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11 October: Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 04:07:18 GMT

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
(2006, dir. Scott Glosserman)

I've been trying to avoid writing up too many recent films, but the truth is there have been some damned good horror movies made in the last few years and this is one of them. It's also a lot less serious and disturbing as the last couple of things I've written up. So it's time to even the score between "horribly scarring filmgoing experiences" and "oh yeah, movies can be enjoyable sometimes" a little bit.

The "deconstructionist" horror film sub-genre There's Nothing Out There started and Scream continued has led to this-- Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is the new king of the genre, hands-down. Behind the Mask is the name of the documentary being made about Leslie Vernon, a new killer hoping to join the ranks of his heroes: Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, et al. The film presupposes a world in which these characters actually exist, and that killing is an open market-- anyone with the dedication and training can make their name at it.

Leslie Vernon has decided to allow documentary filmmaker Taylor Gentry an inside look at what it takes to become a career mass-murderer. He explains the rules he must follow, and how his ultimate aim is to find the perfect Final Girl: that one girl who's left alive at the end to destroy him. The film switches back and forth between documentary footage and interviews with Leslie and scenes of the film that Leslie is setting up, all the prep work leading to a final slaughter at his abandoned childhood home out in the country where (if all goes well) he'll have his perfect showdown.

While it's a lot of fun to hear the characters talk about the accepted ways of behavior and strict adherence to rules that cause people to do completely wrong things in these situations, the best part of the film is Leslie himself. Nathan Baesel gives an excellent performance, making Leslie a funny, charismatic guy who's just confident and assured enough that it's okay if he's a bit of an asshole. And, you know, mass murderer. The scenes with his mentor Eugene are also really funny. For example, we learn that Eugene is retired but still trains by doing things like staying buried in a coffin for days on end, just to keep in shape. Eugene and his wife are parental figures for Leslie, and their concern for him is genuinely sweet. This little touch is just one more thing that sets Behind the Mask apart from overly ironic or wacky horror comedies.

The film eventually turns completely into the slasher film that's being set up for its first two acts, but manages to keep the viewer off-balance and guessing with a sneaky plot twist. Even this is that rare twist that doesn't feel like cheating on the part of lazy writers-- you might see it coming, but it's fun anyway. The film also surprisingly isn't very gory, and might well appeal as much to fans of Christopher Guest's mockumentary style as to horror fans. Make sure to watch the credits all the way through, and not just because it probably wasn't cheap to get "Psycho Killer" licensed for the film!

10 October: Marebito

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 03:29:50 GMT

Marebito
(2004, dir. Takashi Shimizu)

From the trailers and images available, Marebito looks suspiciously like another "long-haired ghost girl" J-horror throwaway. The fact that it was directed by Takashi Shimizu, director of Ju-on (The Grudge) and its various sequels (and American remake) doesn't help. However, Marebito is actually a very different beast than the technology-obsessed ghosts that haunt so many of the avalanche of samey Asian horror films that have been unleashed since the success of Ringu.

Director Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo: The Iron Man) plays Masuoka, a videographer obsessed with fear who films a violent suicide in the subway. Masuoka is alone, jaded and completely desensitized to human suffering. Divorced and estranged from his wife and daughter, he lives in a small apartment crammed with video and editing equipment, and finds himself compelled to revisit the scene of the suicide repeatedly. On one visit, he makes his way into a deeper part of the subway, then deeper still into dark, seemingly endless caverns that run beneath the city. When comes out the other side, he finds himself in a vast (and decidedly Lovecraftian) mountain range deep below the earth. He discovers a nude girl chained to a rock and takes her back to his apartment.

The girl is mute and acts like an animal, and she refuses to eat. She also appears human, but has vicious, razor-sharp teeth. Masuoka discovers that the girl must feed on blood in order to stay alive and so begins a murder spree to keep her happy. When he can't be at home, he watches a live video feed of his apartment on his cell phone. Things get even more complicated and disorienting when his ex-wife begins calling him and asking to see their daughter.

Like many psychological horror films, Marebito is intentionally ambiguous on many points. Did Masuoka really find another world beneath the city? Is the girl in his apartment his daughter? Has he been driven mad by his isolation? The film denies answers at every turn, making it much more intriguing than most by-the-book J-horror stories. The film moves at a glacial pace, which makes its intensely violent scenes all the more shocking-- especially effective and unsettling is a scene where Masuoka videotapes himself murdering a woman to feed to the girl, his face completely devoid of any emotion. One gets the distinct impression that Masuoka is a stand-in for media junkies in general and possibly horror fans specifically: after constantly immersing himself in the most horrific images imaginable, is it any wonder he finds none of this particularly unusual?

Marebito is a much darker, more complex answer to Ju-on's simple (but inarguably effective) haunted house scares. It definitely displays that Shimizu is capable of much more than just endlessly rehashing the same scenes and characters for remakes and sequels to his most popular creation.

9 October: Family Portraits

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 02:35:42 GMT

Family Portraits
(2004, dir. Douglas Buck)

Family Portraits is a DVD collection of short films by director Douglas Buck: Cutting Moments (1997), Home (1998), and Prologue (2003). The films aren't directly related, but share some concepts and themes. They really don't fit together in the same way as, say, Todd Haynes's Poison. And, to be honest, one of them (Home) is pretty weak. However, that might only be because the other two are so much more idiosyncratic and powerful.

Cutting Moments is probably the most notorious of the three. The film shows the events leading up to the murder-suicide of a troubled married couple whose son is being taken away from them. There are insinuations that the husband has molested the boy. As the separation looms and questions go unanswered, the husband reads his newspaper and watches football while his wife tries to keep things together and the son doesn't seem to know or care that anything is wrong. One night as the husband watches a football game, his wife dresses up and puts on makeup in order to get his attention. When it doesn't work, she returns to the bathroom to strip down and starts scrubbing her lipstick off. With steel wool.

There is exactly one short scene, just before the film plunges into gruesome grand guignol, that is entirely unlike anything I have ever seen: the wife returns from the bathroom, covered in blood, and stands before her husband again, exactly as she did the first time in the red dress. He looks at her and his face breaks. He stands and touches her face as she continues to look directly in his eyes; he begins to cry. That mixture of horror, tenderness, and heartbreak is the film's real emotional gut-shot. The scene after it, where the husband carves up his wife and then himself, is completely redundant. Still, the short garnered Buck a lot of attention and must have ratcheted up expectations for his follow-up quite a bit.

Home is a much more straightforward story about a man who has a miserable, abusive, repressive childhood and who grows up to be a miserable, abusive, repressed businessman who murders his wife and daughter one morning before he goes to work. The sense of inevitability puts a damper on the story and leads to impatience. It's pretty obvious where all this is leading from the start. While the film has some interesting images and a great final scene, it's easily the weakest of the three shorts.

