Staunton Hill

Did you know George Romero's son made a movie? Yeah, I didn't even know he had a son, but good christ there's STAUNTON HILL on the instant view Netflix.

SPOILER: I didn't actually watch the entire movie. There's actually a good reason for that. For FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, nothing happens. The movie doesn't even give the obligatory "opening kill" shot, just some pointless scenes of a girl in an operating room layered with creepy pig noises that I guess is supposed to make me all HMM INTERESTING but just reminded me of the fact that virtually every modern slashers contains these stupid overedited shots. So, after the movie decided what I really needed was a BREAKFAST SCENE that lasted for over ten minutes, I just used netflix's handy multiple thumbnail feature to find the actual kill scenes.

Staunton Hill has been widely described as a basic Texas Chainsaw Massacre ripoff, and while I normally bristle at the term rip-off, it's perfectly apt for this disgrace. Hell, now that I think about it, maybe Romero the Younger wanted to emulate Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the point of not getting any kills until the second half. The difference between the films is that I could stand watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre because of the pervasive sense of unease, whether intentional or not (considering Hooper's general output, probably a combination of the two), within the filming. You know bad things are going to happen to the characters in both films, but in TCM you're actively dreading the moment that Leatherface pops out of the metal door, while in Staunton Hill you can't fucking wait for these horrible people to stop talking.

Both films' plots revolve around counterculture kids getting into bad situations. In Staunton Hill, you have five hippies in rural Virginia planning to go to a rally in Washington. They end up hitching a ride with a dude they meet, but then his truck breaks down and they decide to camp out at a nearby farm that they soon find out is inhabited by a crazy religious grandmother, her generally crazy fat daughter, and a Leatherface. People die, and there's bizarre attempts at themes that exist for a scene and are then ignored (a racist junkyard owner doesn't like the one black hippie who talks about Black Panthers, something about medicine and christianity), and then a really obvious twist that really sealed the deal on the whole TCM problem. SPOILER BELOW (highlight to read):

Those that watched TCM might remember that the Leatherface clan included an exciteable crazy son, and an apparently normal guy who lived away from the actual clan house. When he meet the racist junkyard guy and the truck man, my horror sense went a tingle-jingle, but I refused to believe it. Seriously, the director couldn't be planning a twist where both of these people are actually related to the crazy farm family. That's just too lazy and obvious, I thought.

Then when everyone reaches the farm, there was a scene where the truck driver talks to someone off-screen, saying "they're looking around the farm now." I wasn't sure what to make of this, and had to rewind it to figure out if it was some sort of editing error, but nope, they're just making it really obvious that NOT ALL IS AS IT SEEMS. This wouldn't be a problem, except the film then somehow expects the audience to forget that this scene existed, as nothing is really alluded to this aspect of the guy's character, and just keeps interacting with the cast until the ending where it's revealed...HE IS THE SON OF THE CRAZY FAMILY. whoaaaa. whoaaaaaa. And also the junkyard guy is also in on it. Aaaaah.

Let me put this another way. Revealing to the audience a secret that isn't known to the characters isn't a bad thing in and of itself. It can add tension, showing scenes where you realize that the characters are in terrible danger and just don't know it. But you can't just go "oh the truck driver clearly has a secret," proceed as if nothing really happened for fifty minutes, then go OH MAN HE'S THE SON GOT YOU GOT YOU. Either acknowledge that the surprise is spoiled, or just don't mention it.

Everything about the movie is forgetable. Edits are awful, featuring lots of classic "conversations clearly filmed during three time periods." The hippies are unlikeable both in acting and writing, and the only really interesting person is the crazy mother, who played that one fat woman in the trailer in the TCM remake (GODDAMNIT SERIOUSLY), so you naturally have to root for the bad guys. Apparently not realizing that, Son Romero slathers the hippies in bathos, like weird tracking shots of a skinned girl over sad music, or focusing on (spoiler I guess) the black guy crying really badly when seeing his girlfriend getting scalped.

Maybe Son Romero is capable of good films. The best you can hope for modern slashers these days are self-obsessed horror fans blowing their wads at technical quality (and to be fair to Staunton Hill, there is some decent non-cgi gore), so it's not a good place to start. Maybe he could try a zombie movie or hahahahaha




POST DEATH (ehehehehe): So, as mentioned above, the setting is explicitly in Virginia. Always being curious when a film actually tries to set itself in a real place that I might've been to, I tried to figure out exactly where the Lame Squad was. At first I thought it might've been around Staunton, due to the title and that it's basically on the way to DC, but turns out the screenwriter was totally full of shit.

Basically, while the truck is out and everyone is trying to explain what to do, they mention two highways, one being highway 193 and some other that I would have to try to find again, and that these roads would eventually lead to bethesda. For those who don't j/o on google maps, bethesda is in maryland, and north of DC and all of virginia. Put another way, the screenwriter clearly has no idea what he's talking about (or I might be horribly wrong, and welcome a correction).

DRAGON KWEST NEIN

It'd been a hard sell for my girlfriend.

