Saturday, May 16, 2009

The Legend of the Seeker: I Think my Neurons are Burning

First of all I would like to point out to the few (if any) of the people who have read Goodkind's early books and legitimately enjoyed the Scifi mini-series 'the legend of the seeker'; that I could not even finish the first episode, there, you got it, I'm F*ck*ng unprofessional. Now with that out of the way; the 'first impressions' review.

So this is more bitching than an actual cool headed review; now the seeker is only in the loosest of terms the same as the book, sure it bears the trappings of the universe, (names and such), but only to the extent that queen Elizabeth bears the trappings in common with William the Conqueror. The basest of elements are there, the sword of truth, the main characters, the three lands, and the three boxes of Orden; but despite this of itself speaks more of overconfident screenwriting (*after all they wrote 'Xena'* heavy sarcasm, ha ha) than actual artistic ability. But of course to defend their pathetic foray into writing this, they claimed: according to the 'ancient, infallible' scrolls of Wikipedia they were trying to "honor the books without literally translating them", and in showing their "honor" they have indelibly fouled up the story of the Wizard's First Rule. Now to the second Failure of the series, the actors, admittedly not all of this is their fault, but rather the fault of poor casting director, who apparently had never even thought to mach the characters with their descriptions. Overall the cast (so far) have been very poor actors, their performances ranking equally with the worst of fantasy role players. Over all I had to force my self from seppuku with the knife I keep at my desk, to end the infernal horror of the series.

Even worse for the dignity (lol) the series; 'Krog Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire' a Comedy Central series of which I am now wholly that was designed to parody the 'seeker'; is superior to it in every way, the acting is good (much better), costuming significantly better, the story didn't make me wasn't to burst into flames as a preferable alternative.

Seeker <>

The 'seeker' is perhaps the greatest paragon of film based upon a book....

THE.

BOOK.

WAS.

BETTER!
(much better)

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Update: What a Couple of Weeks

Ah so as you can guess from my title I have decided it more efficient just to do a generic update rather that to post individual thing I have been buzzing about; after all I am just one busy (very lazy) frood. So without further ado the stuff

- On new ground the other week I found this interesting flash game that is at the same time brilliantly executed, unbelievably cute, and vomit inducing (quite literally), it is called Spewer, as the subtitle says: "a game about puking", I admit it is not much more than that though it ma help to say that it is a platformer with great (if slightly wonky) physics , in which you primary puzzle solving tool is projectile vomiting (just like elementary school) to your target. But be warned this game is very tough, and those who do not want to be frustrated by repeated gruesome (if undeniably cute) deaths of your puking worm-thing.

- Last weekend the adventures of my band of chaotic treasure-looting mercenaries continued, the first "real" dungeon of my campaign was completed and the next is up coming. The mantle of divine spell caster was taken up by a new player: Bridger, another veteran of d&d and a druid. Yet again the party proves the old constants of being perfectly unpredictable, trying their best to temp death, and taking the violent solution above all others. There was also the bit of starting up a hither to unknown to me "zombie campaign" to pass the time at five in the morning when we were all to inebriated (mostly due to caffeine, late night, and propane fumes) to continue within a narrative structure of a traditional campaign.

Yeah, something like that

- last week I also found a relatively new roleplaying system, pathfinder, currently in an early stage a good portion of the manual can be downloaded on their site: paizo.com (Pathfinder RPG). I would basically refer to It as AD&D v3.75, for it is clearly a direct decedent of the game (certainly more so than fourth edition), I personally chose not to use it because it is basically interchangeable so therefore would be more difficult to convert (you know, people not remembering what they are playing), and may of the "significant" changes I had already included in my home-brew update/setting which I use for my campaign (though it is still mostly D&D), though one thing that may make little difference to those dedicated Role-players is the overly stylized (gamer english for: can't draw) Anime-ish art style

- I have just finished the fist cycle of the Elric novels by M. Moorcock , they are good, origional in the description and function of the planar multi-verse if a bit to existentialistic at some points for my general enjoyment of continued existence. the story kind of "pulpy" (as in the 50's-70's episodic type writing) Elric's adventures consist of moping, gaining hope, going fantastic places, meeting interesting characters, then after the struggle being driven to kill then by his psychotic-soul-sucking sapient rune-sword: Stormbringer, to relate this to you purely vidogaming types; Aurthas' (you know warcraft) blade Frostmorne took it's name and powers from the twin blade of Elric's; Mourneblade, in fact much of Aurthas (early on) was based upon Elric.