Right as rainy

The history of the Gothic franchise is one of ups and downs. While the first two games reached decent sales and a good reputation among RPG fans, Gothic 3 was released in a completely unfinished state, with game-breaking bugs and problems that aggravated players throughout. Original developers Piranha Bytes moved on to another publisher. JoWood kept the franchise and gave the job of creating the next game to Spellbound Entertainment, who are known for… well, not much really, only the real-time tactics series ‘Desperados’ comes to mind. All that didn’t do much to inspire faith in ArcaniA. However, the PC demo with good graphics and compelling gameplay raised hope that ArcaniA might be worthy successor to the Gothic series. Sadly, it is not so. (continue reading…)

I’ve been following a few discussions and podcasts lately, some of which dealt with the point (or lack of point) of scoring game reviews, in fact, any reviews. Now that’s a discussion that has been going around since the beginning of review scores. The debate however has gained new momentum with the advent of Metacritic, a site which aggregates review scores from different sites to present a kind of average which many people use to orientate themselves and, in the end, make a purchase decision.

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… is perhaps not the best way to restart this blog after almost 3 months. But it’s the best way I can think of right now So let’s skip past the formalities and go straight ahead. I’ve watched four movies on the big screen in one week, I might as well write something about them. (continue reading…)

There are numerous theories about aliens and what they would do if they had to encounter our planet. Some say that they are among us, living unrecognized and not revealing themselves because humanity is too immature. Others think that they came and ran away crying over the obvious lack of civilization and progress in mankind. (Personally I am quite partial to that one). Scott Derrickson’s ‘The Day the Earth stood still’, a remake of the 1951 original, propagates another thought. They will come here, save what needs to be saved, and destroy the rest because it has gone out of control and run out of chances. (continue reading…)

It’s done. Another live album by New Model Army, who have been my favourite music group for a long time. Another entry in the impressive discography of the band, spanning ten studio albums and a number of live documents, among others. Their songs and lyrics have accompanied me for years and some of them are inseparably connected to phases and stages of my life. Reason enough for me to constantly keep track of their work, and when I saw that this live album, entitled “Fuck Texas, Sing For Us” was available online (through 7Digital, a very recommendable online store), I wasted little time buying and downloading it. And already the first song indicates that, even after 27 years of band history, New Model Army are far from finished. (continue reading…)

There has been a number of films with a political background in the last few years – many of them are trying to create awareness for current or past, forgotten problems in the world. Ridley Scott’s recent circuit effort ‘Body of Lies’ joins the ranks of these, and sits right up there with the likes of ‘Lord of War’ or ‘Syriana’. It tells the story of an undercover CIA operative, who tries to infiltrate terrorist groups and network in the Middle East. A dangerous game, in which no-one can be trusted.

I don’t know if the writers tried to follow the zeitgeist, or if it is actually a story someone wanted to tell. Let’s face it, Muslim terrorists are hardly an original idea these days, and the danger of succumbing to stereotypes and propaganda is very high. But this one is not about the big struggle, the War on Terror. That’s only a background motif. Essentially the story is about a man who wants to do the right thing, who wants to make a small contribution so that some day the world can be a safer, better place. He believes that things need to be done the right way, not whatever it takes. That puts him in direct opposition to his boss, for whom all that counts is results, and anything goes as far as achieving them is concerned. That’s the kind of thinking that puts the operative at risk.

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So the question asked itself a while ago – how to build a home entertainment system on a budget? The project took about half a year to be finished, but now the setup is pretty complete. A 3Ghz DualCore PC running Vista Ultimate supplies Media Center functionality – Videos, DVDs, the works. The XBox compliments it on the gaming side, and a Samsung T260 takes care of the visuals. The last missing component was a decent sound system, i.e. one that can do an acceptable job for an acceptable price.

Now I am neither too much of an audiophile nor overly knowledgeable when it comes to Hi-Fi and all those things. I know that there’s people out there who would balk at even the notion of spending less than a month’s salary on a sound system, but that’s beside the point. I have to go with what’s affordable to me at the time. That being said, I laid my eyes on the Divoom Comet A1 some time back, and just before Christmas I finally took the plunge. The A1 is a 5.1 system, coming with 4 satellites, one center speaker and an 18 inch sub woofer/amplifier. What sold it for me was the fact that the system has got discrete audio, both optical and coaxial – which was extremely suitable because both my systems have got discrete outputs. (continue reading…)

Good old James Bond is back on stage. “Casino Royale’ was arguably one of the finest movies ever to grace the franchise, and ‘Quantum of Solace’ missed that bar only by a couple of inches. So logically enough, and going with the zeitgeist, there has to be a video game as movie tie-in – by the title of ‘Quantum of Solace’. And remarkably it’s the first James Bond game to make it to the PC since ‘Nightfire’ which was released in 2002, and also the first modern PC title to be directly based on one of the movies. Needless to say it is obviously present on virtually all other mainstream platforms as well. Enough reason to give it a try.

About 5 hours later the conclusion was somewhat sobering. I watched the credit roll (which seemed to be almost as long as the game) and thought to myself ‘Is that all?’. ‘Quantum of Solace’ is clearly trying to appeal to the mainstream FPS crowd, leaving a lot of potential unused or ignored. Level by level is spent doing run&gun scenarios and chicken shoots in the style of the early ‘Call of Duty’ titles, with a bit of hand-to-hand, some minute pseudo-hacking, a bit of pointless stealth and some irritating awkwardness in a few scenes. Most of it is just Bond-unworthy, as he usually has smarter means to outwit his opponents than shooting everything that moves. To add to the frustration, there is exactly one way through each level, each event is scripted, and the  execution of the objectives is as flexible as a railway track. No alternate routes, no silent way, nothing. (continue reading…)