Robosexual

I'll either have an Operation Rainfall post or an Extra Credits-related post up tomorrow. Until then, I direct your attention to this review of "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" by Roger Ebert.

Speaking as a guy who has spent way too much time thinking about a big-budget adaptation of the Mega Man X video game series re-imagined as an existentialist thought exercise about the capacity for super-intelligent machines to think or feel, this review seemed like kind of a downer. Not because I disagree, but because I think the gulf between a theoretical advanced android and a human person might not be so vast as we'd like to think. And if that did turn out to be true, then a review like Ebert's, whether he intended it or not, says more about humanity than it does about machines.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Play For Japan

Farting penis monster for charity.

No, seriously. This was going to be a post on Operation Rainfall until I saw that. Somebody thought that was a good idea for an album cover for music that's supposed to(somehow) help Japan after it's devastating hat-trick. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems like the kind of thing people would look at, and then pay Godzilla to wreck Japan even more, just to prevent art like this from happening again. Which seems like the opposite intention for disaster relief, doesn't it?

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Classic Friday: "We Summon Rock"

Square-Enix is releasing a rhythm-based music game based on music from the Final Fantasy franchise. Sounds interesting to me, since I'm a huge Nobuo Uematsu dork. Today's Friday, Classic was written before the keytar was added to these games, and before the Rock Band/Guitar Hero plastic instrument franchise fad died off(or was it murdered?). That said, I still prefer my idea:

Small Wonder

A Batman: Arkham City artist explains the gritty reboot of Robin. Because if it's one thing more video games need, it's brooding bald guys who fight people.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

"Fragile Dreams" Review

(In the interest of full disclosure, I abandoned this game for a span of several months after being hopelessly stuck at one part. It was a carnival stage, and just trying to find my way out to progress to the next part of the game was an exercise in futility. I spent days combing every inch of this area, even backtracking to a previously completed mall area just in case I missed something.

Eventually I had no motivation to play Fragile Dreams anymore. I couldn't even bring myself to look at Game FAQS until several months later. This review should have been up last year, but I felt so thoroughly defeated by this game, and for all of the wrong reasons: Its art-design of a rustic, post-apocalyptic world hid a doorway that should have been in plain view, which was never pointed out on the map. The game made no effort to point me in the right direction. This was a total failure on Tri-Ace's part to communicate an objective with the player.

A year later, and I finally pushed through with the help of an online strategy guide, although no other portion of Fragile Dreams is that poorly designed. The product itself is rough around the edges, its battle system clearly an afterthought. It's clear where this game's priorities are, and they are better than most. And yes, the experience matters as much as the product itself. What does one rate a game that does many things right, and one thing outrageously wrong?)

Review Ratings

Once in a while I will post a review of something here. Movies, games, maybe an album or a novel or something else. Depends. While I believe the actual words should take precedent for whoever might read these things, I know that people don't always have time to go through an entire wall of text(which I am prone to provide, brevity not being a talent of mine).

So we come to ratings. I have a rating system which combines the needless constrictions of the "Four Star" system, and the redundant stupidity of the "...OUT OF TEN!" rating guide used by shitty video game websites. It's out of 5, but I make room for .5s too, so there's a total of 10-11 possible ratings.

(Five being a thousand blowjobs, and Zero being a thousand blowjobs, BUT they're all from the Crypt Keeper.)

For those of you curious, that's supposed to be the face of an original(pfft, HAHAHAHAHA) character I made a while back. I used to have a gamer webcomic with this guy at the same time I was writing the odd review, and I thought a symbol of his face/mask/thingy would tie in well enough. Now I guess it doesn't really serve any purpose still being there, but I like it, and it's my site, so fuck all ya'll so yeah.

I know ratings like this are stupid. Roger Ebert once wrote: "I write reviews for those who can read, not those who can count."... or something. Yeah, maybe they're dumbing down society or whatever. But that's the way the wind's been blowing for a while now, and I might as well take it seriously. Or at least, try to be consistent with how I give them out.

Just posting this so that you'll know what that weird little icon is at the top of future reviews I'll post here.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Classic Friday: "Skyward Snore"

Today's Classic Friday article sheds some light on why I'm more interested in Xenoblade than the new Zelda game: