The State of PC Gaming

 

Having recently purchased three PC titles in quick succession I was surprised by the amount of effort that was needed to start playing these games. The titles in question being Grand Theft Auto 4, Dawn of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War. Yeah I know these games released last year but I was waiting for my ill fated CPU upgrade to finish before playing these.
Anyway lets go through the effort required one by one, patching World at War to v1.4 requires downloading and installing 3 huge patches with a cumulative size of over 700MB. Of course one of the patches adds more multi-player maps but its still huge. On starting the game you have to create an account with the developer and you can start actually playing the game.
Dawn of War 2 was unbelievable in this regard, it installs Steam (then Steam updates itself), then it installs the game itself, then it installs Games for Windows LIVE (GFWL), then Steam updates the game, when you finally launch the game GFWL updates itself. Whew... then you can finally play the game after signing into Steam as well as GFWL.
GTA 4 requires online activation after installation finishes (in addition to SecuROM) and requires an account with Rockstar Social Club before playing and on first start it updates GFWL as well as the game itself while the status is shown as updating GFWL. So after creating all these accounts and downloading the patches it almost feels like setting up a new system from scratch and installing all the drivers and updates.
What is going on here, are all these companies into email address harvesting or something? You can't properly play a single player games without signing into three online services.
Now to the actual single player games themselves, since when did single-player gaming become an add-on to games and multi-player the main component? GTA4 is the only game out of these which can be called a single player game, others contain small single player campaigns with the main focus on multi-player gaming and maps (as the change logs suggest).
Image courtesy VisualPharm.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

The movie is about a boy who loses his father at a young age and has to live with his stepmother. Even though his stepmother loves him he thinks that he is alone and she is stuck with him.
Wait a minute! Isn't this movie supposed to be about an alien landing on Earth to wipe out the human race so that the planet can survive? Who cares about a smart ass kid who thinks he knows best and tries to mess up everything.
The plot notwithstanding the movie feels like everything is subdued for some reason, there are very few shots of GORT while we're made to watch endless scenes of a deadpan Keanu Reeves and a pleading Jennifer Connelly. Overall a pretty dull movie with all stereotypical characters and very few action scenes to redeem it. I couldn't fathom why it was released in IMAX when there were so few action scenes. Not even recommended for Jennifer Connelly fans.
Lest you loyal readers complain that I'm being to harsh in my criticism I will point out three good things about the movie - Watchmen, Star Trek and X-Men Origins: Wolverine;  rather the trailers for these three films were screened before the movie.

Dragonlance Trilogy

This series was a welcome comeback to high fantasy after trudging through the Farseer trilogy. The first book is pretty good even though the glaring absence of the protagonist's girlfriend is a little odd initially. Of course by the second book you realize what's coming and the planned plot twist falls rather flat.

Some tips for the authors, when you want to make a character mysterious you either narrate their actions only to the readers or you make the other characters slightly suspicious of them. You don't make the characters simply refuse to answer direct questions and accusations, that just gets on the nerves.

The magic in the books seems to be purposefully doled out like the porridge in Oliver Twist's workhouse. The wizards seem too inconsistent with their powers and sometimes it feels like the authors used a deus ex machina.

Another odd thing is the choice of story segments the authors chose to relate in summary (traveling to the location of the dragon's eggs) or in a poem (ice wall). Its strange that situations ripe for some thrilling action and suspense were relegated to a couple of pages while much more was written about the dwarf's sea sickness.

Aside from these minor irritations the series is quite good to read and recommended to everyone.

Quantum of Solace

How low can a popular action franchise like James Bond sink, if you want to know then you should definitely see this movie. This movie manages to do so many things wrong that its difficult to know where to start. I'll start with the story first - its pathetic. Instead of a story about international espionage and political intrigue we get a story about an angry boyfriend (he can't sleep because of his grief) who wants to avenge his girlfriend's death.
There's some silly background story about political instability in South America being encouraged by the CIA because they want oil while the dastardly terrorists only want to sell expensive water. But that's all it is , a backdrop for the angry hero to go around killing people while the bad guys kill off his friends and the movie can be slapped with the James Bond brand.
There are no gadgets, no car and the ending is perhaps the lamest one you'll ever see in an action movie. This one is definitely not recommended to anyone.

