Assorted Bits And Dork Pieces

(Picture unrelated, but awesome. Kristen Bell plays Lucy in AC2, if y'all didn't know.)

First things first.

The trumpet has been sounded. GEEK MEET this Saturday, same place, at 12:30. Adam sounded the horn, and so far, Brian, Crazylegs, and myself have answered the call. I might suggest moving upstairs, to avoid the burning coffee smell and meth-head piss.

So what else has been going on? I haven't blogged that much because I've been working on a story, and today heard of another opportunity that means I have to rewrite something super-Flash-quick to meet a deadline this Monday. This is what freelance writing is like: nothingnothingnothingSOMETHINGBIG!GO!GO!GO!nothingnothing.
Nature of the elusive beast.

Gaming wise, I've been distracted away from AC2 by the shiny newness of Dragon Age.

What strikes me most about DA is how Canadian it is, not just in terms of production, but in feel. It's a game made by people who grew up playing Dungeons and Dragons on long winter afternoons, who have stared across empty fields sitting in the back of cars and dreamt. The darker tone can also be seen in the works of Steve Erikson, Guy Kay and Scott Bakker, and seems to be something we respond to, we cheerful, everybody's friend Canadians.

The game itself is far more difficult than I thought it would be, but then, most Bioware games are. You are led by the hand for the first few hours, made to feel that yeah, I'm pretty good at this
--and then everything goes to hell. Shit, as someone I'm sure still says, gets real.

I've also had my face slapped and backside kicked with Street Fighter IV. I'm terrible at fighting games, which doesn't stop me from playing them, driven by the fading hope that one day I'll suddenly be the best in the world. Dreams keep us young!

Speaking of fighting games, I spent a long Friday night trying to unlock Darth Vader in Soul Calibur IV, only to finally give in and go online to see just how in hell you pulled off that geektastic feat. Turns out you have to buy him over XBox Marketplace.

Yes, I did swear. A lot.

Dear 24,

You can go to hell.
I wasn't going to watch you this year. I had decided that I had personal goals I wanted to achieve this year, and sitting and watching you wasn't going to help me do that. I've sat through your semi-seasonal offerings enough to know what's on order with you. I've seen it all before, and you never seem to change it up. I know if I turned you on, I'd get what I always got from our relationship:

1. A great and exciting first three hours, making me think that this time, this time, things are going to be different between us.

2. This will be followed by 19 hours where you will do your best to kill that dream in its sleep. You're like that great first date who spends the second date farting and confessing to liking monster trucks. Your plot--seemingly so sharp in those early, optimistic hours, will begin to meander,as if it too was affected by the same blunthead trauma Jack Bauer always suffers.

3. You will offer up cougars, just to distract me. And you'll also throw in Elisha Cuthbert. Possibly being pursued by those cougars, or variants thereof. All so I don't notice things, like how Jack can get across all of Los Angeles in six minutes.

4. There will be grimace inducing torture, guns will fire, things will explode, and camera lenses will do their best to convince us that 5:13 p.m in my Los Angeles is actually 8:00 a.m in a future L.A.--where maybe this is how early morning will look, all orange tinted skies and washed out landscapes. And Jack Bauer fucking everywhere.

5. And finally, you will triumphantly bring it all to an end, quickly throwing more lime on the plotline that you shot in the head somewhere around Hour Seven. If I ask about the many things that don't make sense, you will pound me into submission with lots and lots of explosions, grimaces, and Jack shouting at someone that it doesn't have to end this way, even as he pulls the trigger.

Like I said, seen it, done that, read the recaps. No more.

But then you have to pull this.



You cast Katee Sackhoff. Not only that, but you outfit her in a black muscle shirt. Which--and you goddamn know this--I have no resistance to. That same woman, that same outfit--albeit more green and Space Marine-y--dragged me through some of the more turgid episodes of Battlestar Galatica.

So now I'm watching you, 24. And yes, four hours in, we've had two torture scenes, explosions, and men looking like they need to really pull their shoulders down from around the top of their ears. And okay, maybe Jack has a man purse now, but....no. I can't start being critical now. My higher brain function shuts down whenever Katee Sackhoff appears on screen.

You knew this would shut me up. You knew you had me at Starbuck Redux.

You complete and utter bastards.