She refused to believe that it would feel good, that falling back on the traditional games would be good enough. I told her it would be odd at first, but new experiences were healthy, and I was sick of the familiar motions. Besides, I had tried it already, and could state with confidence that despite my initial misgivings, it really was pretty enjoyable.

Eventually I just threatened her with anal rape, and she decided to bite the bullet and play Dragon Quest IX.

Neither of us had really played the Dragon Quest series before. I tried the initial game when I was a child, and after getting wiped out by a wizard I met after exiting a cave, I told my dad to take the game back to the rental place. The girlfriend tried the DS remake of Dragon Quest IV, and dubbed it boring at shit. At the time I decided to shill DQIX, she had finished Final Fantasy Tactics: A2 and was trying to beat Disgaea.

Let me digress for a moment to note that I sort of hate both of these games. Part of this can be traced to the fact that both of the games clearly hate me. After two hours of giving Disgaea a chance and sleeping, I discovered that my flash card apparently refuses to save files from that particular game. Worse was Tactic's treatment of me, which was killing me in the goddamned STARTING TRAINING MISSION as the enemies used attacks that apparently weren't even supposed to occur. It also doesn't help that tactics and disgaea both feature a literal endless parade of frustrating forced grinding and careful stat management to protect yourself from having to repeat teeth-gratingly bad cutscenes.

I'm also going to admit that generally speaking, I'm not really a big RPG player, and an even smaller RPG-finisher. I usually get halfway or three-quarters through a game, and then get distracted/frustrated with the inevitable plot slowdown and just play through the Metal Slug series again. So, it was surprising that I not only beat Dragon Quest IX, but I beat it with a minimum of "god damnit I don't want to fuck with this dungeon wanna blow up tanks because I am a manchild."

One thing that alot of HARDXCORE rpg enthusiasts bitched about was the total lack of plot, or more specifically, the lack of a grand unifying story. They're not really wrong there, as the central plot of Dragon Quest IX is forgotten a dozen hours at a time. The basic gist of the story is that you are a Celestrian, which is basically a race of Christianity-style angels who exist to do good deeds and engage is retarded cutscenes that don't really go anywhere. Aside from the beginning and tailend of the series (the latter of which features the most awkwardly shoehorned in EVIL EMPIRE introduction seen to man), the plot consists of episodic visits to towns, which always have a Problem, which can always been solved by going to a Local Dungeon to beat a Bad. This is literally every town, aside from some tiny variations (such as go to Local Dungeon, then go back to town to beat a Bad). However, where I differ from people that have no problem in spending 200 hours in Disgaea's Item World (when my girlfriend explained that to me, my reaction was akin to shoving a cross in Dracula's face), is that this isn't really a problem for me.

Aside from the town's problems, there really is very little personality about the game. You have no moral choices throughout the game (not even the false refusal BUT THOU MUST trope), and the people you fight with, along with yourself, are customizable both in ability and appearance. As a result, while you are forced to help everyone, I could just pretend that helping the people was simply so I could get along with my ultimate goal of leaving these terrible places are quickly as possible. I really appreciated the game not giving my party members any actual personality, as there was no chance that I would run into that bad RPG conundrum where the best characters gameplay wise are easily the worst character wise (FUCK YOU AYLA WHY IS YOUR STRENGTH SO HIGH). My only regret was naming my nuke mage character "Snooks," as I realized halfway through the game that season 2 of Jersey Shore is really fucking awful.

Probably my favorite aspect of the game is how they implement job skills. At any job, you will gradually level in stats, as well as gain ability points that can be allocated into different sub-skills, which include weapons and job-specific trees. As you allocate points, you unlock various perks, including new abilities and increased stats. Relatively early in the game, you can switch out jobs, but with the penalty that you start the new job at level 1. While annoying, you can always switch to your previous jobs at whatever level you stopped at, and you always retain the perks from your job point allocation. In essence, it prevents easy exploitation that would break the tiny challenge the main game holds, while also encouraging experimentation with character build since you're never heavily punished for putting your points into stupid things (protip: knifes are so fucking awful it's not even funny).

Combat is a really simple throwback to older console rpgs (the only real change from the fight/magic/item scheme are randomly appearing limit breaks that are pretty much useless and will pop up exactly when you could gain no worthwhile use from them), and the challenge is always at a reasonable level. I tend to play RPGs carefully and with a somewhat autistic attention to MAXX STATS, while my girlfriend just basically grinded only when a boss completely stomped her. Both approaches worked well, as it's not really very hard to feel like everything you're fighting is hilariously unprepared for a guy wearing a hood shaped like a slime.

Speaking of slime hoods (OR SLOODS IF YOU WOULD), one reason I would wager the game's massive popularity is in the sheer amount of equipment within the game, and that the equipment directly impacts the character's visual appearance. Thus, part of the game is basically playing dolls, which appeal to all of you SICK FUCKS out there. But really, the amount of customization is almost overwhelming, and thankfully aside from weapons, stats play such a minor role in your character's strength that you can afford to choose a slightly worse outfit if it makes you feel like a boss.

