Up From Genre City

The Ruler's Back

Promotional Trailer?  Intro Video?  Either way, this opening footage from Wipeout Pure has got to be the sweetest piece of video I've seen in a very long time.  It should start automatically on entry to the site.  It loops too, so feel free to let it run in the background all day, just like I'm doing. Check it out and see why the PSP owns 2005. 

Yeah Thanks, Nick

So I just started reading The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby and even though I buy The Believer every month and see the column the book is based on when I flip through the latest issue before burying it under a pile of comics and/or clothes, having them all in one clump (and actually reading them) has naturally inspired me to do something similar in this space.  Long time readers will no doubt remember similar attempts to focus this blog into something more than it really is, but I think it really could work this time.  After all, everything in this blog that's not directly related to production of my comic could be framed as something I bought and my reaction to it.  My only regret is that I didn't start this a few weeks earlier, when I was reading Lemony Snicket's The Grim Grotto and Import Tuner magazine.

Bought
Following Cerebus #2, Various
Astonishing X-Men #7, Joss Whedon, John Cassaday, Et Al
Green Lantern: Rebirth #3, Geoff Johns, Ethan Van Sciver, Et Al
Sleeper: Season Two #7, Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Et Al
The Goon #10, Eric Powell
JLA Classified #2, Grant Morrison, Ed McGuinness, Et Al
The Shaolin Cowboy #1, Geofrey Darrow
Wolverine #23, Mark Millar, John Romita Jr., Et Al
The Authority: Revolution, Ed Brubaker, Dustin Nguyen, Et Al
X-Men #165, Chris Claremont, Salvador Larroca, Et Al
The Simpsons: The Complete Fifth Season, (DVD) Various
Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, (DVD) Various
Kingdom Hearts, (GBA) Various
The Believer, Issue 20, Various
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, Et Al
The Days Are Just Packed, Bill Watterson
There's Treasure Everywhere, Bill Watterson
It's A Magical World, Bill Watterson

Actually SRIW (Seen, Read, Interacted With)
Astonishing X-Men #7, Joss Whedon, John Cassaday, Et Al
Green Lantern: Rebirth #3, Geoff Johns, Ethan Van Sciver, Et Al
Sleeper: Season Two #7, Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Et Al
JLA Classified #2, Grant Morrison, Ed McGuinness, Et Al
The Shaolin Cowboy #1, Geofrey Darrow
Wolverine #23, Mark Millar, John Romita Jr., Et Al
The Authority: Revolution, Ed Brubaker, Dustin Nguyen, Et Al
X-Men #165, Chris Claremont, Salvador Larroca, Et Al
Some Of The Simpsons: The Complete Fifth Season, (DVD) Various
Some Of Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, (DVD) Various
Some Of Kingdom Hearts, Various
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach, Et Al
Some Of Chrono Cross, (PS1) Various
Some Of Final Fantasy X-2, (PS2) Various
Some Of Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories, (GBA) Various
Another Dose Of Arrested Development: Season One, (DVD) Mitchell Hurwitz, Michael Cera, Et Al
Some Of The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby
Shaun Of The Dead, (DVD) Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright, Et Al
Return Of The King: Extended Edition, (DVD) Peter Jackson, Et Al
Some Of The Lord Of The RIngs, JRR Tolkien

(I don't know how far back this goes, but hopefully future installments will be a bit less unweildy.  These were the things that popped into my head.)

One of things I'm enjoying most about TPS is the paper trail Hornby follows in cataloguing the things he reads.  It was the thing I was most looking forward to here.  For example, you can see that I bought Kingdom Hearts but played KH: Chain Of Memories, FF X-2, and Chrono Cross.  What happened was this.  Some of you might remember my recent attempts at improving my video game driving acumen.  This was continuing on apace until, for some reason still a bit mysterious to me, I recaught my always-at-least-dormant zeal for Square RPGs.  I started back in on FF X-2 at first and returned immediately to getting into random battles and increasing my AP levels in order to learn new abilities.  I will freely admit that this is the main reason I play RPGs and probably why I stick to Square.  I honestly have no idea how most other RPGs are set up in terms of levelling (the only non-Square RPG I can think of that I've played was Knights Of The Old Republic and I didn't really enjoy it), but Square is set up, as far as my inclinations go, perfectly.  Every one of their games that I've actually finished, I've finished resoundingly, trouncing the final boss, because I've spent upwards of twenty hours in one dungeon picking fights and getting new Spheres/Materia/Jobs.  Most of the time I don't even use the stuff I've unlocked.  I'm just as bad a collector in the virtual one as I am in the physical.  Anyway, this led to me to a brief fling with Chrono Cross, a massive trade in of old and unused GBA games to fund the purchase of Kingdom Hearts: Chain Of Memories and after getting halway through that, a necessary purchase of its progenitor, because there was shit going on that I just knew I was missing.  You can expect at least one Disney DVD purchase in the next installment of this "column" because Kingdom Hearts is great at both reminding you of what's so appealing about DIsney Animated Films and completely erasing any memory of their more annoying charateristics.  (How could I have any desire to buy Aladdin, when "Whole New World" is in the film?)

