Monday 23 April 2012

Boycotting Fez and the nature of Art

I have had another article published by Gamecentral, the link for which is on the left.

As a summary - Phil Fish has created and released a beautiful game called "Fez". During GDC (or something of that ilk) a Japanese gentleman asked the panel, which Phil Fish was a member of, what they thought of modern Japanese games.
Phil Fish responded with "your games just suck".

Due to this, some people are deciding to not buy the game, regardless of how good it is.
I decided to try to analyse this viewpoint, to try and see exactly what rational basis there is for having such an extreme reaction.

Enjoy.

Wednesday 21 March 2012

Teenage Alien Ninja Turtles

So, Michael Bay is doing weird things with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film he is producing.

The strangest thing, the thing that immediately had fans in an uproar, was that he said that the turtles were aliens.
Now, considering his defence (linked above), lets assume that he genuinely is changing the origin of the characters.

Some responses I have seen are along the lines of "Hey, relax, aliens make just as much sense as mutants."
But do they? Really?

First of all, consider the name of the franchise - they are ninjas, mutants, and turtles. If they are aliens, they would have to be alien mutants, alien ninjas, alien turtles.

The original story was a reference to the origin of Daredevil, because the creators were huge fans. A chemical spilt on some turtles, which mutated them into being anthropomorphic. It also mutated a human ninjustsu master into an anthropomorphic rat. The rat then taught the turtles ninjutsu, hence why they are ninjas.
Let's call that 3 on the ridiculous scale, 3 ridicules (Turtles mutated; human mutated; human-rat teaches turtles).

Now, what if they are aliens? Then they have to be aliens that for some reason look like turtles. They also have to be taught ninjutsu by a rat, who is also presumably an alien. Then they came to Earth. Also, they have to be mutants.
I'd say that's a solid 6 ridicules (aliens that look like creatures from Earth; alien that looks like a different creature from Earth; Second alien knows a martial art from Earth; Second alien teaches first aliens; Aliens come to Earth; Aliens are also mutants)

I therefore disagree, on the face of it the origin stories are not equally silly - they alien story, the one that annoys the fans, is objectively twice as silly as the original.

I would say "I hope they don't mess it up" but let's face it, it's Michael Bay, therefore it will be atrocious.

Wednesday 14 March 2012

Current plans

I haven't written an entry for a long time (business as usual, then) so I felt it was time for an update.

First of all, I'm still trying to figure out a sensible way to do the side-bar. I've also got a contact page set up, as some people have tried to contact me and ended up contacting other people on my host. People that are not me.

I'm also working on a page specifically for the videos I make, with a clear layout so that you will be able to select the exact video that you want (i.e. mp4, flv, html5? Long or multiple parts?) and see what other videos are planned.

This is still slightly confused by the fact that Blip will no longer let me upload different file formats for the same video.

Speaking of videos, why don't I do another one? I haven't finished writing the Death Note review, but why not Blood the Last Vampire in 5 seconds? Or maybe even commentary? Perhaps merely splitting the Dragonball review and joining the Blood one so that I have multi-part and long versions of both?
The answer to these questions is both simple and incredibly frustrating - my first generation sandy-bridge motherboard had an issue with the SATA connections, so I sent it in for repair.
I am still waiting to get it back.
Hopefully I will be contacted by the 28th of this month (which is happily enough 28 working days after I got the email telling me that I should be contacted in "3 to 5, or maybe 28 working days").

I'm currently doing everything on my laptop, however the dvd drive on it has stopped working since I installed Windows 8 Developer Preview (yay! /sarcasm)
This means that I have difficulty in installing things via the dvd drive - for example, the video editing software I have installed on my (motherboard-less) desktop.

After that I will be moving out, at which point I will hopefully have enough room to put up a simple green-screen and film my Death Note review (yes, a chromakey will be required).

Finally, I have a Con announcement: I'll be at Sunnycon! Not as a speaker, or anything (though I will quite possibly talk to someone at some point, at least to ask where the bathroom is) but as a normal person with a ticket and everything.
I will try to film it, and hopefully there will be enough interesting material to make a video. Don't expect any interviews, as I can't think of any questions right now, so in all probability I will just be gushing at them, and no-one wants to see that.