Tsar Bomba

Bride has been one of my favorite bands since the first time I heard them. Like many people, my first introduction to the band was the seminal "Snakes in the Playground". I'm not going to glaze over the fact that I haven't liked a lot of what Bride has put out since "Scarecrow Messiah", but Snakes and Scarecrow were awesome enough to keep me faithfully listening to their new stuff and exploring their back catalog for many many years. Other than the off-the-reservation rapcore "Fist Full of Bees" (which I thought was totally awesome) most of Bride's releases in the last 12 years or so have only offered one or two tracks I could really get into. It might be shallow of me, but I've been hoping for another in the style of "Snakes" or "Scarecrow" since those albums were released. Tsar Bomba doesn't deliver on that hope, but it may actually go one better - if I could set my nostalgia aside, I might actually consider it a superior release.

I just got my copy of Tsar Bomba in the mail this evening and finished listening to it. It's nothing like Bride has ever done before, yet unmistakably Bride. What's more, it is one of, if not the, best albums they have ever produced.

As I listened to track after track of crunchy, sweet, gut-pounding delicousness I found myself comparing it to the slick production quality of a "Project Band". Magdalen, RedSea, Liars & Theives, and Neon Horse spring to mind when I try to search for an equal to Tsar Bomba in terms of quality. It really feels like about three times the work went into this one than any previous release, and TLC seems to ooze out of every note. Each track is my favorite one. The quality, originality, and pace are relentless. IMO, Troy's guitar work has never shined so brightly.

I can't really pick out any individual songs to review because I think the album has to be enjoyed as a whole. Unlike most other Bride releases, there's no unifying musical "theme" here (except maybe raw coolness). You won't find a lot of repetition or same-y style on this marathon record, just infectious, crunchy guitar hooks, energetic multi-layered solos, and vocals that are all over the map. Every little corner of the music is filled with sonic goodness.

Tsar Bomba can be best described as two best-of albums, but with songs no one has ever heard before, stacked on top of each other with smoky maple syrup poured on top. There's so much going on, it really is like listening to two albums at once. The riffs and solos are amazing, Dale's vocals haven't lost any of their luster, and there's no skimping on the quantity. Super awesome sauce.

Bride's message is, as it has always been, one of salvation through Jesus Christ and the struggles of life through the eyes of a Christian. Throughout their long career they have never waivered in that. For fans that have been following the band, this won't be a surprise.

Speculation has abounded since their 2003 release "This Is It" that Bride was going to call it quits, but there has been no speculation with Tsar Bomba. Members of Bride's mailing list started getting messages from Dale Thompson that Bride wanted to do "one last album" before retiring, and called on the fans to help. I'm not sure if this has ever been done before, but the band started taking donations from fans that wanted to see one last album from the band. Donate $20 and get a CD in a year when it is finished, plus the knowledge that you directly contributed before-the-fact to the creation of that album. The fans spoke and the album was made - that really says a lot for the kind of following that Bride has inspired. Maybe this isn't the end for Bride, but if it is, they couldn't wish for a better send off.

Turbo Express Get!

I am a veteran of the console wars that raged through the late 80's and early 90's. At school the Nintendo and Sega fanboys would have such heated discussions that it would sometimes actually come to blows. I was a staunch defender of Mario and his ilk, and I could quote the NES and SNES specs by heart. The SNES color pallet blew the Genesis out of the water - who cares if the Genesis is fast if it's ugly...okay, I better change the subject. (Man, that's easy to slip back into!) So in the midst of the chaos came a relatively unknown. The Turbografx-16.

Like a stranger from out of town come to upset the balance between the two dominant gangs, the Turbografx looked almost as good as the SNES and moved almost as fast as the Genesis. But perhaps the thing that most set it apart was its penchant for paradigm challenging. Two things in particular stuck out in my mind. Firstly the system was the first to market with a CD-ROM add on - if it had not been so prohibitively expensive, that alone might have cemented victory for NEC's little contender. But the other thing that really stuck out was the Turbo Express - a handheld system from NEC that actually played the same games as the home console. Both of these revolutionary ideas were mimmicked by Sega later on, but NEC set the precedent.

I have had a Turbo Duo for some years now - I managed to score a brand new one from TZD.com before they closed up shop. But I never could bring myself to spend the cash on a Turbo Express unit. Despite being nearly 20 years old, the little handheld console never really dropped in market value. It was one of those rare items that went from being expensive because it was new and hot directly to being expensive because it was collectable.

I have been a member of PCEngineFX.com off and on for the last few years. As a former member of the now defunct R.I.G.G. I found them to be an invaluable resource for Turbografx/PC Engine fans. So when I saw a practically brand new Turbo Express on Ebay going for practically nothing because the video had failed, I stopped by PCEngineFX.com and sure enough found a repair guide for it. I bought the Turbo Express from Ebay and a $1 capacitor from Radio Shack and when it arrived, I went to work.

Things didn't turn out perfectly however. The capacitor that had to be removed was a "surface mount" capacitor, and it was very difficult to weaken the connections.

(This image is magnified about 8x)

The advice I read was to gently twist the capacitor with a pair of pliers. Well, gentle as I was, I still managed to lift the negative trace right off the board.

(Without the little solder pad there was nothing to connect the negative leg of the cap to...)

You'll probably notice the scratch marks where the negative trace should go. The printed circuit boards (PCB) in these NEC systems are multi-layer so i was digging in desperate hopes of finding the rest of the trace buried somewhere under the pad I had lifted off with the capacitor. It took me a while to notice the little trace that had lifted just adjacent to it because it was so small. It looked like a sliver of paint to me (you have to remember these photos are magnified a bit.) The trace went straight to the leg of the little transistor/MOSFET. That was what I needed to find an alternate soldering point.

(The negative lead is connected to the alternate soldering point)

I decide to "remote mount" the capacitor because the legs of the capacitor were stiffer than a couple of thin wires and the connection was extremely fragile - I didn't want to do a lot of twisting and adjusting after the leads were attached.

(Here is a greatly magnified view of the alternate solder point)

So, while the experience was harrowing, I was fully rewarded when I popped in Bonk's Adventure and the game screen displayed normally on the formerly blank console. It was worth the fun, though repairing these things probably isn't for everybody.

11:00 AM is Disco Party Time

I had always heard that having a new baby meant losing sleep. My new son has not been a disappointment. I fully believe that if I still worked nights, 8:00 am would be party time.

Infinite Undiscovery Review

After playing through Infinite Undiscovery I still haven't the faintest clue as to what the title is supposed to mean. It sounds meaningful, but the game is neither infinite nor does it challenge the player to "undiscover" anything.

Clocking in at around 20 hours, this game is hardly representative of its impressive pedigree. I can't recall a Star Ocean or a proper Final Fantasy game with so little substance. This is nearly unheard of for a game spanning two DVDs. But what is there is done well.

Extremely heavy on story, the narrative and characters are developed well. I happen to be one of those individuals who doesn't cry foul at plentiful cut scenes, but I must admit that this one started pushing the limits of what I thought was acceptable.

Perhaps my imagination is running away with me, but I couldn't help but notice some visual similarities with one of my favorite series: Ys. When he's in full armor Capell closely resembles Adol Christin, and Balbagon - an auxiliary character - appears similar to Adol's best friend Dogi. I have to wonder if this was intentional.

The music is ambient and fitting, but largely unremarkable, much like Final Fantasy XII.

Visually the architecture and cut scenes are a microcosm of Final Fantasy XII, with large sweeping camera pans across tall ornate buildings.

Gameplay wise, this game was very obviously using the same engine as Final Fantasy XII. It's as if someone took Final Fantasy XII, stripped out 75% of the depth and made it into an Action RPG. The character development and AI control of the other party members seems to follow a similar progression but the player is given very little visibility into or control over them.

The item creation system is almost as cryptic as it is frustrating. The items you can craft are dependent upon who you "connect" with. To connect with another character that character either has to be in your current party, or you have to locate him/her in a town or village. Trying to locate a party member in a town or village can be a lengthy and frustrating process. There is no way to tell which items a character can craft without actually connecting with him/her to view the list. The quickest option is usually to change out party members while in town and then exit town to get them to "connect". The problem with this is that, frequently, the story will not allow you to leave town. It also forces you to decide between who can craft the best items and who is the best in battle when choosing team members. Fortunately (or unfortunately if you look at it that way) the items available for crafting are rarely ever better than what you can buy in shops. Supposedly frequent crafting will cause your crafting ability to increase and make new items available, but I was never able to see any progress from this.

