January 2009

Nobody Cares About Mac
Submitted Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - 7:27:44 PM by Klaitu

You know, this Mac vs PC debate has been going on for decades now, and it doesn't show signs of stopping any time soon.

I recently had a conversation with a guy who I will describe as.. "mactastic". I would call him a fanboy, but that would be a disservice, as there really isn't anything wrong with liking Macs, except for the unfortunate tendency for their fans to get all worked up about how great Macs are supposed to be, and how much the PC is supposed to suck.

Linux people get this way, too.. but there aren't as many Linux people as there are Mac people.

It's okay to be a Mac user, it's okay to like Macs or linux if that's your cup of tea, but you need to be aware of something that no Mac or Linux (or even indeed PC users) seem to realize: When you choose a PC and Operating system, you are making a philosophical choice that you will have to reap the consequences of.

Let's put things into context with the Personal Computer market share from October 2008:

Windows - 90.23%
Macintosh - 8.28%
Linux - 0.91%

What does this mean? 90% of all computers sold between January and October 2008 were Windows-based computers, while only 8% of computers were Macintosh.

All that talk you're hearing about how Macs are superior to everything.. those annoying switch ads, the annoying "I'm a Mac" ads, all of that has resulted in Macintosh climbing it's way up to a paltry 8% market share.

This 8% figure is important because It is the highest market share that Macintosh has ever had in it's entire history.

Why is Windows so dominant in the PC market? Because it has tremendous advantages that only now Apple is beginning to figure out. For comparable systems, Macintosh is more expensive, and for that extra price, what do you get? You get an operating system that can't run software that the other 90% of computers can run without difficulty.

It's true, you can install Windows on a Macintosh these days, but if you want to do that, then why not just buy a PC which will end up being cheaper anyway?

In other words, a PC can do everything a Mac can do, but a Mac can't do everything that a PC can do. It's not a hardware problem, it's a software issue. A Mac could theoretically do anything you wanted it to, but Apple doesn't want it to, and software makers don't really see the point in programming special software just for 8% of the market.

Macintosh will never be able to compete with PC's until Apple decides to stop treating their computers as if they were expensive toys. Computers are tools, and people will always choose the tool that gives them the best results.

While we're on the subject, I'd like to address Firefox people. I like Firefox, I exclusively use Firefox because I like it a lot, however, let's look at the market share for browsers in November 2008:

Internet Explorer - 73.01%
Firefox - 16.7%
Google Chrome - 3.1%

Like I said, I use Firefox, but I am under no illusion that the king of the internet is Internet Explorer. For me, Firefox is an acceptable alternative because it does virtually everything that Internet Explorer does, but has a much smaller security vulnerability window.

That being said, when a website requires me to fire up Internet Explorer, I don't start on a rant because a webmaster has chosen not to support a browser with a tiny market share.

So, when you go on and on and on about how Steve Jobs is sick and "OMG what's going to happen to Apple?!?!?" You have to realize that 90.23% of us don't care. You need to realize that it doesn't matter if Macintosh can run editing software or Adobe Photoshop better than a PC can.

Anyways, that's just my feeling on the subject.

The Trouble With Battlestar Galactica
Submitted Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - 11:42:41 AM by Klaitu

I've been watching Battlestar Galactica for 6 years, but there's only been 4 seasons of it. If you said "huh?" then you've picked up on the main overarching problem with Battlestar Galactica, it meanders.

Ronald D Moore, the creative guy behind the new Battlestar Galactica can be a great writer at times. Virtually every Star Trek episode he ever created was top notch, but without a framework to constrain his ideas, he sort of meanders and rambles with no real direction.

For example, the show began as a rag-tag fleet searching for Earth. They got sidetracked, and the show became about resisting the Cylons on a planet. Then, the show became about religious symbology. Then, it went back to finding Earth again. There really is no consistant thing about the show.

Moore's philosophy is to take the thing that you usually see happen on TV and do the exact opposite. "Wouldn't it be cool if the hero died?" or "Wouldn't it be cool if the terrorists won?"

Recently there was an episode where a character who had been on the show since the beginning started getting happier and happier. To anyone watching the show it was readily obvious that she was going to either kill herself, or kill a bunch of people and then kill herself. We were supposed to be thinking that she was happy, but happy can't exist in the world of Battlestar Galactica, so the second she smiled, she was marked for death.

Moore thought he was being clever, but he was just being boring.

Another thing that Battlestar Galactica does is pull plots straight out of it's butt, even if the plot contradicts earlier facts already established.

The first quarter of the series deals a lot with the Cylons and how they can't reproduce sexually. Then, they are able to produce a hybrid baby by breeding a Cylon and a Human. This is a big deal to both the cylons and the humans.

Later on, their character that is supposed to represent the "everyman" has a baby with his wife. Near the end of the series, it turns out that the "everyman" is a Cylon. Oh, wait.. he has a baby, and hybrid babies are a big deal. So, they retconned that he wssn't really the father, that his wife had cheated on him.. even though it was out of character for her.

Now we're in a situation where the Galactica has found "Earth" and has discovered that "Cylons were the 13th tribe all along" and that "history occurs in unavoidable loops". None of this information can be trusted, because at any point it can be retconned when something "cooler" is pulled out of their butts.

I'll be glad when the series is over, if only because things can't get retconned anymore.

Attention!
Submitted Monday, January 26, 2009 - 12:33:10 AM by Klaitu

The following is the most ultimate thing ever put into stop motion animation by anybody, anywhere, at any time. Deny it if you wish, but know that there is no competition:

Hitler is a PvPer
Submitted Sunday, January 25, 2009 - 1:21:23 PM by Klaitu

You know, this video reminds me of an old buddy of mine.. Basil Stag Hare.

Staples? Two!
Submitted Sunday, January 25, 2009 - 1:12:49 PM by Klaitu

You know what, I think I worked at this place back when it was called Hertz.

Obama now President, Agent of Satan
Submitted Sunday, January 25, 2009 - 1:07:23 PM by Klaitu

Well, I've seen lots of people who believe that Obama can shine a rainbow from any orifice, but yesterday I heard on the radio a guy who believes the exact opposite.

It was a local radio show, the kind of thing the station plays when hardly anyone is listening. I didn't catch the name of the guy, but essentially his argument was "Obama wants to eliminate non-profit tax status and destroy the churches of America".

Ridiculous!

Guess what? Not gonna happen. Whatever you believe about Obama, you can believe that Obama wants you to like him. He's a politician, so making people like him is his job. Something like 60% of Americans attend a church, even though they may not practice a religion. 90% identify themselves as "believing in God".

