A Brief Note on 80s Metal

There are few things in this world more universally ridiculed (or ironically lionized) than 80s metal, most notably what we deem today as "hair metal."

I don't exactly know why that is for everyone, but I do know why it happens to be so for me. I'm currently reading Chuck Klosterman's wonderful Fargo Rock City, and while I agree with him on almost every one of his points, there is one thing he neglects to mention that can help to explain some of the disdain people had for 80s metal (it now seems as though 80s metal has been forgiven and let back into the house of commercial music).

Klosterman points to the idea that labels more or less ruined the legacy of 80s metal. He writes at one point, "Part of the reason '80s hard rock will never get respect - even kitschy respect - is because so many of the major players have retroactively tried to disassociate themselves from all of their peers. Disco didn't wrestle with this kind of shame" (29).

Now, on its face, the statement seems true enough. Hard rock bands have always been obsessed with their own images. Even Metallica, in not wearing make-up and teasing their hair out, was trying to mold the public's perception of what their music, and, as an extension, what they were all about.

Metal is kind of like a giant religion in that all of the competing subgenres are actively trying to excommunicate one another. There are moderate metalheads and moderate metal bands, but they are always under attack from more militant factions under the metal tent.

You can get a general sense of this idea by listening to Pantera's 1996 album, The Great Southern Trendkill. Philip Anselmo railed against "the trend" incessantly for the whole of that album (check out the opening track and "Sandblasted Skin, Pt. 1) without really quantifying what "the trend" was. One can assume that, given the climate of the music scene of the time, that it was grunge music (even though Kurt Cobain had died two years before and the grunge scene had more or less petered out), but no one can be for sure.

But I don't think that it's the constant self-labeling that corrupted the integrity of the 80s rock movement. I think the answer lies in the time period itself.

My first (and most damning) piece of evidence: Monster Ballads.

Now, I will reconcile my point with one of Klosterman's strongest. The culture of the 1980s had an indescribable impact on the way that metal bands sculpted their images. They were materialistic and opportunistic and plenty of those bands made gobs of money.

If you listen to Monster Ballads (or take even a cursory glance at the song list), you will notice that a great number of bands that do not generally fit together have tracks on that album, from The Scorpions to Damn Yankees.

Yet, given the fact that (most of) these groups released the bulk of their material in the 1980s is the key point here. It reflects the dominant philosophical ethos of the decade: that of greed.

I'm not necessarily saying that metal bands from the 80s are or were greedy, but I am saying that the problem wasn't that they were hesitant to label one another. It's the fact that they chose to cash in on the female demo swarming to rock music during the 80s, which isn't an out-and-out sexist comment, by releasing such overtly sensitive music. I refuse to accuse them of selling out (though this is probably a moot point), but the commercialization of rock music in the Reagan Era plays into the criticism.

Combine that with the fact that albums like Monster Ballads exist, and you have at least a partial answer to why these bands have a problem gaining any sort of respect, even the kind of ironic respect Klosterman mentions above.

Dozens of bands tried to emulate Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath during the 70s, but what we often forget is that most of those bands have completely disappeared into obscurity. Led Zep and Sabbath persist for a reason, and the other bands gave up on their dreams and went to work at normal jobs because the viability of their music had all but dried up.

Bands like Poison and Ratt and Quiet Riot benefited from and were cursed by the music milk machine of the 1980s and 1990s, which sold immediate nostalgia to the masses without any sense of shame. The bands, critics, and the fans got caught up in a nostalgia loop from which they could not immediately recover.

Normally, there is a cool-down period between the death of a certain genre of music and the nostalgia that helps us forgive or endorse it. The bloated 70s rock of the aforementioned Zeppelin and Sabbath had a cooling off period, wherein people weren't necessarily spiteful of its existence but didn't necessarily care for it either, but the rock of the 1980s did not, and the bands suffered. Poison went directly from the bargain bin at Wal-Mart to the nostalgia circuit without much of a gap between the two periods.

All in all, Klosterman is dead-on, however, and I'm not entirely sure that the points I've made contradict his own, but I couldn't help myself. All right. Now I'm going to listen to a little-known ballad from Sabbath's fourth album.

