Month: September 2014

A shadow over hobbits and games…

D'Arque Bishop

I don’t think anyone would be too terribly surprised that I like The Lord of the Rings.

I think what would actually surprise people is how relatively late I got into it. Despite my love for the fantasy genre, I didn’t actually read The Lord of the Rings until 2001, in preparation for watching The Fellowship of the Ring. I hadn’t even read The Hobbit until then, either; I read that first, and when I was done I read my mom’s copy of The Lord of the Rings (which was actually older than I was). Since then, I’ve picked up my own hardcover collectors’ editions of both books.

The movie trilogy is also one of my favorite movie series. Jennifer and I happen to watch it whenever it’s on TV, even if we happen to be flipping through channels and just happen upon it by random. Needless to say, we were both excited by the prospect of a movie series based on The Hobbit, and had originally been looking forward to it.

I know I’m a bit late to the game in saying this, but neither one of us particularly enjoyed the films as an adaptation of The Hobbit. The big problem, of course, is that the film trilogy is the same length as the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, while the source material is about half the length of The Fellowship of the Ring. The amount of padding needed for the film trilogy was best shown when I was re-reading The Hobbit; at one point early on, I turned to Jennifer and said, “Hey, honey? I’m on page 42 and am already an hour into the first film.”

The additional changes were also an annoyance. As much as I like Sylvester McCoy, Radagast did not need to be in the movie. Jennifer was also surprised when I pointed out that not only was Legolas not in the original book, Tauriel was a character invested solely for the movies. Once we finished watching the second movie and noticing all of the changes made, I decided to myself that it would be much better if I simply enjoyed the trilogy on its own merits. On its own merits, The Hobbit trilogy is a decent fantasy series. As an adaptation of the original novel, it leaves a LOT to be desired.

What might also be a surprise is that I don’t have any Lord of the Rings video games. The closest I’ve come to getting one was being tempted to get The Lord of the Rings Online, after seeing it demonstrated while at E3 in 2006. What stopped me was the simple fact that I had burned out on MMORPGs a few years before, and could not see myself getting back into them. I simply hadn’t had much interest in getting them, especially as the majority of them appeared to be real-time strategy games; I tend to be terrible at strategy games. :-)

Recently, however, WB Games announced a game that actually piqued my interest: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Instead of being a strategy game or a straight adaptation of one of the films, the game takes place between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and follows a ranger named Talion who, after being killed and brought back in a form of undeath, investigates the rise of Sauron in Mordor. The gameplay is described as a cross between Assassin’s Creed and Batman: Arkham; the latter drew my interest as it’s one of my current favorite game series.

While I’m interested in getting it, there is a slight problem. As I don’t have an Xbox One or a Playstation 4 (and have no plans to get either), I would need to get the game for either my Xbox 360 or my PC. Unfortunately, my PC doesn’t quite meet the minimum requirements; I would normally download a demo to see if it would work, but there is no demo available on Steam. As a result, that platform is off the table. However, the Xbox 360 version has its own issues. One of the game’s main features is referred to as the “Nemesis” system, where orcs you encounter and fight remember you and adjust their tactics and actions to take your own actions into account. However, word is that the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions had to have the Nemesis system scaled way back due to the difference in system capabilities.

The Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions aren’t due out for another couple of weeks. If the reviews are not promising, I may skip the game. Otherwise, I might just rent it from Redbox and see if it’s worth purchasing.

It’s a shame that the two biggest and most recent adaptations of Tolkien’s work are so hit and miss. Still, while I’m questioning whether to get Shadow of Mordor, I’ll definitely still see the third Hobbit film. While it’s terrible as an adaptation of the original novel, I can still enjoy it as a fantasy movie. I just hope it won’t be a disappointment. :-)

An erratic concert…

D'Arque Bishop

My two favorite bands of all time are Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull. Earlier this year, Jennifer and I got the chance to see an excellent Pink Floyd cover band called Brit Floyd. To my surprise, Jennifer really liked the concert, and wanted to hear more of Pink Floyd. That only left introducing her to Jethro Tull.

Well, it turned out I would get my chance. Ian Anderson (the guy behind Jethro Tull) was doing a world tour promoting his new album, Homo Erraticus; the tour touted that not only would he perform material from his new album, he would perform the best of Jethro Tull. Needless to say, we got tickets as soon as I learned about it.

The concert was tonight. To be perfectly honest, it was something of a disappointment.

The first half of the concert, aside from the last two songs, were all songs from Homo Erraticus. The songs pretty much reminded me of one track from Jethro Tull’s last album, J-Tull Dot Com, called “Hot Mango Flush”. That track was kind of discordant, and had rather nonsensical lyrics. The music from the CD felt the same way; as “Hot Mango Flush” was easily my least liked Tull track, you can imagine I didn’t care for it.