Changing party members can only occur while you are in a town, or at certain points in the game you are given a one-time option to change out party members. This can happen before a boss fight, for example. I would have expected the developers to at least give the player access to this feature at save crystals, but evidently that would be asking too much.

In a badly failed attempt to reinvent the oft mimicked Active Time Battle (ATB) system made famous by Final Fantasy IV, Infinite Undiscovery will not pause the action while you browse through a menu. Instead of adding another layer of strategy to the fighting, the game simply severely penalizes you for wanting to access your menu during a battle. For example, I purchased and equipped a sword with a water element. I had been using it for over an hour when I suddenly encountered a group of water based enemies that I was accidentally healing every time I attacked. They weren't particularly strong enemies, but in the time it took me to open my menu and equip another sword, my party was wiped out and I lost an hour of gameplay. The fatal flaw of this system is that when the menu is open your character is paralyzed. I can understand not allowing the player to attack while using the menu, but to not be able to move? What piece of reality is that trying to simulate? Also of annoyance is that there isn't a way to quickly exit the menu once you've done your business and want to get back to the battle. Instead, it is necessary to cancel out of every menu in the same order they were opened. If the developers had allowed the character to move around, and provided some sort of quick menu exit, this feature would have added the desired challenge without being a complete kick in the face.

Healing during battles can be painful to the ears. Left to their own devices the other characters will simply attack constantly. If you want them to heal each other or themselves it is necessary to hit the Y button. This doesn't put them in a first-aid mode where they keep healing until everyone is topped off or near it, no, it's only good for one heal, then it's back to attack attack attack. When dealing with boss fights where area effect spells hit everyone at once, it becomes necessary to repeatedly mash the Y button. This wouldn't be such a problem, except that it elicits a voice clip of Capell either imploring someone to do some healing, or asking if they have. This gets old very quick and was the single most annoying aspect of the game for me.

With so many negatives, it might be easy to get the impression that I didn't like the game, but that's really not the case. It was a decent game and enjoyable, but I see all of the ways it could have been done better and I can't help but point them out. It's definitely worth a play through, but not at $60. This game was obviously produced in a very short amount of time, and should have been priced accordingly at around $40.

Playing the "Heaven and Earth" series from Quintet

A couple of months ago, I was reminiscing, as I often do, about the good ol' days of gaming. And, of course, the good ol' days will vary from one gamer to the next, but for me, it was the heyday of the Super NES.

One game that held a special nuanced memory for me was Actraiser. It was one of the earliest SNES games and like all good early titles sought to show off the capabilities of the new hardware. To this day I think the phenominal orchestrated soundtrack, tight controls, and gorgeous colorful graphics make it a great demo piece for the SNES.

Like many good things, however, there wasn't nearly enough of it to quench my thirst. Just when the game started to hit it's stride, and I started to really get into the "zone", excited about what I'd be doing next, it was over. When the credits rolled, my heart sank. I rushed out and picked up a copy of ActRaiser 2 (I didn't play the first game until well after it came out, so the sequel was readily available). ActRaiser 2 disappointed me in that it departed from the original in too many ways to recapture its essence. I never finished it.

So a couple of months ago I remembered ActRaiser and happened across its Wikipedia entry. As is often the case, after reading the article, I started tumbling down the Wikipedia rabbit hole and ended up learning all about the developer that made ActRaiser, Quintet, and about another game as famous for its obscurity as for its quality - Terranigma.

I learned that Quintet went on to make another SNES game called "Soul Blazer" with a theme similar to ActRaiser. I also learned that it was unofficially the start of a series of games fans had dubbed "Heaven and Earth".

Amazed that I had never heard of this before, I immediately scoured the local used game shops for a copy of Soul Blazer. I found one and played through the game in a couple of days. The game told the story of a greedy king that sold the souls of his kingdom to the devil for money. He didn't see the foolishness of dealing with the devil until the devil came for his soul. The English adaptation didn't call him the devil, just as it didn't call your benefactor God, but that's what those characters were meant to represent. The game consists of defeating the demonized souls of the citizens that the king sold and restoring the world to its state before the devil took over. Although it was almost completely different from what I remembered of ActRaiser, it managed to capture some of the addictive gameplay and kept me hooked until the very end.

The next game in the series was "The Illusion of Gaia". I had actually bought the game years ago and never played it. I was on an RPG kick and bought pretty much anything I could find with the intention of playing it later on. It worked out remarkably well in this case. So the Illusion of Gaia was quite a bit heavier on story than I remember many SNES games at the time. The production values seemed a bit higher than Sould Blazer - better graphics, more action. But it played like a cheap knockoff of Seiken Densetsu II (The Secret of Mana). The difficulty of the boss fights seemed disproportionate to the stuff leading up to them, so I only really died on boss fights - some of which took upwards of 30 minutes to figure out. Kinda reminded me of Mega Man's pattern-based boss fights. Still the characters were compelling and the story, while still very Japanese in its unliklihood, was compelling. The rest of this paragraph is a spoiler. The game world is filled with references to actual places on Earth, but the references aren't exact. Instead of a continent, Euro is a large town. The Nazca lines of Peru are actually where India is located etc... There is a large comet careening towards Earth (Final Fantasy fans will find this very familiar) and its light is causing creatures on the planet to evolve into monsters. After defeating the monsters and collecting several mystical statues, you gain the power to confront the evil soul of the "Dark Gaia" - the horrific intelligence behind the comet. When the dust clears the comet changes course, but it expelled enough evolutionary light to re-order the continents and suddenly you've gone from a 50 B.C. like world to the world of 1994.

After that we have what some consider the end of the series, "Terranigma". This is a game with an odd history. Its primary quirk is that although it was officially released in the English language, it was never released in the United States. This makes it a much sought-after title for collectors. This is a trend reversal of sorts because generally Europe and Australia get screwed out of quality game releases. I never realized that half of the challenge of the game would be getting past the technical hurdles just to actually play the thing.

A couple of years ago I heard about Terranigma and tried to buy it. I even bought a Super Honey Bee adapter so it could be played on my U.S. Super NES system. But I was outbid on the Ebay auction for the game itself, so I was stuck with an adapter and nothing to adapt with it. Well, once I learned that the game was made by Quintet, and further that it was part of the "Heaven and Earth" series, I redoubled my efforts to get a copy. After winning my auction I spent a couple of hours digging through dozens of boxes and several closets filled with gaming crap to locate the stupid adapter. When the game arrived, however, I received a shock. The adapter that I had had for the last two years for this one purpose, didn't work. It did what it advertised it would do - it bypassed the lockout chip on the Super NES, but apparently the engineers at Nintendo had devised an additional way to stop people from playing out-of-territory games by the time that Terranigma came out. Terranigma was only released in English in Australia and Europe. Both countries use a different television standard than the U.S. and Japan. Long story short, the screens refresh at a different rate in Europe than they do in the U.S. The game checks this refresh rate and if it finds the system running at the U.S. refresh rate, all you get is a screen telling you that you can't play the game because you're out-of-territory. Of course, my SNES runs at the U.S. refresh rate of 60Hz - otherwise the TV wouldn't display it properly. So I started furiously digging on the Internet for answers - a game this popular, this has to be a known issue and there has to be a solution to it that doesn't involve emulation.

After searching and searching, I was surprised to find how little information there is out there about playing Terranigma on a U.S. SNES. In general a lack of information about something like this either means that it can't be done, or it's so easy, no one thought anyone would need specific instructions. After a couple of hours of searching, however I discovered two options, one was to buy a Pro Action Replay for the SNES as they are the only adapter cartridge that are known to work with that game, but it would have to be a specific version of the adapter, and they usually went for over $100 on Ebay. The other was to spend $5 on bits from Radio Shack and wire in a 50/60Hz switch on the console. Such a switch is usually installed to allow European and Australian gamers to play U.S. and Japanese games, but since the consoles are effectively identical, it works both ways. Since I have 5 Super NES's, including one that's already marked up by some joker who etched his name and social security number into it, I opted to go the cheap route and mod the console. There are plenty of sites that will show you how to add a 50/60Hz switch, just not many that will explain that that's what's needed for Terranigma.