Can Science Shape Human Values? (NPR)

Super There Will Be Blood

Super There Will Be Blood from Tomfoolery Pictures on Vimeo.

LiveBlogging: The Walking Dead

I don't know what kind of mass appeal the show is going to have, but I sincerely liked the first episode. I wasn't blown away, but that can be attributed to the fact that I have read the comic books. I want to see a horror show actually succeed, and, of all the ones I've seen, The Walking Dead definitely has the best chance.

11:22 - The lingering temptation to commit suicide is something I imagined would be present, but it's not something I really, honestly thought about until now. If I were trapped in a tank with a "dead" zombie, there's no telling what I would be thinking about.

The scene involving the horse feast is a definite nod to George A. Romero.

11:20 - Yep. Hiding under a tank feels as sufficiently claustrophobic as I would have thought it to be.

11:12 - I'm ready to see images of a zombie-ravaged Atlanta, but, aw damn, another commercial break is interrupting it.

11:11 - Seeing him wrangle the horse brings to mind images of old cowboy movies.

11:04 - Headin' down I-85 toward Atlanta.

They just showed new characters. Oh, man, Jeffrey DeMunn is awesome. He has the coolest voice in all of filmdom, in my opinion. I've been a fan of his since I listened to the audiobook version of Dreamcatcher. He's the scraggly, white-haired guy in the fishing cap.

10:59 - One of the underlying ideas about zombie lore is that it gives regular people the right to kill indiscriminately. In fact, you are supposed to kill the undead. It is encouraged for the sheer fact that to not do it is to risk all of human civilization.

What The Walking Dead does is confront that notion with a simple conundrum: what if one of the people you are supposed to kill is your wife? Even though it's not her her you're shooting, it's still kind of her, and even though it's the smart thing to do, it's not the easiest. You say now you'd do it, but would you be able to?

10:57 - It's odd hearing ethereal music behind the sight of a zombie dragging itself (herself) across a grass lot.

10:45 - Second commercial break.

10:43 - What's great about the Rick / Morgan dynamic is that Rick's experience with Morgan is the exact opposite of his own, which will (ultimately) cause him to head toward Atlanta. Unlike Morgan, who knows that his wife is (un)dead, Rick does not, and it will become a motivation for him to move forward, to find out, even if finding out is as terrible for him as it was for Morgan.

10:39 - In seeing Morgan's wife, I have the hope that this show will be much more about the psychology of being involved in an intense, life-altering situation such as this one, rather than about the zombies. It seems counterintuitive, but it's what sets The Walking Dead comic apart from other pieces of undead lore. The characters are so well-drawn (forgive the expression) that you end up actually rooting for them, which is rare in the horror world.

10:35 - Morgan and Rick are discussing the Zombie Apocalypse (ZA) right now. I'm so jaded by zombie mythology that I have trouble sitting through the explanations of "what's happening." I almost find it tedious that every piece of zombie fiction feels the need to make this explanation.

Almost.

What makes me happy is that, somewhere out there, there are people experiencing zombies for the first time, or at least experiencing them seriously for the first time. Zombies are so pervasive now that it's hard to have a defining experience, but I'm sure it's happening for some people. And I love that.

10:29 - First commercial break.

Overall, I like the show. Since I read the first several issues of the comic years before, I both have a vague sense of remembering what has happened without knowing the details. It's as though I'm experiencing dull deja vu.

I'm interested in getting beyond the stuff that I've read. I can't speculate or anticipate very much. It seems as though they're sticking to the source material with some fidelity.

10:25 - The show is very deliberately paced.

Lennie James (Morgan) is a bad-ass. That headshot was excellent, even despite the level of CG involved. In the last few months, he's played a pimp (Hung) and a zombie apocalypse survivor. Lucky guy.

10:21 - Characters in post-apocalyptic movies tend to walk in disbelief through the remnants of the final moments of humanity, among dead bodies and ruined structures, mostly to show the viewer the horrors which have taken place. I don't know. I've never been overly impressed with that method of storytelling. I understand why it's there, but it's so far removed from what 99% of the population would do (which is perhaps why 99% of the population is dead at this point) that it strains the suspension of disbelief.

Also, the Return of the Living Dead-esque lady in the grass - gross.