However, I'm going to have to say that while it was fun for a little bit, Dragon Quest 9's post-game content isn't really all that good. Yes, in that quest for extending playability, there is a post-story aspect of the game that easily surpasses the actual story. However, while I did play through it fairly extensively, it just wasn't that fun. Let me break this down.

1) I HOPE YOU LIKE FUCKING GRINDING. Post-game consists entirely of "grottos" which are sort of randomly generated dungeons that consist of several to many floors, culminating in a boss that drops a treasure map to another grotto. The quality of the grotto from that map, which affects the boss, quality of treasure, and enemy types, depends on several things, most most especially on the level on your hero. Put another way, if you want the toughest monsters and best gear available, you're essentially going to have to level your main character all the way to level 99.

Ha ha, just kidding. Actually, to get the best, you're going to have to level your main character to 99, then go to a place where you "revocate," which drops your character back to level 1, then level back up to level 99 then revocate again and then revocate to level 99. To grind to this level, you better have a grotto map that spawns a rare slime type that gives insane amounts of experience, or you're essentially in this shit for the long haul.

After you do this, you can then fight Legacy Bosses, which are essentially final bosses from previous Dragon Quest games, and are all hard as shit, and require you to grind up different jobs so you can allocate skill points to every possible stat-increasing perk. Oh, and to get the best possible gear from the Legacy Bosses (note, said gear has a 2% drop rate unless you have a romfile or employ a really surreal programming trick), you have to kill each Legacy Boss dozens of times, as each time the boss is killed, you can choose to have the boss "level-up," meaning better stats and occasionally new horrible abilities.

Granted, I know the game wasn't forcing me to play through the postgame, but the sudden reliance on massive amounts of dull grinding in order to progress was just a little depressing.

2) NOTHING IS REALLY RANDOM. I would have been able to deal with the grinding if the post-game experience had been more random. By that, I mean the sort of Diablo II random, where once you get to a certain level, a vast amount of really great stuff can come out of any enemy, though the chances of that happening were fairly low. At first glance, the random nature of the grottoes made me hopeful for that sort of experience when I first started plowing through.

However, any aspect of randomness is totally illusory. Every enemy can only drop two treasures, and even the treasure chests can drop a certain level of treasure depending upon their "quality type," which stays the same no matter how many times you enter the same grotto. There apparently certain tradeable grottoes so heavily done that people have plotted out what sorts of items can drop from each chest at any given moment. This is amusing, but it basically removes any sort of interest from the game, transforming the game from an entertaining, rapidly progressing yarn about a jerk angel who just wants people to leave him alone into SQUARE-ENIX'S SPREADSHEET ADVENTURE.

In conclusion, at the very least it's a game worth picking up, and almost as good as anal sex.

haha kidding

video game humor, the impossible challenge

So, Lisa Foiles' column about Tetris has beaten Tim Roger's literal nightmare screed by over 7k pageviews and about 150 comments. Both columns were pretty perfect representations of their author. Lisa's column, as usual, started with a photo collage of SEXY TETRIS POSES, and ultimately boiled down to "hey tetris is fun sometimes I can get obsessed with competition with my video game pals (omg lisa has a video game group does she have a boyfriend well of course we'll never know as nerd slut mystique DEMANDS as such) and now I will pad the rest of the column with tetris factoids." Tim's column is a fucking mess, starting with a parody of post-apocalyptic literature, or at least I assume it was a parody because the entire passage read like a damage report from those ultra-aspie rpg systems where every body part is accounted for individually. He was also befuddled by Burning Man, and tells everyone how he made friends with a girl on OKCupid.

My girlfriend pointed out that Lisa had a website, and dutifully, we examined it to find banal game reviews, and more interestingly, three episodes of a fledgling web series called "Everyday Achievements." What amazes me about most nerds is that, for the sheer amount of comedic material they ingest, they are generally unfunny as shit. Couple that with the fact that game humor is probably the easiest subject matter to come up with jokes with, and I don't understand how someone who actually had experience with comedic acting could fuck up a webseries so badly. I wasn't expecting some sort of gaming hilarity like Broken Pixels, but JESUS CHRIST FUCK THIS SHIT.

Presently, I'm wonderingly if I can write about the show without having to rewatch any of the episodes. The plot is that Lisa is a wacky GAMER GRRL who has wacky friends but no wacky adventures because that would require some modicum of creativity, so instead you get idealized retellings of game nights. What struck me most about the series is that there really wasn't much actually game humor, the closest we get is the sight gag that her psychologist is named Dr. Wily (faint praise approaches: this was far and away the funniest thing in the series). The first episode has Lisa throwing things around, then goes to a skit about her wacky roommate Kenny who does wacky stuff like baking cupcakes with mayo frosting (AND HE ALSO LIKES IT THAT WAY LOLOLOLOL). The second episode features the worst "psychologist and patients group meeting" skit ever conceived, then notes that when gamers play together, it kind of sounds like they're having sex! WHOA

Perhaps sensing that the series is already starting to decay, Lisa goes for her Limit Break, the third episode opening with her dressed up in various sexy costumes and goddamnit I may as well post the entire monologue because it is the perfect representation of attention-seeking girls realizing the bounties of nerd hormones:



After 5 minutes of awkward dialogue masquerading as humor, we find that the pizza guy was interested, but not really, leaves so the viewer can mentally insert himself as the caring shoulder that might transmorph into the hot lover after lots of sweet talks and sexually charged near-victories on Street Fighter 4. ;) The two highest rated comments on youtube pretty much say it all:

Everything I know about life and the universe tells me that if you meet a girl who is THAT attractive and THAT seductive with THAT much innuendo, you need to run the f**k away. It's a trap. Nobody's karma level is that high. You'd take one step in the door and get struck by lightning, or covered in bees. The universe is not that kind. If you happen to BE that attractive, your punishment is having people run away from you, fearing karmic repercussions. Or the aforementioned bee lightning.

