Am I the only one underwhelmed by this game? The E3 showing was, well, it was something that happened. That's about the best I can say about it. Yeah, the graphics were good, but the animations hadn't changed at all. Kratos still moves like he did in the first God of War. And I'm not just talking about the repeated move set, which, lets be honest, is bullshit.
And they still have QTE's. If I wanted to watch a short movie and tap along...well, I don't. Because that's stupid and a waste of time. I'm a grown ass man, I don't need to be slowing hitting button prompts while I watch a game do everything for me. I can handle multiple inputs and combinations. Despite what companies seem to want us to believe, game controllers aren't that hard to navigate. Last time I checked, there's more to keep track of when driving a car than there is when playing a game and people seem to be doing that just fine.
Anyway, Read this in a nerd monotone, "God of War has a really deep and complex combat system. If it ain't broke, don't fix it." No, fuck you. God of War is the Coldplay of action games. It gets SO much better. But again, like Coldplay, it's flashy, and that's hard to beat. "LOOK AT THE BIG ENVIRONMENTS AND MONSTERS!" Yeah, the exact same ones that just sit like fucking animated wall paper having ZERO affect on the gameplay. You can't do shit to those monsters tearing apart cities on the horizon until the game deams it appropriate. They're exactly like bosses in every other game, the only difference is you get to see them for a bit before you fight them. Wait, no, that's like other games too. I guess the draw is that they're big. Is that it? Is that why you people keep hailing this as the best thing ever? 'Cause the fake monsters are bigger than fake monsters in other games? God damnit.
And 2010? Seriously? It's taking them THAT long to pretty up God of War 2? You know what else is coming out in 2010? A fucking camera that knows who you are and tracks 1-to-1 every movement you make almost literally putting you inside a video game. Jesus Christ, it's like they're telling their fan base to sit and spin and everyone's responding "Sweet! For how long??"
Point is, buy Prototype, it'll be much better.
3.6.09
7.10.08
Sad Video Tuesday
This week is Johnny Cash's introspective and emotional cover of Nine Inch Nails' Hurt. Cash's quivering voice and resigned baritone boost the song far above it's original source and the video only enhances the pain and heartbreak.
Again, another serious tear jerker
Again, another serious tear jerker
25.9.08
New Regina Spektor Album
Regina recently dropped the news on her MySpace page that she is currently working on her new album. Rumor has it it's due out in early 2009.
Classic Regina song:
Classic Regina song:
16.9.08
Sad Video Tuesday
This one's from Nick Cave's brokenhearted classic, The Boatman's Call. The track by itself is a moving and sincere love song, but when contrasted with the imagery of the music video, is utterly heartbreaking.
Try watching this thing all the way through and not feeling emotionally drained
Try watching this thing all the way through and not feeling emotionally drained
9.9.08
Why Times Magazine Has No Business Discussing Music
The following is from Time magazine's website and is their list of "the greatest and most influential records ever" compiled by decade.
1) They want to be hip. Including an Eminem album, any Eminem album, in a list with the purported purpose of stating the top 100 " greatest and most influential records ever" effectively says that you want to appear in touch with modern music but don't want to put in the time to actually remain knowledgable. It's lazy, and depressing considering it's coming from a highly respected and popular publication.
2) At a bare minimum, they long for the return of the simplistic self indulgent rock of 60's and 70's mainstays like The Beach Boys and Led Zeppelin. At worst, they consider those decades to have produced music superior to anything from the last 20 years and only included the contemporary albums they did out of a fleeting sense of journalistic integrity. Either way, the list is severely off balance.
Here are some highlights from their All-Time 100:
They DID include:
The Marshal Mathers LP, Eminem
The College Dropout, Kanye West
Live Through This, Hole
My Life, Mary J. Blige
Ropin' The Wind, Garth Brooks
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams
One Nation Under A Groove, Parliament/Funkadelic
2 Aretha Franklin albums and 4 Beatles' albums
They DIDN'T include:
Dr. Octagonecologyst, Dr. Octagon
Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Wu-Tan Clan
Odelay, Beck
Post, Bjork
Daydream Nation, Sonic Youth
Doolittle, Pixies
Richard D. James Album, Aphex Twin
Moon Safari, Air
Anything from Nick Cave
Anything from Tom Waits
Anything from Frank Zappa
It should be noted that they snubbed electronic music all together, although you could argue Kid A, but still
But this list is important and here's why: It embodies a certain music critic ethos that makes up a large part of music journalism (with rags such as Blender making up most of the rest). The ethos consists of the belief that rock attained perfection in 1974, The Beatles were mostly a rock band not a pop band, and that liking random rappers (Lil Wayne, Nas, etc.) and calling flavor of the month pop singles (such as Umbrella or SexyBack) "good" and "quality pop" makes you current. They like Radiohead but they'll always put Pet Sounds or Zeppelin IV above OK Computer. It's okay to endlessly praise a band that sang misogynistically about women in California or howled about Hobbits as long as they did it before 1980.
