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4-28-04,
11:10 AM
Heroin,
peppermint-flavored heroin.
Music: The Impossibles - Long Way
From, Long Time Since
No, I
haven't been awake since some
ungodly hour, I actually woke up at
6 AM. Cripes, that's almost normal.
Anyway, I polished off Manhunt
a couple nights ago and it was a
pretty enjoyable experience aside
from the couple of levels near the
end. It's the sick and demented
twist on the stealth action genre,
which seems to be so popular with
the kids these days, that makes it
so appealing. Unfortunately when you
get to the point where guns come
into play it's just a slow-motion
effect away from being Max Payne.
Taking on an army of heavily
equipped commandos (as well as the
city's police force) by your
lonesome and losing a lot of your
chances for stealth in a game where
you don't exactly deflect bullets
like Superman causes a lot of
frustration. Couple that with the
lack of a quicksave feature means
that one false move means you have
to replay large chunks of a level.
It's above average, with a decent
ending, well worth a rental, but I'd
hold off on buying it.
I've
got my hands on both Hitman:
Contracts and Resident Evil:
Outbreak (Colons always get me
excited) so let's talk about them.
Hitman, glorious Hitman,
how you shine like a beacon in this
sea of crap. 47 is back and when we
find him he isn't doing so hot.
Gut-shot, he stumbles back to his
hotel room, and begins to have
flashbacks about his previous
assignments that, I assume, lead up
to this moment. Some missions are
new (Some taking place between the
first two games) and some are
remakes of missions from the earlier
games, leading to a feel of just a
little laziness on IO Interactive's
part, however the biggest difference
is that the game has gotten much
easier. It doesn't feel like so much
of a challenge if I can get a Silent
Assassin rating my first time
through a mission, the margin of
error has been greatly increased,
and swiftness is purely a style
choice. I always held the series in
high regard as the best thinking
man's action game available, and it
still is, however I fear that
they're dumbing it down to appeal to
the slower crowd. I'm still enjoying
the game very much, it's a worthy
addition to the series. Some would
argue that with it using rehashed
levels and not getting many
improvements in the graphics
department that it's no more than an
expansion pack. Even so, it stands
head and shoulders above the rest in
it's genre.
Now, Resident Evil: Outbreak.
I want to like this game, I really
do. I haven't given it nearly as
much play time as I have to
Contracts, but right from the
get-go I'm pretty displeased with
it. The control scheme has been
switched around a bit, but player
movement is just as muddled and
sluggish as before! There are a
handful of different scenarios to
play, taking place during the events
of the first three RE games,
though I've only unlocked two of
them so far. At the start you get to
pick from a cast of varied
characters each with their own
strengths and weaknesses. There's
Kevin, the cop, the all-around
decent character, who starts out
with a .45 caliber handgun (Good
luck finding ammo for it), Mark, the
security guard, he's good with melee
weapons, but he's slow. Then there
are characters like Jim. Jim's a
subway employee, his skills are
playing dead, whining, and looking
like a gay Dennis Rodman. There's
Cindy, the waitress. She can duck.
She can also play the piano, but
that's not helpful in any way, shape
or form when battling hordes of the
undead. Apart from one character,
Yoko, who can hold four items,
everyone else only gets to hold
four, which means there is a lot of
item swapping to be done among your
partners. Inventory management,
unlike the other games, is done
in real-time. This includes
reloading your gun. So while a group
of zombies may be ambling ever
closer to you and you need to
reload, you have to open your
inventory, select your weapon,
select reload, and then watch as
your character reloads a
semi-automatic pistol one bullet
at a time. Take into
consideration that the game has a
sort of "hurry up" to it because at
no point will you eliminate all
zombies in the area, they respawn
seemingly out of thin air. There are
occasions when you can perform
actions like nailing boards over an
open doorway, but that only stops
them for roughly thirty seconds,
allowing you enough time to say
"Damn, that was a waste of time." I
have yet to venture into the online
arena for it, but maybe I should
because it can't be any worse than
playing with the AI partners. There
isn't any mic support, so Capcom
included a few basic commands that
work when you press a direction with
the right analog stick, which are
"go," "come here," and "help me."
I'd say that the AI only responds to
these 20% of the time. When I
played, there was a scene that went
down like this: (zombies
attacking my character, AI character
stands nearby)
Me: Help me!
