My immediate reaction was to believe it a joke. Then, upon realising that it was a real deal (literally!), I thought “hey, that doesn’t have to be so bad.” Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t automatically distrust any large company when they buy up the rights to a beloved franchise. Of course they are going to try and make money out of it. Of course it won’t be the same as the original trilogy that many of the fans grew up with. But be honest now – was the new trilogy the same? No? And didn’t you all go see it anyway?

I thought so.

Now. I realise that there is a line drawn here, between those fans who grew up with Star Wars and as such have forged a deep connection with the original trilogy, and those of us who came to the fandom later in life. I love Star Wars, I really do. My first meeting with the world, though, wasn’t through the original trilogy. It was through the Ewok cartoons, which I didn’t really connect to Star Wars at all at the time. Then, later, I saw the movies and fell in love with them, old and new. For sure, there are elements in the new that I hate. Such as king of whinypants Anakin, not to mention Jar Jar Binks. But as a whole, I love them. I’m willing to look beyond these annoying elements and enjoy the story, the setting, the mood.

And I’m fairly certain that I will be able to do the same with the Disney-backed Star Wars movie(s). Disney didn’t ruin the Marvel movies they were involved in, and I can’t believe they’ll do such a bad job with Star Wars either. These aren’t amateurs. They probably didn’t acquire LucasFilms on a whim. They’ve thought this through, or so I choose to believe. And I choose to believe that they will do their very best to do the franchise honour.

New and different doesn’t HAVE to mean bad.

Tiny addition: To be honest, had Disney bought the rights to Harry Potter and announced new movies in that series, I would have been much more apprehensive than I am about Star Wars – because I have that deep connection to Harry Potter that some of you have to Star Wars. I know there are two sides to this, I’m merely stating my feelings about this.

Featured image: Original artwork by James Silvani. I obviously claim no rights or ownership.

Issue #1

I recently started reading The Walking Dead comics by Robert Kirkman. Or, well, I read the first issue a while back, as it was/is one of the free comics on the Comixology app. Then I got a newsletter e-mail from Comixology last week telling me that it was running a sale on all TWD comics. So I bought volume 1, consisting of issues 1 through 6. Read through it in less than an hour. Got the next volume…and the next…and the next. 16 volumes later, I have just one thing to say:

The comics have the TV show beat by a light year.

I honestly didn’t think that the comics would give me that same sense of urgency and fear, and definitely not that they would make me gasp out loud. But they have, on several occasions. I also like how the persons in the comics are even more nuanced than they are in the TV show – and I initially thought that the show did a pretty good job with that.

The comics are a lot more gruesome, though – for both bad and good. Good because really, if the zombie apocalypse came around, no one would get off scot free. People would turn on each other, and everyone would come into harm’s way. I’m not saying that’s not the way in the show, but in the comics, well, you’d have to read them to see what I mean.

Now, my favourite part of the comics is how different Carl is. Carl in the show is, well, annoying. Half the show is made up of “where is Carl?” “GET IN THE HOUSE, CARL!!” “Carl is not in the house!” “CAAAAAARRRLLLL!”. And sure, maybe that’s how some kids would act if they knew that wandering off into the woods might get them eaten, but it does get old, and quick.

But in the comics, that’s not how it happens. In the comics, Carl is a badass. I know, I know, he shot Shane and all that in the show, but he’s still a bit whiny and frustrating and probably one of the reasons why people sometimes want to leash their kids. SO THEY WILL STAY IN THE EFFING HOUSE WHILE THE GROWNUPS GET SHIT DONE.

See? Badass. Not going to tell you what happens next though, but it confirms his badassery. Or the complete loss of his childhood. Or both.

If you enjoy the TV show but haven’t read the comics yet, I strongly encourage you to do so. Keep in mind that when creating the TV show, they did not set out to follow the comic storyline completely – some things are the same, some are changed. Like Carl always being sent to the house but never staying there.

And then all my top wishlisted games went on a days long sale parade: Anno 2070. Skyrim. The Walking Dead. L.A. Noire.

And I had to buy them all because, you know, they’re on SALE. It would be wrong of me not to get them now. The thing is though, I now have – let me count – 23 games that I haven’t finished. That’s not counting simulator games (some of which I haven’t tried yet), episodic games and games that came in bundles.

So I’m going to need to be strict with myself now. I have to finish something. I hardly ever finish games, the recent exception being Dragon Age Origins & 2, but this has to stop.

These are the rules: Until I have finished AT LEAST ONE of my “older” games, I am not allowed to start any of the new ones (with the exception of The Walking Dead because, umm, I’m already almost done with episode 1…). I should also try my damndest not to veer into other older games, with the exception of 1) Simulator games and 2) Cutesy platformers – because I play those kinds of games just to unwind when life gets me down. When life gets me down I do not want a challenge, I just want to build an empire and rule the world, ok? Ok.

First up: Mass Effect.

Oh, wait. A third exception: Bioshock. Because, you know, that whole blog category has been dead for a while, so I need to do something about that. I’m scared already. Hold me.

Nostalgic for the times when drinking at the job was practically mandatory? Mad Men is for you.

One of my biggest obsessions, TV show wise, is Mad Men. Season 5 just started, and I was for a bit rather upset at the timing of episode 1+2 – I’d be away in Bergen for a conference at the time. Then I realised that as long as the hotel I stayed at had a decent wifi connection, preferrably a free one, I could just download it onto my iPad. Win! This turned out to be even more of a win since I got sick just before leaving, so staying in my hotel room with Mad Men on the iPad was perfect! Except the being sick part.

Since there is a week between each episode, I’m keeping my obsession in check by rewatcing all the previous seasons. Thanks to the Easter break, I’ve plowed through season 1 in just a couple of days. Rewatching it made me think about how I first came to watch the show, a story I thought I’d share (yeah, I took three paragraphs to get to the real point of this post, SO WHAT).

I was at a course-seminar thing through my job at the university, all about marketing. I’m not really sure why I went, as I have nothing to do with marketing. It might be because I thought I could better at marketing my department? Definitely not sure. Anyway, they showed us a clip from Mad Men – from the last episode of season 1, the one where Don Draper (insert swoon here) did his presentation of The Wheel/Carousel for Kodak.

This is Don Draper. You'll probably buy whatever he's selling.

This is where I would have put the video clip from Youtube, but embedding has been removed by request. If that was you requesting, AMC, you suck. Seriously, not letting people embed and share a show that’s centered around, among other things, advertising? Sharing on the internet = free advertising for your show. I shake my head in disbelief at you.

Here’s the link instead: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2bLNkCqpuY. Not as awesome as an embedded video.

When I first saw that clip, I didn’t see any of the other trappings that might have enticed me into watching the show – namely, the 60′s setting. But the presentation of The Carousel, the feelings it apparently enlicited in the watchers – that’s what got me. I’m big on nostalgia. Very, very big. I’m hit by it almost every day, by the strangest little things. I’ll watch the snow falling outside, something that I actually despise, and suddenly feel a wave of longing for when I was a kid and the best thing that could happen was snow during the Easter holidays, because that meant skiing and sledding all day long. I’ll hear a song, and almost shed a tear for the bygone times when my mother would sing to me before bedtime.

I read a comment on one of the Youtube videos, saying how the clip plays on nostalgia twice over:

Do people get the self-reflection in this scene? Don is actually giving reason for the success of the series “Mad Men”. “Sentimental bond” with the Sixties, “nostalgia” for a classy era, “place we ache to go again” etc. Mad Men is the actual “time machine” for the viewer. This scene works so on many levels.

So there you go. Might be that my love for the show itself stems from nostalgia. Now go, watch, and let me know what you think – I’d love to have someone to talk to about this show!

Not convinced? Don Draper says it's your loss.

Nawww.

Tonight I finally got around to re-watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2. Several of my earlier complaints about it still stand – namely two: The whole “let’s finish this the way we started it, Tom” thing (ugh WHY); and the epilogue, which makes me throw up in my mouth a little, both in its written and its visual forms.

