The Platonic Male Friend's Guide to Relationships

I'm Brennan Hickam, and I'm a Platonic male friend.  I've been a Platonic male friend to many women in my time, a task I have undertaken both willingly and begrudgingly.  Most men refer to this as the "Friend Zone," and it's often considered a mark of shame, for the promise of sex is constantly dangled in front of our primitive brains while our conscious minds remind us that it will never happen.

Being the Platonic male friend is fine in some scenarios: if they're our exes and we don't want any more from them, if we're simply not attracted to them, if we made a religious commitment to abstinence, and if we're gay.  However, this is often not the case, and we are stuck at an impasse with girls we would totally fuck but we can't.  In this case, there would be some sex at the end of the rainbow if there wasn't interference at one end or the other.  Whether you girls aren't attracted to us or we're spineless pussies who are too nervous to ask you out, either way we are stuck.

How we as humans reconcile failure has been on my mind a lot recently.  Many of the world's problems stem from it, but we are nowhere close to knowing which way is best for which scenarios.  There is no more primordial failure for us as males of the species to not be able to spread our seed to willing and fertile females.  For those of us stuck in the Friend Zone, we often choose the route of blaming you.  We call you manipulative gold-digging harpies toying with our emotions and crushing our hopes and dreams, but all too often we can only blame ourselves.

Although I have accepted that it is my own fault that I constantly end up in the Friend Zone, there are still a few things I don't get about you women.  Why do you stick around with terrible excuses for humanity when there are so many perfectly decent guys waiting in the wings.  Men aren't picky.  All you women need to do is snap your fingers and you'll have guys clambering for you like little kids with candy.  We often have to wait years, even decades, for the privilege of sex, but all you need to do is sit at the bar and look inviting.   Stop torturing yourselves!  If you're no longer happy with the guy you're with, and especially if he's fucking around behind your back, do yourself a favor and kick the bastard to the curb.  If he thinks he can do better than you, you know you can do better than him.

I know that all sounds a lot like "don't fuck them, fuck me!" but I really believe it.  No one should feel like they have to stay somewhere where they don't feel happy, least of all you.  And as a final word, to us Platonic male friends everywhere, if you're not abstinent or gay, we don't deserve to give you everything you want while the one thing we want remains unanswered for.  And now, I'm headed out to the bar: maybe this time I'll find what I'm looking for.

The Times They Are A Changin'

Well, I was right: one of the things that would get me back on my ass and posting on this blog would be packing up and going somewhere else away from the distractions of home for a couple of days.  The destination of this excursion: Bend, the rather large central Oregon town that invokes a feeling of deja vu within me, a person who has spent the last three months essentially living on central Oregon.

I haven't been here in more than a decade, and it shows in the fact that I recognize absolutely nothing.  The areas around the High Desert Museum, Sunriver, and Mount Bachelor are totally different now, packed with resorts, supermarkets, and strip malls, the folly of a rapidly-expanding tourist stopover.  I've noticed this in many places I've been; even Albany, a town seemingly frozen in time, has changed in a few significant ways over the years.  Change is the law of the modern land, but we are a species that thrives on the comfort of the familiar.

Change can upset and enrage some groups of folks, and lives can be shattered when things simply don't go according to plan.  There's a lot of tension going on between the old and the young of this nation today.  Understandable, really, since the old folks can't retire and keep on working, and the millions of young folks looking for work are left out because of it.  The average age of the workforce is shifting permanently up, and the young and old are having a tough time adjusting, getting aggressive and defensive towards one another.  They will eventually adapt, but it will take time.

In increasingly uncertain times, people will hold on to what is familiar, to what they percieve as normal.  I believe firmly to this day that I was hardwired to have a paranoid personality.  I am never off my guard, I pathologically think negatively of every situation I come to in life, and I have always viewed the unknown as something that will be the death of me one day.  The transition into adulthood has wrecked havoc on the deepest layers of my psyche, but it never showed past the quirky-yet-friendly facade I put up on a day-to-day basis.  The weight of the world is crashing down hard, and I can only hope to brace myself.

Perhaps I might view change more positively if I wasn't instinctively paranoid.  I might be able to view it as exciting, as a myriad of trackless paths with a million opportunities just waiting to be explored.  Alas, as I see it, all the paths lead into packs of wolves, endless wastelands, lava pools, and other rather unpleasant things.  Maybe the truth is that it's a little bit of both, and that our choices and outlook dictate whether we'll end up down a pleasant road or down the alpha wolf's digestive system.  Like the whole "being crazy and loving it" spiel last time, it's a matter of life being what you make of it.

Now, if only I could apply those lessons to my own life

Damn, this was another deep trip down Downer Central, I better liven things up next time.

Normalcy

I've been in a lot of those deep, introspective moods lately.  E3 is going on and by all accounts I should be excited and talking about that, but everyone else is excited and talking about that, so let's actually make the title of this blog make sense and talk about some of my experiences in life.  This is "The Bre2nan Experience" after all.

I haven't really made any new friends in the three years I've been at OIT.  Sure, I've met people, and even got a few minor friendships going, but none of the real good, steady friendships I used to have back in high school.  As much as I thought my life sucked back then, at least I had people to complain about it with.  They're all still around, and I still talk to most of them, but engaging in our good old-fashioned shenanigans is rather complicated when I am a full 200 miles away for most of the year.

And so I've been thinking lately, why is this?  What changed?  Why can't I see eye-to-eye with anyone here long enough to form any sort of connection.  Well, I think I came up with a fairly good explanation of what is going on.  Most of my really good friends have been screwed up in some way: one was a jittery autistic kid who spoke jibberish most of the time, one was a ritalin junkie who played with stuffed animals up until he was thirteen, and one pretty much goes through the same shit I do plus the occasional panic attack.  They all have slightly more issues than I do, and being in a larger social environment where I was pushed aside and openly mocked for being just a little bit different than everybody else, it felt good to know that there were people out there who had it worse than I did.

The "straight man" I became for the most part, up until I got started at OIT and discovered, at least from my perspective, that the only ones here were *shudder* normal people.  Those medication junkies I loved to hang around before didn't last long before dropping out or spending every cent to their name on Amazon purchases and weed, and since I inexplicably keep getting good grades, I linger on.

I've now started doing *shudder* job interviews.  Great!  I felt like the crazy guy in regular everyday interaction, but now when I get a shave and a haircut, dress down in business attire, and start talking about my future ambitions, I feel like a downright imposter.  "Detachment" is a pretty good one-word description; I've never really felt like just part of everyone else.  I was different, I knew it, and it forever skewed my psyche.  My old adaptation mechanism that had served me well all those years wasn't going to cut it at OIT or in the business world, and now I have been forced once again to cope with the social detachment that has followed me throughout my life, now with the only respite being the calm spots between waves of crushing loneliness.

So how do I survive?  Where do I go from here?  Well, it's obvious, isn't it: I need to learn how to be the screwed-up guy and love it.  It's only when I'm not ashamed of my own quirks that I can really gain back the confidence I once had when I surrounded myself with people who were (or at least I percieved them to be) crazier than I was.  It's gonna take some doing, lifetime patterns of thought can't just be willed out of existence, but it's something I have to do, and something I will do as part of my first steps into the rest of my life.

Double Feature: Thor and X Men First Class

Damn, Marvel have been on a roll with the move releases this year, haven't they.  "Thor"s been out since the beginning of May, "Captain America" is coming out in July, and this month Fox decided to join the fray with their most recent attempt to revive their X-Men franchise.  Just coming back from X-Men and having long delayed giving you all my thoughts on "Thor," I'll be double-featuring them right here.

