Creative Originality...

    So I have a bit of catching up to do I suppose. I did just make a blog post but I have had so much rattling around in my noggin - sometimes I jut need to get it out.

    I have always craved creative outlets. In the same breath though I strive to set myself apart, or really just excuse myself through originality. I mean I feel like many people try to be creative, or at least feel like they are. It is impossible to create something wholly original. We are constantly bumping into other people and their ideas; sifting through a dirge of information that they put through their own filters before it hit us and ours. But while the task of creating something perfectly from my own original thoughts is hardly possible, I try. I don't really feel honest about it unless I can feel like I own at least a significant portion of the intelligence that went into a particular creation.

    Over the years this outlet has taken many forms. A few hobbies have never progressed to the point where I tried taking the creative reigns. For example, origami has been a favorite hobby from time to time. I have created some beautiful models, but none of them were my own design. Many, many years ago I was into remixing songs. I had a great little program called SoundForge I believe, and I made some fun remixes. I had just started bringing some of my own music out when I stopped. By 'stopped' of course, I mean that I shifted my focus on other things. Card magic was my #1 hobby for about a year straight. I ate up everything I could understand from archaic books and videos. I know how most card magic is done when I watch it on the screen, or at least I know how I would do it and make it look the same. I have created a few of my own reveals and some of them are pretty spectacular, but in no single case can I say that the entire trick is mine; most of them are cobbled together from various other tricks I know, with or without my own variations. And then we come to writing.

    Writing has always been a special passion of mine. My mother is a published novelist and it is something about her that I have always admired. I remember a few stories that I tried writing when I was a kid. I wrote a story about a special forces team that got stranded underwater and had to disarm some weapons (sound familiar? Like every submarine movie ever and The Abyss had a butt-ugly baby?). I wrote a story about a team of astronauts that went to Mars to build a base and they had a run-in with a dangerous alien. Now this story was a little special I suppose. I had never read any books or seen any movies about colonizing mars (other than Total Recall, but that was a completely different story). I also was writing the story in a journal entry format and this was before I had read or even heard of that style of writing (as seen in Dracula). I put an obscene (for the age I was) amount of research into the design of the ship itself and how the mission would work. This was before the internet - before it was much easier to figure out things like fuel consumption and such. Making the same story today would be much more difficult for me because I am so detail oriented I would never rest until I felt like I had answered every question. I felt at the time (and still do really), that the story itself was very much the product of my own original thought. But here's the thing: the entire story - the premise for the entire plot, was produced in my mind by a piece of art that was on a binder folder that I had. A picture of a creepy looking, clawed and lanky alien on an alien planet that was clawing at an astronaut that was obviously trying to take off in a ship to get away. Now in no way would a person look at this picture, read my story, and say that the story was anywhere in that drawing (aside from a conflict with a dangerous alien). But I am telling you: if I hadn't seen that picture, I couldn't have written the story.

    One of my more recent stories is a book about a girl named Marecia (which I learned some time later I had misspelled as her name originally was a feminine version of Maurice. I am of the opinion that "Mauricia" looks clunky, asks to be pronounced just a bit differently, and most importantly, is not the name of the little girl in my head who I wrote the story about. I will, in fact, continue to misspell it). The Marecia book is darkly humorous and is based on what my wife calls "Marecia(sp) stories". Stories her dad used to tell her when she was very young wherin the titular character finds herself in deadly, and deliciously non-sequitir outcomes for misbehaving. The catch was the stories he told were really just gory punchlines. Morbid one-twos embraced for both their shock value, and brevity. If you had to ask me to make one up that was in the original style it would be this: "There once was a little girl named [Marecia] who was always getting into things that she shouldn't. One time she was playing with power tools in the garage when a thousand spiders attacked at once and drained... her... dry. The End" My own novella is quite a bit longer than that and is in a chapter format. Each chapter ends with the description of a scene which I hoped would paint a picture of an intractable situation resulting in the grisly death of the girl. Each consequent chapter begins with an explaination of how she survived. In some ways the book feels like a series of cliffhangers, but the goal all along was that the story could be read to basically any length and it would end with the certain death of the protagonist. The longer story requires a bit more logic than a classic [Marecia] story; the situations she finds herself in need to have a bit more cause and effect, but if you boiled down my book into a 'punchline' it would go like this: "Once there was a little girl named Marecia who didn't listen to her parents. One night, after a long day of not listening, she choked on a marshmallow and died. The End."

