Japanese 101: Day 7

So, it's been a week. This really isn't to proclaim to the internet how amazingly fantastically amazing the experience has been; these entries are mostly just going to be to get my thoughts in order, track my progress, and might eventually give me the opportunity to rant at myself if my efforts start slipping.

Going over the initial lessons in the Hiragana workbook, a lot of my fears have been put to rest. The language isn't that complicated, that is to say that the perception I was exposed to didn't hold that much water. It's not this language that you have to be born into to fully grasp. It's possible to learn it, just as much as it's possible to learn German or Spanish, but you just have to go about approaching it a different way.

After one week, I haven't made much progress. I've learned exactly eight Japanese characters, how to say them, and how to construct a few words using them. That's about it. The following lessons cover the rest of the Hiragana "alphabet" and then how to construct more complicated words. The sentences come eventually. Learning the alphabet is the easy part, though. Everything after that sounds about as daunting as I've always perceived it to be. Hopefully not.

Knight's Game of the Year: Twenty-Ten Edition

It was a pretty good year for gaming, especially for fans of RPGs and FPSs. We saw the release of Bungie's "final" entry in the Halo franchise, Halo: Reach, the redemption of Obsidian Entertainment with Fallout: New Vegas, and Rockstar make a valiant effort in making American westerns cool again with Red Dead Redemption.

And let's not forget BioWare's major release for the year: Mass Effect 2. Can't forget that.

I had a lot of fun this year, though 90% of all the games I bought were released in Autumn. Needless to say, my holidays were busy - not to mention rewarding. Some truly masterful games were released in 2010, a year I thought was surely going to end up being a little dry for the most part. So, I figured I'd go over the best of them, the worst of them, and lead up to the game that, in my opinion, was the Best of 2010.

Hence the title of the blog.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

What's this game doing here! I can hear you asking yourself that from here, but don't worry, I'm not going to sit here and tell you Black Ops made this list because of its enthralling story, its amazing level design, or Sam Worthington's flawless American accent...because that would be a great way for me to lose the few strands of credibility I still cling to.

No, this game is a runner up because I had a great deal of fun with it. Call of Duty has become an annual event all its own, and because Activision is so afraid of dropping the ball, they throw a metric shit-ton of cash at whoever happens to be developing the next game; in this case, it happened to be Treyarch. The result is a game with an action-packed campaign and a very, very addicting multiplayer mode. It's no Bad Company 2, and just a short step below its predecessor, Modern Warfare 2, but it's definitely fun while it lasts.

MASON!!! I SAID IT'S FUN WHILE IT LASTS!!! ALL CAPS, MASON!!!

Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition

I know DA:O technically wasn't released this year, but this new edition certainly was. Buying it was a good excuse to replace my original broken copy and to play all of the DLC that was released for the game over the course of the year. On the whole, I mean, most of the add-ons were, ah...negligible? They really didn't serve any sort of purpose other than to earn BioWare some easy money. (How else to you explain a repackaged zone with no voice acting and no story as DLC?)

But the few add-ons that really did work for me did A LOT to make the whole DA:O experience much more enjoyable and, dare I say: complete. It was great returning to Ostagar, helping out the Dryden family, and giving my Warden a heartwarming ending on top of the one he already got. If you've never played the game, this version is the one to own.

I'm not buying Dragon Age II to watch how Hawke's story turns out; I want to see what happened to my Warden, plain and simple.

Fallout: New Vegas

I waited a very long time for this game, and it did not disappoint when it finally arrived. Obsidian have always been a company of talented individuals who find some little way, here and there, to improve upon the classic RPG model. Whether it was your influence over your party members in KotOR II: The Sith Lords, or the dynamic story line and the "intent" wheel in Alpha Protocol, Obsidian always finds some way to deliver...and then proceeds to shoot themselves in the foot almost immediately after.

Obsidian would be right up there with BioWare in terms of writing and immersion, if they didn't ALWAYS fuck up the quality assurance process. New Vegas was, in my opinion, Obisidan finally doing everything right. They were given all the exact same tools that Bethesda had used during the creation of Fallout 3, and still managed to turn out a game that throughly trounced its predecessor. The writing was superb, the lore was deep and well-defined, the world was beautifully depressing (depressingly beautiful?), and the amount of control that you had over the story was...well, that's Obsidian.

Don't wait too long to make another RPG, my friends. We need you on the frontline.

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

This game really took me by surprise. When UbiSoft announced they were releasing another installment in the AC series so soon after the stellar, involving, and masterful Assassin's Creed II, I was sure, you know, that was that. UbiSoft had decided to make the series their Call of Duty, to rush out a sequel once a year, which would arguably lead to a decline in quality.

Oh, and they're adding a multiplayer mode to it, you say? Well, shoot, there goes the series. At least it ended on a high note...

But imagine the shock I got when I actually played the game and found it to be BETTER than Assassin's Creed II, and by a very wide margin. The improvements were small, but they made all the difference. The storyline was just as long as its predecessor, but much more dramatic and immersive. Fixing up Roma and training up assassins made the whole journey much more personal, and the sidequests were many and most were unique enough as to not feel so repetitive.

And the much dreaded multiplayer actually turned out to be original as hell. It was fun, addicting, and frustrating beyond all belief. Whoever thought it up and refined it to this level should be given a medal. Definitely one of the best multiplayer experiences in a very long time.

However, I do hope that UbiSoft tries not to leave off on such a confusing cliffhanger for the next game. Does wonders for dramatics, but it definitely sours the overall feel of the story. Endings are important, UbiSoft. A bad one can leave a lasting impression that might actually bring down what was a flawless experience. Just ask Fable III.

Mass Effect 2

ME2 a runner up?! Blasphemy, says I!

