Review: Pan's Labrynth
Now this, this was a nice movie. Like Tim Burton only…. not cute in a creepy way. Billed as horror, well it had it’s moments. There was definitely some creep going on. There was some.. brutal, greusome moments. I had to hold milli’s head at parts and tell her when it’s over, while I was groaning and squirming in my seat. But then at times it was downright magical. Magical, I tell you.
This movie flips between the women caught in the Spanish Civil War (it’s in Spanish) and the repulsive tasks this girl has to accomplish to get away from it all and enter the Magical Kingdom. It ain’t disneyland. Dark and beautiful and magical, yet grounded and greuling and harsh like real life, this intense fairy tale doesn’t relent or give you time to regret anything that happens. Absolutely magninicent and gorgeous. Highly reccommended to see in the theatres for all the lovely scenery and shooting.
Link:El Laberinto del Fauno (2006)
Also link: official movie flash web site (with complete soundtrack…nice.)
Beware the Winter Solstice!
Thankfully we have passed this day, when the sun rises for only a few short hours, and now we have begun to blissful journey towards longer days and sunnier times. It may commonly be referred to as the Winter Solstice, which more accurately happened just into December 22nd, but technicalities aside we’re passed it and that’s what really matters.
I challenged myself this time to complete the comic in under an hour of working time, mainly because of the holiday season and massive preparations for not only new things to come but also an impending relocation of my base of operations. This may or may not become a recurring thing, I have all but promised The Game all of my internal organs is I do not keep up some semblance of a regular schedule. December has been extremely kind to Critical Hits, and we have even higher hopes for 2007!
Review: The Time Traveler's Wife
Title: The Time Traveler’s Wife
Author: Audrey Niffenegger
Year of Publication: 2004
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 536 pages
Rating: 4/5 – Worth paying full price
Review:
The Time Traveler’s Wife is hard to describe in so many words. When you break it down to it’s basic parts, it’s not much more than a tragic love story between a man and a woman who have a problem that gets in the way of their love. Nothing new or very exciting, as this also describes classics like Romeo and Juliet, and probably many trashy romance novels. What’s different about this book, however, is the way it’s told, and the particularly unique problem that the couple faces.
Why Games Should Never End
We’ve finally figured it out with years of study.
The hardest part of designing a game is not coming up with the idea, or original mechanics, or balance, or any of that stuff.
It’s figuring out how the darn game ends satisfactorily.
This problem, by the way, is not left solely to boardgames. Movies, comics, books: with many of them, the ending is a problem. But at least in those it’s a one way street. In games, you have to worry about what a group of people will do at the end.
Why is it such a problem in games? A little thing called “Kingmaker.”
We Work With Wii
The glowing blue light that greeted me this morning informed me that a present was waiting for me on my Wii: the trial release of the browser for Wii has been released! And of course, Critical Hits was the first page I loaded. I’m happy to report that the page works perfectly with the Wii Browser!
The interface is about what I expected. Typing in websites, like typing anything else in on the Wii, takes a while. But loading is quick, and I didn’t encounter any CSS weirdness. And, like all the other on-screen buttons, putting the cursor over a link gives a noise out of the remote and it vibrates slightly. A nice tactile touch to webbrowsing.
And a big plus… embedded YouTubes work! Though there are certainly other ways to do it, watching YouTube on a tv is pretty cool. When I went to YouTube’s site, however, it didn’t like the browser. I have the feeling that won’t last. And for the meantime, you can watch all of our previous YouTube Tuesdays on the Wii Browser.
When I get home I intend to check out the games on the WiiCade and see if the Flash support is there like they say. It would be very cool to see homebrew stuff like that work.
(And any of you that get Wiis for xmas, be sure to post your system code! Mine is 7098 3777 2548 0858)
The Christmastide Cometh
With Christmas a scant amount of days away, everyone pretty much starts the slow process of stopping everything else they were doing. The process begins sometime in August, when the first leaf decides it can resist the foul temptations of gravity no longer, or it simply falls for the grass’ endless tauntings of free booze and cheap hookers down below. Or perhaps it begins when vile, soulless marketing directors decide it’s just about time for Christmas commercials to start…just before summer ends.
ExtraLife has had an excellent series of Christmas / Wii themed comics lately, as well as pointing out quite a few excellent things in his blog:
Apparently these are some rejected or preliminary conceptual designs for the Wii and its controller interface. It really has to make you happy with what came out, going with the simplest and most functional but still aesthetically and commercially appealing is really the balance that the Wii controller achieves perfectly. I was sold from the very beginning, once I saw that the ‘remote’ design could be turned sideways to almost perfectly mimic a classic NES controller, I knew Nintendo had done right.
The other snippet of news ties yet again into my post from a few weeks ago, about updates on the Transformers movie. You can view the new trailer here!
Edit: More excellent news I read about yesterday, apparently very talented Comic writer Brian K. Vaughan is joining the writing cast of Lost! He’s probably best known for his comics Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina, and hopefully his writing abilities will help bring a new taste to upcoming Lost episodes.
I hope that everyone has an excellent Christmas and Holiday season, and we’ll be flying into 2007 with so much new content you’ll literally crap your pants upon first sight of it!
YouTube of the Week: Stop Hiring Him! Edition
I don’t watch Spike TV, so I didn’t catch these when they first aired. And I cracked up because I didn’t know what was coming. This one is the best, the other two in the series after the jump.
Inq. of the Week: Burning Crusade
Is it worth the wait? Or will it be same old same old without enough new stuff to keep the game interesting?