The other part of this ethos is acting reflexively defensive by alluding to a steady onslaught on their integrity. They make statements like "Read and listen to the arguments for the selections, then tell us what we missed or got wrong. Or even possibly what we got right," where the attempt at wit functions more as a way of saying "We think you're not going to like what we wrote, but we also think we're smarter than you and what we wrote is probably right anyway." That defensiveness often appears as elitist and by extension for most, intelligent, granting whatever they have to say an undeserved air of authority.
The thing is, none of it would be so bad if it wasn't all done under the guise of intelligent critique. Doing any of the above and then talking down to your audience about it is absurd and counter productive. There is plenty of good music out there among all the garbage. It's the critic's job to sift through the mediocre and abysmal and let people know about the good and even excellent. Standing on a soap box hearkening for days long past and attacking people before they disagree with you is as effective a form of informing people about quality music as aggressively panhandling is an effective form of entrepreneurship.
http://www.time.com/time/2006/100albums/The first thing you'll notice is Eminem is on there. The second thing is how bottom heavy it is. Over a third of their choices come from the 60's and 70's. These two pieces of information tell you two crucial things:
1) They want to be hip. Including an Eminem album, any Eminem album, in a list with the purported purpose of stating the top 100 " greatest and most influential records ever" effectively says that you want to appear in touch with modern music but don't want to put in the time to actually remain knowledgable. It's lazy, and depressing considering it's coming from a highly respected and popular publication.
2) At a bare minimum, they long for the return of the simplistic self indulgent rock of 60's and 70's mainstays like The Beach Boys and Led Zeppelin. At worst, they consider those decades to have produced music superior to anything from the last 20 years and only included the contemporary albums they did out of a fleeting sense of journalistic integrity. Either way, the list is severely off balance.
Here are some highlights from their All-Time 100:
They DID include:
The Marshal Mathers LP, Eminem
The College Dropout, Kanye West
Live Through This, Hole
My Life, Mary J. Blige
Ropin' The Wind, Garth Brooks
Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, Lucinda Williams
One Nation Under A Groove, Parliament/Funkadelic
2 Aretha Franklin albums and 4 Beatles' albums
They DIDN'T include:
Dr. Octagonecologyst, Dr. Octagon
Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Wu-Tan Clan
Odelay, Beck
Post, Bjork
Daydream Nation, Sonic Youth
Doolittle, Pixies
Richard D. James Album, Aphex Twin
Moon Safari, Air
Anything from Nick Cave
Anything from Tom Waits
Anything from Frank Zappa
It should be noted that they snubbed electronic music all together, although you could argue Kid A, but still
But this list is important and here's why: It embodies a certain music critic ethos that makes up a large part of music journalism (with rags such as Blender making up most of the rest). The ethos consists of the belief that rock attained perfection in 1974, The Beatles were mostly a rock band not a pop band, and that liking random rappers (Lil Wayne, Nas, etc.) and calling flavor of the month pop singles (such as Umbrella or SexyBack) "good" and "quality pop" makes you current. They like Radiohead but they'll always put Pet Sounds or Zeppelin IV above OK Computer. It's okay to endlessly praise a band that sang misogynistically about women in California or howled about Hobbits as long as they did it before 1980.
The other part of this ethos is acting reflexively defensive by alluding to a steady onslaught on their integrity. They make statements like "Read and listen to the arguments for the selections, then tell us what we missed or got wrong. Or even possibly what we got right," where the attempt at wit functions more as a way of saying "We think you're not going to like what we wrote, but we also think we're smarter than you and what we wrote is probably right anyway." That defensiveness often appears as elitist and by extension for most, intelligent, granting whatever they have to say an undeserved air of authority.
The thing is, none of it would be so bad if it wasn't all done under the guise of intelligent critique. Doing any of the above and then talking down to your audience about it is absurd and counter productive. There is plenty of good music out there among all the garbage. It's the critic's job to sift through the mediocre and abysmal and let people know about the good and even excellent. Standing on a soap box hearkening for days long past and attacking people before they disagree with you is as effective a form of informing people about quality music as aggressively panhandling is an effective form of entrepreneurship.
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