Speaking of collecting, there were some great fucking books out this week.  It might be fun in this and future installments to compare the list of comics I bought with the list of comics I read.  (For those unwilling/able, I bought but didn't read Goon and Following Cerebus this week.)  FC isn't really a comic, it's a magazine about Cerebus, but that's hardly an excuse.  The Goon is probably the best book I'm buying but slow to read.  Maybe it's because I have an inherent wariness to read a book about a weird city with stories that bend genre conventions.  For some strange reason.  Astonishing was the book I read while walking from the store back to work.  I was just dying to read it.  And it was out of control great.  There was a sense that, at a few more crowded moments over the past couple of issues, Cassaday wasn't really doing his best work.  A few scenes, like that bunch of people crashing through that wall last issue, seemed sketchier than usual. There are no such moments in the latest issue.  Tight as a drum and thank God, because this is Joss' best written issue so far.  Sure that S.W.O.R.D. exposition scene doesn't feel at all relevent (yet) but everything else was goddamned fabulous.  And that page with Wolverine (you know the one I mean) was his funniest moment since What Th--?!? #2 brought us "Grepppps!"  On the other hand, X-Men was just embarassing.  The kind of book that, even though only you are reading it and thus only you can see how cheesy and cloying it is, you are embarassed to be seen with in public.  Authority was a fine read, but its the kind of book I probably won't have much to say about it until it's finished (same goes for Sleeper).  Wolverine is a book I'm pretty wild about these days.  The art is fantastic and Millar is successfully recreating the stories behind every doodle I ever drew in High School.  ("In this one, Daredevil is fighting Wolverine!")  The Green Lantern book is only the latest Geoff Johns jernt I've picked up.  I've become quite enamored with with the way he writes superhero stories.  Don't ask me how or why.  Superhero books have always been one of my more unexplainable pleasures.  When they work for me, they work for me.  There was a scary moment while reading Shaolin where I thought I might have outgrown my affinity for Geoff Darrow's work.  Does this mean that my internal battle over whether or not to plunk down fifty bucks for the Matrix Boxset might be over?  (Pros: Conceptual Artwork by Darrow/Skroce, West Commentary, new Matrix transfer.  Cons: Nearly every second of Matrix Revolutions)  I don't know for sure that I'm all the way over him.  There were just a few moments in the book where it seemed he wasn't really working for me anymore.  We'll have to see how this ends up after a few more issues.  Morrison back on JLA was just incredibly fun to read, offering very little to discuss.

I'm kind of miffed that the people I know who I know have seen Shaun Of The Dead did not immediately ensure that I saw it immediately.  I can see why they didn't, though.  I hate, hate, hate scary movies.  This is because, when it comes to movies, I am a complete and total pussy.  I clench up in my seat, I cover my eyes and ears.  I am liquid.  So even I myself was pretty loathe to see this movie.  Wrong move.  It was so fantastic, so smartly clever (you know, clever but in a subtle way that doesn't annoy you), so perfectly attuned to my sensibilities that it went from unseen to instant personal classic in (according to the box) One Hour, 40 min.  There was only one big jump (shower scene) and I even got a little thrill out of it (this often happens with good scary movies like Alien and never happens with shitty scary movies like Aliens).  More importantly, though, it was just shit in my pants hilarious.  I won't waste time recounting line after line of comedy (I'll save that for when Anchorman/Wake Up Ron Burgundy comes out next week), but the record bit was a particular standout.

