That's Cute....

I found two indie games that I found to be quite, dare I say, cute. One is Machinarium which looks to be like an adventure game, every character is a robot, the city is made of metal and by god it does look cute. Then I saw Minecraft which looked like it could be fun, but fun like LSD: Dream Emulator where you think, "Oh this could relieve some time" but fear it may bore you even more. When I watched the Minecraft video the guy was digging up roses and trees and planting them elseware and mining dirt, rock, and ore. He even explored caves and that seemed a bit fun.
The one indie game I've tried and had the most fun with (I should buy it) is Cortex Command. Cortex Command is a side scrolling shooter that had me playing for hours trying to protect my base from evil robots and watching the destroyed aircraft and robot bodies pile into mountains. I shot down each transport with the Flak Cannon and giggled as the transport spiraled out of control and hit the ground exploding. Was it cute? I dunno, depends on your definition of cute.
Here's the price for all these...
Machinarium (Pre-Order) is $17 (Mac/PC)
Minecraft is FREE (Java)
Cortex Command is $18 or FREE DEMO (Mac/PC)

In the News

So I recently got turned onto "The Local" which is a German news website translated into English and I must say they got better things on there then what's on CNN. Scientists in Germany found out why people walk in circles when they are lost in the desert or forest. Wanna know why? It's because they have no marker in front of them like the sun or a building. They did a test in the sahara and after the sun went down everyone started walking in circles (they found this out through GPS). Subjects that were blind folded either followed the path or walked in smaller circles. I find that one fascinating because they are blind folded... so they can't see anything right? I dunno.
I also learned from the site that a member of the Red Army Faction was recently arrested for an assassination that happened 30 years ago. This is supposedly one of the biggest investigations in Germany and they have arrested the now 57 year old Verena Becker. I just found this fascinating that they are still arresting members of this 70's terrorist cell.
To read more go
HERE FOR THE 'LOST' ARTICLE
HERE FOR THE 'RAF ARREST' ARTICLE

Klaus Schulze and Dog's Do Not Go Well Together

My parents aren't home so I decided to blast Klaus Schulze throughout the house and the song got a bit quiet and then picked up with a loud electronic buzz and my dog stops dead in his tracks, perks up his ears, cocks his head a bit to the side, and gives me this look like he saying, "Why are you going towards the noise? The noise is scary!"
He also gave me the same look when I was playing the Metroid II: Return of Samus soundtrack in my room when he was hanging out in my room with me. I guess this just goes to show that electronic music and dog's do not go well together.
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I know the title is different shut up, don't make a federal case about it!
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Now he's barking at my music... what a weirdo...

SQUEE! Review

So I'm still not over how awesome Weird Science was. To continue the awesomeness I just finished Squee! by Jhonen Vasquez. This graphic novel was one laugh after another. It's episodic and each episode is hilarious with little author's notes. That's what also made me laugh was the small author's notes littered about the pages. Some of the jokes made me feel so immature, but quite frankly I don't care, they were disgustingly funny. Some of it was disturbing and even the author admits that. They break the fourth wall. It's pretty much Invader Zim without Zim, Dib, and Gaz. The first part of the graphic novel is all the Squee! stuff, the second half is a bunch of random comics that are funny as well. Jhonen has this little series in the book called "Real Drama" or something like that and the first one is so weird and hilarious I loved it. It starts with this mom running into a hospital and screaming for the doctor to help her baby. The doctor puts a stethiscope to the baby and takes the baby and runs out the door screaming. He throws the baby up in the air and the baby blows up. Then the doctor says to the mom, "I'm sorry, you were too late." and the last frame is the mom just standing there. I'm laughing hard even as I type this. There's also some stupid aliens in the beginning that make me laugh because of just out dumb they are! I think what makes the book funny is all those author's notes I talked about and how the humor is geared towards adults sometimes and then towards kids at other times. I'll give some examples... there's a scene where the main character, Todd, his dad is watching TV and the TV shows a child being born and there's an author's note to the side that says, "Watching Todd's birth is reverse." As mean as that might be, it's just down right funny. The adult humor comes in where Todd's future self comes to warn him about something and he says, "In the future traffic doesn't slow to a crawl because a cop is handing out a ticket, it's great!" I find that humor geared towards any adult that may read the book, I got it, I found it funny. The humor geared towards kids comes in with one page. The setting is Todd's bedroom and there's a giant disgusting monster holding a bunch of kids saying, "Hope you don't mind that I borrow the closet for a few minutes. Just knock if I'm making too much noise." I found that to be geared towards kids because of how kids may think there's a monster in their closet. If you are into Jhonen's work or if you like oddly funny things or... well... you know what... go out and buy it or I'll be forced to have you shunned by society.