"Thor" is just plain awesome in a way that movies have not been awesome since the '80s swords-and-sorcery boom.  It isn't a comic book movie in the traditional sense, but a space fantasy epic that looks and feels very similar to the 1980 "Flash Gordon" movie.  It's all-out, 100%-commitment weird, and it is AWESOME for it.  Screen time is divided between the space-fantasy wonderland of Asgard and 21st-century Midgard (Earth), and the schism can be felt not only in setting, but in acting style.  Everyone from Asgard is putting on their best Shakespearian melodrama, and everyone from Earth acts basically how everyone from Earth acts in your average modern Hollywood movie.  It's awesome, end of story, go see it if you have even one drop of geek blood in you.

This is one of those things that underscores the recent trend that comic book movies have gone through.  The movement is towards more authenticity to the comic books, which means more of the characteristic weirdness will be translated to the screen.  We've seen it in "Kick-Ass," "Scott Pilgrim," and "Watchmen" (to a lesser extent) and we're beginning to see it being carried over into the Marvel movie universe and likely into DC's with "Green Lantern."  The only property that has been sheltered from this trend is Batman, for which the Chris Nolan films remain, and have every intention of remaining, cerebral crime dramas with occasional appearances from Batman.  Nothing wrong with that, but it does put blinders on the focus of the Batman mythos in this context.  The "Batman: Arkham Asylum" video game shows you much more of Batman's brand of weird.

Speaking of comic book weirdness, let's move on to "X-Men: First Class."  Brian Singer is back in charge as the producer, and he's brought the Hammer of Retcon down upon "X-Men: The Last Stand" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" giving us a prequel to the two movies he was involved with.  It's hard to have faith in a series that's been circling the drain for a good portion of the last decade, but I can safely say that "First Class" redeems it all.

The themes of discrimination and struggling with being different are back in the limelight, as well as the relationship between Erik Lensherr (Magneto) and Charles Xavier (self-explanatory) in their earlier years.  Yes, the series is done sucking Wolverine's cock, as he's demoted to only a brief cameo as much more interesting characters are given the screen time.  The two leads give surprisingly good performances, even considering that they were played by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan in the previous films, and the rest of the supporting cast holds their weight as well.  Cold War tension and '60s class elevate the whole production as the film runs with a plot that would be right at home with one of the old James Bond movies and runs with it.  There's no restraint here; nothing was cut in fear of it looking stupid, from the yellow Spandex uniforms of the X-Men to Magneto's horned helmet at the end.

X-Men is definitely out of the toilet for a while, and Thor is off to a flying start.  And it's only just begun; there's still "Green Lantern" and "Captain America" to talk about.  Guess this calls for another double-feature come July.

Me, Myself, and Asskicker

As an aside in one of the early topics I did for this blog, I mentioned how there was usually "one best class" for me in any RPG that I have played.  There was usually one setup that suited my play-style, and thanks to Gamefly I can now add the Crusader from Oblivion to the list of "one best classes" that I have played.  How does this work in a non-class-based RPG like, for example, Fallout 3.

Well, I had a very interesting experience with Fallout 3, and it's about time that I got around to sharing it.  For the first run, I made a character named after me, and shaped him after my own personality.  Brennan was the amiable vault chaplain who was skilled in science and first aid.  This made hacking my way out of the vault a cinch, but it also meant that I got spanked royally by every mutated abomination I encountered out in the wasteland.  Fitting, because it's probably how I would really do in an environment filled with armed-to-the-teeth bandits and mole rats the size of St. Bernards gnawing at my legs.  Only my elevated capacity to put myself back together kept me from constant death.

I tried again, this time going a totally different route with a character called Asskicker.  Asskicker was a morally-bankrupt sociopath struggling to keep a job as a fry cook in the vault kitchen.  He solved all his problems as a child by shooting BB's at them and/or beating them up, even if it meant putting tiny pieces of metal in his own father.  He had trouble figuring out how to get out of the vault, but once he was out in the wasteland, he made everyone his bitch.  He rigged the nuke at Megaton, and watched all its citizens die with a look of sadistic glee.  He went on to amass all the weapons and all the caps in all the world, and the only thing that ever gave him trouble was that damn Megaton security robot.

I know now why there are so many fantasy RPGs with magic systems and all of that: to give the nice, smart people a fighting chance in a world where super-powered monstrosities are plotting your death.  If Brennan were in a fantasy RPG, he could be a shaman or a druid and lay down some ass-kickings with thunderbolts summoned out of thin air, or shape-shift into a tiger and make dinner out of his enemies.  In Fallout, however, he's left to run like a bitch and hide from a pissed-off Super Mutant and stitch together what's left of his legs while praying that he's not dragged out and gang-raped by bandits.

Asskicker can live up to his namesake in both worlds, though.  Whether it's the Dark Lord of Something-something-something or just the friendly neighborhood mole rat, he'll kick their asses for the sake of having an ass to kick.  As the "one best class" goes, Asskicker would definitely be it for Fallout 3.  Even though he doesn't act the way I do in real life, he acts the way I do in games.  So I'll keep on rolling with Asskicker in the Capital Wasteland, and I might even visit Brennan while I'm there, though all that's left of him now is a bloodstain on the side of Tenpenny Tower.

Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted

Two years ago this month, I found a game in the bargain bin at GameStop that changed my gaming experience forever.  I was on a quest at that point to expand my gaming horizons, for the online FPS's that I had played so much before had gone stale and boring on me.  I had heard about it, mostly bad things, but it was only ten dollars and it was worth a try.

This was "Assassin's Creed," and I fell in love with it.  I still criticized it for being a repetitive, drawn-out affair punctuated by poorly-designed sword-fighting marathons, but I was hooked.  I loved the parkour, I loved digging up clues on my target throughout the three main cities, and I loved planning my assassinations and routes of escape.  Along with that, it had surprisingly believable characters and very interesting story threads involving them, as well as the future intrigue involving some guy voiced by Nolan North being held up in Aperture ... I mean Abstergo Industries and learning the truth behind their intentions.

This was not long before the release of "Assassin's Creed 2," which I made sure to pick up new as soon as it came out and loved it even more.  I loved the new variety in missions, I loved the new setting and the new layers of intrigue that surround it, I loved the character of Ezio Auditore da Firenze and the entire ensemble surrounding him, and I loved the new tweaks to the gameplay that kept you much more on your toes during sword-fights.  Everything that could have been better was made better, and I was now a dedicated fan of the series, even going so far as to buy the DLC expansions when they came out.

Even though the series had never let me down, I was still skeptical about "Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood."  Why was it being released only a year after AC2?  Why did they add multiplayer?  Why do I get the impression that this is just going to be a bullshit side-story?  Turns out I was wrong to doubt this game, because it was even better than the last time.  The gameplay had gone through further improvements, the side missions had a focus around the main story that the last game lacked and the first game had, the god-awful facial animations from AC2 had been improved, and the overarching future story had made bigger leaps and bounds than ever.  The multiplayer was even pretty fun, though it got boring quite quick as I could not escape the sense that I was doing the same thing over and over again.

I was eagerly anticipating "Assassin's Creed 3" to be released this year, but Ubisoft is giving me blue balls and instead is coming out with another "Brotherhood"-esque installment entitled "Assassin's Creed: Revelations."  Revelations?!  Finally, they might explain some shit to us this time!  Confusing cliffhangers and other unsolved mysteries have been a staple of the series, and now that three games have come out they may hopefully be ready to tell us more of what's going on.

The first round of teasers have already come out, as well as a Game Informer cover featuring the game.  The Game Informer cover offers the most clues as to what the game will be about.  The cover features two protagonists from past games: Ezio from the last two installments, looking like age has finally caught up with him, and Altair from the first game.  It has been confirmed that both Ezio and Altair will feature prominently in this next installment.  Behind Ezio's head, you will see a building that might look familiar, for this is the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (Constantinople in Ezio's time), confirming that this will be the main setting of the next game. 

I was a little peeved that Ezio is featured again, for I did not think there was any reason that we needed to see more of his story, but his continuing presense is redeemed by the fact that he's in a completely different setting, and a very interesting one at that.  Istanbul is a very interesting place culture-wise, a clashing point between the cultures of Europe and the Middle East.  Plus, it's in Greece, one of the places I've been wanting to have featured in an Assassin's Creed game, and it will allow for much more ancient intrigue in the vein of the Romulus missions in "Brotherhood."

One question, though?  Ezio's looking pretty old this time around.  When does he, you know, procreate?  Isn't the whole point of the Animus to relive the memories of an ancestor.  You know, a direct descendant!  So when does Ezio have kids so one of them can become Desmonds great-great-great-however many times-grandparent.  This game better end with Ezio as a baby daddy or I'm gonna be pissed!

Overall, I'm excited about this game.  It should bring a lot to the table with the new setting, and it will be interesting how it will handle the body hopping via the Animus Black Room between Altair's and Ezio's memories.  Hopefully, though, this will eventually lead us to "Assassin's Creed 3."  I will have been waiting for long enough by the time this comes out.

Autism Speaks ... Now

Well, for the first post in a long time, it's serious issue time.  The topic of the day/week/month/whenever I decide to post again is mental disorders and PSA sites dedicated to increasing awareness about specific mental disorders.

You might have seen the ads on TV that are trying to increase awareness about autism.  There was one a little bit ago comparing the statistics for autism diagnoses versus other somewhat-more-serious ailments such as cancer, diabetes, and AIDS.  These are all put out by an organization known as Autism Speaks, an advocacy group trying to increase awareness about autism to help parents identify it earlier, opening the door to more treatment options.  According to them, 1 out of every 110 children has autism, up from 1 in 160 in an earlier ad, and for something so common to be so misunderstood is an injustice.

They've gotten a little more interesting with their advertising since then, with one coming out rolling back the degrees of separation from "I heard of some kid with autism" to "My son has autism"  AUTISM!!!!  Seems like they're making an unusually big deal out of it.  How should I know?  Well, according to the criteria they base their statistics on, I have autism.

When I was 15, I was diagnosed with PDD-NOS, atypical autism is you're not good with remembering acronyms.  My parents had always dismissed my shortcomings with social interaction as a "phase" that would pass over time.  However, with the combined pressure of the extended family and the school system, they finally thought around the time I was in middle school "Hey, this might not be a phase, let's get him tested for this 'Asperger's Syndrome' we keep hearing about!"  Autism Speaks and many other people and groups speaking out about autism would agree that my parents did all the wrong things, but I cannot blame them.  They were just victims of the same misunderstanding that Autism Speaks is working to correct.

Well, OHSU concluded that I did not have Asperger's, but that I was still on the autistic spectrum.  This was a relief for my parents, but it didn't help me all that much.  I still had issues, only now I had a name for them and knew that at my age there was not really much that could be done about them.  It doesn't exactly bode well for the 15-year-old psyche to be told, in a long roundabout way, that I would have problems for the rest of my life.

Back to Autism Speaks!  Their intentions are noble, and for the most part their reasoning is sound, but some of their methodology seems questionable.  Comparing autism to cancer or AIDS is quite bold considering that they are completely different in cause and severity.  As an autistic speaking here, I don't feel like I have an incurable disease.  I indeed have problems because of it, but I don't have the risk of dying an extremely slow, painful death.

One of the ethical issues regarding autism concerns what treatment is necessary.  There are many parents out there who boast that they have found "cures" for autism, and many others with autistic children are perking an ear to it.  On the other end, there are people who equate cures and treatments for autism with cures and treatments for homosexuality.  I would have loved to have treatment options, but as I don't feel that I have a disease, I don't feel like I have anything that needs to be cured.

Autism gives people a unique perspective on the world, but it also deprives us of many of the tools to effectively share this experience to the world.  If groups like Autism Speaks can encourage more parents to give their children these tools, then the world could have a lot to learn from us, all of us, not just the Bill Gateses and the Beethovens (allegedly).  Just as misunderstanding leads to prejudice and fear, understanding leads to respect and cooperation, and if that's really what Autism Speaks is about, then I support them in their endeavor.

The Worst Song Ever Made

I saw a video on YouTube the other day that changed my life.  I will never look at today's crappy popular music the same way again.  It has changed my perspective on everything.

This video was for Rebecca Black's "Friday"

I can say without a doubt that this is the worst song that have ever been written, ever.  Who thought that this would be good?!  What creatively bankrupt studio loosed it upon the world?!  This makes Justin Bieber look like Mozart.  This makes Hannah Montana look like Janis Joplin.  This makes Ke$ha look like God!

There seems to be a decent amount of effort sunk into this video, too, with some decent Adobe After Effects going on and a guest appearance by a rapper who, to me, looks like he would not stop for even a second to molest any of the teenage girls on screen.  Which leads me to the only positive thing I can say about the video: everyone is age-appropriate.  The teenagers actually look like teenagers, rather than the 20-somethings in letterman jackets you get even in movies about high school.

I'm not even sure that this is real, and not some joke pulled on YouTube to parody all the teeny-bopper pop songs that have been raping our culture for what seems like the last decade.  If it is, then it's a pretty well-done joke, and I commend them for their bold statement against the music establishment.

However, all evidence that I could dig up points to the creators, Ark Music Factory, as being dead-pan serious in their effort to cement Rebecca Black as the next pop sensation.  Their strategy is to duplicate Justin Beiber's rise to fame and debut a new pop star over YouTube to gain enough groundswell for her to really make it big.  If she signs with a record label, then God help us all!

If ever there was a song that would bring about the End of Days, this would be it.  This is the absolute worst, the low point of pop culture, the horrific embodiment of everything that is wrong with the music industry today.  This ear-shrieking siren of death will bring about the undoing of the world.

And I recommend everyone go watch her video!

This is something everyone needs to see.  It's actually so bad, it's brilliant.  It will make you look at acts like Justin Beiber, Ke$ha, and Lady GaGa with new eyes, and make you say "well, at least it's not Rebecca Black."  I'm no longer ashamed of actually liking Katy Perry, because if anyone questions my good taste, I now have something to show them, so that they may see the error of their ways.

You can find the official video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0  They shut down the ratings system, so if you want to contribute to the already-impressive hit count on the video without guilt, then just post in the comments about how terrible it is and you will be absolved.

Enter the world of "Friday," if you dare!

Paradigm Shift

Here's a little double-feature follow-up to the post I made just earlier today about the new Medal of Honor.  It seems that some people (Cody) threw a shit-fit and game me an earful about how influential the MoH series has been.  I agree with you, Cody, I just think that this game was a hackneyed mess only elevated by a par-for-the-course mutliplayer.  And no, the fact that the multiplayer is decent does not excuse the fact that the single-player (or at least my experience with it) was broken beyond belief.

Now, let's lighten up.  Now that I've given both of my readers an earful about a game that I didn't expect to hate, I'll dish out seconds about a game that I didn't expect to like.  I'm astonished, actually!  This game has all the elements that should throw me off and send me away, but I was drawn to it and enjoyed it despite.

The game is Final Fantasy XIII, and to those people who are calling my sexual orientation into question for liking a wussy little JRPG over a big, tough manly military shooter, well then that is FABULOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUS!!!!!!!!!!!

Final Fantasy XIII is generally regarded as one of the worst in the series (not including the recent Final Fantasy XIV Online).  People seem to take issue to the confusing story, the repetitive gameplay, and the domination of the cast by emo kids with strange hair colors.  Wait, am I talking about this game or the whole series (ba dum tish).  I can say now that I'm not one of those people.  I've so far been able to follow the story, get engaged in the gameplay, and actually connect with the characters.

To explain the backstory of this game would be like trying to explain quantum physics, and it would be pointless because I hardly know any of the backstory.  There's this place called Cocoon, and this thing called the fal'Cie that everyone's trying to get to, and all of the main characters get these tattoos which mean that they are these things called l'Cie and they need to fulfill their Focus or they get turned into these other things and ... AAAURGH, my brain hurts.