    One of my favorite stories is called "The Boy Who Ran Out of Time". It is about a young boy who grows up, moves out, gets a job, and becomes the oldest man alive, all in a summer vacation. It is very short, and lots of fun. It is based on the idea that setting your watch ahead by 5 minutes will help you be prompt.

    A story I am working on currently owes its pedigree to "Back to the Future", which is a favorite movie of mine. The flick is great, but it has always bothered me that Marty's photo was disappearing slowly. The discovery of the photo moves the story along quite effectively, but it has always niggled at me. I have no problems with watching movies that have made up technology, wizards, mythical creatures, or the like. But a story bothers me when it doesn't follow its own rules. I mean, you can make up anything that you want, so at least try to explain your exceptions. The point is that Back to the Future has a type of time travel where changing the past will change the future. Fine. But then Marty goes back, changes something and it is shown quite clearly that his changes have altered the future. Altered it in ways that would result in his having never existed. So shouldn't he have just popped out of existence? One explanative sentance from Doc would have quieted my brain. "Your brother and sister are disappearing, you must have changed the future. Feedback energy from your travel here must be keeping you from blazing out of existance, perhaps along with the entire universe, but that won't last forever! We need to fix whatever changes you made and get you back to the future!" Roll credits.

    The point is, if Doc had uttered that line I never would have started writing my own story where my #1 goal is to follow my own clearly defined rules about how time travel behaves. If I had never been given the tip about setting my watch ahead that boy would never have lived the American Dream. If my wife had never told me about poor little [Marecia] I never would have written 15 thousand words on the subject. And had I never seen that binder folder or watched The Abyss I wouldn't have been able to write my earliest attempts. None of us exists in a vacuum. In the words of the great philosopher Pink Floyd, "Our thoughts strayed constantly, and without boundary". In some ways I feel like copyright law is tasked with the impossible. If you asked anyone who created something where the idea came from, and they are honest, they would always cite it back to some external source. That doesn't mean that their creative project is not their own. It just means that it was a product of a chaotic mind, filled with experiences and ideas, viewed through their own myopic internal lens. It's a beautiful thought that the atoms that make up our bodies have been recycled to the point where we each have specific particles in us that were in every human throughout existance.In the same way perhaps our thoughts are passed down by each person having changed the world that subsequent people experience.

    Banana tunafish...

The blink of an eye...

I have been all over the place since my last little entry. I have been having a sort of a revival of all things retro lately. I dusted off the SNES and tossed some money at tracking down a few games. Some I had owned previously. Some I have never played before. It was worth the money. There is something so honest about these games that have literally stood the test of time. I mean, the industry is so obsessed with the "new shiny". The next big title is obviously the best right? Well not so much. Oftentimes new titles are just the same old games with new levels (lookin' at you here Modern Warfare). Eventually, they become a bit blase. If I wanted to play the same game again, why shouldn't I just go play the same game again? I won't deny that there are some great set pieces in the MW titles and other games like them. Heck, the single-player campaign may even be good enough to warrant a purchase for plenty of people. But the multiplayer beast in me was put to rest a long time ago. Until somebody constructs a matchmaking system that puts me exclusively with other working stiffs I will always, ALWAYS be nailed by some 12-year-old kid with nothing to do after school other than wax newbs like me 5 seconds after I spawn. Right. So my multiplayer forays seem to consist entirely of more-or-less social gatherings with friends where I spend more time concentrating on conversations with them than on actually accomplishing any objective in-game. Or so I tell myself.

    But I digress. The SNES library I have put together is remarkable to me alone. I am sure some people would love to get their hands on some of my titles, but overall I would say it is nothing special. My favorite SNES game is Mega Man X and probably always will be. It is perfect in a way that other games wish they could be. The controls are tight. The level design is superb. The music is catchy. The bosses are a perfect complement to their levels and the game in a way that few other Mega Man games have had. The game itself has a nearly perfect difficulty curve, perhaps only just ramping up a notch on the Sigma stage bosses. But, like any other enemies and stages in the game, pattern recognition and experimentation will net you a victory. The entire game is an overall length that practically begs for a speed run. My time is not that great compared to people who do this every day, but there is still something beautiful about making a perfect jump, shooting an enemy in mid-air, and sticking the landing on a small platform that wasn't even on the screen when you jumped. I have Mega Man X2 and X3, but they lack the magic and energy of the first. I have Final Fantasy III (VI really) and it is excellent of course. I actually had a spare copy that I sold to a buddy not long ago. I have Mega Man 7 which is a very expensive game for whatever reason. I have never played it. I have Turtles in Time and Knights of the Round for when I want to get my brawler on. I have Mechwarrior for that moment that I want to blow crap up. I have various Street Fighter games for when I want technical fighters. And oh yeah, I have Chrono Trigger.

    The first time I played Chrono Trigger was on an emulator on my PC. I didn't play very far because I was using the keyboard for input and it totally sucked trying to play that way. I got as far as the first jump back in time and then I had had enough. When I played it on the SNES I was familiar with the opening level which has you running around a marketplace during a festival. I went through it and continued on the game. Well, eventually there is a part of the game where you are put on trial. The game was using things I had done during that initial level to try and convict me of a crime. These little things I had done in that level were being misconstrued to paint a picture of my character. "Look! He ate that old man's sandwich! What a monster!" Of course, I didn't get to say that the "sandwich" in question was just a blob of pixels that gave me a generic action prompt when I approached it. "He grabbed her necklace before he even helped her get up! Obviously he was only interested in her wealth!" I didn't get to explain that I had already played that part of the game before and I knew that if I talked to her first she would make me go find her necklace before I could progress in the story. So I ended up in jail. I am certain that landing in prison is the next part of the story. That no matter what I had done I would have ended up there. But I still wanted to start the game over and do it 'right' during that first level just to see what they would say about me then. It was such a slap in the face. Such a surprise. I know that games tell a story that is more or less rigid. Some games attempt to offer you the illusion of choice, but it really is just an illusion. It was pretty cool playing this game that is over 20 years old, that is still taking modern games to school.

    Also on my retro binge is my Netflixing. I have been watching this cool new reboot of Voltron and it is pretty awesome. The animation is great, the voice acting is spot on and there is a lot of humor thrown in to keep things light-hearted. Well, how seriously can you take a 150-foot tall robot that fights aliens? I also picked up a Thundercats reboot and it is wonderful. Right now, I bet myself a dollar that if I ever went back to watch the original Thundercats I would just hate it. I don't plan on ever trying to find out. The reboot, on the other hand, is great. I have been having a blast watching it with the ladies. We watched an episode yesterday where our intrepid heroes end up in a huge thicket. They meet a diminutive race of flower beings, one of whom is named Emmerich. He is a small child when they meet him. Well, it turns out this species grows old and dies in a single day. It was kind of a beautiful story that they told, and touching. You wouldn't expect to find that from the Thundercats, would you? Well, enough rambling from me for now.

Man of Steel

Been a while since my last post, yadda, yadda... So who here watched "Man of Steel"? This is the new Superman movie (2013) written by Christopher Nolan and directed by Zack Snyder. Christopher Nolan who, of course, made the mostly excellent "Batman Begins" (which borrows heavily from the amazing "Batman: Year One" comic by Frank Miller), the absolutely seminal "The Dark Knight" which was nothing short of a masterpiece in every way, and "The Dark Knight Rises" which had some good as well as many things about it that were just wrong in my mind. So even though I hate Superman (see below), and even though I have never enjoyed a Superman movie, I decided to give this one a go. Here is my review.

So Superman is a superhero that was created when America needed a hero who could stand up to anything; who could be invincible. It wasn't till later that Superman was given some artificial weaknesses to try to make him more interesting. When you see Superman doing his thing he is like a hot girl: he never needs to do much except show up. His one true weakness is how dim he is. He tries to solve every puzzle with brute strength which is, of course, ridiculous. Here is an example: in one scene from "The Dark Knight Returns" Superman comes into Gotham to talk to Batman. There are several panels with him zooming by as a streak of red and blue color. The scene changes to a guy who has fallen on a subway track and everybody is freaking out at the approaching train. Then there is just a shocked guy on the track and the subway has stopped with just this indented handprint on the front. We infer that Superman stopped the train with one hand and saved this dude. Here we see Superman using that brute force and totally screwing things up. How many people were injured on the subway that he just stopped? How much damage was done to the train that he had probably derailed? How long was the line put out of commission? How many people did he inconvenience? The straight-line solution to avoid all these problems would just be to grab the one dude out of the way...

Ok, so Superman didn't really grow on me much as a person during this movie. I did love Kevin Costner's portrayal of Jonathan Kent. I also loved the bad guys, especially Zod. I liked many of the 'human' moments that Clark had to deal with throughout the movie, but when he dons the tights he goes right back to being a giant deuce. The ending especially lost me, and I am really confused (and concerned?) that I haven't heard anyone harping about this but Superman hands-on kills the bad guy by breaking his freaking neck. Now I don't know how you like your superheros, but I thought the classic ones weren't supposed to cross that line. I had the same sort of feeling towards the first Burton Batman movie when the Joker dies at the end as a direct result of Batman's involvement. It just shouldn't have happened. Of course, maybe I just don't know Superman as well as I thought I did. Perfectly plausible considering that I avoid him whenever I can. He did kill Zod and his wingmen in both the comics and the original Christoper Reeves movie, and sure, he killed that Doomsday guy. But there was just something so visceral and hands-on when he ganked Zod in this movie. I guess I can give him an inch here; he was protecting a family of terrified humans, and he was pretty pissed while Zod was deliberately pushing his buttons, but what about all those babies?

What? Babies, you say? Yeah so it is revealed that the Kryptonians are all raised in artificial wombs, and that the Kryptonians have also been sending out colonization ships with a butt-load of babies ready to be born to far away planets - Earth being one such planet. Zod wakes this ship up, ostensibly starting the birthing process for the babies on board, in an attempt to take over Earth and turn it into the new Krypton. Superman will not allow Earht to be taken and so he. Blows. Up. The. Ship. Full. Of. Babies. Let that sink in for a minute... So Superman has qualms letting any human die, but when it comes to Krytonians he is a baby mass murderer. How can this possibly be justified? Now Zod was trying to change the atmosphere of the planet to resemble Krypton to make it less harmful for Kryptonians. Surely some of the babies would have died on Earth, but Superman was a baby when he came to Earth and he survived, so obviously some of them would survive as well. Surely some of them would have grown up to be major d-bags like Zod, but Superman grew up pretty benevolent (to humans anyway) so obviously some of them would have as well. And as for the ones who didn't grow up nice... Superman would surely just kill them then. You know, after they prove their guilt, not when they are innocent unborn babies...

Think about it and realize with me that this movie makes Superman a very, very dark character indeed...

Other than that the movie was pretty much fun. I had a bit of a mental dilemma when Superman was losing his powers as he was fighting the atmosphere-changing machine. So Superman was losing his powers when he was breathing Kryptonian atmosphere. Um, OK, I'll bite... But then there is that one part of the movie where he goes into space without a spacesuit and he obviously doesn't die. So I'm thinking that Superman can hold his breath for a very, very long time. So why didn't he just hold his breath and take that beast out in a second? Stupid. Also, Supes doesn't like killing humans right? But by the end of the movie half of Metropolis is destroyed, some of it directly due to him tossing guys though buildings and such. Seems like a pretty irresponsible way to protect mankind.

Superman is a tool...