(AI character leaves and enters
the next room) There is also a
scene where you pull the valve off
of a gasoline truck, spreading
gasoline across the road where a big
group of zombies are fast
approaching. Unfortunately it's not
a good idea to have other characters
standing on it when you're about to
light it, and shouting "Come here!"
did nothing to keep poor, dumb,
musically-inclined Cindy from being
reduced to cinders. At least it's
not necessary for everyone to make
it out alive.
I'll give it a little more time,
probably after I finish up Hitman,
hopefully it'll start to not suck.
-K. i've
never seen a man eat so many chicken
wings
4-24-04,
1:03 PM
Today we
are going to learn how to make
plutonium from common household
items.
Music: Ben Lee - Cigarettes Will
Kill You
Not a
whole lot to report today, though
I've updated the What to Think
section for this week. Manhunt
for PC has just hit the streets and
if you've missed out when it was on
the consoles now is a good time to
give it a try. I'm enjoying it more
now with the sharper visuals and
easier controls, and it's worth
playing just for the dark and gritty
atmosphere alone. Speaking of dark
and gritty I highly recommend
reading Broken Angels, as I got
into it almost right after I bought it
a couple days ago. If you like your
science fiction brutal and harsh with a twist of
Marlowe-esque brooding then this is
for you. I also got a little into
Eric Idle's The Road to Mars,
expecting him to try to do the
nigh-impossible of mimicking Douglas
Adams, but I soon discovered that
it's more of a satire on the nature
of comedy itself rather than an
exercise in silliness and if that
sounds like something you want to
read then by all means go find it.
But if you're more interested in
Douglas Adams, I just found out Neil
Gaiman wrote a book about him (and
the Hitchhiker's Guide
series) titled Don't Panic.
See,
I do read.
-K.
why are you doing that?
4-23-04,
9:23 AM
There
aren't evil guys and innocent guys.
It's just... It's just... It's just
a bunch of guys.
Music: The Eels - Your Lucky Day in
Hell
So,
during one of my late night drifts I
was listening to the Carney Show on
1120, as I have been doing these
past couple weeks. He talked about a
study he came across that was
recently conducted, saying that of
all kinds of writers poets die
earlier than the rest. My first
thought was "Wow, that's
interesting." My second thought,
however, was the one I liked more:
"Wait, who the hell selects and
funds these studies?" I'd like to
know how it works, and the image in
my head was a bunch of guys in white
lab coats sitting around a large top
hat that has small pieces of paper
with different topics written on
them in it:
Researcher #1: "Aw, man, I
got 'Which writers die the
earliest.' What did you get, Bill?"
Researcher #2: "'Find
out how many bees a man can
swallow.'"
-K.
i got a rock
4-21-04,
9:57 AM
Last
update of the day, I swear.
So,
without the option of sleep
available to me I did what any sane,
normal person would do: I sat
outside Borders until it opened. I
still had the $50 gift card my
father gave me for Christmas, and
the idea was, which I came up with
earlier than this morning, to go
and use that card to buy as many
anti-Bush/liberal books I could
find, such as Richard Clark's and
Bob Woodward's new books, and lay
them about my room so my father
could find them in the hopes of
pissing him off.
So, I ended up in the Science
Fiction section and blew all $50
there, because I decided that I just
don't get beat up enough.
(For those curious, I got William
Gibson's Neuromancer, Eric
Idle's--as in Monty Python Eric
Idle--The Road to Mars, and
Richard K. Morgan's Broken Angels)
4-21-04,
8:05 AM
I
fucking hate people. (Not a movie
quote)
Shortly
after laying down to get some sleep,
I'd say five minutes, the quietude
of my room is suddenly ruthlessly
kidnapped by diesel trucks and heavy
construction machinery that's being
operated next door. I'm not exactly
sure what they're hoping to
accomplish with this project, but
apparently it consists of rapidly
banging very heavy objects together
in hopes of achieving the loudest
noise ever.
4-21-04,
6:23 AM
Liverpool can be a lonely place on a
Saturday night, and this is only
Thursday morning.
Music: Audioslave - Show Me How to
Live
No, I
didn't get up early, I've been up
since 2 PM. At four o' clock I
caught a showing of Kill Bill
Vol. 2 at the Chase Park Plaza.
