In Hesher, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a jerk, Natalie Portman is mousy, and Rainn Wilson doesn’t say a single funny thing. We’ll go into more specifics in this week’s podcast.
Podcast (movies): Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
As required by law, after getting the you-win! endscene, Clutch dumps you back into the city. Its story is done, and has no further demands on me. Everything after that is just play. All doors are now open to me, as demonstrated literally above.
There’s a few more goals to chase down, both for in-game rewards and out of general principle. I can replay any of the story missions to get a higher rating if I didn’t come in first in the first place, and likewise proceed further in the side events. I can of course buy all the remaining upgrades, acquire the remaining cars, and fill out my garage’s collection.
After the jump, I take off my sunglasses… Continue reading →
Sometimes, a plan comes together. I love it when that happens.
That did not happen this time.
After the jump, Alice goes to jail Continue reading →
The problem with Brink is that it’s not very Call of Duty.
It’s the room, the sun, and the sky
The room, the sun, and the sky
Been out of town for a couple of weeks, and thus away from my consoles. I looked at news and relevant threads to keep abreast while I was on the road, but not too much. I kind of figured all this PSN stuff would sort itself out by now. Surely it would have to.
Nope. This PSN is fine. Not the one I need right now, though. So I figured I’d do another story level for the above-the-fold of this week’s column. I fired up my PS3. Launched LBP2. Went to my pod and engaged Story mode. Started sorting through the bits I’d already played, trying to figure out which section of this particular world level I had not yet tried. Looked at percentages. Thwocked around trying to ascertain where the next unplayed bit was. Did this for a few minutes.
Paused. Recalled something my six-year old taught me on the plane the other day. Took a deep breath. Let it out and said…
“Fuck it.”
After the break, peggle for your thoughts Continue reading →
This is the kind of thing that happens when you park for too long in the bowels of a particle collider. In this picture’s case, it was a zombie technician with a flamethrower-esque thing. They’ve got no range to speak of, so they’re really only a danger if my car has barely-holding-together levels of damage already, or if you just park there and taunt them. The zappy zombies are much less problematic than the occasional exploding zombies, which are–like so many things in my character’s life in Clutch–the fault of the Reapers. If you’re enlightened enough to be chosen, you take off your sunglasses to be zombified and get rigged up with explosives to wander the streets.
So there I am, on fire. It’s between missions, so respawning is just a button away. At this point, I’m in the third and final episode of the storyline. I’ve been deprogrammed by a scientist who is either unnamed or literally named Scientist, and I prefer to believe the latter. My diary indicates a hangover, to put it legally. It also says that “The Scientist says it’s the abstinence syndrome. The yen.” That figures. Leave it to a crazy cult to give you abstinence syndrome.
After the jump…science! Continue reading →
Snow!
Colonel-General Guderian was near Teploie on the night of November 3-4, 1941, where the day before, the leading infantry elements of LIII Corps had run into a large Russian force comprised of two cavalry divisions, five rifle divisions, and a tank brigade. The Russians were able to make some progress thanks to the mobility of their T-34 medium tanks in the stifling mud, whereas the Germans had had to leave behind all of their heavy equipment. In the middle of this tenuous situation, Guderian’s chief of staff handed him a detailed operations plan, prepared weeks before, for a general resumption of the offensive on 4 November, including a sharp counterattack by mobile elements of Geyr von Schweppenburg’s XXIV Panzer Corps. The plan detailed extensive German movements over ground assumed to be hardened by frost and new snowfall. The commander of 2 Panzer Army was dumbfounded. “How can you prepare an entire operational plan based on the supposition that it will snow tonight?” Guderian demanded. “Herr General,” his adjutant protested, “it’s Turn 22”. “Ah yes,” the Colonel-General replied. “You are right”.
After the jump, an 8th grader shows up Adolph Hitler Continue reading →
If you give a peasant a loaf of bread, he’ll eat for a day. If you teach a peasant to fight, he’ll beat the hell out of the brigands that harass his village every week and take their bread instead. We’ve been asked by the village elder of Sarimish to instruct his villagers in the noble, timeless art of bandit slaughter. Judging from the trail of bodies we left in our wake traveling here from Jelkala, we are more than qualified to serve as instructors, but we need to make a supply run first.
After the jump, the juggernaut steams ahead. Continue reading →
The Hunters are in Atom-city primarily for materialistic or hedonistic reasons. Money, adventure, excitement, really wild things — stuff like that. It’s only natural that, people being the kind of beings that people are, that some would seek out the spiritual side to running over hundreds of zombies and making other cars explode. Especially after lucre loses its luster, and they hit the rock bottom of seriously considering taking off their sunglasses for eventual suicide-by-car.
