Portal 2

Well, I beat Portal 2 finally after having a friend lend it to me. My steam copy decided to bork-up because of my computer configuration, so it’s been a longer wait than I anticipated. There’s literally nothing I can say about it that hasn’t been covered by everyone else on the internet within 24 hours of its release date.

It’s good, you should go play it. You might not find it as enjoyably as the original, but there’s just about no one saying it’s a bad game. It’s still humorous and challenging. Now with the combined might of the entirety of Valve it also happens to have some of the finest animation I’ve seen in a while and is one of the best examples of cinematic game-play in an FPS I’ve ever come across. But really that’s just a wordier version of the first sentence, so just go buy it already.

Oh, and look out For The Part Where He Kills You.

P.S. I still like the first Portal song better, but the new one’s still pretty awesome.

God of Thunder

I understand now.

How do you take the colourful and dramatic world of Norse mythology and combine it with the expectations of modern audiences?

How do you take a literal God from said pantheon and mix him in with relatable characters and not come of as forced or idiotic?

How can you make an audience expecting grittier, darker and edgy heroes accept a bombastic over-the-top concept like Thor?

How do you make it all work, please everyone, somehow be considered a kids movie, and really funny (but not a comedy) at the same damn time?

Play it all one hundred percent perfectly straight, refuse to drop any concept or original art design, and have everyone behave exactly how they should in such an insane scenario. The fact it all works is either unfathomable luck or definitive proof that the Norse Gods are in fact real and have blessed the movie.

Nothing seems forced because every characters immediate reaction to the absolutely mind boggling absurdity of it all is to assume they or everyone else around them has gone insane, and just continue to roll with the consequences of what’s going on. The romance subplot is present, but develops slowly and naturally to the point it hasn’t resolved by the end of the movie rather than forcing it to fit within their time constraints. The huge contrast between Asgard and Earth is prevalent, acknowledged and responded to in a proper fashion by every character that sees it, fueling about 90% of the comedy of the film. And I think one of the most important pieces is that all of the drama, despite the colourful setting, is treated completely seriously negating the need to inject gritty re-imaginings of an already pretty good story. All of this is bolstered by a fantastic acting job by everyone involved.

I don’t know if this movie is likely to win many Oscars, but it’s genuinely entertaining for a huge audience of all ages. I don’t think there’s really anyone I wouldn’t recommend this movie too, bar perhaps the snootiest of the pretentious crowd – and even then, I might just send them off to see it as an experiment. Maybe a movie that purely fun could penetrate even their smug attitudes.

About the only complaint that comes to mind is the 3D. It wasn’t really important for any scene in the movie. It does make a couple of the shots of Asgard look nifty, but for the increased cost I’d just say go view it in 2D. After all, things can get a little out of hand with the ticket price. But that’s mostly my own fault for seeing it at the Midnight release, with all the obligatory IMAX experience and 3D showing that such entails. It seriously ran me a bit over $17. It’s as stacked of an ‘experience’ as one can get from the biggest theatre in Ottawa, all the bells and whistles included; but damn, $17?! That’s atrocious.

That pretty much sums up that. Go see it and feel free to bring literally anyone. It’s worth the praise it’s receiving and it’s made me more than a bit eager for the Avengers movie. Here’s hoping Captain America follows in these footsteps.

Thor!

At the mid-night release to boot. That's right, Them Canadian Guys are packing up to go check out the latest in the line of Avengers here to sweep the box-office. The reviews coming in may not be going so far as to call it movie or year, but they're almost all positive to some degree. 

I must admit I've been in and remain in a state of dubious caution concerning the movie, because while the concept is something I can see entertaining me it's not an idea I expect to be widely accepted. Essentially I thought this was going to be, at best, another Expendables, which I could sit down to watch after carefully turning my brain off and enjoy with everyone else. The sort of action/comedy combination that isn't going to win an award for anything ever but will leave me happy I spent my money on it. The thing is movies like that usually attract a large crowd of people who despise the rather intentionally low-brow nature of them and consider them half-done attempts at film making. Thor seems to be by and large avoiding this stigma, and given that it's a comic book movie literally about a Norse God hanging around earth I'm left utterly baffled at how they managed it. 

Don't get me wrong; I don't hate the concept. I find it hilarious and awesome, certainly capable of entertaining me for what I expected to be the regulated hour and half. Just when I hear it the first thing I assume is Hollywood will make it stupid beyond imagination - with the additional assumption I'll probably like it for what it is anyways. Here though we find a movie over two hours long with an 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 95% from the viewers. The first time I heard those numbers I thought I was being trolled. I'm frankly astonished at the success it's having. Despite all that I can't shake my dubious thoughts on how it'll turn out, it's all just so bizarre.

None the less, we're off to find out first hand. I'll undoubtedly write something up for the movie tomorrow, so  'till then. 

Videos! Revamps! Actual content from other users!

I know, it’s hard to believe! I barely do myself, and I’m part of the group that was working on it all. We finally have a video posted up on our you-tube account which is why this blog is suddenly going to be more connected to it. Previously the account was pretty much just mine for idly subscribing to a handful of channels I like to follow, and all of our video making ideas firmly stuck in the pipe dream category. However, now we have a functioning editing machine and working camera equipment and production is plowing forward.

I’ve said it before, the first video we have primarily features this fact, and I’ll say it again; everything is liable to be crap. We are learning here, and that’s not a process known to suddenly create masterpiece after masterpiece. On the plus side we happen to have a bunch of ideas, none of which particularly require great acting skills from us. Hopefully we’ll prove capable of holding a camera steady and pointing in the right direction.

Now for the format of the videos, it’s going to be a bit wonky. One of the major ideas I want to throw into action is showing our learning. This is to say for each video I want to focus on a new thing we’ve never really tried before in an effort to figure things out. The idea is that the video following that one would identify what we were tinkering around with, how we felt it went, and where we’re still baffled. Presumably the new video will also have a new focus, and this could be a sort of roll-over effect. The downside with this idea is it means we need at least a minute long segment on each video dedicated to something entirely irrelevant to what it’s actually about. That combined with an insane urge to just make a million videos means these after-action reports may end up being entirely separate clips linked to by the video they’re about.

I’m still aware of the fact we have virtually no readership, but if you’re here by some magical accident feel free to click on the links up in the navigation bar to the right to get to the you-tube channel. There’s not much kicking around up there at the moment, but given we have at least three ideas slated to be filmed right now, hopefully you’ll be able to find more stuff there in the future.

A side note is the potential for other Canadian people to be making content for the site. Trevor’s making a how-to/how-I-did/Hey-I-have-stuff blog/video about making maps for games. He’s been plugging away at a variety of new custom maps for a mod in the old source engine and was busy doing a write up of sorts for how it’s been going last time we got together. With any luck we’ll see that (in whatever incarnation it takes) come around soon. Skye, a friend of ours I’ve mentioned a couple times is still hoping to join us in the video end of things, and with any luck we’ll be able to coordinate our bizarre schedules soon to make that happen.

Vlogging.

Vlogs. I’ve never done one. I now intend to start one – this time with all the other guys too. I don’t know precisely what part anyone is going to play in any of the upcoming things, but with the mentality we’re taking it probably won’t matter. I’ve wanted to shout at a camera about things for a while now and I damn well intend to, so we’re going to sacrifice the one thing we don’t think we’d really have anyways; quality.

Where this blog has always been about learning to write and getting myself into a proper work ethic to keep writing, the vlog will work on our video editing skills and valiantly taking stab at our camera shyness. It means we’re going to need to make mountain – great heaping terrifying mountain – all of crap. I can’t assure you that any of it will be enjoyable or worth checking out, but I suspect the odd bearable glimmer will shine through. The point is to get us to, like the blog, keep at it. It’s a work thing I’ve been capable of pulling off on my own now – but only barley. I can throw out a number of these posts in a week and I don’t see any sign that I’ll show down any time soon, but that’s just me. Lonesome singular me. Getting another two people to dedicate what free time they have to effectively working won’t be near as easy.

To that end I regret to say the videos will likely contain an unhealthy quantity of odd experiments as I try and find out precisely what part of film making my friends find fun so that they’ll feel motivated to keep going. I’d really like to get everyone today early this Tuesday and crack out an introduction show and a follow up on Video Games Live, but I never seem to have any luck getting a hold of people at a decent hour. Maybe I’ll just go throw rocks through their windows until they come out.

Oh, as a side note on Video Games Live itself; the show was awesome. I have most of a post on it planned out, but I’m holding back throwing it up here until I see if we can make that vlog. Ideally they’ll go up at the same time, but if for some reason we fail to make any sort of video I’ll just post the blog instead. Something’s better than nothing, right?