Because the thing about the epilogue is that it reads like fanfic of the very worst kind, the kind with Mary Sues and Gary Stus abound. Seriously, it could have been written by a 12 year old fangirl. Here’s pretty much what will happen after the new Potters and Weasleys and Malfoys board the Hogwarts Express (please note that this list is not exhaustive):

• Albus Severus is the first ever Hogwarts student to be put in two houses at the same time. He’s both a Gryffindor AND a Slytherin. This of course also means that he can play for both Quidditch teams, using a time turner to be able to play against himself when the two house teams face off against each other.
• Lily Luna mysteriously develops colour-changing eyes, which by old wizarding lore signifies great talent for absolutely everything.
  

  Suck it, Hermione - Lily Luna is in da hooouse!

• Snape’s illegitimate son shows up unexpectedly, he may or may not be the result of a drunken night Snape and the female Carrow had shortly before the Battle of Hogwarts. God only knows where she has been hiding the kid up until now. Love triangle between Snape Jr., Lily Luna and Hugo Weasley ensues.
• Albus Severus with friends (probably named the New Marauders or Marauders 2.0) are daring each other with bungee jumping from the Hogwarts bridge, when one of them spots one of the pieces of the Elder Wand.
• Rose Weasley uses her super awesome library skills to scrounge up information on how it ended up there and where the other piece might be (considering Harry’s throws, I’d say it’s a few meters away from the first one, but what kind of adventure would THAT be?).
• The gang go on an adventure to find it. They do find it. Lily Luna then uses her excellent skill of EVERYTHING to mend it.
• With the newly mended Elder Wand, Albus Severus can also be awesome at everything. At least everything that requires a wand.
• Since no one can ever be as awesome as Albus Severus and Lily Luna combined, they assume the family name of Dragonborn and marry each other, Targaryen-style. Because seriously, no fanfic is complete without at least one crossover.
• Ok, one more point to complete all obligatory points of a HP fanfic: James Sirius and Scorpius Hyperion turn out to be madly in love with each other. Thus ends the long, proud Malfoy bloodline.

THE END.

No love for the water levels, though.

It’s no secret that I’ve been playing games for a long, long time – since before the term “gamer” was coined to represent, among others, those of us glued to the screen, mesmerized by Mario’s seemingly endless quest to rescue his beloved princess. Since then, the world of games has evolved like crazy. I remember thinking that Super Mario Bros. 3 was the most graphically sophisticated game ever. Now? Not so much, even though the entertainment value remains the same.

Anyway: With the advent of the newer gaming consoles, 3D games became more and more the norm, while my beloved 2D platformers more or less faded into Oblivion (capital O intended – get it?). And I miss them, I miss them so much. Besides Wind Waker, which is probably my favourite game of all time, I prefer 2D platformers above most other games. Point in case? When the Nintendo Wii was released, I bought one on release day (purely by accident – or providence – but that’s another story), along with two games: Rayman Raving Rabbids, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I’ve finished Raving Rabbids, mostly because it’s hilarious and made up of small games, hence making it very casual. However, I’ve probably logged only about 3 hours total of Twilight Princess since its release. What I’ve used the Wii for, mostly, is purchasing old NES and SNES (and the occasional Sega Mega Drive) games and played those. And they are – you probably guessed it – platformers.

But now. Now there’s a new kid in town. Mario has already called me a blasphemer for this, but when I got The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for Christmas, I exchanged it. I exchanged it for one of the most awesome and hilarious games I’ve ever played: Rayman Origins. When I first heard about it being marketed as a return to the 2D platformer, I was hooked. When I watched a gameplay video on Youtube, I was sold. I had to have it. And I have not regretted it for one second.

Yes. This actually happens in the game.

Rayman Origins is made by insane people, there can be no doubt. But insane in a good way. Like – on acid, but without in any way being a danger to themselves or others. From the moment you start the game, it is like being on an intense sugar high. It. Is. Crazy. CRAZY FUN. And it IS a return to the roots. Rayman was my first Playstation game, and it has held a special place in my heart ever since, along with the early Super Mario Bros. games, Alex Kidd in Miracle World and Wind Waker. Origins does it justice, most definitely. I especially love the zany intro movie, and the Mosquito levels.