10:15 - I've suppressed just how similar to 28 Days Later this opening hospital sequence is. We have been told why he wakes up in the (non-functioning) hospital. Did we ever get that in 28 Days Later? Not sure. Having visions of Left 4 Dead and The Stand, also. Are there only a few horror archetypes that can exist in an epic (post) apocalyptic work? Is that the connection, or am I unnecessarily drawing on similar apocalyptic worlds?

Also, the chick in the hallway - gross.

10:13 - They're not shying away from the blood. Great.

10:09 - I like the way Darabont is shooting the show so far (though I'd be lying if I
said I knew if it had any distinct Darabontness to it. I don't know what Darabontness would entail.) They don't seem to have gone out of their way to make the show seem absolute in the awareness that it was a comic book in a previous life.

10:06 - The Southern accents aren't too terribly distracting, which is nice. I know, as a southerner, I shouldn't ever be personally offended by much, but southern accents are usually egregious enough to be prosecutable. All right, the dialogue sequence is over. Here goes...

10:03 - I still think Timothy Olyphant would be a great Rick Grimes, but I can see that Andrew Lincoln fits the bill as well. Also, the burgers in the post-title sequence look delicious.

10:00 - The show has just started. What I'm afraid I'm going to do - especially early on - is try to pick out the places where the show was filmed. This is sad for two major reasons, the major one being that I don't really know Atlanta well enough to be able to do that, so I'd be lying half the time if I did pretend to know.

Happy Halloween!

The Quality of Zombie Death

I've been thinking a lot about Left 4 Dead lately, and, for the most part, it's because I cannot seem to get it out of the tray of my 360 (sorry, Mass Effect).

I mean, I really love that game. The shooting is terrifically precise, individual missions are tense and dynamic, the music gives a sense of dread that I wish more horror movies would adopt, and, of course, because it is perfectly all right to be a fan of games that Valve makes.

There is no question that Valve is a great software developer. Left 4 Dead, while only one of about a million zombie games to come out in the last five years, manages to stay within the mold cast for it and yet be better than ninety-nine percent of games within the mold, like making a fine wine in a prison toilet.

Much of Left 4 Dead's success has to do with actual quality of the game, a point I find so mundane I should scarcely mention it. Its metacritic score is 89 at present moment (for the XBox 360), as is the sequel's, curiously. So, not a great game, according to the critics, but not a repeat of E.T. or Superman 64 by any stretch of the imagination. Just a good, solid game.

But a game, like any form of media, does not exist in a vacuum. Some of the praise heaped upon the game, though, is due to perceived quality. Left 4 Dead is perceived as a quality game in part due to the studio delivering it. Were it Activision or EA putting out L4D, then the reception might have been somewhat more plagued by criticism.

That point, though, is also teeth-grindingly specious. If EA, Activision, or Capcom, even, had released the game, it would have been completely different altogether (and probably much, much worse). I will concede that the argument doesn't hold up to close scrutiny, but I can't help but to argue with myself when I feel like I'm making obvious points.

Video games are different than other forms of media in that quality becomes evident over time. Games are easily digested, and even some of the better games released each week die after a couple weeks of intense play. To get a better sense of a game's quality, look down the road a few years. Servers all over the internet are fill with hordes of gamers still hooked on Quake or Doom II. Plenty of people play shitty games for a time, but no one really plays shitty games over a long period of time, unless the purpose of playing that game (or series of games) is done for some ironic purpose. I can remember friends of mine and I engaged in hours-long

People still play Left 4 Dead because it is a terrific game. It gets a bit samey in parts, but that is a flaw of the game's construct. To give gamers a variety of experience in each campaign, different types of terrain must be inserted. I'm speaking specifically of bloody (or dingy or rotten) corridors here. There are certain points during each campaign where I forget which level I'm playing, usually during the places - and each campaign has one - where you and the other three survivors are forced to walk into a building, walk up stairs, walk down a corridor, clear out rooms, walk up more stairs, walk down a corridor, and so forth.

It doesn't make the game bad, and, besides, this post isn't about how good or bad Left 4 Dead is or is not. It is about how perception influences the relative quality of a product.

Tell me if this has ever happened to you: you see a preview for a movie and, seeing nothing that interests you, independently decide that the movie is going to be shit. This may be during the preview for a movie you actually want to see - Inception or something - and you even think during the movie, "God, I can't wait to tell everyone how terrible this movie is going to be." You are giddy because you feel as though your friends will agree.