The last film in the collection, Prologue, is the real reason to get this DVD. A young woman who was savagely attacked and left for dead returns to her home after a year in the hospital. Things have changed-- her boyfriend has moved on and gotten married. She has no memory of her attack or who her assailant might be. In a parallel story, a retired postman and his wife go about their routines and wait for word from their long-lost daughter. The two stories eventually intersect as the film moves toward its devastating climax.

Buck's short films show that he is definitely capable of creating astonishing moments of unease and getting incredibly powerful performances from his actors. The acting in all three films is uniformly excellent, especially in Prologue (which is as subtle as Cutting Moments is blunt). Given the amount of talent Buck obviously has, it's somewhat perplexing (and worrying) that his debut feature is a remake of Brian de Palma's Sisters that has been completed and shelved for over a year. Hopefully we'll have the chance to see it before too long-- given his amazing short films, I'm very anxious to see what he does with a feature.

(Pictures, Quicktime trailers, and other information regarding Douglas Buck and Family Portraits are available at Glass Eye Pix.)

8 October: Martin

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 01:48:28 GMT

Martin
(1977, dir. George Romero)

As I mentioned last time, George A. Romero is one of those filmmakers who have been simultaneously blessed and cursed by creating a film so ingrained in popular culture that he can't help but be associated with it. And it makes sense-- he practically invented horror movies with Night of the Living Dead. I'm exaggerating a bit, of course, but I imagine it would be difficult to find someone who hasn't at least heard of that film. But between making genre-defining masterpieces, Romero made some smaller, lower-profile films that are arguably just as good (if not as massively influential) as his Dead films. Martin is my favorite.

Martin (compellingly played by John Amplas) is a young man who believes he is a vampire. In the film's intense opening sequence, Martin stalks a woman in a train before attacking her and drinking her blood. When he's not stalking women and having elaborate fantasies about his romantic vampiric adventures, he calls in to a local talk radio show and explains what it's like being a vampire in modern times. It's tough! For example, Martin's guardian Tada Cuda hangs up garlic all around the house and forbids Martin from associating with his granddaughter Christine. Christine, as it turns out, doesn't even believe Martin is a vampire.

And maybe he's not. One of the core questions of the film is whether Martin is who he says he is (an 84-year-old vampire who appears 17) or whether he's just a delusional sociopath. Regardless, Martin is definitely a monster: he murders, drinks blood, and admits in one of his radio calls that he's never had sex with a woman who wasn't drugged senseless. Tada Cuda, convinced that Martin is actually a vampire from the old country, vows to destroy Martin after cleansing his soul. In the meantime, he gives Martin a job working in his grocery store.

Martin's interactions with other people are difficult and sad: Christine feels sorry for him and becomes a friend, but she's stuck in an abusive relationship with a young thug named Arthur (played by legendary makeup artist Tom Savini). Martin begins a tentative and potentially dangerous affair with a married woman who frequents the grocery store, but she is as damaged (in her own way) as Martin. He finds solace only through his fantasies, which play out in moody black-and-white parallel sequences during the scenes in which he stalks his victims.

By the time the film is over, there are still many unanswered questions. As repulsive a creature as Martin is, Romero and Amplas create a surprising amount of sympathy for him. The audience will likely feel the same as Christine, more sad and confused at his fate than anything. Martin is very dark, but has moments of bleak humor and a unique style-- the parallel scenes of Martin's real-life attacks and their highly romanticized fantasy counterparts are pretty amazing. For anyone interested in checking out Romero's filmography beyond the Dead films, Martin is a great place to start.

7 October: In the Mouth of Madness

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 05:55:16 GMT

In the Mouth of Madness
(1995, dir. John Carpenter)

John Carpenter will always be known as the guy who wrote and directed Halloween. Just like George Romero will always be the Night of the Living Dead guy to most casual movie fans. This is not because these men haven't made other great films, but there's no question that the combined number of people who have seen Martin, The Crazies, and Bruiser falls well short of the number of people who have seen Night of the Living Dead. They have been blessed/cursed with the creation of a hugely popular, iconic film that has moved on into Legend territory. That said, John Carpenter's track record is considerably more inconsistent than Romero's-- I'm looking at you, John Carpenter's Vampires.

However, Carpenter has also made some great films that are as good as Vampires is inexcusably awful. The Thing is one of those rare remakes that greatly improves on the original. Escape from New York and Big Trouble in Little China are goofy, ridiculous fun. But one of my favorite Carpenter films is one that seems often ignored or dismissed: In the Mouth of Madness, which is also one of the best H.P. Lovecraft films ever made.

Sam Neill stars as private investigator John Trent, hired by a publishing company to track down Sutter Cane, their most popular author. Cane has gone missing and took the manuscript for his latest novel with him, so it's Trent's job to find Cane and/or retrieve the book. Trent sets to work and discovers that Cane has left a series of clues in the artwork for the covers of his books that create a map that leads to Hobb's End, the sleepy New England town in which many of Cane's books take place. That doesn't actually exist.

Then things get weird.

In the Mouth of Madness features numerous references to ancient cosmic forces, and was obviously written as a tribute to the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Carpenter even manages the rare trick of making the film seriously disorienting, especially toward the end. And especially on the big screen-- this is a film made for late-night shows. And even though it's not an adaptation of a Lovecraft work, In the Mouth of Madness succeeds more than almost screen adaptation in evoking the kind of mind-bending cosmic terrors Lovecraft so effectively conjured in his fiction.

6 October: Night of the Creeps

Sat, 06 Oct 2007 20:15:52 GMT

Night of the Creeps
(1986, dir. Fred Dekker)

Fred Dekker should be a household name. And maybe he's getting there-- 20 years after its original release, his second film, The Monster Squad, was finally released on DVD thanks in part to its dedicated (and vocal) cult following. The Monster Squad is a lot of fun, and it's no wonder that kids who saw it back when it was first released care so much about it. After the film's failure to garner an audience in theaters during its original release, however, Dekker went on to direct only one more film: Robocop 3. The critics were not kind, and fans of the franchise were even more vicious. Dekker dropped off the radar for years until the fans started clamoring for the return of The Monster Squad. It's great that The Monster Squad is available to everyone now, but the greater injustice is that Dekker's excellent debut, Night of the Creeps, still isn't.

Night of the Creeps plays like a precursor to Peter Jackson's Dead Alive: both feature overly complicated, melodramatic storylines joined with gruesome violence. The film opens in the 1950s: an alien experiment is jettisoned from a spacecraft and makes its way to earth the same night that a serial ax murderer takes his latest victim. The film then jumps to present day (1986, specifically) where a couple of nerds named Chris and J.C. are crashing a frat party. They want to pledge, but their assignment goes awry: they accidentally wake up a man frozen in cryogenic suspension in a basement laboratory on campus.

