Alien Shooter Revisited (2009)

Alien Shooter Revisited is pretty much the same game as the 2003 original, though with updated graphics. I hoped that they would also slightly update the gameplay and go with less quantity instead of quality, but it’s still the same throw as much enemies at the player as the screen can take approach. And then some. In later levels it’s often impossible to see your character among the assault of enemies and enemy rockets.

Yeah, it’s stupid fun, but it could have been a much better game with slightly more attention to gameplay balance and level design. Instead it’s just kill, kill, kill. Which gets boring fast the second time.

Miscellaneous TV-Series

Eureka S4 (2010-2011)
The show managed to stay fresh without changing the core concept, which it did through a displacement of the main cast into a subtly different timeline. The changes were kept to the personal level, which allowed the show writers to infuse more drama without doing stupid tricks like forcing annoying and pointless new characters into the show.

The second part of the season also introduced a planned mission to Titan, which was a great way to show that Eureka is more than a weekly show about zany pseudo-science going wrong and instead could actually be useful (though the FTL-drive looked more like a transporter to me and I wonder why they needed all the training and preparation for stepping through one).

Bureau of Alien Detectors (1996)
A one season animated kiddy-show that feels like it was heavily inspired by the X-Files. While the plots where enjoyable enough (often in a hilarious way, like aliens from Mars attack with a zombie army), the writing was just awful. While I give points for trying, at times I wished someone actually competent had worked on the dialog. You can only go so far with goodwill, and in the end I think the show deserved to die. Also, characterization was either absent or plain bad.

Lost Girl S1 (2010)
Urban fantasy TV-series that is obviously not written and done by Americans, as the series is devoid of any puritanical posturing that is all so-common in the genre, both prose fiction as well as TV-series. The modus operandi is normally that the mostly female main character of these series discovers sex at a slightly advanced age (for the rest of the world, this means later than 22), mostly with a vampire, werewolf or some such, and is both disgusted with having so much fun and yet can’t stop.

Here the main character is a succubus who literally needs sex to survive and solves supernatural crime on the sideline as well and isn’t bothered at all to have sex nilly-willy. It’s not yet up to feminism standards, but at least the main character doesn’t go into crisis mode every time she enjoys sex (something I found extremely annoying when watching the 6th season of Buffy).

It’s a fun show that slowly grows its mythology aspect and manages to make the main character not too annoying, though power-creep and protagonist-centered morality rises its head from time to time. Since it’s also spelled out in-universe that fate has big plans for Bo, further seasons might become more annoying if Bo becomes a walking cliche for the main character is always right, but at the moment it’s still bearable. Though I wish the dark and the light fey side would be given equal space and less strongly positioned on a moral axis.

Robotomy (2010-2011)
Animated show about two robot friends in a robot world where everyone is trying to kill each other most of the time. None of the characters really minds this and everyone is just living his normal life, which looks like your typical American standard human life (whatever).

My first thought was: How you could have a simile to normal human life, when everyone is trying to kill each other, though maybe it’s not really permanent when done to robots. Still, the shows concept doesn’t make sense even in a wacky sense typical for cartoons. Apart from that, I only saw two episodes and they were so boring and painfully unfunny that I can understand why the show got canned.

Complete Peanuts 1957-1958 (2008)

The fourth volume of Peanuts was the one where everything just made click. I wasn’t sure if it would eventually happen or whether Schulze’s humor really wasn’t to my liking. But I’m sort of thankful that it eventually did, because not getting why everyone else seemed to love Peanuts made me doubt the greater humanity, especially as the first two collections were god awful and the third still kinda mediocre. But this time around the jokes were funny, I felt compelled to read the entire collection in one sitting and couldn’t wait to open the next one.

I’ve read a number of personal recollections of other people appreciating the Peanuts in recent times and I think one reason why I had such a hard time liking Peanuts initially is that most people seem to like Peanuts because they can empathize with Charlie Brown, Snoopy or any of the other characters to some degree. It’s a Zeitgeist thing to which I am not partial. For me, it’s like looking at an alien world that doesn’t make much sense.

I can laugh at the individual strips, sometimes like the point Schulze is making, but the overall theme of prevailing failure and trying to get accepted by the world at large, a world that seems overly hostile from Charlie Brown’s POV seems pretty artificial and doesn’t hold any deeper meaning for me. I may laugh at the surface, but what is beneath it is written in a language I don’t know.

Ponyo (2008)

Ponyo is a perfect example of minor material which is successful because of the excellent execution. Basically it’s a modern update of Anderson’s Little Mermaid with younger characters and the Disney-typical happy ending, which honestly doesn’t sound all that exiting. But what makes the movie work is the attention to detail and the enthusiasm it projects: from the lovely design of the house and the surrounding landscape, the well written characters and the near-perfect pacing to the happy but not saccharine ending that is uplifting without falling back on cheap tricks.

It’s a kid movie that manages to make even hardened grown-ups smile when they leave the cinema. Sure, you’ll know that the threat-potential in the movie was kinda low anyway, that not much happened plot wise and yet, in the end it’s still fun to watch again and again. Best of the recent Ghibli movies.