For that, I'm sorry, but lemme defend myself here. The Mass Effect series is shaping up to be one for the text books. It has a well-defined universe, unique races, fantastic characters, and a story only gets better as it progresses. If people want to argue that it is BioWare's magnum opus, I won't be waiting outside your house the next day to throw bricks through your window.

But see, I buy BioWare games because they make RPGs, not because they make Gears of War. Mass Effect 2, to me, represented a big step back in what RPGs rightfully should be. Your decisions have little impact on the story, most of the tried and true elements of the genre were stripped away in favor of a streamlined experience, and, frankly, most of ME2 revolved around gathering your team - like a space-bound version of Ocean's Eleven.

Ugh, I should be talking about the good things. There were many. This game was beautiful, I loved the characters, and going to new planets for the first time was very exciting. I loved this game, I love this series, and I'll be in line to buy the final chapter at midnight at the end of this year. Definitely.

Game of the Year: Red Dead Redemption

Gah! What can I say about this game that hasn't already been said! I've sunk dozens of hours into Red Dead Redemption, and I've not regretted one second of it. The story, though flawed in a few respects, is absolutely amazing, not to mention emotional. The ending encouraged one of the few moments in my long history of gaming where I simply could not react. My jaw dropped, I stared blankly at the screen for a long time, and then slowly regained my grip on reality long enough to save my file.

But even setting the amazing story aside for a moment, there are just so many things to do in this game. You can do a whole lot of nothing and still feel like you're being productive; the world is just so vast, so beautifully crafted, and it seems to take on a life of its own no matter where you look. You can stand on a hill, look out into the distance, and watch as a storm comes rolling in, darkens the land, makes the trails go soggy. Sometimes I boot up the game just to do some sightseeing, that's how remarkable New Austin and the piece of Mexico it borders really are.

And let's not forget Undead Nightmare.

RDR is an intense and unforgettable experience. I can't wait for Rockstar's next release, LA Noire, nor can I wait for the other big releases this year:

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Mass Effect 3

Poke'mon: Black and White

Dragon Age II

Modern Warfare 3

Gears of War 3

The untitled Assassin's Creed release.

This is going to be a great (and possibly better) year for gaming! I know it! MASON!!! THIS IS GONNA BE A GREAT YEAR FOR GAMING!!! MASON!!!

Buch's All-New Saturday Morning Cartoon Line-up

Lately I've been kind of depressed and concerned that I'm stuck in an awkward 'man-child' phase that should have ended a few years ago. I keep finding myself collecting nostalgic videogames, making silly jokes and losing the silent, aloof smart-guy quality I used to have when I was actually a child. It's strange: as a kid I acted like a lonely guy in his late twenties. Now -
I have it all backwards. I'm clinging to childhood joys...

And I'm starting to think the reason is just that somebody has to! Kids today don't have a fun, colourful childhood. I see them dressed like adults, more smartly than adults sometimes, cursing without finding it funny - just cursing. Just talking like everyone. Renting 15-rated comedies at my shop, because there's nothing else for them now.

Where my generation had Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast, today's youths have Twilight, whatever animes they can understand and Epic Movie. Where we had Spiderman, Spiderman, Radioactive Spiderman, they have Tobey McGuire crying because the stress of his three jobs made him punch his girlfriend. I see these kids looking through the DVDs, trying to find which films rest halfway between what their parents are watching and what they actually want to watch. And they get something like Watchmen. It's the closest they can get.

The famous Saturday Morning Watchmen video is hilarious, but what's kinda sad is that it seems so funny nowadays. If 'Watchmen' had been mainstream in the early 90's, they would have made that show for real. And though it would have driven Alan Moore to homicide, it would have been really good. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a ridiculous parody of the dark, gritty comic it was based on, too, you know? And we loved it. There was even a Rambo cartoon. That was a movie about a traumatised war veteran killing cops. We had cartoons based on absolutely every succesful movie, toy line or videogame character. Absolutely every one. Whatever happenned to that?

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So because of a) this chip on my shoulder about the kids having nothing to watch, b) my sad reflections on my own immaturity, and c) three glasses of wine, I present the new summer line-up. Here's a list of recent (or recent-ish) movies that are just crying out to be turned into cheerful, enjoyable half-hour cartoons. On the television. For kids.

Dear TV producers: if you'd like to use these ideas, I will accept payment in the form of strawberry-flavour Nesquick milkshake mix.

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THE PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN

The pitch: In an age of swords and shenanigens, charming, rogueish, Bohemian pirate Captain Jack Sparrow commands the motley crew of The Black Pearl, seeking treasure, adventure... and rum! Every week it's a new mishap, a new mis-step and a new foe: Blackbeard, mermaids, voodoo zombies, the evil squid-man Davey Jones himself... or just the usual trouble from his old friends Barbossa and the East India Trading Company. Whatever he's fleeing, Captain Jack is always just sober enough to save the day, and fight crime!

Honestly, though: Well why not? I would have loved a 'Pirates' series on CITV.

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JAMES CAMERON'S 'AVATAR'

The pitch: Heroic marine Jake Sully now lives happily with the peaceful and mystical Na'vi aliens on the jungle planet Pandora. Whenever the human miliatary, lead by the cruel Commander Nevarius and his mechs, return to the planet trying to destroy the environment and steal their precious Unobtanium - it's up to Jake, his true love Neytiri and their tribe's best warriors (Ka'lor the strong, the wily and cunning Jee-las and the hilariously overweight Colbo) to save the planet, fight crime and put things right!

Seriously: Seriously! I don't know that it would have to be in CG, but just picture it! That movie was made for half-hour adventures. Cameron apparently is making two sequels, but why? The story (such as it was) is told already. If you're going to add to it needlessly to make a few bucks, do it like this.

The theme tune: Av-at-aaaaaaar! He's my av-atar... comes from afaaaaarrr... beyond the staaaaaars!

