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)

fallout 3 reveiw: finally

So what has this grizzled misanthrope been doing instead of reviewing fallout 3, well try playing the game, yes it is that good, so it seems my "crack addict-esque" behavior has proved well worth it, possibly not all that well founded but certainly an enjoyable period of my life. now for my review of my time in the radiation three and a half months in the making.

I know it is not my picture

Fallout is A post nuclear Armageddon adventure to put it bluntly (if you have seen a screen-shot you could have extrapolated this though). fallout's setting centers on retro-futurism, basically the fifty's technology filled optimistic view of the future that ended in a storm of nuclear fire (think nuked tomorrow-land), you combine this with a visual style more than reminiscent of mad max down to the leather jacket jacket, sawn-off, and psycho-mutt(who has a tendency to open doors 0_0, which led to many "interesting" events). However the setting of the third installment loses some of it's credibility just because of the time it take place. It's 2277 200 years after the bombs fell, and the DC inhabitants are still living in a more technology filled but less settled life than those on the west coast over one hundred years ago. This kind of life style can only happen during the Mad Max era of the apocalypse (i.e. one, to three generations after the nukes), so either the Capital Wastelanders are complete idiots with access to unlimited tech or the time period was just not all that thought out.

The intro from the "war never changes" sucks you right in, more that any other I've ever played. The tutorial is by far the best Bethesda has ever birthed in terms of immersion and enjoyability. The creation of your avatar and your subsequent vacation as the pilot of your new automaton begins with with your birth upon which you are charged with coming up with your name gender and future appearance (quite a load for a still bloody infant)then five seconds or thirty minutes later(depending on how long you spent rattling at your avatars knobs) your mom dies, I'm not sure what this was supposed to accomplish other than to give you no good reason to stick around the vault after every one tries to murder you. then your little flash back moves on to your days as the amazing sprinting baby (after all running indefinitely is the default setting in any video game) in which you escape your internment in the dreaded play pen teach yourself how to read, and choose your future stats basically all boiling down to a thug, sniper, scientist/doc, a silver tongued rouge, or a complete f*ck*ng psych but most will have one thing in common a sharp wit to gain the most skill points and a charisma slightly less than that of a sack of "tetanusy" nails (less so for the rouge character). after which your father James(Liam Neeson) feebly tries to sway you from the dark side with his framed bible verse stitched doily

Liam Neeson - and your father James

then your are swept down the hall to you arbitrary rpg friend Amata, who when grown looks a fair bit like Alex from Half-Life 2; probably yet another attempt to reach geek-dom

Similar?

And so your flash back/tutorial touches upon several other events in your avatar's life, the first weapon, your tenth birthday, and your job assignment test. This series of events and tutorials make you invest emotionally into your avatar, which helps dispel some of the disbelief tied to the setting.

As an adult you are woken up by your childhood friend and are told that the shit has officially hit the fan; your father has ditched you, your family friend has been whacked, and the overseer wants your head on a pike for no particular reason other than than hating your guts. you are immediately given the chance to properly role play, but as with most games the decisions are split between four annoying flavors, ignorant asshole, understanding pussy, subservient noob, or beige neutrality I hating this usually play a combination of assholery and neutrality. Then you work your way out of the vault along the way slaughtering 0 to 20 percent of the vaults population (according to fallout cannon) with and additional 5 or so dying indirectly as a result of your father's eviction, and at the upper reaches it's pretty much genocide people. Then as you leave you either get sappy farewell or a good riddance from Amata depending on your choices in roleplaying.

you emerge squinting into the sunlight much the same way you did in oblivion, and you will be thinking the same thing; "aint it pretty" though not for the same reasons you did during Oblivion.

Now unlike real life you won't break down and start crying about loosing you comfortable little life (if you do I have lost all respect for you), no you will probably do one of two things; like me "were do I start looting", or "let's see were this quest takes me", after working your way through the suspiciously well stocked ruins of Springvale most of most of "ye" will go off to Megaton, a town built of scrap Ala Mad Max, with a live nuke worshiped by a fairly "benign" cult. In this town you have the opportunity to continue the main quest, the first half of the main quest allow for more freedom than any player of Bethesda has known within a quest, though it is a level on par with the original fallout's many ways to complete a quest, each leading you down a completely different path to slightly varying endings. For example in the first quest you need to find information, the saloon owner has the information, so to get it you can sweet talk him, pay him for it, kill him and steal it from his terminal, just hack his terminal, just continue wondering the wasteland looking, or even intimidating his hirelings. however the later quests are very linear, more along the lines of oblivion's main quest that traditional fallout, with only a few endings to the later quests. admittedly this heavy scripting for the quests creates a more cinematic telling of the story than previous Bethesda works, many of these felt more like the cinematic events in the most recent Call of Duty games than an RPG. Another fault of Fallout 3 main story is the severe lack of endings, there are only twelve, on the surface this sounds like a signifigant amount (more than Bioware ever had) but think 3 alignments multiplied by 2 sets of choices with 2 outcomes, which is not alot. The Endings do not have that quality of legendary storytelling both of the original fallout's and the intro and outro the Road warrior had.

I am "not" legend

But of course This third installment is not just about the main story, there are innumerable side quests and interesting places to explore. Fallout had what I liked about many of the dungeons in previous elder scrolls, little implied stories in the form of notes, decorations, items, and enemies fighting. Fallout had more varied locations than any previous elder scrolls games, and more of these implied stories. One of the more interesting areas in the wasteland is the Lovecraft themed Dunwich (horror) building area. The quests of fallout 3 are very interesting, bordering on the schizophrenic; many of the official recorded side quests barely fit in with fallout cannon let alone reality (crazy vampires, a happy go lucky wasteland survival guide, and Harold the tree headed ghoul).

Now to what attracts many of the "consoleers"; game play. Fallout 3's interface is by far superior to that of any other previous Bethesda or fallout game: in terms of fluidity, ease of use, and general freedom. though with the advent of firearms in combat the idiotic masses immediately compare it to contemporary first and third person shooters, whilst the games interface goes far a shooter it "ain't", but the again it never was designed to be; it is still first and foremost an rpg, and a fine one at that, but it will never live up to the "balls and bayonets" action of shooters. What is a reveiw of fallout 3 without a rundown it's post child, no not Vault-Boy

V.A.T.S.!

VATS, or Vault-tec assisted targeting system is Bethesda's answer to fanboys' (who were still getting stiffies over Van Beuren) whining about the turn-based and aiming of Fallout not being ported to now, ten years in the future. First of all I have to say as a skeptic of VATS, that it was a brilliant addition, my fear was that it would hamper my immersion, but far from it, rather it helped me get behind my character, and besides seeing a raider fly to peices in bullet time never gets old. I often cued up VATS in close combat were my reflexes lacked and asked that raider bastard " did I fire five shots or six, well do you feel lucky, huh do you, punk"

Hah! to bad, this guns got a twelve round clip! Blam!

Though the down side to vats was in fact that I had the time to say the exact quote (and probably make a sandwich) between the time I cued up VATS and when I got control over my avatar's mind again.

Fallout 3 is a sufferer the disease of Bethesda's nay all of the game industry, games are getting much shorter. For example Bethesda's previous works, morrowind when played at the standard leisurely rate (SLI?) of game playing could clock in at over 500 hours, Oblivion: just over one hundred, and Fallout is even shorter, admittedly this extra space has been filled with better graphics, "more" depth, etc but it still is less content, and in many cases less good content, but not so for Fallout 3.

I loved Fallout, It's combination of Mad Max wasteland and tomorrow-lands flair led me to fall in love with the original, of course it has been several years (I last owned it in the early 21st century)since I played and It was played little, most of my love comes from third person and and first person observations from playing a game made by a splinter faction of black isle (interplay), the game was Arcanum, my favorite game of all time, so it is no surprise that my views of fallout are tinted by this, though Fallout 3 is it's own experience, It compares to everything and nothing at once, if judged by it's own merits It is one of my favorite plays ever, but if measured against all of it's fore fathers it will always seem somewhat lacking when as Yahtzee put it is compared to something viewed through "the rose tinted goggles of retrospect". But none the less fallout 3 is still one of the top 25 games of all time.