Once they got to the actual Tull material, things improved a bit. I knew the songs, and the musicians were all good and played very well… with one notable exception.

Is it sad that the one whose name is on the group is the weakest of the group?

Anderson’s instrumentals on flute and mandolin were excellent as always. However, his singing was terrible. He was off-key, his intonation was off-sequence, and it sounded like he was straining badly. Personally, it reminded me of when I would sing karaoke and would sing a song that was out of my range; in those cases, my voice would break and end up rasping near the end. Anderson was no different.

The sad thing is that he had a backup singer that would sing alongside him, and he honestly sounded more like Anderson in his prime than Anderson himself did. The backup singer would alternate with Anderson on lyrics; Jennifer and I were both of the opinion that he should have stayed on vocals and Anderson should have stuck with instrumentals.

The real telling sign of how this concert reflected Jethro Tull was what happened afterwards. After the Brit Floyd concert, I played Jennifer some Pink Floyd because she wanted to hear more of it. After this concert, I played Jennifer some Jethro Tull to prove that Anderson wasn’t always that bad.

It’s a real shame, because with this concert I’ve decided never to go to any more Jethro Tull or Ian Anderson concerts. If this was any indication, Anderson’s singing career needs to end. He can stay with instrumentals when touring and have someone else sing, but he needs to give up the singing part himself.

Preparing my Halloween entertainment…

D'Arque Bishop

It’s almost October, so you know what that means. Halloween is upon us! :-)

I try to make it a ritual to find a couple of different ways to entertain myself throughout October, whether it be going through a book, a video game, or some movies on the day itself. For example, a couple of years ago I played through the entirety of DOOM 3: BFG Edition. I’ve also watched movies on Halloween night such as John Carpenter’s Apocalypse trilogy (The Thing, Prince of Darkness, and In the Mouth of Madness), Psycho, and Bram’s Stoker’s Dracula. This year, I’m thinking of doing both, plus adding a book or two to the mix.

I’ve mentioned in an earlier post that I’ve picked up a new copy of the original Dracula novel. I may go ahead and do a re-read of it. In addition, I have a copy of Stephen King’s novel The Shining that I picked up while visiting the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado (the inspiration for the hotel in the novel). Admittedly, I never got around to reading it, so this month would be a good time to rectify that oversight. :-)

On the gaming front, there has been an indie horror game that I’ve tried that might be fun to try and beat: Five Night’s at Freddy’s. You play as a security guard in a Chuck E. Cheese pastiche called Freddy Fazbear’s, where you have to stay alive despite the animatronics coming to (accidentally?) kill you, and the limited power to operate the security cameras, lights, and doors. A typical game session provides plenty of paranoia and jump scares, as you frantically try to locate the animatronics in the restaurant and risk having them screeching at you unexpectedly. While I picked up the iOS version for my iPad, I’ve come to find I need to get the PC version. I’m not proud of this, but I was playing the game while in bed and tossed the tablet away when one of the animatronics caught me unexpectedly and screamed right in my face. With the iPad not in a protective case, I was lucky it landed on the mattress.

As for Halloween night itself, I’m thinking I’d like to do a relatively innocuous double feature. As I’ve decided not to go to the Alley Theatre production of Dracula, I figured I would watch the original Dracula film starring Bela Lugosi, as it was based on the same stage play. The second film would be The Crow; it’s not horror, but it does take place on Devil’s Night. It also helps that it’s one of my favorite comic book movies. :-)

All in all, I think I’m pretty much ready for this upcoming October. I’ve got good books, a good game, and good movies. I just hope I get to be able to get through them all. :-)

Going legit with the pinball machines…

D'Arque Bishop

Apparently today is National Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Honestly, the day never had any appeal to me. I’ve never been that interested in piracy as a concept or reality, and the closest I personally ever came to having the term applied to me in the real world had to do with software piracy. Even then, what little piracy I partook in ended something like fifteen years ago, for the most part. I essentially got over the fact that software cost money and realized that the developers needed/deserved to be paid for their efforts. If there was something I needed to do, software-wise, and I couldn’t afford to pay for it, I found and used a free and/or open-source equivalent.

The one difficulty might have been gaming, but the fact of the matter is that gaming is a want, not a need. Price isn’t even that much of an issue anymore, anyway; unless it’s something I want to play right away (in which case I’m willing to pay full price), I can always get it used or on sale via Steam. Even arcade games of old are now easily located in Apple’s app store, whether individually sold (Pac-Man, Space Invaders) or as part of compilations (Atari’s Greatest Hits, Midway Arcade).

Unfortunately, until recently, there was one exception to that rule: pinball games.