(Jhonen Vasquez)

The Best John Hughes Movie

So I've seen Home Alone, Ferris Beuller's Day Off, Breakfast Club, and Sixteen Candles. Those are all great John Hughes movies, but nothing compares to Weird Science. Weird Science is by far the best John Hughes movie and now one of my favorite movies. It's about two nerds that are very unpopular that create a girl using their computer. They initially create the girl for mainly sexual reasons, but the girl ends up teaching them a lot about life and changes them for the better. As usual John Hughes has casted Anthony Michael Hall as one of the main nerd characters. The other nerd is played by Ilan Mitchell-Smith, his brother is played by Bill Paxton. I don't really know what to say about the movie and why I think it's one of the greatest movies ever, but I just love it. The only real bad part is what happens to Chet (Bill Paxton's character) in the end of the movie because it's cheesy and disgusting, but it works. Anyone who's a nerd/geek will love this movie because it's one of the few movies where the nerds/geeks become the cool people and they don't have to turn into a superhero or anything. It's like Revenge of the Nerds gone John Hughes. I think they filmed part of it in Lake Forest, IL too... which is near me... which is awesome. So yeah, like I said, I don't know what to really say about the movie, but it's just one of the best movies ever. Definitely pick it up!

The Happenings in my Life

So I recently bought "Squee!" and "Johnny the Homicidal Maniac" both by Jhonen Vasquez and I have yet to read them so I won't have a review posted for some time, maybe if I'm not doing anything this weekend I'll finish "Squee!" and review that. Aside from that I got the "Ten Years of Resident Evil" soundtrack and Klaus Schulze's "Irrlicht". I am listening to Irrlicht for the second time, why only a second time you ask? The first track is half an hour and the second is twenty-one minutes so of course it takes awhile to finish. This album is amazing though. I love "Ebene" it's got this eerely awesome string set going on that I just love. From what I remember this album is amazing, some of it can be very repetitive, but I manage, my music is very repetitive... I think... maybe... I dunno you be the judge of that. The Resident Evil soundtrack is awesome, nothing more needs to be said about that. School started so with that blog posts may be scarce, we'll see.
Oh and if you read, please comment, I love comments, lets me know people are actually reading this.

Review: Resident Evil Fire & Ice

So this afternoon I bought and read Resident Evil Fire & Ice, a graphic novel written by Ted Adams and Kris Oprisko who also wrote the original Resident Evil comics. This graphic novel was an original idea and totally shows that in both a good and a bad way. I can't really go into further detail than saying that without spoiling some of it. What I can reveal is that there is a scene in the arctic where two of the characters are ambushed by G-virus infected animals. The infected animals that surround them are a wolf, a bear, and to get into ridiculous territory a whale, a walrus, and a penguin. It was like, okay a G-virus mutated whale, walrus, and penguin. Both the whale and walrus were like a Tyrant, they had arms and legs and were bipedal. The penguin was just a penguin it was rather cute and funny. What stood out was that the whole thing seemed rather rushed, for example each character was given their own back story within a panel or two, there wasn't a big flashback scene it was just told to the reader. Even the ending seemed rushed, it all happened so fast I went, "Wait... what? Was that it!?" Apparently it was.
What makes this graphic novel so great is that it comes with the original Resident Evil comics (Resident Evil 1 and 2) as well as a few short comics that the author wrote. The blood and gore is very limited in this, which makes me wonder if it was aimed at a younger audience. I wouldn't have an issue with it if it was, but when I think Resident Evil creatures I expect to see lots of gore whether they are alive or not. Probably the best gore scene is when a guy got blown up. There aren't many zombies in the story either, the zombies are mainly in the opening sequence and then it goes to monsters, not an issue, but again I'm used to the video games where zombies are always present and eventually the character encounters more and more monsters gradually, but even then zombies are still present.
I bought this because I had never read a Resident Evil comic before and I had always heard good things about them from RE fans. I also looked at reviews and info on this specific graphic novel and it had gotten good reviews and this specific book that I got (which can be found at Barnes and Noble) was limited to 5,000 copies. So with all of that said, I definitely think it's worth picking up, maybe you'll have as much fun as I did or maybe more fun. Either way it's definitely worth picking up!

2012, thoughts

So we all know the movie is going to be two hours of destruction porn with no plot other than the world is ending and stuff is getting F'd in the A. So I'd like to focus on that special date in the future when everyone thinks the world is going to end. You must know this: December 21st 2012, is the last date on the MAYAN calendar and not OUR calendar or the CHRISTIAN/JEWISH/MUSLIM calendar. Look at it this way, the Christian calendar begins 0 AD, the year Jesus Christ was born, not when the earth was created. Nostradamus must've based his predictions around the Mayan calendar. Also, remember Y2K? Everyone was flipping a shit about how the world was going to end and how computers would go haywire and bombs would all launch and stuff, but did any of that happen? No. Many people have tried to predict the end of the world, but they've all been wrong. Every religion also has their own Escatology (study of the end of the world) and they are all different, for example Christianity has the book of Revelations that goes through the Apocolypse of John and the Revelation of Jesus Christ, and right there, the revelation of JESUS CHRIST and other religions don't believe that Jesus was the mesiah, which means that their view of how the world will end will be different. Well... I hope that convinced some of you or all of you to calm down and go, "Yeah, fuck you media!"