Dead Reckoning

These books are trash, that being said I love this garbage. I've read the previous 10 and stuck through Sookie's "word of the day calendar" remarks, her thinking that Walmart is high class, and pretty much her sleeping with or being seduced by every kind of supernatural being in existence. It took me awhile to get my hands on this book, when the previous outing had all sorts of energy and plot development with an ending that left you saying, 'Wait, what?!" Now what do I get for all my patience? NOTHING. Stupid plot. Zero character development. The reintroduction of a boring love interest and the possible exiting of THE ONLY DAMN CHARACTER I LIKE. You know what. I give up on you, Sookie.

House: Season 7

See, this was a perfect example of why sometimes it's best to stop watching a show and catch the rest on DVD. I started to consider cutting House from my "appointment viewing" rotation during Season 5 and then made the move early on in Season 6. It had just ceased to be a show that was consistently worth spending an hour watching week in and week out. And the Internet at large seems to suggest that I was followed off the bandwagon en masse during the mess of inconsistency that was Season 7. I read some reviews for several episodes I just saw, and most critics, by season's end, were saying stuff like, "I don't think I can watch this show again next year, even for a paycheck." On DVD, however, lump viewing sessions allowed me to mostly ignore the shitty episodes and plotlines while still enjoying the enjoyable parts of the season, of which there were still several. I'm sure hindsight helps too; the season began with House and his boss-slash-sparring-rival Cuddy beginning a romantic relationship that never felt natural in the slightest, and I can imagine that this relationship made a lot of fans scoff while it was happening in "real time" so to speak; but while I hadn't read any big spoilers for Season 7 or anything, I know that the Cuddy character has been written off heading into Season 8, and thus the pair was doomed to fail at some point during the 23-episode set in question. This foresight allowed me to just enjoy the ride for what it was without ever getting too invested one way or the other in it. Another thing I find interesting about House - and really about any long-running TV show - is the way in which it has (or hasn't) evolved over the years. TV fans are fickle. We want long-term character development and love a well-told story, but we also lament, constantly, that shows aren't as good as they once were. So showrunners are damned if they make changes and mix things up, but damned if they don't. House happens to be one of the most episodic and procedural-based dramas I watch, and in theory you could insert any Season 7 episode into Season 1 and have it make sense for the most part, sans the inclusion or exclusion of certain characters and longer-running background stories. Or at least I think that's the case; the way some critics waxed nostalgic about the show's early years had me wondering what, really, has changed in either the episodic or season-long formulas. House has always been brilliant but miserable. The same is true of most of his colleagues and employees, to lesser extents. The show has a rather cynical tone overall, but some of the deepest running themes have always been loneliness and unhappiness. Among the main characters, we've seen something like four divorces and seen several other cases where loved ones have died. Even the weekly patients of interest are often facing death without many loved ones at their side (though this may simply be due to the extra casting that would need to occur for extended families to gather at the bedsides of the dying). I guess what I'm getting at is the idea that House was not a feel-good show in 2004, and it isn't one today. Throughout its run, it's been, at best, a show where characters bond over shared miseries and regrets. The currently-airing eighth season has been confirmed as the show's last one, and maybe before I watch it I'll go back and re-visit some episodes from Seasons 1 and 2 just to see if there's been an enormous dip in quality or consistency after all. I mean, I don't disagree that the show has become a bit absurd and a bit melodramatic, but on a per episode basis I guess I haven't really noticed a decline. If anything, the decline has been in my own interest levels for a show that, by and large, hasn't changed very much in seven years. Fickle old me.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

I would like to first thank Keith for gifting me Ocarina of Time on the Wii virtual console in 2008 when I was playing Twilight Princess. Please do not take any of the following anger personally; it was a lovely gift. Four years later, I beat Ocarina of Time. I swore. I yelled. I yelled some more. I have come to the conclusion, and came to this conclusion many many times during the game. I hate Ocarina of Time.

So now I'm going to poorly write a rambling 1500 word high school style essay about the game. I feel like a college admissions person would really have appreciated my story. Feel free to read and relive your childhood memories of playing this.

First off, I’m supposed to find my sword. Well how am I supposed to do that with the old graphics and an awful control system? Seriously. This is the first reason why I gave up on the game. I couldn’t find my sword. I walked all through the forest. I cut down shrubs. Gathered rupees. Threw rocks. Found more rupees. Was overall fascinated with rupees. But I couldn’t find a sword. So I gave up.

Six months later: Steve helped me find my sword. Great! Joy! A ten year old with a pocket knife! So now I’m supposed to visit the Deku Tree. Honestly I don’t remember what happened here. I think I walked up a talking tree. I think little Link ate too many forest mushrooms.

I’m a little hazy on the time line here. I think I very stealthily sneak into a castle to court a princess. Now what? WHO THE HELL KNOWS?! No, Navi, your vague hints are not actually helping guide me to my next location. Navi was almost as bad as Midna. (UGH MIDNA) I tried to get my horse. Too young for a horse. Learned a song for a horse though. I walked up a mountain. Got hit by a few rolling boulders. Was unsuccessful for most of the time. Talked to some Gorons. And you know what? They wanted me to solve their problems. This is a running theme of Zelda. Have the ten year old kid solve your problems. It is very logical.

So I started playing again in 2010 I think. School was busy so I didn’t play there, and I didn’t even unpack my Wii in Westford so I took a little 2 year hiatus. Well deserved I may add. I got my sword! I also wandered aimlessly for a long time. Anywho, Steve and I moved, so I thought I would start playing again. I visited the lovely village of Kakariko. I met some armadillo looking fellows on a mountain. I followed a monkey around the lost woods. And got lost. I helped the Gorons in Dodongo’s cavern. And I helped the water people in the Big Fish Belly. I was super proud of myself. I thought I was like 1/2 done with the game. Wait, what was that? NEITHER OF THESE WERE TEMPLES. Why oh why must I go off on these silly side quests that take me 3x as long as a normal person? Can’t I just complete the gosh darn temples?

At some point Zelda was captured, the world got sad, and I inherited a lovely Ocarina. Isn’t that sweet? A princess gave me an instrument. How lovely. I’m sure I would have left the instrument lying in the middle of Hyrule field if I knew that instrument meant I was supposed to save the land. Seriously great news though. I don’t have to be ten anymore. I can save the land as a seventeen year old. Zelda clearly wanted me to develop my muscles before I took on anything too serious. My big strong muscles allowed me to take the sword from the stone. I feel like this was stolen from a book/movie.

To save the land, I have to reunite the sages. Rosemary, oregano, sage, chives, paprika, and cumin. Na, I’m just kidding. That’s Spice Rack of Time. Honestly though, I’m supposed to go to all of the lands of Hyrule and beat some sort of boss and gather some token. This token is very very important, and eventually they will make me a rainbow road to Gannondorf’s castle. Why these oh so powerful sages need a ten/seventeen year old to do their work for them I’m not sure.

Now I’m going to tell you the things I hated most about the temples. I will give you the cliff notes version. Steve experienced the real life version. I feel bad for him. Note: Now is the time where I am supposed to get my horse. I lost the race and ran out of rupees so I never got my trusty steed. Shucks.

Forest Temple: Before I get to the forest temple I need my handy long shot. Oh no, I mean short pointless shot. Yea, that thing sucks. I gotta say though I don’t remember much about the forest temple which means it must have been ok and not infuriating. In typical Zelda style I just had to solve a few puzzles, move some blocks around, play some songs, and defeat some boss with my newly acquired bow. So predictable. Side note: According to a walk through, I was supposed to get the biggoron’s sword here. I didn’t know. So oops. I think it made my life harder.

Fire Temple: I hate the fire temple because I hate bats on fire. They would hit me. EVERY TIME. Like I am incapable of fighting bats. In the fire temple, I found that I had a problem with walking straight and general Zelda controls. I regularly fell off blocks onto lava and stood at walls trying to climb but couldn’t. I would complete a challenge then fall and have to repeat it. Story of my life. The only fun things about this level is I got to blow up a lot of stuff. Whenever in doubt, blow it up. (I’m also bad at throwing bombs. I would usually drop them at my feet by mistake, hurt myself, and waste a few bombs before I hit my target.). I didn’t like the miniboss in this level either. Some dancing fire fairy that I was supposed to hookshot and blow up. Gr. But now I have a HAMMER. YEA! Break stuff! Limp Bizkit style!

Water Temple: Did I save temple? Sorry I meant dungeon. Because first I have to melt the land of ice with blue fire. And I get iron boots. And iron boots are just awful. The thought of them makes me cringe. The water temple just sucks. I was pretty against walk throughs before the water temple. I considered them cheating and taking the fun out of the game. But I quickly changed my mind. I spent far too many hours trying to figure out where to go on the many levels with the different water levels. Thank you walk through. The only positive thing coming out of the water temple was the long shot. This one is the real deal. I’m pretty sure it’s the only weapon I liked.

Shadow Temple: So this level required me to go to the bottom of the well and get a magnifying glass which lets me see through walls. Neat. It’s a whole dungeons worth of keys before actually getting to the shadow temple. Even neater! The super cute part of the shadow temple is how there is no easy access to the boss. If you die, have fun starting at the beginning of the level! Which I did! Many times! I also got hover boots. Which you know what? Not as cool as they sound! Really it’s just gives you false hope before you plummet into a hole. Or off an edge. This temple took me many sittings to do because I sucked at one part and kept dying and then also died at the boss multiple times. Very annoying. The only bright spot is most of the enemies were spiders which are cool and easy to beat. Unlike Bongo Bongo. He messed me up real good. Kept smacking me with those hands. Jerk. Steve beat this boss for me when I got super frustrated. He came home from work when I was already in a Zelda fit of rage, and he graciously beat Bongo Bongo (took him a few times too). That Bongo Bongo is a jerk.

Spirit Temple: So I did this whole thing before the spirit temple where I rescued some carpenters by fighting angry female guards that kept putting me in jail. I don’t think I actually had to do this because I didn’t get anything out of it. I think I could have raced someone after for a prize. But I didn’t have a horse…so can’t do that! The spirit temple was pretty swell. Mostly because I followed the walk through religiously. Which I had to. Because I never found the map. Woops. The bosses were all these knuckle things but I had a fancy spell so I couldn’t take danger so I just spammed the crap out of my magic and beat the dudes down. I also got to use a shiny mirror. Oooo shiny. This level was also fun because there was a fairy fountain and a great fairy right outside the temple. So you know, when I died I could go stock up on health and magic goodies.

Final Dungeon: Final dungeon! Final dungeon! Gannondorf! Yea! In Twilight Princess I gave up after I got to the final castle. This was certainly not going to happen on this game. I wanted to beat it into the ground. Armed with my trusty walk through, I defeated each of the six mini dungeons. (By the way, thanks Zelda! How did you know I would want to repeat all of the most annoying parts of your game!) I even got a great fairy defense power so my life was basically double. Armed with double life and two fairies, I was all ready to kick Gannondorfs butt. Until I didn’t. So I did it again. And I beat him! But the game wasn’t over yet (of course). I had to escape with Zelda out of the castle before it blew up. I got out with 2 seconds remaining. Cut it a little close. Then FINALLY I had to fight this evil mega Gannon. And you know what? He owned me. I was trying to shoot arrows at him and he would block them. I couldn’t hit his tail. I didn’t have my sword. It was a disaster. And then I got super frustrated. And really angry. And was pretty sure I was never picking up Zelda again. But I triumphed, got Zelda out of the castle again, and took a new strategy with my special magic power that protects me. And I killed that dude. And I rescued the land. And then Zelda turned me back into a child and forgot about the whole thing. It’s like thanks girl. They didn’t even celebrate me. CELEBRATE ME.

So yea, that game was awful. It probably took me 70 hours. 4 years. So many deaths. So much anger Hatred of all the characters and temples. My heart is racing again just writing this. Stupid Zelda.

Ok. Off to buy Skyward Sword!

Final Fantasy X-2

Final Fantasy X was a very good game throughout- not my favorite of the series or anything, but still at least in the top half. As one of the most mainstream games of the series, it makes sense that it was the first given a proper sequel, because as we all know the Final Fantasy games all have nothing to do with eachother- that's why FFX's sequel is FFX-2, while FFXI and FFXII are completely different games. FFX had one of the most sensible stories of the whole series, and by sensible I mean the plot doesn't suddenly take a sharp turn off the highway, next stop the fucking moon. There is a goal at the start of the game- to once and for all defeat an all-powerful self-regenerating behemoth known as Sin who has been attacking the world of Spira for the past thousand years. Along the way there's a sense of impending doom and you know it's not quite going to have a happy ending. This is realized as the main character, Tidus... sort of 'slips away' from reality. A quick scene post-credits reveals some sort of unfinished business, and this idea is fully realized in Final Fantasy X-2. Yuna, Tidus' lover, is distraught over her loss but after seeing what may be his image on a mysterious video-sphere, she sets off to find any sort of evidence that Tidus might still be out there. Yuna joins up with her old pal Rikku and a newcomer, Paine. This band of adventurers set off hunting for more spheres hoping to find anything, be it signs of Tidus or wealth and fortune. Along the way you'll run into some old friends and engage in sidequest-heavy gameplay until you get your answers as to why Tidus has been appearing to Yuna. Sounds good right? Well, not exactly. For instance, there's not much that was worth checking up with these characters two years later. Wakka, Kimhari and Rikku are basically the same and have shown no maturing since the defeat of Sin. Lulu barely gets any screentime at all. Tidus and Auron don't show up at all. That leaves Yuna, who I admit I finally came around on. I found her pretty terrible as Tidus' love interest in FFX, but here as the star of the sequel she actually comes out of her shell a bit and becomes fun to root for. Don't get me wrong though, the transition to voice action cutscenes is still pretty damn awkward here and there's loads of awful side characters who will embarass you as you play through the game. The story gets really uninteresting really quickly and by the end I really had no idea why I was fighting some of the final bosses. Now the game wasn't all bad though. From a pure gameplay standpoint, this actually might rank among my favorites. Battles are fast and fluid, and there's a competent job system that rewards you for trying out different job classes. There was no ridiculous spike in quality at the end, and I found the side-missions for the most part pretty fun. But because you wouldn't want other people to watch you play this game out of sheer embarassment, I can't say I recommend Final Fantasy X-2.

Downtown Owl

Downtown Owl is Chuck Klosterman's first fiction novel, so I'm assuming everything he wrote previously was more along the lines of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, and I'm ok with that. It was a fun book full of interesting pop culture analysis. Downtown Owl however reached some momentary highs but ends up altogether pretty forgettable aside from an interesting deus ex machina. Klosterman grew up in a very small town in North Dakota, and as such I can identify that at least two of his books take place in the most boring state- this and Fargo Rock City. While I feel like he does hold this rural upbringing close to his heart, he doesn't exactly paint a beautiful portrait of small town life in the fictional Owl, North Dakota. We witness three slightly intersecting stories in this small town in the 80's. First up is Mitch, the high school football team's third-string quarterback whose only real interest is being lazy; then Julia, the recent college grad from the big city who comes to town for a teaching job and slowly descends into alcoholism; finally Horace, the old widower with nothing to do but chat with his friends at the local coffeeshop. Each chapter switches focus between the three of them, and at times a fourth and fifth character get their own chapters. I have to wonder why Chuck focused a full third of the book on Mitch, as I found him to be at best boring and at worst completely unlikable, while Julia's questionable happiness and Horace's recounting of his life's stories were much more interesting and seemed to give off the small-town vibe I think Chuck was going for. Still though the book kind of plods along for a bit and the characters at times just feel like blank mouthpieces for Chuck, and then along comes a major disaster and the characters react in their different ways. Something tells me that a few months from now if asked to remember this novel I'll probably just remember that ending, and nothing from the previous ~230 pages. Oh well. A quick look at Klosterman's other books tells me that all of them are more along the lines of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, so I won't let this stop me from reading more of his stuff.

