Howl's Moving Castle

You should check out this trailer for a movie called Howl's Moving Castle. True, it's all anime-ish, but good lord! I'd put up with just about anything for those visuals. The movie is apparently based on a book by Diana Wynne Jones, who writes clever, fun fantasy for the young adult crowd. The guy directing the movie is the same guy who did Spirited Away, which won a best animated film award from any number of groups, including the Academy, and was a really imaginative, wonderfully drawn movie. The fact that Disney is brining in some big names to dub Howl in English could be good or bad, but either way this new film looks very promising. The only problem is that I'll be in Germany when it comes out, along with Batman Begins and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory. Doch schade.

Psychonauts redux

Looks like Psychonauts turned out about as the demo indicated: solid but not particularly innovative gameplay coupled with spot on, top-notch art direction, voice acting, and writing. Now I can eagerly anticipate the inevitable price drop later this year...

Guero

Beck's released a new album titled 'Guero' which is quite excellent. Very similar in style to Odelay, with a bit more emphasis on electronics and hip-hop influece. Or so it sounds to me, but I know not so much about these things.

Psychonauts

Psychonauts is a new game from Tim Schafer, the guy who designed Grim Fandango and Full Throttle. If you've not heard of either of those, they're widely considered adventure game classics. I've only played Grim Fandango myself, but I can say that it's definitely worth hunting for a copy. The game had absolutely amazing art direction, voice acting, music, and writing. It's one of those rare video games that will stick in your memory for years to come, not so much for its gameplay, which is really just the vehicle for transporting the actual content, but for its unique character.

Both of those games were developed when Schafer worked at LucasArts (back in the days when it didn't routinely butcher its flagship license), but he has since moved on to found his own company, Double Fine Productions. Psychonauts is their first game, and the first game that Schafer has worked on (to my knowledge) since leaving LucasArts. Its development has been somewhat protracted and rocky, but after being dropped by their initial publisher only to be picked up by Majesco, they are set to finally release the game on the 19th (for PC and Xbox, with PS2 theoretically coming 'soon'). Double Fine recently released a demo of Psychonauts to the public, which includes what looks to be the introductory training area of the game. I took the time out of my busy schedule of homework, homework, and more homework to play through it, and now you get to hear what I thought. Exciting, no?

The first thing you notice is that the fantastic art direction of Grim Fandango is still present in spades, along with the voice acting. What little of the writing I saw was promising. While the humor was forced at times, it was certainly entertaining, and the script quickly establishes the relationships between the major characters, not falling into the trap of a too lengthy exposition, which can quickly kill a video game. I was also very appreciative of the fact that what is essentially the tutorial section of the game is pretty well integrated into the narrative- many games have tutorials that are very jarring, forced, "Now click the left mouse button on the flashing box" affairs that are never any fun. Pyschonauts throws you right into a very simple level that presents you with a series of obstacles that are easy enough to figure out one by one, all while a psychotic drill sergeant is screaming imprecations and occasional instructions at you. It worked well. Technically, the game looks nice enough, with many of the new whiz-bang effects that we've come to expect, but when compared to Half-Life 2 or the like it doesn't stand out in this respect. This game will succeed graphically purely through art direction, as far as I'm concerned.

Overall, the game that this demo indicates could go either way. The section represented here is certainly a good start, but it's of course very difficult to draw any hard and fast conclusions from the brief opening sections of any game. As compared to other current games, Psychonauts most notable features were unquestionably its art direction, character design, and so on. The gameplay itself was solid but not outstanding, and certainly runs the risk of falling into the common action/adventure/platformer mold, but again, it's very hard to tell from such an early segment. In any case, it's likely that the story and art will be what carry the game.

