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November 28, 2008

Oscar Comes Out

Posted by fred1979 under Essays, Reviews, Whatever This Is | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |
[5] Comments 

So I’m pissed off and I have no one to blame but myself.  If I had any foresight at all, and I like to think that I do, I would’ve seen this coming.  But I’ll back up to the beginning …

I was at Walmart two weeks ago.  I was buying four new tires for my car, and as much as I hate Walmart their tires are quite inexpensive.  Anyway, four new tires would take a while at any place, but at Walmart it takes forever.  My estimated wait time was four hours.  So, I thought, no big deal; I’ve been trying to make my way through this massive “books you should read” list and I was about to begin Frankenstein.  I would read that.  Well … I really disliked it.  Thirty minutes in, I was banging my head against the wall in the waiting room imagining three and a half more hours of that.

A devastatingly simple solution eventually came to mind; I would go check out the Walmart book section.  It can’t totally suck.  Right?  There’s got to be something there for a person that considers themself literate.  Not. so. much.  I don’t know why I didn’t realize this in advance, but their book selection is really piss-poor.  Your choices are basically: romance novels, Clive Cussler novels, The Secret (yaaay), the sanitized Walmart top sellers list, and picture Bibles.  As much as I love drawings of Noah and his magical mystery ark of fantasy, I was unimpressed and depressed.  How the hell was I going to make it through 210 more minutes of this.  How?  I can only play the Guitar Hero demo for so long before the store employees begin to become suspicious of the guy rocking out with a circle of kids around him (happened twice already - yeah, I’m almost 30).  How was I going to get through this?

Then, I saw a book out of the corner of my eye that made me turn my head.  It was a book that I’ve heard of.  To this point, nothing that I’d heard didn’t make me want to make fun of it.  I couldn’t read that crap.  I like literature written by important people rather than trash.  As an aside, I’m kind of a douche.  Anyway, back to the story … so, my sense of fairness kicked in, aided perhaps by my desperation, and I thought “I really shouldn’t make fun of this if I’ve never even read it - maybe I could read it today for three hours while I’m stuck here anyway and I’ll feel better about taking shots at it.”

This is how I came to purchase Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.

I understand if you never listen to anything that I ever say again.

I may join you.

So here’s the thing: I liked it. I’m as shocked as you are.  This comes with provisos, of course.  It’s no great literature; this is not a book that fourteen year olds will be forced into reading by an overzealous English teacher three hundred years from now.  It just isn’t.  But … it’s entertaining.

As I read through Twilight, I thought: “OK. Vampires are real.  They’re really hot.  They like to drive fast.  I get it.  I’m intrigued for some reason.”  Then I realized that I had finished the book … in less than 24 hours.  I had devoured it; doing little else aside from sleeping from the point I picked it up to when I put it back down.

So I had decisions to make.  Should I read the next one?  Twilight is the first of a four book ’saga’ - ick.  Should I tell anyone that I read it?  Let’s take the second one first.  Upon finding out that I was reading it, my wife made fun of me non-stop for approximately a week.  Let’s examine that.  I was ridiculed by a woman that reads Dean Koontz books.  Koontz actually writes with a crayon and his ‘novels’ are printed on construction paper.  Was I really looking to admit publicly that I’d read it?  Not hardly.

Would I read the next one?  I decided that I was intrigued enough by the first one to justify reading the second one, as long as I didn’t tell anyone that I was doing it.  Yes, I’m quite secure.  Thanks.  So I went to an actual bookstore (Barnes & Noble) to buy it and discovered that they only had it in hard cover.  So I thought … is this worth nearly $20 to me?  Ultimately, and I don’t get it either, I decided that it was.

So I read New Moon and enjoyed it for the most part.  OK, so now there are werewolves.  They’re huge.  They bay at the moon, run temperatures of 108 all the time, yadda yadda yadda.  Look, I’m not proud of it, but all of these things I can buy.  For the most part I enjoyed New Moon.  Not the best thing ever, but it did present a problem.  Would I buy the third book?

So let’s review before I answer that question.  Basically, I’ve spent several days and more money than I’d like reading semi-trashy watered down supernatural romance fiction written for teenage girls that either a) are stupid or b) cut themselves.  I’m feeling really really fucking cool.  Right, but back to the decision surrounding Eclipse.

