Archive for January 1st, 2013

Fade in to Youtube video of Far Cry 2. A custom Far Cry 2 map with red fuel barrels strategically placed in underbrush under a tree line. The End by The Doors and jeep engines are the only sounds. After a minute the player launches a grenade, a giant fireball fills the screen, engulfing the trees in flames.

This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes, again

Dissolve to:

December. Shit. Far Cry 3’s not coming out ’till December. Every time I buy an open world FPS game I think it’ll actually be good. When I was playing Far Cry 2 after finishing the original it was worse. I’d keep expecting it to get better and there’d be nothing. When I was playing, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I’ve been here for three months now, waiting for the next new release, getting fatter. Every minute I spend in front of this monitor I get stupider. And every minute the AI squats in the bush he gets cheaper and lamer.

Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a sandbox FPS set in the tropics, and for my sins they gave me one. It was no accident I got to be the caretaker of the villain at the end of White Gold’s memory, any more than being back in fictional third world country was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story is really a confession, then so is mine.

After the jump, I stop talking like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now Continue reading →

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I met Phantasm director and writer Don Coscarelli once. Well, “met”. It was a screening of Phantasm at the Hollywood Cemetery, where he introduced the movie. I made my way over to where he’d been buttonholed by a few fans. When my turn came, I said something about how Phantasm was a huge part of my childhood.

“Must have been quite a childhood,” he said.

I suppose it was. So I feel awful that I don’t like John Dies at the End, an obvious labor of love from Coscarelli, a guy who’s early contribution to horror is infinitely more valuable than anything Wes Craven did before Nightmare on Elm Street. But for whatever reason, Coscarelli never had his own Nightmare on Elm Street.

After the jump, balls of silver only get you so far Continue reading →

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