Despite (or perhaps in conjunction with) its acronym, LoL features an inordinate amount of trash talk during and after the game. It even parks you in a post-game chat lobby to better facilitate post-drubbing geysers of self-amused braggadocio. “lol yo stats suk on me, lux scrub,” I’m informed after what I naively misconstrued as a lively hour-long exchange of cartoonish yet epic pyrotechnics. “We won,” I counter encouragingly. “I learned at team-building seminars not to fall forward, you might want to try that tactic near turrets when I have full mana there, cheech.” “lok at statz,” he insists. Then sends me a friend request, which upon my acceptance I soon learn he only proposed so that he could continue lambasting me in a larger window without the inconvenience of other spectators chiming in to break up his perfectly sculpted floes of aggression. See, ’cause he was an ice mage. I think. Like even the richest heiress’ wardrobe, 68 champions means seeing at least two shades of cobalt a week.
After the jump, I learn how my misanthropy is supported by cold, hard statistics. Continue reading →
It was no great surprise that a film composer like Hans Zimmer would do the soundtrack for a videogame, particularly a big bombastic Call of Duty. Zimmer’s scores for Dark Knight and Thin Red Line are bolder than the average movie score, but most of Zimmer’s soundtracks are exactly the sort of thing you’d think would go with a game like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, in which you couldn’t turn the music off or even down. It was entirely fitting and forgettable, as befits a videogame like Modern Warfare 2. Jerry Bruckheimer would have been proud.
But Clint Mansell scoring a videogame? He’s done his share of forgettable stuff, but those are the exceptions to the rule. I know him best as the genius behind Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain and Requiem for a Dream, both of which have soundtracks as vivid, distinct, haunting, and memorable as the movies themselves (Mansell describes the structure of his Fountain soundrack as a “prog-rock album”). Mansell’s talent was recently buried under all the classic music rightly used in Black Swan. But left to his own devices, you can still hear his unmistakable stamp on an action movie like last year’s underrated Faster.
So for me, when he lets slip that he’s scoring Mass Effect 3, I consider it a hearty stride on videogaming’s road to respectability. I’ll know videogames have really made the big time when longtime Coen brothers composer Carter Burwell signs up. Imagine Portal 2 with a Carter Burwell soundtrack. /swoon
Mansell spills the beans in this interview. It’s a great read, and I love how he gives props to music as diverse as Public Enemy, Godspeed! You! Black! Emperor!, and John Carpenter soundtracks.
Well this was unexpected. The real world just got its chocolate in my peanut butter.
I’m buzzing along, dipping into community levels with a sense of anticipation now that I’ve found one I really like. Today has been a little frustrating, because I’m getting a lot of duds. Usually I’ll find something to like, however small, in any level. Today…oy. Still, which each new Lucky Dip I feel a sense of hope. Then, out of the blue, the real world intrudes with a commercial. What?
Without really paying attention to the name of the level I drop into something called Prius_Stay Green and I find myself playing an entry in a contest where folks create a Prius level for a chance to win–wait for it–not a Prius. You win a television or some Playstation sports junk. The level is okay. It’s clearly a green theme, as you can see above with my little sackbot standing in front of some windmills. I also get him to water some compost and raise a solar panel. Hopefully by doing these things I’ve earned enough carbon credits to offset the power I’m using to play this game today. Eventually I run into a white Prius, which I meaninglessly drive through a dark city. Or something. It was hard to tell. I know advertisements are part of games. In a racing game this doesn’t really phase me. I expect to see billboards when I’m in a car cruising through a city. Here, on this little big planet, it is jarring. So I purposely chose a non-product picture for the top of this post. Just to grief Toyota, I’ve put the product pic after the jump.
After the jump, I say nyah, nyah, nyah to a car company Continue reading →
I was just kind of goofing on Test Drive Unlimited 2’s technical snags earlier, because they seemed like the sort of teething problems you’d expect from any MMO on launch week. I was still having a grand time driving around, collecting, exploring, racing, and becoming a more and more famous jerk-off among the jetsetting high-life reality TV celebrities of Ibiza and Hawaii getting cosmetic surgery and collecting clothes and buying houses I never used.
But then today happened. On the Friday after your game is released, no one on the Xbox 360 can play because the servers are down? And there’s no message explaining this? The opening screen just hangs? And the forums are taken offline at the same time?
Figure it out already, Atari.
I prefer to think of what I’m doing as playing hard-to-get, rather than labeling it as being cheap, but I’m probably fooling myself. Because there’s this girl I really like. I mean, I’m totally into her. Yes, she’s hot, but it’s more than that. We have a connection like…well…I don’t know if I can explain it. You know how you felt the first time you successfully executed a Zergling rush? Yeah, it’s kind of like that. Something clicks and you get it. I get her. She may be the one.
Plus, she’s easy.
After the jump, I try to get out of the hole I just dug for myself Continue reading →