So the mod worked and I can play Terranigma on a proper Super NES now. After playing through the first few hours of the game, I can say that this is, in fact, one of the most polished SNES Action RPG's I've ever played. The graphics, sound, combat engine, options, weapon and armor system, and in-game help are all on par with the best the SNES has to offer. While it's no where near "the best game on the system" as a lot of hype-monger fanboys would have everyone believe, it is a significant leap in complexity and depth over Quintet's other offerings. It's quite a bit better than several titles that did make it to the U.S. so I have to wonder why it was never brought here. My only guess so far is that Nintendo didn't like the sloppy job Enix did with the English translation. Normally when a game is localized from Japanese to English, a new "half-width" character set is added to the game's memory to take advantage of the fact that English letters don't need as much space on screen as Japanese letters. This is particularly evident in the text of games like "Secret of Mana". Terranigma is a perfect example of why localizers normally do this. All of the English text uses the same width as the Japanese characters so it looks like there's a space after every letter and two spaces between words. It's not a horrible thing to adapt to, but it does make it difficult to read the dialogue.

Finally I learned, that although Quintet dissolved for all practical purposes after the 16-bit era, they did re-form under a new name and spit out one last game that is arguably an unofficial sequel to Terranigma: Granstream Saga on the Playstation. That's another game that I picked up some time ago but never played. I won't know if it's any good until I finish Terranigma, but once again it pays to be a pack rat.

Summer 2008

I find it interesting to compare my expectations of the things I looked forward to all year and my thoughts after I actually got to experience them.

This year I was really looking forward to several movies.

The Happening -

Before: This looked like an intriguing mystery with a thought-provoking premise.

After: This movie is crap, and is easily M. Night Shaymalan's second worst film ever. The #1 in crapulence is, of course, and always will be the unwatchable "Unbreakable." The actors were underutilized for this snoozefest. We don't need any more movies telling us human beings how horrible we are being to the planet, we just don't. And we don't need any more MNS movies without any basis in possibility. From square one, the plot was a dud and it had me wondering if anyone is out there keeping these goofy writers in check anymore. The production values were non-existent. There were two scenes where the boom microphone is clearly visible hanging over the characters' heads like it was meant to be in the scene or something. Just poor work all around. Everyone involved ought to be embarrassed.

Prince Caspian -

Before: Although the BBC version was sufficiently interesting, I always wanted to see Reepicheep portrayed a little more realistically.

After: I've pretty much already gone over this one, but it was disappointing enough that I'm not really planning on buying the Blu-ray when it comes out. The writers should have realized from the success of the books and the first movie that there is no need to shoehorn in entirely new and crappy storylines in order to make the pacing of the movie fit into the "Three Acts" mold. Reep was pretty sweet though.

Speed Racer -

Before: The Wachowski brothers have been a big let-down since the first Matrix film. And although I wasn't really acquainted with the original television series, it didn't seem to be all that interesting. I had heard about the oddball cameras they were using to obtain eye-popping visual effects, and that was pretty much all I was looking forward to.

After: Not only was the movie thoroughly fun, but it was bright colorful interesting and fairly long (I hate 90 minute movies - it makes me feel like I'm getting ripped off). The racing sequences reminded me of one of my favorite video game franchises - F-Zero. Despite the kiddy dialogue (which I rather enjoyed) the plot is fairly complex, filled with secrets and double-crosses. The characters, while incredibly stereotypical and over-the-top dramatic, are very well developed. I'll definitely be buying this when it comes out.

The Dark Crystal (Yes the one from the 80's) -

Before: I had seen posters, and rental boxes for this movies for most of my childhood. It kept getting re-released, so I figured it must be interesting enough to compare with something like Labyrinth.

After: I know I don't technically pay to watch these movies when I get them from Netflix, but I still want my money back. This movie must have been a blight on Jim Henson's career, and looks more like a cry for help from a band of hopelessly chained drug addicts than anything approaching cinema. I suspect that altered states of consciousness are required to derive the implicit metaphysical meaning that just isn't there. One might argue that it's a kid's movie, but that's hardly a worthwhile defense since exposing children to such dribble is probably considered child abuse in most municipalities. The plot was straightforward and insipid. The protagonist was hideous, the pacing was terrible, and the cinematography had all of the hallmarks of being done by a blind man. And that's all I have to say about that.

The Incredible Hulk -

Before: My first thought was that there ought to be a law preventing a franchise from being "reinvented" more than once in the same decade. We just got a modern-special-effects Hulk movie back in 2003 so what gives? But at the same time, it does have Ed Norton, so it can't be bad, can it? Sure, it's got Liv Tyler of my-only-acting-ability-is-crying-scenes fame, but that can't drag it down too much can it?

After: I was very surprised by the quality of storytelling. Ed Norton makes a great Bruce Banner. Liv got her pouty-crying scene that she gets in every movie she's ever in, but it was ignorable (maybe I'm finally developing an immunity to her evil powers!). The special effects were interesting, not over-the-top or stupid like in the 2003 movie. And the little tie-in at the end of the movie caused more excitement than I would have expected.

Iron Man -

Before: I didn't really know much about Iron Man at all. I'd seen the comic illustrations and heard people talking about this movie for years, but it was just another in a long line of Marvel super heroes that were probably cool, but whatever. When I heard Robert Downey Jr. was going to be playing Iron Man, I thought someone got a wire crossed, but like a train wreck, I wanted to see what the hell that could be like.

After: This was actually one of the best comic book to movie adaptations I've seen since the X-Men trilogy, and Robert Downey Jr. was brilliant. I can't comment on whether the personality matches the comic book version, but it was definitely interesting enough to make me a fan.


I also had a chance to play a number of Video Games this year.

Metal Gear Solid 4 -

Before: I've been mildly interested in the Metal Gear universe since the first game debuted on the NES. Admittedly I still haven't figured out how to get past the first stage in that game. But when Metal Gear Solid came out for the PS1, I was instantly hooked on its interesting gameplay and intriguing plot. My enthusiasm for the series took a sharp dive when the majority of MGS2 was taken up with the whiny unlikable character "Raiden", and a plot that didn't make sense by itself. A lot of people lost faith in the series at that point. When MGS3 came out, there was barely any fanfare. My personal supreme disappointment with MGS3 was the fact that despite being technically sophisticated, Hideo Kojima had not seen fit to include a widescreen mode. I barely played more than a couple of hours before losing interest. Because of my mixed experiences with the first three games, I figured 4 would be a crap-shoot. It was hard to tell if it would be any good.

After: I haven't finished the game yet, but after pouring nearly 20 hours into it, I'm ready to cast my vote to nominate it for the award for "coolest thing ever". This game is singularly the greatest foray into interactive entertainment I've ever taken. It seems like all of the action games I've ever played up to this point were just practice. MGS4 takes an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach that could have just as easily ended up being a messy frustration and blends it into a seamless action story, with some of the prettiest graphics I've ever seen. The controls are so natural and responsive, I never find myself fighting against them to get the game to do what I want. The story, which largely seeks to tie up all of the loose plot threads from the other games, features some of the scariest social commentaries I've ever seen. I find myself wishing that everyone was a gamer so that they could experience the beauty of it.

Haze -

Before: I had just finished playing some very solid FPS games like Killzone, Half Life 2: Episode 2, and Halo 3, and just finished the marvelous Ubisoft game, Assassin's Creed when I saw the trailers for Haze on PSN. The trailers were very pretty High-Definition and easily out-shined everything out there in terms of realism. I started drooling over this game back in September. It was supposed to be released in November. The game was delayed numerous times to "make sure they got it right." I remember thinking to myself how that was a good thing because the game should be even better than what was in the trailer.

After: Haze originally retailed for $59.99. Less than three weeks later it was marked down to $39.99. That's about matches the disparity between my expectations and what I got instead. The game wasn't in HD so most of the text was blurry from the upscaling effects. The frame rate still sucked, despite the sacrifices in the level of detail made to help the game run smoother. The arsenal was tiny, and the NPC dialogue was repetitive and annoying. This game is quite a bit worse than the tralier that drew me in for it several months ago.

Devil May Cry 4 -

Before: I have always been a fan of the DMC series because it borrows so heavily from the gothic themes in Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Much like the Metal Gear Solid games, 1 was awesome, 2 was horrible, 3 was passable but I lost interest because it wasn't in widescreen. Knowing that 4 would be widescreen and high-definition, I figured it would be awesome. Despite some bad experiences with PS3 games, I decided to go with the PS3 version over the XBOX360 version because I thought the limited edition packaging looked cooler on the PS3 and Capcom swore blind that the games were identical on both systems.

