous Atlus localizer Nich Maragos visited over the weekend to celebrate with us. He even brought along a copy of his latest project, Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja. I probably will recuse myself from the 1UP review due to the obvious conflict that stems from having a good friend involved in its development, but I'm certainly not the only "mysterious dungeon" fan on staff, so it should still get fair treatment. I already approve of the localization, if for no other reason than the interrobangs are written as "!?" rather than the ever-annoying "?!"
For those keeping tally, Izuna is right up at the front ranks of low-profile but totally good DS games like Hotel Dusk and Lunar Knights due in the next couple of months. (I think everyone will be surprised by how good Hotel Dusk in particular is.)
Also of note: Talking Time seems to have become a testing ground for people with gaming comics. Good gaming comics, even. I'm pretty sure they're just doing it because they know I'd like nothing more from life than to become a cartoonist but fall just short of having sufficient talent to make it work out. But at least I can live vicariously through threads like this, wherein Bill Mudron worked out the kinks in his vaguely 1UP-inspired Minus World. (Totally ripping off my idea, I should note.) And then there's, uh, this. The origin (?) of Nintendo Super Squad. It's charmingly absurdist. And nerdy.
Anyway. This week's Retro Roundup is online, and fairly cranky. (Though I was careful to stop short of projecting a whiny sense of entitlement lest my Internet diploma be revoked.) And while there's no Retronauts podcast this week, there is a blog post. Hotcha.
Pan's Labyrinth is the best movie I've seen all year. Granted, it's January 3, and Pan is the only movie I've seen all year. So if I'd had the misfortune to have seen Night at the Museum or Black Christmas yesterday, I guess they'd take top honors instead. The difference, of course, is that in a month or two, Pan's Labyrinth is still likely to be the best movie I've seen all year. Yeah, eat that, semantics.
I very nearly skipped the movie altogether, for reasons that may be blamed entirely on the Internet. The simple fact is that I've refused to watch any Guillermo del Toro movie ever since Ain't It Cool described his direction of Blade II in terms of oral sex. The fear that del Toro films would, by association, fill my mind with visions of Harry Knowles receiving sexual favors is a powerful deterrent. Should he ever use similar terms to describe food, I will inevitably die of starvation.
Also at fault was the movie's poster, which featured a Tim Burton-esque gigantic tree and fun curlicue typography. Big Fish was pretty good, but maybe not worth shamelessly ripping off!
Fortunately, self-preservation lost out to the appeal of a quality trailer. And it turns out that Pan neither resembles anything Burton has ever directed nor brings to mind unspeakable Knowlesean physical pleasures. It is one of those movies that could easily be described as "dark," although that suggests an element of cynicism not really present in the movie. It is almost bleak, but lacks the necessary degree of hopelessness. It is, rather, grim... or Grimm, if you will. Like the famous brothers' original work, Pan features innocents caught up in terrible circumstances and turning to the fantastic -- though not for escapism, because in these works the otherworldly is every bit as unpleasant as the real.
While the posters and trailer give the impression that Pan's Labyrinth is mostly a quirky bit of fantasy escapism, it really isn't; most of the movie transpires in WWII-era Spain amidst the Franco regime's efforts to quash the freedom-loving pinkos who don't think that brutal totalitarianism is totally awesome. Everyone who writes about the movie is quick to point out the shocking modern parallels to current world politics, apparently because they're under the impression that no one has noticed that every movie of the past five years has shocking modern parallels to current world politics. (OMG guys I heard V for Vendetta was meant as be a subtle critique of the Bush administration! Can you imagine!?)
Really, the strained political allegories are just a distraction from the heart of the movie, which follows a young woman named Ofelia as she comes to terms with her new life. And, while she's at it, to reclaim the magical royal heritage she lost in her last life.
Her quest begins in earnest when she discovers an ancient labyrinth in the woods near her new home and works her way to its center. There she encounters not a creamy caramel filling but rather a creepy faun who tells her that a magic picture book and a bit of determination will help her return to her former life.
It's pretty standard fantasy stuff -- dreamy-eyed child finds herself living out the faerie tales she should have outgrown already. Kinda like some other movie with "Labyrinth" in the title. Except that the dreamy stuff is pretty nightmarish, full of muck and monsters and horrible crawly things. And the real-world stuff is even worse, filmed with a ferocious brutality destined to cause an uproar from stupid parents who didn't bother to take the "rated R" warning seriously. (But there's a whimsical CG faun, like in Narnia! They couldn't possibly mean that R rating!)
For instance, to get across the point that Ofelia's new dad, the Franco-fascist Capitan, is a pretty bad guy, you get to watch him smash in a hapless peasant's face with a bottle. There goes his nose, right into the skull. Then he shoots the guy's elderly father point blank. And then blame their deaths on everyone else once it turns out they were totally innocent. Subtle? Not especially! Brutal torture, cruel bloodshed and occasional self-applied surgical incursions were just part of the daily routine after the Spanish Civil War, and Pan captures that little slice of life in vivid detail. Nauseatingly close-up, too.
You can tell it's not an American-made movie, though, because the gruesome stuff isn't particularly glossy. The camera doesn't take pornographic glee in showing extreme violence -- just enough to get the point across and make you totally hate the Capitan, and drive home the unhappy reality of Ofelia's life and the conflict that surrounds it. There's a little Alice in Wonderland about the tale, a little bit of Narnia, but all seen through the lens of wartime reality -- the Queen of Hearts in a Normandy foxhole.
The lack of a strictly happy ending is another one of those "not made in the USA" tip-offs, too. Much of the movie, especially Ofelia's dual life, is left open to interpretation, and the narrative ends with the most jarring ambiguity of all. The final scene perfectly encapsulates the dichotomy that characterizes the entire movie: it's brutal but beautiful, a bedtime story designed to give you bad dreams.
And, yes, to gripe about George Bush. But please, don't let that deter you from enjoying all the hand-maiming and cheek-slicing.