Bridesmaids (2011)

So I was recently informed about this thing called the "Bechdel test," and you can use it to (sort of) measure any given film's representation of women. The test is relatively simple. To pass, a film needs to contain one scene in which two named female characters exchange dialogue about something other than a man. Specific, but incredibly simple. Remarkably, so many movies fail this test. In some, it's expected. War movies, for instance, are more or less man-centric films, so it'd be silly to hold a lack of woman-to-woman conversation in such films against them. I mean, where in Saving Private Ryan would it have been organic to insert a scene with two women conversing? Still, it's incredible to see the list of movies that fails the test. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. What? Really? The movie whose title character is a woman, which is also a movie about bringing justice to those who abuse women, did not feature once scene with two named women talking to each other? Guess not. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2. Seriously? The final part of an eight-piece movie franchise with a number of memorable female characters? Debatable, I guess. Like, at one point, Mrs. Weasley yells, "not my daughter, you bitch!" as she kills Bellatrix. It's two named female characters, one talking to the other and certainly not about a man... but can we really call that a conversation? I guess part of the test's effectiveness is that once you find yourself splitting hairs and debating whether or not some tertiary character had a name, or whether or not there's a difference between a person "talking at" someone and "having a conversation with" someone, you realize that the test exists for a reason. Anyway, I bring up that long-winded introduction in Bridesmaids because everyone seems to be making such a big deal about the female-centricity of Bridesmaids. At first I thought it was "gender blind" of me not to take the female-ness of the cast into account while watching and critiquing the film. Like, so what if this raunchy comedy stars a bunch of women? It's still just a raunchy comedy, and a middling one at that, and so why is anybody making such a big deal over it? But after learning about the Bechdel test, and seeing just how under-represented women are in film, still, today, I realized that an all-female "buddy comedy" like Bridesmaids is a big deal specifically because it shouldn't be a big deal. Like, isn't it kind of bothersome that it took until 2011 for a group of women to make the same kind of movie that groups of guys have been making for decades now? (Note: I'm not sure if the blame for that rests with women for never attempting to make such a movie, or men for never allowing such a concept to come to fruition, or some combination of factors, but the point is, it's a big deal that we've never had a movie like this before. Unless it isn't. I dunno, I guess I'm still capable of jumping back and forth across the fence.) So at any rate, the only way for it not to be a big deal just because a woman or group of women have done something is for women to start doing said thing over and over again. Like, the next time we get a comedy with a female ensemble, people will be unable to resist comparing it to Bridesmaids. But if we get five or six more of them, hey, maybe we can finally stop treating it like a big issue. We'll get there someday. Now, as far as Bridesmaids itself is concerned, I thought it was a tad overrated. I thought the same of the very bro-centric Hangover, though, so maybe I'm just down on summer comedy blockbusters lately. What I took away from Bridesmaids was that it started very strongly, faded somewhere around the third act's break, and ended up being a very funny but overall not amazing summer comedy. Like so many others before it, and like so many others yet to come. I'd give it a B+ I guess. Oh, and just to bring this full circle, I made it a point while watching Bridesmaids to see if there was ever a moment where any two named male characters converse with one another about anything other than a woman. Nope! The closest we come is when Jon Hamm's character says something like, "thanks, officer" to a named policeman character. I wonder how many other movies out there fail this "reverse Bechdel test." My gut says not nearly as many as fail the regular one.

Arrested Development Season 1

So! Arrested Development Season 1. People LOVE Arrested Development. Like LOVE. Super obsessed. It's actually a little annoying. So annoying that I was a bit stubborn about actually watching it. Well, with all the hub-ub about the Arrested Development new season / movie, I guess I had to watch it. And you know what? It is funny! At this point, it's not the greatest thing I have ever seen, like people seem to think, but Steve promises me it only gets better in the ensuing seasons. I was sold with the one line "THERE'S ALWAYS MONEY IN THE BANANA STAND!" Between that, and the steps car from the plane, man, this show is pretty funny. I'm gonna rank where I'm liking the characters for now, see if it changes at all.

1. Michael Bluth - Michael is the main character of the show, and thus he gets the top spot. He is the serious but he sets up so many jokes

2. Buster - I'm a huge fan of Buster (and An Yang!). I just think they are hilarious.

3. Gob - Gob is a magician and that's awesome.

4. Lindsay Funke - I'm surprised by Portia de Rosse. I didn't know she could do comedy! She's good!

5. George Sr. - Funny guy

6. George Michael - Oh George Michael. SO SO awkward. I'm placing him here despite that fact that I absolutely can't stand the Maeby storyline

7. Tobias Funke - Tobias is funny but he isn't there for me yet. Steve loves him. We'll see if I like him more eventually.

8. Maeby Funke - Ugh. Maeby. She is annoying, and not that funny. Ugh.

9. Lucille - The only reason I put Lucille at the bottom is because I don't think she does a ton. But she's funny when she is in scenes.

Well, I'm not happy with how my character rankings came out, but oh well! My blog posts aren't very fun anyways. My next post will not be fun. I can promise you that.

Pawnee: The Greatest Town in America

This book was the basis of a Parks and Recreation episode earlier this season, and lo and behold, an actual tie-in exists in real life. I received said tie-in book for Christmas and have been reading it a few sections at a time for two months now. I enjoyed it, but must admit that a great deal of the book seemed like a rehashing of great moments from the TV show, now in print form. Of course, that's both understandable and permissible - how does one make a 220-page book about a fictional town without focusing heavily on the elements already canon to said fictional town? This was definitely something a big Parks and Recreation fan like me would enjoy reading, but is by no means going to get a non-fan to become interested in the show itself.

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks is the longest tenured game on my backlog, and now it is finally complete. I started into the game on a work trip to Dayton nearly a year ago, getting decently far and having a great time with it. After lending my DS to my bored brother in the army for a year or so, I finally picked up where I left off a few days ago. The game plays similarly to the previous DS installment Phantom Hourglass with 4 expansive areas each with their own temple and set of small towns and attractions, as well as one giant tower acting as a central hub. Rather than sailing from port to port, this time Link rides around on a train, and this mode of transportation drew most of the criticism for Spirit Tracks. This makes sense- rather than being able to freely travel wherever you wanted on a boat, getting around on a train is much more limited as you can't exactly go off the beaten path. There are a few distractions from the boring rides though, as you can engage in cannon combat with enemies or hunt for animals while continuing to your destination. The towns, mini-games and temples are all standard Zelda fare- if you've played any recent installments, you have a pretty good idea of what you're going to get. I also have to praise the developers for listening to a recent grumbling among the Zelda fanbase- people insisted that items were growing stale, and that there's no surprise in getting the bow and arrow or boomerang anymore. But I enjoyed some of the new items- the whip and sand-raiser were fun to use and more importantly had important uses outside of their respective temples. You also play a flute along the way, using the DS's microphone capabilities, which did prove tough- sometimes it seemed like the DS just wouldn't register my blowing (har). In addition to the typical Zelda mainstays, Spirit Tracks has a central train station known as the Tower of Spirits, this game's answer to the much maligned Temple of the Ocean King from Phantom Hourglass. It appeard that Nintendo listened to people's complaints, because while the tower can be a pain in the ass at times, it's not nearly the burden that the Temple of the Ocean King was. Basically on six seperate occasions Link has to traverse four or five floors of the tower to proceed with the game, but unlike before there's no time limit and you don't have to redo old floors. In the tower the phantoms from Phantom Hourglass return, patroling around and instant-killing Link, but this time around the spirit of Princess Zelda (her body gets stolen from her early on) can possess these phantoms, allowing Link and the Princess to work together to get through the game. I appreciated this aspect- despite being the name of the whole series of games, Zelda always takes on a background role and most often plays some damsel in distress. Spirit Tracks did wonders for fleshing out the character as spunky and more adventurous than our hero Link, and it would be impossible to get through the tower or defeat the final boss without her. By the time you've reached the endgame the quality of different aspects of the game really seemed to reach their extremes- the temples and mini-games got more and more fun, while constantly shuttling around passengers on your train and playing more difficult tunes on your spirit flute became boring and difficult. Those two flaws don't bring the game down much for me though, and overall I had a great time with it. That people consider Spirit Tracks one of the worst Zelda games speaks volumes about the quality of the entire series.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

My foray into the hand held Zelda games has been quite limited. I have played a few of them but this one is by far my favorite. Incidentally, this is also the first Capcom Zelda game I have played. Having enjoyed this one so much I may venture into the oracle series (oracle of seasons and oracle of ages) both also Capcom games. I would go into explaining how the game is laid out but that might be a bit exhaustive because everyone knows how Zelda games are structured. Instead I will focus on what makes this game distinct. In this edition Link has to work with the Picori people sometimes referred to as the Minish because they are mini. At certain spots link can use magic items to transform into a Minish and is then able to do things as a small link that he can't as a big link. This duality of links created an interesting game play scenario.

So what did I like about this game? It was fun, intuitive at times and challenging at other points.The bosses were hard but not so hard that you couldn't beat them in a couple tries. It was full of side quests that could give you a break from the main quest. Another thing I enjoyed was its simple yet great story.

As far as I can tell this game more than any other Zelda game I have ever played influenced the Skyward Sword game that just came out. For instance Minish cap contains items called Kinstones and most people in Hyrule have one, actually half of one. Link collects many kinstone halves and when he completes the second half of someone else's good things happen like treasure chests appear or caves open and stuff like that, this is a feature that was closely mired in SS.