So I bought it, and the final book Breaking Dawn, in hard cover no less.  This has done wonders for my self-esteem.  Eclipse continues the love triangle between the werewolf, the vampire, and the girl who can’t get out of her own way.  It’s good.  I hate to say it, but it is.  Meyer draws overhanded, almost omnipresent, fucking constant even, comparisons to Wuthering Heights and … I can see it.  Kind of.  Love triangle.  People that are bad for and to one another.  Two of them are supernatural figments of your fucking imagination.  Wait … what?  So anyway, yeah.  I moved onto the final book happy that I’d soon be done and back onto things that I wouldn’t mind admitting I’d read.

Breaking Dawn is the name of the final book rather than a German bondage flick.  I mention this so that you know too. It opens as the wedding of the girl and the vampire approaches.  Because you know, in post-9/11 America it’s so easy to get fake ids good enough to pull off an entire fake life like the Cullen [vampire] family does.  Anyway.

Right now, I’m 200 pages in and I’m not sure that I’m going to finish.  I’m fairly annoyed.  Yes, I’m already 2000 pages or so (in less than two weeks - I’m so cool) into the Twilight Saga and I may put it down and never finish it.  Why?

As I’m sure this essay shows to this point, I’ve treated this like ridiculous, fun, “summer” reading [if you will] that always teetered on but never really crossed the absurdity boundary.  Obviously, I don’t believe in vampires and werewolves.  But they’re common enough in legend and popular culture that I can accept their presence in a fantastical story with clearly-defined rules that aren’t too absurd. I am only human after all.  If, for instance, the Cullen family could all turn into bats all of the sudden it would piss me off.

Which brings me to the thing I’m upset about.  All of a sudden, like 150 or so pages into the fourth book of the ’saga’, Meyer tells us that Bella (dumbass girl) is pregnant with a fucking vampire succubus that is eating her alive from the inside.  I’m so disgusted that I had to read that, let alone type it, let alone tell you all about it.  Fucking a.  This was not in the rules.  This was never mentioned.  It was never close to possible.  What the fuck?  I mean, I could buy it if they had sex the first time and it killed her because he had a massively strong vampire dick or something like that.  Hell, I could even understand if having sex with him gave her some kind of vampire ovary junk disease or something where her fucking fingers fell off.  But a demon baby eating it’s way out?  What the shit?

So that’s why I’m pissed; both at Meyer and myself.  And this is why I don’t think I’ll ever finish despite the time and money that I’ve put into it.

Who the fuck am I kidding?  I’m off to read this crap right now.  Disgusting idiot I am.

 

May 11, 2008

A Scale Of Awesome Review - Super Paper Mario

Posted by fred1979 under Reviews, WiiViews | Tags: , , , , , , , , |
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Super Paper Mario

Super Paper Mario (Wii)
three and a half stars
3.5 stars

The Scale of Awesome

Overall, Super Paper Mario for the Nintendo Wii console is a great game. The positives far outweigh the negatives. There are negatives though and they are significant enough that it loses one and a half stars. I was really looking forward to playing this and to this point I’m pretty happy with it.

The Background

Super Paper Mario is the Wii console’s follow-up to the N64’s Paper Mario. The original Paper Mario was a Mario game with a bit of a twist. Nintendo incorporated RPG elements into the standard Mario side-scroller fun that we all love and know. There were more story elements. You collected things like characters and attacks. Attacks took place in turns, which was weird but you got used to it. So rather than jumping on a Goomba as soon as you saw it, you’d go to a fight screen and then take turns attacking one another. It wasn’t the very simple run while holding turbo and then jump onto things Mario game that we were used to.

The Good

There’s a lot of good in this game. These are only a short list of the best points.

1. The best thing that they’ve done is a direct improvement on the original. Fights have gone back to being open format. You don’t have to take turns anymore. It was a cool concept in the original game … at first. It got rather annoying as you moved through the game. You’d have to go to a fight screen and take turns every single time that you wanted to kill a goomba or a turtle. It was a great idea that ended up being kind of silly in practice. Thankfully that’s gone. I was kind of worried about that coming into this.

2. The 3-D. This is another improvement. The Paper Mario games have always been based in 2-D. The characters look very flat; they’re like paper dolls. You spend most of your time in Super Paper Mario in 2-D, however you can press a button to flip into 3-D. It’s really cool because it allows them to hide entire boards, paths, and items outside of your regular view. It makes the game a bit more difficult which is nice. It obscures your line of sight to the logical steps that you should take to complete an objective. As a matter of fact, many of the boards are laid out nearly identically to boards from earlier Mario games and the 3-D allows new things to be inserted into the boards that you know and love.

