Well, kids, my laptop finally came yesterday, and I’m toying the idea with writing a post about it since it’s a popular-ish model (Dell Studio 15), but I haven’t really used it for anything since I’m still waiting for someone who understands our secure wireless network to hook me up (figuratively) so I can do anything with it, so, yeah, no real news yet on that front! In other news, I’ve been kind of busy/not feeling like blogging, and I don’t really have much to say today either, but I’m trying to update more frequently and my short story’s been sitting on top of the blog since Monday, so I’ll work on a few tidbits for you guys.
I saw Public Enemies last night – Seriously, I was invited to a 10:10 showing. Man, haven’t seen a theater that empty since opening day for Land of the Lost. Zing. – and walked into the theater realizing that I actually had no idea what the movie was about, which is something I haven’t done in a while. Usually I know quite a bit about a movie if I’m going to the theater to see it, but I didn’t even know what the topic was, and I was just tired enough to revel in the modern, diluted sense of discovery, which was soon paid off handsomely as it is a movie about bank robbers, which, just in case you didn’t know, are easily the coolest kinds of robbers. It’s a very good movie, and it definitely keeps your attention throughout the whole thing. Johnny Depp’s acting is, per usual, brilliant, as was Marion Cotillard, although Christian Bale didn’t seem particularly into it. Also, since I can get away with making any kind of stupid complaint as long as I make it clear I actually like the movie, what should be the movie’s climax feels far more like a drawn out denoument, and, and this is easily the strangest complaint I think I’ll ever make about a movie, the cinematography and lighting seemed kind of unusual. Yep, that’s right internet, I just called a movie out on cinematography! Look out, Rotten Tomatoes!
I’m not really sure why I get so interested whenever a new Final Fantasy game is released, since the only games I really liked in the series are the first one and the Tactics spin-offs, and I haven’t played any installments dated later than III. Still, I was kind of interested in the news about a new DS-exclusive Final Fantasy, until I read some of the actual details about it and realized it was pretty much the most underwhelming video game announcement I’ve ever read. For example, here’s a snippet of IGN’s summary of what we know about the plot:
“… you play as Brand, a character who’s just come of age and heads off to the castle to meet the king. There, he learns that the king’s daughter has been kidnapped by the Witch of the North, and he’s tasked with saving her.”
No. Way. That’s only the plot of every other fantasy ever made. I’m not talking about Final Fantasy, mind you, I’m talking about the genre. Don’t worry, it gets better:
“Going further in depth on the story, the magazine also got commentary from director Takashi Tokita, who said that the game’s theme is about the travels of an adventure”.
Uh huh. The theme of a video game is adventure… Groundbreaking!
“The game makes use of a turn-based battle system, requiring that players simply select a command … To execute cure and other spells, you simply touch one of these panels.”
“As one would expect of a classic RPG experience, this means random battles…”
Did this really need to be a four page magazine article? Is there anything this game does that RPGs haven’t been doing since the dawn of time? Oh, it’s probably too early to tell, certainly, but based on this “news”, for a game whose “overall goal … appears to be to fuse classic RPG gaming with the more modern tech offered by the DS”… how is this not just more of the same?
And just in case this post isn’t unfocused and helter skelter enough, I found this a few days ago and now understand why A Cappella is so damn popular.