After: I shouldn't have trusted Capcom when they said that both games were identical. The XBOX360 version of the game was slightly superior in terms of graphics - the PS3 version was full of "jaggies", and the PS3 game featured a 30 minute-long forced Hard Drive installation (because Capcom is too lazy to figure out how to use the Blu-ray drive properly). If that wasn't bad enough, the installation process has an undocumented flaw that caused me no end of frustration for the first four hours that I attempted to play the game. If you are downloading demos or videos from PSN while installing, the Hard Drive will interleave the data to speed up write speed. 99% of programs in existence wouldn't even notice this, but for some reason DMC4 absolutely has to be installed contiguously (ie. not interleaved) or the game will randomly crash. So stop your downloads before you install, thanks for the heads up, Capcom:P Anyway, the game itself was the testosterone-laden, demon-killing, sword-swinging, heavy-metal playing romp that I expected it to be and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Prince Caspian Review

Any fan familiar with the literary versions of the Chronicles of Narnia can tell you that the books are practically screenplays already.

A number of challenges face a writer trying to adapt a novel to a screenplay. One of the biggest comes from the fact that novels are generally longer and contain more detail than a typical screenplay. Screenwriters usually have to remove enough that the movie can fit into the 90-180 minute length without sacrificing so much detail that the overall story suffers. They usually do this by condensing or rearranging events. Pacing can also represent a problem. A novelist can get away with whatever placement of events makes sense to tell the story - even when that means long stretches of very little action or excitement, but a screenwriter will find him/herself putting an audience to sleep if the interesting bits, be they action or discovery, don't continue to come at a steady pace.

Understanding how difficult it can be to balance these things, I can usually forgive screenwriters taking certain liberties with a beloved story. I don't usually like it much, but I can reason why they did what they did.

With the Chronicles of Narnia, however, they'll get no such understanding from me. The books are already proper length for a screenplay at give or take 200 pages. They're expertly paced and don't suffer from any plot stalling. There are no redundant details - there is exactly as much exposition and action that is needed to tell the story and not a drop more. So there should be no reason to condense or remove any details in the books.

Unfortunately the writers who penned the screenplay for Prince Caspian think a little too highly of themselves and made the lamentable decision to embellish the story in nonsensical and unnecessary ways. I could almost forgive this desecration if it wasn't for the fact that they removed bits of the original story to make room for their un-inspirational additions.

The writers felt it necessary to continue the character assassination of Peter that they began with the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. In the first movie, they depicted Peter as a more modern boy who would run away from responsibility when the window broke. If you read the book, Peter clearly has a strong sense of responsibility and would face up to punishment, never running away.

In the Prince Caspian movie, Peter is portrayed as being a power-hungry slob that lets his anger rule him. Instead of focusing on Caspian's well-being and doing Aslan's will, Peter tries to (literally) fight Caspian for control of the Narnian army. And if that wasn't enough he leads the army on a foolhardy siege of the Telmarine castle that ends in defeat. The main point of the added siege sequence seems to be to make Peter realize what a bastard he's being so he'll give control back to Caspian. They could have more easily accomplished this by writing Peter as he was in the book where he wasn't a bastard to begin with, and practically tripped over himself to make sure he wasn't encroaching on Caspian's rightful rule.

Essentially the writers dumped the entire first chapter of the book in favor of adding a scene where Peter gets into a fight with several boys at the train station before they go back to Narnia, and the siege scene. They also felt it necessary to generate a romantic sub-plot between Susan and Caspian that promptly went absolutely nowhere and accomplished nothing but making purists like myself angry.

Moving away from my hatred of the embellishments and character assassination, the movie was quite enjoyable if one ignores the book it was based on.

Reepicheep is far and away my favorite character in the Prince Caspian story and the animators did an awesome job on him. I thought Eddie Izzard was an odd choice for him, but it fit better than I would have imagined.

Peter Dinklage went above and beyond with his portrayal of the cynical and fearsome Trumpkin. And I don't think I've ever seen Warwick Davis look quite so evil as when he played Nickabrick.

The animators, make-up artists, and actors did a great job of breathing life into the myriad fantasy creatures Lewis included in the stories, and the settings were beautiful.

I really hated Liam Neeson as a choice for Aslan's voice in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, but somehow it wasn't as grating and out of place here.

I also appreciated the good degree of violence that played out - specifically that none of it was removed to appease the absurdly anti-violence mentality that so many modern organizations that purport to be in the interest of children insist on purveying.

The music and photography were particularly noteworthy. The framing always maintained interest without being overly awkward, or plain. The musical scores complimented the scenes they accompanied and never distracted.

The film was longer than I would have expected, owing chiefly to the lamentable additions to the story. It actually takes me less time to read the entire novel than the running time of this film.

I can only request, and hope that the writers don't screw with the Dawntreader in 2010 as badly as they did with Caspian.

Anti-Gun Advocates Don't Need No Stinking Evidence

This article on Fox News is just one of many that infuriate me. The Second Amendment has increasingly come under fire by news media and reactionaries alike as we approach the anniversary of the VA Tech shootings. I'm sure the same thing is going to happen when we approach the Von Maur (Omaha, NE) incident's anniversary. It really gets my blood boiling to listen to these people.

For example, in the linked article above, the reporter explores two options about how to deal with the VA Tech shootings. One option, is to make more laws further restricting the acquisition of firearms, the other is to accept that laws, by nature, do not stop criminals, merely punish them after the fact, and just arm everyone. I might almost have made it through the article without getting angry if not for the fact that the reporter described continuing to disallow students to carry guns on campus as erring on the side of caution. That's the very issue being debated here. In my opinion, erring on the side of caution is giving everyone the ability to defend themselves.

I don't for a moment suggest that it's a good idea to start arming people who are uncomfortable or unfamiliar with guns, but for those of us who haven't been conditioned to automatically assume that guns are evil by nature, and not amoral tools, our right to defend ourselves should not be infringed.

It's an old argument, and one for which I've never heard an articulate or worthwhile rebuttal, but the simple fact is that a person willing to kill another in cold blood has already decided to violate the law so he/she is not likely to be tripped up by something as trivial as a gun law. They certainly aren't tripped up by the absurd stickers forbidding the carrying of firearms at the facilities where they commit their atrocities.

Trying to make "gun free zones" has been proven time and time again to be ineffective in preventing homicide by a motivated individual. It fails for much the same reason that communism does; it can only work when everybody believes in the same thing, and that's simply not possible. Not only is it impossible, but it is antithesis to the foundation of what we call American Values. We have rights to different viewpoints and opinions, different faiths and occupations, different dreams and hopes. This isn't true just because we like it that way, it's because the founders of our way of life recognized that it was harmful and ultimately futile to try to force everyone into the same mold.

It is simply impossible to prevent people from going crazy and killing others in the process. Some people are just prone to it, and despite our best efforts, they will get it done. The only logical response to this is to even the odds in favor of everyone else. If everyone is armed, will people still get killed? Absolutely, but not nearly as many. Recent news reports about that church in Colorado have pretty much proven that to be the case. It amazes me that so many officials are so reluctant to allow college students to arm themselves voluntarily.

It's relatively obvious that they're concerned with the responsibility of making such a decision. It amazes me that they consider their own personal liability more important than the lives of the people who would be saved by such a thing. Can we please start electing people with some spine?

The Desert Eagle 50 Action Express

I'm a relative n00b when it comes to weapons. I'm not one of those guys who can watch a movie and tell you the make and model of every gun used, or field strip an M-16 blindfolded. I am, however, a U.S. citizen that believes that I'm honor bound to practice the right to own and bear arms to ensure that, among other things, the government maintains a healthy respect for me and my household.

I was recently in an argument with a co-worker over the necessity of owning firearms which are designed and intended primarily for shooting other human beings. When I related a couple of the stories I have read (real life accounts, not fiction) about people in pre-communist Russia, and pre-WWII Germany being ordered to relinquish their weapons, and only discovering afterwards that the reason was to minimize troop casualties when the army showed back up a day or week later to confiscate livestock and other goods, and to force able-bodied young men in the family into military service. His response was "but this is America, that could never happen here." I asked him why he thought that made any difference, and his response was "we're a democracy." Now, the U.S. is not, and has not ever been, to my knowledge, a democracy, but a republic with democracy-like representation. I didn't quibble over that, but did tell him that the countries I mentioned enjoyed similar forms of government prior to being overtaken by fascists. I went on to express my belief that the reason we are and will remain a republic is precisely because the government cannot force us to do otherwise, and the government cannot force us to do otherwise because the Second Amendment prohibits the government from prohibiting citizens to keep guns which would make such an effort too costly and ineffective to attempt. I still could not convince him it was so. He seemed to believe that America has been and will remain a "free country" simply because it's citizens have been granted the authority to vote and we like things this way.