3. There’s a lot to it. The game is massive and everything takes a really long time to do. It’s cool. I’ve been playing it for a week and a half or so and I’m only 25% of the way through. It’s a very good value at $50.

4. It’s engrossing. I’ve lost time a few times now while playing. It’s easy to just lay on the couch and play for two hours while feeling like only 15 minutes have passed.

The Bad

1. It’s a little too … ‘on the nose’ shall we say. Much of the dialogue and story elements seem to alternate between being intentionally hokey and metatextual. I know that it’s common for the Mario and Zelda games to do this. They seem to make fun of themselves a bit. In Super Paper Mario, it’s just too much. I understand that I’m nearly thirty and that I’ve been playing Mario games for over twenty years, and that maybe … just maybe … that’s worth poking a little bit of fun at. I don’t expect the poking to come from Nintendo though.

2. You fight alongside a series of helpers known as pixels … erm sorry I mean ‘pixls’. Yeah, they really spell it that way. They all look like odd colored bits thrown together. Calling them pixels is a clever joke that’s neither clever nor funny. Everyone knows that images are made of pixels. It’s not necessary to point it out in your character class naming.

The Ugly

There’s really only one thing that falls into the Ugly category. It’s really Ugly though. The game lost an entire star for it.

1. There’s way too much story. No really, there is way too much story. There are points in the game where fifteen minutes pass while you’re staring at dumb cut screens and reading dialogue. It may be a generational thing because I know that many games today are like this, but I’m not into it. I want to save the princess, I don’t want to read War and fucking Peace. I play video games because I want to turn my brain off for a little while rather than to be fed an overcooked hacky backstory. I’d be watching a movie or reading a book if that’s what I felt like doing.

And In Conclusion….

It’s a great game. There are a lot more positives than negatives. Admittedly, the negatives aren’t all that negative either. I’m just a bit picky. It’s a great game and you should check it out.

 

May 4, 2008

A Scale Of Awesome Review - The Nintendo Wii and Sundry (to this point)

Posted by fred1979 under Reviews, The Scale of Awesome, WiiViews | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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The Nintendo Wii
“Habersham! Climb to the bell tower!”
“To what end my Lord?”
“They must know.”
“Who must know? What must they know?”
“Everyone Habersham! Everyone must know that the game of bowling is finally available to shut-ins and hermits.”
Was that an overly dramatic opening for my Scale Of Awesome™ review of the Nintendo Wii console? I really don’t think so. The Wii console actually inspired The Scale Of Awesome™. I finally got my Wii earlier today and so my review may be a bit incomplete. Initially though, I’m very impressed and even inclined to say that it’s the best game console that I’ve ever owned.

The Wii is exceptionally fun to play. I don’t state that lightly. One would think that you’d feel awkward flailing around like a wounded goat as you try to play tennis (or whatever) on it. I really don’t though. I truly believe that it’s so fun that all of your considerations about looking ‘cool’, or however you want to describe it, just fly right out the window.

My opening mock drama isn’t completely silly. This game really does bring sports and other things back to the hermit and the shut-in. Kind of. I generally don’t like to be around people. As a result, I haven’t actually played a competitive sport since high school. I’ve had so much fun playing the Wii Sports games both alone and with the kids. It’s amazing.

Wii Sports

And what about those Wii Sports games? Well, they’re free. They must suck right? No. They really don’t. I also got Super Paper Mario along with the console and I’ve yet to get to it. AND … I was really looking forward to it. The Wii Sports games were just so fun that I couldn’t stop playing.
1. Bowling - I started with bowling for two reasons. The first reason was that my daughter had played it before at a friends house. She already got it, so it’s a good easy in. The second reason is because I’m really not into bowling. I don’t live in a trailer. I don’t generally think of things that you can do while excessively drunk as sports. You get the point. I figured that, being a bowling-hater, I’d get it out of the way and get to the games that didn’t suck.

Shockingly though, Wii Bowling KICKS ASS. No, really it does. It was so fun. I think that we played for almost two hours before moving on to the next game. I have limited range of motion in my arms now and I blame Wii Bowling.