Turns out there was a good reason for this-- the man was infected by the alien experiment, which turns out to be large, black creatures that look like leeches and who multiply by crawling into the mouth and then making their way to the brain, where they gestate and then explode. The frozen guy staggers out of the lab and begins a chain reaction in the classic zombie film style.

Meanwhile, a bitter police officer (the absolutely hilarious Tom Atkins) who has a mysterious tie to the ax murders back in the 1950s believes the ax murderer is on the prowl again. His investigation and the rapidly multiplying space slug population finally come together on the night of the big formal, leading to the film's fantastic climax of sorority girls in formal dresses versus an army of frat boy zombies in tuxes.

Night of the Creeps is very much a 1986 film: the hair styles and clothes leave no question when the film was made. But it also holds up exceptionally well, mostly on the charm of its ridiculous story, the quick pace, and genuinely funny dialogue. There aren't a whole lot of surprises, but each twist is played out with the requisite dramatics (like Lionel finally standing up to his mother in Dead Alive). Dekker has stated in recent interviews that Night of the Creeps is still tied up in rights issues, and it may be a while before we see a new official release. But if The Monster Squad can make it, there's always hope.

5 October: Let's Scare Jessica to Death

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 05:37:06 GMT

Let's Scare Jessica to Death
(1971, dir. John D. Hancock)

For years, Let's Scare Jessica to Death was another "lost" film. Released on VHS years ago and only just released on DVD within the last year, the film mostly existed in the memories of those who caught it on late-night television. Look around the internet a bit and you're sure to find people who saw it on TV when they were small and remembered only a few things. Almost universal among these memories is the fact that the viewer was creeped the hell out.

Zohra Lampert stars as Jessica, recently out of a mental hospital for undisclosed issues. Jessica moves to a house on a secluded island near a small town to get away from the city. When she and her husband move in, they find the house already occupied by a drifter named Emily. Jessica, her husband, and their friend who helped them move become fast friends with Emily and ask her to stay. But Jessica encounters a strange, seemingly mute girl in the countryside near the house, and the locals in town are considerably less than hospitable. And it seems Emily may not be who she says she is...

Or Jessica might be losing her already fragile grip on reality. The film's sound design (and "electronic music by Walter Sear") is creepily effective in helping get into the head of the main character and keeping the audience off-balance. There are also a few moments and images of surreal unease that will definitely stay with the viewer for a long time. While it has a few moments of unintentional humor and its pacing is a little off, Let's Scare Jessica to Death still manages to create and sustain a thick atmosphere of dread that carries through to the bizarre, unquestionably scary finale.

Luckily, you can get creeped the hell out at home any time thanks to the recent DVD release, which was long overdue. Last year during the film's showing at the Music Box Massacre (a 24-hour horror movie marathon held at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago), the climax managed to have the entire theater full of horror fans sitting in stunned silence. I can think of no better endorsement.

4 October: Zombie Honeymoon

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 05:12:57 GMT

Zombie Honeymoon
(2004, dir. Dave Gebroe)

In horror films, like any other big blanket genre, there are many recognizable sub-genres. There are zombie movies (world full of zombies, some people hole up somewhere, bad stuff happens), there are slasher movies (bunch of people get knocked off in different ways for an hour and a half), there are sub-sub-sub genres of vampire movies (techno vampires/romantic vampires/______ vampires/blah blah blah), etc. etc. etc. There are simple formulas, courses of action and character behavior that have been established and that filmgoers expect to see followed through. Countless horror films every year are churned out direct-to-DVD and sometimes into theaters that play by rules, live up to expectations, and fit very neatly into their genre.

So it's rare and exciting when a film comes along like Zombie Honeymoon. Sort of the low-low budget American cousin to Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead, Zombie Honeymoon takes a familiar subgenre and tries to do something genuinely new with it. However, whereas Shaun of the Dead mixed Romero-style zombie apocalypse with clever romantic comedy, Zombie Honeymoon makes the story more personal and basically treats being a zombie like a terminal illness in a made-for-Lifetime movie.

Newlyweds Denise and Danny bolt from their wedding to take a honeymoon house-sitting for friends who live by the ocean. While out sunbathing after some surfing, a shambling creature clambers out of the water and bites Danny on the neck before collapsing. The newlyweds rush to the hospital where it appears Danny is fine, but he soon finds himself possessed by a desperate, raging hunger for live human flesh. Denise finds out about it and first flees, but she loves him too much to leave him alone with his sickness and so she tries to make the best of it. Which gets progressively more difficult as Danny's flesh rots as fast as his murderous hunger intensifies.

Despite its low budget, Zombie Honeymoon packs in some effectively gross effects, most notably for Danny's decomposition. Anyone coming to the film expecting gore certainly won't be disappointed, although they'll probably get tired of how the film plays the story and characters straight. A little too straight, actually. Some of the acting goes a little over the top, but for the most part the emotions are true to what you might imagine people in this situation would experience. That irony-free take on the story is another thing that makes Zombie Honeymoon unique.

While it certainly has moments of dark humor, the fact that the film refuses to go zany with its characters is very endearing. It may be a film that I admire and enjoy more for what it wants to be rather than what it actually is, but the fact remains that in a stale subgenre full of copies of copies of copies of copies, Zombie Honeymoon stands well outside the crowd with its bloody heart on its sleeve.

3 October: The Reflecting Skin

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 04:29:58 GMT

The Reflecting Skin
(1990, dir. Phillip Ridley)

The Reflecting Skin is one of those "lost" movies that has been out of print for years and is extremely difficult to get hold of. There have been DVD releases of the film in different places around the world, usually short runs that end up going for hefty prices on import sites. It's probably because the film is tied up in the same kind of legal junk that has held up the release of other "lost" films such as The Monster Squad, which was only recently released on DVD after being long out of print on VHS. Although there's no doubt that at least one of the reasons The Monster Squad finally made it to DVD was a vocal fan base clamoring for its release, and it's difficult to imagine a similar fanbase rising up to support this film. Mostly because a lot of people who have seen it probably don't really want to talk about it.

There is no question that The Reflecting Skin is one of the most seriously disturbing films I have ever seen. I saw the film once, over a decade ago, late one night on a cable movie channel, and its horrific images and sense of overwhelming foreboding have stuck with me. It is truly a film that creates nightmares.

Taking place in the rural Midwest in the 1950s, The Reflecting Skin makes excellent use of endless acres of fields to enforce the concept that the characters are living somewhere completely separate from the world at large. The film tells the story of a young boy named Seth Dove and one Summer that changes his life and those of his family-- a coming-of-age story in a way. Only one with absolutely no hope, and with events that may not be supernatural but are all the more unsettling due to their relative plausibility.