However, when you disparage the movie to your like-minded cohorts, you find that the movie was directed by this guy or produced by this other dude...and suddenly your perception changes altogether. You may not be entirely on-board, but you are more on-board than before. Slowly but surely, you come to find yourself liking the movie, or at least liking the idea of the movie, because of the potential. It usually relates to the "prism" (and I hate using that term)through which said director will view the movie he/she is making.

This is profoundly fascinating. I have found myself literally changing my mind over the course of a two-minute discussion in reference to a movie I thought I'd despise just because of some arcane detail I didn't know before the beginning of the conversation ("Oh, that movie was produced by Quentin Tarantino? Hmmm. Maybe I'll check it out.").

I didn't have that reaction to Left 4 Dead for two reasons: (1) I became aware that Valve was making Left 4 Dead at the same time I found out that Left 4 Dead was going to exist, and (2) I am a sucker for zombies. The fact that Valve was involved had almost literally no effect on me, other than that first thought, which was, "I bet that'll be interesting." Interesting is by no means the best endorsement I could give of a product, but it's by no means the worst. I'd almost something be interesting rather than good. In the world of democratized media, plenty of "good" things exist - just check Reddit on a daily basis - but few genuinely interesting things pop up.

To put it another way, think of how many mediocre or declining bands release albums that, if released by other artists, would be considered excellent. If Christina Aguilera had put out "Fame Monster" and Lady Gaga had dropped (whatever her album was called), then people would still probably care more about Lady Gaga than Christina Aguilera and "Fame Monster" would, thus, die on the vine.

This has nothing to do with the relative quality of either person or either album (though I think that Lady Gaga's is somewhat listenable), but it speaks to the force behind the product (and let's face it: these are all products, first and foremost). Nothing is without context, but that's obvious to anyone who has taken an intro history course.

I would like to parse this difference, though (at a later date). People don't play Left 4 Dead because it's a Valve title. That would be a silly and transparently false argument to make. People don't crowd servers because the studio producing the game generally makes solid titles.

They play it because it is (mostly) a good game, and I suppose that is what trumps all. I have no real response to that argument, and until I do, I'll have to leave it alone. Nothing is without context, but, then again, very few people really care about context. Users on Steam (Valve's gaming response to iTunes) don't care whose name is on the menu screen. They just want a clear angle for a headshot.

Bill Murray in full Ghostbusters Gear

I don't need anything else to make me happy today.

Zakk Wylde and Slash Playing Jimi Hendrix

Because it's badass.

Joel McHale at the Cobb Energy Center

Being funny is something that just about anybody who works hard enough can accomplish. Think about it. If you are my age or around it, then Pauly Shore has made you laugh at one point or another. If you spend enough time honing a comedic persona, sooner or later you will become somewhat talented at the craft of telling jokes.

Joel McHale is a hardworking guy, no doubt. But he has something that a lot people much funnier than he is do not have: likeability. He's the friend who, in high school, could call the prom queen a disgusting mongoloid and end up going home with her at the end of the night...and get tired of her.

McHale is frustratingly adept at being a likeable jerk, and the longer that he's in the spotlight, the farther he tries to rib the audience and then subsequently pull them back in. However, it's not like he's a comic who tries to push the envelope - much of the time his comedy is little more than PG-13.

It's that he's caught in a space where he has to try really hard to put people off. He's a good-looking dude, but that's not really a hindrance or a source of contention for anyone looking to criticize him, because he doesn't even address his own good looks, even ironically. It's something that really attractive female comedians do, more often than not, because they seem to feel a need - understandably - to address their looks so they can get on to the funny stuff.

Joel McHale is able to glide along on his personality, and I mean that in the best possible way. He has perfected the ability to say absolutely heinous shit to celebrities' faces and have them love him for it.

It's not like they have a choice. Joel McHale is the Jon Stewart of the celebrity world, a merry prankster who, on the surface, seems to denounce and deride his own existence but in reality takes the necessity of the public's need for something like The Soup very seriously. Anyone who lashes out at him or The Soup looks deservedly stupid and callous, despite the fact that what Joel McHale says on a weekly basis would drive seventy-five percent of the television-watching public to wracking sobs, if not in front of friends, at least in the privacy of their homes (while probably watching The Soup.