Lisa's so pretty.

Maybe I'm being a little harsh, as it's only been three episodes, but as it's already started mining for boners, fuck the show. I even considered giving it some leeway since we're only dealing with five minute long snippits, but that actually makes the terribleness of the show even worse, as then all you would have to do is just ignore the need for filler and just pile on the gags. lern2channel101.

Ultimately, I guess this is all just frustration at how drastically unfunny nerds are. By nerds, I mean those people that leapfrog from one stupid nerd website to another, roffelling at penny arcade, kotaku, and maybe zero punctuation if it's still around and hasn't been swallowed up in some of space time singularity of total pointlessness. While most members of every subculture are pretty terrible at humor, nerds are generally the most hellbent subculture at convincing people that they are funny. Your average jock is somewhat aware of his lacking funny bone, and instead just going to refer each other to the humor column in sports illustrated, or just relate humorous anecdotes. Nerds are still convinced mouthmashing memes without any context are totally hilarious.

Maybe it's the source material. People flipped out over Ebert declaring "games are not art," but he's basically right. Movies, music, and other sorts of media offer a chance to connect to other people via the experience of observing the media. There's nothing commonly shared about video game experiences, just a vague blob of "oh man that was awesome you dodged that missile" between players. There are cutscenes that are always the same, but come on, cutscenes? Better to argue that Let's Plays are art, since at least then many people have the same experience watching those, but then you're just watching a movie with a nasally asshole commentary track.

At any rate, the variable nature of video games really makes subtle humor on the subject difficult, as you either have to be really good at humor in general, or fall back on other subjects of humor to pad it. As most nerds are just about as clueless on other forms of media as any other idiot class, the latter option is out. And as to the former, if you're actually funny, why bother being funny on a subject that is only going to be funny to those people that no one actually cares about? Which bring me in a roundabout way to the question, why even bother really being funny with video game humor? Going back to Penny Arcade, the only thing really humorous about the strip is that the disparity between the creators' actual physical appearance and their cartoon selves mirror the same situation of the comic's readers. Actual game humor is reserved to the punchlines of:

"Whoa this sort of thing wouldn't happen in real life."
"Man, what were those video game executives THINKING???"
"Not much happening here WAIT WACKY THING HAPPENS IN LAST PANEL"

The worst thing is that Penny Arcade is -relatively excellent.- I can read a couple of Penny Arcade strips and at least just roll my eyes, or hell, EVEN CHUCKLE (note that my chuckling at a strip usually means that the normal readers of Penny Arcade will quote it for YEARS TO COME). Compare this to VGCats, which usually leads to me feeling too ashamed to play video games for a month. Combine this with a base readership of overwhelming social awkwardness, and we're at a place where even when someone might have an idea of attempting something new humor in game humor, they'd be too afraid and instead just fall back on going "pedobear pedobear pedobear" to be warped into the dimension of screaming gamer lexicon to get love.

WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE ME, YOU ASK.

Well, maybe I should try to be funny?

Let's Talk about Kotaku Columnists!

Does every internet person have a site that they scour themselves with? By that, do you have a site that despite the fact that you're generally offended or irritated with its content, you still continually visit? I have several, and primary among them is Kotaku.

This isn't really anything special, as a good rule of thumb is that if SomethingAwful is mocking your site, raging against it is probably pretty passe at best. I've recently gotten tired with Kotaku (especially with it recently trying to review games as dully as possible, and its entire week of salivating over Gearbox's guaranteed mediocre revival of Duke Nukem Forever), but I still will get excited when I see a new column up. There are currently four columnists in Kotaku, and each is a very distinct brand in varying degrees of not good. Each one is basically a cardinal point in the field of VIDEOOOOO GAAAAAAAAAME JOURNALISMMMMM, and demonstrates pretty well why no one besides basement dwellers is going to care about your Halo Feelings.

Brian Crecente, SOCIAL GAMES JOURNALISM

Does every games site have one of these people? I think Crecente is one of the head editors of Kotaku, and thus gets to have a column regardless of his writing ability (unsurprisingly pretty shitty). His column is entitled "Well Played" and involves "weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come." For those not exactly affluent in gamerese, this means trying to awkwardly combine mainstream journalism with stuff about video games. Well Played is full of stuff like "how do war veterans deal with violent war game videogames" or "hey blizzard is messing with online anonymity what does that mean for the INTERNET man." Translated another way, social games journalism is the kind of fluff piece on the intersection of video games and society that prime time news programs occasionally stuff on the tail-end (X:45-X:50, the final minutes are always pure human interest) of the news programs.