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

The movie starts off some time from where the previous one ended, the animals (just the penguins really) have managed to repair an old airplane to fly them back to New York. The movie starts of with a bang and is pretty much relentless in delivering comic scenes and lines. Of course their plans go awry and they end up in Africa instead of reaching New York.

Thankfully the movie does not suffer from the sequel syndrome, the jokes are fresh and don't feel silly or over the top (symptoms seen in many comedy sequels). Highly recommended for animation or comedy lovers.

Farseer Trilogy

The trilogy starts of rather steretypically with a bastard child of a prince being delivered to a keep and doesn't stray far from the basic fantasy formula. You have the young ignorant boy with immense potential and a wise old self-sacrificing mentor who served the boy's father.

The three books themselves pretty much have the same repetitive plot, the boy get injured then heals and does something half stupid and half heroic getting injured again in the process. There weren't any interesting plot twists to keep the reader engrossed and protagonist's idiocity really starts getting on your nerves after while. To top it all off when the author finally decides to leave the formula behind (after a much belabored climax) it is to spoil the ending. Instead of a happy ending to appease the readers after going through three novels its a rather hollow ending. I wouldn't recommend this series at all.

Hainish Series

 

After having a less than enjoyable experience with the Earthsea series I turned to the author's award winning science fiction novels.

The Dispossessed deals with a comparison of capitalist and communist (albeit non-authoritarian) economies. Only this time they're on different planets, both systems have their pros and cons as felt by the protagonist during his stay on the capitalist world while the story of his life on the communist planet unfolds as flashbacks. The story starts of well but then dies a slow and torturous death as nothing seems to happen for long periods and the anti-climactic ending does nothing to improve the story.

The Left Hand of Darkness brings back the author to her favorite subject of gender distinction. The idea of a society with androgynous members who become male/female once a month for mating is interesting but again instead of basing a story on this backdrop the author makes the exploration of this society as the story. Sure, the alien representative from a galactic federation and first contact is supposed to be the main theme but story constantly changes focus and in the end feels flat.

The Dark Knight

I finally managed to get a ticket for an IMAX show and it was definitely worth the trouble. The movie is fantastic, sure its not as much of a step up from Batman Begins as that movie was compared to the earlier Batman trash but this movie is definitely a must see.

A special mention must go the the portrayal of the Joker, this is the first time the Joker is actually scary rather than just looking silly and everything about the character is so exquisitely done from the make up and dialogues  to the acting that you walk away with the feeling that this movie was all about the Joker.

There's something for everyone in this movie and its so well balanced that no one should be disappointed whether they were looking for action, drama or even (yuck) character development.

So this movie is highly recommended even if you dislike superhero movies (which anyone would after watching Superman Returns).

A note about the IMAX theater though, I did not understand why they've built seats so close the screen that the metal railing in front of the seats actually does not allow the viewer (even from the last row) to see the  lower corners of the screen.

Earthsea Series

The series started off as a fairly decent (i.e. nothing special) boy-turns-into-powerful-wizard type of story that reminded me quite a bit of REF's Magician. Barring the boring chase and pursuit of the unnamed evil section the book was quite good.

The second book had a different protagonist which seemed odd at first but the book itself was enjoyable enough and has a satisfying ending. The third book again returns to the standard fantasy template with the wise wizard taking a young apprentice along on a quest to save the world. This book although suffers from the same prolonged climax that ails the first one. The story ends with the wizard losing his powers and the young apprentice being crowned as king after fulfilling a long foretold prophecy.

The last book I read in this series was Tehanu, it may surprise the readers but almost nothing happens in this book. At least nothing to classify it as a fantasy novel. The wizard returns in this book after losing his powers and mostly lies around while the female protagonist from the second book tries to keep him alive. This book feels like something a angry women's lib activist with no creative talent would write after reading the other Earthsea novels.

I didn't understand how these books could have won so may awards so I've ordered some of the author's Sc-Fi books to see how that goes.

Iron Man

Now this is how a superhero movie should be made. Having watched some Iron Man cartoons on TV a long time back I didn't have high hopes for this movie. It was one of the few superhero cartoon series that I didn't like and this from a guy who loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series.

However I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the movie, there was never a dull moment and casting Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark was a masterstroke, he really does fit into the role very well. The movie itself was very well paced and there's hardly a dull moment in the film. The special effects are top notch and twist at the end really had me surprised.

This movie is certainly going to be a hit and we can only hope that its a sign of things to come this summer.