You know, the hotel and apartment
building in the Central West End
with a five-screen movie
theater in it. If you guys want
to be really awesome please lend me
$650 a month so I can get a studio
apartment there. I first noticed it
during one of my late weeknight
drives that I've become fond of
lately, where I wander around
randomly from about midnight to two
or three in the morning, often
somehow ending up in the Central
West End or on Delmar. Since it's
not part of the Wehrenberg, AMC or
Landmark chain I didn't know it
existed, so naturally I had to go
there, in part of my effort to visit
every theater in St. Louis. Part of
the reason I like to go to the
Tivoli is because it has a certain
level of character that the other
two main chains lack. Same with the
Hi-Pointe, with little bits of
various film paraphernalia to add to
the charm. The Chase isn't
particularly remarkable, but it does
have decorative auditoriums and
friggin' organs in the front, which
leads me to believe that they'll
give way to silent films on occasion
accompanied by a live score, which
that alone deserves some
recognition. All that as opposed to,
say, the Crestwood AMC, which is
almost Soviet when it comes to
style. I think I've said this
before, but you could drug me while
I was in the Crestwood AMC, take me
across town to the Esquire AMC and I
wouldn't know the difference until I
walked outside. I have a feeling
I'll be returning to the Chase Park
Plaza theater, but it might just be
due to the surrounding area, my
favorite part of the city. Location
is part of the reason I don't care
much for going to Ronnie's. Anyway,
I had a point here... Ah yes, build
me a theater that has character and
not built to some uniformed code and
you'll most likely get some return
business.
Anyway, let's talk about
Kill Bill.
I don't know, maybe it's because I
haven't seen part one, though it was
made without it being required,
maybe I was hoping for too much, but
I wasn't overly impressed (All
right, Theron, let's see that bile
spew!). I was entertained, sure, but
maybe with Pulp Fiction
Tarantino set a standard he could
never hope to meet again. I admire
him as a filmmaker very much for the
same reason as I admire the Coen
Brothers, because of their ability
to combine different genres in a
single film and make it work, though
the difference between the two is
mostly that the Coen Brothers
actually have more skill when it
comes to originality. Since
Tarantino comes from the midst of us
film freaks it's no surprise to see
that it's rubbed off on his own
work. Reservoir Dogs borrows
heavily from the 1987 Chow Yun-Fat
film City on Fire. Jackie
Brown was based on an Elmore
Leonard novel. Even the plot for his
segment in (the very underrated)
Four Rooms was centered around
an episode of Alfred Hitchcock
Presents. Hell, his next
project, Inglorious Bastards,
is a straight remake of an
Italian film of the same name.
Nothing about the film feels all
that original unless, you know,
you've never seen a samurai or kung
fu movie in your life. Dialogue has
always been his strong point, which
might have been to his detriment
when deciding to tackle a film that
mostly falls under action and a
genre known for ridiculous
conversations. For a two hour film,
it's almost surprising what little
actually happens through the course
of it. While from little of the
first one I've seen, The Bride
slices and dices the baddies as if
she were making a people salad,
however in this second film, without
giving too much away, she only
technically kills one person. I
guess I was expecting to see a
little more from "the deadliest
woman on earth." In fact, I'm
positive she spends more time
talking about killing people
than actually engaged in combat this
time around. And as I scroll back
up, I see that I said I still
enjoyed the film. Yes, there are a
few great moments, the long shot
that tracks out of the chapel as the
assassins enter and lay the place to
waste-like comes to mind
immediately. The cameo by Samuel L.
Jackson was classic. David Carradine
gives it his all, acting well enough
to make us forget his lisp. The
soundtrack is kick ass and Michael
Madsen proves once again he's the
perfect Tough Guy. The
action, what little there was of it,
is extremely well done. You can
really feel the grindhouse style
coming out of the film (Which,
again, is something he borrowed, but
I'll quit raking him over the coals)
and works great. So, to make a long
story short, it wasn't incredible,
but passable. As hard as it may be
to accept it, Tarantino isn't Cinema
Jesus, but give him time and maybe
I'll eat those words. Let's just say
it's what 1941 was to
Spielberg.
Oh well, at least he had the good
sense to stay behind the
camera.
-K.
between iraq and a hard place
4-17-04,
7:56 PM
Anybody
that doesn't want to get killed best
clear on out the back.
 Music:
Booker T. & The MG's - Summertime
So,
it's been a while. Saw David Cross
last night in Columbia and he really
is one of the funniest people alive.
Between slamming Bush and
Republicans overall as much as he
can, which is funny enough by itself
("Bush just killed and ate a Jewish
baby." "Why?" "Because it was the
last evil thing he hasn't done
yet."), he runs around from topics
such as his friends having kids
("Raising kids is hard? No it's not.
If you want to know what hard is try
talking your girlfriend into her
third consecutive abortion."), the
needlessness of products like
electric scissors, the porn
industry, Fox Network's degradation
of humanity, and having sex with
yourself. Was an awesome show even
though we showed up late, got shitty
seats, and sweated out all my bodily
fluids. He also mentioned a little
bit of news that I think everyone
should know about, and should get
any level-headed person to be pissed
off at President Bush.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s819685.htm
There's the link, read it, let your
jaw drop in disbelief, and then
share it with as many people as you
can find. I'm so taken aback that I
can't even think of anything to say
about it.
The
Clerks script is underway with
only a few pages finished and a few
more due since I'm supposed to have
two-thirds of it done by Monday.
It'll be up as soon as it's
completed.
I also
updated the What to Think section
with plenty of new things which are
required of you to check out; there
will be a quiz next week. You may be
shocked, but yes, it's true, I like
jazz. Though the most important part
of the update is the banner at the
bottom that you need to follow.
-K.
when clinton lied nobody died
4-08-04,
5:39 PM
Constantly talking is not
necessarily communicating.
Music: Grandaddy - AM180
I don't
know if you read this site or not,
but yes Jim, I have heard of
Painkiller. In fact, I was going
to make a new post that the full
version of it is now in stores and
that they've also released a
new
single-player demo
that's very enjoyable. Also, if
you've got the connection and
patience, I recommend downloading
the
free, two-hour
trial of
Dead Man's
Hand. This allows you
to play the full version of the game
for two hours after that you will no
longer be able to play, but you can
purchase a key to unlock it for $20.
It's probably worth it since there
aren't a lot of Western-themed
shooters these days and it's a lot
of fun for a budget title. I've been
told the
Lineage II
open beta is fun, though
I don't have the space to try it
since it's a 1GB download much less
a 3GB install. If MMORPGs are your
thing and you want to try one for
free you have until the end of the
month when the beta ends to try it
without paying for it. Finally, for
any of you Diablo fans out
there you should check out the
demo of
Sacred.
It's a fun little hack-and-slash
that plays exactly like the
aforementioned game, but looks much
better. I think that's pretty much
it for now.
Saw
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind the other night, it was
good, it was very good. I'll
elaborate later... Maybe.
UPDATE: Out of
boredom I added a new a section to
the site based on something I had
seen before.
-K.
as seen on cops
4-07-04,
4:56 AM
Your
rules are really beginning to annoy
me.
Music:
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes -
Science Fiction Double Feature
Despite
the heavy amount of loathing I carry
for The Rocky Horror Picture Show
and its copious, insipid fanbase,
I can't help but like the cover of
that song.
So I
was able to talk my instructor,
after much discussion, into letting
me write an episode of Clerks.
As only one person in the class is
even remotely familiar with the
series which ran for two episodes,
I'll be pretty much on my own as far
as ideas and suggestions from my
peers goes. The proposed idea for
the episode is that Randal buys KITT
from Knight Rider after finding him
in a used car lot, KITT becomes
jealous of Randal's relationship
with Dante, and then tries to kill
Dante and impersonates him at the
store, and no one notices that it's
a car.
Also,
if you aren't watching HBO's new
Sunday night miniseries Deadwood
you should be ashamed of yourself.
It's a very gritty, moody Western
with some very great performances
and has one of the most nefarious
villains ever. Bravo's Keen Eddie
(Formerly belonging to Fox) is
one of the smartest, funniest, most
creative cop shows ever created.
Making a protagonist extremely
likable as well as funny without
making him ridiculous can be harder
than it looks, but you just can't
help but love the repeated line "I'm
Eddie... How do you like me so far?"
The fact Fox dropped it after five
episodes further proves that outside
of The Simpsons Fox simply
doesn't have a fucking clue about
good programming.
I don't watch a lot of
television and fewer programs have
been able to keep me coming back
every week, a feat held once but no
longer by CSI and 24,
but I never miss either of those
shows.
So watch Deadwood and Keen
Eddie and maybe I won't kill
you.
-K.
they let you try it free? |