From a traditionalist standpoint, this is probably the least offensive branch of gaming journalism. Crecente's writing is a meandering tailspin of poor articulation, but I can reasonably imagine someone with basic English skills and an ingrained understanding that most people just don't give a fuck about Startropics's effect on island cultures being a non-ironic enjoyable read.

Of course, the weakness of this field is that it is always going to be related to a world where your average reader, at best, just wants to forget. Unsurprisingly, aside from hot button issues, relatively very few people read Well Played on Kotaku. The same cannot be said for

TIM ROGERS, NEW GAME JOURNALISM

If anyone actually liked by writing style, they would probably be salivating at the prospect of me eviscerating Tim Rogers. Well, bad news, while I hate Tim Rogers, so much has been said about him that it's honestly rather ridiculous to pile on. Don't worry, I am going to rage pretty shortly.

The best statement of Tim Rogers is that he's essentially Cargo Cult for gamers. While Well Played awkwardly tries to merge video games with real life topics, Tim Rogers boldly envisions a world where real life is totally bogus and the real intelligentsia is reserved for the video game club. Nothing is more dismaying than reading comment after comment in a Tim Rogers review proclaiming his ideas to be "thought-provoking" (actually, more dismaying are the equal comments of people terrified at possibly reading long text essays). Tim Rogers is essentially intellectual literature for people who have never read anything really intellectual (NEIL GAIMAN DOESN'T COUNT CUNTMONGS), but have just enough self-awareness to feel vaguely bad about this. Tim Rogers provides the answer with his columns, which are basically SRS GAMERZ ONLY clubhouses. The actual content of his columns can be divided in two camps:

1) Complete nonsense about game mechanics that when stripped of Tim's WACKY DEVIATIONS amount to completely banal and obvious ideas. Consider his article on "friction," which if reread was basically saying "slowdown and intentional jerkiness in movement provide great enjoyment in games." WHOA YOU JUST BLEW MY MIND GUY. Sometimes there's not even really an idea, just the wacky deviations (this is really common in his reviews, which commonly talk about the game in the last paragraph, like a fifth grader bloating up his book report with factoids tangentally related).

2) HEY LOOK AT MY LIFE. These have been worryingly more common for Tim, wherein he doesn't particularly discuss games, but instead presents himself as a proxy fantasy for Kotaku readers. Tim lives in Japan (in fact living there so long he even can complain about it), is in a (really terrible) noise rock band, and talk to girls. Still, I'll give the devil his due and admit it's hard to mock these columns since Tim has mastered the art of "not really ironic but actually ironic" writing. To wit, the tone of these columns is "I'm not cool, but I'm aware of this, so I act cool and that's cool in an uncool way." It creates such a perfect web around itself that your options in insulting it are either to try to mimic it and look like a total fool, or just go FUCK YOU TIM ROGERS and play Link to the Past or something.

Again, Tim Rogers is awful, but the scary thing is that he's not actually my least favorite Kotaku writer.

LISA FOILES: "SOCIAL" GAME JOURNALISM

FUCK THIS BITCH.

For those whose brain were slightly triggered by that name, Lisa was a cast member on Nickelodeon's ALL THAT, a pretty lame sketch comedy for people whose dad was not forcing them to watch reruns of In Living Color and MAR'IIIN (mar'iiiin). At some point, I guess she started realizing that a minor interest in video games could translate into niche fame.

Again giving Tim Rogers some credit, the dude clearly likes video games, and has spent alot of his life at least trying to think outside the box for ideas about how games should work. Reading Lisa's columns gives the impression that Lisa treats video games as a sort of vague side-hobby timesink, or that she is actually kind of retarded. Reading a Tim Rogers column at least stimulates my brain into coming up with counterpoints and an occasional "wait what." Lisa's columns are literally amazing in their emptiness.

The vast majority of her columns can be summarized pretty accurately as "I am a hot girl, here is an anecdote where I was in the situation of a normal person but famous and I like video games! ^_^" Whatever game discussion in the columns is so uncannily elementary that I think she's working the same angle as Tim Rogers, albeit in the opposite direction: instead of a illusion that the reader is capable of intelligent thought, Foiles creates an illusion that gamers are capable of seeing simple elegant truths.

Foiles's strength is that she is not scared to slut it up for nerds. I don't know if it's a learned or natural trait, but she is that type of female that has learned to say exactly that sort of thing that simultaneously appeals to both the man-child and sexual predator side of the average Kotaku reader. For examples, these are all just from ONE COLUMN:

When I wasn't washing green slime out of every crevice of my body,

Whenever a customer recognized me, they would immediately ask why I went from humiliating myself on television to humiliating myself at a game store. The answer was simple: It was a block away from my condo.

…Which segued into my REAL answer: I am infatuated with video games.

Finishing Odin Sphere after over seventy hours of gameplay, and realizing my adventure with the amazing characters was over, left me with an empty feeling. From this perspective, video game characters connect better with humans than those in movies.