Seth's older brother Cameron (Viggo Mortensen) has returned from a tour of duty in the military and becomes romantically involved with an English widow whom Seth believes to be a vampire. A car full of greaser thugs tools ominously about the countryside while Seth and his friends torture animals and terrorize the poor widow. It also comes out that Seth's father may be a serial child molester. In the middle of all this confusion and horror, Seth finds a dead baby in a barn and, mistaking it for a "guardian angel," takes it home to confide in.

The film is gorgeously shot and the actors are uniformly fantastic. Writer and first-time director Philip Ridley does an amazing job of keeping the events of the film and the actions of his characters grounded in reality. All of these aspects of the film add up to a powerfully effective, profoundly unsettling experience. It may not strictly be a genre horror film per se, but it's easily one of the scariest films you're every likely to see.

The fact that the film remained out of print even while Viggo Mortensen was at the height of popularity during The Lord of the Rings is a testament to either the depth of red tape in which the film's rights are buried or the sheer reluctance of any DVD house to put out such a polarizing and difficult film (or, more likely, both). Ridley's film career has, to date, been sadly short. After The Reflecting Skin, he has since directed only one other film (The Passion of Darkly Noon, which I unfortunately have not seen) and then, for all intents and purposes, disappeared. It's a damned shame, really. Maybe one day someone will realize they own the rights to The Reflecting Skin and give it the release it deserves. Until then, good luck finding a copy. And good luck trying to sleep after watching it.

2 October: One Missed Call

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 03:56:32 GMT

One Missed Call
(2003, dir. Takashi Miike)

Takashi Miike has made a career of cranking out several movies a year, with no small percentage of those being brutally violent and/or curiously surreal and/or super weird and/or insanely boring. Sometimes he does specialty films: Ichi the Killer is almost all brutal violence, Gozu is a blatant homage to David Lynch's trademark small-town surrealism, The Happiness of the Katakuris is a musical about murder and suicide with claymation sequences, and The City of Lost Souls (despite a few intriguing images) is almost all just really, really boring. Miike's fans in the U.S. tend to consider his films more "arthouse" than "grindhouse," although the man himself has repeatedly claimed that he makes films not for any intellectual or artistic reasons, but because it's his job.

So it's not terribly surprising that One Missed Call is something of a black sheep in Miike's filmography. It's a virtual remake of Byeong-ki Ahn's Pon (Phone), released just a year before One Missed Call. Pon was a massive hit in South Korea, and the constant cycle of remakes that horror fans have been bitching about for years here in the states is nothing compared to the insane proliferation of remakes, sequels and knockoffs that followed in the wake of such Asian horror blockbusters as Ringu. One Missed Call is Miike's stab at a big mainstream J-horror film, and while Japanese audiences ate it up, many Miike fans in the states turned their noses up at such a blatantly mercenary enterprise.

Which is their loss, really, because One Missed Call takes the basic story of Phone (haunted cell phone with eerie ringtone leads to death for a group of teenagers) and does it considerably better. Plus, it's still very much a Miike film: the death scenes are gruesome and the ghost is highly disturbing, especially during the film's impressive climax. Where Phone attempted to shoehorn in subplots about decidedly non-supernatural revenge and plodded along with overly deliberate (i.e. sloooooooow) pacing, One Missed Call substitutes nasty jolts, horrific violence, and pitch-black humor to keep things lively even with a longer running time.

Unsurprisingly, One Missed Call is being remade for American audiences. The remake is being released in January of 2008, and the trailer for it is (also unsurprisingly) not very reassuring. Here's hoping the studio stays true enough to the spirit of Miike's take on the material enough to stick with a hard R-rating. Although I won't be holding my breath on that one.

1 October: There's Nothing Out There

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 03:14:27 GMT

There's Nothing Out There
(1992, dir. Rolfe Kanefsky)

It's hard to talk about There's Nothing Out There without also talking about Scream. Released in 1992, There's Nothing Out There beat Scream to the "deconstructionist horror film" punch by several years. And did it much better and more honestly-- i.e. with fewer bigger words-- than Wes Craven's slick, (relatively) big-budget franchise.

There's Nothing Out There starts off with seven "youngsters" going to a remote cabin in the woods for a weekend of partying. A mysterious force starts picking them off one by one. Sound familiar? The hook here is that one of the seven kids is an annoying bastard who works at a video store and has literally seen every single horror film the store carries. He knows there are rules that the villain (and victims) must play by, and as it becomes clear that something is bumping off the party members, everyone turns to the video clerk in hopes of surviving the weekend.

First-time director Rolfe Kanefsky obviously made this film with almost no budget, but it's just as obvious that he and his cast were having a great time. He also clearly knew that enthusiastic performers, brisk pacing, and gratuitous nudity can easily take the place of name Actors and expensive prosthetics any day. There's Nothing Out There is almost in the same meta-territory as Wet Hot American Summer: it is a ridiculous, goofy no-budget horror film that simultaneously acts as a parody of and loving tribute to ridiculous, goofy no-budget horror films.

Sadly, There's Nothing Out There is out of print again-- originally released on VHS, the film went on to air on cable movie channels for a while before being released on DVD in 2001. Hopefully another DVD house will put it out again before too long. In the meantime, though, you can get it from Netflix and if you still have a little video store in your town, maybe some old VHS copies are still floating around.

Introduction and Explanation

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 03:14:04 GMT

A quick word of explanation: in order to prevent myself from not moving off my bed and playing Persona 3 for at least a little while each day, I have decided to try a project wherein I write up 1 horror movie per day for all of October. Yes, I realize I'm four days behind. Yes, I know you don't care. But! It is something to do that is not sitting in my dark room trying to improve my Charm so I can smooth-talk the manager of the swim team and thereby more quickly power-up my Personas in order to defeat hideous monsters. NEEEEERRRRRRRD.

In any case, the movies will sometimes be big ones everyone has seen, sometimes smaller ones that are harder to find, sometimes not strictly horror films exactly. But here goes.

UGH

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 05:46:42 GMT

I had a whole thing here about how depressing the box office results have been for The Abandoned, the first real honest-to-God grown-up horror film to come along in quite some time, but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to go drink a bottle of detergent. So never mind.

