A Sane Man of an Insane World

Source: Escapist Here is what I have to say to you, Activision. This could of had been yours. This hard rocking game of a gem could have had your nice little label on it, and you could of have made oodles of cash on it. You could of had it Activision! You could of had it all, only if you wouldn't make it a Guitar Hero spin-off! But noooo, you had to have that cursed spin-off, you couldn't perceive the brilliance of any marketing strategy outside of it. You didn't dare have the awesome power of metal burn your faces off like butter sitting on a freshly warmed knife! So you got rid of it! You abandoned Schafer's baby in the cold desert of 'No Publisher', leaving all those years of labor for naught. And when EA swoops down to save it, what do you do? You panic! You go "Oh noes!" and you decide to pull off the biggest douche bag move you could ever conceive of pulling off. You try to use the legal system to delay it, you good for nothing sons of mothers! You tried to stop the great charge that was Brütal Legend. But you can't stop it! You can't! Even the legal system urinated you in the face! You had your chance to do something good with the gaming world, but you shrunk back! And you got nothing for it all! And that is all you deserve.

This is so ridiculous that I can't even be offended. Also: EA knows their bastardization of Dante's Inferno is a piece of shit, so instead they pornography it to get sales. Good job EA.

Thanks io9. It would appear that SyFy, a channel that is devoted to Science Fiction shows and movies, is now quite surprisingly out of shows that deal with Science. They have plenty of Fiction though! What is the solution? Simple! Make a new Firefly show! Well, not exactly Firefly, alas, but it will be in the same style, and tone, and all sorts of goodness. This Browncoat hope it works and it lasts for more than a single freaking season and a feature length film.

You can read more about it here. But why so worried? In 100 years, our kids will be on the moon doing crazy things with jetpacks!

Thanks to BloodyDisgusting, it has been revealed that the Castlevania movie, which was killed in the Spring, has been revived, thanks to the co-creator of the Saw franchise, James Wan! ...Yeah, I never heard of him either. But it has an awesome poster!

If there was ever a better collaboration to produce the greatest masterpiece in fantasy's short run in the Cinema, it would of had been Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta. Between these two people, we had gotten The Lord of the Rings (the animated one), Wizards, the Death Dealer, countless paintings for Conan the Barbarian, as well as cover artwork for some Tarzan novels. These guys knew how much artwork lends itself to some of that over the top landscapes and scenarios that are so common in fantasy. These two were perfect for bringing the Fantasy movie. They made Fire and Ice, a chronicle of the battle between the denizens of the Fire Kingdom and the Lands of Ice, a retelling of the struggle between good and evil that only these two guys could of had thought up of. Unfortunately, they did not make the definite fantasy movie. On the positive side, Fire and Ice is still a pretty good movie, and one you could watch and so long as you are not looking for a storytelling masterpiece, you will find a fair representation of the fantasy genre. Fire and Ice has its shortcomings. The overly sexualized heroine, the occasional dry dialogue, and the fact that pretty much everyone has to wear loin clothes. But on the plus side, you get a fun movie with lots of action and suspense and proof that just because you were a Panther's mask you can still be a badass. It is a fun movie. Ignore the fact that all of the girls are in small bikinis and you will have a good time. A solid 7.

No.1 - You have one more day to write the story for saturday's RPG Group? Me - No. No.2 - You have to think of some way to get money for that First Date? Me - What First Date? No. 2 - Precisely. Me - No, it means this is "post funny images" day!

From Kotaku.com You know, it is an unproven fact that precisely 1/3 of World of Warcraft's player base is made up of incest spawns.

My God. Okay, yes, Planescape: Torment has some baisc design principles with Eastern RPGs, but come on! That is just painful!

The days of the bleeps and bloops of the video game ancients of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Tetris and Space Invaders have long since passed. Technology has now reached the creativity of composers, and while it is a rarity that you will get compositions that equal their patriots in the film industry, there are always a few glimpses of true art with video game music. I had the privledge on Saturday to go with a certain blogger named Chris Knight to "PLAY! A Videogame symphony", a 2 hour long compiliation of various video game music suites written specifically to be played by a live orchestra. As a lover of not only symphonic music, but also video games, I went there with great enthusiasm. But first, I'll link you to Chris Knight's post, just so that you can get an idea of how a much more casual music lover's tastes are. Oh, and just to give the man some much needed publicity. Back to the symphony! I met Chris at the Palladium Cinemas at 5:00, and soon we were off to one heck of a road trip. I was under the impression that we would be heading straight to where the symphony was taking place, but Chris had more than a few trips up his sleeve. We took a pit stop at "Hyper Mind", a hobby store that Chris is more than attached with. As someone who was quite new to the RPG hobby, I was quite excited to be in a gaming store for the first time ever. Of course, just my luck they had no RPGs that I was currently acquiring. It was still a very fun expierence for me to have. Of course, when I told Chris my semi-dissapointment, he turned to me and said in a loud voice that made me glad we were alone in the car "You want RPGs? I'll give you RPGs! We're going to Sci-Fi Genre!" A good twenty minutes later, we turned into a small six car max parking lot, and before us stood Sci-Fi Genre, a store that I was more than acquainted with. I had almost bought a set of Q Workshop's Cthulhu Dice for my friend Peter's birthday back in April from them. It didn't take me long for me to find their shelves full of RPG books, and just a tad longer me for to find their old RPG shelf. I had almost bought their copy of "Fading Suns", but not after I realized it was the First Edition, and not the Second Edition that I was on the hunt for. Anyways, Chris bought his figurines for Warhammer 40,000 (Chaos Space Marines! Death to the False Emperor!), and we were off. We arrived there at about, oh I'd say 7:00-ish. We found some nice seats on the lawn in front of the playing platform, and at 8:30 the music was on! They began with SUPER MARIO BROS. Well, it was quite expected to be honest. After all, where else would you start any sort of dedication to video games than with something regearding that big, fat, Italian plumber? It was a mixture of suites of the main theme, the undergound, that underwater theme, and Bowser's castle theme. BATTLEFIELD 1942 came next. Now to be honest, I never quite remembered that game's music havins such a Jazz-like feeling to it. Of course, we have to be honest here, I don't remember that much about the game, so I'll allow that to pass. We were then subjected to an electric guitar edition of the SILENT HILL games. Personally, I thought this was the weakest part of the whole occasion. Silent Hill does NOT work very well with rock instruments. It was designed to give a sense of corruption and supernatural horror and the way it was used here did not evoke that atmosphere at all. Listen to this, and then I am sure you will be in agreements with me. One of my most favorite parts of the symphony came next - CASTLEVANIA! I was in estatics the whole way through. Sure, they didn't have any of the themes from Lament of Innocence play, but come on! This was Castlevania! How could you not be excited just by the fact that they had some Castlevania music playing? I was satisfied for the entire performance right then and there. KINGDOM HEARTS came next. It was a nice arrangement of the music - and thank God, no pop songs in sight - but the overly ecstatic applause made me frown. Only because of Kingdom Heart's association with Final Fantasy makes it such a huge hit. Otherwise, it is just a purely average game. The music is charming, sure! But it is not worth all of the love it is getting. Oh, wait, I'm going into rant mode again. Let's move on. They finished the first part with a wide variety of music from THE LEGEND OF ZELDA games. Of course, with 12+ games, there is no way in hell you could accurately give a musical suite with such a vast variety of musical cues in just 7 minutes. But whoever did the arrangement gave it their damned best attempt, and what music was heard was quite good. After the break we listened to some jolly music from SIM CITY 4. It was the light hearted fun you could expect from a game where you can build your own cities and destroy it any way you could desire. As much as I hate the Elder Scrolls games (or heck, anything from that hack studio known as Bethesda Softworks), the musical cues for the fourth entry in the series, OBLIVION, was quite good. It gave a good sense of the fantasy setting, of the mysteries of the ruins, to the despair that was given by the hordes of Oblivion that was invading the land. I quite enjoyed the choral cues. Some music from CHRONO CROSS and CHRONO TRIGGER was played. Surprisingly, I remember nothing from this portion of the performance. This is when the biggest shock occured - it rained. And not just a drizzle, no sir. It rained cats and dogs and some mice for good measure. Chris and I ran for them hills and got some nice cover and stayed to listen to the music from the HALO trilogy. Now, you guys probably know that I think the HALO games are good mindless fun, but to be honest, are pretty average. The music on the other hand... woo boy, now there is some music. Great fun to be had, especially by that HALO geek Chris Knight. Then one game came up I was never expecting - WARHAMMER ONLINE. As a one time player, it was great to have that music play. And of course, then came one game that everyone knew would come up - WORLD OF WARCRAFT. A great set of music to be sure. Thinking that it was done, Chris and I made our way to the parking lot when, all of a sudden, we heard something. Like mad men, we raced back to the stadium, and I heard the final boss music from FINAL FANTASY VII, "One Winged Angel". I thought the choirs were too soft and slow myself. And then, they were done. For real. And it was a great experience. Should it ever come North Carolina's way again, I will certainly be dragging everyone I can by their ears to this. Good fun to be head by all.

There are few games in the field of videogames that divides players as much as this one does. One end, it is horribly glitchy, has some of the worst combat you could ever see in an RPG, and the character models aside, it is not at all a good looking game. On the other side of the spectrum, you have some of the most finely written dialogue you could ever hope to see in any medium, its characters are so well written that they seem real life human beings, and it has a wide range of options in handling the objectives in the game. You could persuade your way past the guards, suck their blood like that Vampire you are, or sneak past them like you are the next Solid Snake. There is a lot of hate, let me tell you. But man, for someone who loves his options and his stories like I do, there is so much to love that you have to wonder why bother hating it at all? Let me give you all one good reason why you should grab this game from your nearest torrent site. This right here is the Haunted Hotel at Santa Monica beach. You think you have seen scary in a video game. You probably thought you had seen it all. "Pfft!" You will think when you are given the task to retrieve the pendant from inside the Hotel that control the ghost that haunts it. "I've seen Horror movies. I saw Alien and didn't even flinch! I'm a new age man. I watch SAW and I can handle this pussy Hotel ghost like it was nuthin'!" You will be wrong. My hand was shaking the whole time. I couldn't even keep my mouse steady. My palms were sweaty. It was like Niagara Falls all over my Microsoft Sidewinder (the new spiffy black one, not the one that looks like a boomerang). I had to wash my hands for a whole minute, soap bar and all, before I was convinced I was clean enough to continue gaming. People, that scene is pure atmospheric brilliance. Saw what you will about that sewer level, where all us persuasive characters are forced to run for our (un)lives from those Death-on-Legs because we were too busy investing our points into Persuasion and Seduction rather than "I'm Gonna Woop Yo' Ass!". The Hotel Mansion alone made Vampire Bloodlines one for the record books. And that wasn't even the best scene. There is this one scene where you are confronted with a Cannabilistic Vampire, and this is where the game throws some moral-philosophical head spinners our way. See, this vampire wanted us to send some poor chap that had seen her doing her stuff down to her lair so she can make sure the guy doesn't tell a soul about her. You will do it. It will make perfect sense in all of the world for you to do it, even for those extremelly moralistic individuals. You will do it because she presents the case - and quite well, I might add - that you are no different from her. You suck blood, the life force of humans. She eats them. They are both horrid, damnable acts. What makes what you do so much better than heracts of survival? None of it does. So that is why you do it. And that is why I love this game. Because it is more than a game. It is about things, stuff that you need to think about, to ponder about, to debate with yourself. That is a sign of good storytelling folks, not how much fanart is dedicated to your game on DeviantArt.com. I'm not even finished with it yet. If it weren't for the fact that The Witcher and Arcanum and Planescape: Torment are patiently waiting for me to finish them, I'd do a second play through as either the butt kicking Gangrel or those crazy I'm-gonna-debate-with-a-stop-sign Malkavians.