On the other hand, the remembrance of your long journey may not necessarily be a positive one. An extended meet-and-greet with characters in games may cause your mind to associate negative traits with these heroes. For example, sure, the Prince from Prince of Persia 4 had some incredible moves and fought like a badass, but why did he have to communicate like every arrogant frat boy I've ever met and immediately wanted to punch in the mouth? (Okay, that's from a chick's perspective. Get off me.)

When I was thirteen, my acting coach refused to give me comedic scenes to perform because they were too easy for me. She'd give me scenes where I'd have to cry. I struggled for months, and even tried cheating by pinching the crap out of my eyelids when my coach turned her back. Turns out she could see the pinch marks. (GOOD IDEA, THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD LISA.)

Combine these with the fact that every one of her columns has at least one photo of her in a TOTALLY APPROACHABLE HEY DO YOU LIKE BUBBLE BOBBLE pose, and it's no question why her columns are quickly being read more than Tim Rogers. I'm partially keeping up with Kotaku in the hopes of eventually reading a clash between Rogers and Foiles, of crystal irony versus murky sexiness. Prediction: At some point Tim will write a heavily prepared flirt/burn that will implode in his face. And then I will marry Tim.

But seriously, it's clearly an uneasy marriage between Foiles and Kotaku. Kotaku has to be aware that she's using the site as a means of self-promotion and basically contributing shit to actual gaming news and idea, but as long as mongs keep logging in to imagine Foiles blowing them for saving her from HALO JERKS, I guess it's a winning combination for both.

oh yeah and her handle is "darth chix0r" god people are filth.

LEIGH ALEXANDER- Who?

Seriously, her site photo is totally a fat girl angle shot that makes her look like Artemis from Always Sunny, big deal

(I actually don't mind her columns, in that the ideas within are usually a little more interesting than Tim Rogers's concept, and unlike Lisa Foiles, I don't feel like I'm seeing subliminal panty shots. Of course, on the other hand, thought-provoking video game journalism is still thought-provoking video game journalism)

Piranha 3-D, Mi Amour

In a few short sentences, I will blow your mind.

Piranha 3D largely accomplishes what it sets out to do in creating a fun, gory, and decidedly unsadistic creature feature. The only real possible misstep is that the movie covers its fairly slow first half by bombarding the viewer with nudity and unnecessary backstory to characters. However, such a technique is commonplace enough, and both the boobshots and actors are pretty quality to the point that at least my (admittedly semi-tipsy) self was entertained enough until everything went to hell. I have no idea if people who only really like modern horror would enjoy this, but for people like me who were basically raised on the USA Network's "Up All Night," this movie was a treat, and probably my favorite Aja film thus far.

WELL THAT'S IT. Seriously, I would be a pathetic sad man if I went into any real detail on this film. To its credit, Piranha 3D actually meets how a normal person would imagine such a film to be in the best possible light. There are tits, ridiculous deaths, actors clearly enjoying an easy paycheck. There's no real need to discuss anything in depth, as this film is about as complex as a wafer, and unlike Scott Pilgrim, I can't imagine anyone is going to cling to this film as some sort of essential sounding bell of their life's epoch. Besides, heaven forbid someone is reading this without having seen the film. The best I can say about Piranha 3D is this: if you think that there is a chance you might have fun at a movie called Piranha 3D, you will have fun watching it.

Or at least I'd like to say that, but a perusal of various horror reviews have shown a distinct minority that disliked the film. Most of the these reviews are awful, and I'm probably just going to spend the rest of the review laughing at them, so feel free to let yourself out of the moving car.

Probably the worst was Cinefatastique's review, which was written by the horror fan who clearly now only enjoys SEKRIT INDIE HORROR, and never quite understood the point of anything. Pretty much every line of the review includes one movie reference or another. Let me let you in on a secret: I'm terrible at writing reviews of music, and frequently resort to talking about other albums because it helps to distract the audience from the fact that you can't really illuminate what's right/wrong with the thing you're actually reviewing. I'm not saying comparisons are per se wrong, but it's essentially laziness when the main point of your review is that "these things are bad because I liked these other scenes from obscure movies better."

Another point from the review, that's been repeated in others, is that Aja is somehow trying to be too clever and is trying to alter audience expectation, or something. These it's essentially impossible to have an "straight" slasher or creature feature anymore. The best one can hope for is that the movie doesn't force you to glance at the fourth wall, and thankfully Piranha 3D avoids that. I'm willing to accept that Aja is perhaps being a little too clever in showing the relationship between sex and violence when a topless para-sailor is floating in the air, but is the audience really going to notice something like that? Clearly, faux-intellectual shit like Hostel wants you to consider IMPORTANT ISSUES behind the sadism, but getting mad at a T&A gorefest because there might be some sort of subtext strikes me as a critic trying to find uranium in a coal mine.

Bottom line, unless you have some sort of horrible auto-literary analysis disorder that can't be cured by whiskey, and you like seeing tits and/or ridiculous 3D gore, go see this movie.