I really enjoy playing pinball games, and I tend to eschew the video game-based ones that don’t emulate other tables. Fortunately for me, a game called The Pinball Arcade came out a couple of years ago that exclusively emulated actual pinball machines. While I bought a couple of favorites like Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Monster Bash, I still kept Visual Pinball/VPinMAME installed on my desktop PC for my two all-time favorite pinball games: Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Doctor Who. I honestly didn’t see either one coming out for The Pinball Arcade anytime soon.

It turns out I was at least half wrong. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was released for The Pinball Arcade this past weekend.

The port itself is pretty good, and I’m finding it to be far closer to the actual table than the Visual Pinball version is. For example, the skill shot timing matches the actual table, and it doesn’t have the same problem with locating and maintaining the balls that the Visual Pinball version does. The only glitch I’ve noticed is that sometimes the ball will launch from the launcher automatically instead of waiting for you to press the “LAUNCH BALL” button; if you’re aiming for big points on the skill shot, then you’re down to luck whether you’ll hit at all when that happens.

The biggest advantage to this port, though, is the platform. Visual Pinball is only available for PC. While The Pinball Arcade is available for PC via Steam, I actually use the iOS version. That way, I can play via my iPad when at home, and via my iPhone when on the road.

Now that I’m down to one table on Visual Pinball, I may as well delete it from my PC. I’ll be going without the Doctor Who table, but to be honest, it’s rare that I play it anyway. (Playing pinball via iOS is far more convenient than booting up the PC.) I also have no expectation of Doctor Who coming to The Pinball Arcade, as the TV show is so popular now that the licensing fees will likely be exorbitant. For that table, I’ll settle for playing it whenever I go to a real arcade like the Game Preserve or Pinballz Arcade.

All in all, I’m a happy camper. One of my favorite tables is now available for me to play on my preferred platform, and in a port that’s closer to the original than I had been playing. Not only that, I’m doing it legitimately now. I may not get Doctor Who anytime soon (if at all), but being able to play Bram Stoker’s Dracula is more than enough for me. :-)

Getting locked in to a new book…

D'Arque Bishop

So, Jennifer and I got to have an interesting night out a couple of weeks ago. :-)

One of our favorite authors is John Scalzi, who wrote the Old Man’s War series and the homage to Star Trek called Redshirts. His latest book, Lock In, was released a couple of weeks ago, and he kicked off his book signing tour here in Houston at Brazos Bookstore. We had gone to the book signing for Redshirts when it was released, and it was fun enough where we knew we had to go to this one. :-)

There was a pretty good crowd for a Tuesday night, and it ended up being a lot of fun. Scalzi read two sets of materials, then did a Q&A. Afterwards, he went ahead and began the signing. Jennifer and I both got our own copies; Jennifer went first, and told him how she earned her geek credentials by introducing me to his work. (This is true, as she introduced me to Old Man’s War a few months after we started dating.) He made sure to note that in his autograph. As for me, his first question to me was, “May I ask how you acquired that shirt?”

It was a fair question, as the t-shirt I was wearing had the logo for a game called Midnight Star, for which he had written the story. I replied that I had won it in a Twitter giveaway, and that I was looking forward to the game. His autograph reflected the shirt, and also made reference to Jennifer as well. ;-)

As for the book itself, it’s a really good read. The one thing I’ve always liked about Scalzi’s work is (as he pointed out himself during the reading) is that it’s very accessible and easy to read, yet it doesn’t dumb anything down for anyone. It’s not uncommon for me to start reading in the evening and power through to the end in one sitting; in this case, by the time I had finished it was 2 AM. :-)

The book is a sci-fi noir story, taking place in the near future. The background of the story is that a flu-like disease had ravaged the planet, and that a small percentage of survivors experienced a permanent state of “lock in”, where they no longer have control over their bodies and are trapped, unable to move or speak. A whole industry popped up as a result, to give “Hadens” (those afflicted with lock in) access to the world. Hadens can either use “personal transports” (robots controlled remotely), or in rare cases, Integrators (humans who can allow Hadens to use their bodies remotely). The story follows a new FBI agent who is himself a Haden, investigating a murder possibly committed by an Integrator. The twist comes with no one knowing if the Integrator himself committed the murder, or if he was under someone else’s control at the time.

I really can’t recommend this book enough, especially if you happen to like mystery stories. As far as I am aware, this was the first noir mystery story Scalzi has written, and yet the story flows like he’s very familiar with it. The characters are all interesting, and their motivations and behaviors are understandable and well-explained.

I know there are TV series coming out based on both the Old Man’s War series (titled after the second book, The Ghost Brigades) and Redshirts. I’ll be honest: I would be disappointed if Lock In didn’t find its way to a TV series as well. It’s a great novel in its own right, but the depth of the underlying setting means that this does not have to be the only story in this world.

In short, even if you can’t get out to a signing, be sure to get yourself a copy of the novel anyway. :-)