Nitpickery: The Avengers

Hey y'all.  Guess what?  I actually saw a movie on the day it came out.  I never do that.  I'm usually that pretend to wait for the dollar theater but end up forgetting about it until it comes on Netflix sort of person.  And I'm a cheapskate.  But it was my birthday, so I wanted to go see a movie.

I had a really good birthday, actually.  I got free fancy tea, put in an application for a new job, and had one of those "baconator" sandwiches from Wendy's.  Yummers.  Oh wait, I forgot, I have leftover cake.  Be right back!

...

Okay, cake acquired.  Movie review time.

Katamari Damacy New Ideas

Hey y'all.  Hm.  I was just watching a bunch of let's plays on youtube of Katamari games.  It turns out there's a crap ton of them.  I've watched Katamari Damacy (the only one I've actually played), We Love Katamari, and Katamari Forever.  The first is excellent, and the second brings in a lot of originality -- though the second one lost points with me because it made it look like humans actually like it when the Prince rolls a katamari.  If you're being rolled up into a ball and turned into a star, I doubt you'd like it.  Then the second game makes up those lost points by its ending credits sequence.

The general plot of the game is that the King of all Cosmos has gotten like...drunk or something, and has accidentally destroyed all the stars in the sky and also the moon.  His teeny tiny son, the Prince of all Cosmos, has to go roll up all the Earth items he can to make new stars.  Basically all the games go on this model, though the cause of the loss of stars varies somewhat per game.   The point of all the games is to create more stars and planets out of random stuff on Earth.

These are great games.  You'd be surprised, but it is.  What with gathering up a bunch of random objects (mainly weird Japanese stuff), the King's random and derogatory quotes, ridiculous music, and the ability to roll up people, cars, and even buildings and giant squid as you get bigger, this game can be ridiculously addictive.

But the problem with the game is, it's pretty simple.  Even fans of the game have to admit that it's pretty repetitive, and if you have one of the better games, there's usually no need  to get another unless you're really obsessed.  So that's why Katamari needs some new ideas!

How to Doom your Sequel 2: Dark Seed

Hey y'all.  I didn't think this was going to be a continuing thing, but I've been watching let's plays of the Dark Seed games, and it's like the developers of their second game really didn't want their sequel to work out.  It's like they did almost everything possible to make sure the game was weird and you hated the main character.  Normally I'm not a horror fan, as most horror these days is all gore and no scare.  However, the Dark Seed games are so cheesy hilarious, I figured I might check them out.

The first game was actually pretty decent.  It centers around professional writer Mike Dawson, who has just bought a really creepy house, for some inexplicable reason.  His first night there, he dreams that an alien baby has been implanted in his head.  From the headaches Mike experiences every morning, you figure the dream was real.  This is a horror game, after all.

So Mike has to do several things and claim several seemingly insignificant items to enter the dark world, a place more or less parallel to the normal world, only creepier and nastier.  From here, he has to find a way to stop the ancients, an alien race, from using the baby in his head to take over both worlds -- because apparently, while creepy, the normal darkworlders are just....well, normal.  One of them, a disembodied head, is the person who sends Mike dreams every night and helps him win the game.

There are several problems with this game.  First of all, it is very, very difficult.  Without a walkthrough, you will find yourself dying several times.  And because you don't pick up a specific object, or don't complete a task fast enough, you can easily get yourself into an unwinnable state without even realizing it.  Also, every time you die, the game forces you to go back to the beginning, including watching the scene of Mike getting a baby implanted in his head again.  Save early, save often.

But overall the game itself was pretty good.  Not the best thing in the world, but it was a great start to a potentially rewarding franchise.  If the second game hadn't happened, anyway.

Video Game Influence

Hey y'all.  So I was watching a video by Peanut Butter Gamer on Youtube, and in this video, "I Dream of Dreamcast Part 2", he makes a joke about a video game influencing him to go paint graffiti.  That got me thinking.  How much do video games actually influence people?  There are so many opinions floating around that it's really hard to pin down something that's actually concrete and scientific.  I mean, how exactly would Mythbusters tackle an idea like this?


I took a personality test recently, and apparently I'm an INTP, which means that I see logical inconsistencies faster than most, and I like to think.  No real surprises there.  So, due to this nature, I want to create a scientific means for deciding whether or not video games can influence people.

Write Club -- How to Doom a Sequel

Hey y'all.  So I was thinking about it, and there are things that moviemakers do either by accident or by well-intentioned mistake.  It generally doesn't happen as often with books, particularly considering that it takes so long to write a book and publishers seem to care a whole lot more than producers whether or not their product is good.  Considering that movie makers can get away with a lot dumber choices and still make money...well, yeah.

Maybe this is just a personal vendetta from a writer type, but it seems to me that movie people should be punished by lower sales when they make dumb stuff.  Unfortunately, even things like "Jack and Jill" and "Zookeeper" seem to make a crap ton of money, probably because people are bored and movies are there.  Fortunately, making fun of bad movies is entertaining.  A win-win situation, I guess.

Anyway, I just want to illustrate a few things that illustrate what can make a sequel turn bad.  Everybody's aware of sequelitis, where a sequel just doesn't measure up.  Sometimes it's just a matter of not being quite as good, but still being well-made and watchable.  Other times....well, not so much.

Write Club: Respect Characters

Hey y'all.  So I was critiquing somebody's writing online, and the thing I noticed about this particular work they wrote was that it was missing an integral part of all good stories: the love of characters.  The sample I read was a prologue, and it was quite obvious that the characters in it were mere tools to get on to the first chapter.  None of the characters were particularly interesting.  They were merely there to serve a purpose, and then they were gone.

This is not the way a character is to be treated.  A character is not merely a tool, but a little person living in the fictitious world that you made for them.  They are little organisms, based on yourself and people you know.  They are given life by your perceptions, and become more deep the better you perceive.

The trouble is, there are errors with people's perceptions.  Most of the problems with the above writer's sample was the fault of one such error.  He combined.

Write Club -- Which Reviewer Are You?

Hey y'all.  So I was reading this book, "How to Succeed in the Publishing Game" by Vickie Stringer. She was talking about all the different aspects of editing. Apparently in the business there are three types of editors. Copy editors, content editors, and book doctors.