2. Tennis - A little difficult, but overall really fun. I can see myself coming back to Wii Tennis time and again and trying to improve. I think it would probably be more fun if you were to play against someone else, but it was still great solo.

3. Boxing - So good. It should come with a warning screen though that says: “Not intended for portly smokers.” It kicked my ass. I didn’t lose. Rather I mean that the game took a lot out of me. I’ll probably play this one a lot as it provides a huge adrenaline rush and also the greatest physical challenge at this point. Some day I’ll be able to fight two rounds without needing oxygen afterwards. I hope.

It would certainly be worth the $250 and the time and effort it would take to set it up and convince me to come over just to see my reaction when I knock my opponent down. Now, in reality, I have a poor fighting combination. I have both crazy hate/retard strength as well as an almost total lack of coordination. You wouldn’t know it though to see my after a knockdown. You’d think I just beat the hell out of a real person … that I hated a lot. Kudos to you Wii Boxing. You’ve made sad funny again.

4. Golf - Wii golf is fun. It’s fairly simple. I was a little annoyed at times by problems with the sensor during my swing, but overall good clean fun. I will play many times more.

5. Baseball - I’m not going to lie to you. Wii Baseball was a little weak. Pitching was fun. The only thing that made the hitting fun was the nerf bat remote that I also got. I talk about that below. I’d say the largest problem with hitting is that the pitches come in too slow. It can kind of feel like you’re waiting forever to swing. Also, it’s kind of set up like some kind of bizarre whiffle ball game that you’d play as a kid. You’re assigned a base by how hard and far you hit the ball; there is no running. Overall, it’s kind of fun though (pitching at least) so I’ll probably play it some more.

I’m really excited to continue exploring all of the features and availabilities of the Wii. I would like to check out the online marketplace, Guitar Hero, Mario Kart, Wii Fit, etc. I’m so excited to see what Nintendo comes out with next. They actually sell a crossbow remote attachment for the Wii Zelda game. A fucking crossbow? That’s so incredibly badass. I don’t know how I could possibly not check that out for a measly twenty-five bucks.

I have never gotten more cool free games with a console. Super Mario Brothers kicked ass, but there was only one of it. You know what I’m saying?

The Single Negative

I only really have one negative thing to say about the console. The sensor could be better. Theoretically. It doesn’t suck. That’s not what I’m saying. Basically, the sensor seems a little weak at times. I feel like I have to do things twice or that it does the wrong thing occasionally. I didn’t take off any stars for that because it’s not that bad. It’s a nitpick really. It may even be that I’m doing something wrong or that I’m still just getting used to it.

The NERF Remote Attachments - AWESOME IDEAS

Wow! Who was the person that came up with the idea of making attachments for the Wiimote that resembled the equipment of the sport you’re playing? Someone deserves a raise. I couldn’t even think of a cooler little thing for the Wii until I saw the crossbow. (I mean, Jesus, it’s a crossbow!) It’s about $35 for the package. It comes with a tennis racket, a baseball bat, a golf club, and a handle that the remote goes in.

The tennis racket is fun. It makes Wii Tennis feel a little more realistic. I was a little tiny bit nervous about the baseball bat. By this I mean, the whole ’swinging a baseball bat in the house’ thing. It is NERF though and I haven’t broken anything yet. The bat was one of the best things about Wii Baseball. I have yet to get around to the golf club. I played golf before opening this set.

The NERF Remote Attachments - MY ONLY REAL GRIPE

I get it now. I always used to wonder how men mistook transvestites in bars for women. The NERF package taught me that sometimes - in the right light, at the right angle, when you really want it to - one thing can look like another. Yes, that’s right. They tricked me. Imagine how embarrassed I was with all that Bonaduce egg on my face!

What was it? There was a Wiimote in the package … or so I thought and hoped. As a result, I didn’t pick up a second Wiimote. Big mistake. I ended up being a mixture of Wiibemused and WiiPissedOff. As it turns out, the ‘Wiimote’ was actually a cardboard cutout of a Wiimote. I laugh at my stupidity now, but at the time I was pissed. At the right angle, in the right light, with a certain amount of hope - it looked like a real Wiimote.

In Conclusion

The Wii rocks. If you like fun, you’ll like the Wii. If you have a heart, you’ll like the Wii. If you’ve never kicked a baby, you’ll like the Wii. Buy one if you can. If you only care about car-jacking people and blowing stuff up, buy something else (though there are some of those kind of games too for the Wii). I love it. Best birthday present ever.
 