Besides that, the story is actually fairly genuine and well-put-together.  One of the l'Cie is named Sara, and her fiancee Snow and her sister Lightning both try to rescue her from the fal'Cie.  Lightning is dragging around this black guy called Sammy Sosa or something who has a chocobo chick tucked away in his afro (don't ask), and Snow is dragging around two kids: Hope, the embodiment of "pussy," and Vanille, the embodiment of "totally freaking bananas."  They fail, Sara turns into an ice sculpture, they all wander around on a truly-amazing-looking solidified sea, and that's as far as I've gotten so far because, being Final Fantasy, its long-long-long-long-long-long-long-long-long-long-long-long-long.

The point where I knew I was getting into the story was the requisite Final Fantasy love-story flashback featuring Snow and Sara, and I was actually kind of touched by it, even though I had been sitting around for like fifteen minutes since the last battle and was like "okay, that's nice, can I play the damn game now."

The combat system is simple while still achieving a sense of depth and involvement.  You spend most of the time pushing the Auto-Battle button (if you're me), and setting up chains of spells and attacks for a little custom ass-kicking.  Being a turn-based game, there's a certain amount of time you have to wait before making a move, but this is slightly countered by the presence of multiple layers, allowing you to make multiple moves in one turn, or make individual ones in almost-real-time.  There's also a Paradigm system that allows you to alter the behavior of your party members in combat, the requisite RPG skill assignment system to upgrade character stats and unlock new moves, and a thousand more things I haven't learned about because they likely haven't been introduced yet.  This sounds like a lot of thinks to keep track of, but it's well-handled enough in the game to not be a bother.

So far, I'm liking Final Fantasy XIII.  I'm almost loving it, in fact.  Don't expect me to be attending conventions in Cloud Strife cosplay any time soon, but do expect me to pay a little more attention and have a little more respect for a genre that I've mostly ignored over the years.

The Goat That Never Was

I was never excited about the new modern "Medal of Honor."  I agreed with analysts at the time that the game would be meeting stiff competition with "Halo: Reach" being released at around the same time and "Call of Duty: Black Ops" just around the corner.  It had no reason to exist, predictably did not meet sales expectations, and was sure to be just another mediocre modern-warfare shooter.

That is, until I played it.

This game is not just mediocre, it's downright terrible.  The single-player campaign is an unpolished mess, the multiplayer is a horribly unbalanced sniper-fest, and the requisite co-op survival mode or any fitting replacement is completely absent.  It's an overall poorly-made, lackluster package that fails to meet up to the standard of other cut-rate CoD knockoffs.

Where else should I take my first bite into this shit sandwich than with the campaign.  There was real effort to make everything you do here accurate to real-life military operations, and the whole thing is set around a real military campaign in Afghanistan.  This realistic tone clashes with the high-octane setpiece-action gameplay that dominates the game as part of its obligation to be just like Call of Duty, and there are parts where the game wholesale copies sequences from Call of Duty but cannot make them as interesting due to their obligation to be realistic to real-world procedures.   Pick one and stick with it, Medal of Honor, these things don't mix well.

It's a fairly petty gripe, and one that is easily resolved through changing the settings, but the default controller sensitivity is very low.  It's cumbersome to switch between different targets when the reticule doesn't move any quicker than a slow crawl.  R.O.B. the Robot turns quicker than your guy on the default setting, and when you're in marking-targets-for-airstrikes mode, it's like R.O.B.'s batteries are dying.  THIS IS NOT REALISTIC, MEDAL OF HONOR.  Guns move quicker than this.

Also, please give me a clear indicator of how close I am to dying.  You know how in Call of Duty the screen turns all red when you're about to die?  That's a good thing: it lets you know right away that you need to take cover.  Sure, there is a little red fringe around the screen in Medal of Honor, but it stays to the sides like it doesn't want to interrupt you.  Believe me, the news that I will die if I take another hit is important enough to warrant telling me.  Again, back to realism:  In real life, you can tell very easily if you are about to die.  I know you can't replicate excruciating pain and blood loss in your game, but that's why you use another system to tell me.

Don't even get me started on the graphics.  The single-player uses a modified version of Unreal Engine 3, which doesn't even begin to make sense since they packed in the much more advanced Frostbite Engine for the multiplayer.  Unreal Engine 3, really?  I could make a game in Unreal Engine 3.  I know you "heavily modified" it, but it seems that by "heavily modify" you meant "break."

I'll sum up all my issues with the graphics with one little instance.  There's a scene where you are hiding behind a hill and a goat comes right up in your face.  At least I think it was a goat, you can't really tell when the textures take 5 minutes to pop in.  I can't describe fully how terrible this thing looked, but I'll just say that the sheep in Minecraft look more realistic.  This was obviously a chance to show off how detailed the textures were, but it was totally ruined when the showing-off subject looked like an amorphous polygon-laden white blob.

This ... is ... inexcusable.  This is just unacceptable.  You just don't ship a game out like this, much less a big-budget fall blockbuster game.  It's broken when it has no right nor excuse to be.  Whoever QA tested this over at EA should be fired immediately.

Okay, moving on to the multiplayer.  The multiplayer is actually okay: it's functional and looks really nice with the much more stable Frostbite Engine.  Yet again, though, it has no right to exist.  The map design and gameplay are just like Call of Duty with no improvements other than it being built on a better game engine.  It tries to do nothing new, and makes no effort to separate itself from its competitors.  It's also severely lacking in features, only including three classes and minimal upgrades.

What really puts the nail in the coffin, though, is how unbalanced it is.  Sniping is ridiculously easy: no scope-steadying like in Call of Duty and no windage to worry about like in Bad Company 2, just point and shoot.  There are also no killcams, so a sniper can rack up dozens of kills with no one knowing where the bastard is. Overall, it's heavily biased towards camping and sniping, and if you're on the receiving end, it can be terribly frustrating.

The game sucks, simple as that, and I feel sorry for anyone who paid full price for it.

82nd Annual Snooze Festival

The Academy Awards definitely sneaked up on me this year.  I didn't even know they were going to be tonight before I checked my e-mail and saw an announcement on the Yahoo homepage.  For some reason, I wasn't really looking forward to them enough to keep track of the date.

However, I tuned in at 5:00 sharp and watched the whole thing.  Now that I have endured the three-plus hour award ceremony, I know why I wasn't excited for this.  To put it lightly, it was a load of bore.

It's often exciting when you see a movie or several movies that you really liked snatching up awards left and right. Here, this effect only really applied when "Inception" started sweeping the technical awards.  The rest of the awards were distributed amongst movies I either haven't seen yet, don't ever want to see, or just plain didn't like.  

The effect I described worked in the opposite when I saw movies like "Alice in Wonderland" and "The Wolfman" getting awards.  Sure, they were for things like costumes and art direction, but still.  Those movies were awful, and their names don't even deserve to be uttered alongside this year's greats.  By the way, how the hell did "Alice" win for Best Comedy/Musical at the Golden Globes?!  There were way better comedies that came out this year (*ahem* Scott Pilgrim *ahem*).

Now, let's run down the major award winners.  "Black Swan" surprisingly only netted like one award that I can remember, a long-overdue Best Actress nod to Natalie Portman.  Out of all the Best Picture hopefuls, this is the one that I have the most interest in seeing.  "The Social Network" is up there, but I probably won't see it just out of defiance of this movie about Facebook being the movie for my generation.  That one really locked horns with "Inception" over the technicals, and it ended up being a pretty even split between them.

"True Grit" is one that I want to see, "The Kids Are Alright" and "Winter's Bone" are ones that I can take or leave, but the one that I really have no desire to see, at all, ever, is this year's Best Picture "The King's Speech."  Blah blah blah, the King has a speech impediment, blah blah blah, historical significance, blah blah blah, overcoming adversity, blah blah blah, blatant Oscar baiting, blah.