While I sat here writing this, it occurred to me that Psychonauts was one of maybe four game in the past year that I've been actively interested in playing. (Along with Paper Mario 2, Half-Life 2, and World of Warcraft.) Though I have next to no time to actually play games anymore, I do try to keep up with the industry, and despite all the impressive steps that have been taken as far as graphical capability goes, there have just not been that many interesting games released in a while. Maybe I'm just not paying enough attention and missed a slew of amazing titles, but you can be sure that I'm really holding my breath for Psychonauts, particularly since I may actually have time to enjoy it this summer. It has the potential to be one of the first genuinely fun games to come my way in quite a while.

P.S.
The American Society of Magazine Editors has posted their picks for the year's best magazines.

Prince Ombra

Okay, I need to tell you something: I'm a huge dork. That's my justification for spending a couple of weeks reading a kind of cheesy, kind of fantasy book about a kid who heroically fights off the One Great Evil of the cosmos. What prompted me to pick up an obscure fantasy book from the early 80s? Read on, friend. Read on.

The first mention I heard of this book was in an article on Bookslut, which is the internet's premier librarian pornography website. Really. Anyhow, one of their contributors wrote an article on Speculative Fiction (which is apparently the new catch-all genre title that eliminates the problem of where to file stuff like the Book of the New Sun. Is it fantasy? Is it science fiction? Oh god, I can't tell!!) They particularly recommended a book titled Prince Ombra, written in 1982 by Roderick MacLeish, who appears to be the poster boy for obscure authors. I had just finished reading Stoppard's play The Invention of Love, which is excellent but difficult to get your head around, like most of his work, and was in the mood for something a little easier to read. Incredibly, the college library actually had a copy of Prince Ombra, so I was off!

After finishing the book, I can say this: it was interesting, but not so much that I would go through it again. The basic premise is the idea of the recurring hero (all the great legends of the past, Arthur, Gilgamesh, Susano, etc., are about different incarnations of the one eternal hero), and this time the hero has recurred in the person of a small boy with a crippled leg. The book is interesting in that, while it ostensibly takes its cue from such epic legends of the past, the story related here is very personal and anything but epic.

The article at Bookslut, and also the comments about the book on Amazon, praise the book particularly for its strong, believable characterizations and its well-developed setting. In fact, this is where I view the book as failing. It's true that there's strong sense of setting and that the characters behave realistically, but the way in which they're depicted is so blunt and clumsy that it kills any sense of believability. Where other authors will define a character by their actions and interactions, MacLeish just comes right out and says it. "Bob was a happy guy, but he was haunted by the death of his mother so many years ago..." Which wouldn't be so bad occasionally, but this is essentially the only way we get any characterization at all in the novel. Although in a sense it's necessary, since most of the characters are being influenced by an evil force at some point in the story, so the opportunity for demonstrating their true nature through action is somewhat limited. But anyhow.

The heavy-handed treatment of characters in the novel reflects a larger problem of the book: the writing overall can be fairly uneven. There are places where MacLeish is able to evoke a mood or scene beautifully, and there are other places where the prose is completely flat. Although the book is not for children and deals with fairly mature themes, there are places where he seems to be addressing an audience of younger people.

The book strikes me as the kind of thing that one might read and enjoy as a young adult, and carry fond memories of it into later life. Despite its undeniable charm and some particularly strong writing in places, the novel as a whole is more interesting than entertaining, and I found myself having to forgive it too much.

Things that should not change

Healthy eating is a good thing that we need to see more in America, and seeing healthier messages in the media is undoubtedly going to contribute to a change for the better. But there are certain lines that just should not be crossed.

Cookie Monster is named 'Cookie Monster' because he likes cookies. Not cucumbers, carrots, or chick peas. Cookies. It's in his bloody name. When Cookie Monster starts telling you that cookies are no good, well... It just makes you want to kill all those damn terrorists who are screwing up our beautiful homeland even more.