My personal belief is that an inherent mistrust of the government is a healthy necessity that we all need to develop - even those people who comprise the government aught to carefully question the motive of every action they are asked to take. I'm not saying that we ought to develop a liking for lawlessness as some have suggested when they have heard me say this, but that we ought to always keep in perspective that the government exists for the sole purpose of serving our needs, not we its. The practical meaning of this is that if the government's requirements of you are reasonable and necessary, you ought to comply, but if the government's requirements become unreasonable or are still enforced although unnecessary you ought to fight back. There is considerable room for interpretation in those statements, and necessarily so because, just like our constitution, which the U.S. Supreme Court is fond of pointing out was loosely written, the actual meaning is contextual and will change over time.

Basically my reason for owning a gun is for protecting myself, my family, and my home from aggressors, regardless of who the aggressors are - it could be a burglar or it could be a soldier following illegal orders to violate my rights and freedoms.

So when I told that same co-worker that I was going to try one (Desert Eagle) out, and I related what I knew of it, he asked, "why would you need something like that?" My answer is that I didn't, but I don't have to need a sports car to want one either. It still fulfills the need but has a little extra kick for fun. I wanted to try one out because it's one of the most well-known and largest caliber hand guns available, and it looks freakin' cool.

I tried one out at a local gun range and learned why some friends with more experience had warned me away from it.

Firing the gun felt like hanging onto a standard claw hammer while someone hit the head with a 10-lb sledge. It was very difficult to rapid-fire with any degree of accuracy at all. And in true n00bish fashion, I found myself instinctively closing my eyes before squeezing the trigger. I could only hit around 6 inches of a target 25 feet away. I'm much more accurate with smaller calibers.

I figured I might just need a lot of practice to get used to the power. The ammunition worked out to cost something like $1.60 per round, so practice would be prohibitively expensive.

On the upshot, the gun is accurate enough that I could still use it effectively in a confrontation with a perpetrator in my home, and loud and destructive enough that even if I missed it would probably convince the perpetrator to disengage.

Circle of Nothing

These are the lyrics to a song I wrote a long time ago:

CIRCLE OF NOTHING

Indiscriminate decision from eyes that once have seen

With slightly clouded vision and dismissed it as a dream

Turn from light to darkness to try to see with their own glow

The eyes that seek the truth they want and not the truth they know

Unrealistic expectation from men of both minds

Turns the cross of healing to the burning sword that blinds

Men will claim allegiance in their mouth but not in heart

And men who know the answer will still turn and depart

Self defeating human nature an inescapable disease

And the only thing that proves to each of us we’re free

A great divide of the things we hide

From those that feed our pride

Designates the the things we hate

And the flags we wear outside

Far from logic or calling divine

Chooses their sides and draws for them the line

What motivates their loving and loathing

Is an ever recycling circle of nothing

To place your trust in one who’s eyes merely touched the story

And not to see yourself is to give a traitor glory

Your ears will dance with magic of the words you want to hear

And your heart will crush with anguish when that magic disappears

Enduring of this hardship will surely seed your fate

You’ll seek reconciliation, let hatred dominate

Or shake your fists at God and gauge his faithfulness by man

Because your pride was burned from faith acquired second hand

A grandchild of the king seeking to claim the throne

Slay the unrighteous blood ‘till you see that blood’s your own

Far from logic of calling divine

Chooses your side and draws for you the line

What motivates your loving and loathing

Is an ever recycling circle of nothing

Plain and simple is the way the truth and light

All pervading forgiveness to replace any wrong with right

Blood shed for the cause of life free for you to take

Not to accept is the only possible mistake

Far from logic of calling divine

Can choose your side and draw for you the line

If you make your heart a temple of loathing

You’re forever bound in a circle of nothing

Taken to a place you sought but did not seek

Hearing Him repeat the words you thought but did not speak

And ask questions of the things you knew but did not think

The darkness will envelop leaving not a thing to see

And forever abolish this foolish feint of ambiguity.

Toy Poodles: The Silent Menace: The Untold Story of Bobby Tables

Owning a dog is a family tradition that dates back to a long time ago when families started keeping dogs around. Dogs can be faithful companions, warm your feet at night, warn you of intruders or pull you from a burning building.

Despite such a glowing reputation as "man's best friend", some breeds of dog have garnered a reputation for being unpredictably brutal, and dangerous. Thankfully a number of forward-thinking lawmakers have summarily banned dangerous breeds like the American Pit Bull, the German Shepherd Dog, the Doberman Pincer, the Sugar Glider (technically it's a squirrel but it's considered just as deadly by some Wisconsin residents), The Chihuahua (the puppies were found to be a choking hazard for hungry seniors who unsuspectingly confused the miniature canine for a popular menu item at Taco Bell), and last but not least the Rottweiler.

As every breed of dog that is potentially dangerous has been clearly identified and banned by visionary lawmakers in some areas of the country, those citizens can walk the streets without fear of being mauled by dangerous animals on the prowl. Many believe that if we can just get these laws enforced across the country, the number of dog related deaths and injuries can be brought down to zero. All dangerous breeds can be safely eliminated.

But does a recent change in policy at Home Depot point to something more sinister? The popular retailer of hardware, grills and discount software has recently reversed its "pet friendly" policy, barring the use of dogs in its facilities. Store managers were silent as I pondered calling them to ask for a comment, and I can only take this to mean that there is a potentially explosive cover-up in the works.

Consider the story of little Bobby Tables, a bright-eye'd boy of six who accompanied his father to Home Depot to get an eight-year-old copy of solitare and some wood screws. His father had promised to bring him to Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone that afternoon. It was a soft-serve delight that the boy would never have the chance to enjoy. While Bobby's father was busy perusing Home Depot's selection of table saws, little Bobby told his father that he was going to look at Thomas The Train DVDs in the $1.99 bin at the end of the aisle. That was the last time Bobby was seen alive.*

"I heard a scream, so I flipped my camera phone and ran to the scene. In case I could send a picture to 911 or somethin'," said Phillip Dittmeyer, the first responder to the scene, and this was among the grizzly images he captured:


Fifi, an innocent-looking wild toy poodle was left to roam the aisles of Home Depot back in 2003. The employees and staff would feed Fifi beef jerkey and occasionally paint thinner, to lighten his mood.

"He was really just a mascot for the stores. He loved the kids. Occasionally people would say he bit them, but there was never any proof - most of us just figured that Fifi was trying to help the kids get their fingers unstuck. There's a lot of dangerous stuff around the store," said the evening-shift manager of Store 117 who agreed to speak with us on condition of anonymity.

After the closed casket service for little Bobby Tables, his father Wilbur probably said, "You just never think of a toy poodle in that way. I mean it's not like it's a [expletive deleted] Sugar Glider for [expletive deleted] sake. People have to know about this, I mean I'm sure I could hold my own against one of them, but a kindergartener doesn't stand a chance. Where is the legislation to ban these [expletive deleted] baby-killing monsters?"

Where indeed, Wilbur; where indeed. When I attempted to learn about any pending legislation to ban the breed by staring at the Google search page, I drew a blank. As it turns out, there is no legislation being considered to ban the possession of these cuddly-looking killers. In fact, when I thought about going back to do follow-up interviews, I found that all trace of the incident had been erased from local newspapers, and had never made it to the national press. All that remains is the new policy that says "no pets allowed" in Home Depot, and when asked about the justification, the manager grew silent and would only say knowingly, just above a whisper in confidence, "Somethin' probably happened down south."

At first I thought maybe it was an innocent mistake, a desire not to spread fear and angst about what could be a fictional account of a toy-poodle related death, and not a plot to cover up the long history of this vicious white murder-machine. Then I found more evidence of the cover-up masquerading as a badly-doctored attempt to fabricate an alibi for Fifi.


Are we to believe the testimony of every suspected killer who says "i is innosint"? Do we truly live in a society where a brutal creature like Fifi can be allowed to roam freely in the aisles of other non Home Depot stores? This reporter hopes not. Echoing a statement on behalf of the fathers of Bobby Tables everywhere, "Dear God, won't someone please think of the children."

*These statements have not been evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

What a Year For Video Games

The last time I remember getting this excited about all of the great games coming out was the golden age of the SNES heyday.

I've had a chance to play through most of the titles that made my list this fall and I haven't been disappointed yet.

