Eaten By A Grue

Inception Guides: A Guide

2010-07-30T18:11:00.006-04:00

So you're waist-deep in the middle of Inception, kinda sorta getting the gist of what's going on when all of a sudden the third act arrives and it's like the first week of Calculus II and here you are without your graphing calculator. Wait, how many levels deep are they? Which kick is doing what? THEN WHO WAS PHONE? It's actually not that confusing, but when your most cerebral film experience to date is Back To The Future 2, it's a lot to ask. Fortunately the film's convolutions have launched a cottage industry of sorts among unemployed graphic designers: online Inception infographics. But which one is right for you? Let's take a look at some of the most notable efforts floating around in limbo:

This is clean and straightforward, certainly. In fact, you can probably sort this by any of the columns in ascending or descending order, with or without headers as this was clearly cobbled together in Excel. I mean, it gets the job done but there's no style! No pizzazz! No spirit fingers! Plus that "Dream Level" row is totally extraneous, and what's with the Limbo kick description? "I assumed they shoot themselves"?! WE DIDN'T COME HERE FOR ASSUMPTIONS, BUCKO.

Now this is a distinct improvement. Nicely laid out, with a lovely panorama depicting each level and convenient arrows guiding you gently out of unconsciousness. Sure, it's a little text-heavy, but look how confidently it spells out who does what where and to whom and why! "Ariadne and Fischer fall off a building. Cobb and Saito shoot themselves." Now that's how you describe the Limbo kicks, spreadsheet guy. None of this wishy-washy "uhh maybe they shoot themselves" BS. This guy knows what he's talking about--wait, what's this in the Reality level? "No one... we think?!" GOD DAMMIT.

OK, this one's trying to be kind of cute and amusing--yes, yes, Alzheimer's and boogers, how droll. But, you know, it doesn't do a bad job of walking you through the rules of dreaming, has a Inception-y style going on and even ka-zings you if you haven't seen the movie yet. (By the way this post contains massive spoilers. Perhaps I should have mentioned that earlier.) Still, it's missing a lot of pertinent information. But at least it's not a freakin' spreadsheet.

And finally we have this work of art. This is the kind of thing USA Today editors keep in their porn folder. Look at those clean lines. Those color-coded silhouettes. Those adorable explosions! The economy of space, with every square inch designed to convey at least three different concepts at once with as little text as possible. It's a masterpiece of graphic design. It's also obtuse, incomprehensible and completely useless.

In short, it's perfect.

Me and You and Everyone We Know

2010-07-27T22:01:00.004-04:00

171MB of Starcraft II trial downloaded... 15 hours to go. Guess the servers are kind of busy.

Has anyone been following this? How do you play?

Inception

2010-07-17T13:48:00.005-04:00

Man, if you thought Memento was complicated...

I'm not yet sure if Inception is a full-fledged instant classic or "merely" an extremely impressive piece of screenplay architecture, with a hundred moving parts delicately laid into place by a master watchmaker. It's more emotional than any of Chris Nolan's previous films and more complex by half, so it's almost certainly his best. But the cool detachment that pervades his work his still here, if reigned in a bit.

Undeniably, though, it has a third act the likes of which you have never seen. And I am a sucker for third acts the likes of which I have never seen. Also, zero-gravity fights in hotel hallways.

More thoughts (perhaps) after my brain has unscrambled itself.

HYPERPLANE

2010-07-14T21:04:00.007-04:00

OK, it's time to fess up. Yes, posts here are a bit... sporadic. The truth is this blog is part of an elaborately constructed Alternate Reality Game--if you plot the time between posts as values on a Cartesian graph, then take the derivative of the function described and add it to the URL (remembering to deduct the sum of the numbers secretly embedded in each post image) you'll be redirected to the teaser site for I ♥ Bees: A HALO Puzzle Adventure, coming soon to the Nintendo DS.

Unfortunately, this means my next post won't be until November 2012, otherwise the URL doesn't work.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii to Include Giant "WIN" Button

2009-10-09T09:48:00.005-04:00

Internet detectives discovered the patent for this a while ago, but Nintendo recently shed some light on a new feature they'll be incorporating into their games, beginning with their four-on-the-floor multiplayer Mario adventure, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, coming out in November.

After you've humiliated yourself by dying eight times in a row, a jolly, candy-like "Super Guide" button will appear on the screen. Hitting this button cedes control of the game over to the computer to get past that tricky part, akin to handing the controller to your 14-year-old cousin who has beaten the entire game in eleven minutes. No word on whether the computer snickers audibly as it completes the level for you.

I think this is a great idea for two reasons: First, it splits the difference between making something as cheap (and tempting) as a total "level skip", and never ever seeing the end of a game you paid hard-earned money for because you suck. Second, and this is from Nintendo themselves, it allows them to make their games more difficult. This means that the later levels of NSMB Wii will once again be the Italian plumber murder simulators we all remember from certain sections of the original Super Mario Bros. games.