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

I have to assume everyone reading this has played Bejeweled at one point or another. At least, I remember seeing so many people playing that game on their non-smart phones and in web browser windows a few years back. If you aren't familiar, it's a very basic grid-based puzzle game (much like Tetris or Hexic or Dr. Mario) in which the goal is to line up three gems of the same color. When you do so, they'll disappear, and gravity will pull all the gems above those down to fill in the holes, complete with new random gems coming in from the top of the screen. You can create combos in this way, linking three yellow gems together, say, and seeing a red gem fall into the newly-created gap only to connect with two other red gems, giving you that combination as well. It's a game that has seen so many different variants and styles that I can't even tell if there's an actual original set of Bejeweled rules that people still play by. Regardless, I was never a huge fan, mostly because the appeal of the game seemed hampered by its luck factor - depending on which new jewels appeared at the top of the screen, you could end up with any sort of game. I think I bought the game for my cell phone during a lengthy lecture block in college, and only even played it once or twice. Anyway, at some point along the way I heard of Puzzle Quest, a game which was supposed to be like Bejeweled with strategy and RPG elements, and when I saw it being sold on Amazon for six bucks, I made the plunge. I'm glad I did, because Puzzle Quest was such an easy game to fall right into. The Internet at large quoted the game as taking 35 to 50 hours to beat. Fortunately, I made it through in what couldn't have been more than 20, and most of those hours qualified as double-logging duty, as I played the game in front of a whole lot of Dexter and How I Met Your Mother. I'm sure there are some questions just burning away at you right now, so I'll go ahead and answer them. Yes, the game was in fact an RPG of sorts. You travel a world map, get new quests at different towns and cities, gain experience, level up, acquire new skills, encounter random enemies from time to time, equip a selection of weapons and armor, and even have other people join your party. However, the combat is entirely Bejeweled-based, as you and your opponent take turns lining up gems. Line up skulls to damage your enemy, line up gold coins to acquire gold coins, line up purple stars to gain experience, and line up colored gems to gather mana. Use mana to cast spells, some of which heal you, some of which harm your enemy, and some of which alter the puzzle board itself. It's such a simple premise, and yet there were so many different ways to play the game due to the breadth of spells and items. As with any other RPG with customizable characterization, you could take many different routes, between a "warrior" type who can absorb a lot of damage but serves up a lot of it too, or maybe a "healer" type who can turn battles into wars of attrition by recovering health every turn. My own character was a "druid" whose specialty was altering the colors of the gems on the board. I'm sure that had I been some other type of character, I'd have played the game in a very different way; my strategy by the end of the game was to deal damage with skulls whenever possible, but aside from that to build up my mana reserves as quickly as possible and start chaining together magic attacks. I was worried at first that the appeal of the game wouldn't hold up for forty hours, but if anything the game got more and more interesting as I acquired new items and abilities and had to face harder opponents. I mean, with so many games on my backlog, I'm never one to lament the completion of any game, but I'd be lying if I said no small part of me wanted this game to just keep on going. It looks like two sequels exist for handhelds and the PSN/XBLA gaming services, and I could easily see myself purchasing and playing those games at some point. But not yet. Not yet.

Futurama: Volume 6

Futurama is a fairly consistent show, and there have been very few duds in its more-than-a-hundred episodes; you can count on most of its half-hour segments to entertain you with a light barrage of puns, references, humorous wordplay, and well-timed one-liners. Still, every now and again, Futurama hits you with a really memorable fantastic episode that stands head and shoulders above most others, as most long-running episodic TV shows tend to do. Most of my favorite Futurama episodes can be divided into three categories: emotionally powerful stories, genre parodies with fantastic use of science fiction tropes and concepts, and then simply those very funny episodes that keep the laughs coming from end to end. Fans of the show would probably agree with me that the episode about Fry's old dog fits nicely into the first category, for example, and the classic Emmy-winning episode where Fry goes back in time to Roswell and becomes his own grandfather is a great fit for the second. (Mileage may vary on the third type, as comedy is often far more subjectively enjoyed than the emotional material or the genre homage.) There's overlap between these three broad types for sure, and the very greatest episodes make use of them all, but in general they stand as three benchmarks with which to typify the series highlights. I bring all of this up because only once I rationalized this all in my own mind was I able to figure out why I didn't completely love this series of thirteen episodes that aired last summer. I actually think that the thirteen episodes from 2010 that comprise Volume 5 made for the greatest run in the show's long but spaced out history. So why am I left wondering if these last thirteen episodes were one of the weakest stretches? They certainly had their moments, and none registered as "duds" in my book; still, there was an overall lack of what I considered to be truly great episodes in this past season. None of the episodes were bad enough for me to even consider ceasing to watch Futurama, but none will go down in, say, my top fifteen or so of all time. (That's not a list I've actually figured out, by the way, and if I ever do, I'll post about it on some other blog.) I suppose that could be credited to statistical sampling; if a hundred episodes exist, then only one in every six or seven will make a "Top 15" list, and if none were to be found in this season, that only means the season came in at two under the expected value. Still, I've now seen every episode at least twice, and none of them ever left me saying, "that was moving" or "that was really clever" or even "that was hilarious." This wasn't for a lack of trying, either; one episode used Fry flashbacks, just like the aforementioned dog episode, and ended with Fry's father telling him (a thousand-plus years ago) that he loved him. Eh. It just didn't work as well as most of the show's previous attempts to pull heartstrings. In another vein, there was a good Moby-Dick parody that took place in four-dimensional space, but its third act was too bizarre and sloppy to stick the landing for what could have been a classic. Plenty of other episodes were Bender-centric, a pattern I'm beginning to worry about; yes, Bender is a great character, but sometimes it feels as though the writers use him and his carefree selfishness as an anchor for story-telling when his real strength is timely one-liners. Bender is best left as a secondary character, as the best episodes tend to focus on Fry and Leela, yet an increasing number of episodes seem to ask the foul-mouthed robot to carry the brunt of the plot. This only works so well for a limited number of episodes, and I think we've reached that saturation point. Also, there was a serious lack of Zapp Brannigan this season. What gives? Now, if pressed, I'd probably say that my favorite episode of this season was its final one, a three-segment piece with each short story told in different animation styles: old-fashioned black-and-white, 8-bit video game, and anime. It was pretty solid from start to finish, but it was also an episode I'm hesitant to call an "all time great" because of its internal division. All three parts were great, but their sum was nothing more, you know? I suppose I'm just rambling now, so I'll try to end this on a positive note. In spite of the grievances I've aired here, I have to insist that I really did enjoy each and every episode and that I'm very glad Futurama has ben re-un-cancelled for at least two more years of content. I look forward to these twenty-six new episodes and I hope those include enough great episodes to make any "Top 15" list I made today horribly outdated by the fall of 2013.

Mockingjay

Mockingjay has produced the most different reviews of the Hunger Games trilogy among my friends, and it's interesting to note that the guys I know seemed to hate it while the girls I know seemed to love it. Is the resolution of the Katniss/Peeta/Gale love triangle the source of this rift between genders? Perhaps. I'll give Mockingjay a wishy-washy and thus possibly androgynous review and take neither side. Much of the book involved constant planning and scheming without much action- I'm ok with this though, a book full of planning is right up my alley (this wasn't all that far off from a young adult version of The Stand in a few ways). Through Katniss we get to see the revolution both in its developmental stages as well as the front lines- it was a little ridiculous that the battles were constantly fought by teenagers, but then I realized that Katniss would almost be old enough to enlist in our U.S. army and she would be closer to fighting in a war at her age than I would at mine. I appreciated the more subdued ending as well- it would have been so easy for Katniss to get some real revenge on those who have done her wrong, or maybe have the revolution go out in a blaze of unresolved glory, but a small twist at the end made a big impact on the message- not just the same-old same-old about good triumphing over evil but that everyone, no matter how righteous is capable of terrible atrocities. Either way I still think Collins is probably at her best in writing the games themselves- I still hold to my stance that she could have written a dozen novels in the vein of The Hunger Games without completely runnin' that shit into the ground. That first book was undeniably fun and I'm pumped for the movie.

Downton Abbey: Series One

I can't recall ever paying attention to Masterpiece Theatre in any way- it was public broadcasting that seemed a little too high-brow for me and likely pretty boring. Over the past year, however, Masterpiece Theatre has been broadcasting a show that has recently taken America by storm- Britain's Downton Abbey. Katie and I gave it a shot this weekend and were well rewarded, finishing it less than a day after we started. It basically gives you a glimpse into the life of the servants and aristocrats living in an early 20th century British abbey. The Crawley family- parents Robert and Cora, and three adult daughters, recently lost a close cousin in the Titanic sinking who was heir to the estate. Due to some ambiguities in the laws, it is discovered that unless their eldest daughter Mary gets married soon, they'll likely soon lose the abbey to a distant relative who doesn't particularly care for the rich lifestyle. Mary's cute and all, but has a tendency to be pretty difficult and constantly want what she can't have, and the question of will she finally accept a suitor runs throughout the seven episode run. On the other hand you have the servants, who run the gambit- big dreamers, hopelessly in love, assholes, people with mysterious pasts. The focus of all of this is on Mr. Bates, the new valet, who is basically about as badass as a proper and respectful servant can get. Anyway this is very low-commitment, highly entertaining, and it makes you feel cultured because it's a foreign period piece. Also season 1 is streaming on Netflix so I give Downton Abbey a hearty "watch it!" recommendation.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

I've confused Chuck Klosterman with Chuck Paluhniak many times before- a couple modern writers who share the same first name, have equally funny-sounding last names, and share a large portion of their fanbase. But having finally read them both, it's painfully easy to distinguish between the two- Paluhniak writes novels about people at their worst with wildly twisting plots, while Klosterman is simpler and much more easy to stomach- he simply analyzes pop culture. Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto is a collection of essays which are at least always entertaining, and at times some very interesting pieces of writing. Allow me to go through and provide some brief thoughts on each one:

1. This is Emo- Chuck has a problem with how girls love things like Coldplay and When Harry Met Sally, believing this has led them to believe in a fictionalized version of what love is. This may be true, but by not mentioning how men can be similarly manipulated by media it comes off as "women who don't like me like these things instead."

2. Billy Sim- Chuck cares little for video games but becomes engrossed in The Sims. I've never played The Sims before and have only slight interest, but Chuck talking about playing god and interviewing creator Will Wright certainly helped.

3. What Happens When People Stop Being Polite- The long-lasting effects of The Real World on society- Basically Chuck doesn't see new cast members who act like people he knows, but meets new people and believes them to all suddenly be fitting into the mold of notable Real World cast members. He makes a convincing point, even if it might just be that we tend to follow what we think is popular.

4. Every Dog Must Have His Every Day, Every Drink Must Have His Drunk- Chuck heaps praise upon Billy Joel, and searches for the answer of how Billy Joel became one of the biggest rock stars ever despite never being close to 'cool' to anyone.

5. Appetite for Replication- Chuck spends a night with a Guns N' Roses tribute band and discovers their importance- the show goes about how you'd expect (some people show up and have fun singing and dancing to GnR songs and the band goes home with no groupies and a little bit of cash) but was still very entertaining and made me want to go watch some tribute bands.

6. Ten Seconds to Love- What starts as a reflection on the highs and lows of the Pamela/Tommy Lee sex tape turns into a comparison between the 50's and the 90's, as Chuck questions why Marilyn Monroe could sleep with a star athlete, a playwright and the president, but America's current sex symbols could never pull that off.

7. George Will vs. Nick Hornby- Maybe the book's shining moment- Chuck makes as far as I can tell the be-all end-all convincing argument for why he hates soccer and Americans will never take to it the way other countries do.

8. 33- Chuck attempts to explain how the Lakers/Celtics rivalry was the basis for deeper issues, beyond the obvious one of race. Except he doesn't make it much further than 'people from LA are different from Bostonians.' There seems to be some implication that Bostonians are much more conservative, which is odd because both cities seem to be their coast's bastion of liberalism.

9. Porn- With porn exploding onto the internet in a huge way, Chuck takes some time to analyze what some of the most popular porn fetishes say about society, especially the focus on amateurism vs. professionals.

10. The Lady or the Tiger- Wikipedia tells me that this is a brief history of breakfast cereal and how Kellogg's was started as a religious company. I really only barely remember reading this, even though it was just a few days ago. Add to that my love for breakfast cereal, and the fact that I don't remember it at all means this was probably the worst essay.

11. Being Zack Morris- That's ok though, because this is probably the most interesting essay- a reflection on Saved by the Bell and how unlike other more 'realistic' high school dramas, this was probably the closest representation to how high school really is due to characters disappearing and reappearing seemingly at random and the idea that important things are likely to be pretty cliche.

12. Sulking on Lisa Loeb on Ice Planet Hoth- I can't recall what Lisa Loeb had to do with this, but Chuck does well to determine why Star Wars gets so overrated and people's revisionist history when it comes to their personal experience with the trilogy (like how we all claim we wanted to be Han Solo when it's clear that every kid ever would want to be Luke).

13. The Awe-Inspiring Beauty of Tom Cruise's Shattered, Troll-like Face- In keeping with the movies theme, Chuck compares and contrasts a number of turn of the millenium movie that revolve around the only question he feels worth asking in movies these days- "What is reality?" and in doing so makes a case for Vanilla Sky to be as respected as favorites like The Matrix and Memento.

14. Toby over Moby- Chuck skewers that asshole everyone knows who likes 'everything except for country music' and praises Wal-Mart country music for its straightforward lyrics. As a guy who likes to mix some Toby Keith and Brad Paisley with my mostly indie rock library, I appreciated it.

15. This is Zodiac Speaking- Chuck makes some horrifying points about how serial killing is probably the easiest way to celebrity status and interviews some people he knows who have had a brush with these pseudo-celebrities in order to find out what it's like to know a serial killer.

16. All I Know is What I Read in the Papers- A semi-intriguing look at what goes on behind the scenes at big newspapers- while it's refreshing to see why there couldn't be any political bias in non-editorial newspaper columns, this essay mostly seems like a lot of whining, which isn't helped by...

17. I, Rock Chump- Chuck writing about his experiences at the 2002 Pop Music Studies Conference, during which he notes that it was the 'least rock and roll thing I've ever done.' While the irony is funny, it doesn't seem to warrant ten pages of not liking other music critics.

18. How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found- The book ends on a high note as Chuck attempts to take an unbiased look at becoming a born-again Christian and checks out some of the hypocrisies on both sides of the religion vs. atheism debate as they relate to the Rapture.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

While the last time Call of Duty: Black Ops was posted was one of the most infamous in Back-Blog history, hopefully this time goes a little better. The last few CoD games I had played left me a little underwhelmed. Boring generic World War II FPSes, two of which were Treyarch's previous entries in the series. For Black Ops, I wasn't expecting much. Let's get this out of the way now- my expectations were completely shattered. Black Ops was awesome and sits alongside the Modern Warfare games as shining achievements in first-person shooters. Drawing upon World War II, Vietnam, and the Cold War, Black Ops has some wildly varied missions all over the globe that combine to tell actually tell an interesting coherent story. There's some running and gunning, as to be expected, but it never feels like you're doing the same thing for long. The battle scenes are frenzied and chaotic with Bay-level explosions happening constantly. You'll drive boats, pilot helicopters, assassinate major political figures, use stealth in the dark, and have a lot of fun doing it. It's got a great cast of voice talent (Sam Worthington, Ice Cube, Gary Oldman) and has some actual rock tunes playing during some missions- 'Fortunate Son' and 'Sympathy for the Devil' may be a little cliche, but they add plenty to the action. The big plot twist may have been a little easy to see coming but it's still a good one, better than the typical betrayals that happen in so many other video games. It wasn't until late in the game that I discovered this was an actual sequel to World At War- as far as I can tell it's only because one character makes a cameo appearance- but there's really no comparison between the two. Play Black Ops.