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NEO AND THE HEROES OF THE MATRIX

The pitch: Stuck in the middle of the never-ending war between humans and machines, chosen-one Neo and his band of cool, leather-wearing pals must bend the laws of physics to save the people of Zion from killer robots. Neo and his team spend half their time flying for their lives in the crumbled remains of Earth, and the other half thwarting the machines more subtlely in the virtual world of the Matrix, by foiling the Agents' sinister schemes and fighting crime.

Seriously: It would be like Swat Kats, this one. or like the old Batman cartoon. It would be the cool one, with stylish, angular drawings and lots of black.

Also: Here's another movie that was spoiled by two pointless sequels. It could so easily have been a fun, non-canonical kids' series.

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TOY STORIES

The pitch: Whenever young Andy's back is turned, his collection of toys come alive! Restless, lovable and wacky, every time they show their true colours, Woody, Buzz and the gang always seem to wind up getting into trouble, and sometimes even find the time to fight some crime. However, they get back home within 30 minutes, and at no point do they wordlessly embrace the inevitability of their own deaths, holding hands while rolling toward a furnace, treasuring the flicker of humanity they were allowed to experience. Adults find the show predictable, but the kids have fun and are less likely to self-harm in later life.

Seriously: I loved Toy Story 3 so much, but they were silently holding hands as they waited to die. In a furnace. Also I would like to see a series based on Up! in which no-one ever dies tragically within the first ten minutes. The Toy Story series would be like Rugrats. Rugrats was fantastic.

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HOT TUB TIME MACHINE: The Animated Series

The pitch: Adam, Lou, Nick and Jacob are four lovable losers who have lost sight of the present... and the past! Unable to solve life's problems with a little hard-work and common sense, they invariably choose to travel through time in their magical, time-travelling hot tub! But of course, things just never go according to plan. One minute they could be travelling back to the day before Adam's anniversary to pick up some flowers, and the next - oops! - suddenly they're giving those flowers to Jesse James, or ineptly fighting crime in the prohibition era! How will they cope with that one? What temporal trouble will they get into next?!

I know: This would be exactly like Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures, I realise that. Give me time.

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THE SOCIAL NETWORK

The pitch: Heroic, brilliant (yet quiet and mysterious) billionaire Internet magnate Mark Zuckerberg needlessly-tweaks his beloved 'Facebook' by day... and fights crime by night! Whenever The Troll and his evil Cyber Pirates plan to steal personal information or flood the Information Superhighway with illeagally copied mucic, The Social Network will be ready! Utilising all his contacts from all the corners of the Web, Mark has assembled the ultimate force of technological justice! Marshalling representatives from Google, MySpace, various porn-rings and that Chocolate Rain guy, the mastermind and true force for good is always alert, proving that no criminal scheme can stand up to the properly-organised power... of friendship.

Seriously: Did you ever see M.A.S.K.? I would watch this.

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I'm kind of losing track of what I was trying to do here...

But I have more: just imagine The Expendables, Alien Versus Predator, Inception: The Series, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Mass Effect or Scott Pilgrim Versus the World. Those would be pretty cool, neh? How about Machete, Let Me In! or The Hurt Locker? Maybe even Saw? Fifteen or twenty years ago, I guaruntee all of those shows would have been made, there would have been less rubbish sequels in the cinemas, and kids would have had something to watch.

Maybe I'm just a twenty-something fool refusing to let go of the childhood joys he was too scared to embrace at the proper time. But I honestly believe that no story has ever been told which can't be improved by some bright colours, a good moral at the end...

...and a cool guitar theme. No story at all.

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I Think I'm Learning Japanese

Last August, a couple of my friends and I decided (perhaps in vain) that in exactly one year, we should save enough money to take a two week trip to Japan. Sounded like a great idea; none of us have been out of the country and the three of us have been consistently fascinated by Japanese culture since we were in grade school. We wanted to be able to draw a line between this image of Japan that is perpetuated by the American otaku and, you know, what it really is. Something beyond Naruto and Pocky.

At first, I didn't take it too seriously. My friends are great, but they are not, ah...punctual? Not to say I'm any better, but three broken wheels don't get the gravy train a rollin'. But this year, I've been all about bettering myself intellectually. I'm gonna try and read a lot more, learn a lot more, worry a lot less, and learn to love the bomb.

I've already done a lot of reading this month. It's a lot for me, in any case. I've been cracking open old textbooks and digging out classic SF/F literature to burn through. My goals this year are to read twenty books, go to a foreign country, and learn a foreign language. Japanese is shaping up to be that language, though I'm beginning to think I might have jumped the gun. I haven't learned a ton, but I wanted to talk about what I did.

I'm pretty good with Spanish. I'm no conversational speaker by any means, but I can understand it pretty well. Learning it, it was really only a matter of word replacement, conjugation, and sentence structure. Looking back, it wasn't too difficult to get a basic grasp on it all. It also helped that if you could speak it, you could write it, and vice versa. The biggest thing I've learned whilst trying to tackle Japanese and knowing absolutely nothing to begin with is that it's really, really, really not like learning Spanish.

If none of this is news to you, bear with me. I know I'm late to this centuries old game.

With Japanese, there's a process to it. Learning how to speak it does NOT mean you can write it, but learning how to write it might do the trick. The problem is that there is a lot to learn, because there are three different "alphabets" that you'll have to learn if you want to have an understanding of Nihongo.

Hiragana: This is pretty much the phonetic alphabet of the Japanese language. They are the building blocks of words and phrases - and most children in Japan learn a lot of it by the time they're out of the first grade. Learning Hiragana is essential, and it then segues into...

Katakana: Which is used to translate foreign words into Japanese. It's how Japan is able to write out words like "taxi" and "toilet"; they have their own words for those. My little book here states that 80% of the words used in Japanese advertising are those produced through Katakana (gairaigo). If Hiragana is the base, then Katakana is the structure built upon it. For Westerners, at least.