That's it for this installment.  If it's in the second list and I haven't talked about it, it was simply really excellent and I expected it to be really excellent so, really, what is there to talk about.

Ta ta for now.

Driving And Blogging Do Not Mix

Remember when I used to post in this weblog all the time?  Holy crap, that was so tight!  For the past few weeks, sadly, I've done very little besides spent time with my loved ones and play video games.  Not very exciting blog material? Not really.  It's just hard to muster up the energy to do anything else.  But damn it, I owe this blog my time and at least a little bit of my energy, don't I?

So, lately I've been embarking on a strict training regimen in preparation of February's Dual Driving Game Mega-Release of Gran Turismo 4 and Forza Motorsport.  See, I have a uniquely checkered past when it comes to driving games.  When I was a sophmore in College, and an RA, one of my residents was hugely into the burgeoning new generation of video games (the PS1 had just been released).  I too was heavily curious, as any college student worth their salt is always seeking new ways to waste time and energy.  He was a subscriber to the late great Next Generation magazine (there has never been a better gaming mag, sadly) and one of their cover stories was on the game WipeOut.  I wish I could tell you exactly what it was about it that piqued my interest, nay, consumed my interest, but the incredible CG image on the cover and the screenshots and details inside were the coolest fucking things I'd ever seen.  I arranged for the Hannukah to be a harbinger of both a PS1 and a copy of WipeOut from Oxford, Ohio's own Wal Mart.  I still remember the fateful day when I brought it to my dorm room.  I was, at that point, somehow lucky enough to have procured an advanced copy of Soul Coughing's Irresistible Bliss and I can still remember barelling down the second course of the game to "Super Bon Bon" and thinking it was just the flat out greatest experience of all time (I would not lose my virginity for another four months).  WipeOut, at least the way I played it, was a game where depressing the accelerator was not even within the realm of consideration.  It was all about twitch steering and survival.  For years, WipeOut and its several descendants were the only racing games I played, and I played them religiously, falling into a trancelike state whenever I did, zoning out completely, my thumbs reciting their ordained and invisible-to-the-naked-eye movements.

I tried to get into games like Gran Turismo, that I knew were spectacular, but the physics were so bizarre and alien, I was so unable to control something so sensitive and, let's face it, slow, that I quickly lost interest.

A few months ago, I bought Burnout 3, which was pretty much WipeOut with cars.  Blisteringly fast, violent, and incredibly fun.  And so I was reinterred into the racing genre, this time with actual cars.  Then I got Halo 2 and starting using Xbox Live, and at that point everything changed completely.  I was never behind the idea of Online MultiPlayer gaming.  I never figured I'd have the amount of time necessary to compete against people who spent every waking hour of their lives playing games online and learning every nook and cranny and basically completely pwning me.  But Bungie's incredible online setup completely blew me away and made me completely rabid for any kind of similar experience.

At around that point, I started hearing about Forza, and the incredible online experience they were preparing for the game.  Combined with an enormous amount of visual customization options, I just had to be there.  The idea to making my dream, cream/maroon colored four banger and showing it off online, well, it was appealing as hell.

The only problem was that all my previous racing game experience had taught me absolutely nothing about driving.

The first post-Forza game I got was Need For Speed Underground 2.  I'm about 65% through it and, to my mind, it's the perfect gateway drug between a twitch accelerator game like WipeOut and a pure sim game like Forza.  It's got arcade handling, sure, but it's actually taught me the blitheringly obvious concepts of slowing down a bit before you enter a turn and actually braking once in a while.  I also got to make my car look ridiculous.

Next up, Project Gotham Racing 2.  This was a completely different animal.  Much less forgiving handling and realistic tracks.  Almost 90 turns which required me to almost completely stop the car.  Etcetera.  The one thing I'm realizing though, as I pathetically slog my way towards a piddling Bronze game completion, is that I need to learn the currently impossible task of power sliding.  This is undoubtedly both the hardest thing for me to control, and the most necessary skill in the game.

I just picked up RalliSport Challenge 2, as a brief flirtation with EA Big's fun and criminally underrated Shox completely enamored me with the concept of Rally Circuits, and that and Gran Turismo 3 will join these two other games in a training regimen in preparation for February.

And this is basically what I've been doing instead of talking to you.