It seems like everyone's buzzing about Half-Life 2 Orange Box, and with good reason. Half Life 2 is one of the most solid and entertaining games ever made. The game itself is actually 3 years old but somehow still manages to outshine most of its contemporaries. The story is intriguing and complex, but not overreaching. The voice acting and facial animation are so fluid and natural that you don't really notice them until you view them in comparison to newer games like Halo 3 and wonder why the rest of the game industry is still 3 years behind Valve (Half-Life 2's creator). Visually the game is gorgeous with its dynamic lighting, particle-filled explosions, realistic textures and shading. Aurally this game outshines anything I've ever experienced - the sound of weapons firing is somehow more visceral than in any other game I've ever played. Ambient noise in most games feels like an afterthought, but here it powerfully and convincingly draws you into the story. The controls are the best I've ever used in an FPS. They seem tuned perfectly for the XBOX. And if Half-Life 2 wasn't good enough by itself, the Orange Box comes with two more "episodes" to the story - each is about 5-6 hours long, giving you essentially an entire new game. The set also includes one of the most original twists on an FPS that I've ever seen - the puzzle solving adventure, Portal. Portal was a complete surprise and even at only 5-6 hours long, it provides enough problem-solving fun to be worth nearly the price of the whole set by itself. If you only get one game for your 360, it should be Orange Box. By far the best value and most fun. I have little interest in the PC version of this game because I don't like Steam, or more the the point, I don't like the idea of not being allowed to play an offline game without an Internet connection and a spyware account. From what I'm hearing, the PS3 version has some noticeable flaws that the PC and 360 versions do not, but I don't have first hand knowledge of that.

Super Mario Galaxy was a riot. As addictive, fun and challenging as any game in the Mario proper series, Galaxy truly takes everything Nintendo has learned from its previous games and improves on it. As with any Mario game, the worst part is getting to the end, finishing every challenge and realizing that there is no more. I spent a good 30 hours with this gem and finished it begging for more. The game seems to perfectly balance the needs of both first-time gamers and long-time veterans without resorting to things like difficulty settings. Nintendo provided enough low-challenge stages to allow unskilled players to complete enough of the game to defeat Bowser and enjoy a sense of accomplishment. At the same time, they provided enough challenge and incentive for veteran players to feel the same sense of accomplishment by getting all 120 stars and getting the special ending - and, believe me, some of those bonus stages are nearly impossible. This game has more story than most of the games in the series. Personally, I preferred it when Mario games left most of that to the imagination, but that's hardly an unbiased observation. The controls were natural, and although the gravity twisting and dramatic perspective shifts (like walking upside down or on the side of an object instead of on top of it) were a bit disorienting at first, after an hour or two, I felt perfectly at home with them. My wife really got a kick out of using a second Wii-remote to help me gather stars and stun enemies. Graphically, it is beautiful. I'm using the best setup available - component cables connected to an HDTV and playing the game in progressive scan mode, so your mileage may vary, but overall it's very impressive, with brilliant use of color and dynamic lighting. The music wasn't quite as memorable as that of its predecessors. It was standard fare, but I enjoyed the remixes of older tunes moreso than any of the newer material. Maybe I'm just getting crusty in my old age. Overall, though, I'd say that this is a definite must-have for Wii owners. Hopefully Nintendo will start bundling it with the Wii and we'll have come full circle to the days when the system shipped with the premier Mario title.


Assassin's Creed kept me entertained for a good 35 hours. Let me start off by saying, do not buy the PS3 version of this game. If the PS3 is all you have, just skip it - it's not worth ruining an otherwise thrilling experience with horrible frame-rate and lighting problems. I can't believe that some quality assurance team looked at the 360 and PS3 versions of this game side by side and thought that the PS3 version was okay to unleash on the public. Ubisoft must have expected that the positive press over the 360 version would muffle any complaints from the poor shafted PS3 owners. If someone tells you the difference isn't that big, then they have no idea what they're talking about. So, this impression is on the 360 version which I was lucky enough to replace my nasty original PS3 purchase with. The game had a very procedural feel to it - from the way that the story progresses, to the objectives, to the crowd behavior. I've seen some reviewers trashing the game for being repetitive, but I don't see a problem with vaguely repetitive tasks as long as they're fun. Plus, most of the repetitive elements are optional anyway. Stealing a page out of other A-list titles like Symphony of the Night, or Metroid Prime, you start the game with all of the powers and abilities available, and then you lose them. As you regain each one, you are compelled to appreciate its place in your arsenal, and this provides a natural learning process. By the end of the game, you'll be using nearly every one of the skills you've learned as instinctively as the main character should. Visually, the game is gorgeous. It has set a standard by which I'll judge every 360 and PS3 game in this generation. The controls are fluid and responsive, and the story is very interesting, if a bit predictable. When the game starts, you are presented with a disclaimer of sorts saying that the game was created by members of a lot of different faiths. After discovering the more controversial elements of the story, I have to admit I was offended by some of the fictitious implications about Christianity, or more directly about Christ himself. Not being a Muslim, I cannot surmise whether it is nearly as offensive to Muslims. It's a good thing I don't get my theology from a game. As laughable as that notion sounds, the frightening reality is that the same people who lent credence to The Davinci Code will probably adopt attitudes from the story in this game.

Mass Effect was, in many ways, a disappointment. The game has greatness in its soul, but it can be very difficult at times to see past its gaping flaws and shortcomings to really enjoy it. Graphically it's very pretty, and thank God Bioware added an option to remove the annoying film grain effect. But for all of its beauty, the game is extremely glitchy. After a while you learn to tune out the minor jumps and pops as the camera struggles to follow you while the game is loading - and it is nearly always loading something. About 10 hours into the game, the inventory system becomes an annoying and unintentional mini game because your inventory is limited to an anemic 150 items. The problem isn't so much not having enough space, it's sorting through the equipment and deciding what to keep and what to sell or melt down. Looting is automatic - once you kill someone, any loot they were carrying just becomes part of your inventory. Unfortunately the game will allow you to exceed the 150 item limit, say during a firefight, and not tell you until you unwittingly try to open the equipment menu, at which point you are mercilessly forced to melt down all of the new loot (and newer is almost always better) to get your item total beneath the 150 item threshold. You are unable to cancel out of this screen until you have melted down everything you just got. Very poor design choice. What's worse, there's no way to look at your entire inventory on one screen unless you're at a vendor. In order to assess your inventory you often have to dig three menus deep to see what's available. This may sound petty, but it actually becomes an immensely annoying chore that distracts from the fun of the game. The side games are also extremely repetitive. There are basically two different layouts used for buildings and bunkers for the side quests, and aside from the junk scattered throughout the rooms are exactly identical in every respect, from the layout down to the color of the soil visible through the glass tubes connecting identical boxlike rooms. Every ground mission is basically the same wash-rinse-repeat operation. Some of the skyscapes visible from the planets are quite beautiful, but there is otherwise very little variety. Leveling up is basically identical to Knights of the Old Republic, except there seem to be fewer abilities available to each class, and the Dungeons and Dragons style descriptions of abilities are replaced by somewhat more straightforward terms. The combat is decent and neither impresses, nor leaves room for complaint; I didn't find anything particularly satisfying or annoying about it. Its faults aside, however, the music and story are the areas in which Mass Effect really excels. The main story arc of Mass Effect is extremely entertaining and there are a few "wow" moments culminating into one of the best "last two hours" I've spent with a game in a very very long time. Filled with dramatic synth, the music often reminded me of 80's sci-fi like Terminator and created a very unique mood throughout. When the action heats up or is about to heat up, the tempo and volume rise slightly to get your blood pumping and it's a very effective tool. All in all, Mass Effect was a good game, and the ending makes up for its shortcomings, but only just. It could definitely have used more polish, and BioWare shouldn't have been so frightened of spanning it across two discs. RPG players not only don't mind this, but we sort of like it. I suspect that a good deal of the incessant loading has something to do with the compression required to keep the size down to one 9GB disk.