Scribblenauts: The Reckoning

2009-09-23T18:46:00.009-04:00

My goodness. I check in after a brief six-month sabbatical to find blog traffic has jumped four hundred percent! Imagine what would happen if I updated regularly! Some day this might even be read by someone I don't know.

So, where were we? WATCHMEN? Wow, it has been a while. I suppose my Girls Reading The Source Novel On The Subway Index was a bit of an outlier, as it didn't exactly light the box office on fire. Ah, well. I guess everyone else knew that wasn't Robert Downey, Jr.

But let's go back to one of my more prescient observations, that Scribblenauts for the DS was poised to become an enormous sleeper hit this year. OK, I don't actually say anything like that in the original post, but I did alert all four of you to this game five months before it made everyone's head explode at E3 in May. So I've got that going for me, which is nice. And if completely anecdotal observations and internet discussion are any indication--and they aren't--it's been selling quite briskly since its release on Sept. 15.

And so but how is it? If you remember (or if you scrolled down seven posts), the concept behind Scribblenauts is the ability to solve puzzles using any object in the dictionary just by writing its name. Need to cross a cavernous gap? Summon a helicopter. Or a pterodactyl. Or cut out the middleman and just give yourself wings. Amazingly, that aspect of the game really does work as advertised, and then some. Within certain boundaries--no proper nouns, no adult words, and no alcohol (awww)--if you type a word into Scribblenauts the object will materialize out of thin air. Yes, it's possible to stump the "Objectnaut" database, but this usually happens because the game contains dozens or hundreds of words that break the rules--proper nouns such as "Washington" and "Einstein" are in the game, as are a wide array of Easter Eggs and internet memes like "longcat", "ceiling cat", and "keyboard cat". Lots of cats. So you'll find yourself searching for goofy things that aren't in the game because some other goofy things are.

In fact, searching for goofy things and seeing what they do with other goofy things is pretty much the reason for this game's existence. Before you even press Start, your little Scribblenaut "Maxwell" appears on a playable demo level, where you can summon object after object to your heart's content. And it will be a while until your heart is content, at least until you find out whether Longcat can kill both Cthulhu and Shoggoth in a fight. And what if you gave them all laser swords? And shot them all with your shrink ray from an ornithopter? Truly, the mind boggles.

There is a "game", too, or so I hear. Over 200 levels, split evenly between "puzzle" and "action" levels, in which the object is to collect a "Starite", either by fulfilling some kind of condition in the puzzle levels, or by navigating your way past lava, zombies, barriers, etc. in the action levels. Here, Scribblenauts inadvertantly teaches us why, when dealing with videogames (much like children), it is important to impose limits. Your summoning powers are no more constrained than they are in the playground level, and while you understand that you're probably supposed to scare the prisoners away with a policeman and herd them into a jail cell that you glued to a rope and a boulder and dropped it into the water, it's all too tempting to just summon an evil indestructible blob to kill everyone and fly a helicopter to the end of the level. In every level.

OK, I'm exaggerating a bit. That won't work every time because Maxwell really, really enjoys walking into lava, or sharks, or pretty much anything that kills him because everything in the game is controlled with the stylus, meaning the tap for "attach rope to helicopter" could be easily misinterpreted as "send Maxwell to attack the chupacabra". So, that's no good.

In the end, Scribblenauts is an amazing proof-of-concept that doesn't quite manage to prove a game. But if nothing else, it illustrates how amazingly useful it would be to have a Pegasus in everyday life. And what other game can you say that about?

This May Alter My Box-Office Predictions

2009-03-04T10:29:00.002-05:00

Was I the only person who thought Robert Downey Jr. was playing The Comedian in WATCHMEN until about thirty seconds ago? Man, that's embarrassing, and my apologies to Mr. Jeffrey Dean Morgan. I mean, I'm not obsessed with the film coverage--I read the graphic novel for the first time last year out of nerd obligation--but I've been following it pretty closely for a while. In my defense, though, he's clearly not trying very hard to avoid looking exactly like Robert Downey Jr..

As for actual box-office predictions, well, I'm not going to guess at the mainstream appeal of a three-hour deconstruction of the superhero genre. I do have a fairly reliable metric, though, called the Girls Reading The Source Novel On The Subway Index, which is now up to six. That's pre-FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING levels, and we all know how that turned out.

To Be Fair, It Was Originally Set In Poland, 1938

2009-02-03T18:55:00.007-05:00

There were a number of things that didnt quite sit right about the Resident Evil 5 demo--the default controls still felt too stiff for the ensuing action, the co-op gameplay more or less demands a human partner, but mainly it was a little awkward playing a white dude taking out an entire village of angry, savage African "zombies". Capcom jettisoned the traditional flesh-eating undead depiction in the previous game, and now RE zombies are just really, really angry hordes who occasionally sprout Lovecraftian tentacles out of their neck stump when you shoot their head off. This makes for a somewhat uncomfortable playing experience when it's set in a poor African village.