Halo:Reach

So I have recently been playing Halo:Reach and it is every bit the game I thought it would be. Bungie has really outdone themselves with this one. They have packed in new weapons, new abilities, and new features in their forge editor. They have also taken the firefight idea that was presented in ODST and created a fully fleshed-out game-type from it. I finished the game the other day and probably liked the campaign more than any previous Halo experience. I am currently going through on Legendary (slow going), and hoping to 1000gs this one.

Having said that there are just a couple of things that have been bothering me a bit. One is the balancing issue. I have beaten every previous Halo game on Legendary and I feel this one is quite a bit harder when you are on your own. I find myself really taking advantage of my NPCs just to progress. One mission where Jun was placing a bomb on a Covenant structure I ended up running all the way out of the area because I didn't have the firepower to take on the three Elites and two Hunters that were suddenly dropped on me. I stood way off and waited for ages while Jun killed all the enemies and finished what he was doing, which is I guess one of my biggest complaints: I wasn't really able to be in the fight. I wish I could make a bigger difference but I always have too few rounds, and not enough armor and shields. I can't even really expose myself to two jackals without being badly damaged and forget about taking on an Elite head to head, even without any distractions. At one point where I was assaulting a large Covenant tower (the one with the two HUGE elevators) I was riding to the top, killing one or two guys and then dropping off the side (saving myself with the jetpack) so that I could get a new checkpoint with fewer guys at the top.

Problem #2 will involve some SPOILERS for those of you who haven't finished the game (shame on you, it really IS good). I take issue with how most of the team died. Jorge was the first to go and his death was good; he needed to stay behind to manually trigger the bomb ala Bruce Willis in Armageddon. That I can completely understand. Then Kat goes -- from a single needler round to the head. It WAS a needle rifle and they DO kill with a headshot but ONLY when the shields are down. She had her armor on and nobody had been getting shot at so I can only assume that her shields were fully charged meaning it was impossible for her to die that way.

Next lets talk about Jun. He is the member that was escorting Dr. Halsey to safety. He was told explicitly to kill her rather than let her fall into enemy hands. We have to assume that if he came under fire either she would have died from enemy fire or he would have killed her himself and since she survived he obviously did as well.

Carter was next. I know when last we saw him he had his helmet off, but then he was talking to his team on the radio. No matter what they are flying in the pilots talk on headsets. Carter's headset was in his helmet. The only way he could talk to his team was if he had his helmet on, and if he DID have his helmet on then he certainly would have survived ramming the pelican into the scarab. C'mon, Noble 6 and Master Chief both managed to reenter planetary gravity without much more than a sprained ankle (walk it off soldier!), so how in the world could that crash kill Carter?

Emile went out like a badass and it totally works that he was flanked by enemies while he was busy working the big MAC gun. He probably was even aware of them coming up on him but his mission of clearing the skies was too important for him to stop, even to save his own life.

Basically, if I had been the one writing the story Jun, Carter, Kat and Noble 6 would all have met up at the end of the game and the last "mission" of the game would have been their death sequence. They had already made possible the future Halo games and done everything they could to protect humanity. I would have given them a mission where they are attempting to bunker in to a safer area to await the backup that was supposed to come in 48 hours ("that's imminent?"). They would be falling back from an overwhelming force and all 4 of them would be getting damaged slowly just like the ending of Noble 6. When I started the ending sequence I KNEW from the start that it was where I was going to die. I think it would have been MUCH better if the hope had been stripped from me little by little. Imagine trying to get into a more fortified area and a bulkhead door slams closed trapping one team member outside with the enemy forces (like every submarine movie ever made). The team members inside are frantically trying to override the door controls but the guy outside shoots up the controls to try and protect everyone inside. They are left to watch him via outside cameras as he fights off the horde that eventually destroys him. Then a wraith comes into view and starts pounding the door open. The mission would continue with the Covenant still in pursuit and you are hearing your team calling out sitrep:
"My shield unit is destroyed. It's not recharging."
"Running low on ammo."
"I can't move my arm!"
"Last clip!"
"Losing a lot of blood!"
"He's right on top of me!"
Suddenly the whole screen glares brightly and the camera switches to show the glassing of Reach as everyone, Covenant and Noble team alike, are washed away in the destruction of the planet.

Try and tell me that wouldn't be more epic than what we got.

END SPOILERS

The third thing that really bothered me was the in-depth armor customization menu that doesn't really DO anything. You work your butt off for credits so that you can afford to buy that new shiny whatever but all it does is change the LOOK of your character. I would have felt much happier about each bit of armor bestowing a tiny advantage. Like the shoulder pads that specifically say that they help with jet-packing. Why not make it ACTUALLY help with jet-packing? Even if it helped the energy recharge just a bit faster or gave just a tiny amount more maximum energy I would be happy. Or how about the chest plate that is supposed to help with armor? Why not give a guy a few more hitpoints? Or a tiny bit more shields? Or special defense against a particular type of weapon? Or a bit of extra ammo? Or a slightly larger radar?

These changes wouldn't be big enough to even unbalance the game. When you play Halo you have drawn-out confrontations. Unlike a game like Modern Warfare 2 where you win based on situational awareness (you see the guy first and you will likely win the battle), Halo requires you to hit the other guy with round after round and not let him get somewhere to lick his wounds. Because of this and the fast-paced nature of the game all of the extra tiny advantages would be swallowed up in the multiplayer experience that is Halo and not really make much of an overall difference to the matches. But feeling like you just worked hard to unlock armor that actually DOES something would make a HUGE difference to the individual players. At least it would to me.

More Than Meets the Eye

So I have this long love affair with twisty puzzles. I love that they are tactile. I love that they can be messed up without being broken. I love to try new things with them. There is another type of puzzle that I have never gotten into and that is what is know as a pull-apart puzzle. I don't like thinking that a piece might go missing and destroy my fun, plus most of them rely on a type of gimmick, by which I mean you find out the big secret and then the puzzle isn't a challenge anymore; oh this panel slides. Oh this needs to twist this way. Oh I need to set it down and spin it.

Along these lines a great twisty puzzle is an appropriately complex transformer. It has a clearly defined end-goal, it will keep your hands and your mind busy for a few minutes, and they are usually robust enough that you don't need to worry about breaking them. I have an ever-growing collection. I really lucked out in that my younger brother is kind of addicted so I get to check them all out as they are released and then I just pick and choose the most intriguing ones for myself. Among my collection are most of the Alternator line which was a model quality line which was targeted to adult collectors and not children. They each take 10-15 minutes to transform. If you haven't messed with a particular model for a long time it can take half an hour. The masterpiece lineup is also excellent and extremely accurate to their cartoon examples.

Many people might automatically assume that transformers are only for kids but the truth is that there are many that would be challenging and fun for adults as well.

The Last Crap-Bender

Well I have been pretty busy with school and work but I came down from those lofty pursuits to give you my opinion on "The Last Airbender" movie: it sucked big time. It should be named "The Last Airbender Movie You'll Ever Want To See".

It was honestly terrible which is a shame because the original series is a masterpiece of epic proportions. Without further adieu I give you the top 10 worst things about the movie (in no real particular order).

10. Lame acting. This is surprising because M. Night has created amazing movies with young actors such as Sixth Sense. Maybe Haley Joel was just a much better actor (obviously) or maybe there is some other reason that I felt like I was watching a middle school play.

9. Character appearance. From Zuko's almost invisible scar to Katara's missing hair loopies I was a bit put off by the departures from the original look of the characters, including the fact that Appa (the Bison) looked really kinda weird. If it had been me, I would have tried to nail everything exactly instead of making my own interpretations of existing material.

8. Story mish-mash. It really turned me off that M. Night took such liberties to an already rich and fleshed-out story universe. He added his own lore (The Avatar can never have family connections? WTF?) as well as making a completely new script when he should have used familiar lines during familiar scenes.

7. Crappy bending. In the cartoon a character would move and the element would move, in the movie the character dances around like a retard for a handful of seconds before anything happens. If it takes you 30 seconds to splash someone with water or 3 seconds to shoot them with an arrow why would anyone ever take up bending?