Crysis was the best option I could find for testing out my new PC. My machine specs read like the recommended system on the Crysis box, but the game still wouldn't run at full speed with the settings on high. The game requires some obscure November update to DirectX that evidently didn't garner its own version number, nor was it something the developers thought they would need to include with the game itself. After the obligatory hour of installing and hour of troubleshooting that always reminds me why I avoid PC games like the plague, I finally got Crysis up and running. Another twenty minutes of tweaking controls and switching to 64-bit mode and I actually had the game working rather passably with my XBOX 360 controller. My impression of the first half of the game was pretty meh. Nothing really stood out from any other FPS I had played, except maybe the fact that the designers do not share my opinion that vehicles should be fun or easy to use. The suit functions are neat, but the stealth mode is really the only one that's really useful, and it is so limited that it was more difficult than fun to use. But after a while I fell into a rhythm and it started to get fun. At about the halfway point in the game, the gameplay changed radically and for the better. (Spoiler Alert) When gravity went bye-bye in the bowels of the alien complex, I really started to have respect for the game. It was unique and fun and challenging, visually and audibly stimulating and spooky all at once. Unfortunately that section only accounted for about a quarter of the entire game. The last quarter of the game was spent on unimaginative, contrived missions and frustratingly limiting vehicular combat. I could have forgiven it but that was also the quarter of the game that seemed most unfinished, as evidenced by numerous glitches that forced me to reload previous saves and replay the same section just so I could move the game forward. Important events would just simply fail to happen. The crown jewel of this glitch fest was when the game gave me a shiny new gun to kill the end boss with that just mysteriously decided not to work on the end boss. I had to back track nearly 90 minutes into older saves, spending over 2 hours playing through the same set of events over and over until I found a save prior to whatever glitch made the magical gun decide not to fire. Maybe most PC gamers are okay with beta software like this, but I'll stick with 95% finished games on my consoles, thank you very much.

It's the Tarubots vs. the Deceptarucons!

The heroic Tarubots, Optimus Porum, Aizenhide, and Bumbletsuki are pitted against the evil Deceptarucons, Megatulik and Taruscream.

Windurst is the battleground, The Managon cube is the prize and the stakes are Vana'diel itself!

Don't miss Tarusformers - Their War, Our Windurst!

New Music: The Showdown - Temptation Come My Way

It has been some years since I've been as excited about a new release as I have about The Showdown's sophmore release "Temptation Come My Way". Stylistically the album is a bit of a turn from their first album, "A Chorus of Obliteration". This album focuses more on the melodic elements that they did so well. A hint of the death-metal influences still remain, but only a sprinkling here and there. This release seems to be an amalgam of the band's favorite styles and although things like this are traditionally risky, it really works here. I've heard the core style called "Southern Metal" and I suppose that's as good a label as any. A mix of modern and contemporary metal, "Temptation Come My Way" is all over the map drawing deserved comparisons with Pantera and Metallica's Black album. In terms of refinement and maturity I'd say it's at least on par with Tourniquet's "Vanishing Lessons" - IMO the best album of its time. And unless I miss my guess I even heard an Oz Fox (Stryper) riff in there. As I listen, I'm constantly reminded of classics from Sacred Warrior to early Guardian while being pounded in the ears with Disciple and As I Lay Dying.

Lyrically they are as practical and in-your-face as ever. I don't think I'd call them a ministry band, but their Christian beliefs, patriotism, and strong sense of family are unabashedly on the front line.

Evidently the first track "Fanatics and Whores" which promises to bring the hypocracy of certain televangelists "down around that self-serving smile", was controversial enough that the record label altruistically decided to omit the track from copies to be sold in certain Christian Book store chains. Under the guise of protecting theological integrity they have commited the sin of greed. The bottom line is that any faith so fragile that it could not stand up to such honest criticism, or hearing the word "Whores" does not deserve preserving and if the music is contrary to solid Christian principle, the label should have declined to publish it altogether. But arbitrarily omitting a song on the basis of the word "Whores" or the subject matter of false prophets, is the worst kind of evil. This isn't about theology, it's about money, and I cannot stress enough how important it is to avoid such hacked-up politically corrected material. Don't buy this from a Christian Book store if the first track is not "Fanatics and Whores". Best Buy sells the whole version and it's a lot cheaper. I encourage you to read the lyrics to the song (you can find them on Google with a minimum of effort). I challenge anyone to tell me how this is less acceptible than the Bible itself in terms of language and message. Plenty of music has addressed the touchy issue of an internal audit of the Church - Steve Taylor for example addressed these matters several times with songs like "Am I in Sync", "I Want To Be a Clone", and "Guilty by Association".

The bottom line is that this is one of the best collections of music I have heard in a long time. "Temptation Come My Way" was two years in the making and has the genius and polish to make it a reference by which all metal to come after it should be measured.

Rocky Balboa

As most children of the 80's I grew up with Rocky movies. Corny as I would later come to consider them, they were fun and inspirational and carried a message of hope and perseverance that I believe resonated with most of America at the time. I'm speaking of course, of the first four Rocky movies. I did not see Rocky V until a year ago, and when I did finally watch it, I realized why. Rocky had been done to death, and V looked like just another chance to cash in on name recognition. Although I didn't see it when it came out, I do remember seeing interviews with Sylvester Stallone back in 1990, and even back then interviewers were posing the question "Isn't this going too far? Aren't you running Rocky's good name into the ground by churning out mindless sequels." I remember Stallone's answer at the time. He basically answered that the Rocky movies had been the story of a man's life and his dream and each represented a different stage of it. So, no, this wasn't going too far. That being said, Rocky V was an awful movie, so chock full of cliches that it stunk of "cash-in". After a swan song like that, I was surprised to realize just how intriguing the idea of another Rocky movie sounded to me.

My curiosity was undeniable - what could another Rocky movie possibly have to offer the world? The filmmakers either had something great going on to counteract the bad taste left in anyone's mouth by V, or they were banking on my curiosity and/or memory loss to trick me into going to see another bad movie. Fortunately for me, they had something great.

I've heard a couple of explanations for why this movie was not called Rocky VI, but it is my personal belief that this movie was intended as a replacement for Rocky V as the end of the man's story.

From the start, it paints a believable picture of a retired present-day Rocky Balboa. The story walks you through some of the twilight years of a man who speaks few words and doesn't speak them clearly, but still manages to dish out some unexpected and poignant wisdom on life and love and happiness. His body looks tired and worn down, but his spirit is willing.

A computer simulated fight between Rocky in his prime, and the reigning heavyweight champion, Mason "The Line" Dixon and that willing spirit eventually drives him back to the ring. The concept may seem overly ambitious at a glance, but the movie is very quick to point out parallels in real life that make it more believable. Evidently a statistical computation done in the 60's between Mohammed Ali and some boxer that was retired at the time (boxing fans, please don't hate me, I don't remember his name), showed that the older boxer would have won. And, of course, the Foreman vs. Holyfield fight where George Foreman came back to fight in his 50's nicely parallels Rocky's post prime aspirations.

Visually the film isn't anything special, but then it really doesn't need to be as it is the story that compels you to keep watching. The camera work is faithful to the older movies, with a few dramatic slow-motion and freeze-frame fade-outs. Rocky's signature theme song makes a couple of appearances, once as a remix and a final time as a beautiful rendition of the original. After all these years I can think of few scores with such widespread recognition that can inspire quite as well.

Throughout the film, Rocky experienced flashbacks, and although I can't say I'm an aficionado, it appeared that his flashbacks were limited to scenes from the first four movies, almost as though the filmmakers wanted to skip over that painful chapter or pretend it didn't happen. This is partly why I believe this film was intended as a replacement for V.

From Rocky's struggle with old age and ridicule to return to the ring to the climactic fight scene with Mason Dixon, the movie was engaging and even suspenseful at times. I actually found myself tensing up as Rocky would take a hard knock, nearly cheering with relief as he fought back.

The film somehow managed to maintain the charm of the prequels without falling into the trap of taking itself too seriously. A few well placed jabs at itself, and a comical cameo by Mike Tyson kept things fresh and believable.

The movie is very family friendly with a minimum of rough language and nothing sexually objectionable. I don't personally believe that there is anything wrong with violence - in fact I believe that prohibiting violence is a fundamental flaw in most societies that call themselves civilized - but that is another discussion. I mention it here to give fair warning that I may not be the best judge when it comes to violence. In my personal opinion, the movie could have done with more violence, but since it did have slightly more violence than a Care Bears movie, you might not want your fragile children watching it. Yes, that was intended as sarcasm.

All in all, no one could have hoped for a better conclusion to this story. Anyone who liked Rocky could not help but be pleased by this final chapter, and even some of those who despised the sequel-heavy story will be delighted by the freshness here.

Using "ls" in Windows

As my professional life moves into a more UNIX direction I have found myself more and more often trying to execute UNIX commands in Windows. One such command is "ls" - to list the contents of a directory. I know that cygwin binaries can be compiled for Windows to get ls functionality, but I decided to solve the problem a different way. I've written a batch file that wraps the "dir" command in windows. To work properly, both "ls.bat" and "getstrlen.bat" from an earlier post on this blog, will need to be present in your PATH.