Death Proof (2007)

There are few movies by Tarantino I actually like. I find most of them an interesting experience when watching, but I rarely enjoy them. Death Proof is no exception in that regard. The way Tarantino plays with certain conventional elements from various genres to create something entirely unique is fascinating to watch, but the endless babbling of the female characters and the death porn midway into the movie is something I’m not enthusiastic about.

American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition (2011)

The 10th Anniversary edition of American Gods was as good as any reason to reread the book. This edition has 12,000 more wordage, but upon finishing the book I couldn’t say where the new material was. So, if you read it with that expectation, as long as you don’t have eidetic memory or you read both editions side-by-side, you’ll probably won’t find the new stuff.

But I admit, while I read all of Shadow’s text parts, I only skimmed those that showed how the Gods came to America in the first place. While those passage where informative, they also broke the flow of the overall story and I remembered that I felt kind of bored when I read them the first time years ago. So this time, I either skipped them completely or only scanned them cursory.

Like all books we loved once, there’s always the fear that you can’t go back, but I discovered that I still like the book. Sure, the flaws are more obvious this time. The book meanders around a long time and some bits really drag. Shadow is one of the most reserved main character I’ve come across for some time. But the book has great bits too, which make it work despite these flaws.

The overall story of a con-job that starts with Shadow discovering that various Gods are real and the final realization of Odin’s endgame is a brilliant concept. There may be no new ideas and ideas are a dime a dozen anyway, but that story still feels pretty original even after all these years. Despite the meandering plot, most of the places the story visits with Shadow in tow are actually worth it. Sure, you could cut a few subplots here and there, but none of them feels really unnecessary.

And while Shadow is more an outline than a real character, the contour of his character is one most people probably can relate to. He’s down-to-earth, not smarter-than-average, mostly passive and yet capable. When the situation requires it, he rises to the occasion. Just as most of us would like to act.

Most of all, reading even the minor parts is fun, as long as Shadow is the POV. It’s the kind of book where Gaiman could have written about Shadow doing pretty mundane activities like buying stuff (and he actually did) and it’s entertaining. Even if there are no surprises, the writing manages to suck you in. This new edition is worth reading not because of the new material, which you probably won’t recognize anyway, but because it’s a great book that is fun to reread.

Alien Shooter (2003)

Alien Shooter is an isometric shooter by Russian developer Sigma Team. The best way to describe the game would be, the gameplay of Serious Sam in an isometric perspective with the art sensibilities of Fallout (to some degree). Though, while that may sound great, the game lacks serious polish. Pathfinding is horrible and next to useless, even moving among normal stuff standing around in the levels can get your characters stuck for some time (while the animations of your character looks seriously bonkers).

Balance is seriously lacking as well. While the initial levels can be easily beaten, after some time the game just starts throwing monsters en mass at you. It’s pretty obvious why the developer has put the cheat codes on the official game page for Alien Shooter. Another issue is that the levels look pretty much the same, monster variety is low and the mission in each level is either kill all monster or just blow up the monster generators.

All that aside, the game manages to be entertaining of sorts. Blowing up wave after wave of monsters with your weapons and painting the floor red with their remains is just as fun as killing monster in old-school first person shooters. It’s mindless fun, sure, but fun nonetheless.

Ghost Rider: Road to Damnation (2005-2006)

At the end of the Grayson’s series Blaze was riding into the sunset with the girl he won, Ennis’ series starts with the Ghost Rider trying to leave hell. I have no idea whether I’ve missed a connecting annual or special or whether both series, since they were published under the Marvel Knights logo are out-of-continuity.

Ennis’ series revisits themes he already used in Preacher, Hellblazer and a few other comics (Hell vs Heaven, both are sort of evil and use humans as cannon fodder, some of the devil/angel try something different) and since he really hasn’t anything new to say, merely makes a violent, comical gorefest with Ghost Rider playing the unwitting pawn devils and angels.

The comic gives off the vibe that Ennis would rather have done something different with his time but needed the money. It’s enjoyable in a stupid kind of way, but not really all that good. And it’s sad that Ennis’ wrote Ghost Rider like a bit of an idiot, which is completely contrary to everything that came before.

Ghost Rider: The Hammer Lane (2001-2002)

This one I tried reading, but only did one issue completely and skimmed the rest of the series. It’s basically Johny Blaze as a whiny emo who want to be left alone from the Ghost Rider and who subsequently has to learn to live with his demon and get happy again. Not the best way to approach a comic about a motorbike riding demon, but what really sinks the boat here is the awful writing that reads like someone got his first try at doing a comic here.

Time Pygmy (2010)

Time Pygmy was an entry in the 19th Ludum Dare game contest, which had the theme discovery. You play a small stone-age pygmy who ventures into the future through a portal. He arrives in 1981 in a house and has to discover various concepts until he has to go back to the past. The biggest draw of the game is the beautiful pixel art. Depending on how much you like experimenting with various things and see what happens, you like the simplified, adventure inspired gameplay.

Each time you try to do something new, your little pygmy discovers something. From fear of heights to realizing that cars can be easily destroyed, the discoveries cover the entire range from mundane to ludicrous to the symbolic. Some of the discoveries are obvious, other come completely out of the blue and require the lateral thinking typical for bad adventures (girl into the fridge is either a really evil reference or just mad puzzle design). Despite the four minute time limit, the game is short on replay value once you’ve seen everything, but it’s at least worth one play.