It’s a rare thing these days that I want to sit down and play a game for hours, but that gaming joy has been rekindled with Rayman Origins. Ubisoft, I am grateful.

She looks friendly.

Well, before going there I finished some other things, most notably dodging a Little Sister and her Big Daddy (in a cut scene, but whatever), killing a splicer on fire and taking the elevator to higher ground. A part of me is still a little sad that completing an objective gets me nothing. A level up would have been nice about now.

I’m somewhat getting the hang of moving around and aiming to kill things. However, I encountered a moving target, which caused some problems because I kept turning the wrong way, looking up when I should look down etc (sidenote – since I can’t invert the X-axis, I’ve opted not to invert Y either). I got him in the end, though. I also learned that you can’t shoot electro bolts between stair railings. Pah!

Today’s play hasn’t been too scary – I’ve even ventured into areas away from where the objective arrow pointed me, just to check out what was there! Other achievements of today include using a weapon other than the wrench, hacking a Security Bot, and not dying. Yay!

All in all great progress has been made today. 1 – I made it to a new place, the Medical Pavilion, 2 – didn’t die, and 3 – I only stopped playing because the game crashed, not because I was too scared to go on. The game crash is somewhat disconcerting, as it is the second time this has happened. Hopefully the disc just needs some cleaning – I would hate to have to abandon my new project because of a broken game disc (or worse, a broken Xbox! (although to be honest, I’d like to get a new one of the new generation that are smaller and less noisy (but I’d rather not have to spend that money until I have to))).

Also, no whales spotted. They might be hiding to pop out at me when I least expect it, though – just like everything else in this game.

I think, however, that my being scared might help when it comes to killing things, because it ups the rate of my button mashing. This works very well, at least when the target is right in front of me. I realise that they will not always be right in front of me, but I will cross that bridge when I get to it. Unless the river is shallow enough for me to wade across it.

So far in the game I have killed two splicers and apparently almost killed myself by falling off a balcony while my DNA updated itself so that I could shoot lightning bolts out of my hands (or at least one hand, I’m not sure what the other hand is up to all the time). Please note that this was the game’s doing, not my own. So in reality, I haven’t made any big mistakes yet. Except perhaps thinking that I might ever get through this game.

Once again the image belongs to 2K Games. No offence intended, 2K.

OMG WHALE

And then the game starts, I suppose, with a splicer attacking my pod. This is where I turned off the game because the thought of something attacking me while I haven’t gotten the hang of the controls kinda scared me.

It sounds even more pathetic when I write about it than it was when it happened, I swear. Also, I realise that this entry is sort of more about whales than it is about the game, but that will change. I hope.

Have you ever wanted to play a game that is normally out of your comfort zone, just because it appeals to you aesthetically? This is the case with me and Bioshock. Ever since I first laid eyes on Bioshock I have loved the look and feel of it. Here’s the thing though: I don’t do first person shooters. Or, actually, shooters at all. Or first person at all. I’m more of a third person RPG person (Neverwinter Nights, Dragon Age etc.).

Also, I’m easily scared. Really. I have been known to scream like I’m the star of a horror movie, just because my husband hid behind a door and jumped out. Are husbands even supposed to do that when they KNOW that it will scare the living daylights out of you? Isn’t there some kind of law against it, or if not a law, at least a well known and respected custom?

Anyway, back to Bioshock. I’m going to try it. I really am. It will probably be slow going, because I have a tendency to just turn off games that scare me, sometimes the second they scare me, because my heart, IT JUST CAN’T TAKE IT.

Please note that I do not have a heart condition. That I am aware of. Most likely, my heart can take it, or I wouldn’t even try.

It will also be slow going because I have only 5 days of vacation time left, and I really need to spend at least some of that doing productive things, like writing my thesis proposal. Then it’s back to work and studies, which might leave precious little time for gaming. I’ll try, though!

And you, you will get to follow my feeble attempt to conquer my fear of scary beings attacking me in first person. I mean, scary beings attack in Dragon Age as well, but they’re not all up in my face, so it’s fine.

Ready? GO.

(All images are the property of 2K Games. I didn’t ask their permission to use them. Please don’t shoot me.)