2013: Things I Liked

I'm gonna change things up a little with my year-end lists(that take place months after the year in question ended).

I'll do two lists: Things I liked, and things I loved.

Also, only two things are blacklisted this year: Penny Arcade's "Strip Search" reality show, and Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories". Both are things I enjoyed, before it came obvious they were associated with rape-culture shitheads.

"The Wind Rises" Review

by Alex Hill

5/5

Via kazetachinu.jp

Sometimes I see a movie with my mom on a Tuesday night, because it's cheaper to go on Tuesdays. As a movie plays, there are usually interruptions. She'll ask who an actor is on screen, or for a snack or something, since I'm the one holding the food. For the two-hour running time of The Wind Rises, neither of us made a sound. Save for the crunching of popcorn behind us, and some laughter at a specific character design, a peculiar quiet descended on the audience. For the most part, we watched in silent reverence.


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Let's Green Egg And Ham It

I am so tired right now, I'm hallucinating. I could swear they were making another Shag Fu game.




But seriously, we're getting another one of these before Half-Life 3.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Skyrim: "Don't Tread On Me"

Because drawing isn't working for me right now, and I have a lot of free time, I've been grinding in Skyrim. A meaningless goal I have is to reach level 100 before I tackle the end-game content of the main questline, and to pick up a few odd achievements here and there(I'm playing on the Xbox version, which unfortunately means longer load times and no mods).

Right now, my biggest conundrum is whether to side with the Imperials or the Stormcloaks. I'm playing a character who swore revenge on the empire for trying to execute him... but I'm hearing that picking the Stormcloaks is actually worse in the long-run for everyone but the native Nords.

I've already killed the Dark Brotherhood for sending assassins to kill me. I've established my character does not forgive nor forget attempts on his life, no matter the cost... So do I swallow my pride and side with the Imperials for the greater good, or do I ruin Skyrim for a lot of the races in Tamriel just for revenge?


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Love Is Not Selfish

How many of you have heard the phrase: “You have to love yourself before you can love anyone else”? The idea is that if you love yourself, it will naturally lead to caring about others, and not caring about yourself denies you the ability to have meaningful relationships. 


But wait, what about bankers? What about bible-thumping bigots? What about mass-murderers and dictators? What about lobbyists and corrupt police and senators and congressmen and gangs? What about rapists? What about hollywood executives? 


These are not self-loathing people. Psychopaths have high self-esteem. They love everything about themselves and continue to make the world worse because that initial self-love never spread out. Why wouldn’t they? They want everything for themselves because they see themselves as more important and more deserving. Hating yourself is not necessarily always what makes you hate others, so why would loving yourself be the only entryway to loving others?


You do not need to love yourself to love others. That’s bullshit. I hate pretty much everything about myself, and I cared about people. Certain people, at least. I was a humanist for most of my life, and my own self-loathing didn’t stop that. Even years after I should have stopped having any personal investment in the human race. Long after I should have given up on the species, I was still hoping and caring.


If I still care about anyone, it’s not because I had some epiphany or some moment of self-acceptance. It’s because I’m not a psychopath, and love is not selfish!

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Japan's Vanilla Ice

Has anyone else heard about Mamoru Samuragochi, the composer of Resident Evil and Onimusha? Apparently he didn't actually write music, but took credit for ghost-written compositions due to being deaf by age 35(which is now also under question).

Geez. I hope this isn't a common thing. I'd hate to think of some of my heroes of video game music being frauds.

Is there any equivalent to this in movies or television? Granted, the music industry has no shortage of thieves, and then there are cases where "music by X" actually means "music by X and his recording team, sound engineers, etc.". It's clear that not every single note you hear in a Hans Zimmer score was his and his alone, but when you read "Soundtrack by Hans Zimmer", it's to be understood as being a brand more than the individual guy. And even then, he does roll up his sleeves and do the work(...sometimes. Other times he just sort of collects a paycheck when they re-use his themes from a previous movie in a sequel, but just get someone else to score the rest, like in Kung-Fu Panda 2).

But I can't think of an instance where a film composer was outed not only as having taken credit for music, but also accused of faking a disability.

For that matter, does anyone even remember the music in the first Resident Evil? Does anyone even remember Onimusha the game? In any case, this is just what Capcom needed: more bad publicity.

END OF LINE

~A.H.

Whatever

I wish I had more to talk about on this blog. I meant this to be where I dump all of my video game rants and stuff, but I've become so disillusioned with the state of the medium that I don't feel like I have anything meaningful to say. And I just think the entire industry is on course to collapse anyway, and nobody wants to fix it, so...

Meh.

Maybe one of these days I'll get off my ass and finish the Fave of 2013 list. Until then, I don't know what else to say.