Thanks to my dual booting MacBook Pro, I’ve been able to start playing PC games. The first game I made a point of buying was the new Sam and Max game, and instead of buying just the first episode I went ahead and bought the entire first season (six episodes).
Sam and Max, a walking-talking dog and rabbit duo created by graphic novelist Steve Purcell, are freelance police. In each episode they must solve a case, and in the end they all tie together to make up a larger six-part story arc. Telltale Games chose to release the game episodically; one episode was released every couple of months at an affordable price, with the option of paying a larger amount to “subscribe” to the series and get the whole season for a discount. Each episode on its own is worth the $9 fee, and the entire six episode season is definitely worth the $35 bundle deal.
For those of you who aren’t familiar, Sam and Max is a third person point and click adventure game and a sequel to one of my favorite classic Lucasarts adventure games, Sam and Max Hit the Road. In these types of games, the player must solve puzzles which usually involve either talking with other characters or combining and using items from your inventory, while observing the environments carefully to locate clues and other helpful items to pick up or use.
Telltale Games has done a fantastic job on these games. The sequels are true to the LucasArts original, and in some respects better. The writing is just as sharp, if not sharper, and improves with each episode. The 3D graphics are a perfect fit, and navigating the environment works well. My only complaint is the driving mini-game, which at times feels a bit forced.
If you’ve never played a game of this type, these are a perfect jumping-on point. You can try one episode instead of getting the whole game, and the puzzle difficulty is relatively easy, especially when you compare it to some of the fiendishly absurd puzzles in the older Lucasarts games.
Shrek the Third could be summarized as “more of them same.” Poop jokes can only take you so far, and a second sequel is evidently past that point.
Beyond the poop jokes, the movie has several funny moments, at least, but not enough to carry the film. Just like its predecessors, Shrek the Third feels like insubstantial fluff when compared with Pixar’s masterworks. I look forward to the day Dreamworks produces a CG animated feature it can be truly proud of.
In the meantime, I plan to get my animation fix by watching Death Note, Paprika, and Ratatoille.
Call of Duty 3 was a game I had no desire to buy, rent, or actively seek out in any way. My cousin Daniel came to town, and being a big console first person shooter fan, he wanted to get one for his Wii, and it seemed to him that CoD3 was the best available option. So, he bought the game, and we played through a decent amount of it over the week he visited.
To put it plainly, CoD3 is one of the best Wii games out. Some may argue its just another case of Wii controls being tacked onto a game, but they work, and they work very well. The result these “tacked on” controls is one of the most immersive shooters I’ve ever played.
CoD3 doesn’t play like the typical shooter. The game places you in World War II warzones as a member of a squad as opposed to as a lone agent. The fact that these are literally warzones makes cover very important, and the ability to move crouched or to crawl on your belly to find covered positions to fire from becomes key to survival. This style of gameplay is a perfect fit for Wii first person shooter controls, which would be sluggish or unwieldy in a more traditional shooter like Quake or Resistance, because the controls don’t seem conducive to fast-paced “run and gun” style gameplay. Maybe another Wii game will come around that’ll prove me wrong, but that’s my view at the moment.
The biggest downside to the Wii version of CoD3 is the complete lack of multiplayer support both online and offline. I would have loved to see a multiplayer co-op mode. The single player game is stellar and full of variety, but that’s not really an excuse.
While the Wii edition’s graphics don’t match the competition, it doesn’t affect gameplay. The lower end graphics don’t detract from the game’s immersiveness.
I learned an important lesson here — I need to stop shitting on third party Wii games based on media coverage or personal jadedness. It’s time to give third party Wii games a chance.
I enjoyed Fatal Attraction, for the most part. Once the movie picks up just slightly into the second act, when it becomes apparent that Alex (Glenn Close) is deranged, I really got into it. Something in particular that caught my eye in the second act was how effectively Lyne turned telephones into an object of terror. He got me to dread it’s ringing in the film in the same way that Dan Gallagher (Michael Douglas) dreads it, and that sort of true character empathy is rare, I think, at least for me.
The movie is a very well constructed, believable thriller. I didn’t realize until I looked up Adrian Lyne just now on IMDB that he also directed Jacob’s Ladder, which I must say I like more, but Fatal Attraction is still excellent. It’s just a matter of personal preference.
So, my computer’s still screwed up. I got it back from Apple, and they said they couldn’t find anything wrong with it. I took it in to the Chip Merchant, they tested four different kinds of RAM, and all of them caused the same issues. This seems to point to a problem with Apple’s hardware, not a problem with the RAM, so I took it back to Apple again. This time around I had to take it to a different Apple Store because the one I was using was going to be closed for a week and wasn’t accepting new check-ins. I hope that at least having new people looking at it will help fix it.
I also decided to keep the MacBook Pro. I’ve been quite productive on it; its proven to be a great work machine for me. An added bonus is that it can dual boot to Windows, so I’ve set up a 20GB partition for Windows XP that I’m using mostly for gaming. I bought the first season of Sam and Max, which I’ll probably start reviewing as soon as I finish playing through the first episode.
Hot Fuzz is Edgar Wright’s follow-up to Shaun of the Dead. This time he parodies action cop flicks, and he does so rather well.
Star and co-writer Simon Pegg, who is also star and co-writer of Shaun of the Dead, is unexpectedly perfect in his role. He plays a supercop that is transfered to a rural village because his job performance makes other London cops look bad.
The movie’s three acts are considerably different from each other. The first is a humorous introduction to the characters and setting. The movie then shifts dramatically, crossing the cop film with slasher horror. Finally, in the third act, the movie becomes a balls-out action flick.
Just as Simon Pegg was an unexpected surprise, so was the amount of graphic violence, which pops into the film as the second act begins. I’m not complaining, but I thought I should mention it because it’s definitely not for the squeamish.
Wright again uses occasionally flash montages in this film. While I complained about them being out of place in Shaun of the Dead, they work in the context of Hot Fuzz. Also, the film’s action sequences are well executed and hilarious in their over-the-top ridiculousness.
It’s hard to stop myself from comparing the two movies, but they’re too different to conclusively decide which I prefer or which is actually better, even after a second viewing of Shaun of the Dead. However, the sense of humor is similar, so if you liked one, you will most likely enjoy the other.
Blades of Glory is Will Ferrell’s latest comedy, also starring Jon Heder of Napoleon Dynamite fame. They star as rival figure skaters who must pair up in order to skate after being banned from the sport’s solo division. Ferrell does his usual schtick, while Heder is barely adequate; this is definitely not the movie where Jon Heder proves he’s a gifted actor or comedian. As I watched this, I couldn’t help but think of Dodgeball, but I actually liked this movie more.
Despite Ferrell giving us more of the same, the movie is funny, and therefore worth watching if you’re a fan.
I was surprised by how little I enjoyed About Schmidt. The movie really pales in comparison to Alexander Payne’s other films that I’ve seen, Sideways and Election.
Expressing my disappointment is all I really have to say about the movie. Kind of sad.
I got my computer back from the Apple Store on Thursday. Of course, they couldn’t replicate my issue and say its my RAM. So I’m going to run a further series of tests at home this weekend and then call the Chip Merchant to see what they tell me. In the meantime, I still have the totally sweet MacBook Pro, which I’m now considering keeping.
Anyways, on to what the title of this post is concerned with. Over the last week, I played through Cave Story. Cave Story is a freeware Japanese PC game that I recently found out actually has a Mac port as well as a translation patch. The game looks and plays very much like a Super Nintendo game, and I’m fairly convinced that had this game been released on that console, it would have been hailed as one of its best games. It’s an action sidescroller that owes a lot to Metroid, but plays at a much faster pace.
Cave Story’s gameplay is excellent, the graphics are nearly perfect for the chosen art style of the game, and the story is decent. There’s tons of hidden goodies, secret challenges, and multiple endings. The games features some fantastic chiptunes, too. On a whole it’s mindbogglingly amazing for something that’s completely free.
Go to
this fansite for links to both the Mac and PC versions, as well as the English patches.
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