I haven't been doing much blogging lately. There are some things I would have liked to review, a few 360 demos, maybe a movie or two, but I've only been thinking about one thing: Dead Space 2. I'm a big fan, so it's kind of been consuming me. Not even in a healthy way.
I purchased the Collector's Edition of Dead Space 2 when it was released last Tuesday. I played around with my replica Plasma Cutter (it now serves as a chair for my Isaac Clarke action figure [the old one, I don't have the new one, yet]), and checked out the contents; soundtrack, DLC, advertising material, instruction booklet.
Then I sat down to play the game. By Friday morning I had finished my first play through on Normal.
Thursday was the most intense bit of my play through. I had a full day to myself. I spent 8 hours, pretty much straight, playing Dead Space 2.
This is a horror game. It will make you jump, it will make you paranoid, and it will set off a massive adrenaline dump in when the action kicks in.
By Friday afternoon I was exhausted. I really, legitimately was exhausted, and it was all from putting myself in Dead Space 2. A fantastic experience, that the game was engaging enough to wear on me a person both physically and emotionally makes me very appreciative of the work that the design team put into it.
I'm a big fan of the show Bones. It has great characters and good enough writers to consistently put them into interesting situations.
Tonight's episode of Bones was masterful. I'm nearly at a loss for words. I'm searching for an adequate way to try and describe how moved I was, both by the mastery of the plot and it's impact on the characters.
What did we have tonight? We had my favorite character going through something of an uncharacteristic crisis of self, we had others discussing tricky morality questions, we had an exploding head (which was awesome), and we had the first glimpse of what will likely be a recurring villain.
And I'm missing things, of course. Tonight was crammed with good. So much so that I might actually watch this episode again, which is something I've never really done with television outside of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episodes.
I love everything Dead Space. I love the comic books, I love the movie, I even love the averagely written but wonderfully plotted book. Most of all, and really, c’mon, you knew this was coming; I love the two video games the series has produced.
Dead Space, the video game, is remarkable in every way. It tells an engaging story using the video game medium in a way that I find revolutionary and it creates a universe that is fairly fleshed out and incredibly interesting. We get to deal with all of the great horror tropes: slashers, zombies, psychology and freaky religion.
The slashers and zombies are mashed into one excellent creature: the necromorph. Created from the dead, these bastards transform into living weapons. Instead of arms, the base necromorph have limbs that transform into bone scythes. Instead of a headshot taking care of business, you have tear the limbs off of them; increasing the gore and brutality level than what a mere decapitation can deliver. It also takes a few shots to get rid of: taking off its head just means that the creature will charge at you blindly, take off an arm it has another, take off a leg and it will crawl at you. Fantastic. And that’s just the base type of Necromorph, there are a handful more, including little monster babies! Who doesn’t love a little monster baby?
In each Dead Space tale you’re guaranteed to see someone go insane, in many instance, you’ll get to see several people go insane. In some very special parts of the games, you get to be the one going insane. Most noticeably, in an early part of Dead Space you find yourself walking around the space ship that the game spends most of its in time. As you walk you start to hear a thud repeating itself over and over again like one of those annoying tocking clocks. Then you find the source of the noise, it’s a person bashing their head into the wall. You don’t get a chance to save the person; they end up dying in a splatter of brain and blood. It’s creepy every time. There’s also a noticeable point in Dead Space: Extraction when you play as an insane person hallucinating. That was one of the few moments I’ve really gone from tense to terrified since I watched the Alien trilogy as a child.
I’m not going to talk about the religion. Not because I’m lazy, but because I think it might deserve its own space. I think there’s a lot I want to say when it comes to religion as it relates to insanity, paranoia and fear in fiction.
Ultimate Captain America #1 I’m never sure how to feel about issues like this. See, there was nothing surprising in this issue for me, I knew the punchline before I heard the joke. Was it a good issue? Yes. I enjoyed it, I like the characterization of the major players in the story, and I like the general direction that the plot is going to head in. But I knew the gist of all of this beforehand, because I really like reading interviews by Jason Aaron. It was good, and I’m excited for #2, but the setup issue seems like it has lost its oomph with writers giving the setup in interviews.
Steel #1 A good comic. It was nice in that it had a few ups and downs, but when you pit Steel against Superman’s murderer you know the end result of the plot. Not that this issue was all about the plot, it was pretty character driven in terms of setting up Steel’s fall, constantly referring to him as a normal man who surpassed his means. It was good, not great, but it doesn’t really serve to get me interested in the Reign of Doomsday event, though, I’m not really sure what could serve to get me interested.
Superboy #3
This series moves! I love this book, I really do. A fantastic mix of character development (and a lot of it) and a nifty and interesting plot that involves time travel. And this is just the third issue! If the books keeps moving like this it will easily have had more actual content than entire trades worth of other comics. I’m a fan.
Batman Beyond #1 Another set up issue. We meet the antagonist; we learn the situation that our hero will have to deal with in future issues. There really needs to be a way to do these issues in such a way that the plot really moves beyond the very opening stages so that they feel like more than an opening paragraph. Good issue overall, I’ll check out #2, but it felt like there was something missing.
Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis #4 An action packed issue with plot development! YES!We learn the reason for the mutant babies in Africa, and it’s appropriately sci-fi. We learn of a new threat based around, I believe, some old Alan Moore stories. We get to see a number of the X-Men actually put into some kind of realistic danger that had me worried that they might get injured in some capacity. Good time.
American Vampire #10 I’m probably biased, because I love this series and I love the art and I think all of the characters are quite fantastic, but this was a setup issue done right. We’re introduced to several elements that our protagonists are going to be dealing with in upcoming issues and we get a good sense of where some of the main characters are now. I think part of what really helps this issue is that we get a full plot thread open, get to a middle, and close, yes, we get a full story, and then we get to see that plot open up again into something new. There’s also the slight hope that my favorite character will appear, but I’m thinking that this short 2 issue story arc might happen without them.
Yesterday I watched the best episode of Millionaire Matchmaker I have ever seen. Considering that I've seen all of them, and find the show to be generally entertaining, I'd like to think that says something.
To start, if you're unfamiliar with the show, Millionaire Matchmaker airs on Bravo and features the struggles of an extremely energetic (and loud and opinionated) professional matchmaker named Patty. Patty is not someone you would want to fuck with, to put it lightly. Anywho, what she does is find love for her clients, clients who have to have a net-worth of at least one million dollars. I can imagine finding perspective matches for such clientele is easy, cast a wide enough net and you're bound to find a handful of prospects just waiting for the chance to marry into money.
It's the finer points that make the show really interesting. Most of the time the millionaire or millionairess (which is apparently a real word, I was expecting my spell check to red-line that one) has a reason they have yet to find love: work, generally anti-social, not sure what they're looking for, etc... So Patty grooms them and coaches them and sends them on their merry way. Being very successful people, they butt heads with the person they're paying, I can only assume, decent bank to provide them a service and Patty explodes all over them. It's fantastic television and it can happen several times an episode. Love it.
Onto what made me happy!
And there's more! I strongly recommend you seek out the full episode, which is probably located on the Bravo page.
Now, I've seen superficial, hell, I thought I was fairly superficial myself, but DAMN, that woman makes me feel humble and modest. If you note, there is not one thing that she brings up on her own that does not have to do with that man's body or wanting to give him money, or wanting to bang him. He makes no bones about finding her unattractive and not much more than a pretty pink piggy bank, and she makes no bones about him being nothing other than a piece of meat. It's fantastic! In a perverse way they are made for each other. God can only hope that they don't procreate like she promised him. It's amazing that they're honest with each other about being horrid people looking for nothing more than status symbols to make them feel better about life. Just shocking in a way I don't think I've ever been shocked before.
Wow.
On the flip side the other couple featured on the show (every show has two millionaires looking for love) were perfect for each other and adorable. The juxtaposition was brilliant, it's almost like it was planned.
I have had absolutely enough of this horrid awful trend of using babies and their idiot parents as a form of entertainment on my television.My television is meant for one thing and one thing only: interesting and thoughtful entertainment. I accept procedural dramas, because those have been stepping up their game with interesting characters as a means to distinguish themselves from other procedural dramas. I accept reality television even, reality television is a group of consenting adults who have opened themselves up to be exposed as either slack jawed idiots or scheming bastards who will do anything to win a competition or some notoriety. Right now I’m watching Professional Wrestling that I had to DVR because I was busy reading comic books when I could have been watching athletic body builders risk serious harm to every part of their bodies in a cheesy soap opera. Putting barely aware, practically fetal tiny humans on my TV and expecting me to be anything but outraged (in the wrong way, there is an art to making me feel outraged in a way that I can respect you for doing it) and disgusted in these “parents” for a) exploiting their children and b) for being crazy enough to go to extreme measures to have kids as if kids were some kind of status symbol.
And that is all I feel like saying on the matter. I wanted to write about the terrible shows in some detail, but there is no need to. They can all be summed up in one filthy sentence, and I think I’ve written than one filthy sentence.