How will people see the removal of tax-exempt status? All of the people that it directly affects will oppose it, and other people who do not attend church but are conscientious about the law will also object to it. Trying to directly attack churches in the US in this manner will result in instant political suicide.

If you're saying to yourself "Alright, you're right, that won't work.. I wonder how Obama will do it then." You are a Conspiracy Theorist.

Listen, crazy people.. and you rainbow people listen too: Presidents come and go. They are elected every 4 years. There have been 6 presidents in my lifetime.. and we're all still here. There have been 44 presidents overall, some more conservative than Bush, some more Liberal than Obama.. and we're still here.

No matter what Obama does that agree with or don't agree with you will survive and furthermore you will live in the richest country in the world.

The moral to all of this is: shut up about Obama already!

Obama now President, also has Magical Powers
Submitted Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - 6:20:54 PM by Klaitu

I'll admit that I was never a very big Obama fan, but I don't hate the guy or anything. It seems from my vantage point that everyone is going nuts about Obama now that he's in office.

Maybe it's a good thing that people are looking up again, for whatever the reason, but there are people who are taking things a bit to the extreme, I think.

Whatever Obama is, I'm not attributing any special paranormal abilities to him.. but from the look of things around me, many people do. As if Obama is the answer to all the ills of America, and the world too.

For an example, I'll use this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/iris-lee/iceland-is-burning_b_159552.html

The Economic situation that has spread throughout the world is now affecting Iceland, and Icelanders have completely flipped out about it. I don't live in Iceland, so I don't really know their political situation there. The part that interested me the most was at the end:

Over the past eight years, America ceased being the City on the Hill, shining its light to the rest of the world. America and Britain closed the NATO air base in Iceland, and have made no offer to help Iceland in its time of trouble. We need help, not only to break down the old power structure, rotten to the core, but also to prevent it from being rebuilt. We desperately need stability, economic assistance, impartial advice, and fair supervision.

Barack Obama, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Please!

The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Submitted Monday, January 19, 2009 - 1:40:12 PM by Klaitu

The X-Files show did some serious shark jumping in its last few years. Everyone knows that the X-Files is all about Mulder and Scully investigating paranormal phenomenon and never finding actual evidence of it. In the latter years it became about Scully protecting her baby, and Mulder was the father.

The new movie, X-Files: I Want to Believe has some good ideas and bad ideas.

Bad Idea: The movie stays away from the formula that makes X-Files work, namely Mulder and Scully investigate paranormal phenomenon. Mulder and Scully are often not together in the movie, and when they are they're not investigating paranormal phenomenon, they're investigating a normal crime except a psychic is tipping them off.

Bad Idea: The movie could have chosen to break the continuity of the series and it could have just been a standalone story, but they chose to continue with the whole shark jumping aspects of the latter seasons. Thankfully, the Scully/Mulder baby is dead now. It doesn't stop them from sleeping together or cracking some wildly creepy sex jokes.

Seeing Mulder and Scully in bed together is like seeing Donnie and Marie Osmond in bed together. It's just wrong.

Bad Idea: The movie tries to bring character development to Mulder and Scully. While normally I applaud character development, I have to deny it in this case. The X-Files was on for 10 years, and at the end of it, Mulder was still looking for his sister and Scully still didn't believe in aliens (despite being abducted by them like 9 times and seeing a zillion alien spacecraft), It's too late to try to develop their characters now.

Good Idea: The story doesn't involve any aliens or government conspiracies. It's much like a standalone episode of the X-Files in that it's just a normal investigation with some sort of paranormal twist.

Anyway, X-Files is amusing if you're an X-Files fan, otherwise there's no reason to do out of your way to see it.

Overall Score: 6 of 10

P.S. I'm pretty sure the bad guy is a cylon.

KHAAAAAAAAAN!!!
Submitted Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - 4:16:11 PM by Klaitu

Wow, who knew that Khan would be the next Star Trek guy to go?

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Ricardo Montalban, the Mexican-born actor who became a star in splashy MGM musicals and later as the wish-fulfilling Mr. Roarke in TV's "Fantasy Island," died Wednesday morning at his home, a city councilman said. He was 88. Montalban's death was announced at a city council meeting by president Eric Garcetti, who represents the district where the actor lived. Garcetti did not give a cause of death.

"What you saw on the screen and on television and on talk shows, this very courtly, modest, dignified individual, that's exactly who he was," said Montalban's longtime friend and publicist David Brokaw.

Montalban had been a star in Mexican movies when MGM brought him to Hollywood in 1946. He was cast in the leading role opposite Esther Williams in "Fiesta," and starred again with the swimming beauty in "On an Island with You" and "Neptune's Daughter."

But Montalban was best known as the faintly mysterious, white-suited Mr. Roarke, who presided over a tropical island resort where visitors were able to fulfill their lifelong dreams - usually at the unexpected expense of a difficult life lesson. Following a floatplane landing and lei ceremony, he greeted each guest with the line: "I am Mr. Roarke, your host. Welcome to Fantasy Island."

The show ran from 1978 to 1984.

More recently, he appeared as villains in two hits of the 1980s: "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan" and the farcical "The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad."

Between movie and TV roles, Montalban was active in the theater. He starred on Broadway in the 1957 musical "Jamaica" opposite Lena Horne, picking up a Tony nomination for best actor in a musical.

He toured in Shaw's "Don Juan in Hell," playing Don Juan, a performance critic John Simon later recalled as "irresistible." In 1965 he appeared on tour in the Yul Brynner role in "The King and I."

"The Ricardo Montalban Theatre in my Council District - where the next generations of performers participate in plays, musicals, and concerts - stands as a fitting tribute to this consummate performer," Garcetti said later in a written statement.

"Fantasy Island" received high ratings for most of its run on ABC, and still appears in reruns. Mr. Roarke and his sidekick, Tattoo, played by the 3-foot, 11-inch Herve Villechaize, reached the state of TV icons. Villechaize died in 1993.

In a 1978 interview, Montalban analyzed the series's success:

"What is appealing is the idea of attaining the unattainable and learning from it. Once you obtain a fantasy, it becomes a reality, and that reality is not as exciting as your fantasy. Through the fantasies you learn to appreciate your own realities."

As for Mr. Roarke: "Was he a magician? A hypnotist? Did he use hallucinogenic drugs? I finally came across a character that works for me. He has the essence of mystery, but I need a point of view so that my performance is consistent. I now play him 95 percent believable and 5 percent mystery. He doesn't have to behave mysteriously; only what he does is mysterious."

In 1970, Montalban organized fellow Latino actors into an organization called Nosotros ("We"), and he became the first president. Their aim: to improve the image of Spanish-speaking Americans on the screen; to assure that Latin-American actors were not discriminated against; to stimulate Latino actors to study their profession.