ODDS 'n ENDS:

1) Jesus Christ, how did Vampire Suck make more than Scott Pilgrim or Piranha 3D? I don't really feel bad for the latter considering it got a decent per-theater average, but seeing Pilgrim get around 15 million in two weeks is depressing, both for the fact that it deserved to have more attention, and now I'm going to have to deal with years of wretched nerds act like the movie is their fucking special treasure that the normals cannot appreciate.

2) I've seen all the Resident Evil films, and at least looked up plot summaries to all of the games, and I still have no idea what was going on in that trailer.

3) This was actually the first 3-D film I've seen, and the only thing I can really say about it is that my girlfriend and I enjoyed making Blues Brothers jokes before the movie started.

Glenn Beck's "The Overton Window"

(When I first planned a review for The Overton Window, I thought of composing a wacky send-up of its prose. But that idea was over twenty chapters ago, and now that I'm finished, nothing sounds worse than attempting this. So, just enjoy some good old-fashioned vitriol instead!)

Let me be clear, I know this review is all very outside looking in. Glenn Beck could have written "Back Jauer in Titland" and gotten the very same reaction (hell, probably a better one from me) from every person in the world. Glenn Beck is a totem that needs no introduction, one so strong that whatever he attaches himself to will be loved or hated regardless of content. Looking at positive reviews of the book, people actually seemed to enjoy the fact that characters will randomly go into talk-radio arias for ten minutes straight. And while I guess they have a right to do that, what bothers me about the book is what bothers me about Tea Party people in general: aside from a vague hatred of government, there's not much there. Oh yeah and also that it is a terrible fucking book.

It's hard to tell how much of the writing is from Beck and how much it is from his three ghostwriters (considering the oft-reported news that one of the ghostwriters wrote a book fairly similar to Beck's, it's likely more the latter party), but who cares, shit sucks. There are pieces of fanfiction on Freep where the obvious author self-insertion finally blows the lid on President NOBAMA and beats up the New York Times editor board and finally makes out with his step daughter WAIT DELETE DELETE that have more literary worth than The Overton Window.

One nice thing about reviewing The Overton Window is that while listening to it, I could basically zone out half the time, since Beck basically repeats what has happened so far in the plot about once every ten minutes. Saying that Beck looks down at his readers is like saying that characters in The Overton Window are a little chatty. Beck's clear lack of respect for his audience is probably the most central theme in the book. While it's true that subtext isn't abundant in thrillers, there is no such thing as "overstated" in the Glennverse. Absolutely nothing is suggested. When describing the living quarters of the protagonist's father, the narrator talks about the clean, sparse nature of it, then immediately follows with a "this meant he didn't like people very much." Glenn Beck doesn't trust his readers to connect any dots, but sit in thrall as he conducts a ten-hour long Christian puppet show.

The main character is Noah, who is a hotshot advertizing executive who doesn't really care about American politics, but wants to bang Molly, who is a operative in the "Founder's Keepers," the novel's Tea Party substitute. Glenn Beck helpfully explains that the Founder's Keepers are just patriots that really love America, and task their members with remembering lines from Thomas Paine and John Adams, because Glenn Beck apparently really liked that part from Fahrenheit 451. The only other named Trapper Keeper we meet is Hollis, who is from Appalachia, forges his own bullet casings, and in the most sexually charged moment in the book, gives Noah a "man hug." Also, all those racists and kooks in the group are actually government plants designed to make the group look bad. Representing the opposing faction is Noah's father, who heads the above advertising agency and is planning Something Bad so the government can take control of everything and remove Freedoms.

There's also a B-plot involving some conservative youtube superstar (who has just enough self-loathing to make it the obvious Glenn Beck self-insert) and a FBI agent trying to bust a cell of domestic terrorists planning an attack on Las Vegas. Every review I've read basically ignores this part of the story (as every reviewer clearly either didn't actually suffer through the book, or assigned some luckless intern the duty to highlight the funny parts), and let me be kind here: the B-plot isn't good, but a part of me actually tolerated those sections as at least something actually happens with those two.

Here's the thing: Nothing actually happens in Noah and Molly's section. I'm not exaggerating, here's the entirety of the entire plotline on their end: Noah goes to Tea Party conference, ineffectively attacks police officer while drunk, goes to and out of prison, sleeps, wakes up and hangs with Tea Party, gets spiked sweet tea, wakes up, goes after Molly, reaches Nevada with Molly, gets out of car to be arrested by cops to save Molly, is tortured, saved by his dad, and joins dad's evil company as a man on the inside.

Maybe The Overton Window is a secret Kafka-esque indictment of modern life, but I'm guessing Beck just doesn't understand that generally protagonists in thrillers aren't incredibly passive schmucks. They have literally no effect on the nuclear bomb subplot. Noah just sits around being lectured either by his evil dad (who doesn't like people, as explained about six dozen times) or Molly (who fucking loves freedom), or passively using his connections to smooth out plot problems.

I'm not saying that Noah needed to go out and roundhouse kick some terrorists to be a viable thriller hero. I love John le Carre, and it's not like George Smiley is a rough-edged action hero. However, it's not like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was about Smiley sitting at his desk reading operations reports from other people while leering at women. Noah can't even figure out what's happening even after his father basically explains the entire plot. Is this really the person we're supposed to relate to?