There were several notable snubs this year.  The only recognition Chris Nolan's film-making genius got this year were shout-outs in special effects editors' acceptance speeches, and Daft Punk was never even considered for their radically cool and different score for "Tron: Legacy."

Even more notable were those that we lost this year.  Leslie Nielsen?!!  Pete Postlethwaite?!! IRVIN KERSHNER?!! DINO DE LAURENTIIS?!!! Hollywood lost a lot of great, talented people this year.

So there you have it, last year in cinema.  A lot of people failed to get recognition, even more people died, and the best picture of the year was the same movie it seemingly always is.  The prospects for this year seem much better, but we won't really know what the Oscar lineup will be until those movies start coming out the month before next year's awards.  We can only hope.

And now, I took my laundry downstairs during the cheesy grade-school song sequence at the end, so I better check on that.

The GameFly Rundown

Well, I've returned my Valentines presents to GameFly, and am drumming my fingers eagerly anticipating the next two games they'll send me (hopefully Bulletstorm and Killzone 3 if all goes well).  Now that I've played a little more of 3D Dot Game Heroes and Crackdown 2, I'd like to give my thoughts so far after bidding them farewell.

3D Dot Game Heroes is ... is ... well, it's Zelda.  Sure, some of the details have been altered, it has a really unique 3D cubist art style, and is packed with referential humor, but it's pretty much just Zelda sans Link.  Not much else to say about it: I would definitely buy it if I ever found a copy in stores, moving on.

I actually have a lot to say about Crackdown 2 now that I've gotten into the meat of what the game is.  Essentially, it's an open-ended sandbox taking gameplay cues from both Grand Theft Auto and a Prototype/Infamous-type super-powers game.  Your guy is super-powered, indeed, but the actual powers are not all that expansive.  You can run full pelt at 40 miles an hour (more or less) and jump 20 feet straight in the air (more or less), but there's not much in the way of interesting powers other than that.  The "more or less" here comes from the fact that your guy's agility can be upgraded by hunting down special orbs or completing rooftop races.

This leads me to the one interesting thing I can say about the game, the levelling of skills.  By killing enemies in different ways, doing special maneuvers, and collecting orbs scattered throughout the city, you can increase your strength and agility and unlock different weapons and vehicles.  It's something that genuinely not seen in very many other games in its genre, and something I'd like to see more of.

With that out of the way, the rest of the game is competent but uninspired.  The combat boils down to either shooting, exploding, running over, or beating up enemies either with your fists or with a nearby environmental object.  There's enough variety, but not anything that the game can call its own.  The acrobatics are not all that fun, either.  Getting around the city via the rooftops, an act that is made interesting to look at with the parkour stylings of Assassin's Creed or the electricity-powered flair of Infamous, comes down to either running, jumping, or grabbing something in Crackdown.  Climbing a building is especially yawn-inducing: "jump, grab, jump, grab, jump, jump, grab."  No real climbing, no swinging, and very little shimmying on ledges: it's just jumping and grabbing.

Overall, it's just kind of okay.  The skills levelling is somewhat unique, and the commander's voice you hear throughout the game adds an almost Verhoeven-esque tone to the whole experience, but it's dragged down by uninspired combat, unengaging acrobatics, and a clear lack of focus in its overall design.  It all amounts to a heaping amount of side missions that eventually results in some kind of game progression, without the benefit of a clear plot to move things along.  5/10: A good 10 to 20 dollar game, there you go.

Happy F***ing Valentines Day

Well, here it is: the holiday dedicated to love and devotion to that one special someone. Ya da da da da, point is, I hate it.  Not the concept of the holiday, but what it represents to me and all others like me.  On any other day, I can see a happy couple and not be bothered by it, but now that it's f***ing Valentine's Day, happy couples are everywhere, and general lovey-doveyness is all over the place.  It ironically makes me pissed off to the very core.

Antipathy towards Valentine's Day is fairly easy to explain.  For every one of the happy couples out there that fortune smiles down upon, there are a few dozen sorry losers that are still wiping off the blood and scat from their last meeting with fortune.  Yeah, I know, "fortune" and "fate" are basically just excuses for us to not try, but the thing is that a lot of us have, lots of times.

Let me tell you about the 600 foot wall.

Everyone who's ever felt any amount of social anxiety knows about the 600 foot wall.  It's that feeling you get where, with every fiber of your being, you want to go and meet someone and/or get to know them, but you are at the complete mercy of a barrier made of excuses and self-doubt.  I know this feeling very well, because it happens to me all day, every day, and I have no way that I know of to stop it.

It's funny that the acronym for Social Anxiety Disorder also describes what it does to your psyche.

For all the S.A.D. people out there, Valentine's is the time for anger and apathy.  Particular emphasis should be placed on the apathy part, because that's the only way a lot of us get through the day without going hair-pullingly, teeth-gnashingly, screaming-profanities-in-publicly insane.

It was looking like one of those days today.  I walked down to start classes in the morning met by a chilling wind and a thick blanket of dark grey clouds neatly conveying my mood most mornings.  After a few sessions of trying to stay awake during lectures, I walked over to my mailbox, and what do I see but a very special Valentine's gift courtesy of GameFly.

Yay for temporary distractions.

Might as well give my first impressions of what was in those special envelopes.  Crackdown 2 is a super-sprinting, moon-gravity-jumping third-person shooter developed by Ruffian Games for the Xbox 360.  At first glance, it looks a lot like another game published by Microsoft Game Studios, with the energy shields, power armor, and regenerating health.  However, when powerup orbs, auto-aiming, and going all kung-fu on people's asses are introduced, these comparisons are immediately thrown out.  The controls are rather slippery, and the platforming rather imprecise, but it almost works for this kind of game.  This would be a fun game for multiplayer, definitely.  I could just imagine opening fire on one of my friends from 60 feet in the air, and engaging in good button-mashing fisticuffs when bullets fail.

The other game is 3D Dot Game Heroes, developed by From Software and published by Atlus in North America as an exclusive for the PS3.  It features a hero who must collect six power orbs to free the land from an ancient evil force, and starts with you getting pulled out of bed and sent to the king, who gives you a weapon and says "It's dangerous to go out alone - take this."  Yep, this is a 3D pixelated homage to the 8-bit action adventure classics, especially one in particular put out by Nintendo.  From what I've played of it, it's just great, and I'd totally recommend it to any fans of the old-school Zelda games.

Well, the day is almost over, so I shall spend the rest of the night in solitude playing more of the awesome games that GameFly was nice enough to finally get to me today (I sent in the previous two games on Sunday, last Sunday).  Good night, all, and have a happy f***ing Valentines day.

EDIT: Turns out "the rest of the night" was wrong, because I got called in to work at around 6.  Blast!

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Anger

Every Yahoo article on higher education pisses me off!  Not that anything else on Yahoo is much better, but the higher education articles take the cake.  It isn't that they are necessarily worse than the others, it's my perspective when reading them.  Want to have a rewarding career with a good salary?  Guess what?  You're in the wrong major!  You're gonna have to get into Accounting or Nursing while there's still time.

The article I found yesterday was no different, but was slightly more thought provoking and less shallow.  Business blogger and author James Altrucher's controversial stance on the transition from high school to college was profiled.  Altrucher believes that this transition shouldn't be instantaneous, as it often is, but that people should have some time in between to develop crucial skills and figure out their place in the world.

Great, I initially though, something else I got wrong!  I'm three years and most of Grandpa's college fund deep, and now I'm realizing I really should have taken some time off to figure out what I wanted to do with my life before I took the plunge.

Granted, I was simply doing what my parents, teachers, peers, government, and society instructed me to do.  Altrucher's views are controversial because they go against everything about the role of college that has been viewed by mainstream society as just how it's done.  In fact, the general pressure we're getting from who are supposed to be our role models, especially President Obama, is that we need as many people in college as we can find.  Sorry if your message seems a little misguided when there's all these college graduates stuck in the unemployment line, Obama.