Montalban commented in a 1970 interview:

"The Spanish-speaking American boy sees Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid wipe out a regiment of Bolivian soldiers. He sees `The Wild Bunch' annihilate the Mexican army. It's only natural for him to say, `Gee, I wish I were an Anglo.'"

Montalban was no stranger to prejudice. He was born Nov. 25, 1920, in Mexico City, the son of parents who had emigrated from Spain. The boy was brought up to speak the Castilian Spanish of his forebears. To Mexican ears that sounded strange and effeminate, and young Ricardo was jeered by his schoolmates.

His mother also dressed him with old-country formality, and he wore lace collars and short pants "long after my legs had grown long and hairy," he wrote in his 1980 autobiography, "Reflections: A Life in Two Worlds."

"It is not easy to grow up in a country that has different customs from your own family's."

While driving through Texas with his brother, Montalban recalled seeing a sign on a diner: "No Dogs or Mexicans Allowed." In Los Angeles, where he attended Fairfax High School, he and a friend were refused entrance to a dance hall because they were Mexicans.

Rather than seek a career in Hollywood, Montalban played summer stock in New York. He returned to Mexico City and played leading roles in movies from 1941 to 1945. That led to an MGM contract.

Besides the Williams spectacles, the handsome actor appeared in "Sombrero" (opposite Pier Angeli), "Two Weeks With Love" (Jane Powell) and "Latin Lovers" (Lana Turner).

He also appeared in dramatic roles in such films as "Border Incident," "Battleground," "Mystery Street" and "Right Cross."

"Movies were never kind to me; I had to fight for every inch of film," he reflected in 1970. "Usually my best scenes would end up on the cutting-room floor."

Montalban had better luck after leaving MGM in 1953, though he was usually cast in ethnic roles. He appeared as a Japanese kabuki actor in "Sayonara" and an Indian in "Cheyenne Autumn." His other films included: "Madame X," "The Singing Nun," "Sweet Charity," "Escape from the Planet of the Apes" and "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes."

Montalban was sometimes said to be the source of Billy Crystal's "you look MAHvelous" character on "Saturday Night Live," though the inspiration was really Argentinian-born actor Fernando Lamas.

In 1944, Montalban married Georgiana Young, actress and model and younger sister of actress Loretta Young. Both Roman Catholics, they remained one of Hollywood's most devoted couples. She died in 2007. They had four children: Laura, Mark, Anita and Victor.

Montalban suffered a spinal injury in a horse fall while making a 1951 Clark Gable Western, "Across the Wide Missouri," and thereafter walked with a limp he managed to mask during his performances.

In 1993, Montalban lost the feeling in his leg, and exhaustive tests showed that he had suffered a small hemorrhage in his neck, similar to the injury decades earlier. He underwent 9 1/2 hours of spinal surgery at UCLA Medical Center.

Despite the constant pain, the actor was able to take a role in an Aaron Spelling TV series, "Heaven Help Us." Twice a month in 1994, he flew to San Antonio for two or three days of filming as an angel who watched over a young couple.

In an interview at the time, Montalban remarked: "I've never given up hope. But I have to be realistic. I gave my tennis rackets to my son, figuring I'll never play again. But my doctor said, `Don't say that. Strange things happen. You never know.'"

The Witcher
Submitted Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - 3:29:31 PM by Klaitu

Never heard of The Witcher? It's probably because the game is from Poland and is a PC exclusive for the moment.

The Witcher is the story of an ugly guy who hunts monsters for a living. He lives in a run-down fort where several other monsters and one hot girl mage live. The fort is attacked by bad guys who go and steal a box out of the dungeon. Now the chase is on to find the guys who stole your junk and figure out what they want to do with it.

The Witcher has a pretty good story, but it's not a fast story. From the box it seems that the game is based off a novel, and it feels like it. The plot is slooooooow. The game makes you pay dearly for every morsel of story it throws down.

First thing you're likely to notice is the horrible voice acting. It's like the cast is composed entirely of Al Gore impersonators. There are no inflections to anyones voices. It might as well be a world of robot people.

The sound design in the game is pretty lackluster as well. It's like they bought a "1001 sound effects" CD down at the costco bargain bin and just used that. The music isn't particularly noteworthy either (not that it stopped them from putting a soundtrack CD in the game box).

The graphics are crisp and sharp, and they would have been top quality 5 years ago. The game was originally released in 2007, so I suppose I can excuse the lack of Directx 10 Support, and the lack of mapping shadows. I'm not going to say the graphics are bad, but they are pre-oblivion graphics. There is also no camera focus in the game, so distant objects and near objects are always in focus.

If anything about the graphics isn't lacking, it's the game's use of female hair. It doesn't use physics calculated hair, but neither does everyone have plastic hair, either. Another particular point of note is the character's eyes, which look uncannily real, except that nobody ever blinks.

And that's the real downfall of the graphics. All the animations are wooden and just.. fake looking.

There is something that explains the blandness of the entire game: It's made with the atrocious Neverwinter Nights engine. You may recall that for the first Neverwinter Nights I spent more time in the level editor than playing the actual game, and then Neverwinter Nights 2 was so pathetically bad I gave it a 1 out of 10 and I threw the whole thing in the trash it was so bad.

When you first start up The Witcher, you're going to be presented with the vomit-inducing experience that Neverwinter Nights 2 referred to as "gameplay". Thankfully, you can turn off that mode and instead go with an almost passable over-the-shoulder style of gameplay. It is this single fact that saves the game from my wrath.

Even so, the camera is still going to get stuck behind things. You're going to click on something, and your character is going to run around in circles trying to get to it.

The Witcher also suffers from "not fun syndrome". That's when RPG developers think "we need to give the player lots of things to do" and then decide to give us boring or mind-numbing quests. The Witcher is the kind of game where your objective is "talk to the mayor" but before you can get into the mayors office you have to kill 100 creatures, collect their skins, bring them to the fur trader, pick 500 pounds of cotton, turn it into thread, sew the fur together into a bear costume, sneak into the bear's lair while they're hibernating and steal their treasure, trade the treasure to the local thief for a lamp, use the lamp to delve into the local dungeon and get the ruby inside, take the ruby to the Mayors doorman and bribe him to get in.

Then you talk to the Mayor but he won't help you until you do him a few favors...

In the end, the Witcher seems like a game with a story it wants to tell, but everything else about the game is so bland or needlessly difficult that getting the story out of the game is like wrestling match. I want to find out what happens next, but I find that I can't play the game for more than 30 or 40 minutes at a time without wanting to put my fist through the monitor in frustration.

Will I ever make it to the end of The Witcher? It could take me awhile.

