It's a Guh-Guh-Guh-Guh-Storm!

Oh dear, oh dear. I could tell from the opening shot this wasn't going to be good.. and I was mostly right.

A lightning storm unleashed a collection of ghosts from the cemetery ground. They fry pretty much everyone in town, until they realise they can fight back with the help of a random medallion, a fire extinguisher and electricity... and then everyone left alive at the end (just the three of them) have a good laugh, knowing that everyone else on the island, and more, have been destroyed entirely.

Yes, the plot is stupid. Yes, the characters are a waste of screen time. But what I do like, a lot, about this is the special effects. I don't know if the people who did the CGI have their own studio, but if not, they should form one and get out there and get better places to work for. (Oh, and the editing wasn't bad, even if the acting and direction was.)

There are some notable names here. Carlos Bernard, Steve Bacic and Aaron Douglas, to name all of them. Although it does look like some of the other actors have decent careers, but none I have heard of.

Another movie to skip, but check out the trailer for all you need to see.

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Agent of Puzzle Research

Because I had to do at least one thing more than just lazing about, I played Puzzle Agent 2... because I had already played Puzzle Agent a while ago.

Despite the fact that these are not the most complex puzzles under the sun, the storyline is quite complex, and not something to be taken lightly. The set up is the rather silly idea of a problem with an eraser factory, but it includes astronauts, forest gnomes and a rather complex list of characters. All voiced differently. And all drawn in the style of Graham Annable, upon who's Grickle this is based on. (Which, yes, does make me want to find out more about that).

But yeah, the puzzles aren't that hard. The worse part is that it is not always obvious what the goal is supposed to be. In some case, you go from point A to B, but it wasn't clear that I was supposed to pass through certain points inbetween. Or that what I read as the question wasn't what they meant. Each puzzle gets scored, based on the number of wrong guesses (and each guess costs money) and the number of hints used. (The first puzzle I got confused about caused me to reset my game and go again... which introduced that I was dealing with unskippable cut scenes - bad game!)

The first game, while it does come to a conclusion, leaves a lot of plot threads open, which the second game follows up on. And although a lot of threads are then dealt with, what's going on isn't 100% clear. But I do like the plot we get. It's not straight forward, and while largely linear, you look forward to going to the next clue and not minding that. (And while you are not limited to going directly to the next puzzle, there isn't much else that happens outside the main line.)

Not long games, and enjoyable to play. I picked them up during bundle sales, so they can be gotten more cheaply than their already low cost.

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I'm Not Batman

Remember how Bane killed the Batman?? Well, kinda. And no, not the movie. In the original comics, Bane broke the back, and thereby ensured he would be remembered forever... as that one guy that did that one thing but otherwise is just a generic thug.

Well, they re-released the comics last year (and yeah, I've only just gotten around to finishing them). A long time ago there was the two volume set, of Knightfall and Knightcrusade, telling the fall of the Batman, and the return of Bruce back into the role. But they were missing Knightquest, which was the middle part. I always wanted to read that, to find out how Bruce got himself back to normal and rescued Tim's father and ... there was a lot of plot there.

In the more recent version, this is now a three volume set. The first one covers the first volume and half of the second one, with the remaining half in the new volume three. Volume two is Knightquest... which is all about how Jean Paul Valley is the Batman, and is going crazy and becoming Azrael at the same time... But I don't care about that! So I still don't know Bruce's story!

We also get Prodigal, in which Dick 'Nightwing' Grayson takes on the mantle of the bat for several issues, which the various characters expected to happen anyway. That was interesting, but we all knew Bruce was eventually going to come back... after all, it's not like he'd ever give it up and let Dick take over permanently, eh? Eh? (That's a reference to the fact that that has more of less happened in recent Batman continuity.)

While this is a nice set, I now have an issue of space. Before I complained about how DVD sets need to be on USB stick. Add comic collections to that. Although I prefer to read physical comics than on screen...

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Killing Giant Jacks

Yep, okay, you got me. I thought it odd that this was already out there for grabbing, and it turns out there is a reason for it... it's the Asylum version! Doh! Still, I said previously that they have been getting better, so this is a chance to see if that's true or not.

Plot wise, this is worse than a mess. Jack is a whiney 18 year old that gets some magic beans from his dad, and ends up in the land in the clouds where his dad is (fortunately one day up there is one year down here... although that doesn't hold when Jack is up here and they start popping from clouds to earth). And there are no giants. Because Newald killed them. So that title is wrong on at least two counts, and Newald the Giant Killer just sounds really stupid. Oh, and this is all taking place in England by the way. But there's a previous human, Serena, who gets the giant dinosaurs to come down from the clouds to earth and take it over. Fortunately, Newald knows what Ben Franklin did, and Jack has his own power mecha suit. Seriously, he built his own mecha suit. Yeah...

So yes, that gets this movie thrown out. I'm not sure it's entirely as bad as the 1.6 rating on IMDB, but it's not good. The CGI... is still obviously CGI. The creatures are looking a little shiny and plastic, and the interaction with real actors doesn't quite work... but it's not terrible over all.

Still, at least this stars some... actors... who are playing roles... and they speak words... yeah... there's that.

Terrible movie. Very much down to Asylum's usual standards... for all that entails.

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237 Rooms

I like a good overthinking. Many deep analyses can reveal what's actually going on, usually revealing that I had no clue at all about it. But it can go too far...

Room 237 is analysing The Shining. Several people reveal their theories about what the The Shining actually means. Like how it reflects the native American Indian genocide. Or the Jewish holocaust. Or has a Minotaur in it. Or how it shows that Stanley Kubrick helped fabricate Apollo 11 moon footage (not that we didn't go to the moon, just that we have faked footage about it) - for example a room key tag has 'ROOM No' on it, and the only words you can make from the capitalised letters are MOON and ROOM. Moron.

And that's about when I officially gave up. Unofficially, I never really gave it much of a chance. These people, self-admittedly, watched this movie over and over and over... and then they started noticing things in the backgrounds, which resonated with their own knowledge of various pieces of history. Really... how convenient...

Not to say that Kubrick didn't put some imagery in there. He was a smart guy, knew what he was doing, so could have easily seeded all sorts of things into it. Except... and even they skirt acknowledging it, even some of the things they point out is due to they were making a film on a set. And had to edit footage from different takes, with slightly different continuity. And I'm sure not even Kubrick directly decided on every single item placement, he would have left some of that to set dressing then okayed it. There's only so much time in the day to implant suggestions of sexual symbols or other airbushed self-portraits that are only visible for one frame.

[I don't know how long this film took to make, but 90%+ is film footage from other movies, and the audio track is basically these interviews... there are certainly harder films to put together.]

Usually, after watching something like this, you'd want to watch the original movie again. I was never a big fan of The Shining... but you know what? I don't want to see it again, because I'd just remember this and it would be ruined.

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Firey Rings

This is a natural disaster as a two two hour (with ads) miniseries. So given we know a disaster is going to happen, and the disaster is the main reason people are tuning in, when do you expect the disaster to happen? If you say in the first part, then you have a better sense of timing that the writers do. Not to say that it doesn't happen in the first half, just that it is the last possible moment.

So then in part two, we get the disaster out of the way, and then deal with people surviving. With, other than the threat of escalation, nothing else coming from the disaster. Yeah, what was the point of that then? Oh yes, that's right. People.

There's a lot of characterisation. And by characterisation, I mean the first half is setting up relationships, by which I mean lots of people arguing on screen with each other about random things we don't care about, because that's going to make people care, right? And then in the second half, we see people struggling to survive, and if you think there's a kid involved, then of course you'd be right, as well as dudebros trying to get away, and several other people, all with families to get back to, because then you know they are going to survive. (In fact... I'm not sure anyone actually dies... no wait, there is one family. Other than then, everyone else is fine.)

The cause of it all is Evil Corporation(tm)... guess who has a change of heart by the end? The Evil CEO(tm) of course! Then it rips off Dante's Peak and Volcano and... there is nothing new here by any means at all.

See this? You already have!

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ba-XING-ga!

Yes, I'm talking about a new game. A puzzle search and click in the style of Myst et al. By the name of XING.

You'll note that I've linked to a Kickstarter. I generally don't talk about them, if you look to the right, you'll see my list of tweets that are how I generally communicate about Kickstarter projects I'm a part of... but this one is slightly different.

There's a demo! Yes, you can plays it for yourself! (I'm pretty sure that link is open to all, ie not restricted to Backers. Considering they want to promote this, they'd be wise to let all try before they buy.) And after the demo, there's also a survey which asks about your machine set up and game experience. A chance to influence the creators!

Or if you want to just get an idea about game play: (which you can't do in the demo.)


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