Kanji: I don't know a lot about this yet (haven't gotten the book) but it's supposedly the last part of this language that you should learn. Instead of writing things phonetically, Kanji supplies symbols that represent entire concepts, like "sea" or "bird" or "cat". It sounds difficult, in that you pretty much have to learn a new symbol for every concept, which has to set off some kinda weight limit in your mind at some point.

I've learned a few speaking phrases in Japanese (the basics) but can only write them out in Romaji, which is how you spell Japanese words in English. But I've been slowly making my way through my Hiragana book, and I've learned to write out my first word:

Comb.

Yeah, suck on that, America.

Sorry. Anyway, I've been having a lot of fun. It feels like this new world is steadily opening up to me, word by word. I may have only taken the first step, but I'm keen on taking a few more.

Book Review: The Acts of Caine: Heroes Die by Matthew Woodring Stover

Gritty fantasy. It's not something I have a lot of experience with, but its existence makes several different kinds of sense. Most of the fantasy that I've read in my life follows a group of adventurers that play by the rules, be it their own or those set up by society. They have codes of honor, a strict sense of morality, an oath they must bear for the rest of their lives. The villains are usually just the same, save for the fact that they kill people for selfish gain. So, it's odd to finish a book and not quite know who the villain was, who the hero was, and who really came out on top as the victor.

It was an interesting ride, one that I should've taken a long time ago.

Heroes Die is set on dystopian Earth and Overworld, depending on how you look at it. Earth has been overtaken by a rather harsh caste system, and the main form of entertainment is the exploitation of a parallel dimension (Overworld) where elves, dwarves, dragons, fairies, and magics are very real. Earth trains up people called Actors, who are then transfered to Overworld to seek out bloody fame and fortune through Adventures, which can then be resold as "movies" of sorts. Caine is the best and most popular Actor of that generation, and he wants out of the game. But just when he thinks he's out...

His estranged wife, an Actor herself, is disappears in Overworld and the Studio has no way to bring her back to Earth. What's worse, due to the way she was transfered to Overworld, if she isn't found within the next week, she'll fall out of sync with that dimension, and will subsequently be torn through various parallel dimensions where humans have no right to exist. It's a death sentence of the worst sort. So, Caine goes back in, with the caveat that he must kill Ma'elKoth, the self-appointed Emperor of the human Empire in Overworld.

There's a lot going on in this book.

It has betrayal, gang wars, regicide, torture, incest, human sacrifice, decapitations, disembowelment, rape, mindrape, soulrape, prostitution, necrophilia... and I'm still gonna sit down here and recommend this book to you. Let me tell you why.

Most fantasy stories that you will read will play things very safe. For all intents and purposes, fantasy is a genre that always tries to be dignified. It tries to portray life as something cleaner, funner, happier. It often portrays a place you'd want to escape to. Fantasy has become Utopian fiction, in a way, and it's caused the entire genre to ruthlessly cannibalize itself. Stover pulls a one-eighty on all of that, and just kinda lets you sort it out for yourself.

On the one hand, you have an adventure that I can only compare to those of Conan. It's full of that bloody, primal fury that will have fans of good action almost clapping as they read. It's also written (for the most part) with a voice of eloquence and obvious intelligence (again, much like Conan), which allows for a really immersive trip into Overworld. But beneath all of that, there is quite a bit of social commentary: in that this is a violent book about violence. Caine's actions, good or ill, are all as a direct result of the dreaded "supply and demand" system. He's there because people demand it, and in return, he supplies the blood.

The main conflict Caine faces with this (besides overthrowing the Empire) is to show that the Studio and its executives and their consumers do not own him. He's a worker, he does a job, but he's not a slave.

If Karl Marx could write fantasy, I suspect it would turn out like Heroes Die.

The moral dilemmas are not in short supply here, and the repercussions don't die with Caine's enemies. All of Caine's actions come around to bite him in the ass at some point. This is a book that will make you think if you'd like to, but it's also a book that you can enjoy for the action, the over-the-top scenes of violence, and it'll make you wonder whether or not you should have enjoyed it as much as you did.

He's doing this for you, after all.

Heroes Die lacks the subtle touch of Stover's later works, but that was probably on purpose. Stover can be poetic when he wants to, life-changing if he's bored, and can show you a universe you didn't know existed if you open yourself to what he's really saying. There's a of that here, but it's buried deeper than I would've liked it to be. Overworld itself is the real accomplishment here, as well as the introduction of Caine, a character I am eager to pursue through his next few books.

Read this book if you want to see what fantasy's like when life gets in the way.

Red Dwarf back from the dead (Have you been trying to explain about our future selves again, sir?)

Hello? Testin', one two three. Hello?

Ye-es!

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Red Dwarf is something I discovered in high school, and then obsessed over, in the truest sense of the word, for the next eight or nine years.

Someone (who coincidentally I haven't seen since high school) just sent me this link - they're making a new series of Red Dwarf! Like, right now they're making it. As I type this, Robert Llewelyn is probably having his mask removed and complaining about it, wondering if his complaints are amusing enough to justify another book.

This is very interesting to me! Imagine if the news said, "Lucas unveils third Star Wars trilogy!" or "Turns out there are invisible Dinosaurs! How bout that?" Really interesting. Dwarf is the reason I write, and the standard I aspire to. It shaped my teenage years, my sense of humour, voice and personality. Red Dwarf.

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But here's the thing. I don't want any more.

It's not just because series 8 was a massive disappointment. And it's not just because last year's special episode, 'Back to Earth' was somehow even worse.

I don't want a Red Dwarf IX because Craig Charles, who plays Lister, is 46. I just read that in the above Daily Mail article.

