The trailer for this short film, directed by Neon Genesis Evangelion‘s Shinji Higuchi, from Studio Ghibli aired last summer, but now we can actually watch the whole thing. It was announced not only as the company’s first foray into live action, but also as an attempt to capture an old style of Japanese kaiju filmmaking. Including: no CGI. The God Warriors are the ultimate danger in the world of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and they’re no less ominous for being placed in Tokyo. [via The Mary Sue]
A really stunning debut, I just wish I spoke Japanese.
When I find myself desperate for excuses to do anything but write a review, it’s usually because the subject matter ended up being rather disappointing. Borderlands 2 sadly falls into this category, as I have been struggling for weeks to come up with something praise worthy to write.
But I can’t let that stop me anymore, productivity must continue!! (Never give up, never surrender!!) With my house clean, laundry finished, caffeine and snacks at the ready, I am all out of excuses; its time to sit down and get this review done. Wait, what am I writing about again? Oh right Borderlands 2…hmm is that a spot over there that I missed dusting? Clearly my bout of Borderlands 2 induced ADD is persistent.
Kickstarter seems to have become the Dr Frankenstein of ancient game franchises, as we keep seeing old favorites being brought back to life. Though I have been trying to keep away, the promise of a new Dreamfall game was too tempting to resist. Take my money!
The Longest Journey is a point-and-click adventure game that was released in 1999 (Europe) and 2000 (North America). The story of April Ryan, an unlikely heroine who goes on a very long journey to save the Balance between the twin worlds of Stark and Arcadia, the game received amazing reviews and won multiple awards.
TLJ was followed in 2006 by Dreamfall: The Longest Journey on PC and Xbox. Continuing the story of April Ryan, and beginning the story of Zoë Castillo, the follow-up also received glowing reviews and won several game of the year awards, including awards for best story, best adventure game, best music and best voice acting.
These were two excellent story based adventure games. Clearly finding funding for a sequel has been challenging, as its been almost ten years since the release of Dreamfall. Thankfully crowd funding can make it happen!
Maybe I will go play the first two games again, as a refresher. Wonder how well they hold up.
Look at me already being more productive! I finally updated my reading challenge for 2012 (I know, totally overdue!) and even though I managed to read 80 books last year, it only came to 25,860 pages. Bleh, that’s what I get for reading graphic novels. Ah well.
Onward to 2013s challenge, 100 books or 40,000 pages, whichever I manage first. (If last year is any indication I have no hope at 40k pages.) =P
If given the option, I always pick female characters. Thankfully more and more games are making either gender available to play, but even in games where gender is assigned, I will go with the female option as my first choice.
Even though I have tried playing male characters, I simply don’t identify with them as much, which does impact my enjoyment of the game. My interest really wanes quicker.
This doesn’t mean that I never play games with male protagonists. If the game is good enough, it transcends gender. For example, Diablo 2’s necromancer is by far my favorite class, which only had the male gender as an option. On the other hand in Diablo 3, because either gender was available for each class, I made all my characters female.
Both is really my preferred answer, but since that isn’t quite accurate I will attempt to be more specific. As I am a huge fan of both genres, in much more then games, it took a while to figure out that I do really have a preference.
In movies and TV I strongly lean in the Sci-Fi direction, while books are much more middle ground. But in games I seem to prefer the fantasy setting, its certainly what I play the most of.
This is very likely related to my proclivity for role-playing game, which are often in a fantasy setting, rather then the more sci-fi first person shooters. But I’m not sure if my preference is because of game mechanics or genre preference.
Video game movie adaptations are pretty much universally terrible. Thankfully I really like bad movies, especially since many of these adaptations have crossed that line into ‘so terrible its funny’.
But there are a few that were enjoyable for simply being fun and entertaining. My favorite is probably ‘Tomb Raider’. Angelina Jolie does a great job of being an action star, and I’m always a sucker for an intelligent, kick ass, female heroine. My runners up are ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘Resident Evil’.
Let me clarify, these are not great movies, but they still managed to represent their games fairly well and be quite entertaining. Frankly, with the selection of game movies that are out there (~cough~ Dungeon Siege movie ~cough~) these three movies are masterpieces.
While games don’t seem to adapt as well into other mediums, the opposite direction is often much more successful. Two of my favorites are Lego Star Wars and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Both are super fun games that represent their various genres extremely well.
Even though crowd control would be one of my selections for this category, I have already discussed it at length. (Yes, I am sparing you more Enchanter tales!)
Instead I will regale you with my other favorite strategy, the total opposite of crowd control, ZERG!
Zerg (of course!) comes from the real time sci-fi strategy game StarCraft and is the name of one of the three playable races. They are the creepy bug/alien option whose main purpose is to traverse the galaxy and biologically assimilate other species. Yuck.
What made the Zerg so fun was their ability to quickly create a whole lot of small units; the goal was to overwhelm your opponent before they had the opportunity to really get up and running or to simply overpower them with superior numbers.
Since I really enjoyed the creating of units and supervising buildings far better then micromanaging battles, this strategy was by far the most fun for me, which made Zerg my go to race in the original StarCraft. (StarCraft 2 changed Zerg to be far more micromanagement heavy, so I tend to play Protoss.)
From this ‘overwhelming’ strategy was born the term Zerg, which now means ‘overpower with superior sacrificial numbers’ in almost any setting, aka FUN!
This review, like most of them, is long overdue. The delay is mostly owing to my abandoning the game quite early on and thinking I would come back to it. Well, to be honest, requiring myself to come back, since I didn’t feel I had played enough to give it a fair review.
But it’s become quite obvious that I am not going to return and the review will have to happen regardless. Any guilt I had, has been assuaged by the eight months of subscription I have paid for a completely inactive account – its time to be done.