How I Met Your Mother: Season 6

I'm of two mindsets on this sixth season of How I Met Your Mother. The more agitated and negative one is still reeling from the ultimate pointlessness of the entire season for the most part. Ted met, courted, dated, and then broke it off with yet another woman who we knew all along would not be the titular mother. Barney dealt with daddy issues and began the process of learning to settle down with one woman, even though he'd done the latter thing in the early part of Season 5. Marshall and Lily tried to get pregnant, but couldn't, but then did in the season finale. And Robin... was there. But interestingly enough the prevailing mindset for me is the more positive one. "Eh. They wasted a lot of time on a pointless relationship, but so what? Several of the episodes were duds, but that's always been the case. The writing staff sure was spinning their wheels, but there's some forward momentum to take us into next season and beyond." Granted, that positive mindset may be more beaten into apathy than truly optimistic, but it's still the one I'm walking away from Season 6 with. The earlier negative one? That's the one I had a year ago when I "walked out on" Season 6 right in the middle of it (ie, deleted the series recording order from my DVR). There are two conclusions to be made here. One is that the sixth season sucked at first and then got a lot better. The other is that this show works best when devoured on DVD rather than seen live, twenty minutes a week at a time. My money is on the latter being true. After all, I thought Season 5 started out so-so and ended very poorly, and that lines up with the fact that I watched the first half all at once before catching up to the second half, which I watched live. So I'm left with the same takeaway now that I was left with a year ago - that How I Met Your Mother is a show best seen in multiple-hour chunks. That's actually kind of rare for a comedy, and many shows that I watch on TV every week for laughs are shows I'd be hard-pressed to revisit on DVD in marathon sessions. But then, How I Met Your Mother is far more emotion-driven than most sitcoms, even if it's shot with multiple cameras, contains a laugh track, and airs on CBS. Lost in all of this theorizing I'm doing is the fact that the show is now more than six years old, and that it's actually pretty hard for a show to keep churning out fresh material when all the pieces have been in place for so long. It's an easy joke that becomes more true every year that the show should be called How I Spent the Years Before I Met Your Mother instead, but that's widely accepted as being beside the point by now. The parts of this show that work don't necessarily work because they push us toward the point where we find out who the mother is, and the parts that don't work don't necessarily not work because they put Ted in non-mother relationships or find other ways to stall. No, simply put, certain episodes are funny and interesting, and certain episodes are meaningful and relevant to the big picture overall, and certain episodes resonate emotionally. And sometimes an episode hits right at the center of this triple Venn diagram, and sometimes an episode misses every mark entirely. Watching every episode in a season over the course of a few days, it's easy to forgive the duds and remember the highlights; watching every episode over a nine month stretch, the stink of those duds lingers much longer. In other words, although it's tempting right now to race off to the Internet and watch the first half of Season 7 and catch up once again with the show, I know that after two consecutive iffy March episodes, I'd abandon ship all over again; it'll be another six months at least before I find out what comes next for these five characters, but at least I can assume it'll be a whole lot of stuff relatively similar to the stuff that's happened to them for six years and counting now.

Dexter: Season 5

I've seen all six seasons of Dexter now, but this is the only one I've seen twice; the first four were DVD-only viewings, and upon catching up, the last two were seen in real time, but the sixth season hasn't come out on DVD yet. Were it not for my own stubborn desire for complete DVD ownership of every show in my DVD collection, I'd swear never to buy Season 6 because it was so damn terrible. (I mean, who only has half the seasons of any given TV show? Flakes and quitters, dammit!) But Season 5? Season 5 was flawed, for sure, but it wasn't terrible. With the understanding that anything that happened two years ago can't be considered a "spoiler" in the strict sense of the word, I'll proceed to "remind" my audience that Season 4 ended with a shocking moment - Dexter's wife has been murdered in her own bathtub. It was a bold cast-cutting move, but since it was organic enough to the story at hand - Dexter tends to make enemies out of some very sick and twisted people - it didn't feel like a shark-jumping moment at all. Actually, the strongest parts of Season 5 were the ones that dealt with the aftermath of the event, and how it affected Dexter's already frayed psyche. The moment where he had to tell his step-kids, while wearing Mickey Mouse ears, that their mother had been killed... you know what? Just go watch it. Even for those with zero understanding of these characters and their relationships, this short clip is something to behold. Best comic relief ever? Most uncomfortable G-rated scene in history? At any rate, it's unfortunate to note that the powerful stuff dealing with Rita's death was mostly contained in the premiere. Meanwhile, the worst of the Dexter - loose plot ends coming to unlikely resolutions, the preservation of Dexter's secret double life, and the utterly frustrating predictability of it all - ramped up later in the season, and especially in the finale. I can't even look back and cite this season as the one in which everything fell apart for Dexter; the second season's deus ex machina climax and tacked on falling action were pretty egregiously bad, and Season 4 was only a noteworthy performance by John Lithgow and a shocking season-ending moment away from being an altogether lackluster affair. Given how bad Season 6 was, though, I'm pretty sure I'll hold off on Season 7 until the DVDs come out. Still, holes and all, Dexter was compelling and entertaining enough in Season 5 for me not to hate the fact that I was re-watching it. And honestly, that's more than I can say for the final season of Lost.

Breakfast of Champions

Steve let me know the other day that there have been 17 Kurt Vonnegut books posted on the blog! Wowzers! I thought I would jump on the bandwagon, so I read Slaughterhouse. And I did not enjoy it nearly as much as everyone else did. I couldn’t get into the style of writing, and the story jumped around so much, I found myself having to reread passages. Breakfast of Champions was a Kindle daily deal a while back, and I couldn’t help purchasing this book for $1.99. I may as well give Vonnegut another shot.

I didn’t love it, but I did like it more than Slaughterhouse (which seems surprising to some). This book is disjointed in its own way. It follows two characters Kilgore Trout (of Slaughterhouse and other Vonnegut book fame) and Dwayne Hoover. The book jumps back and forth between these two seemingly unrelated stories for 50% of the book, but the stories then begin to converge. For me, this book was easier to follow this because first and foremost, it was on chronological order! +1 for Breakfast of Champions.

I thought the story was interesting. Right in the beginning you learn that seemingly normal Dwayne Hoover will go crazy because of Kilgore Trout, but it’s not until the last 25% that you find out why. This gives me something to look forward to. I appreciate that in a book. Slaughterhouse to me lacked payoff. (The bombing of Dresden scene did not stand out at all to me for some reason.)

Pseudo Spoilers to Follow: When I read the Dark Tower, you may remember me getting a little angry with Stephen King for writing himself into the book. Well Kurt Vonnegut does the same in this book. But I think it worked in this book. He is an observer of a book he wrote. He acknowledges how he wrote all the characters. He references how it has related to his own life and problems. He even addresses the characters and shows them he has control over their life. It is an interesting way to incorporate yourself into the book, and I enjoyed it.

So good for you Breakfast of Champions. I may just read another Vonnegut book now.

No Country for Old Men

When No Country for Old Men got made into a movie a few years ago, it generated some wildly mixed reactions- some claimed it was the best movie of the year (as you can see by the sticker on the book, it won Best Picture), others thought it made no sense at all. I, like many others, enjoyed the movie purely as a border-crossing chase flick, as well as Javier Bardem's chilling turn as Anton Chigurh, the emotionless psychopath who is more force of nature than human. But like many others, I wondered what the hell Tommy Lee Jones was doing in this movie- he hardly seemed important at all for the overall plot, as he never catches Chigurh and rarely meets up with any other main characters. I had heard that this role made much more sense in the book. Now that I have read No Country for Old Men, I can say it does. Rather than two main characters (Llewelyn and Chigurh) in a chase and a third (Sherriff Bell) interrupting the action from the sidelines, the book version feels like three integrated stories, with Bell playing a much larger role than before. He starts every chapter with a few pages of thoughts on the increasing violence in his county since he became sheriff, and I found these parts to be the most interesting of the whole book. It's true that I already knew how Llewelyn and Chigurh's game of cat and mouse would work out and had less to be interested in there, but Bell's reflections on his career really drove home the idea that the world is changing for the worse and the fight against nutjobs like Chigurh will never end. I still think I enjoyed the movie more, but this is a case where two different versions of the same story complement each other well- if you wanted to know more about what was going on in the movie, reading the book will help.

The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

The credits are rolling on the first game of the recent Prince of Persia trilogy, The Sands of Time. I think Sands drew both Stan's and my interest after finding it on some best of all time video game lists, and with the recent release of the entire trilogy in HD for PS3 I had no excuse not to give it a shot. The Sands of Time focuses heavily on using parkour to get the titular prince around an expansive palace, and clearly the developers knew that nailing this constant movement would make or break the game as a whole. Fortunately it worked out well and becomes the game's main draw- soon enough I was looking at huge platforming segments and planning out a way for the prince to bound around in a fluid motion that I've felt in few other games- Mirror's Edge and the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series come to mind. A complement to the parkour aspect is the 'Sands of Time' themselves, which allow the prince to rewind time any time he messes up. It may seem a little cheap to just undo an action every time you press the wrong button or don't dodge in time, but late in the game when this ability is taken away I realized it added much to the overall gameplay. The prince and the questionable ally bounce around their palace, killing former guards who have been for some reason turned into monsters. The combat here is pretty shallow, but still very fun- what could have helped was a little more enemy variety though. About halfway through the game you've seen every enemy, and they just increase in numbers the further you go. Aside from that small complaint, Sands of Time lived up to its much-hyped billing, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the trilogy.