At the start of the show, Lister was 25 (how old-do-I-look??) and even by series 7 (after many new seasons, reinventions and Craig Charles' unwarranted stay in prison) the guy was only 28 (and I feel a new maturity about myself. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I tried to urinate on Rimmer from the top of D Deck. Oh wait a minute... Friday.)

The credits at the end of the last-broadcast show began with "The end" - to contrast with "The beginning" on the first episode's credits. And though the show claimed it was joking... even then I figured they weren't. Or it was a half-joke. Maybe.

So - for years I waited... and co-creator Doug Naylor toiled to make a movie happen. The plot... sounded pretty bad (the baddies were called 'Homo Sapienoids') but I wanted to see it more than anything. It never happenned, for various reasons.



And then, out of nowhere, after a decade, came the all-new special, Back To Earth. And this was a really wierd experience for me - Knight will attest because I poured my confused feelings out at him several times - because it was bad. My favourite, favourite writer ever, ever had written a bad show (although there were some flashes of real brilliance in the third act).

Worse than that - with the exception of Kochanski, all the characters were old. Like, old old. I don't mean to sound like a sneering teenager, but they were old. Understand that these characters were like friends in my head - dear friends, honestly. And now... Lister was old. Kryten was old! The Cat was old and wrinkled. And Rimmer was old and wrinkled and grey and thinning... and some of them were getting fat.

And they were on Coronation Street for some reason.



I know that so far this entry has been garbled, confusing and quite frankly duller than an in-flight magazine produced by Air Belgium. But I'm getting to my point - here we go now.

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I don't want Dave Lister to be 46.

At the age of 25 he fell in love with Kristine Z. Kochanski. After that, he got stranded in space after the end of humanity and longed to get back to Earth and to get Kochanski back. He was a disgusting slob who consumed nothing but curry, lager and cigarettes, and it was funny. He spent the next few years still a slob and still in love with Kochanski... but slowly becoming more mature, more romantic. In one of the novels, he was marooned on a planet and grew a field of jasmine in the shape of two K's. At the age of 28, he met Kochanski again and lost Rimmer, the hologram bunkmate he hated, and who existed purely to 'keep him sane'. Rimmer was easily the funniest one, and he had now left the show, becoming a hero in the process. The story was coming to an end, right?


In the Back to Earth special, he was forty-something... still living on Red Dwarf, still a slob in a leather jacket, still pining after Kochanski. Rimmer was losing his hair. And the jokes weren't funny.

I like to pretend 'Back to Earth' didn't happen.

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Okay, I'm being overly dramatic!

Craig Charles says he refused to settle without a script as good as the golden age of series V and VI. Well. If he's right, I owe the Dwarf people a big apology for this blog (if indeed anyone read this far!) Part of me is very excited about new episodes.

But - a new series as good as the glory days? Or even decent? I don't see it.

It's a comedy about four or five lonely, odd young men (and a perfect woman at one point) alone on a space ship. usually in silly costumes. They shouldn't still be there at 46. They were supposed to be on Fiji by now. Or in the Ganymede Holiday Inn with moustaches. Or repopulating the human race after destroying The Rage. Or something. We weren't supposed to see them getting fat.

Caine Hits Back

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Matthew Stover's work. Maybe I have no right to call myself a fan, since I haven't even read his original flagship franchise called the Acts of Caine, which includes three books: Heroes Die, Blade of Tyshalle, and Caine Black Knife. I'm about halfway through Heroes Die, and I've just been tearing through that thing, man. Books over 400 pages intimidate me, since I'm the slowest reader I know. 400 pages is a week's worth of effort if all goes well. But I'll be damned if I haven't knocked off those first 200 pages in just a couple of days. I was a fool to procrastinate (but we'll see what happens when it comes time to buy the sequel. Sheesh).

If you haven't heard of the series, but are an avid reader of SF & Fantasy, don't fret; very few have. The publisher of the series, Del Rey, absolutely dropped the ball on what those who have read it think is one of the most creative series in the genre. It's gotten rave reviews from Scott Lynch, John Scalzi, Joseph Mallozzi, Michael Stackpole. People like it, but Del Rey promoted it worse than a third-rate Star Wars novel. This still doesn't sit well with fans of the series, especially its author. Just take a look at the cover for Heroes Die and see Del Rey at work here.

But, recently, a talented group of artists have gotten together in the hopes of properly resurrecting Caine from the bowels of obscurity. They hope to make a comic book series out of the world of Ankhana, and they've made a ton of progress toward making this thing a reality. Matthew Stover will be writing the scripts, with a motley crew of talented, emerging artists doing all they can to get this thing into print.

If you're a fan of Stover, have an interest in getting into the series, or are just feeling overly generous: stop by the official website, check out what they're up to, and donate to the cause if you can. Every little bit helps. I've donated what I can afford (which is very little) but the amount of people donating is what's important, not necessarily a monetary amount.

So here you go: www.overworld.tv

And, again, check out his books, Star Wars or otherwise, if you haven't already. You won't be disappointed. Believe it.

Just Asking...

We're here, less than two months before the release of Dragon Age II, and we know almost nothing about it. We've had two official videos showing a dark and ultimately ambiguous demonstration of the combat system, and another video that details the overall structure of Hawke's story. That's about it. BioWare have been keeping a tight lid on it.

Maybe they've always done this, but I don't know. The last few releases, I refused to look at leaked details, but now I've gone looking for them, usually always coming up empty. What's up with that? I know from reading all the forums that they sorta stirred up the beehive by changing up some of the classic RPG elements, so they might be doing some damage control. Maybe they're hoping that ill-informed fans of DA:O will automatically purchase it, as will general BioWare fans, and those who now genuinely believe (and like) that it's resembling Mass Effect on the surface. Because if there's one thing everyone's aware of at this point, it's the ME connection.

At least we know that it will have DLC on day one! Right?! Yeah...