May 4, 2008

The Scale of Awesome

Posted by fred1979 under Reviews, The Scale of Awesome | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
[7] Comments 

I’ve made a decision to periodically review products, good, services, odors, and meatloaf here at the Rough Drafts Writing Blog. “Good”, I think. “I will do that. But how?” How is definitely the question. I, Fred aka Mr. Fred aka The God of Fuck, needed to find a way to do this that would set me apart from every other asshole on the internet. So, what did I decide?

First off, I’m going to try to be fresh and inventive. I’m going to try to make the reviews amusing. I’ve read through many a stale review wondering (sometimes out loud and to the sky) why in the hell some banal idiot thinks that their opinion matters. Never fear, I plan to bring it.

Secondly, I decided that I needed a scale; something fair, amusing, and easy to follow. So I developed The Scale Of Awesome™. The Scale of Awesome™ would have to be so clear, so concise, that nobody would dare question it. I think I may have found the way (graphic follows).

The Scale Of Awesome™

What does all of this gobbledygook mean? How dare you question me? Erm … I mean … I’ll explain. OK, so I decided to go with a star system. I know what you’re thinking: how is that inventive? Well, I’ll tell you. Geez. Impatient. Each of the stars lets you know what the item that I’m reviewing is “the coolest thing since”.

5 Stars - Penicillin. The big one. If something gets a 5 Star, then it’s the coolest thing since Penicillin. Honestly, Penicillin rocks. We all live a lot longer because of it. People no longer die (in large numbers) of things like syphilis.

An item that gets 5 Stars makes me forget all about Alexander Fleming and his wacky mold concoctions. It makes me think things like “dying of syphilis wasn’t that bad right?” You will see this rating quite infrequently.

4 Stars - Bronson Pinchot. Are you kidding me? This guy (graphic below) is clearly one of the coolest men alive. If you ever meet me and get me drunk, and that is what we’ll do, I will likely reach a point where I pick out a man in the bar that looks like Balki and spend the rest of the night mocking him. Why do I mock him if BP is so awesome? Good question. It’s because he’s a low-rent impersonator. You don’t believe that I actually do this? Email me, and I’ll send you testimonials.

Balki Bartakawesome

You will know that an item really made me do the “dance of joy” if you see me give it a rating of 4 Stars or above. Truly, there can be no other explanation.

3 Stars - Sliced Bread. The reason that things become clichés is that they’re either A) true OR B) incredibly awesome. Think about this for a moment. How fucking cool is sliced bread? Can you imagine being some shitbag thirteenth century peasant? You’d spend 20 minutes picking the fleas out of your beard and then be rewarded with a hunk of bread. You’d look at it as if to say “what the fuck” and then jam it in your mouth. Then you’d die a horrible, horrible death as you find yourself unable to get air down your throat. See what I’m saying? Sliced bread kind of kicks ass.

A 3 Star rating says that an item “kind of” kicks ass.

2 Stars - Happy endings. Just to clear it up at the top, I don’t mean when stories have a happy ending. I mean it the other way. I know, I know. You’re thinking. Happy ending? That sounds pretty cool. Think about it though. Seriously, take a second. Paying a terrified immigrant to milk your prostate is NOT cool. Clearly. You with me now? Good. I knew that you would be. If you’re not, I advise you to bathe in peroxide and cry for an hour. If you can’t cry, think for a bit on the mess that your life has become; that should do it.

A 2 Star rating means an item is sad and kind of pathetic. Alternatively, I considered calling the 2 Star rating Grey’s Anatomy.

1 Star - Pet Rock. If an item ever gets this rating, then clearly I’m saying that it sucks. Flat out. It’s horrible, putrid, unimaginative drivel. Given the choice, you would rather hit yourself in the head with a hammer than use or experience it. It is the lowest of the low, much like the Pet Rock.

Good Lord, who invented that shit anyway? That would be Gary Dahl (graphic below). Wikipedia informs me that he’s still alive so I probably shouldn’t ask you to kick him in the nuts if you should ever see him. I REALLY wish that I could.

In closing, I put some thought into this so I hope that you all like it. Feel free to provide me with suggestions. I’ll accept them or ignore them as the situation warrants.