The alternatives to immediately going to college discussed by Altrucher are starting a business, doing some world travelling, creating art, trying to make it as a stand-up comedian, writing a book, working for charity, and mastering a game or sport.  I actually tried the "writing a book" route while in high school, but trying to take the summer off to do it in my house was met by considerable pressure from the parental end.  I felt like I was in the R&D division of a major corporation: "Give me some results or we're shutting this whole operation down!"  Also, I have done some travelling: not all that much, but enough to learn lessons that many of my countrymen live their entire lives without learning.  I have no qualms with what he is suggesting.  They teach people what they need to know to figure out who they are, and none of them require searching for a job in the bone-dry unskilled labor market.

Doing much of this on the scale that Altrucher suggests is risky, though.  There's still a considerable monetary investment needed for many of the alternatives, and many parents still would feel better about their kids being in college knowing that they're getting something accomplished rather than fucking around for a few years "finding themselves."

Altrucher's way may be the only way right now considering current education policies.  High schools seem to want nothing more than to have a good enough percentage of their students pass the state standards tests, and colleges seem to want nothing more than to be either free-form knowledge dispensaries or highly-specialized career generators.  The only time people have to find themselves is their own time.

Perhaps this can be changed.

The change could come from the high school end.  Why not?  The ridiculously broken compulsory education system in America needs a complete overhaul anyway.  Why not build career exploration deeper into the curriculum rather than just being a token add-on in the current system.  There's a million other problems that need fixing, we could definitely fix this one while we're at it.

Perhaps colleges could change.  It wouldn't require as much from the government, and could be implemented and tested in private colleges almost instantly.  They're halfway there as is: they just need advisors who advise rather than just sign off on classes for next quarter.  The expectation in today's culture is that college is the place to find yourself, anyway.  Why don't the colleges really aspire to help with that.

Maybe it's easier than it's made out to be, and we don't need a drastic Altrucher-level plan to gain all the life skills and self-exploration we need.  Wow, I'm already a lot less pissed about an article I was only mildly pissed off about to begin with.  Maybe the next Yahoo article will be even better.

Or not!

Why Do We Care

The Super Bowl is here: in fact, it's going on right now.  You probably didn't need me to tell you that.  Unless you live in any country other than the U.S. or are living under a rock, you'd know that the country is going  through its annual football fervor.  The commercials, the promotions, the constant, incessant hype!  Packers this, Steelers that!

And I could care less.

I'm not even watching it right now, and I don't plan to.  Truth is, I don't give two flying shits about football, especially NFL football.  There's no NFL team here in Oregon, so the whole "local pride" thing doesn't really cut it.  Hell, the college I go to doesn't even have a football team (we're big on basketball, though).  The only sports I have even an inkling of interest in are NASCAR, MMA, and whenever they show poker on TV.  With NASCAR there is always the possibility of an epic crash, MMA is basically two people beating the snot out of each other which is always viscerally fun, and I feel like when I watch poker I'm learning skills that can make me some money sometime in the future.

Football, however, I find painfully dull.  It's incredibly slow, horribly repetitive, and since all the players are decked out in insane amounts of padding, the chances of anyone getting seriously hurt while playing it are ridiculously slim.

Why do we even care about it, though?

This has more to do with culture than anything.  Football is right up there with baseball and basketball in the Holy Trinity of American Sports.  It doesn't have to be better than soccer, rugby, hockey, lacrosse, tennis, or the rest of the myriad of sports with huge international followings that Americans don't give a shit about.  As long as it's made in America, we're more than happy.

American culture is pretty much what happens when you mix exclusivity with a superiority complex.  We don't care about anyone else's stuff, and no one else cares about our stuff, whether it be sports or systems of measurement.  And since we're the only nation that measures their football plays in yards, we get the impression that we're better than everyone else.

Since the time of America being a global superpower will draw to a close (it will happen, people), it's about time we started taking steps to join the international community on an equal footing.  Back when we were waffling on whether or not to sign the Kyoto accords, I though that we should, not because it would have any significant impact on our carbon emissions, but as a sign that we were willing to submit to the same rules as any other nation, that we had grown out of the "AMERICA!!! FUCK YEAH!!!!" mindset that has stuck on like an ideological cancer at least since World War 2, and that when someone else started doing way better than we were, we were willing to pass the torch.

Wow, this really ran off course didn't it.  To wrap up here, Americans like football and the Super Bowl and all that because they're American and nothing else.  Have fun watching the Steelers win again!  Peace out!

The Siskel and Ebert Effect

Happy February!  I took last week off from posting to this blog since it was midterms week were at OIT and I couldn't get a minute in edgewise between writing a 5-page paper and writing several more.

Today, I observed an interesting phenomenon in the comments section of a YouTube video about Mass Effect 2.  The game, which came out for the Xbox 360 last year and was just recently released for the PlayStation 3, is an RPG with third-person shooter trappings, or the other way around.  This really bothered some people, but didn't really phase others.

What I observed was what I call the Siskel and Ebert Effect.  There are two kinds of people in these kinds of arguments: Siskels and Eberts.  Siskels are all about details, focusing on all the little pieces which, to them, make or break an experience.  Eberts, however, are more about the big picture, viewing the experience as a whole and judging it based on whether it lived up to what it was trying to do.

To the Eberts, Mass Effect 2 was nothing to bitch about.  It had a decent amount of flexibility in the gameplay and forced to player to make very tough decisions that shaped the entire game.  The Siskels railed on about how it was a "shooter with plot choices" that didn't offer the complex skill selection or strategic combat they were looking for.

Neither of them are wrong, they are just coming at it from different perspectives.  This game was the perfect one to put these two perspectives at odds with each other: An RPG at heart, but a shooter by design.  

As for me, I enjoyed the game from both of these angles.  It feels very much like an RPG, including the initial struggle of finding the "right class."  This is something I have to do for pretty much every RPG I've played that has pre-set classes: play a selection of them to find the one that feels right for how I play the game.  For example, the "right class" for me in WoW is a Paladin, a Rogue in Dragon Age, and a Vanguard in Mass Effect 2.

The shooter aspects are refined and solid, with no major hiccups, and the RPG aspects are naturally flawless. This is Bioware, after all.  Judging by the experimentation the games has gone through from 1 to 2, it's not quite clear how the series will progress gameplay-wise.  Hopefully it will be another one of those genre contradictions, because it's just too damn fun to watch people bitch about those.

I, Socialist Libertarian

I have rarely bothered to evaluate where I stand politically.  I am "independent" on my voter registration, which, by the way, is the best way to go.  Here in Oregon, you sacrifice the ability to vote in the primaries, but it's all worth it when you can vote for whoever the hell you want on the main ballot.  I voted for Obama in the '08 election, but I also voted to reelect Gordon Smith.  I voted for Chris Dudley in the Oregon gubernatorial race last year, but voted to reelect Ron Wyden.  It's awesome!!

However, for a class I am taking this term at OIT (Media & Democracy), I have to take this political standing quiz online as part of an assignment.  It's the Political Compass, which is available for free at http://www.politicalcompass.org/ .  It's rather fun, I recommend taking it if you're curious about where you stand politically versus a sampling of famous world leaders.

How it works is that after taking the quiz, you are scored based on a 2D plane spanning the range of -10 to 10 on both axes.  The X axis represents views on the economy, with Socialist on the left and Capitalist on the right (the actual analysis labels these points as Communist and Neo-Libertarian, but I'm sticking with my wording).  The Y axis represents views on social policy, with Authoritarian on top and Libertarian (Anarchist) on the bottom.  The quiz you take to even get this far is pretty long, and is full of loaded words and difficult choices, but it's worth it.

My score: Socialist Libertarian (-3.88, -1.95).  I share this quadrant with Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and the Dalai Lama.  For comparison's sake, Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand were extreme Capitalist Libertarians, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong were Socialist Authoritarians, and George W. Bush and Gordon Brown are Capitalist Authoritarians.  Hitler, interestingly enough, shares a quadrant with Bush and Brown, but resides more towards the middle on the Capitalist-Socialist plane.