At this point, I'm still very disappointed with the direction that this game went. I can kind of understand why they went with the format they did, but I'm still not going to sit back and love the non-existence of some of my favorite elements. But, again, I'm still definitely going to give this game a fair shot. Maybe I've been way off, and BioWare has another hit up its sleeve, proving me wrong once and for all. I can't wait to see which way this will go, but I know if things go south, then Skyrim will be there to pick up the slack.

Let's get back to what we were doing... (the KotOR love letter essay)

I've been playing my absolute second favourite videogame (after Joust) the last couple of weeks - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I think we may have mentioned the game before.

This may not seem like anything out of the ordinary for me, the man who plans to name his first child 'Darth Revan' regardless of gender, and his second either 'Carth' or 'Carthette' (and I had a goldfish named Trask, we worked opposite shifts; I guess that's why I haven't mentioned him before) but this is interesting because I haven't played this thing in years. The reasons are firstly that the original Xbox game plays very badly on the Xbox360, and secondly... I was really worried that it wouldn't be as good as I remembered.

Knightfall and I really, really love this game, and I enjoy the nostalgic talks about it so much - and I enjoy using it as a baseline for comparison to any other videogame RPG - that I would have been truly sad if it turned out that I'd embellished it. After all, when I played this game I was in a rough place. I was lonely and miserable and got sucked into Bioware's strange 4000-year-old Star Wars world just because I needed some escapism. I wasn't particularly a Star Wars fan at the time (though I liked the movies in a silly, self-aware jokey way) and I'd never played a role-playing game. It was actually the first game I'd picked up since the Nintendo 64... I needed something silly to do to cheer me up, so I got an Xbox and the Star Wars game.

And it totally worked. After the intial day of "what the hell is this turn-based combat" confusion, I played this 40-hour interactive story through over and over, ten or twenty times through. What I loved was how every single time, I found a quest or a line of dialogue that I'd never experienced before. Nowadays we have DLC for that, but in KotOR, there was no need. It was already massive enough. It was all in the details, the sheer quality of the writing and the acting. I remember playing through it again and again, dreaming the story at night and living it all day, and thinking "God-damn... this story is so much better than the Star Wars prequel movies."

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And, playing it again, thanks to a new laptop...

I was right! I'm very happy to report that it's still the best damn game out there... provided you know the difference between a Rodian and a Duros, anyway. But then, when I picked this thing up, I didn't know much about Star Wars, 3D games or role-playing. But once I had made it through the training area and the first planet... once I had touched down at the Jedi training academy and built a lightsaber (with my choice of colour - I went with yellow because I fancied Bastila)... once I had role-played the process of becoming a Jedi knight with my own lightsaber, robes, Millennium Falcon-looking spaceship and team of fascinating, beautifully-acted sidekicks... I was hooked. For about 7 years.

I remember thinking, "Where are the cool starship and the amazing sidekicks in Phantom Menace? There's... Jar Jar, I guess, and that black guy with the plastic guard outfit... and that shiny ship that Amidala had that time... the HMS ShinyShip I think it was..."

So I'm about halfway through my game now, my first in a fair few years, and once again getting totally caught up in it. Even though I know, almost word for word, I want to know what happens next. I want to influence the tiniest of details in this story, fine-tuning it as only a loving fan can. I want Carth in Jamoh Hogra's black-and-white cowboy armour. I want Mission to cheer up without forcing her to (she's my surrogate daughter, that girl) and I want to crack dumb jokes at Juhani until she snaps and tries to behead me in that wierd... little bathroom place she lives in.
And I absolutely won't get on with my life until I've done those things.

Carth wears the black and white cowboy armour. The protagonist has a random surname and a real-world first name, and that face that looks a bit like a young Barbara Streisand with the blue eyes and the black hair tied in a small ponytail. She has a single yellow lightsaber and brown Jedi Master robes and levels-up in repair and persuade and I LOVE THEM.

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What I truly love about this game, more than any Bioware game that's come since (I've played them all to death and somehow I'm always just a touch disappointed) is that the good/evil decisions are... a little something more than that. As Carth, that handsome bastard, said to me last night outside the Ebon Hawk, "I used to think 'The Dark Side' was a fancy way of describing what I see every day. People are cruel and selfish, and cowardly. But I'm starting to think for the Jedi, it's different." That handsome fuck. That sums it up - because the characters are Jedi, the good / evil aspects of this particular story really allow you to create a character - and better, they allow you to make the story into one of temptation. You know, like Anakin Skywalker, only not rubbish. That's Star Wars.

Your guy can be a noble hero, a cartoonish villain, or a bit of a rogue who wears a leather waistcoat and cracks jokes because she's got a real nasty streak and keeps finding herself swinging between massive acts of charity and Vader-choking that jackass in the cantina who keeps insulting her. And near the end (all good/evil RPG's should have this) there is a distinct choice: the game stops and gives you one heroic dialogue choice and one that just says 'Death to the Jedi'.
The game is saying this is it - good or evil, no turning back. Save the galaxy in the last dungeon, or else murder your friends right now and take over the woooorld instead. I loved to craft the character as if s/he were a recovering addict: always wanting to solve her problems by lightsabering people's knees off, and being kept juuust on the right side of things by her endless invasive chats with the various party-members who were all sick of her, and all hesitant for various reasons, to mentor her. You can't do THAT in Mass Effect 2.

I remember landing on Dantooine for the first time and really liking how there was a flock of birds who followed you in. I thought, 'Huh! Birds in Star Wars - awesome!' (I hadn't been paying attention to Naboo in Phantom Menace, but I ask you, why should I?) The birds were there on Kashhyyk, too. That's a really nice touch. When I saw those birds again a week ago, it honestly felt like coming home. I've missed these birds, and I've missed the poorly-animated fictional Space Opera characters onboard this ship. All their superb little nuances.
And I'm looking forward to seeing my favourite, Jolee, again so damn much. He was a better Ben Kenobi than Alec Guinness (or even Professor Frink), if you took the time to keep pestering him.