I don't have time to explain this code right now, but I will make an effort if anyone asks.

ls.bat:

@echo off

if not "%1"=="" goto gotargs
echo Executing: dir /b&dir /b
goto done

:gotargs
set ARGS1=%1
set CHECK=%ARGS1:~0,1%
if "%CHECK%"=="-" (set CURROPT=%ARGS1% & goto parsearg1)
if not "%9"=="" (echo Executing: dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9"&dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9"&goto done)
if not "%8"=="" (echo Executing: dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8"&dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8"&goto done)
if not "%7"=="" (echo Executing: dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7"&dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7"&goto done)
if not "%6"=="" (echo Executing: dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6"&dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6"&goto done)
if not "%5"=="" (echo Executing: dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4 %5"&dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4 %5"&goto done)
if not "%4"=="" (echo Executing: dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4"&dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4"&goto done)
if not "%3"=="" (echo Executing: dir /b "%1 %2 %3"&dir /b "%1 %2 %3"&goto done)
if not "%2"=="" (echo Executing: dir /b "%1 %2"&dir "%1 %2"&goto done)
echo Executing: dir /b %1&dir /b %1
goto done

:parsearg1
call getstrlen %CURROPT%
REM echo Got strlen: %strlen%
set ARGLEN=%strlen%
set count=%ARGLEN%
set i=1
set newargstr=
set CURROPT=%CURROPT: =%
set remain=%CURROPT%
goto parsearg2

:parsearg2
echo>%temp%\helper.bat set token=%%remain:~0,1%%
echo>>%temp%\helper.bat set CURROPT=%CURROPT%
echo>>%temp%\helper.bat set remain=%%CURROPT:~-%count%%%
call %temp%\helper.bat
del %temp%\helper.bat
if %i% GTR 2 goto resolvearg
:argresolved
set /a i="i+1"
set /a count="count-1"
if "%count%"=="-1" goto parsed
goto parsearg2

:resolvearg
if "%token%"=="l" goto arg_l
if "%token%"=="s" goto arg_s
if "%token%"=="a" goto arg_a
if "%token%"=="t" goto arg_t
if "%token%"=="r" goto arg_r
if "%token%"=="R" goto arg_CR
goto argresolved

:arg_l
if not "%newargstr%"=="" (set newargstr=%newargstr: /n=%)
if not "%newargstr%"=="" (set newargstr=%newargstr: /q=%)
set newargstr=%newargstr% /n /q
goto argresolved

:arg_s
if not "%newargstr%"=="" (set newargstr=%newargstr: /n=%)
if not "%newargstr%"=="" (set newargstr=%newargstr: /q=%)
set newargstr=%newargstr% /n /q
goto argresolved

:arg_a
if not "%newargstr%"=="" (set newargstr=%newargstr: /a=%)
set newargstr=%newargstr% /a
goto argresolved

:arg_t
if not "%newargstr%"=="" (set newargstr=%newargstr: /o:d=%)
if not "%newargstr%"=="" (set newargstr=%newargstr: /t:w=%)
set newargstr=%newargstr% /o:d /t:w
goto argresolved

:arg_r
if not "%newargstr%"=="" (set newargstr=%newargstr:d=-d%)
if not "%newargstr%"=="" (set newargstr=%newargstr: /t:w=%)
set newargstr=%newargstr% /t:w
goto argresolved

:arg_CR
if not "%newargstr%"=="" (set newargstr=%newargstr: /s=%)
set newargstr=%newargstr% /s
goto argresolved


:parsed
if not "%9"=="" (echo Executing: dir %newargstr% "%2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9"&dir %newargstr% "%2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9"&goto done)
if not "%8"=="" (echo Executing: dir %newargstr% "%2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8"&dir %newargstr% "%2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8"&goto done)
if not "%7"=="" (echo Executing: dir %newargstr% "%2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7"&dir %newargstr% "%2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7"&goto done)
if not "%6"=="" (echo Executing: dir %newargstr% "%2 %3 %4 %5 %6"&dir %newargstr% "%2 %3 %4 %5 %6"&goto done)
if not "%5"=="" (echo Executing: dir %newargstr% "%2 %3 %4 %5"&dir %newargstr% "%2 %3 %4 %5"&goto done)
if not "%4"=="" (echo Executing: dir %newargstr% "%2 %3 %4"&dir %newargstr% "%2 %3 %4"&goto done)
if not "%3"=="" (echo Executing: dir %newargstr% "%2 %3"&dir %newargstr% "%2 %3"&goto done)
if not "%2"=="" (echo Executing: dir %newargstr% %2&dir %newargstr% %2&goto done)
echo Executing: dir %newargstr%&dir %newargstr%
goto done


:done

How different is 1080i from 1080p really?

I've had a lot of people ask me about the new HD buzz words floating around on the Internet and in store ads. There seems to be a lot of confusion on the subject of whether or not 1080p is better than 1080i by a large enough margin that the discerning consumer needs to be careful of them. Most recently this question came in the form of an email, and I thought I'd share my answer.

Question: What is the loss of quality between 1080p and 1080i?

Answer: That actually depends on the source material and the monitor - it's a very complicated question to answer but all things being equal the loss of quality would be half of the horizontal resolution.

Another way of putting it:
1080i:
1920x540 pixels displayed at once

1080p:
1920x1080 pixels displayed at once

But this isn't an exact comparison.

The Long Explanation:
Video recorded natively at 1080i will be broken down into two separate fields (540 lines x2). One field (commonly called Field A) will consist of all of the even lines from the original frame and the other field (Field B) will consist of all of the odd lines from the original frame. The idea is that when these two fields are displayed one right after the other quickly enough, that you appear to see the whole original frame (1080 lines) but it only requres 540 horizontal lines to do it. Essentially 1080i relies on tricking your eye into thinking it is seeing more than it actually is.

The interleaving technique was developed with CRTs in mind. Most fixed-resolution displays (LCD/Plasma/DLP) can't actually display an interlaced picture (or rather don't because it would look like crap on that type of display). Instead these displays have image processors that use a variety of techniques to take the interlaced signal and turn it into a progressive signal for whatever the native resolution of the display is. This is where the interlacing really presents a problem, because when being shown on a progressive display, the material has to be "de-interlaced" first. The image processor has three basic options, line-doubling, interpolation, or field overlap.

Line-doubling is the easiest but it is wasteful- just take one of the two fields and show every line twice, discarding the other field entirely - sure, it's using all of the available pixels, but you're really only seeing half of the picture.

Interpolation is the hardest to do and it lowers fidelity- the image processor will "make up" the missing lines by averaging color and lighting info between each pair of lines in a single field and discard the other field entiely. The picture is a little clearer, but you've lost some fidelity because you're no longer seeing the true picture.

Field overlap is the most problematic but provides the best fidelity. Simply taking the two separate fields and laying them on top of each other will give you the complete picture, however if the material was originally recorded in an interlaced format (1080i for example) each field will have a separate time index. What this means is that objects in motion between fields will not line up correctly and this creates an effect called "combing" - where the right and left edges of the moving object will appear like the teeth of a comb.

Most current image processors will use a combination of these techniques, constantly sampling the source material and trying to determine the best method. A lot of progressive scan DVD players have a Video Mode setting that will let you choose something like "Film,Video,Auto" so you can override the image processor if it isn't choosing the right technique.

The "Film" setting is of particular relavence. This is also sometimes called "3:2 pulldown" or "Inverse Telecine". Basically it is a smart version of the field overlap technique. When film material is transferred to video it is run through a machine called a Telecine. The Telecine basically takes each full frame of the film and breaks it down into separate fields to be played back on an interlaced display. Because the frame rate of film (24 frames per second) and interlaced video (~30x2 fields per second) have a constant ratio of 2:3 the Telecine machine uses that ratio to turn every two frames into five fields - that means that our of every five fields one of them will be a duplicate. When your TV or DVD player (it doesn't really matter where the image processor is) detects or is set to Inverse Telecine mode, it uses that known ratio to reassemble the original frames from the interleaved fields.

So the conclusion of the long answer is this:
--If your source material is video (i.e. it was captured/created in 1080i) then your resolution loss between 1080i and 1080p is 540 horizontal lines, because this information will most likely be padded with either fake video information, or line-doubled making every other line redundant. This would be true of most TV shows and video games.

--If your source material was originally film (i.e. it was run through a telecine machine to be made 1080i) and your TV has a decent image processor, then the individual fields will be reassembled into the full 1080p frames resulting in essentially no loss of picture quality whatsoever.