Being that I am a big Buddhism fan, it's intersting that I ended up not far from the Dalai Lama.  However, I'm closer to Pope Benedict XVI, who is a moderate Socialist Authoritarian.  I've strived, through my voter registration decision and many other factors, to be as "true neutral" as possible, and according to this I've almost succeeded.  To anyone still reading this, take the damn quiz.  You might be surprised to find where you stand.

The State of the Union

Yesterday, President Obama delivered his State of the Union address for 2011.  The speech was mostly about the role fostering innovation and improving education and infrastructure is going to have to take in America's recovery as a nation.  Essentially, it's what Obama goes on about in every public address he gives, it seems.

Obama is definitely inspired by the Kennedy's, using his opportunities to get up on the podium to try to inspire the people to pursue innovation.  The only difference is that, as Obama would admit if you heard his address, times have changed.  People are much more critical of politicians now than they were back in JFK's time, so attempts by the president to promote change will fall on many more deaf ears.

Well, hindsight is way more accurate than foresight, so let's take a look at what the first Congress under Obama actually did.  Before we get into that, I'd like to shake off a misconception that seemingly a lot of Americans have.  The Congress holds pretty much all the power for domestic legislation: that's why they're called the Legislative Branch, for crying out loud.  Obama just signs bills and runs the military.

I'm sick and tired of the attitude that a lot of us have, hanging the president in effigy for every one of our nation's shortcomings, whether they be the fault of the government or not.  Hell, it could be our fault as the American people, but what will we exchange for personal responsibility?  Blaming the President!! The Congress pretty much has the President by the balls if they have a large enough party majority.  If you have a beef about how our country's been doing over the past couple years, don't blame Obama, blame Congress.

So, getting back to what Obama and the last Congress did.  Quite a lot, actually!  They put through a reform of healthcare (It will probably end up being Obama's No Child Left Behind, but oh well), they launched a massive stimulus effort to stem the tide of the Great Recession, they ended the U.S. combat role in Iraq, and on their way out the door, they even repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell.  Lame duck Congress my ass!

Overall, we've gotten a lot done over the last couple of years.  It isn't like we've done all this without a few growing pains.  The national budget has not looked any better, and Obama along with the Democratic party have made more than a few enemies along with it, some going so far as to form their own party.  Wherever we end up going as a nation, we'll have everyone, including ourselves, to thank for it.  After all, Obama isn't the dictator of the Socialist Republics of America yet.

The Build

I have been working for the last several weeks on restoring my old desktop.  By restore, of course I mean that I totally gutted it and replaced everything in an attempt to bring it out of the year 2001.  Yes, this computer is old, so old that it took considerably more effort than I originally anticipated to get it to play nice with the new parts.

For all the frustration of trying to get everything put together and working, it was actually kind of fun.  I daresay, it's a kind of fun that will match the fun I will experience being able to play the latest PC games on it.  This was an real eye-opener, an experience that has taught me a lot about the tech hobby surrounding PC gaming.

I used to not understand PC gamers, always talking about "graphics" this and "polygons" that:  a few megabytes here, and a few gigabytes there, and maybe a few terabytes thrown in for good measure.  I grew up with a computer that couldn't even run N64 ROM's, so all of this was totally off my radar, until now.

Now that I have seen what lies between the side panels, taken it out, and replaced it with updated parts, I can really appreciated what PC gamers see in all of this.  It's rather like how motorheads will talk about the new spark plugs or catalytic converters or whatever they got.  The same level of pride applies to PC enthusiasts talking about their new video cards or sound cards or RAM chips.

There are a few gaming experiences that are still exclusive to the PC, and there is a feel to playing with the keyboard and mouse that cannot be replicated with the controller.  At it's core, though, PC gaming is a tech hobby, plain and simple.  Souping up my 10-year-old computer has taught me that, and has given me a proper induction into the hobby.

Gender Roles

Floating around the massive expanses of the Internet, it seems that there are more debates than usual regarding gender roles.  Some people are concerned that they are eroding from modern society, but most people welcome the elimination of the concept.  Well, sounds like it's my turn to put in my two cents on the issue.

I'm right there with the majority in believing that gender roles have got to go.  The philosophical thinking of modern times has no purpose for the overly-simplistic categorization offered by gender roles, and forcing people into those categories has done more harm than good.

The traditional gender roles, you have probably heard a million times.  Men are supposed to be stoic, strong, and dominant, while women are supposed to be sympathetic and submissive.  The people who advocate gender roles are right in that men generally exhibit dominant, stoic behavior, and that women generally display more empathy and the need for togetherness.  Also, they are right in pointing out that such roles were necessary back when families were under constant threat from whatever loomed in the wilderness.

However, "generally" is the key word here.  Not all men are dominant by nature, and not all women are submissive by nature.  At the very least, systems of rigidly-enforced gender roles ostracize the dominant women and submissive men, and at the very worst fuel aggression and blind submission; women forced into being abused by men who were forced to abuse.

These roles have become obsolete in modern society.  People are encouraged to find their own path, rather than fill a pre-determined role.  Men are encouraged to show their "feminine sides," and women are encouraged to have leadership aspirations.

Things are not perfect, though.  We need to take into consideration that the pro-gender-role people are right that most men are dominant and most women are submissive, and acknowledge this without reverting to full-on traditional gender roles or, for example, forcing men to be more empathetic than they are capable of.

We also need to do better at giving new generations what they need to find their own path in life.  Too often, people crash and burn or just flounder about once they enter the real world, not able to handle the pressure.  This is the only real advantage the traditional gender roles had.  People knew how they needed to live their lives and what was expected of them.  Nowadays, we don't have that luxury, and we need to do better at compensating for this.

This will not be easy.  The ideals being embraced by today's generations are totally alien to generations past, who were used to being told what their lifestyles should be.  It is indeed alien to Western culture in general, where the dominant religions emphasize "Read this, do what it tells you"  over any kind of self-exploration.  Indeed, the basic foundation of Christianity isn't privy to the concept.  There are denominations that embrace it (Thank you, Methodism), but the biggest, most mainstream sects generally don't.  Is there a religion out there that is built around choosing your own path to being the person you were meant to be, one that would be perfect for the world we live in today?

Yes!  It's called Buddhism!

"The Green Hornet" Review

This is a good year to be a comic book movie fan.  With today's subject kicking it off, and many others coming such as "X-Men First Class," "Captain America," and "Green Lantern," I can expect to be going to the movies much more often than in previous years.

Now, as for "The Green Hornet," this movie definitely takes not-so-subtle cues from the "Iron Man" movies in terms of its setup.  We have a trust-fund jackass who takes over his father's business, and becomes a tech-based superhero in his quest to actually make something of his life.  Gee, where have we seen that before?

The only difference here is that Tony Stark was actually competent, but Britt Reid, the hero this time around, has no clue of even how his dad's business works.  Take that perfect combination of ineptitude in all things and extreme arrogance and you have the perfect role for star Seth Rogen.  Personally, I am indifferent towards Seth Rogen.  I don't find him particularly funny in any movies he's been in, but his presence isn't necessarily a deal-breaker.  He's not Peter Jackson, and he's not Michael Bay; he's just J.J. Abrams.

There's a clever dynamic going on between Reid and Kato, played in the old TV series by Bruce Lee and this time by Jay Chou.  It really deconstructs the hero-sidekick relationship, and I'll just say things aren't alway rosy between the two.  It's kind of like the relationship between Sherlock Holmes and Watson in the most recent film adaptation, where the sidekick is less flawed than the hero, and acts as a neutral agent to guide the hero's character arc.  Bringing it up again, we also saw this dynamic played out between Rhodie and Tony Stark in "Iron Man 2."