That's all I can think of, at any rate. Let's return our thoughts to the mission, please. I'm here if you want something done right, you know?

I should go.

In memory: Pete Postlethwaite (1946-2011)

I only just heard that the Lancashire-born actor Pete Postlethwaite died on the 2nd January, due to testicular cancer.

Every time we do one of these obituaries there's a sad feeling that someone really great has gone from the world. Postlethwaite was a very good actor - one of those who seemed to be content with bit parts in international movies like The Usual Suspects, Alien 3, Jurassic Park 2 and Inception (and he was great in Romeo + Juliet) because he had already starred in Brassed Off. And once you've starred in Brassed Off, that's pretty much it. You've got acting covered.

Here's a clip of the man in action.

Used Book Stores: An Endangered Species

When I was little, the library was this magical place that I tried to get to every chance I could. Can't tell you why, but it felt like an escape, with every book in that place an opportunity to get spirited away on some adventure - or to Hop on Pop, or what have you. And my first library card...I cherished the hell out of that thing. It was like an honest-to-goodness passport to me.

Then I lost one of the books I had checked out and racked up a fucking astronomical fee. Haven't been back there in a while...

I discovered book stores not too long after. If I remember correctly, we had three book shops here in town, and all of them were independent. One of them had been built into an old house, and the owner had painted each room to correspond with the genre it contained. Another was in a grocery store shopping center, and they would server butterbeer (no idea what it actually was) to kids when the new Harry Potter novels were released. The last was a science shop, but they had a ton of science-oriented books and I loved the hell out of that place.

It seemed to happen really fast, but all three of them shut down within a few years of each other. Barnes & Noble and Borders were doing some very aggressive expansion during that time, and a Borders opened up here in town when we really hadn't seen any major chains before. Yeah, it was a neat store, and had more books than I ever cared to dream about at the time. But there's just something about those big shops that just kills some of the experience of buying a book.

For nearly a decade, we went without an independent book store. I remember getting stupid-excited when I found that a local thrift store had converted their basement into an impromptu book shop, but that closed down too, eventually. I had almost forgotten the thrill those little book shops can supply, until I stumbled upon a place called Black Cat Books while on vacation in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

I'm seriously...that place is awesome. If you live in "The Springs" and haven't been there, do yourself a favor. At first it just looks like a quirky little shop when you walk in, and there's like...15 books on the shelf. But then you take a little staircase down to the basement, and there is a very decent selection down there, made even better by how the building hangs over the river that runs through the city. You can actually plant yourself next to the window and do a little reading with the sound of running water in your ears. There's no bathroom there.

That's all well and good for Manitou "We've got a COG railroad" Springs, but what about my town? Huh? Where's my used books store?

Fortunately, and more to the point of this entry, we just recently received one. I was on my way home from having lunch with my dad, when I saw the place out of the corner of my eye. Just about smashed my head into the windshield in excitement. My sister and I pull over and check the place out. I was seriously expecting to be disappointed; I thought it was going to be a repository for old Reader's Digests and Dean Koontz novels. Really glad I was wrong on that one.

Once I poked around a little bit, my excitement mounted until I started reacting like K'nuckles did when he saw the Colonel's backflip. The selection...is...amazing. There are comics, rare books, old books, new books. I've been trying to get a good copy of Darkwalker on Moonshae for a friggin month now, and they had two amazing copies just sitting there. The fantasy section alone made me want to pass out. They had every edition of Lord of the Rings, a ton of Star Wars and Star Trek books, practically every big series (Sword of Truth, Shannara, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Dragonlance, The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, Forgotten Realms, Elric, etc.).

I could have spent all day there...but I didn't. I had things to attend to, but I did end up buying four books for the not-so-bad-at-all price of fifteen wing-wangs:

* Darkwalker on Moonshae by Douglas Niles

* X-Wing: Rogue Squadron by Michael A. Stackpole

* Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock

* A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Not a bad haul. Not a bad day. Now I gotta read all this stuff! That's the hard part! Gah!

DLC Review/Rant: Mass Effect 2 - Lair of the Shadow Broker, Stolen Memory, Overlord

I don't know what it is about downloadable content that gets me...perturbed? That'll do. Yeah! It makes me perturbed!

Through Mass Effect 1, 2, and Dragon Age: Origins, I outright refused to even think about having anything to do with downloadable content. My philosophy on video games is that there are things you can sell as DLC, and things you can't. Now, the stuff that BioWare have been putting out lately isn't quite something they can't sell, but it's almost something they can't sell. So, I'm gonna make a ruling on this...Okay, that reference from The Departed doesn't quite work, but you get the point.

Basically, I think there are some add-ons that should never be parted out to gamers. Sure, people will buy them; a lot of people have money to burn. But I think there's a moral factor at play here. We used to believe in things called "expansions" here in the gaming world, but somewhere down the line that translated into: Let's sell single missions for $10 a piece. Let's sell things that should rightfully be in the game, hold them hostage, so people will buy new copies of the game.

This last year saw BioWare put three party members up for sale on the Xbox Marketplace. Party members. On top of that, Dragon Age was hit with a bunch of 1-2 hour quests and items that made chatting up your party members ultimately meaningless.

To put things in perspective: While BioWare was releasing all of these DA mini-quests, which have a total value of $51 and add roughly 10 hours of gameplay (at the very most, since time-spent will depend on how fast you can kill things (since most of that time will be spent on combat)), Rockstar put out an add-on for Red Dead Redemption that added new game modes, a new story, achievements, new weapons, with all of the original voice actors in a remade landscape that took me 13 hours to complete at a sprint (and I didn't try most of the other game modes out; that game is scary) for a measly $10. This add-on should forever set the standard; I feel like I ripped Rockstar off.