THE REVENGEANCING

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 05:38:06 GMT

The time has finally come to spare my friends from constant talking about dumb nerd junk nobody cares about. The time has come to make datamemory an official, loosely-defined nerdblog. The time is now. I will kick this off with a couple of bad ass games I am looking forward to:

Aquaria is an upcoming independent 2D adventure game from Bit Blot. It looks gorgeous-- this is the "full trailer" for the game, in development for some time now and looking spectacular. The game is to be controlled completely with a mouse and its two buttons to keep it simple and accessible. While 2D games of any sort are a dying breed, this game definitely drives home the point that there's plenty left to explore in gaming's past. I'm anxious to see more and play it; I really hope the game gets picked up for console release at some point. With the new avenues of online distribution, I think a game like this could get an audience it would otherwise never access.

Granado Espada is a Korean-based MMORPG that I've been keeping my eye on for a couple of years now, and it's finally coming to the US this Summer as Sword of the New World. The game keeps the basics of MMORPGs-- huge worlds, interaction with other players-- but the hook is that you have a party of three characters you build up individually and you can join up with other parties for large battles. The three-character party mechanic is to root the game more clearly in RPG tradition, and it's basically exactly the sort of thing that I've been hoping would happen to the genre. It's also basically the only thing that I think could interest me in the genre to begin with. With this, Bio-Shock, and Spore coming, I'm really really really going to need to get a new computer.

And then I'll post my pull list for your scorn:
52 (limited series)
Batman (Grant Morrison run)
Crossing Midnight
Ex Machina
The Exterminators
Jonah Hex
Justice Society of America
The Spirit
Tales of the Unexpected Featuring The Spectre (limited series)
The Trials of Shazam (limited series)
Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters (limited series)
The Walking Dead
Welcome to Tranquility

Yes, I'm reading about 90% DC Comics. I have a bizarre inner pendulum that seems to swing back and forth between interests I had when I was a teenager, and almost nowhere else. The pendulum has officially swung back into Comics, enabled greatly by my friend horty_pie (aka comicpedophile). So far this year I've read Essential Man-Thing, Showcase Presents Green Lantern Volume 1, Junji Ito's Museum of Terror books 1 & 2, Sam Kieth's Batman: Secrets trade, and I have a backlog of about 7-8 other books waiting (although 4 of these I have read as individual issues: Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory trades).

I'm not sure what it is about comics that has me so excited again-- it's definitely not simple nostalgia, because there was nothing like The Exterminators around when I was a teenager. Well, there might well have been, but living in central Indiana and only making it to the comic shop when my parents felt like it (it was all the way in Indianapolis!) prevented me from branching out too far beyond DC, Marvel, and Dark Horse books. There's definitely some of the excitement of being young and reading them, though. I still clearly remember one day when my parents had taken me to Comic Carnival in Indianapolis and this guy in line in front of me was buying a huge stack of books. I was amazed, and my dad (jokingly, I'm sure) told me that one day when I had a job I could buy that many comics whenever I wanted.

A little over a month ago, I finally did. I hadn't been to the shop in about three months to pick up my pull list books due to work and not having the money for them, and I walked out with a mighty pile. It was exhilirating, and I was anxious to get home and start reading.

So... yeah. I'm assuming not too many of my friends had similar experiences, so I moved this sort of thing over to this journal. We'll see how it goes.

Granado Espada finally coming to the US!

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 16:42:26 GMT

Korean MMORPG Granado Espada finally, finally coming to North America! I've been keeping my eye on this one for a couple of years now as it's basically the only MMORPG game I've ever seen that I've been really intrigued by. Instead of a single player leveling and blah blah, you have a team of three characters (Final Fantasy XII-style) and you directly control one of them at any given time.

I'm planning on writing more stuff here soon. I apologize for being gone for months again. Seriously, it's going to get good eventually.

Bored Nerd's Delight: Rampant Speculation

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 04:06:20 GMT

After the stories I linked to yesterday, and the confirmation later in the day that PS3 games will not now (or possibly ever) run in 1080p high definition (after claiming this would be the PS3 "standard" back in May), things are looking rough for Sony. The Playstation3 launch is starting to look like a major fiasco, and Microsoft and Nintendo seem set on having a spectacular Christmas season.

This information, coupled with the news that sneaked by me a while back that Nintendo's Wii development kit runs less than $2,000 has me wondering if Nintendo's plan for their new system might work out even better than they hoped or any of us expected.

There's no hard information, but it's rumored that Playstation 3 dev kits run upwards of $30,000 (some estimates put it closer to $50,000). It makes sense that higher development costs equal more expensive games, so it's not surprising that there's a possibility PS3 games will probably run well over $59.99. One of the biggest complaints of any gamer is the fact that games are often too expensive, especially in a market with such a vast number of choices at hand. And, even worse, with mountains of bad software making its way into release at full price.

Nintendo's plan with the Wii is to get people who don't play games to play games. They started this with the DS and now the strategy is carrying over to their new console. The Wii has an unique new interface, it's geared toward accessibility and ease of use. Nintendo has been hinting that there are more surprises in store before the Wii's launch, and so far the only mention of price point for individual games is that they will be unlikely to cost more than $49.99.

Speculation on the price of the system has been all over the place, the most recent (and probably incorrect) guesstimations suggesting the system will launch at $170. Nintendo's only official announcement so far has been that Wii will launch at less than $250. While this, to me, sounds an awful lot like $249.99 is in the running, others have pointed out that Nintendo has never launched a new system for more than $199.99.

So, just for a minute, let's do some rampant speculation: Nintendo unveils the final details on the Wii. The system launches at $199.99, and the last big surprise is that games will run $29.99. Development costs will be tiny compared to the enormous budgets companies will have to put together for PS3 (and, to a lesser extent, Xbox 360) development, and surely one of the big factors preventing more people from getting into gaming is the price of individual titles. What if Nintendo finally broke the $49.99 barrier that has been stuck as an average game price for years?

If this were the case, this Christmas would almost certainly be completely and inarguably owned by Nintendo. You could be one of the incredibly lucky 400,000 or so beta testers (*cough*) who will get a Playstation 3 before Christmas. You could spend $600 (plus sales tax) on the PS3 if you manage to snag it at retail before the inevitable consoles end up on Ebay for $2000+. You could pick up one of the launch titles-- rumored to be 15, although the exact list is unclear even now, just two months away from the console debut-- for $69.99. You might want an extra controller on the off chance that launch game you got is 2-player (maybe you're one of those suckers who buys Madden every year, say). That's likely to be another $39.99, at least.

This would put your grand total PS3 purchase around $708. Plus tax. If you don't buy any other games, accessories, HD cables, or Blu-Ray movies to show off why you just spent the better part of a thousand fucking dollars on a game system that plays movies, a description rather neatly fitting your PS2. Huh.