What all the Elder Scrolls true success are though is unlimited game play through the modding tool made for the game. So truly no matter how good of flawed the game, you have whatever you want at your finger tips, a veritable Holodeck of user-created content. My game alone has 20 or so mod on it, some that make the wasteland hate me (more realistic), some that rebalance the game a few to add weapons from the preivious games, and the list goes on to infinity.

see you later, vault dweller...

Cozumel Travelogue

Now you may all be wondering why in my apparent streak of increased posting why I haven't posted the entirety of last week, other than the fact that I am incredibly lazy when it comes to updating this blog except in brief stints when and where I have nothing better to do. I was in Cozumel for the second year running; now you get a travelogue *put's on evil mustache* Muwah! ha! ha! ha! *takes off mustache*.

So the sixth began at 3 o'clock in the f''ing morning(as always seems to happen with trips in which my family flies) when my grandfather pulls up in his mini-van to take us to the Airport, the ride to the airport was nice, the seats reclined just enough to sleep if you could through the maxed volume big band music and his maniacal driving through the dimly lit streets of Cleveland. So upon arriving at the airport we were not alone, we were surrounded by other traveler's either victims of weather, staff incompetence, or were just so plain crazy as to let their grandfather drive them to the air port at three o'clock in the morning! Other than that the ride to Cozumel was fairly uneventful.

Upon arriving in Cozumel we were greeted by all the Immigration forms and what-not which kept us tied up for about half an hour, then before you walk out of the terminal you press a button to have the button god's judgement passed upon you, If it lights up green you are free to go if red, you get strip searched, admittedly it is less biased than a couple of good ol' boys sitting around picking out anyone who look suspicious but WTF how does it prevent or solve any problems, It doesn't, the button god is just probably something proposed by the pretentious button worshiping cult that controls Mexico's semi-socialist government.

Your One True God

One thing to know about Cozumel is that the taxi drivers are right out of Liberty City's driving school, driving a minimum of 20 KPH over the speed limit, turning around in the middle of the road, darting around the cornucopia of mopeds and other small vehicles piloted by locals and intrepid tourists, In their micro-bus sized vans. Oh and did you know you can fit a family of four on a moped (and twelve in the cab of a crew cab truck), strange, only in Mexico I guess.

So after fearing for my life for the second time that day we arrived at our hotel/resort thing called El Cozumeleno and were greeted by the door man and the first of many all inclusive drinks to come. but apparently they had screwed up our reservation but this was easily fixed by switching rooms with family we I was traveling with. now to the point were I tell you about the hotel, It was all inclusive (free food, drink, shows, and pool) though if you do not eat at one of the two free restaurants on the resort the food will remind you of your wort memories of elementary school cafeteria food. both of the others are adequate though, but Lex Luthor waited on our table

Compare
what you don't know is that this shot took two hours to get, he doesn't want to be found

Well he didn't actually wait any tables he was just the undisputed evil overlord of the palapa. But now an interesting story, last year when I was at the same resort; the entire restaurant was full of birds, so this year they put up fishing line on all of the openings other than the entrances and exits to keep these birds out, well anyway all they did was create an unnatural selection which allowed only the sly crow-like grackles to get inside the palapa, the interesting thing is though that they mostly take the pink artificial sweetener packets; I mean just wow, look you created a population of hyper smart crow-esque things that are addicted to artificial sweetener. I know it, it's Lex's new five step plan for world domination; 1. move to Mexico 2. breed an army of birds that you can control somehow 3.take control of your army 4. train them in the arts of combat, subterfuge, and fear (think Hitchcock) 5. use the army to take over the world.

But there is more to Cozumel than just El Cozumeleno, there are decent restaurants on the Island, also innumerable nearly identical tacky souvenir shops with annoyingly pushy owners.
But let's start with the restaurants, first of all a tip; do not eat at Carlos' n' Charlie's, not only is it full of drunken college students, the food is a heaping pile of meh and they will put a penis shaped balloon hat on your head. But at the other end of the spectrum of eating: there are a couple of restaurants in the town square that all provide excellent food in a quieter atmosphere, best of all; no penis hats. The first and foremost of these is a converted porch known as Casa Denis, it is probably the oldest eating establishment on Cozumel, officially being classified as a restaurant since 1945. Casa Denis Serves Yucatan style food, it's generally good all around and the wait staff are such asshole it makes me feel as though I am at home. Last year The group I was traveling with (I.E. my parents, siblings, aunt, uncle, cousin, and foreign exchange student)went to Casa Denis our foreign exchange student a Scott named Jordan got piss drunk as scotts are wont to do

note this is early on in the night, he already had two more of the ones in the fore ground

after the one he is picture with he turns to my aunt's video camera and says "I'm sorry mum!" then after we pay the bill he staggered off towards the street with a couple of liters of mango margarita in him as well as a couple of pounds of food sloshing around in his stomach. one of the a fore mentioned annoying pushy shop keepers Called upon him to stop in the shop,

"no gracias!!!"