Overall Score: 4 of 10

Oh YEAAAAH!
Submitted Wednesday, January 14, 2009 - 2:35:46 AM by Klaitu

What would happen if the zombies in Left4Dead sounded like Macho Man?

Well, it would probably be a little bit like this:

The Dark Knight
Submitted Sunday, January 11, 2009 - 10:49:41 PM by Klaitu

I am not a Bat-fan if you will.

Well, I take that back. I like detective-version Batman. Collecting clues, solving a crime.. that part of Batman is A-OK.

Action hero Batman? I am not such a big fan of.

Guess which Batman shows up for The Dark Knight? Yeah, action Batman.

What does Batman do? He gets angry, drives an arguably cool car, and punches people.

So, what's the Dark Knight about? Batman getting angry, driving a car, and punching people.

Admittedly, the Dark Knight isn't as bad as those older Batman films that didn't star Michael Keaton, but it's still not good. I'm not able to explain why the Dark Knight was the success that it became.

Here's the skinny: The Joker shows up, he wants to kill Batman, but he can't. He wants the mob to help him, but they won't, so he just sort of.. is a nuisance.

Along the way he captures the District Attorney and turns him into two-face. Two-face then kills some people you don't care about. Batman decides to take the blame for it because.. Gotham City needs the District Attorney to be its hero.

I don't know about you, but can you name the District Attorney for your city? It the District Attorney here snapped and killed people I didn't care about, I wouldn't be affected in the slightest.. let alone have to blame Batman for it.

Another problem with Batman is Bruce Wayne. They try to Tony-Starkalize him, but it falls flat. Batman is an angry guy who punches people, and Bruce Wayne is an emo kid who lives in a gothic mansion at the edge of town.

Bruce Wayne is not a millionaire jet-setter, despite them wanting it to be that way.

Oh, and one last thing.. the line is said "Modifications to your armor? I see you want to turn your head"

You mean to tell me that Batman has been fighting crime all this time and couldn't turn his head? That's pretty ridiculous.

Maybe one day the bad guys will get smart and shoot Batman in the face. Then a less-stupid superhero can take his place.

Overall Score: 5 of 10

Gran Torino
Submitted Sunday, January 11, 2009 - 10:34:22 PM by Klaitu

You know, I've had a mixed track record with old people movies. Secondhand Lions was awesome, Space Cowboys was not so awesome.. The Notebook was lame, but The Green Mile was awesome.

I wasn't sure which category this film would fall into. It was fairly obvious from the trailer that this would be a "grizzled old man frustrated by his old body" story, and sure enough, it is.. but it does it in just the right way.

Clint Eastwood is an old guy. His old wife just died, and when he looks at the world around him, all he really sees is punk kids and the death of the values that he upheld as a younger man.

He's a Korean War veteran and lives in the same house that he's lived in for the past several decades. The neighborhood around him has decayed into a ghetto, but he's still there.

A group of asians have moved in next door, firing up his memories of fighting similar-looking people in the Korean War. All he really wants is to be left alone.

There's a teenage boy and girl next door in the asian house who are constantly running afoul of the various gangs who roam throughout the ghetto. Gangs piss Clint Eastwood off, so he ends up getting tangled up with the asian family next door and their struggles against the gang.

Gran Torino is a movie that is loaded with story, character development, and a compelling plot. It's music is pretty understated, and the rest of the film is pretty basic. Actually, I suspect that this film will be ridiculously successful, as there's no CGI in it and very few effects.

You want to be told a good story? Go watch Gran Torino. See if your jaw doesn't drop in disbelief when Clint Eastwood drops a shotglass... I won't spoil it.

Overall Score: 9 of 10

Bedtime Stories
Submitted Saturday, January 10, 2009 - 5:17:30 PM by Klaitu

Once Upon A Time, a Klaitu went to the Warren, the most magical and magnificent theater in town. He wanted to see Clint Eastwood beat up some punk gang members in Gran Torino, but as it turns out, the rest of the universe wanted to see that too, and they were sold out.

Instead, Klaitu was stuck with the remaining movies left playing at the theater, and Bedtime Stories was, alas, the best of the rest.. if you can believe that.

So he got his tickets and found his seat, but horror of horrors, several rows of the theater were reserved for a birthday party.

The dread grew and grew as snot-nosed children began to flood in the two rows in front of him. 18 children per row.. for 2 entire rows, except for the ONE adult who had pulled the unfortunate detail of escorting them.

Aside from which there were the ordinary children who came with their parent, or parental-type people. As it turns out, Klaitu had booked himself what turned out to be nearly the last seats in another sold out showing of a movie that he didn't even want to see to begin with.

There were times of turmoil when the previews began.. first a hippie movie about some monkeys or some crap... next, a movie about CIA hamsters. The vomit was beginning to well up in his esophagus as the feature presentation began.

Lo and behold, a ray in the darkness as the words "A Happy Madison Production" appeared on the screen. Maybe the next 2 hours would be tolerable after all.

I'm not going to say that Adam Sandler is a comedic genius of our time, but he's enough to turn a banal children's movie into something that is tolerable, and that's exactly what he does in Bedtime Stories.

He gets roped into babysitting Courteney Cox's kids, and tells them bedtime stories, which then begin to come true. He tries to manipulate the stories to his advantage with no luck. In the interim, he has to survive the imaginations of 2 small children.

I have to admit, the movie was a lot better than I thought it would be, and it's only got 1 swear word in it (the only reason I remember that is because it's a Disney movie.. when did Disney allow swearing in G rated childrens films?)

Overall Score: 6 of 10

Final Fantasy VI
Submitted Thursday, January 8, 2009 - 9:37:55 PM by Klaitu

You know, I've tried off and on to play through Final Fantasy 6. The first time I attempted my playthrough I tried it with the SNES version (known as Final Fantasy 3). I got partway through the game only to lose access to the SNES on which I was playing it!

Some years later I tried it again, this time using SNES emulators. I got partway through when I bought a new computer, and ended up forgetting all about the game.

My old saves didn't work with my new computer, so I had to do it all over again. I got to the point where I was escaping from the bad guys hideout in a mine car when I had to fight a boss named "number 128". Try as I might, I could never beat this guy. I tried it for weeks and eventually I just gave up.

I tried again sometime later by renting the Playstation version of the game released as part of the Final Fantasy Anthology, but eventually I had to return it.

So, I played the beginning part of the game several times, and try as I might to start the thing again, I could never work up an appetite for it.. I just didn't want to play through those same parts over again.