In seeing him live, it's obvious that he's somewhat new to the stand-up game, but that doesn't matter. Watching him perform is like watching a really excited friend hold the room at a party in the palm of his hand for an hour-and-a-half. His live persona is very similar to the one we see on The Soup, but somehow he's able to string together a collection of high energy jokes into a solid night's worth of entertainment.

And the thing is, it's mostly him. It's not really the writing, and that may sound kind of mean, but it's really not. McHale, like I alluded to above, is able to carry a room on his charm and wit, which is not something I could imagine most comedians could do on any given night, especially early on in their careers. He's able to pull it off as though he's barely trying, even though we all know he's one of the hardest-working entertainers around. Standing up in front of people and making them care, making them want you to like them, rather than the other way around, is nigh impossible. And Joel McHale makes his audiences feel like the prom queen who can't believe she's about to go home with the class clown. It's almost like John Hughes was right all along.

Nintendo Customer Service Training Video (1991)

Down - Stone the Crow

Just a song from the 90s that I happen to enjoy.

A simple quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson

“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have lately become quite fond of the Transcendentalists, chief among them being Ralph Waldo Emerson. This has not always been the case - my distaste for their idealism remained trenchant throughout my teens and early twenties - but a question that keeps recurring to me seems to have softened my view of them: Do people change, or does the world change them? It's a trite expression, of course, but I am solipsistic enough to ignore its application elsewhere, and it is a damned intriguing question.

As I get older, and I am still relatively young, my yearning to search out Truth has taken me, well, very few places physically, but emotionally, mentally, and spiritually (even in my atheism, I can think of no better existential metaphor), I feel I have traveled to a variety of different places. I am all the richer for the search.

I can say, somewhat, that it is my perception which has changed. I used to believe myself running from something, but I think the camera itself had been positioned in the wrong place all the time, because the wide open space before me has never seemed more intriguing and enigmatic.

While I cannot relish in lingering silence even still today, my need to be immersed in the noise of life has subsided somewhat. I have begun the necessary steps to transcend my more prohibitive notions about existence. I am going to die. Someday. I will grow old. Someday. My life is but a tiny wrinkle surrounding an aged eye. A blind eye, though one which is as intriguing a spectacle as any out there.

This is me at my most vague, my most oblique. It is freeing to know these things, or, rather, to be able to try them out. I am not one of those people who can know about death or age, but only one who can have intense moments of knowing, like someone who has been pulled to the surface of some raging ocean for a desperate moment every now and then. Either way, you drown, but the drowning isn't so bad as long as you're not contemplating it. It's when you flail your arms, see the way your fingers have pruned, that you realize how dire the situation really is.

It is difficult to be free enough to see the water for what it is. But I am trying.

My First Thoughts On: Dead Rising

Yeah, that's not a typo. I didn't somehow miss the 2 in there somewhere. I am really playing the first Dead Rising game, the one that is about to become seriously unnecessary by way of its sequel.

Still, there's someone out there in the Eastern Bloc or Haiti who hasn't played this clunky gem of game, which is the thing I love most about the internet - people are always finding new and interesting ways to amuse themselves - so I feel entirely validated in talking about it. Whoever reads this review may become me a month from now.

However, the need to pick up the first installment may be diminishing, considering that (a) the sequel is out and (b) the original seems to be getting pulled from the shelves in order to make room for the sequel. I'm a compulsive gamer - I'm a compulsive everything - so I spent the better part of an afternoon searching the shops, malls, and cavernous used game stores for a copy of Dead Rising, and, it being my luck and all, only managed to find a battered version at my local used dealer.

The original copy I got was overpriced and seemed to be suffering from third degree burns inflicted by the previous owner's 360's laser, so I had to return it and get a fresh(er) copy, which worked fine, though once I got it home and slid in the disc tray and went through all of the installation mumbo-jumbo, I realized, well, Dead Rising isn't really that fun.

It's sort of like Grand Theft Auto with zombies, which sounds on its face like a magnificent time, but there's some aspect of fun that seems to be lost in the follow-through. I'm no expert, but I expected more than just the melee combat from a Rock Star game to be present in Dead Rising.

