Zorac's LiveJournal

I mentioned a couple of weeks back that I was playing The Longest Journey - an entry of that oft-neglected genre of computer games, the point-and-click adventure. Following on from the purely text-based games which have been around for decades, the point-and-click games had their heyday in the 90s, most notably in the hands of LucasArts, with the colossus of the genre being the Monkey Island series. Fans of those games will know that it's high praise indeed when I say that The Longest Journey is right up there with Monkey Island at its best. As for the sequel, Dreamfall...

( Collapse )

( Collapse )

1. SomethingAwful has a bunch of B-Movie-style poster spoofs which are well worth a look.Page 8 has the HP one, most of the rest are pretty good too.
2. Apparently, Lost has been cancelled - in 2010 (well, assuming it doesn't happen soon, say, if the ratings keep falling). Three more 16-episode seasons - a hard limit which (together with the fact that last week's episode was actually pretty decent) gives me hope that they might be able to pull of a decent conclusion. Maybe.
3. Heroes was awesome - must be Tuesday.
4. April Ryan is my new video-game-girlfriend (not sure who the previous one was, actually - possibly Elaine Marley, although she's kinda taken now - but it certainly wasn't Lara Croft...). I picked up a copy of The Longest Journey at the weekend for under ten bucks from Steam, and it's all kinds of fantastic. Yes, the graphics are eight years old, but it's a point-and-click adventure, so who cares. It's got interesting characters, a huge sprawling plot, buckets of humour, and got the Monkey Island reference in very early on - what more could you ask for? Oh, yes, a fix for the lock-up bug (save early, save often...)

And the "totally misleading trailer of the week" award goes to Bridge to Terabithia. Given the current cinematic drought, I was happy to catch a preview of something which showed every sign of being a cheap Narnia rip off. What I actually got was something rather better - a fine character piece with a few effects sequences along the way (whilst they're certainly not gratuitous, the cynic in me wonders if some of the justification for them was to allow for the marketing spin. Either way, they didn't exactly break the bank, which is fine as the movie delivers in other ways.)

Jesse is an artistic schoolkid with (like seemingly every male character in American TV/Cinema - what's with that?) Daddy Issues - not to mention Sister Issues (he has four of them). At the beginning of a new school year, he meets new arrival Luna Lovegood Leslie, a fellow outsider (who conveniently lives next door) and they soon become friends. A rope-swing across a stream away in the forest, together they create a fantasy kingdom to escape from the real world and plot revenge on the bullies.

( Collapse )

PS. Yes, I know it's based on a book which was published way before HP.

Apparently last time I went to lush, I forgot the golden rule of bath bombs - Never get the yellow ones. Also, the rainbow drops really don't dissolve in bath-water. They just go kinda goopy. Yech.

In other news, at some time in the not too distant past, IMDb have finally added my Most Wanted Feature. The "Movie Connections" section was never quite as good as it could have been on account of not explaining itself (and it could be really frustrating to not know why movie X apparently references movie Y). There's now an optional description for each connection, too - obviously many are blank at the moment, but it's a start...

Yes, I am posting to LJ from my Wii. l never did get around to doing it from the PSP because entering text is way too painful whereas this is point and click, plus it has auto-complete. For my next trick: Wiimail-to-LJ. Or not.

OK, after waiting this long, I don't think I will barbecue it, but still...

Thanks to this site, I got notified the minute Amazon got some more Wiis in stock and had the order placed immediately. Now I just have to wait for it to turn up...

So, I went to see Hot Fuzz today, another excellent piece of it's-not-quite-a-spoof-it's-just-really-funny cinema from the team behind Shaun of the Dead and the ultimate fanboy sitcom, Spaced. The gentle comedy of the first half does a great job of setting up the full-on (albeit slightly silly) action movie second half. Pegg and Frost are on form as usual, and Timothy Dalton is clearly having far too much fun hamming things up, plus the who's who of British actors and comedians - Jim Broadbent, Bill Bailey, Steve Coogan and the seemingly obligatory Bill Nighy cameo. An unexpected bonus was having a lot of the film shot in the cathedral city of Wells, which is where my Gran lives, so I know it quite well. Many familiar sights - the best moment being a chase scene down the pathway which run's behind Granny's garden - it's a small world, after all.

In other news, my quest for a Wii remains entertainingly doomed. Bricks-and-mortar retails seem to be barely stifling amusement if you have the optimism to enquire if they have any in stock. As for online, I have found a nifty stock-checker-alerter website, but thus far the stock has only appeared either as part of a full-price bundle including a bunch of games I don't want, from shops which will only deliver to the registered credit card address, or exactly when I'm not online. Yes, I could reserve one, but I should have done that months ago, and do do so now would be just cheating! (I'm deliberately not reserving a PlayStation 3, because there's no way I'm paying that much for a games console).

Well, I'm back.

Eventually. Flight out of Martinique delayed slightly (didn't matter as I had a long wait at Paris Orly anyway). Flight out of Paris taxied out, made strange whirring and clanking noises, taxied back for mechanics to poke with screwdrivers and hit with hammers, eventually cancelled so back into the airport. Rebooked on next flight, which is also delayed several times before being cancelled due to "mechanical difficulties". Rebooked on even later flight, which is also delayed but does eventually leave.

Catch DLR into London, miss change due to being confused where it is, then on spur of the moment take route from Bank involving two changes rather than one (despite heavy bag) thus miraculously taking the only tube lines which weren't suffering serious delays.

Naturally the railways have to make up for this. Hop on first fast train towards Oxford (already late to depart), eventually discover that we're going nowhere due to signalling problems, and later still the train is cancelled. Scoot across to earliest non-cancelled fast train for some more waiting. Eventually advised to go and find another train, then immediately told to get back on again for immediate departure (but with more delays to come as there's only temporary signalling in place).

Eventually get back to Oxford at around 00:20, but at least the night busses are still running - and on time at that. Total journey time: 25 hours, at least six more than expected. Most amusing aspect: none of the delays were caused by the snow and ice which usually bring the country to a stand-still...

ETA: It looks like I've got about 550 posts to catch up on, but first I've got 9 TV episodes to watch...

Right, that's it, I've had enough. I'm off to the Caribbean to become a pirate.

Failing that, sitting on the beach drinking rum for eight days sounds like a pretty good plan...

On a scale of 0-10, how much do I want one of these?

That would be, oooh, at least a 12. I was literally drooling while I looked through the demos on the Apple website. iPhone rumours have been floating around for years, but the reality actually manages to top the hype (assuming that reality lives up to the demos). Obviously there are some unanswered questions (third party - and home-brew - application support being top of my list), but it has the potential to be the coolest gadget ever.

On the downside, it is quite pricey (not unsurprisingly, but cheaper and more featureful than getting separate 'phone + iPod + PDA), and not overly well-endowed in the storage department. Also, us Europeans have to wait until Q4 and there's no word as yet on network support.

Still, OMGWANTZ!

PS. AppleTV: Hmmmm. It is rather shiny, but the feature set is rather minimal. Big unanswered question: can it play video that comes from anywhere other than the iTunes store? If not, I certainly can't see myself wanting one...