Rant over.

But! Recently, there was a sale going on that allowed me to purchase the big add-ons for ME2 for $10 even. Which was a decent enough price for me to fold like a lawnchair on the matter and give these add-ons an honest try.

LAIR OF THE SHADOW BROKER (800 Microsoft Points/$10)

This add-on had me especially conflicted. Mass Effect fans might remember that this Shadow Broker business has been going on since the opening hours of Mass Effect 1, and was a recurring element in the sequel. Since Shepard's death, Liara has since made it her life's mission to track down and destroy the Shadow Broker by any means necessary. Not quite sure how that happened, since I'm sure it was Tali who'd had business with SB in the last game, but whatever.

In this add-on, the Shadow Broker plotline comes to an end. When I had first learned about this, I was reasonably disappointed. I just couldn't see why BioWare saw fit to lop off the ending to a story that had been building across two games and put it up for sale. How very renegade. In this instance, I was thinking with slippery slopes.

But! Then I actually played the thing, and I enjoyed it. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it, and not just because BioWare decided to give Liara a makeover. You hand over some information on the Shadow Broker that Cerberus has conveniently dug up for you, and you're caught in quite the predicament as SB closes in on you. This includes riding along with Liara on a high speed chase through Ilium's skylanes and a subsequent sprint through a ritzy hotel. And, finally, you will reach the eponymous Lair of the Shadow Broker, which actually had me in awe for a few minutes. A lot of work went into that place.

The writing here is pretty tongue-in-cheek the entire way through, with Shepard and Liara wisecracking about omni-gel and the hacking minigame. There was definitely a lot of variety in this add-on, with a bit of mystery, drama, and a satisfying (albeit quick) ending. When all is said and done, your eventual encounter with the Shadow Broker will last a few minutes, then it's over.

Lair of the Shadow Broker does a lot to set up what could be another storyline in Mass Effect 3, and if that's the case, then maybe it was a good idea this was turned into DLC. I think, if anything, this add-on proved that BioWare has to be more open with what their intentions are when it comes to these things. I spent months, BioWare, MONTHS brooding over this, thinking that you were selling an ending back to us. In reality, you were selling a probable sidestory we most likely wouldn't have seen otherwise.

In that sense, I can't say with 100% certainty if this should have been in the game. Part of me says, "Hell, yes!" but another part of me says, "That should be the purpose of DLC: to expand on the baseline experience." Whether or not I was right or wrong will hinge upon how it's handled in ME3.

This is the stuff I think about.

Bottom line: $10 seems a little steep to me (again, RDR: Undead Nightmare was $10, and the two are by no means comparable), considering that most of the add-on involves lengthy stretches of combat, and will take you no more than an hour and a half to finish. But there are some impressive visuals, some great dialogue/drama, and an interesting twist in the legacy of the Shadow Broker that just might have an effect on the next game. Unless you didn't care for Liara too much, this add-on is a pretty safe purchase.

Quality: 4 out of 5 Stars

Morality: 5 out of 5 Stars (Pending the release of ME3)

STOLEN MEMORY (560 Microsoft Points/$7)

This, on the other hand, should have definitely, 100%, been in the vanilla game. Yes, this add-on is fun. Kasumi is a good character, her loyalty mission is enjoyable and well-written. But! Selling party members as DLC? I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever approve of that. Sell me weapons (ugh), sell me items for my avatar (ugh!), sell me armor (rah!), sell me additional missions (meh), but don't sell me things that should rightfully be in the game itself.

If BioWare wants to make an expansion, add a ton of new missions, new character, etc., then by all means, I'll be there to support that, but don't make me do this again. Walk this thing back a few years and imagine paying $7 to have Canderous Ordo in your party.

$2.50 was enough to help me make up my mind on this matter. At full price, I probably would have moped a little longer.

Quality: 4 out of 5 Stars

Morally: 0 out of 5 Stars

OVERLORD (560 Microsoft Points/$7)

Okay, BioWare, c'mere a minute. You see this add-on that you put out? Overlord? Now, granted, it's not as polished as it could've been, but a rather lengthy mission with a palpable atmosphere, interesting story, some mystery, drama, and a climactic tug at the heartstrings...this is what DLC should be all about. It's a mission that doesn't look like it was a leftover from the editing room. It feels unique. I liked it.

But that price tag...I still don't agree with that. I know we can sit here all day and argue whether or not it's "just seven dollars" or it's "just not worth it," but I feel that, at the end of the day, the word of the consumer matters. So here it is: this mission isn't worth $7. It's not that it isn't quality, it's just that you can't charge that much for a 1-2 hour mission. This is a steep price to people who have just shelled out $60 + tax to buy the game itself, and almost an insult.

The Cerberus Network? Great freaking idea to control piracy. It really is. But hows about giving people who actually have it a little bit of a discount on the DLC? That would show people that you care about the fanbase who bought that game at launch (I bought it at midnight) and won't be putting them in the crossfire in this piracy war.

Anyway, I liked this add-on. Anytime that I find myself leaning forward in anticipation, that's the sign of a good game. Fighting to disable a Rogue VI is something that I feel we've done before, but this time around it was decently creepy, and definitely had some thought put into it.

Quality: 4 out of 5 Stars

Morality: 2 out of 5 Stars

I guess the bottom line here is that the Mass Effect 2 DLC isn't as pointless as I had figured it was going to be. I still wholeheartedly believe that the add-ons are overpriced, but not at the price I got them for. Aside from Stolen Memory (and even that was pretty good) I can't say that any of these packs are entirely pointless. They were good, and how much you enjoy them depends on how much they're worth to you after you've played them.

Now, the Dragon Age: Origins DLC...that's a whole other battlefield, my friends. See you next rant.