You may disagree, and, yes, there are some aspects to it that aren't jaw-droppingly inane, but Frank West moves too slowly and clunkily, the controls are somewhat awkward, and the constant need to check one's watch detracts from the emergent, open-worldedness of the whole experience, which, in my gaming OCD state, I found irritating.

I sincerely want to like Dead Rising, and I do, to a certain extent. I think I should have played it several years ago, before games of a higher caliber had been released. It is a dated, flawed experience, but one that I will give more of a chance in the coming weeks.

To be able to enjoy Dead Rising, you almost have to give into its Dead-Rising-ness and enjoy it for what it is, which is what I intend on doing until I feel I've gotten my money's worth. Since I managed to snag it for 15 bucks, ostensibly the cost of a pretty good XBLA title, it shouldn't take long for me to be able to squeeze worth out of the experience. If nothing else, I should be able to run around and mow down zombies (literally!) to my heart's content.

Red Dead Redemption Time Lapse

It's unironically beautiful in a strange way, and I never thought I'd say that about a RockStar game.

Nathan Fillion is the Wrong Ryan

Revisionist LOTR

Revisionist Pulp Fiction

If 'Zombie Apocalypse' Were Accurate...

...Armageddon would be mind-bendingly tedious.

I don't normally buy games from the Playstation Network, but I am eerily susceptible to media about zombies. Movies, comics, books, games, ringtones (I wanted a Left 4 Dead 'Witch' ringtone for a time). That's why I initially picked up Zombie Apocalypse for 10 bucks on PSN.

It is a standard two stick shooter that has a few similarities with Valve's Left 4 Dead franchise. You can play as one of four characters (just like in L4D). One of them is a grizzled old white guy. Another is a hipsterish African-American. One is a hipsterish ginger...and the woman.

Well, I guess that's really just the most blatant example of lifting from L4D but even that isn't totally egregious and obvious - and not necessarily true - so I'll move on. I mean, I could fill an entire post with the coincidences between the two games (They both have shotguns! They both require you to kill an inordinate number of similar-looking people! They both mostly take place at night! Holy Jeez!)...but I won't.

Suffice it to say that ZA is fun for short stretches, but it's a same-y sort of game, so don't expect much in the way of varied gameplay. You shoot zombies. And more zombies. And even more zombies. Blood literally covers whole stretches of the screen at certain points, and yeah, that's fun, but honestly it gets old.

And this is me saying it! I absolutely love zombies, couldn't get enough of them. That is, until this game.

The problems arose when I decided to try for all of the trophies. There is one little sucker called "Hotter Than Hell," which prompts you to finish a game mode called "7 Days of Hell."

Now, granted, I should not complain that a game mode called "7 Days of Hell" is frustrating. It's like ordering snake whiskey in Thailand and complaining that you got a rattler stuck in your throat.

But it is really frustrating! And really tedious! The game has no sense of pace, even a rudimentary one. It sounds ridiculous that I should point pacing out, because Zombie Apocalypse is not a story-driven game. It's a challenge, much like old NES titles, but there should at least be a suitable crescendo of zombie violence in the final portion of each stage.

Especially the seventh and final one.

Instead, what I got was a mass of zombies midway through the final level and then a gradual tapering off in the numbers, until the very end, where I was forced to snipe the occasional zombie until the DAY 7 SURVIVED accomplishment popped up. Unacceptable. There should have been a frantic battle at the end, or the level itself should have been shorter and more difficult. Overall, I killed about four thousand zombies in that final level, and it took an astonishing forty-five minutes to beat it.

The regular game mode isn't that horrific, but it does get quite repetitive, because there are only a few levels, a few guns, and a few zombie types.

Zombies have been cool long enough for me to get a substantial fix on the undead, but

My First Thoughts On: Mass Effect

This is going to be a tough one for me. 'Mass Effect' is the first BioWare game I've ever played, and it's so different from most everything I have ever encountered, I have little to compare it to. I never got into 'Knights of the Old Republic' back on the original XBox (save the hissing and spitting until I finish this post). Ditto for the Baldur's Gate series. I'm simply lacking a formal vocabulary that I can use to discuss it.

