Quick Reading Reviews and Recommendations

Star Trek Destiny 1-3 is another fucking excellent series from David Mack. Who says tie-in writing has to be written by tuxedo wearing monkeys typing with their feet? Mack is one of a handful of tie-in specialists who proves that even "Star Trek" novels can be great books.

I also gotta recommend any of the Atticus Kodiak books by Greg Rucka. I'm working on Shooting at Midnight now and it's another homerun. I always gotta give props to writers from my neck of the woods. Oregon has one helluva a lot of great authors.

FEAR 2 Fails to Scare the Shit out of Me

I missed the first FEAR, but I always knew how wonderful the AI was supposed to be. How brilliant it was at finding you and killing you, almost but not quite like a real player. I also heard how repetitive the spaces were, just office after office after fucking office. What got me to check out the sequel were some good words from Listen Up, a long wait for Killzone 2 and my interest in both Akira and The Ring.

Story-wise it still makes little sense. It’s clumsy, muddled and could deal with some real cut scenes. FEAR 2 works with the fear aspect though. It has plenty of creepy bits that managed to scare the pants off me here and there. The atmosphere effects add to this as do the ghostly baddies, the creepy long haired girl Alma and the typical dark spaces. Sure they are repetitive, but not quite so bad. I still feel that these guys at Monolith know fear. They can scare you and unsettle you. They know how to make good bad guys who can outflank you and piss you off, but they fail at challenging narrative even when they try to ape the Half-Life first person style cinemas. The environments are well modeled, but dull and things all fall together into a fun, but not Triple-A game.

It’s all fun and challenging, but it’s pure shooter, a bit old school with med packs and armor rather than recharging shields. But I could care less about my character Becket or this plot. It’s just a shooter with good controls, some fun guns, challenging baddies, the ability to change difficulty every time you die and boring ass typical factories, offices and industrial locations.

Now, I do love the mood and feel they strike and the satisfying spray of blood everywhere is fantastic. I love that shit. I just could give a shit about the story and that’s a shame, cause it is so close to being fucking-A fantastic and not just a great first quarter shooter. It’s not going to topple CO or Halo but it’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a solid 7.5 kind of shooter. If you want a good ten hours of shooting shit, it’s great, but couldn’t they just reach a little more and make it a 9?

Watchmen: A Couple Hundred Words of Impression Aren't Nearly Enough

Watchmen is brilliant. It is a visually amazing, totally controllled, designed, arranged, organized, detail driven adaptation of one of the greatest works of art. It is by no means perfect, but the love shown for the property is evident and it's hard to find another film that cares so much about where every single object on screen is. Snyder's film will make you think and it will stay in your head. Not everyone will love it, but after one viewing, I was ready for another one. Snyder is obviously a visual filmmaker and he excells at crafting scenes on screen. See this if you have even an ounce of interest. Debate the changes, dispute the performances, but remember it. This is art.

BSG Retcons Its Ass and Answers All (Mostly)

BSG has not always had a clear plan. It's had a goal and along the way it has crammed itself full of great bits, but when they introduced the idea of the final 5 and then showed us who they were, they found themselves backed into a corner. They had to not only explain how and why skinjob cylons came to be but how these characters with clear history worked. Then, the show went and found an empty Earth and more questions were created. Now, in a very clever bit of retconning and exposition, they have basically explained everything (at least in bullet points) and while it wiggles with history, it does the job. It's clever, it's a bit obvious, it's needed and hell, it makes a lot of sense. With a new opening we have the lines, "This has all happened before. It will all happen again" suddenly making sense. Those words are entirely true. Cylons. Check. Nuclear holocaust. Check.

Thousands of years ago, Man left Kobol for new homes. Twelve went one way, one went another. The twelve colonies were formed. Earth was formed. Sometime in the last three thousand years, Earth created cylons. Machines at first, they soon took human forms. They took over, expanding, procreating. Our final 5 were part of them. The bombs rained down and they were resurrected leaving behind a dead world. With no FTL, it took 2 thousand years to travel to the 12 colonies to warn them against creating cylons. They were too late. Just 50 years in the past (see Caprica) cylons were created. This led to war with the centurions. The 5 arrive and offer to help them make skinjobs, to evolve. These centurions believe in the one true God and agree to end the war in exchange for this help. They get it and create 8 models. They are betrayed by the first, Cavil, who kills them, resurrects them and places them without memories into society...they stay that way until their reawakening....And in one fell swoop, the history is outlined and nerds around the world rejoiced....That's how you fucking answer questions on a show like this. Fuck yes. And I think it's quite clear that our Earth has no place in Battlestar's universe. Fine by me. No need to merge the two at all.

Another fraking good episode. Too bad we only have 5 more to go...