Nintendo, on the other hand, seems geared up to ship their planned 4 million consoles by the end of 2006, with probably at least half of that on launch day. So you could be one of the two million or so beta testers (seriously, it's what any early adopter really is) who gets a Wii before Christmas. You could spend $199.99 (plus tax) if you manage to snag it at retail before the inevitable consoles end up on Ebay for $2000+ (seems par for the course nowadays). You could pick up one of the launch titles-- 28 confirmed at last count-- for $29.99. You might want an extra controller on the pretty good chance that launch game you got is 2-player (maybe you're one of those suckers who buys Madden every year, say). That's likely another $39.99, at least.

This would put your grand total Wii purchase around $270. Plus tax. If you don't buy any other games, accessories, or, uh, games. There's recent speculation that the Wii may not have DVD playback as originally announced. Considering the fact that Nintendo stated DVD playback would require a "small, self-contained attachment" for this, it's probably not much loss and certainly helps cement the Wii's status as a games-and-only-games system (although this certainly didn't help the Gamecube). So you probably won't be buying any DVDs just to play them on the Wii, even if it has the capability.

Even if Wii games come in at $49.99, you'd still end up spending less than $300 (not including sales tax, of course) for a Wii, extra controller, and one game. If Wii launches at $200, you could literally buy the system, two extra controllers, and six games for less than the cost of the Playstation 3 system by itself. No games, no movies, no cables to plug it into your billion-dollar HD display. If Nintendo really pulled the rug out from the $49.99 standard and the games retail for $29.99 each, you could buy the console, two controllers, and TEN GAMES for the price of-- once again-- the Playstation 3 console. All on its lonesome.

If Nintendo manages to deliver a $200 console launch and truly takes its mass-market plans to heart, there's a very good chance the Wii could quickly catch up with (or exceed) the Xbox 360's user base and gain a massive lead on the Playstation 3 while Sony fumbles with production issues and prays their Hail Mary pays off. It's not hard to imagine Nintendo selling all 6 million consoles it plans to ship before March 2007. If they manage that, Sony is going to have a very rough go of it in Europe, where the PS3 won't even be released until March 2007.

Eventually, I suppose, I might actually be able to afford one of these systems. Here's a hint: it's not the Playstation 3. I'm a big fan of Sony, and I know a lot of people who have derived countless hours of enjoyment from their Playstation and Playstation2 consoles, and not a single one of them plans to buy a PS3 any time in the forseeable future. Pricing your product out of your dedicated fans' means is a no way to launch a new console. Maybe if Sony can manage another PSP price drop before too long, a couple more people will buy one of those, and Sony will be saved!

But probably not. At the moment, it looks like Sony is well and truly boned.

Bad day for Sony

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:07:48 GMT

Good news: the trailer for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories looks really awesome.

Bad news: everything else.

Sony announces 500k total units for launch in US and Japan. 400k in the US, 100k in Japan.

Sony announces European PS3 launch has been delayed until March 2007.

Which makes sense, I guess, if there's enough of a shortage of the parts Sony needs to make the PS3. Which apparently there is.

I imagine things will look even worse next week when Nintendo makes an official launch announcement for the Wii.

Rule of Rose intro screenshots

Sun, 03 Sep 2006 04:12:04 GMT

Click the screenshot for ninety-eight homemade screenshots from the Rule of Rose intro movie.

Hot damn.

Fall Games: Rule of Rose

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 19:42:06 GMT

Rule of Rose
System: Playstation 2
Release Date: 5 September

Last year, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas got the whole games industry in trouble. Ire was raised, umbrage was taken, all over some peach-colored textures and some awkward, suggestive animations. It didn't help matters that the game featured, you know, the ability to do all sorts of anti-social activities like running over cops, shooting hookers, crashing airplanes into buildings, etc. Surprisingly, however, there were at least two games that managed to sneak under the radar that were much more graphic-- God of War (featuring the PS2's first bare breasts and situations where you have to kill innocents to gain health) and The Warriors (where you get money by mugging people and/or stealing car radios, and then using that money to buy drugs to gain health). Maybe it's because those games don't take place in a reality as cartoonish as Grand Theft Auto, so their approach to mature themes and explicit content were less conspicuous.

I hope the same applies to Rule of Rose, because otherwise there is going to be a shitstorm of extraordinary magnitude when this game is released.

Rule of Rose is a "survival horror" game in the traditional gameplay sense: you play a character controlled from a third-person perspective with a camera that follows you around and (likely) swings to dramatic angles every so often to highlight important areas and scenes. The game has received some comparison to Capcom's Haunting Ground in that your character has a dog companion to help find items and fight monsters. The look of the game is dark and bleak, and it features well-rendered cut scenes that advance the story.

The thing that makes Rule of Rose different is the storyline and the subject matter, which have already attracted some controversy. Taking place in England in 1930, "the year that marked the start of the age of the great zeppelins" (according to the game's official site). The main character of the game is a young girl named Jennifer whose parents are killed in an airship accident. She finds herself at the dilapidated Rose Garden Orphanage that seems all but abandoned except for a few other young girls, three of whom have named themselves "The Aristocracy of the Red Crayon" and given themselves titles of Duchess, Countess, and Baroness. They act as cruel masters, demanding that Jennifer and another girl (Amanda) bring them gifts and offerings in exchange for their benevolence and protection.

There is at least one adult lurking around, a large man seen in trailers for the game watching Jennifer and attempting to grab her while hiding in a dark closet. There are also some sort of (apparently) supernatural enemies, but it seems that the most disturbing and unsettling characters are the Aristocracy themselves. Amanda is given the title of "Poor," clearly because she is, unlike the Aristocracy, obese and dressed in plain, unremarkable clothes. Jennifer is called "Beggar" since she is new. Clips show the girls torturing Jennifer in a variety of ways: tying her up, stepping on her face, rubbing a rat against her cheek, pouring water over her, and viciously mocking her.

The game looks terrifying, and the creepy undercurrent of eroticism makes it even more disturbing. Here is a long, pretty intense "trailer" for the game that shows quite a bit of footage from the game's gorgeous (and unsettling) cut scenes. Here is one where a fan cut together all of the game's Japanese trailers into one six-minute video. This is clearly not a game meant for kids, but since it features a cast mostly made up of children it is bound to attract negative attention.

The catch, though, is this: Rule of Rose looks like a completely different kind of story that what we're used to seeing in this or any other genre of game. There are horror games, but I can't think of any game that uses the cruelty of children as a jumping-off point for a dark, serious-minded story. The game also features some genuinely beautiful and surreal imagery-- watch the Gamevideos trailer and you'll see the airship from the opening of the video return as a giant fish swimming lazily through the rain over the English countryside near the end. I'm reminded of the reviews of the French film Innocence (which I haven't seen yet), which takes place at a boarding school for young girls where no adults appear to exist and much of the film's surrealist bent arises from the simple fact that children are strange creatures.

Rule of Rose has the potential, if its storyline is handled with intelligence and care, to bring truly mature subject matter in console games to a level we haven't seen since Silent Hill 2. The game is supposedly being released in the US completely unchanged from the original Japanese version (see the Gamasutra developer interview for more info), but looking at the game's official site it's clear that at least one detail has been changed: Jennifer is referred to as a "19-year-old girl." Hopefully this doesn't mean that other aspects of the game have been altered as well.

Fall Games: Sega Genesis Collection

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 18:28:04 GMT

Sega Genesis Collection
System: Playstation 2 and PSP
Release Date: 7 November

Is there any single image that says Sega Genesis more than that screenshot of Altered Beast?

Classic game collections are very popular, which isn't surprising. There are a lot of classic games with nostalgia factors through the roof, and longtime gamers are more than willing to shell out $20 here and there for a collection of beloved games we haven't played in years. The problem with these collections is that often I find myself picking them up and neglecting them very quickly. Even the incredible Capcom Classics Collection only held my interest for a short while before I was back to Guitar Hero, We Love Katamari, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. One of the major issues with these classic gaming collections is that they're almost always made up of arcade games, which were designed to be played in short, quick bursts while forcing as many quarters out of the player as possible.

Even worse are the collections of games for ancient systems like the Atari 2600 (Activision Anthology) and Intellivision (Intellivision Lives!), games which are (by and large) almost unplayably primitive. All of these games are meant for quick play, but some of them are still very good and stand up to playing for years and years and years. I cannot count the number of man-hours I've poured into Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga. But these collections fall by the wayside when I get sucked into something with gameplay that was unimaginable when these classic games were originally released, or by a storyline that Final Fight can't really keep pace with.

When I was in high school, I had a Sega Genesis system. I loved it. Before that, I had a Sega Master System, Sega's ill-fated (in the US, anyway) competition against the Nintendo Entertainment System. I moved up to the Genesis and kept my SMS games and found many games to spend countless hours in. I miss those games, and I have been waiting years and years for Sega to finally put something together like this. I nearly cried when I read this story with the full list of games appearing on the collection.

I will go to my grave defending the original Phantasy Star games as one of the greatest series of role-playing games ever made. I played all of them but Phantasy Star IV, which cost $80+ when it was released. The Sega Classics Collection features Phantasy Star II-IV, and that is a hefty value for a $20 disc. I'd pay $20 for a playable version of Phantasy Star II alone, it's really one of my favorite games of all time. The fact that the first Phantasy Star is not on here to round out the collection is disappointing (it was released on the SMS), but this will certainly hold me over until Sega loses their shit and releases a Sega Master System Collection.

Which, actually, will probably be sometime around never.

In addition to the Phantasy Star games, Sword of Vermillion in on here. That's another 50-hour+ RPG game. Many of the games in the collection, though, fall under that category of quick-and-dirty games (not coincidentally there are several arcade ports), and the two Sonic the Hedgehog games (and Ristar) are available on the Sonic Mega Collection Plus that's been out for some time now. It would have been great to see Sega use that space for more obscure games that were no less important-- where are Shining Force, Landstalker, Herzog Zwei, and the Streets of Rage games, for example? Is anyone really going to spend more than thirty vomit-inducing seconds trying to play Super Thunderblade? Do we need three Ecco the Dolphin games? And why did Sega dump the awful Genesis port of Virtua Fighter 2 on here but leave out ToeJam and Earl?

There are a lot of things to nitpick about this collection, but hopefully (hopefully) we'll see a Sega Genesis Collection Volume 2 before too long. As it stands, there's a lot to love about this group of games, and there's a vast amount of gameplay in the four RPG games alone. I hope more companies do this-- if Square saw fit to release a disc with the first six Final Fantasy games in one place, in their original incarnations, along with some of their other, more obscure games, it's hard to imagine them not selling a billion copies. Maybe we'll see more of this once the Wii Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade start to get bigger.

Fall Games: Elite Beat Agents

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 17:06:35 GMT

Elite Beat Agents
System: Nintendo DS
Release Date: 6 November

Without a doubt, one of the coolest Japanese DS games I have seen is the now-classic Ossu! Tatakae! Ouendan!. While the game was only released in Japan, anyone with a DS can play it-- one of the most welcome features of the DS is that games are not encoded for specific regions. If you have an American DS, it will play Japanese games with no modding or other extra work required. Pop it in and play it. Also, uh, you should probably know some Japanese for some games.

But! Ouendan doesn't seem to really require much in the way of Japanese language skills. Here is a short video that gives the basic idea of the game. It's a rhythm action game where you tap and draw lines on the bottom screen in time to the music to control a group of "cheerleaders" (apparently actual cheerleaders are unlockable bonus characters) who help people get through difficult tasks. The gameplay seems to be very similar to the PS2 game Technic Beat, wherein you have circles that appear on different parts of the screen and you have to trigger them in order and in time with the music.

Interestingly, this is a case much like Cooking Mama where the idea could be done in a traditional console style, but the DS interface makes a huge difference. Technic Beat was insanely hard, largely because the gameplay was not intuitive at all. Ouendan is almost exactly the same idea, but it's extremely easy to pick up on what you're supposed to do-- hence the game's huge import fan base, most of whom probably speak little to no Japanese. The DS control scheme makes an enormous difference.

Here is the official trailer for the US version, which is more of a reinterpretation of the idea than an actual sequel. The gameplay will remain intact, but the game's soundtrack and levels have been completely overhauled. This video shows someone playing the game (probably at E3) and it doesn't seem like any compromise has been made in the game's visual style or the quality of the sound. Although, uh, I'm not the biggest fan of "Walkie Talkie Man."

Fall Games: Cooking Mama

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 16:20:58 GMT

Ah yes, months later and I'm posting here again. Getting a job in the games industry (even if it's just cell phone games!) has been very exciting and I'm having a great time. I'm also very busy and don't have much time to update my various journals and web presences, hence the months-long quiet here again. Also, my Playstation 2 died after years of faithful service and it will probably be a while before I can replace it-- ironically, because I'm going to be using the money I would be saving up to buy a new one to buy games I can eventually play on it! Ridiculous.

Which leads me to why I'm posting again-- there are some great-looking games coming out this fall for my game systems of choice (that would be the Playstation 2 and the Nintendo DS), and I felt it was time to write up a few of them.

Cooking Mama
System: Nintendo DS
Release Date: 12 September

Cooking Mama is, very simply, a game where you cook. The nature of Nintendo's DS makes it perfect for this kind of quirky game-- you use the stylus to chop vegetables, punch the numbers on a microwave, stir, move a frying pan, and arrange food on a plate. Mama watches and if you do especially well her eyes light up in adoration. This video shows quite a bit of gameplay from the Japanese version, which will likely be identical except for the voiceover.

I'm excited about Cooking Mama for several reasons. Not the least is that it's such an odd, Japanese concept, but it looks really fun and I'm glad that Majesco is taking a chance on releasing it here in the US. The DS is tailor-made for unique new gameplay experiences, but somewhat unfortunately most of its biggest-selling and highest-profile games as of late have been versions of games we've seen many times over (Mario Kart DS, Tetris) with a cursory nod to its capabilities. Cooking Mama is the kind of game that would be damn-near impossible to make without the DS's touch screen interface. How many cooking games are out there for US consoles right now?

The game's cheery, colorful look and unique gameplay are bonuses to that simple fact-- this will be a new gameplay experience for almost anyone willing to pick it up. Any game that offers something genuinely new is well worth a look, especially when it's shaping up to be as fun as Cooking Mama.

Super Creepy

Thu, 18 May 2006 16:48:03 GMT

This video is a tech demo for Heavy Rain, the sequel to one of last year's most innovative and intriguing games, Indigo Prophecy. There's no gameplay-- the demo is clearly meant to show off what the characters and environments will look like on the Playstation 3. The animation is pretty amazing, but the character model that's shown off (a young woman) is super creepy.

Joystiq posted a link to the trailer today with a little information on the idea of the Uncanny Valley. While the Heavy Rain trailer shows promise, there's no question that it definitely falls victim to this phenomenon-- that the closer simulated humans are to the real thing, the more we notice little discrepancies and are creeped the hell out.

IGN has a quick look at the demo as it was shown at E3. I think this is an important piece of news for a few reasons.

First, it's surprising given the disappointing sales of Indigo Prophecy that its director, David Cage, is working on what is sure to be a high-profile PS3 title. Indigo Prophecy is an amazing game, updating the old PC-style point 'n' click adventure with a highly cinematic look and feel while creating a very effective sense that the actions you choose to take have repercussions throughout the rest of the game. Sony's taking a huge risk on the PS3, maybe they're more willing to gamble on games that are original and daring (and have incredible graphics, which never hurts) might catch on.

The game is currently scheduled for release in January 2008, meaning there's quite a bit of time for the development team to work on improving the graphics. If what we see in this video is an early demo, it's almost scary to think of what the finished game will look like. While it's certainly impressive, the question now is this: do we really want characters that are completely convincing and realistic? If there's any truth to the idea that gaming desensitizes us to violence, then it follows that the more realistic the people are we interact with in games, the more it will desensitize us when we mow them down. Obviously I don't think that's what Heavy Rain will be like-- Indigo Prophecy proved him to be thoughtful and intelligent when dealing with violent themes-- but other games using the same technology (Grand Theft Auto 4, for example) may be more cavalier about allowing players to, say, run over photorealistic hookers and shoot very lifelike police with a sniper rifle.

Of course, none of this particularly matters if the games aren't worth playing. As incredible as the PS3 graphics are, I have yet to see anything really compelling or that makes me want to buy a PS3. We haven't seen any gameplay from Heavy Rain yet, of course, but the fact that many PS3 games on display at E3 this year seemed more like tech demos while Nintendo showed off its new system with a great variety of games that looked like fun. I'm starting to wonder, though, if the Wii is going to be capable of experiences like the PS2's Shadow of the Colossus. That is, games that are not only enjoyable to play, but that create an emotional investment in the player. I know that it's not the graphics alone that make Shadow of the Colossus such a compelling game, but they certainly helped. While the Wii is at least as powerful as the Gamecube (which is supposedly more graphically powerful than a PS2), it doesn't look like any of the games we've seen so far really aim for that kind of experience.

In any case, I'm now eagerly anticipating Heavy Rain. Hopefully by the time it is released in 2008, I'll actually be able to buy a Playstation 3. But probably not.

A few more E3 things

Fri, 12 May 2006 18:28:01 GMT

Dammit! Dungeons and Dragons: Tactics for the PSP looks awesome.

Nintendo discontinuing Game Boy? Kind of a surprise since last I heard they were at work on a new GB system that would play all Game Boy titles from all the way back in the monochrome days up through GBA games. But not all that surprising, I guess, considering how successful the DS has been. End of an era, to be sure.

Joystiq's video of Will Wright's Spore presentation. It's 40 minutes long, and it's totally worth it-- get the torrent here. DO IT.

E3: Hot stuff keeps rolling out

Thu, 11 May 2006 16:54:04 GMT

First shots of the Wii Virtual Console! This shows the format that Nintendo will be using for their Virtual Console, the program that will allow users to download and play games from the internet. As confirmed a while back, these shots show Sonic the Hedgehog (with a picture of the Sega Genesis) and Bonk's Revenge (with a picture of the Turbografx)! Joystiq points out that there are still many unaswered questions, but it looks like Nintendo's heading in the right direction.

Peter Moore talks shit about PS3. It's to be expected-- this is the man in charge of the Xbox brand, after all-- but the man makes a lot of sense. The biggest point I agree with him on is regarding Sony's insistence on using the Blu-Ray format, basically forcing users to adopt a new DVD standard when there doesn't seem to be that much interest in it at all and adding hundreds of dollars to the price of the console because of it. I initially thought that Microsoft made a bad decision launching the 360 with a standard DVD drive, but seeing how that keeps the cost of the system down and how early in the game we are for the next home video format, it's clear they made the right decision. It would probably make a lot more sense to use the new DVD formats in the next generation of consoles.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl looks like the weirdest game ever. Mario vs. a puppy from Nintendogs vs. Kid Icarus vs. Solid Snake!? Shit is insane.

Okami impressions from Joystiq seem to indicate the control scheme needs more tooling before the game's release. This is one of my most-anticipated PS2 games, but if a bit of a wait means a better game I'm all for it. The game was originally due out by the end of 2005, but is currently set for October 2006. It still looks gorgeous.

Elebits info from Joystiq: it's a game where you pick things up to catch little creatures hiding underneath them. And that's it. It looks pretty, the concept is super-simple, and this looks like one Nintendo will have no problem marketing to anyone. I'll have to tell the old ladies at EB about this, they'll lose their shit.

Konami is finally releasing a dating sim in the US, called Brooktown High: Senior Year. The bad news? It looks hideous, and it's on the PSP. Oops. However, it does look like there's another good PSP game coming up: Every Extend Extra from Tetsuya Mizuguchi's Q3 Entertainment (Rez, Lumines, Meteos). The game is apparently also set for a PC release, so that might work out for the millions of people who aren't interested in buying a PSP.

Oh, and it seems Necro-nesia is the first official Wii game that looks like garbage. Although apparently Madden for Wii needs some serious work, too. Hmm.