A Spoonful of Sugar
Can’t stop for long, but between articles for Blogcritics and a column on indie films I’m working on, I wanted to take a moment to pimp another of my reviews over at AceGamez. This time I’m gently poking fun at Opoona, ArtePiazza’s junior RPG for the Wii. Here’s the intro text:
“Former Square Enix assistants ArtePiazza finally break out of the Dragon Quest grind with a new, original series. Sadly, despite an excellent soundtrack and an ambitious Skate-inspired battle system controlled entirely using the Nunchuck, the eponymous Opoona’s adventure is an experience measured at all times by a desire to achieve crossover success with the casual Wii crowd.
This isn’t My First RPG by any stretch of the imagination, but poor level design and a dodgy camera will test the patience of core gamers. If you can swallow that, you could well love Opoona…”
Click through here to read the rest, if you please. First person to spot the sneaky porn lingo I snuck past my editor wins an official All Things Uncertain no-prize!
Here’s something to ponder in the meantime: do I want to uproot my life and move to London to take a job with Gamespot UK?
Signs of the End Times
This is why I’m going to be alright when Google eventually takes over the world. Not best pleased, you know, but alright with it.
Large Google Collider
On the other hand, we’re still alive – yay?
The End is Nigher
Do you see it? Can you feel it approaching?
Starsuckers Inc.
On Wednesday, CERN are finally booting up the Large Hadron Collider, the high-energy particle accelerator that’s been whipping up the blogosphere of late. The wiki is a little pompous, so let’s say that it’s designed to test the current model on which particle physics is based; to push the boundaries of what even quantum theory (as we don’t know it) can explain.
Physically, the LHC is a concrete-lined underground corridor with massive arrays on either end that snakes some 27 kilometres beneath the border of France and Sweden. In less than 24 hours, an admittedly well-organised mob of mad scientists mean to pump highly charged protons at incredible speeds down the length of the tunnel. They’ll be slingshot around the bends of the tunnel, getting faster and faster and more and more powerful until at last, they collide – and when that happens, well. Who knows.
Halo Killer
I’m late to the party, obviously, but still light years ahead of the mainstream media, who you just know are going to cotton on to the Halo half of this tragic news.
The Watertown Daily Times is reporting that an eleven-year old by the name of Joshua Nimm took the day off school to play video games. When his Dad got back from work that afternoon, he found Joshua dead, a single, .22 calibre gunshot wound to the head. Local PD have since concluded their investigation, asserting that Joshua was trying to recreate something he’d seen in Halo.
It’s horrible news, of course; I mean, it’s awful, it really does suck for the poor kid, and I’m only covering this because I’m wont to suspect that the minute an American newspaper or a British tabloid gets their filthy hands on the story they’ll blow it out of all proportion.
First off: I’ve played all three of the Halo games to date, and nowhere does anyone – neither Spartan nor Elite – shoot themselves in the head. A gun to your head, though; it’s a pretty familiar image – and I’m saying that as someone who’s never seen a real gun. I’ve seen it plenty in the movies. On television, too; and in books and comics and other video games. But not in Halo. In the end, whatever my problems with the franchise, Halo and its sequels are the LIVE generation’s Star Wars, and they’ve always known their place. There are moments of maturity, even of sacrifice (I feel like I’m giving these games to much credit already) but Master Chief is a moral machine, and the notion of suicide is much too real, much too terrifying, to ever intrude on the cartoon mechanics of his narrative.
Not that the vast majority of the media will care enough about the truth to fact-check the inevitable flood of stories that stem from this incident. It’s just too delicious an opportunity to have a go at one of the few video games the general public knows exist; Halo 3 was in the news last year when it beat Spider-Man 3 to become the most profitable entertainment launch ever. And we all know, if there’s a video game involved somehow, it’s probably to blame. Unless they find Marilyn Manson mp3s on the kid’s computer, that is.
You can be sure, though, that having a gun in every home, a pistol under every pillow and a loaded rifle in every closet in America – that’s not to blame. I mean, how else could these wonderful peace-loving people defend themselves against the ills of modern society otherwise?
All Things Uncertain 