Cameron Diaz does fine as the leading lady, but special props go to "Inglorious Basterds" star Christoph Waltz as the villain, Chudnofsky (aka. Bloodnofsky).  He perfectly plays off an antagonist who is more insecure than threatening, and tries to reverse this throughout the entire movie.  There are even opportunities for him to bring in some of the off-beat dark comedy displayed in "Basterds."

Deconstruction is the theme of the movie.  There is the deconstruction of the hero-sidekick dynamic, but there is also the deconstruction of the father vs. son, myth vs. reality dynamics going on with the elder Reid, the dynamic between the hero and the leading lady (which, refreshingly, leads to nothing in the movie), and the traditional role of the villain.  There is a self-awareness present here that we've previously seen in some of the joyously entertaining comic book movies of last year.

Overall, though, the spark of those ridiculously entertaining films is not present here.  I did not leave the theater with scenes from the movie abuzz in my head, or with any desire to talk about the memorable moments.  It just did not have the kind of offbeat energy that "Kick-Ass" or "Scott Pilgrim" had.  It seems that the trailblazers of the uber-entertaining, self-aware comic book movie have already rolled through, and "The Green Hornet" is the first piece of bland studio junk to follow the path.

What the iPad Means

Ah, the iPad; I was right along with everyone else mocking it before it released.  The tampon jokes were uttered, the snide remarks made, and I was fully willing to believe that this thing was going to be a one-off failure.  I was actually hoping it would fail.  It would give Apple a good dose of humility it's needed since the iPod took off.

Look at it, I said, it's just a giant iPhone that doesn't make calls.  What kind of impact will it possibly have?  No one will buy this, no one I tell you!

Well, I was wrong.

Apple's loyal minions (i mean *ahem* fans)  came out in droves to get their hands on Apple's overpriced hunk of uselessness.  Not only did Apple's customers take interest, but so did their competitors.  And so, bring on the iPad imitators: The Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Motorola Xoom, the BlackBerry PlayBook, and many more yet to be announced.

You often cannot be sure how important something will be in the long run until some time has past and the ramifications if its existence have truly been felt.  We are starting to see this with the iPad, and we can now judge what it means in the broad scheme of things.  The iPad represents something now; it is the first shot fired in a full-scale takeover by cell phone companies on the tablet PC market.

Tablet PCs have been around for quite a while before the iPad.  Of course, no one ever saw them unless they were on an episode of "Pimp My Ride," but they were around.  These were basically laptops with a touch screen instead of a keyboard and mouse, and they were put out by computer manufacturers such as HP.

The iPad did not posture itself in the beginning as a competitor to these devices, instead going after the market share of much-better-known e-book readers such as the Amazon Kindle.  Nowadays, though, you'll rarely see footage of any e-book reading on commercials for the iPad or it's competitors, so it's become clear what these devices are now focusing on.  They are the new tablet PCs, plain and simple.

The question now is what other tech markets will cell phone companies invade?  Cellular service providers are already locking horns with cable companies over the ISP market.  Random Aside: it's kind of ironic that cable companies, who originally were in competition with phone companies as ISPs, are now facing their toughest competition from what are ostensibly phone companies again.

When will we start seeing laptops or fully-featured computers put out by Motorola, BlackBerry, HTC, and the rest of the gang?  Car GPS's?  Washing machines?  Only time will tell.

2011: A Great Year for Shooters

This will be the first (of many, many) posts about video games.  Why?  Because I really like video games, and when I'm not pondering some greater mystery of existence, I'm either pondering this, movies, or anything else entertainment or pop-culture related.

The key word here is "culture."  Video games, movies, music and the like form the basis of what we can consider modern culture, and culture is one of the main issues regarding human existence.  But whatever, flimsy justification over, moving on.

2011 is shaping up to be an awesome year for first-person shooters.  Now, before I go further into this subject, I will say now that I will not be talking about the upcoming Call of Duty installment.  I am done with Call of Duty, period.  The series is at the point where it will only continue to stagnate without some drastic gameplay modification that will likely piss more fans off than increase confidence in the franchise.  That, and some of the ideas being thrown around by Activision are downright scary.

No, this is a year for shooters that aren't Call of Duty, Battlefield, or Halo for that matter, to enter the limelight and get some well-deserved attention.  What's interesting is that many of these are taking the self-aware insanity route, one that we haven't seen too far outside of "Painkiller" or "Serious Sam" for a while.  As for me, I love it.  I've grown sick of the modern-warfare pseudo-realistic shooters clogging up the modern game market, and it's nice to see some games aware of how insanely fun they are.

The main one that has stirred up a decent amount of discussion is "Duke Nukem Forever" (for reals).  Since the project has been taken over by Gearbox Software, it now has a release date (May 3), and has an announcement trailer that can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5svP9Wu0nk.  From what the trailer looks like, it will be one of the most self-aware, insane, hilarious, and downright fun shooters in recent history, coming to us courtesy of the king of self-aware, insane, hilarious, downright fun shooters, Duke Nukem.

Duke alone makes for an awesome year for the FPS, but there are even more out there.  Coming much sooner (February 22) is a game in the same ridiculously fun, over-the-top vein, Epic Games and People Can Fly's "Bulletstorm."  This may seem like a generic me-too of DNF, in the vein of "Dante's Inferno" last year.  Indeed, this may be the case, but that can only be determined once it releases, and judging by what we've seen of it, it is worth it to at least give this game a try.

It's definitely in good hands for the type of game it is billed to be.  Epic Games has given us "Unreal Tournament," a series of ridiculously fun, over-the-top first person shooters, and "Gears of War," a series of ridiculously fun, over-the-top third person shooters.  People Can Fly's past credit is for "Painkiller," a game many consider to be what "Doom 3" should have been, and are probably right.  All this, and the fact that the protagonist is voiced by Tank freaking Dempsay and one of the kill maneuvers is giving the enemy a good thorough .30-caliber enema, makes this game worth checking out.

One to watch out for later on in the year is Bethesda and Spash Damage's "Brink."  What word that has gotten out about this game definitely looks interesting.  It brings insane levels of character customization to the table, and I'm loving the cel-shady, "Borderlands"-esque art style.  It's also nice that another developer is experimenting with parkour mechanics after "Mirror's Edge" gave them a unsuccessful try.  Overall, looks like some good stuff.

Further off the insanity spectrum but still worth checking out is THQ and Kaos Studios' "Homefront."  I was perfectly willing to dismiss this as another game trying to get onto the modern warfare bandwagon, but the more I look into it, the more interesting it becomes.  Writing credits go to John Milius, the writer of war movie classics such as "Red Dawn" and "Apocalypse Now."  With that kind of talent, we can somewhat expect that this game will excel in the story department.  Details about gameplay also look promising, with multiplayer emphasizing use of all the tools of war, and an interesting item purchasing system akin to a more focused, streamlined, and updated version of the one in Counter-Strike.

What really got me interested, though, is that my mom brought it up.  A commercial came up on TV for it, and she thought that it looked like an interesting concept.  I know, I was shocked, too.  My mom expressing interest in a video game that wasn't made by Popcap, and a modern-warfare FPS at that.  This was just too strange to ignore.

So there you go, my abridged thoughts on each of the notable FPS titles coming out in 2011.  I will most likely go into more detail on each as they come out, and give you my thoughts if I get around to playing them.  The deluge of gaming-related posts has only just begun.

Welcome To The Bre2nan Experience

This is not a new blog.  This has been here a very, very long time (if 4 years is a long time to you).  It used to have a different name, but it was still here.  For the longest time, it has stood here, neglected, as I tried to remember what the password was to access it.

This mystery has now been solved.

And so, for the sake of efficiency, I have recycled this old blog: deleted the old posts, changed the name, and what have you, and voila, the Bre2nan Experience!!!  This is where I will be posting my mostly topical, sometimes insightful, always random thoughts on the world and my place in it.  

Enjoy!