Like with most of my gaming discussions, I guess you'll have to suffer through another post of me talking about how fun [insert game] is.

So far, and I've only put three or four hours into it, 'Mass Effect' is...fun? I think? I'm definitely enjoying it, even though I've killed fewer than fifty people so far (and what video game is any good that isn't a complete and utter massacre), and the last few hours have consisted of running around a building and talking to random people. I assume that's going to take up a great chunk of the game, which is actually fine by me.

At one point, an assassin tried to take me out in a hallway leading to the station's closest approximation of a strip club, and I felt that the combat in that particular instance was getting in the way of my aimless conversations with aliens. It took me entirely too long to kill my assailant, and I am a casual gamer, but had I known my destination, I would have fought much harder for the cause. The fact that I was somewhat disappointed in the club itself does not mitigate my point.

Being a sci-fi noob, I am still unsure of the plot, but it seems as though a Predator has turned on the Empire and is causing a human army to go all Starship Troopers on a few of the surrounding planets. That is the reality I've created, so I'll let it stand at that. I spend most of my time thinking about what choices I'm going to make in the dialogue trees, but I am reticent to take any longer than normal in my actual decision-making. I'm playing Shepard as a centrist, a cypher, in all of these proceedings, and I think I'm doing a fairly good job of it, as well.

Commence your hissing and spitting now.

R.E.M / Stevie Wonder MashUp

Even though I know the trend is waning, this is a particularly great mash-up. Not only am I impressed with the way both songs come together, the isolation of Wonder's voice makes me think about the vocal melody in an altogether different way. Me gusta.

L4D Comic

Jumping into L4D doesn't seem quite so untimely now...since the Left 4 Dead comic is officially out! P.S. Click on the link and you can read it online for free.

First Impressions: Left 4 Dead

I am continuing my quest to catch up on all of the interesting games of the last few years that I've missed, and that quest includes - DEFINITELY includes - Left 4 Dead. No, not the sequel (I haven't gotten that far yet), but the original, a horrifying, frantic, nerve-wracking, panic attack-inducing game. It is the most claustrophobic experience I have ever had watching something play out on television (except, perhaps, for the Texas Funeral scene in Kill Bill, Vol. 2), and I have loved just about every minute of it.

Except for every minute of it. True, the game is fun, as much as any game that is as hard as Left 4 Dead can be fun, but the real challenge lies not in the game itself but in the engine that runs the whole experience. The AI Director (who I always imagine to look like Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget) simply chooses the most inopportune time to send hordes of the undead pouring through doors or down open hallways like cockroaches out of a cadaver that's just been prodded.

It is insanity. I am not one to respond to video games, one way or another, but when my health is depleted, I cannot help but beg the forces inside the XBox to please, please, PLEASE not place a witch in this spot on the map or place a Boomer behind that door.

Forgive the particulars of the language. In Left 4 Dead, you play as one of four survivors during the zombie apocalypse - hence the name - and, in addition to the numerous "normal" zombies in the game, there are special versions of them as well, infinitely more deadly and pants-wetting-scary in nature than their humdrum counterparts. Hunters are stealthy, powerful z-words that can pin you on the ground and rip chunks out of you until a team member saves you. Smokers have long tongues and will drag you long distances...until a team member saves you. Tanks are giant bruisers that require the entire team to kill. Boomers are fatties that vomit zombie juice all over you and attract a horde. And witches, well, witches are weepy little vixens that, if disturbed, will lay a hurtin' on you that will make you flinch every time you hear them in the distance.

All of which hints at the brilliance of Left 4 Dead. The co-op actually works, as opposed to most games, in which the sidekick is most notable for going out of its way to get in yours, or for taking all of your supplies while you singlehandedly take down the enemies (you know, the things your buddy's supposed to be helping you out with).

I've beaten the four major campaigns but haven't played the online co-op yet (alas, I just bought the XBox and must wait for another pay period in which to purchase a year subscription to XBLive). Overall, the game is extremely enjoyable, if frustrating. I do like that, though each campaign has the same basic structure, the number of zombies changes each time. Without that adapting AI, L4D would only be worth a play-through or two.