"why no Gracias!?"

" 'cause; I'm pure steamin'!!"

after arriving in his room Jordan (who "never throws up") began to spew, but just as any scott he just kept on drinking.

Jordan's (or any scott's) liver

We just couldn't let him live this down so we gave him the "lexicon of Vomitology" for Christmas.

The other restaurant is know for being a pizza joint of all things, now I don't have a hilarious story about this one so bear with me. First of all the food was excellent, the wait staff was efficient, and it had all I wanted that last night: some peace and quiet. Now to a more rowdy affair; the famous "Coconuts", Coconuts is a restaurant on a cliff overlooking the beach, It is quite nearly out doors, and It would be If it were not for the palapa constructed on the bluff. Before anything you need to know that coconuts is basically a dive crossed with a college fraternity, meaning that it is full of drunks partying on till all hours and that it's wall are covered with strange collections; put bluntly, the clothing of people who have eaten there before O_O. Now my first reaction was to the signed T-shirts plastered upon the underside of the palapa's roof, I that's kind of cool if a little creepy, then as I looked around I saw that there was also underwear hung upon the support beams of the palapa; at that point I realized the true depth of debauchery that Coconuts housed. It is unknown to me whether or not the clothing items were taken with or without the permission of their original wearers, but considering that a half-pissed middle aged "lady" tried to expose herself before her "friends" took pictures, laughed, and held her down, after this I am inclined to think that the items were removed of the wearer's free will but were taken by some random employee.

But better than any restaurant prior or after; La Casa del Pescador (The House of the Fisherman), put in short the food (steak, lobster, and shrimp) was well and beyond any to be expirenced in Mexico or most places in the U.S., the prices were more than fair ( they were equivalent to anywhere else we had eaten in Mexico), and there was an f***ing Crocodile; yes that is what I said a wild crocodile in a little pond just outside the building; in fact you had to cross a little bridge over the pond to get to the restroom. After we left the restaurant we were asked to stop and come around to the side to watch him feed the various meat scraps the wild four foot reptile that resided in their decorative pond, apparently the croc known as Claudia had moved in recently and they had been feeding her the leftovers, so of course Claudia decided to stay.

during our stay in Cozumel we had intended to dive as we did last year (which is the reason we had decided to come to Cozumel in the first place), but we had forgotten our dive cards, and when we finally got things sorted out so that we could the weather took a turn for the worst and we were left without any opportunities to dive. Though our original purpose was lost we still found entertainment. first and for most we had a day cruise on a trimaran called the Toucan,

Sydne (my sister) and Poy (my forign exchange student-sister) hanging off the mast of the good ship Toucan

this was by far the most bang you can get for your buck. First and foremost on my memory is the excellent food on board; by far the best Mexican food while in Mexico (od considering it was all prepared on a small charcoal grill hanging off the end of a thirty foot boat), second was the spinnaker ride; this entailed waiting for a strong wind, putting you on a small seat tied to the end of a loose sail, and letting the wind thrash you around until either the wind died down or the crew of the good ship toucan managed to wrestle the sail down.

Clay rising up on the spinnaker

The other family that came with us on this voyage happened to be from our area of Ohio (huh small world), THe mother of said group got completely smashed (notice a pattern); and on the spinnaker ride quite nearly lost her top, but her dignity it was gone.