Again, I guess it doesn't matter, just like this book. I'm honestly sick of this review, so I'm going to go play Dragon Quest IX, look forward to watching (and reviewing) Piranha 3D, and let you listen to Frank Turner's "Sons of Liberty," which in less than four minutes contains more entertaining and stirring anti-government sentiment than The Overton Window could muster in eight hours.



PUNCH BECK FACES

Scott Pilgrim, World, Etc.

You know what the big fad in Scott Pilgrim reviews are? Giving some sort of a rundown of your nerd cred, or lack thereof. Maybe it's a little unfair that some reviewers are dismissing the film based on the type of eternal heavenly audience that is going to be seeing this movie, but it's not like the movie is welcoming your average moviegoer with open arms. This isn't like your average summer comic book film that at least pretends to pander to your grandmother with a wacky rundown of the plot or having Stan Lee stare around to make you feel safe. Scott Pilgrim kind of hates you, Mom.

That's all I'm going to say regarding some subjective review of the audience FOR NOW. I do think it's important to note that I've read all but the last volume of the printed Scott Pilgrim series, and I haven't read the last one because the Wikipedia summary of it sounded fucking awful (I'm not going to spoil it except to say the strength of the series lay in the cutsey intermeshing of the banal with the fantastical, and in the last volume it looks like O'Malley went FUCK THAT MAKE IT LIKE A REAL VIDEO GAME), so yes.

The strength of the film version of Scott Pilgrim, and its fundamental difference from the print version, is probably that I don't really have to bother explaining the plot of the film. Wright clearly doesn't care about the niceties of the plot, but just wants to fuck with fight scenes and wacky pop-ups that are like a 14-year-old's (who has never been on the internet) introduction to post-modernism. This meshes most closely with the first volume, which clearly had no idea of what was going on but had more fun with a myriad of strange in-jokes and video game references. The movie sort of follows the second and third volumes, "sort of follows" code for "basically just include the fights from those volumes." After that, where the comic gradually disintegrated into a bizarre soap opera of itself, Wright just ignores all that retarded emotional subtext and just has Scott Orgasm a Girl to Death.

(I've seen more than a few posts from nerds saying that it would have been better if the film had been split into two parts, which mystifies me. Honestly, I wish I'd never read the comic and just seen the film, as it's a far better product than the original, and lengthening it by a few hours would have allowed all the stupid emotional shit to drip in. And besides, haven't you people seen Wright's other stuff? I love the man, but he is -terrible- at those kinds of scenes. OH NO MOM NO MOM.)

If anything, the film really is worth seeing just for the cinematic trickery, if you're into that sort of thing. I'm sure there are movies that would have accomplished the feat better with the budget Wright had, but currently I can't think of any movies with the same sort of literal kinetic flair as here. In other words, imagine that Speed Racer abomination if it had been made by someone with an eye for what the kids like besides trenchcoats. Oh yeah, and most of the performers are pretty good and the soundtrack didn't make me want to kill myself!

Did you notice I said "most?" Eh-yes.

Now, I'm not some horrible movie snob. I know that Cera occupies a certain sphere of movie hyperlink that, once implanted, will more likely than not attract a certain folk who otherwise would not see the movie. But Jesus Christ, I am so sick of him. He is a horrible man who while I do not wish ill toward due to his passive luck in Hollywood being happy in him having the same fucking role over and over and OVER, I also hope something happens that stops making him some ersatz indie darling.

The worst part is that there were better choices here, even if you look at obvious actors. Was Jospeh Gordon-Levitt too busy or something? Fuck, even Zac Efron (I WATCHED SEVENTEEN AGAIN AND FUCK YOU IT WAS KIND OF FUNNY) would have been a better Scott substitute. Again, the movie wasn't totally ruined by Cera's perpetual puberty machine, but part of my brain was constantly muttering about how after I read the first volume, I remarked to myself ,"GEE I WONDER IF MICHAEL CERA WILL GET THIS ROLE" I don't want to get all deeply critical about a fucking fake manga, but the Scott in the comic generally had something of a backbone conflicting with his laziness. Cera's Scott is just an enormous whiny pussy, and part of me suspects that certain omissions and changes to the plot were Wright's attempt to rebalance the story around this new re-characterization of the protagonist.

So, yes. I liked the movie, albeit as a distraction from the crushing conga line life, even moreso than the comic.

Other random musings, some vaguely spoilery:

1) HOW IS M. NIGHT STILL ABLE TO GET MOVIES. I also am not understanding that for a movie about a demon on an elevator, he did not call it HELLIVATOR. Oh wait, I do know, M. Night is a humorless prick who still thinks people take him seriously.

2) Am I the only one who was a little unnerved how Wright focused on Wallace's promiscuity? The comics certainly contained their fair share of references, but the movie possibly had more HEY LOOK THE GAY GUY IS KIND OF A SLUTTY SLUT. Still, it's better than how gay people are treated in most movies of this type (that being a magical creature that solves all problems of the heteros).

3) Possibly the only good thing at having Cera as the main character: Ann Veal as the evil lesbian ex-girlfriend.