Well, because of the previous article I wrote, I ended up talking with one of my old buddies who swore to me that Final Fantasy VI was and is the best Final Fantasy game ever made, even better than VII (and isn't that a tall order?). So, I decided that I would once again plow through all the scenes that I've seen before and dig into the game.

My first purchases when I got my job at Hertz were to collect all of the Final Fantasy games, so it just so happens that I have my very own personal copy of Final Fantasy Anthology that was just laying around.

What can I say about Final Fantasy VI that you might not have already guessed? It's your standard SNES-era Final Fantasy title. I think this Playstation version has been adjusted to be easier, because I remember having serious problems advancing in the SNES version. It was really hardcore difficulty.

The Anthology edition is also pretty hardcore, but at least it's manageable. It suffers the most from load times.. whereas an SNES cartridge is all hardware and is instantly responsive, the PS version has to load off a disc, and is therefore slower on loading the various screens.

FF6's most important flaw is it's tutorial system, or lack of tutorial system. Part of the problem I was having the first few runs on this game was that I didn't even know you could equip magic to any character, I thought it was just for certain ones. I also didn't know that you could summon things. This is because the menu system is counterintuitive.

If you want to equip something, you go to "equip" in the menu, right? Wrong. You can equip some things there, but not others, you've got to go do a different menu for relics, and you have to go to an entirely different menu for espers.. and it's not labelled "espers" it's labelled "skills". Go figure.

Menu glitches aside, Final Fantasy 6 is a solid game, and in 1994, when it came out it was no doubt a spectacular game. My playthrough was 21 hours long, and I didn't do the side quests and all that jazz. This thing could easily clock in at 60 hours if you wanted it to.

Unfortunately, Final Fantasy VI has the same issues that bug me about all of the early Final Fantasy games.

Exhibit A:



Alright, so I'm fighting a T-Rex in an Opera House.. on the stage. I'm down with the Japanese, I can roll with an evil dinosaur wanting to enjoy some fine arts.. but what's with the graphics here?

Lookit that dinosaur, he's got his mouth open, roaring, and looking all mean and nasty. The SNES lacks the power to do anything like animate the guy.. sometimes he might wiggle if I hit him with some ultra powerful move.. but he just sits there.

I can make allowances for technical limitations of the period, but look at the player characters over on the right side there. All my guys are like little cartoon kids with big heads and barely recognizeable features. Why don't I get an awesome dinosaur graphic for my guys?

That art thing happens all the time, even characters who have the blocky child-like graphics get an awesome full-color drawing when you fight them.

There are 2 things that Final Fantasy VI does well: Music and Story.

I don't really need to prattle on about how Nobuo Uematsu is pretty much the master of video game music, so I won't gush about all that here.. again. He did the soundtrack for this game.. including an opera. That's pretty much all I need to say.

The story is pretty great too, certainly lightyears ahead of previous Final Fantasies, and more than likely superior to anything that Dragon Quest cooked up.

Is my friend right, is Final Fantasy VI the best Final Fantasy anything ever? I'm going to have to deny him on that count.

Exhibit B!



The Main boss dresses up like a clown. His name is Kefka.

Why does he dress up like a clown? I don't know. What's his job? He starts out as a general for the evil empire that runs the world. How does someone get to be a general dressed like a clown?

The evil emperor is looking for ways to become powerful and take over the small amount of the world that he hasn't conquered yet. For that he is seeing magical powers. Kefka is his "Darth Vader" if you will, going out and doing all the dirty work.

Halfway through the game, Kefka kills the emperor and decides that he's going to.. just be evil. He doesn't really have a reason, other than that he wants power.

I don't want to spoil the ending, but there's nothing really to spoil. The ending basically boils down to "yay, we won" and has no real plot closure for any of the characters.

So, in a nutshell I'd say if you haven't played Final Fantasy VI, and you like Final Fantasy then this is a pretty good game. The excessive difficulty, random battles, and lack of character development really shoehorn it as an earlier RPG, and it has problems standing up, especially in light of later Final Fantasies.

Overall Score: 7 of 10

Final Fantasy: 1997 to 2008
Submitted Sunday, January 4, 2009 - 7:52:21 PM by Klaitu

While that title might sound like an epitaph, it's not! It occurred to me that the only Final Fantasy game I've written about recently is Final Fantasy 12. A quick skim through my search engine confirmed my suspicions.. the reason I've been so mum about the whole thing is that there haven't been hardly any Final Fantasies come out since I started Special K in 2003!

Heck, I bet you guys didn't even remember that I have a Final Fantasy icon.

This article is going to be a sort of combined retrospective and review.. so hold onto your hats, it's going to be a long one!

Once Upon a Time, in the days of yore known as the 1990's, nobody had really heard of Final Fantasy. Final Fantasies 1-6 had been released for the NES and the SNES. Some of them came to the US, some of them stayed in Japan. There's a scheme to a numbering of all those Final Fantasies, but I won't explain it all here.

Now, Final Fantasy wasn't exactly "unknown", but it wasn't the phenomenon that you see today. If you took a time machine back to my 6th grade class, the kids would know that Final Fantasy was a video game, in the same way that Ninja Gaiden is a video game, but not many of them will have played it.. and I was just like any of the rest of them.

So, when the Playstation era dawned, and people were ooh-ing and aah-ing over the first Resident Evil, and little boys were trying to decide if it was "cool" to play a video game with a girl protagonist like Lara Croft.. Square unleashed what would become the mac daddy of all video games everywhere:

Final Fantasy VII

It's hard to describe how much of a megahit that Final Fantasy 7 was. In terms of sales figures, Final Fantasy VII was the second-most purchased game for the entire PS1 (Gran Turismo took the top slot). If you combine the sales for the PS1, PS2, PS3, Xbox, and Xbox 360, Final Fantasy VII ranks in at number 7.

Let me put it this way: remember how big a hit Halo 3 was? FF7 sold nearly twice the amount of copies than it did. It's in the top 15 most sold games of all time..

So when I say that Final Fantasy 7 was a megahit, you know what I mean.

In 1997, I had never heard of Final Fantasy 7, I was completely oblivious to it as I was preoccupied with Ultima Online (which had also just come out). I was a young whippersnapper working Technical Support for AOL, so as I was working 15 thankless hours a day, I was pretty much unaware of anything happening in the world.

One day my cousin visited me with this new game that he bought, I guess he didn't like it because he wanted to sell it to me for 20 bucks. I played about 10 minutes of it, and I was hooked, I paid the 20 bucks and never looked back. He even threw in the "official bradygames strategy guide" for free.