Over the course of our trip we had left for the mainland town of Playa del Carmen, this was overall pretty enjoyable, but not nearly so to write an entire passage on so some highlights. A man that looked strikingly like inspector Cluso from the pink panther movie snuck-up behind me and put an iguana on my head,

notice the homicidal gleam in my eye primarily because of mr. Cluso's ambush secondarily because I hate having my picture taken


We ate at an interesting if not terribly good restaurant known as Hemingway's Palapa, yes the Writer Ernest Hemingway (I know it does'nt make any sense).

at Hemingway's


We trekked all over town to find a dive shop so that my uncle could buy a t-shirt (It happened to be in a section of town that resembles San Francisco in spirit), saw a shop that sold realllllly weird crap

simply put I have no words to describe it other than WTF

Oh and we almost missed the last ferry back to Cozumel that day.

Then the day came to leave, we took yet another crazy taxi back to the airport (or should I say concrete strip in a jungle), signed in, got on the plane and were greeted by the pilot saying that there was some maintenance that was "mostly paperwork" so 15 minutes later he announced that there was "something dripping out of the engine" and "it will be just a few minutes" thirty minuted later we taxied out on to the runway only to turn around again, It turns out there was another problem; apparently one of the maintenance staff had pulled some of the cockpit circuit breakers and neglected to tell the pilot, um okay; now I feel safe. So after an hour we were on our way, they opted to give everyone on the plane a complementary set of headphones as an "I'm sorry I shook your faith in our airline" gift. Upon arriving in Houston we went through customs quickly and smoothly, missed our flight, got reassigned (that day thankfully), and ran from one end of the terminal to the other in the never ending game of musical chairs that is the airport terminal fortunately we got on our flight home. Once on board we taxied out onto the runway only to find that someone forgot to shut the cargo hatch (well actually secure it but whatever), again, wtf; no never mind I just have lost faith in continental. Upon landing in Cleveland the plane just about landed diagonally; the cross wind was so bad that the plane wobbled severely all the way down. We arrived: alive and relatively unharmed, after continental, and Cozumel's taxi service my a fore mentioned crazy grandfather was a nice change of pace. I arrived home at nearly one o'clock in the morning, passed out im my bed and woke up for school at 5.30 in the morning.

Game Damage

After the endless hours of trolling the web for the most mildly interesting things; I found a new series staring Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, for those of you who may not know (and I'm guessing that's few of you) the Zero Punctuation series of game reviews featured every Wednesday on The Escapist. This new series is what could be described as "totally fucking awesome", Yahtzee remains as much as a prick as ever, and hes co-stars certainly fill the rest spectrum leaving Game damage a well rounded show rather than the opinionated rant of one man or the slightly pathetic solioque of another.

Game Damage's skits certainly fit into spectrum of British (well in this case Aussie) humor, I.E for those of you who have never seen anything by Montey Python "completely bizarre scenarios with people acting rather normally in them". Anyway, this series has much talent for future entertainmet, I should be watched.


Game Damage: A new show featuring Yahtzee, Yug and Matt

The Drawing of the Dark

What do mythological creatures, king Aurthur,vikings, Suleiman, and a drunk Irish landsneckt have in common, well for one thing they all are featured in a hidden gem of a book called the Drawing of the Dark, which despite it's stereotypical sounding name for fantasy, is the one of the most unique and certainly one of the best books I have ever read.

The story goes something like this;It is the year 1500-something and Brian Duffy an Irish Landsneckt (a mercenary, for those dolts who can't even tell you what the holy roman empire was) gets steaming drunk in the streets of Venice and up fighting, and kicking the asses of of three nobles who's father he called 'the bastard pimp of Suleiman. a passing.........( well at first you don't know what the hell he is, but it is important to the story so spoiler alert) sorcerer, called Aureleanis, who wants Duffy to be the bouncer for a tavern recently converted from a monastery famous for brewing Herzwesten (western heart) beer in Vienna, Duffy accepts this at an unusually high pay rate. so he travels north to Vienna along the way encountering bandits, demons, Dwarves, and a hunchbacked swiss artillery officer. upon arriving things get even weirder, he defends the brewery and the so called king of the west against the turks who mean to destroy it and therefore wipe out the western world, and he does it mostly drunk.

This book is truly great; It combines great story telling, witty (and not so much) humor, memorable characters, and it combines the best elements of all western mythology to create a completely interesting explanation for the western world (I'll give you a hint it has something to do with Fin Mac Cool and beer). If you have never seen this book find it and read it, for the drawing of the dark is a one of a kind read.