Oh, and my favorite campaign (and by far one of the best climaxes of any piece of zombie-related media) has to be NO Mercy, where you and your three compadres search for a local hospital and have an epic shootout on the roof while waiting for a chopper. Excellent. Can't wait to play it with actual people.

Full Review: Borderlands (PS3)

My posts have been few and far between for the last month or so, and it has more than a little to do with my recent career change. However, some of my absence from the internet has to do with a near-obsession I've had with the RPG-FPS Borderlands (read my "First Impressions of Borderlands").

Needless to say, I jumped completely on-board with this strange, cell-shaded, Beyond the Thunderdome-ish romp of an action RPG, and I've only this past weekend stopped logging hours in it. I beat the game, hit level forty, and decided there was little else I wanted to accomplish.

I'm still not a fan of the online co-op (even though that's the way everyone says I should play it) and parts of the game toward the end get unbelievably tedious, but overall, it's pretty solid. My friends have been calling it "Cartoon Fallout," and I suppose that's a fair description of it.

But DAMN is that game fun! Beyond the endless trekking across sort of repetitive, desolate landscapes in the last quarter of the game, seeing a dude's head explode through the scope of a sniper rifle never quite gets old. I ended up overleveling for much of the game - once I realized that being underleveled would be a nightmare - and dominated entire sections of the game, blowing through missions and racking up HP, money, and guns like nobody's business.

I have to admit, I grew to enjoy maintaining my inventory like I would a garden, selling guns when all my slots were full, buying new and improved corrosive or shock rifles, watching my pockets grow fat and then using that money to purchase new guns, mods, or upgrades. It went well beyond playing a game. I'm sort of a clutter nut, so I hated keeping unnecessary guns. Even though I played the game using the Solder class, I became attached to the sniper rifles and abandoned or ignored pistols, shotguns, and SMGs altogether after a time. I didn't even really ever upgrade my grenades, because the sniper rifles I found came to be so overpowering.

The literally thousands of guns in the game kept the interest level high. Borderlands might have peaked for me had I been stuck with the same few weapons. And here's where I have to say that it's pretty dishonest to claim that there are thousands of guns in the game, since many of them are merely differently-named, differently-colored, or differently-statted (yep, I made it up) guns, but the constant upgrades gave me a strange sense of accomplishment. Like with my distaste for clutter, I found comparing the stats of guns and making a snap judgment to sell one in favor of another made me feel unnecessarily like a leader or a rogue or something.

Each enemy, like the player, has a level attached to him/it, so you instantly know what you're going up against. I was always keenly aware of when I had stepped into an area I wasn't ready conquer (due to the markedly higher number above the forehead of my enemy) and would thus haul ass out of there until I'd reached a higher level. Even though I hated the grinding, once I reached about level 25, the difficulty curve of the game leveled out, and I was able to move with some confidence throughout the rest of the game.

I couldn't tell you what the story was about (mostly because I played while listening to my iPod), but that doesn't matter. I've heard that the plot for Borderlands is kind of watery anyway, so that never got in the way of the game for me, either way. I was able to tune out much of the plot garbage in favor of killing things and upgrading my character. That's really the big draw of Borderlands in the first place. It's a bloody, goofy, fun game, devoid of any unnecessary self-seriousness, and I highly recommend it, if you can be patient enough to reach level 10.

Guns N Roses - "Dead Flowers"

I'm feeling a bit nostalgic today. Here is a super rare video of Guns n Roses covering the Stones' "Dead Flowers" (From Sticky Fingers). Enjoy.

BioShock: Infinite Plot (Conspiracy) Theory

One of the most interesting theories I've heard bandied about the internet about the coming BioShock: Infinite game revolves around one of a few circumstances: either (a) you are a character who becomes "disillusioned by the city's [Columbia's] jingoism and decide to deflate the city's balloons" to sink the city to the bottom of the sea (this according to G4) or that (b) you become influenced by a young man disenchanted with Columbia and help him destroy it (this man would be Andrew Ryan, of course) or that (c) you are or rename yourself as Andrew Ryan (this theory is all over the internet). It's all tinfoil hat stuff at this point, but if this game is to be anything but a non-sequitur in the series it must revolve somewhat around the original storyline.

Source: http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/706872/BioShock-Infinite-Trailer-Pretentious-Analysis-Time.html

BioShock: Infinite Trailer