When I went to work the next day, I overheard people talking about FF7.. it wasn't just a few people, it was everyone. Girls were talking about it. The black guys were talking about it. The asians were talking about it. My BOSS of all people, was talking about it. It was everywhere, you couldn't escape it. I took my bradygames guide to work with me, and everyone wanted to hog it, it was all I could do to keep track of the thing. Then, once people approached the end of the first disc (a penultimate moment in the story) people started to shut up about specifics. People started protecting the plot twist that happens, like they protected the plot of the Sixth Sense some years later.

Since it was AOL tech support, it was pretty much nerd central. Want a CD copy of the game's soundtrack? No problem. Pirated version of the windows version of the game? Everyone had copies to spare. Heck, the guy next to me found some site where a guy had put videos of all the limit breaks and all the summons online (and that was no small feat in 1997).

Was all the hoopla deserved? For the time, I have to say yes, Final Fantasy VII was and is one of the best games ever created for any system anywhere. Compared to todays graphics, the game is showing its age, but viewed as a product of it's own time, there's no doubt that they did something special.

Of particular excitement were the full-CGI cutscenes, which all the anime nerds called "FMV's". Video wasn't new to video games (what with all those Sega CD games, and Resident Evil's badly acted starting) but it had never been used in such a dramatic way.

Here's an example of one of them FMV's:

It wasn't just the gameplay and graphics that were incredible, the soundtrack still stands as one of the greatest Video Game soundracks ever made. It's composer has showcased the music in places like the Sydney Opera House

And, of course, the story. It suffered from being too complicated for the Japanese-to-English translators, so at points it was hard to follow, but it was still coherant and still moving for most of the players.

I played the game when I wasn't at work, and since I was always at work, it took me nearly a month to complete it. I even took 2 vacation days so that I could beat the game, and I finally did, on January 2, 1998. According to the savefile (which I still have) it took me 64 hours 8 minutes to do it.. and I did everything, all the sidequests, the secret bosses.. the whole thing. It's the only Final Fantasy game that I have 100% completed.

You might think it's odd that I remember the date that I completed it. I didn't set out or try to remember the date.. I just did. How many games can you say that about?

Final Fantasy was no longer "just a game" it had arrived. People started hating Final Fantasy just because it was popular, and the phenomenon we recognize as the Final Fantasy Franchise began.

Overall Score: 9 of 10

Final Fantasy VIII

Sometime shortly after I completed Final Fantasy VII, I turned my hours and hours of boredom at AOL into an intensive search for information about Final Fantasies past and present. My search uncovered the first videos of Final Fantasy VIII taken at some Japanese Game Show (probably the TGS). I don't recall exactly, but I may have peed my pants a little bit.

This is the video that was released:










As you can see by comparing it with the video from Final Fantasy VII, this is an incredible improvement, an improvement that didn't go unnoticed by the hordes of Final Fantasy fans.

When Final Fantasy VIII was released, it aimed to topple it's earlier cousin, but ultimately it would rank only the 4th most popular Playstation game. It's just as well, because if Final Fantasy VIII wasn't as big a deal, it certainly didn't disappoint. It did everything that Final Fantasy VII did, and did it better.. well, except for 2 things.

Firstly, people who like to use magical attacks were angry because magic is treated like items in this game. If you only have 5 fire spells, you can only cast that spell 5 times, you have to go collect more to cast more. Also, magic was tied into stats, so if you were to use magic a lot, you would eventually drain your characters abilities.

Final Fantasy VIII was heavily focussed on melee fighting and limit attacks, and while you could drop a summon on some guys, or use some magic, that really wasn't the way you wanted to go.

Secondly, the story suffered a hit. The game portrays the main characters as a bunch of students that are sort of thrown together and have to make the best out of a bad situation. Then, halfway through the game you find out that they were all raised at the same orphanage, but none of them remember it. How far do you have to go to get implausible in a Final Fantasy game? That far.

Now, there was another controversial thing that Final Fantasy VIII did right, but the hardcore fans hated. The game would try to match you against opponents that were near your level.. and it did this brilliantly, but hardcore Final Fantasy RPG fans loved to level up to the maximum level at the first of the game, and then obliterate their way through the rest of the game. You couldn't do this with Final Fantasy VIII, because the game would just generate harder opponents for you.

On the other side, if meant you could play through the entire game without grinding at all, because the game would adjust all the enemies downward to your level. Even bosses.

By the time Final Fantasy 8 came out, I wasn't working at AOL anymore, and to save money, I had my grandma buy it from Wal-Mart for me. She worked there and could get a 10% discount. It took me about 3 or 4 weeks to beat it, but it was well worth it.

Overall Score: 9 of 10

Final Fantasy IX

If Final Fantasy VII was a big deal, and Final Fantasy VIII was less of a big deal, then Final Fantasy IX probably got the least popular reception on the original Playstation. It all stemmed from Square's decision to go back to the more cartoon-y look of the first 6 Final Fantasies. Well, here.. you'll see what I mean:













If you look past the cartoony graphics style, pretty much everything about Final Fantasy IX is improved.. and really, the art they chose wasn't all that terrible, despite Zidane looking like Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

IX certainly features the most active FMV's of all the Playstation Final Fantasies, and I'll argue that it has probably the single most impressive soundtrack of the bunch. The story has a lot more medival feel than the previous 2 installments.

I don't know why Final Fantasy IX never really caught on. Maybe it was the art style. Maybe it was the fact that the Playstation 2 had been announced, and the original Playstation was dying a slow death (the game supports the PS2's extra backwards-compatibilty features).

When the game came out, I was dirt poor, and I had to rent it. I scrounged enough cash together for a single rental, which meant I had to beat the game in 5 days.. and I did. I didn't sleep that whole week, but I did it. By the end of it I couldn't remember half the story anyway, and I had to replay it years later in order to fill in the gaps of my memory.

This is one of only two Final Fantasy games that I had to go back and buy later, when I had the money.

Overall Score: 9 of 10

Final Fantasy Tactics

With Final Fantasy IX completed, and Final Fantasy X coming out on the PS2 (and me not owning a PS2) I decided to take a second look at an old game that I had bought back right after I completey Final Fantasy VII.

Final Fantasy Tactics was hard. It was really hard, and it wasn't like the other Final Fantasy games. It was more of a Final Fantasy style chess game. I had given up on it when Final Fantasy VIII was released, and I never really looked back until I got done with Final Fantasy IX.

The Internet was a bigger deal now, and you could actually find information about games, and I figured out how to play Final Fantasy Tactics.. and it was awesome. This game was before they made Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, or Tactics A2. There weren't weird alien races in it or anything, it was just a straight up medival fantasy on a chessboard.

They recently made a remake of it for the PSP, which had better graphics, but was a lot slower than the PS1 version.