Newfangledness

Check out the page's fancy new design. Well, not so fancy, but still. I spent a lot of time this weekend working with CSS and HTML instead of doing homework, and the end results are a couple of swanky new doodads. Actually just two new doodads, really, but they're pretty cool. Try resizing your browser window. Notice how the page will dynamically resize itself to fit? Isn't that awesome? The other spiffy new thing is the oversize letter that begins each post now. Notice that they aren't graphic files, those are actually just regular text, which means that they resize themselves appropriately if you make your default font size bigger or smaller (hit Ctrl-'+' or Ctrl-'-' in Firefox). Impressive, no? The only other things that are different are just small cosmetic tweaks.

The page resizing bit I did on my own, but for the oversize letters I am indebted to Eric Meyer's excellent site css/edge. And of course the basic page design is the Scribe template created by Todd Dominey, which I've tweaked to make it cooler. Yeah.

And now that I've had my two cups of French roast, it's time to try and decipher some German.

Update: 'Drop caps' is apparently the 'correct' name for the big letters. As if anyone cared about being correct. Also, they don't look right in IE because, SURPRISE, it doesn't follow the W3C stylesheet specs. So if you're using IE, don't be a fool. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click 'Get Firefox.'

I've been had

As it turns out, hiding in my room all day didn't work at all. I never even got around to hiding before I'd been hit, and hit hard. At bloody 7:40 in the morning, someone tries to call me not once, not twice, but three times. The third time I finally rolled out of bed and answered it. As you might expect, I'm not the most coherent person in the world right after I've been woken up, so bear that in mind. The conversation went roughly like this:

"Whaaa...?"

"Mr. Grady, this is Officer Smith with the police. We were investigating a noise complaint in the attic of your building yesterday, and when we went up there to look around we found some homemade alcohol and what appeared to be a still. Your name came up when we asked around about this, and we need you to come in for questioning."

Now, I don't want to admit anything here I might regret later, so let's just say that this accusation scared the crap out of me.

"I... uh... I have a class at 11...."
"I think this takes precedence over that."
"Okay...."
"Mr. Grady, are you also aware that today is April Fool's Day?"
".......shit."

Absolutely scared the crap out of me. So while I can neither confirm nor deny the reports of a still being formerly located in the attic, I can happily say that there is not one there currently.

Here's hoping you had a much quieter awakening.

The Best Prank Ever

The 1st of April is always a bad day for me. The problem is that I'm an extremely gullible person, a trait which I prefer to call trusting. But however you name it, the fact remains that, if you think of the most ridiculous, asinine thing that your friends have ever convinced you was true, then I have been tricked into believing something at least twice as ludicrous. I am also a coward, which is why April Fool's day sees me hiding in my room trying to avoid other people. However, rather than spend all this time unproductively, I figured the least I could do was bring you the story of the best prank that I have ever witnessed with my own two eyes. And the best part of the story of the best prank is that, incredibly, it didn't happen to me. No, don't stop reading! It's still a funny story, I promise...

So when I was in high school, we had an assistant vice principal of discipline, and his name was Mr. Masters. Mr. Masters looked just like Mario. From the Nintendo games. Short, pudgy, moustache, everything except the stylish red cap. Mr. Masters also had no sense of humor about this fact at all; mention Mario around him, even in good fun, and you would be immediately threatened with suspension, or even expulsion. God forbid they force us to not go to school. Anyhow.

Our school was made up of several building, and on what was probably the front of the building that contained the cafeteria, in big letters way up on the side, it said "Oak Ridge High School," 'cause that was the name of the school. And it had the school logo beside it.

One day, everyone shows up for school. Today, though, instead of saying "Oak Ridge High School," the side of the cafeteria proudly displays "Mario High School."

Turns out that a couple of guys had climbed to the top of the building the night before, rappelled down the side, and rearranged the letters (they built their own "M") to more appropriately represent the management. Within two hours, everyone at school knew who was responsible, including the administration. But they could never prove it, the perpetrators were never actually caught, and their names were immortalized for the rest of the year.

Don't believe that this actually happened? In your face, sucka: