(500) Days of Summer

This has been a most interesting summer for movies, where the big budget movies have tended to fall flat while the movies that I was most on the fence about, namely District 9 and Star Trek, ended up hitting it right out of the park. There were also some great surprises, like The Hangover, and more recently (500) Days of Summer. While The Hangover is a comedic romp that revels in guilty movie pleasure and extremely base but effective humor, (500) Days is a thoughtful, moving, and surprisingly energetic look a relationships that hit very close to home for this reviewer. This was the perfect movie to end my summer reviews with, and though I may yet see GI Joe, I probably won’t review it anytime soon.

(500) Days of Summer makes two things very clear from the beginning of the movie. First, the movie is the story of a boy and a girl, and girl is someone that one of the film’s writers is no longer on good terms with. Second, is that the boy and girl do not end up together. Watching the movie, I was confused as to why the filmmakers would choose to tell us essentially the end of the story at the beginning. This is because the end isn’t as important as how the end came about, which is what the movie concerns itself with. The story is told non-chronologically, which works excellently as every happy moment the characters’ relationship is tempered with scenes from the decline of the romance. This makes the film seem much longer than its meager 95 minute running time, but this works well since such an emotional rollercoaster can’t be sustained for too long without tiring and eventually boring the audience. The movie is briskly paced, and engaging for the entire its entire length.



There are far too many good things to say about the two leads of the movie, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel. They are excellent in their roles, never outshining the other and keeping their balance throughout the film. There are times when you want to hate their characters, and this is because you actually begin to care about both of them and question their actions out of concern for their well-being. This is a credit to both actors and their expertly understated performances. The rest of the cast is also well utilized, giving their support when needed and staying in the background when they’re not. The camera is absolutely in love with Zooey, and does an excellent job of showcasing her stunning beauty and her character’s almost force of nature-like personality. As the story is mostly told from Gordon-Levitt’s character’s perspective, his turn as the helpless romantic is the backbone of the story, and the emotional highs and lows that his character faces were especially relevant to my own experiences.

The movie is not only about relationships, but about personal perceptions as well. Just because you see something and want it very badly, it will never work out if everyone isn’t totally onboard no matter how badly you want it too. This was a lesson that I as a young man from San Antonio, who met a girl from Detroit in college, had to learn for himself a long time ago. I asked that girl out many time, only to get rejected time and time again. I was so sure that we were supposed to be together, that it nearly cost us our friendship. Finally, I grew up and was ready to move on. It was that realization, finally understanding that just because I wanted something didn’t mean I would get it, that was a key factor in my growing as a person. Eventually, that girl and I did get together, but not until she saw that growth in me, and realized that I had the potential to be there for her. This is a lesson that inherent in the movie, and is one of the reasons that I enjoyed it so much.



(500) Days of Summer deserves your attention, more so than any other so-called romantic comedy that has come out this year. I’d say it’s the best movie of the summer, but Star Trek was pretty excellent as well. Both movies are satisfying in their own way, and both are excellent for their own reasons. 10/10

Kriegbot

It would be too easy to dismiss some board games as rip-offs or dumbed-down versions of bigger, more involved games. Descent and Doom could be called Dungeons & Dragons Lite, and Dominion could be called Magic: The Gathering Jr. It would be just as easy to dismiss Kriegbot as BattleTech For Dummies, but that would be enormously unfair. Despite its low-budget presentation, Kriegbot makes for a lot of light-wargaming, robot-building fun.

The game is straight-forward. Players are issued a robot chassis that determines your movement, initiative, and build configuration. You then are assigned teams and are given a team deck of weapons, equipment, and skins with which to trick out your battle bot. After you're finished building, your robots march out on the battlefield to play. Objectives can vary from scenario to scenario, from alien attacks to AIs vs. Humans, all of the objectives look pretty entertaining. In our first two games, we played a team deathmatch followed by Kill the Human, where each team has a single human piloted robot, and the objective is to slay the opposing team's meatbag, I mean human.

The best part about the game is making combos with a robot’s equipment and weapons, of which there are many. Another benefit is that the robot chassis that is issued to you, while being very distinct from the others, can't really hinder you from making the kind of robot that you're in the mood for. You can make a rocket sniper bot, or a rocket melee bot, or a rocket bot that fires lots of missiles. There are many possibilities, and the game is infinitely expandable to provide more building options. Moreover, the game can be played on any hex board, and using any kind of appropriately sized miniatures, rather than the ones included. This makes for a great use of minis from other games or your own home build figs.

I mentioned that people might call this game an oversimplified version of Battletech, but that's fine because sometimes a simple version of game that I like is a very good thing. Where Battletech requires a lot of time to get a new player into the game, Kriegbot takes about 15 minutes. Where you could spend hours going through all of the materials available to BattleTech players to build their mechs, it takes a fraction of that time to build a robot in Kriegbot. BattleTech, Magic, and D&D can't be replaced, but you can get a lot of the fun thanks to games like Kriegbot that are very accessible, easy to learn, and quite enjoyable to play.

I had high expectations from this game, and I'm pleased to say that they were soundly met. If you can get a copy, I highly recommend that you do. 9/10

District 9 and Inglourious Basterds

When I updated the other day, it occurred to me that I'd completely left out any mention of some of the movies I've taken in recently. EGAD! Sometimes I have to remind myself that my geekery need not be limited to games and sports.



This summer was all about the remakes and sequels. Some of them were good, like Star Trek and others were rather bland or just sucked all together like Terminator Salvation and Transformers. It's extremely refreshing when something new and awesome is given to us to enjoy, and nothing more represents that feeling than Neill Blomkamp's District 9.

District 9 is essentially a big-budget remake of Blomkamp's short film Alive in Joburg, with obvious expansions of the plot, characters, and special effects. The movie is about a group of errant aliens who's ship settles just above Johannesburg twenty years before the film is set. Having nowhere else to put the growing alien population, the South African government settles the refugees into a slum known as District 9. This is just one of several not-so-subtle references to apartheid in the movie, and this along with the slow start of the film is one of District 9's few failings. Once the movie gets going you're almost unprepared for the massively epic finale to the film, and before I spoil too much I'll just say that the alien weapons in the movie are definitely video game inspired and utterly awesome.

Speaking of the aliens, they look fantastic. Not only are they exceptionally animated, they're everywhere on-screen. The filmmakers are not shy in showing off their masterfully crafted aliens, but it never feels like they're hogging the spotlight. Further, I suspect that a lot of the time and effort in animating the aliens comes from the aborted Halo movie, that special effects house Weta was also working on. The aliens are sized just about right to be Elites, and one of the alien crafts looks an awful lot like a Pelican. I don't consider this to be a mark against the movie, as any means by which to deliver quality special effects is alright with me. Weta does a great job of making the Prawns, a slurish nickname for the District 9 aliens, different enough in size and texture from Elites for most people not to notice.

District 9 is now required viewing for any fan of good science fiction, and manages to challenge the epic Star Trek for being the best sci-fi movie of the summer and perhaps the year. Really, it's not fair to label District 9 as merely good sci-fi as it stands on it's own as an excellent film quite well. 9/10



From a virtually unknown filmmaker's work, we shift now to a guy that everyone knows and his movie that's been a long time coming. Quentin Tarantino has been working on Ingourious Basterds for over a decade, and I remember when I first heard about the movie right around when Kill Bill came out, and I was pretty excited about it. Some of my favorite movies are World War II films, including Kelly's Heroes and The Dirty Dozen, and this looked to be aiming for being that kind of WWII flick.

Inglourious Basterds definitely delivers such a movie, complete with Tarantino's trademark dialogue and violence. The movie is almost more of an exploitation movie that revels in the brutal killing of Nazis, with many breaks of tense but polite conversation. It's not a film for the squeamish, as many people are regularly and gruesomely dispatched throughout the movie. It's also not a movie for those that dislike killing for killing's sake, so if you didn't like movies like Hostel or Saw, you might want to skip this.

That said, Nazis make for the perfect villains as Indiana Jones and Wolfenstein both proved to us. Killing is not OK, but tempering that notion by killing Nazis is perfectly acceptable in most forms, and is almost cathartic for people who really REALLY hate Nazis, like Jake Elwood or Jewish-American soldiers that make of the Inglourious Basterds in the film. If you already are a fan of Tarantino's work, you need to check this out. Look for excellent performances by the unknowns of the cast, like Mélanie Laurent as the scarred Shoshanna and Christoph Waltz and the polite, evil, and multilingual Nazi Colonel Hans Landa. I for one like this a lot, Nazi killing and all. 8/10

Random Thoughts #5

• I picked up Shadow Complex and am playing through that. A review is forthcoming, but I imagine it'll be tempered by the fact that I'm playing on the hardest difficulty. So far, it's a cool jaunt into some new "old-school" gaming. I'm enjoying it so far.
• It's almost that time of year again, FOOTBALL SEASON!!! The pro league means the beginning of fantasy football, and looks like I'm playing in 4 leagues this year. One work league, an Red vs. Blue Keeper league, a RvB ReDraft league, and a league with my family back home. Of course, it also means that SOONER FOOTBALL is upon us as well. Hopefully my Sooners make something special happen this year, and for now I hope that we beat the hell outta BYU in Dallas! BOOOOMER!!!
• I pre-ordered Halo:ODST. Why? Because I'm a goddamn sucker fanboy, that's why.
• I can't wait to play this game. I've been waiting for too long!
• SOOOONER!!!!
• Finally, I don't think I posted it here, but I did a little voice work for a friend's Halo highlight video. Check it out below!

The Downfall of Pompeii

Macabre in board games has never really bothered me. Maybe it should, seeing as one of my favorite games involves the slaughter of thousands and the wonton destruction of property and person. Still, it’s hard not to think about all the little imaginary lives that might be affected by the way I play this little game and no game has invoked those feelings in me more than The Downfall of Pompeii.

Let’s be clear on one thing; while The Downfall of Pompeii certainly can create some empathy for the little wooden pieces that you both doom and save over the course of the game, it still allows for a sick cathartic satisfaction when burying your opponents in flows of rushing lava. The idea of the game is to save as many people as you can from the doomed city of Pompeii. The first hint at this games dark humor is the fact that you actually have to attract as many people to the city as possible before the volcano start erupting. Right before the mountain erupts in earnest, there are omens along the way that are appeased by tossing your opponent’s pawn people into the volcano as a futile tribute. It’s more grisly humor and more fun for the players!

Finally the inevitable happens and Mt. Vesuvius finally explodes, the real fun begins. Players then try to move as many of their own people out of the city, while using the lava flows to block their opponent’s exit. The game allows players to revel in the carnage as city gates are instead covered in deadly volcano vomit. Movement is limited in this phase, and sometimes sacrifices must be made in order to try and get out as many pawns as possible.

The game has some random elements, like placement of the omens, where the players can place pawns, and when exactly the eruption starts. This allows for some replay value, and the game is an interesting study in cutting one’s losses. I’ll definitely want to give this another play very soon. 6/10.

Automobile

Ever since I saw Automobile being played at a recent Super Fantastic Gaming Hour I’ve been intrigued. I’m not sure why exactly, as the box and board are decorated with a nicely appropriate art deco touch, the bits are somewhat unremarkable save for the oodles of little wooden cars, and the gameplay is almost nothing but resource management. Still the game called to me like no other recently and I set out to give it a try and was lucky enough that a buddy was able to help me scratch my itch. No, not like that you pervs, sheesh.

Automobile is the unassuming name of the most unassumingly awesome game I’ve played in a while, as its plain presentation and simply style made for some really good board gaming. The game reminds me a lot of Roads & Boats in its approach to the game’s art, and this is a refreshing change.

I’ve talked a lot about how the game looks, because how it plays is very simple. Choose an auto industrialist character and get a special ability for the turn. You build factories that you use to build cars. You then sell cars to meet the demand of your distributors, or special abilities or the public. You can slash prices to sell more cars for less profit, and then you take losses on your older factories and excess supply. That’s it. It then all comes down to managing your cash and making returns on your investments.

There would seem to be very little player interaction, but it’s the actions of the players that drive what you have to do and how you have to adapt. New factories built by other players quickly date older factories, and require that you continue to upgrade and provide newer cars to not fall behind. The choice of a character can also be critical, as the special abilities have the capability of affecting an entire turn’s strategy.

My only concern with the game would be its replayability, since aside from the number of players and some of the choices made, theres not a lot of things that can change from game to game. The game is a little on the longer side though, and as fun as it is I can’t see it hitting the table enough to get tired of it quickly. It’s a rewarding experience, but all the mathing and resourcing and cash-making can get tiring. Again, I cannot emphasize how cool this game is if you dig resource management exercises. 8/10. HOORAY FOR MASSIVE PRODUCTION!

Snow Tails

Racing games always have been feast or famine for me. Either they’re really awesome and I love them like Das Motorsportspiel and Elfenland, or they’re awful and I hate them like RoboRally and Pitchcar. I’m happy to say that Snow Tails falls in the former category. I loved it and it was awesome!

Snow Tails puts you in the role of a dog-sled racer in the Iditarod, maneuvering your sled through the course and trying to get to the finish line without taking enough damage to your sled to end your race. The game actually looks more daunting than it actually is, as the clumsy sleds are actually pretty intuitive to maneuver with the movement mechanics the game offers. Essentially, you turn your sled by having one side of dogs moving faster than the other, and you indicate that by playing different speed cards on your sleds right and left halves. Like all good racing games, the curves have a maximum safe speed, and exceeding that naturally does quite a bit of damage to your sled.

The game is very straight-forward, and doesn’t take long to learn at all. The game also plays great with three players, which is another plus for smaller gaming groups, or larger groups where you need to play a short game in between big, long, meaty games.

That last line had a little too much “sausage-love” in it for my taste, so here’s a video of Christina Hendricks.



Ahhh. Moving on, the game plays smoothly and it one of the better racing games I’ve tried in a while. Well done! 7/10