Yours,

Sean

The Witcher: First Surprise of 2010

I didn't know what to expect with this. There is a video game based on these novels, one that apparently was going to come to the White Box of Crushed Dreams we call the 360, but then it wasn't, and now you can only play it on PC. Which means I'll never play it, since this collection of magic and wires is already venting steam if I type too fast. So I thought I'd at least read the book, see what the hoopla was, and content myself with that.

Three pages in, and I thought I was in for a Conan-style ripoff. Which isn't a bad thing for me, since I love Conan, and I love balls to the walls dark fantasy. But then, the book began to change. By the end, I was sold on the entire concept, on the world, and went out to find the next book to be translated, Blood of Elves. Judging by the number of copies Chapters is stocking on their shelves, I'm not the only one in the London area to discover how much fun these stories are.

I won't go into any more details here, since I think discovery is one of the greatest joys in a story. That, and discovering something is far more clever than it at first let on. Like mice with cyber brains. That kind of thing.

My Battlefield Angel

In all my fruitless searching for the perfect virtual mate—someone who understands my inadequacies both as a man and gamer, who will not laugh at my limp attempts to achieve a high score, who will understand that there are just some nights when I don’t have it, that it’s me, not her—I think I’ve finally found the one to keep company on those long, waiting to load nights.

She’s Lin from Advance Wars.

We met unexpectedly. I had time to kill, and didn’t really feel like undergoing the herculean task of turning on my XBOX, since it’s way over there. So I grabbed my DS instead, rifled through the absinthe bottles at my feet for something that would stick inside its slot, and thus made my acquaintance with this dark, one dimensional beauty.

We became fast friends, because I suck at Advance Wars. Every time I heard the rush of an enemy engine, I hit the Options screen and then frantically pounded Tactics. And there, alone in a tent, Lin would appear, giving me the direction I so sorely need. Her voice—a gentle beep that kept pace with her scrolling text—soon became synonymous with my own, lonely, beating heart. When she told me, her eyes mysterious beneath her bangs, that I had to take out the rocket first, a feeling came over that I haven’t felt since Carrie Fisher asked Mark Hamill if he wasn’t a little short for a stormtrooper. It was love, or at least close enough.

This war may be bigger than both of us, and who knows how things will shake out in the coming days, but tonight, on the battlefield, I have my angel. At least, until the battery runs out.

So Much For 2009

Look, everyone else is doing a BEST!!! OF!! list for 2009, so I should, too. And if everyone on the Net jumped off a bridge, I'd do that, too. But not before I secretly put on a jetpack. Because that's the type of forward thinking that has brought me to being 44 years old and still reading comics. Admire, and reflect.

BEST BOOK I READ IN 2009



Not the book I enjoyed the most, but definitely the most powerful. Sent me into a depression that lasted an entire week. I think having read Dan Simmons' THE TERROR right before this didn't help.

BEST COMIC I READ IN 2009



Anything Abnett and Lanning write is usually sure to entertain me, but Guardians of the Galaxy is my favourite. It reminds me of the comics I read as a teenager, books I looked forward to each month, books whose characters I used to write in the margins of my notebooks, amusing myself in math class by charting out the narrative thus far. Now, I just write about them on blogs.

The main strength of Guardians is here is a clear example of two writers with a definite plan, and they are allowed to follow it. No real corporate tie-ins, no hijacking of storylines to promote a company wide maxi-series, no constant changing of writing teams. And it has a raccoon with a laser gun. That's WIN right there.

BEST MOVIE I SAW IN 2009



While I loved Avatar, this small gem performed as much cinematic magic with perhaps one-sixtieth of the money. Let The Right One In also gave me horror the way I like it: all atmosphere, a minimum of gore, and a presumption of intelligence within the audience.

BEST VIDEO I SAW IN 2009.

Definitely this one. And it probably cost less than two hundred dollars.

BEST GAME I PLAYED IN 2009



This was a toss-up between Arkham Asylum and Assassin's Creed II. Both are excellent games, and if you don't have them, fix that. But I had to go with AC2 on the basis of there being slightly more fun things to do, and there was a grander narrative creation at work here. But that in no way means AA comes up short--it's really just a comparative study of two glowing treasure chests of fun.

Right, now onto 2010. Please don't suck.