This little controversy isn't anything new, though, and while the demo content is culturally tone-deaf, it's not like our hero is going to come across actual spear-chucking oogity-boogity tribesmen later on, right? Right?

Oh, JAPAN.

I'm not offended--I had my offended gland surgically removed when I was 21--but I am cringing something fierce. Mostly I feel especially bad for Capcom USA. I doubt they have any control over Capcom Japan's content and yet they can't not release RE5 in North America. I imagine their marketing department inhaling whole packs of cigarettes as the concept art rolled in, and then the early builds...

They must be telling reviewers to keep their mouths shut for now while they reinforce their headquarters.

Wastelander's Journal: Final Entry

2009-01-30T12:47:00.004-05:00

As I lay here dying of radiation poisoning, I'd like to send out a special fuck-you to Fawkes, my radiation-immune Super Mutant buddy whom I rescued from years of imprisonment and who suddenly refused a simple request to enter a fatally radioactive room despite having done the exact same favor for me not an hour earlier.

Thanks, buddy. Really.

Wastelander's Journal: Day 21

2009-01-28T12:06:00.003-05:00

Wow! You start poking around for your Dad a little bit, and all hell breaks loose! In the span of two or three hours I've rescued my Dad from a simulated world, not rescued him from the Enclave, joined the Brotherhood of Steel, gained a Super Mutant buddy, and convinced a genocidal computer to blow itself up. So, all in all, a productive afternoon.

Also, NOW I HAVE A MINI-NUKE LAUNCHER. HO HO HO.

Don't Startle The Witch, Don't Shoot The Gas Pump

2009-01-22T23:39:00.011-05:00

Left 4 Dead is loaded with helpful contextual messages to streamline your game playing experience. (Don't Set Off This Car Alarm! Don't Startle The Witch! You Are About To Be Gang-Raped By Zombies!) All very useful.

What it doesn't say, though, is Don't Shoot The Flammable* Gas Pumps. Perhaps Valve assumed this goes without saying. But maybe they forgot that you're playing with real people, some of whom might be overheard saying "I wonder what happens if I shoot the gas pumps" over Xbox Live halfway through the campaign.

And while Left 4 Dead does an admirable job simulating a zombie apocalypse, it does an incredible job simulating a gas station explosion. Meaning everyone dies in an all-consuming inferno.

*I know "inflammable" is correct. But the people have decided, and the English language must concede the battle and move on.

Wastelander's Journal: Day 9

2009-01-12T09:21:00.003-05:00

Dear Pip-Boy world map: Thank you for suggesting I use the abandoned subway tunnels to reach Rivet City. However, my previous twenty trips through the tunnels have had... service problems. So if it's all the same with you, I'm just going to swim across the irradiated lake. It's safer that way.

#$*(&! fire ants are no longer an issue and I've even absorbed their mighty ant strength and fire resistance. I'm almost done researching Moira's damn survival guide as well--it seems like I may not be able to avoid advancing the main quest soon. What the hell, Bethesda!

Also, recently, by some strange twist of fate, I always see the worst way a person can die...

Scribblenauts

2009-01-07T21:13:00.005-05:00

No, it's not a sequel to Psychonauts, sadly. It's actually an upcoming game for the Nintendo DS in which you solve puzzles by writing the name of any object in the dictionary on the touch screen to spawn it in the game itself. So if you write "J. Edgar Hoover", J. Edgar Hoover will appear to help you collect the star needed to beat the stage. (Actually the parameters are no proper nouns or vulgar words.)

In an interview with IGN and various messageboard appearances, developer 5th Cell repeatedly and categorically assures us that, yes, within the above-mentioned boundaries, every word you can think of will spawn an object.

Yes, that one. And that one. And that one.

We'll see.

Wastelander's Journal: Day 6

2009-01-07T10:45:00.004-05:00

Still getting cooked by Fire Ants. Slathering myself in ant nectar reduces fire damage only enough to slow-roast me, providing the ants with a tasty pulled-human sandwich.

Just to catch up the thousands of readers interested in my playthrough of a three-month-old game, I'm only about a dozen hours into Fallout 3. Previous Fallout experience has taught me to pump up Agility at the start, but other than that I'm just winging it. High in Perception and Charisma too, and I've been concentrating entirely on Small Guns for weapons. Speech and Medicine are also pretty high, and now I'm desperately trying to build up Repair and Science, as this weapon condition bullshit is killing me. I've got a ton of good karma because I have a complex about being mean in role-playing games (except for Knights of The Old Republic, for some reason). Have not even begun the main quest.

I'm beginning to wonder if Bethesda's Oblivion is actually an awkward fit for their Fallout 3 engine, rather than the other way around.

A Candy-Colored Clown

2009-01-06T13:58:00.009-05:00

The Roy Orbison track pack, including "In Dreams", is available as Rock Band DLC today.

Lamp microphone not included.

Wastelander's Journal: Day 5

2009-01-06T11:30:00.006-05:00

Oh, I get it.

Fire ants.

Cute.