Kelson Reviews Stuff - Page 54

It’s always a risk to go back and watch something you enjoyed when you were younger. Your tastes change as you grow up (or you actually develop a sense of taste). There are some cartoons and movies I refuse to watch because I want to remember liking them. Sometimes they work out(ex: Real Genius). Sometimes they don’t (ex: Something Wicked This Way Comes).

Edward Scissorhands still holds up: The contrast between the inventor’s mansion and the pseudo-50s achingly “normal” suburbia, Danny Elfman’s fairy-tale music, the neighborhood’s curiosity, then acceptance, then ultimate rejection of this strange visitor, Peg’s determination to make things work out, Kim’s slow realization that her boyfriend isn’t a very nice guy, and that this scary blade-handed stranger is, the cop’s efforts to smooth things over—all with Tim Burton’s distinctive quirky style.

(Re-watched in the theater as part of a “flashback features” series.)

Since it’s been over a year since I read the book, and I knew to expect a historical drama/horror rather than a documentary, I actually thought it was a fairly decent Jack the Ripper film (if there is such a thing). Unfortunately they ripped out some of the key parts of the book — all the symbolism in London’s architecture, for instance, wouldn’t have fit onscreen anyway, but I rather liked the flash-forwards to the 20th century during his psychotic break after the final murder. One of the main points was that this version of Jack believed he was ushering in the future. They kept the line, but left out everything that supported it.

The first issue of the New Spring comic book was surprisingly good. I wasn’t sure how well Robert Jordan’s writing would translate to the medium, and of course a lot of details are lost, but Chuck Dixon has done a good job adapting the story, and Mike Miller’s art is incredible.

The book opens with a brief description of the world, then a series of splash pages showing the scope of the Aiel War, starting with thousands of Aiel pouring over the Dragonwall. From there it moves to Lan’s story, then to Moiraine’s. Two pages stand out for me: The panorama of Tar Valon, and Gitara’s Foretelling, the latter of which is most effective because it contrasts with the very realistic style of the rest of the book.

Believe it or not, I’d recommend this. Who would’ve thought I’d be excited about The Wheel of Time again?

Katie adds the following notes on other cool stuff:

• You can tell some of the Aiel in their panoramas are female, even though there’s no mention of it.
• Hyperattentive series readers will be able to tell all sorts of stuff quickly, based on minute detail. (e.g. shield designs, armor style, local fashion)
• Looks like there’s going to be icons on out-in-the-middle thoughts/dialogue to let you know who’s saying it. Nice carryover of the chapter symbols.
• Moiraine and Siuan make a cute couple.

I’ve played and enjoyed Might and Magic 4 through 7, and I’d heard bad things about #8, so I went straight to #9. First Impressions: It’s interesting and immersive, but there are some things about it that are really frustrating.

I like the new decision-tree class system, where you start out as a fighter or an initiate magic user and specialize more and more over the course of the game. I’ve played computer RPGs that didn’t even have classes, and I’ve always thought that the idea was rather limiting and oversimplifying.

The graphics are very immersive, and there’s ambient sound down to conversations you can overhear in taverns, or sounds of smithing on the edge of a town. They’ve worked very hard to create realistic towns, for instance.

The problem is that a lot of the extra touches of verisimilitude don’t enhance the game play, and many even detract from it. It’s realistic that the people you would be looking for to learn skills from wouldn’t always be in the same place, so it makes sense for them to be walking around town. But it makes them hard to find, especially since there’s no way to identify someone from a distance. Similarly, in MM6 and MM7, nearly all objects - or at least all objects of certain common types, like barrels, crates, cabinets, etc. - were usable. Even if a drawer was empty, it would open. Well, cabinets, crates, barrels and the like are all over the place, but I’ve found just one that actually reacted to anything I tried to do. The towns feel like they’re unfinished.

My second major frustration with the game design is the hobbled mapping system. In MM6 and MM7, you had a constant automap in the corner of the screen that showed the area around you, and you could zoom the automap in or out as needed. Bringing up the map screen showed you a larger view of what you had seen so far, and you could zoom and scroll to show the entire area at once. Well, now the automap is gone, and the map screen will neither scroll nor zoom. It’s not quite useless, since I do keep popping up the map screen whenever my party gets turned around. And to make matters worse, they’ve crippled the Wizard Eye spell as well. Previously it would place markers on the automap to indicate hostile or friendly creatures, treasures, and so on, and would last something like an hour per skill level in the appropriate magic sphere. It was a standard spell for setting foot in a dungeon or a new land area. Now it brings up a radar-type view with a number of symbols that I have yet to identify… and lasts for only 20 minutes. Now this is internal game time, not real time, so it really doesn’t last very long.

Finally, whoever designed the interface actually made it less usable than before. For example, the spell casting system used to display a page for each sphere of magic, with each spell in a particular place on its page. This meant it was easy to locate the spell when you wanted to cast it. Now, since there are no spell spheres (a move that I like, actually), it displays all the spells on a single list… in alphabetical order, resorting every time you learn a new spell. So one character might have “Heal” in the third position on page one, while another character with more spells might have it in the fifth position on page two… until you teach that character a new spell. So every time you cast a spell, you have to look for it first.

Despite all this, it was fun enough to play through to the end. But I think the series peaked with 6 and 7.