Overall Score: 9 of 10

Final Fantasy X

I don't remember exactly how I managed to get a Playstation 2. I remember that I had to sell my old Playstation on ebay, and it went for $70 (which was not shabby). I probably bilked Branwen out of the rest. Maybe I used some gift cards.

Final Fantasy X was the reason I was going after a PS2. I didn't bother buying one early, and I wasn't concerned with any of the other released. Final Fantasy X was what it was all about.

I somehow managed to get ahold of a rental copy of Final Fantasy X on release week, but what I couldn't get ahold of was memory cards. The Playstation 2 was so popular that they couldn't keep them in stock. Sadly, I rented the game before I learned about this.

Have you ever tried to beat a Final Fantasy game without dying? You know, if you die, the game resets and if you haven't saved, you get to start from the beginning.

Thus my Final Fantasy X experience was like this "Wow, these graphics are awesome.. OMG don't die don't die... HEAL! Holy crap that was close!"

And this experience continued for about 17 hours, at which point I accidentally sent a powerful spell at a monster that reflected it back and killed my entire party.

It wasn't even a boss monster. It was an ordinary, run-of-the-mill random encounter.

Thankfully I was able to snag the last memory card from the local Wal-Mart, and never again did I crash and burn that badly.

Final Fantasy X was, of course, the first Final Fantasy on the Playstation 2. The graphics are simple by today's standards, but they were eons ahead of the Playstation 1. Final Fantasy X dared you to stare at the graphics, often spending 30 or 45 seconds on character's faces.

Like this:



Character models with individually articulated fingers? Unheard of in the old days.

Aside from it having really amazing graphics, it was the first Final Fantasy with voice acting in it. It also featured those FMV's that everyone loves, except now they were in full DVD quality and also mastered in Dolby Digital surround.

The game was certainly a hit, but it didn't rise to the stellar heights of it's predecessors. Those lofty heights were reserved for Grand Theft Auto and Gran Turismo.

Perhaps the most important "first" that Final Fantasy X had was an ending that wasn't an ending. It was mysteriously open-ended, and only those nerds who did all of the secret stuff got to see the "secret trailer" that appeared only on "international versions" of the game. The secret trailer that hinted at what would become Final Fantasy X-2.. but we're not there yet!

Overall Score: 9 of 10

Final Fantasy XI

To this very day, nobody is quite sure why Final Fantasy XI is an MMORPG. For whatever reason, they took a main installment of the Final Fantasy series, and they changed it completely.. and not entirely for the best.

All the usual things about Final Fantasy are there, except the FMV's, the music, the gameplay, and the storyline. You know, the important parts. In terms of Final Fantasy-ness, Final Fantasy XI was completely unlike any other Final Fantasy.

In terms of an MMORPG, Final Fantasy XI was impossibly difficult, making it impossible to play alone, and also impossible to find a group with the correct character balance.

In the end, the game was a flop, being the least popular among the regular Final Fantasy series, and often forgotten about in the MMO industry.

Overall Score: 5 of 10

Final Fantasy X-2

The oddly named Final Fantasy is also oddly cast, oddly written, and.. just odd in general. Not that it's a bad thing. X-2 picks up where Final Fantasy X left off and continues the storyline. It reuses a lot of the assets from Final Fantasy X, which perhaps explains why the game feels a bit cheap. The storyline also isn't linear, giving you a list of missions to choose from. Also, the music really isn't all that good.

Most people consider this to be "barely the last Final Fantasy game" despite there being many Final Fantasy games produced after it. It's the last Final Fantasy with random battles, turn-based battles, and 3 person parties. The story, though lacking, is still there. The game is recent enough that I actually wrote a Special K review of it when it came out. However, it was before I started the grading system.. so let's get that out of the way:

Overall Score: 8 of 10




Final Fantasy XII

Final Fantasy XII is a weird beast. It's a single player MMORPG that you can't play with anyone, but it's got AI control for those extra characters.

It's also recent enough for me to have done a review on it. My review still stands. It's an alright game, but it's not very Final Fantasy-ish.. and clearly inferior to the previous installments.

Overall Score: 8 of 10

Everything Else Final Fantasy

Over the years, square has pumped out all sort of Final Fantasy product that isn't really Final Fantasy but carries the Final Fantasy name.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance:
Alright, but it has bunny people and aliens.. and you can't rotate the game board.

Final Fantasy III for Nintendo DS:
Would have been better on a non-portable format.

Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII:
A horrible game with awesome cutscenes.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII:
Much better than Dirge of Cerberus, would have been better on a non-portable format.

Chocobo Racing:
Imagine a boring mario kart.

Ehrgeiz:
If you have this game, congratulations, it's worth a lot of money. It's kind of like a fighting game that has Final Fantasy VII bonus characters in it.

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles:
Impossible to play for ordinary human beings. Requires 4 players who own Game Boy Advances.

Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2:
Play them. They are not Final Fantasy games, but feature Final Fantasy Characters. They are awesome.

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings:
A nap would be a better use of your time.

Dissidia: Final Fantasy:
Looks cool, comes out in 2009 for North America. It's Smash Bros with Final Fantasy Characters. Too bad there's no Tifa.

So, there you have it, my retrospective and reviews on the Final Fantasy universe. Hope you enjoyed it!

Wall-E
Submitted Saturday, January 3, 2009 - 5:16:30 PM by Klaitu

In the future, the world is controlled by a huge megacorp called Buy N Large. It's basically Costco plus Wal Mart. People consume so much crap that Earth becomes a giant landfill.

The Buy N Large corporation builds luxury liners and evacuates the entire planet, leaving trash bots on the planet to collect all the trash and clean it up.

Shortly after the liners leave, it turns out that Earth is no longer life-sustainable. Everyone leaves Earth, but they leave the garbage robots running.

700 years later there's only one Garbage Robot left.. Wall-E.. and he's still cleaning up trash, not that it appears to have done any good.

One day a spaceship lands and delivers an ipod-esque robot named EVE. EVE has been sent to Earth to find photosensitive plants, which Wall-E just happens to have. He takes a ride along with EVE to the star liner Axiom, the flagship of the luxury yachts.

Turns out that the space humans living in these yachts are all fat consumers as well.. but it's no matter since they have robots to do everything for them.

Long story short, the plant that Wall-E had when inserted into the ship will cause the ship to return to earth. The Robot controlling the Axiom has secret orders to never return to earth, which leads in a power struggle for the plant.

It's not suprise that the good guys win.

This is the second "ecological disaster" movie I have seen in the past 2 days. Apparently people are really afraid that humans can't clean up after themselves. Wall-E isn't as preachy as most films, but it's still there. Fortunately, Wall-E is also entertaining, and it's got robots, which you can never go wrong with (unless you mean Judge Dredd).

Overall Score: 6 of 10

The Day the Earth Stood Still
Submitted Saturday, January 3, 2009 - 5:03:28 PM by Klaitu

As you might be able to guess, I'm a pretty big fan in general of The Day the Earth Stood Still.. you know, what with my name being Klaitu and all.

And yes, I know Klaitu does not equal Klaatu, and that's the whole point of putting the I in there.

The Day the Earth stood still (the 1951 film) stems from a short story entitled "Farewell to the Master" which was written in 1940. In turn, The Day the Earth Stood Still (the 2008 film) is loosely based on the 1951 film and the 1940 story.

Only the basic plot elements pass through all 3 of the iterations of the story, and the rest of them are completely different, so it's best to take each of the stories and just consider them entirely seperate.

In the 2008 version, Keanu Reeves is Klaatu, a man from a different planet. When he arrives and exits his spaceship, he is shot by a nervous military man. This is the part that is the same across all the versions.

The government captures the now collapsed Klaatu and studies him. They remove the bullet from him and start trying to boss him around. Klaatu isn't really having any of that, so he escapes. His mission: kill all humans!

Why does Klaatu want to destroy all humans? Because they exist.

Yep. The movie claims that the existance of humans is killing the planet. Wow. It's strongly hinted that this is some sort of impending ecological disaster. This is where the movie starts to fall apart.

Klaatu has brought with him Gort, a giant metal robot who responds to violence.. and later in the movie, he turns into metal bees. I'm not making that up.

So, anyway, Klaatu must destroy all humans because there is a shortage of life-sustainable planets in the galaxy, and the interplanetary neighbors don't want the humans wrecking up the place.

Well, it's a good thing John Cleese (of all people) is able to convince Klaatu that humans have two sides, and that maybe humans are worth saving after all.

This movie has serious plot problems, but for all of that it does get a lot of things right. When Klaatu is captured, they try all sorts of intimidation tactics but he;s not afraid in the least because he knows that he is in no danger.

Actually, the movie is pretty good right up until it gets preachy about the enviornment.. and that's the sad epitaph of it all. At the end of the film, a lot of human buildings and structures are erased by Gort's bees, and Keanu leaves the world without electricity.. hence "The Day the Earth Stood Still".

By comparison, the 1951 film isn't about ecology, and it isn't even about nuclear war. Klaatu comes to Earth to warn humans that if they try to attack other planets, the Gort robots will destroy Earth. Klaatu is a servant of the Gort robot, not the master. People won't listen to him, so he removes the world's electricity for an hour.. except for hospitals and airplanes in flight. This version isn't even preachy about nuclear war, it's basically "go ahead, blow yourselves up, we don't care, but don't point those things at us!"

Overall Score: 4 of 10

Jennifer Connelly is in this movie, so I though "gee, at least there will be a hot babe!" but she's not hot in this movie. How can you take Jennifer Connelly and ulgy her up? Why would anyone do such a thing? Travesty.

Days of the Future Past
Submitted Thursday, January 1, 2009 - 11:58:08 PM by Klaitu

If you're like me, when you were a kid in the 1980's, the future was going to be totally awesome. Sure, I suppose every era looks into the future and tries to speculate how things might be, but now that we're living in the future, we totally blew away some of their predictions, but not others.

Maybe I'm weird, but I'm going to miss those strange settings that are both futuristic AND retro at the same time. How can this be? Allow me to provide you with examples:

Space: 1999

Left4Dead
Submitted Thursday, January 1, 2009 - 11:51:51 AM by Klaitu

I am of two minds about Left 4 Dead.. and neither of those minds was "blown away" by the game.

What is L4D? It's a zombie game. Over the years I've clicked a lot of things to death.. Nazis, Viet Cong, Aliens.. but one of my favorite things to click to death is zombies.

Unlike those other groups, which you might expect to behave with some intelligence, zombies are all about eating your brains, and their only strategy is to come straight at you and try to eat them.

This is just the sort of AI that computers can replicate well! L4D doesn't mess it up either. Them's zombies, and yep, they's after you brains.

That's about the only thing the game gets right.

L4D is made by Valve, which is currently riding on a cascade of rainbows since they made the Orange Box. People are crazy in love with Valve, which to their credit is not entirely undeserved.

L4D has enjoyed the same sort of reception, and I was curious as to wether it's because it's a good game, or it's because people will just like Valve products no matter how bad they are.

In the end, the game is sort of like Rock Band. If you have friends that will come over and play the game, then it's pretty fun. If you happen to know people to play online with, I assume it would be fun as well.

But I'm neither of those people. I have two choices: Play online with random wankers, or play one-player with computer wankers.. neither of these options is appealing.

L4D consists of 4 distinct campaigns, each composed of 4 or 5 scenarios. The objective is to walk from point A to point B without dying, and once you get to the end of a campaign, then you get to shoot about 900 zombies coming at you at once, and then you win.

You've got 3 characters with you, wether they be computer controlled or online-jerk controlled. Either way, if you want to survive, you have to stay together because there are 2 or 3 zombies per level that can pin you down and only your friends can get you out. Actually, these 2 or 3 zombies are the only thing preventing you from running from point A to point B without any hinderance whatsoever.

Offline play is somewhat annoying, as your computer teammates are constantly standing in your line of fire, and they don't get the hint that they should stay behind you. This perhaps would have been better if you could give them commands like "stay here" or "stop shooting me in the back".

Online play is widely varied. Most of the time, you end up being killed in the staging area at the first of the game by some random jerk. When you happen to get a game that doesn't contain "that guy" it turns out that nobody really knows where to go, and nobody wants to lead, so everyone just stands around, or wanders around aimlessly.

There's also a mode where you play as a zombie and try to kill people, but I never tried it as I got enough PvP in the normal game.

In terms of "scary zombie effect" L4D is horribly lacking. It's a first person shooter where you are a camera with rockets mounted on it. You glide along effortlessly at warp speeds. You're faster than anything that might hurt you, so the zombies are little threat. They don't look particularly scary. They don't behave particularly scary. You can't even run out of ammo, it's infinite.

Another thing I feel I should mention is the graphics. I read on the box that the game is in "1080P".. and that's true. I found this to be fascinating, because rarely are games in 1080P.. but there really is nothing to look at. The graphics are horrible, and except for being in a high resolution, this is something you might have found 10 years ago on the PC. There is really no excuse for murky graphics this bad in a current generation game.

All these issues aside, L4D can be fun with friends for about 6 hours. Then, it suddenly becomes boring. If you want to check it out, I'd say rent it. I'm ashamed to say that I bought the game with christmas money, what a waste.

Overall Score: 4 of 10