6. Fire bending bullcrap. This one pissed me off. Firebenders MAKE FIRE from their chi but in the movie apparently only the most powerful ones could make their own fire. Everyone else had to use existing fire sources. So gay. In the original series the powerful firebenders showed off their power in one of three bad-ass ways: 1) Blue fire 2) Lighting 3) Making giant flames so large you say "eff me!!".

5. The overall pacing of the film. Of course I realize that a 20+ hour anime season will lose a bit when it is turned in to a 2 hour movie, but first of all the movie was NOT 2 hours when it would still have been popular if it had been a 3 hour movie. Secondly, season two could have been shortened easier than season one, there is no real reason to have rushed through it so fast and ended the movie at the same point that the season ended, they should have spent a bit more time on character development, made the movie a bit longer, and turned the three seasons into at least 4 movies. Instead it really feels like we got cheated, which is bad for everyone because those of us who are fans of the original feel like too much is missing and those who haven't watched the series are confused about what is going on.

4. Choreography. It sucks that all the fight scenes in the original series were built and executed much better than in the movie. That's gotta hurt going down...

3. Nobody hurt anyone else. It really kinda struck me as funny that Aang couldn't go into his Avatar state until he calmed down and decided not to hurt anyone. Wha..? In the series he was pissed because the moon spirit had been obliterated and it was his past Avatar lives that carried him into the Avatar state. One of the beautiful quirks of the original series is that Aang has NO control over his Avatar powers and they are triggered by outside situations and he is sort of carried helplessly along like everyone else until he finally masters it. In the movie he certainly looked like he had mastered it already. Suck.

2. Really bad comedy. The original series started out very light-hearted which allowed the climactic two-part episode at the North Pole to be so friggin' powerful because it was so dark and out of control. In a similar fashion the whole series becomes much more serious as it goes on. It sucked that there were only a couple parts which were supposed to be funny and they felt forced and shallow.

1. The mispronunciation of everyone's names. From the start of the movie where Katara calls him the AH-VUH-TAR and Aang is AHNG and Iro (Eye-ro) is EE-RO Sokka (Sock-uh) is SOAK-UH, I died a little inside at each butchering. Groan.

I hated this movie almost more than I can communicate to you. Have a nice day.

Assassin's Creed II (Part 2)

Well I beat AC2 last night and I am impressed enough to warrant another blog. The first game had that "plot twist" I told you about (that you learn about in the first three minutes of playtime). AC2 also has a plot twist, but this time it is very skillfully done. The story is truly viewed through the eyes of Ezio who is the main character. The game never stops the story to explain itself to you the gamer, which is a huge plus. Personally, I hate games and movies which assume the viewer is so stupid that they have to slow everything way down and explain it all to you when it is much more stimulating to figure things out on your own. AC2 definitely assumes that you are not a moron and instead of being condescending ends up being extremely rewarding to the player. There are literally tons of stories, clues, and puzzles that can be skipped entirely during the regular playthrough that substantiate and fill out the story, and missing them would be a huge mistake. For those of you who are playing I refer to the hidden glyphs, and reading the codex pages. As you find these scraps of information a huge and foreboding worldwide conspiracy begins to take shape which does a pretty good job of accrediting major wars (contemporary and ancient) to a certain factions trying to assert a New World Order. The game culminates during and just after the last boss battle where the curtain is literally ripped away and the basis for everything in the game is explained in a way that gave me chills. It was like a hundred shards of information were floating about in my mind and I was trying to make sense of them and suddenly all the answers clicked beautifully into place so that the plot twist was really more of a revelation.

In addition to the above it should also be mentioned that the music in this game is awesome, the graphics are leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor and all the varied mini-missions really keep the game going right through to (and beyond) the end. Another new addition to this game is finding the Assassin's tombs and removing critical artifacts from them. What makes these so much fun is that while much of the game involves finding a way to get from point A to B, these normal movements are not specifically set up to be puzzles. Each of the tombs are set up as a miniature level that must be conquered in a way that draws on platforming skills and requires on-the-fly problem solving skills as many involve timed elements. This really felt like Ubisoft going back to its venerable Prince of Persia series and really ended up feeling like a big shiny present in a game that is already outstanding. You really should consider buying or renting this game.