After the jump, the purpose-driving life Continue reading →
I should state up front that this isn’t a real movie. It’s a documentary, directed by and starring Eric Bana (above, right) and his Ford Falcon Coup. You know who Eric Bana is from his role as the jerkwad husband in Funny People. You know who the Ford Falcon Coup is from its role as the last of the V8 Interceptors in Mad Max and The Road Warrior.
Bana got the car as a beater when he was a kid and he ends up pouring his movie-star money into it and then racing it in a 5-day endurance rally in Tasmania. Twice. Bana doesn’t come out looking very good in Love the Beast. Spoiled, privileged, a bit full of himself. But the cool thing about this documentary is that it’s not about Bana and it’s not even necessarily about the car. It’s about his attachment to the car.
And because Bana is a movie star, he draws some Hollywood into his little documentary. He gets into Jay Leno’s obscene inner car sanctum. He subjects himself to a therapy session with Dr. Phil. And he refrains from punching Jeremy Clarkson in the face when Clarkson says, “All muscle cars are crap”.
The best parts of Love the Beast are the parts that reminded me of Shift 2 or Dirt 2, including footage of Bana and his navigator tearing through pastoral Tasmanian scenery in a gorgeous 70s muscle car. I don’t know enough about racing to watch an actual race — I mean, really, how dull would that be? — but I know enough about caRPGs to understand a man’s attachment to a car. I can relate when Bana interviews a driver who talks about the primal need to pass a car that has just passed you. And I can certainly appreciate a little 70s muscle car porn. So hot. I don’t think Bana has ever had a more attractive co-star.
Love the Beast is available on Netflix (instant watch here).
Typically, the early part of a character’s career in Mount and Blade is spent building up. Since you start with little more than the clothes on your back, a weapon, a horse and a small amount of gold, it’s important to start earning money, gaining renown and honor, getting better equipment, building a small army and currying the favor of the lords of the realm. Exploration is encouraged so that one can see the various realms they can potentially join later in the game, and to gradually learn the locations of important cities and potential battlegrounds.
However, I already know exactly who I want to work for, and he just showed up right outside the capital.
After the jump: just another one of the guys Continue reading →
My planes, trains, and automobiles screenshot was going to be even better, but like much of Motorstorm, it’s a cool idea with a lousy execution. I love it when games let you take your own screenshots, but Motorstorm cripples the feature by failing to include a replay mode. That cool thing that happens on lap three? Good luck anticipating it on your first time through the course and then pausing it at just the right moment to capture it, and you can just forget about commemorating those serendipitous moments that you can’t plan for or recreate at all.
After the break, I try to figure out of the trade-in value of Motorstorm will get me a copy of Split/Second. Continue reading →
My diary informs me that I’ve come to Atom-city to face my fears and then return. It never goes into what those fears might be, but presumably they involve the natural fear anyone would have about staying in the company of a city of high-energy physics zombies. That kind of living situation presents various problems that you don’t have to deal with outside of it, so anyone would have some fears about whether or not they’re up to whatever they turn out to be. There is a certain amount of inference and interpretation in appreciating Clutch’s story.
Like any game, Clutch presents the player with a variety of problems and teaches them the tools and approaches to solve them through a combination of handholding and player exploration. One of the smaller problems and its solution is presented in the picture up above. Problem: there’s a zombie in front of your car. Solution: run over it. Problem: how do you get the maximum benefit out of hitting a zombie head-on? Solution: have the front guard grill option equipped on your vehicle, so that not only does the zombie get killed, it also gets sucked into the engine to be converted into turbo boost. You can see how this ties rather elegantly into further problems such as, how do I go faster to win this race?
After the jump, hunting problems and solutions Continue reading →
Brink and Section 8: Prejudice are both new; they’re both team-based; they’re both very multiplayer but with excellent bots; and they’re both all about objectives and loadouts and special abilities and delicious asymmetry. So it’s six of one, half dozen of the other, right? Not quite. They provide different experiences in some very important ways. So should you play Brink or Section 8: Prejudice?
The short answer is “definitely”.
After the jump, the longer answer Continue reading →
I’m kind of a board game fan. That photo above is my happy little cabinet of games, and I love it, even though I wish it was about five times bigger. When you live in a dinky overpriced San Francisco one-bedroom with your girlfriend and don’t have room for a proper game table, your options are limited. Fortunately, the iPhone and iPad are fantastic devices for scratching that board game itch. The App Store is chock full of stuff every board gamer should know about, with more piling up all the time.
After the jump: Reiner Knizia has too many apps Continue reading →