Gulliver's Travels (1996)

Two weeks ago in my review of Gulliver's Travels I mentioned a TV miniseries version of the classic satire that I'd seen. This is that TV miniseries version. It aired on NBC in 1996 and starred Ted Danson as Gulliver. As I mentioned previously, I'd seen it in seventh grade and remembered it fondly. I was worried, nonetheless, that I would watch the miniseries here and now in 2012 as an adult and be unable to deny two things - one, that this would end up being a rather faithless and dumbed down adaptation of Swift's novel, and two, that the special effects would reek of "made for TV in the mid-nineties." Fortunately, neither fear was warranted. While it wasn't a scene-for-chapter or shot-for-page adaptation, this miniseries certainly held up as an intelligent and respectful re-telling of the original novel, maintaining its tone and various absurdities quite well. And while I'm sure another miniseries made today would have superior effects (especially during the first two parts, which deal heavily with large size discrepancies between people) it isn't as if these effects were distractingly bad at all. In fact, the production seemed rather self-aware of which story elements it was and wasn't capable of recreating convincingly. Overall it was a very good piece of television that feels just as under-appreciated as the novel it was based on.

Catching Fire

Catching Fire was for the most part a good follow-up to Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games, but it suffered from some very perceivable flaws too. The book picks up a few months after Katniss and Peeta have returned home to District 12 to live a life of mostly unwanted luxury. Katniss is trying to live down the horrors of the games while providing a better life for her townspeople any way she can, and rumors abound about her defiance of the Capitol planting the seeds of revolution. But before any of that can happen, our duo have to go on a tour of the twelve districts, greeting the citizens as champion. This extended introduction (nearly half the book) was kinda hit or miss- while it allows for some very poignant scenes of the revolution starting to take shape, it can get bogged down at times by the continuing Peeta/Katniss/Gale love triangle and some ridiculous scenes of the president of a totalitarian regime going far out of his way to threaten a teenage girl. What's more, after Peeta and Katniss return home, there's a twist that really feels out of nowhere and really kills a lot of momentum- I'm starting to care about the revolution, and all of the sudden our main character gets whisked away just as it's starting? That said, the twist allows Collins to write what she writes best, but I'll go easy on spoilers. The latter half of Catching Fire may not be that important in the overarching plot of the Hunger Games, but it definitely provides some of the most memorable scenes and outdoes a lot of the action in the first book. It makes me wonder why Collins set this up as a trilogy and not a longer series, returning to the 'Hunger Games' idea several times- there's clearly plenty of action and drama to be mined from a children's battle royale. At this point I've read about how three separate Hunger Games events have played out, and all of them have been awesome without needing to top eachother in any way. Know your audience, Suzanne Collins, and also know your strengths! Give the people more kids forced to fight to the death! The way Catching Fire ended seems to indicate no more games, so we'll see what book 3, Mockingjay brings.

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones

A while back the second set of Ambassador games were released for the people who got suckered into buying a 3DS at full price weeks before it dropped almost a hundred bucks. The first set of games was comprised of NES games and were mostly crap, a couple of Zelda games and a bunch of games that were worth ten minutes of play at most. The second set of games seems to hold a lot more value. The first game I played out of this set was a game I had heard of before but never played, a part of the Fire Emblem series.

This was not the Fire Emblem game I expected it to be. I was expecting to see Roy and Marth from Smash Brothers. However, this small disappointment aside, I truly enjoyed this game. I actually had trouble putting it down. Dee spent a week yelling at me for playing at the dinner table and eventually started making me leave the console at home when we left the house.

The game itself is a turn based strategy game. When a player dies there is no revive potion so they are gone for good unless its one of the two main characters and then it's game over. It takes place in the world of Magvel and features Prince Ephraim and Princess Eirika as they try to find out why a long time ally has turned its back on their nation and attacked them.

Being my first strategy game I had a lot to learn about leveling up characters. It wasn't until I had been playing for 15-20 hours already that I learned I had the appropriate items in my inventory to level up a lot of my players to a higher class. I also had to do quite a bit of research when leveling to see which classes would yield the higher stats in the long run. One level took me a dozen attempts to finish but with the right strategy I finally beat it. The final chapter took me a couple tries but once I realized that I needed to upgrade my healer I finally defeated evil and restored Magvel to its former glory.

The Woman In Black

I am not big into the horror genre, to begin with. Partially I wanted to see this film because I was keen to see Daniel Radcliffe outside of Harry Potter. What really sealed it for me finding out that there was a pre-existing book, so the movie would be less likely to fall into the cliche horror-movie tropes.

This movie was scary. The late 1900's turn of the century is the perfect setting for a horror film- communication and travel are both difficult things at this time, and the remote locations make it believable that something bad lurks in the dark corners. What was genius to me was the props in the film. Candlelight and victorian wind up toys are terrifying to us as modern veiwers, but would be less scary to the protagonist in the film. He is scared when toys move on their own, but their sinister look is for us alone.

Some of the plot points were weak, the ending wasn't what I hoped for even though according to the all knowing Wiki the ending of the book was uber lame making this an improvement. Some highlights to my viewing experience was a girl crying in fear, another girl screaming at the first scary scene and then my sister screaming in my face.

All in all I found this movie interesting, tense and scary in the right moments. I even forgot that Daniel Radcliffe was Harry Potter.

Archer: Season 2

Archer is a hell of a show, but I already heaped all sorts of praise on it back in my post about Season 1 a year ago, and Season 2 was really no different from Season 1 - which isn't a bad thing. Anyway, in the interest of not just making a super-brief or half-assed or repetitive post, let me try to pinpoint just why I think Archer is a fantastically funny animated program. Beyond the clean and beautiful animation and the snappy and witty dialogue, I think Archer's biggest asset is Archer himself. That's no surprise; plenty of shows, and probably the majority, bank on their main character being their selling point. But Sterling Archer isn't like most leading TV characters; he's an arrogant, stupid, self-centered, womanizing elitist. Yet somehow he's got more charisma than anyone else on the show. He's like a cross between James Bond and that stereotypical lacrosse-playing rich idiot you went to high school with, possessing amazing secret agent skills and all sorts of charm while maintaining the easily amused and enthused air of a giddy thrill-seeking playboy. In a way, Archer makes for better lifestyle porn than shit like Entourage, because while I'd never want to be friends with the crew from Entourage, I'd absolutely love to be the world's best secret agent, surrounded by beautiful women and with a surplus of awesome weaponry at my disposal. The rest of the characters have fleshed out nicely in two-plus seasons so far, but the real appeal behind Archer remains, you know, Archer. I'm glad this show is back on the air, and given that it's an animated show (low cost!) I'm hoping that it can last for several more years in spite of middling ratings - the series draws about a million viewers weekly, which for comparison's sake is roughly comparable to the audience watching PTI every day and various repeats of Friends, Seinfeld, and Family Guy. Oh well. That's late night basic cable for you.

Final Fantasy VIII

Final Fantasy VIII is a game with a ridiculously overdone level of customization for combat and leveling, the now completely abandoned junctioning system. Since this game was kinda mediocre for the series and I'm a bit bored, I'm going to start off this entry with an attempt to explain just how the hell the whole things works. This will in all likelihood be pretty boring for those uninterested, and I don't blame you if you'd like to skip this entry completely. I just want to see if I can make sense of the whole thing and perhaps provide a decent explanation should anyone else on the blog eventually attempt to play Final Fantasy VIII. Ok, let's start from the beginning. Each character has 4 active abilities and 3 passives- don't worry about the passives, they don't come into play until a while into the game. The four active abilities are the four options a player can pick in battle. One of these is fixed as 'attack'- no matter what, a player will always have the option to perform their physical attack. At the start of the game, you'll have four other options for each character to fit into those last 3 ability slots. These four options are Item, Magic, Draw, and GF. Item is self-explanatory, and GF stands for guardian force- basically you can summon whatever powerful beast is assigned ("junctioned") to that character to come in and inflict some major damage. The other two, Magic and Draw, are closely related. Unlike other Final Fantasy installments, magic does not require any 'points' or anything, you simply have a stock of each kind of spell split up between each character. The characters can trade spells amongst eachother depending on the situation. So using the Magic option allows you to select any magic spell already assigned to the character. So where do these spells originate? This is where the Draw command comes into play. A player with 'Draw' assigned to him or her can 'draw' spells from an enemy in the midst of battle, with the option of either casting it immediately on either enemy or ally, or stocking multiple spells for use later. Players with Draw can also stock spells at random 'draw points' located throughout the game. Ok, so those are the active abilities you'll be dealing with to start the game. Now I mentioned 'junctioning' earlier- Final Fantasy VIII gives you a total of 20 GFs to summon throughout the game, and you can 'junction' all of them to active party members. Each time you win a battle with a GF junctioned to a player, regardless of whether the GF was summoned or not, they will receive a certain amount of AP- basically experience points for summons. These experience points help the GFs level up, but also learn abilities that the player can decide on. Each seperate GF has 22 total abilities to learn, and while some of them are simply there to make the GF stronger, many are used for those active and passive abilities I mentioned earlier. Remember, you only get three active abilities aside from 'attack' so if you want to include an option like Resurrect or Mug then you'll have to remove one of the basics like Item or Magic. Once a GF is un-junctioned from a player, they lose those abilities. Same thing with passive abilities- Once a GF has learned a passive ability, you can add it to whichever character the GF is junctioned to- up to three total passive abilities. These include things like increasing speed or total HP, or lowering your rate of encounters, whatever. So that basically covers how to junction a GF and use him to your advantage in and out of battle. But in addition to junctioning a GF, a player can also junction his own individual magic spells to individual stats. This is where the customization gets seriously deep. For instance, if you have the maximum 100 fire spells junctioned to your strength stat, the damage you deal with physical attacks will greatly increase. 100 cure spells junctioned to a character's HP will result in a higher maximum HP. This works best when the spell you're junctioning has something to do with the stat you're looking to change- offensive magic for offensive stats, stuff like that. In addition you can eventually open up things like elemental and status junctions. This means if your player has 100 sleep spells junctioned to his status defense, he will never be put to sleep. Or if you junction thunder spells to your elemental attack, then each physical attack you do will contain an extra charge of electricity. With all of this magic junctioning, you're able to take a look at a boss's strengths and weaknesses and quickly turn most into a piece of cake. Of course not all of these stat junctions are available at first, but must be learned by the GFs as I explained earlier. I appreciate a good deep combat system, and while Final Fantasy VIII's is very tough to pick up with to start off, late in the game when more and more abilities were getting unlocked I had some serious fun with it. However, knowledge of how the whole system works has lead to VIII being dubbed the most breakable game in the series- there's many options to use an unexpected strategy and make yourself final-boss ready before the first disc is over (there's 4 discs in total). Before I explain one of them, allow me to back up a bit. A little while go I mentioned how every battle nets GFs some experience. Well, they also net the players themselves some experience points, EXP. The problem is that this EXP is not only useless, it can at times downright hurt the player. Grinding through random attacks, while a boring but necessary strategy in all other Final Fantasy games, is completely unnecessary here. This is because all enemies, including bosses, level up with the characters themselves, so there's really no point in making yourself powerful through endless battles for EXP. Instead it makes sense to run away from all random encounters and focus solely on leveling up your GFs, allowing them to make your characters more powerful without increasing your level- or your enemy's level either. What makes this easy is that bosses themselves provide no EXP, but a hefty amount of AP (the GF experience points, remember?). And late in the game you can find an island of random-encounter enemies who provide huge amounts of AP and no EXP, allowing you to easily grind for all of the abilities your GFs haven't learned yet. Ok, so to get back to breaking the game on the first disc. Very early on you will get your first GF, Ifrit, the fire summon. Junction him to main character Squall, and then set him up to begin learning some passive abilities that will increase Squall's strength. Squall can then grind for AP at a nearby beach, allowing Ifrit to learn those strength-enhancing passive abilities while leveling up Squall himself minimally. Then Squall can draw 100 water spells from the same enemy and junction them to his strength stat. Suddenly in a matter of minutes Squall has become a potent physical attacker who can just straight up murder any boss on the first disc without breaking a sweat. Unfortunately I did not use this strategy as by the time I figured out how junctioning worked I was well into the game. But this is not the only strategy to make the game very easy. There's also some card game I never bothered to learn that can also apparently break the game in a number of ways and make things incredibly easy. Anyway, Jesus, look at how long this has gone. I'll briefly wrap this up. One thing I must appreciate is the beautiful CGI sequences. Final Fantasy VIII came out 13 years ago when 3-D gameplay was still relatively new, and the graphics are for the most part terrible like every other game from its generation, but Square litters their games with cutscenes that manage to stand the test of time- what they lack in CGI realism they more than make up for in imagination. Overall, the game was pretty average when compared with other Final Fantasy, which means that in the grand scheme of things it's actually a very good game. My only real beef is the main character Squall, easily the least likable protagonist in the entire series. This includes the early game when the characters hardly ever said anything. Other than that, FF VIII was a joy to play throughout, and I only have two more games in the main series left.

Conan the Barbarian (1982)

This one has been sitting on my shelf for quite some time. I’m not even too sure how I came into possession of a such a lack-luster movie. I think it may have been purchased (or given to me) in a writing class years ago only because of Oliver Stone’s writing credit. Hailed as one the greatest screenwriters of all time, this at least makes some sense. It was back in his early days when he also did some revisions for De Palma’s Scarface. Regardless of how this movie ever came into my possession, this was one I always rolled my eyes at whenever contemplating watching it. Although I approve of the majority of Schwarzenegger films – as cheesy as they maybe (probably why I love them) – this, from what clips I’ve seen, just looked too slow paced and boring for my liking. But, hey, I had nothing going on this weekend, so why not bother…

God, this movie sucked. Clocking in at a little over two hours, this film grinded along slower than frozen molasses. It starts off with Conan as a little boy who watches his small Nordic camp get wiped out by a rouge/cult-ish group of warriors known as the Snakes. With only Conan and his mother still alive, the Snakes’ leader (James Earl Jones in a bad wig) hypnotizes the mom to put her sword down only allowing him to decapitate her in one slice. Conan is sent off into slavery with the rest of the children where he spends his entire youth doing physical labor which turns his into our masculine hero – Arnold. Shortly after he’s thrown into cage match where he’s first introduced to fighting. Socking, he wins. Cue the montage as he slays opponent after opponent until his master spontaneously frees him one night. (I’m still not sure why this happened? It was like his master felt guilty for keeping someone so awesome in his possession, but that’s only a guess.) Then Conan starts his quest to get revenge on the Snakes.

Normally, I enjoy campy, dated action flicks… and I did for this; for a few fleeting moments. Those fleeting moments were only of James Earl Jones or Arnold making a tremendous idiot of himself, like this...

or this...

How do you free yourself when crucified? Bite a vulture's damn head off.

Now, while this movie contains gratuitous nudity, violence, oiled-up muscle men, and a fight with a giant, plastic snake it shockingly just didn’t do it for me. Once again, everything just felt stale and slow no matter what the content. However, that James Earl Jones... scene stealer. As the leader of the Snakes, he’s suppose to have some super powers with the ability to hypnotize his victims – how Conan’s mother died. So, whenever he’s on camera, he just stares down the audience with his blue eyes gazing at you (a black man with blue eyes... go figure?). Haunting, but awesome. At one point when Conan first breaks into the Snakes' fortress, James Earl Jones actually transforms into a giant snake only to slither away out the backdoor. (The giant snake I mentioned earlier in this paragraph was a different monster all together. Try and keep up with me people.) It just seems so weird that the one time we see the enemy's true power, he uses it to run away. But let me skip to the ending for a minute here. It's what makes the movie.

The end of the second act, Arnold dies from crucifixion and is then brought back to life by some voodoo spirit shit - one of his sidekicks is a wizard, enough said. There's really no reason for this. I only bring that up because Conan is essentially Jesus with muscles now. Anywho, Conan returns to the Snakes' fortress for one last round. He's taken out all the guards and goons, now all that's left is the bossman himself. Standing in front of his entire following, receiving his praise, Conan approaches him from behind before Jones turns around where they have a standoff. Now, this would be a great moment for this guy to unleash that snake transformation shit he pulled earlier, but, no. He's going to babble about being Conan's true father (hearing James Earl Jones saying "I'm your father" again was endearing). Finally, Conan has enough. Pulls out his "true" father's broken sword (same sword that killed his mother) and takes off the Snakes' leader's head, holds it up for all of his followers to see, then chucks it at them. Although the movie drags on through the majority of it, it does pay off in the last scene. I can honestly say I was expecting non of that.

Now, there is a sequel they allude to in the credits: Conan the Destroyer. I do not own this, and - God willing - I never will.