The Last Candle

An admission: I have tried earnestly tonight to resist bleating out another post and use the time instead for other projects, but the past month of almost constant updates has changed the updates habits far along from the previous state of posting only “once in a while.” I would call that some kind of success.

Tonight’s another brief post, and a highlighting a stance famed critic Roger Ebert has recently outspoken regarding video games compared to books or movies — that is, that Ebert thinks that video games are “inherently inferior to film and literature.”

While the question presented to him (third down on the Answerman page — author Andrew Davis) is a response to his previous comments on the matter, Ebert’s reply here clearly enunciates the reasons for his belief in games’ comparitive inferiority; his argument is intelligent and certainly befits someone of his high critical prowess — even if he sounds fairly misinformed on the video game side of things. Not suprisingly, I don’t agree with Ebert in at least part of his argument, and most specifically the following section:

I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art.

To begin, an insolent little list:

• Roger Ebert is Aware of the Following Games:
  • The Sims
  • Doom 3, Halo
  • Tony Hawk [Pro Skater, Underground, 1337 S8ter]
• Roger Ebert is Likely Not Aware of the Following Games:
  • The Longest Journey
  • Silent Hill 2
  • Shadow of the Colossus (of course)

I realize that’s a very polar way of making my argument (and vague, too, if you haven’t heard of any of those games), giving it some inherent flaws in the gray parts of the discussion, but like I said, I hope to delve further into the subject later this week.

Instead of spending an hour on making a big ole’ post about making phone calls (the tale of one has survived — see below), the hour could be better spent on renovating both the front-end and back-end of this here page. Yes, Blosxom and the starry lamppost are both soon to be gone, cast away into the archives next to the past dozen designs.

T*LC trivia: This page’s title changed from Grimm Thinking to The Last Candle on approximately September 21, 2001; the intention of the design was to get away from the name of Grimm, “borrowed” from my favorite character of the Twisted Metal game series, Mr. Grimm. I wanted something original, which is why, of course, I picked out verbatim the name of a favorite Blind Guardian tune as the new title and domain name. Yep.

Anyways, since there’s going to be a distinct lack of sorrowed tales about harrowing telephone calls tonight, I’d like to point the audience to a decent thinking exercise that popped up on the Shack today; the exercise and answer is best articulated within an article at AVWeb.

The question that has been going around is not particularly artfully worded, and I think that has caused some of the disagreements, but I’ll repeat it as it is shown: “On a day with absolutely calm wind, a plane is standing on a runway that can move (some sort of band conveyor). The plane moves in one direction, while the conveyor moves in the opposite direction. The conveyor has a control system that tracks the plane speed and tunes the speed of the conveyor to be exactly the same (but in the opposite direction). Can the airplane ever take off?”

For the record (and to the surprise of no-one who accompanied me in high school physics), my initial guesses were incorrect — but well-intentioned! And that counts for something, does it not? Well?

But anyways, about that phone call from before. The call was to Nintendo Repair headquarters, inquiring about what can be done about the lack of a digital A/V port on the back of my ‘Cube. The extra output is the only way to get progressive and component video from the console, but Gamecubes since May ‘04 have been built without the port due to “lack of demand.” Having purchased my own ‘Cube earlier this year, and having a sudden flash of frustration tonight that I wasn’t playing Resident Evil 4 at its most-sharp, I gave Nintendo a ring (per the instructions on the Gamecube component FAQ) to see what my options were.

The final word: After I receive the UPS shipping label from Nintendo World HQ, I’ll box up the sad digital A/V portless GC and send ‘er back to Nester. In a few days, a remanufactured ‘Cube with all the shiny snazzy outputs I could ever want will arrive at the door with much fanfare and confetti and angel feathers. Total cost: ZERO BANANAS.

That’s some fine customer service. If I had to grouse about something, it’d be the price of the actual cables: $35, which is somehow more expensive than a controller peripheral that looks like a chainsaw.

Fatal Frame 2: Crimson Butterfly: complete! And finishing ‘er up only took a year and a half playing at four different locations!

No, really — as outlined in an early 2005 post, Fatal Frame 2 was first cranked up in late 2004, forgotten for a while, and then picked up again in Q2 2005. The game wasn’t completed before school ended and I moved back down to Chelsea, but Paul stuck around in Mount Pleasant, and I visited him to chum around in his new apartment — and play some Fatal Frame 2. Finally, the fourth location was my own humble apartment, where the game was finally pushed to completion around 4:30 PM yesterday.

For those unfamiliar with the Fatal Frame series (which is, I’m guessing, just about everyone), the series entails running around dark and dilapidated mansions taking pictures of ghosts while being surrounded by a bunch of mystical Japanese psuedo-folklore. It’s quite scary, thanks to the many ghosts that come a-poppin’ out of doors, flying through windows, and dropping down suddenly into front of your viewfinder as you’re attempting to find a tiny scrap of solace by taking pictures of trees. The gameplay, unfortunately, is stiff, sluggish and often frustrating; the character runs excruciatingly slowly, taking pictures for ghosts can be an exercise in too-particular aim, and battles range from a boring twenty minutes of dodging slow projectiles to five minutes locked in a tiny room requiring one-second reaction times to stop the ghosts that come blitzing through the walls.

In the eyes an’ ears department, Fatal Frame 2 has high production with well-detailed indoor environments and excellent detail on the main characters and ghosts models. Sound doesn’t give life to Fatal Frame as it did for the Silent Hill games; Fatal Frame is more intent on giving you a plain absense of sound rather than spooky cues, and then suddening giving you a jolt — the anticipation of this ritual is enough to create an anxiety that will last the duration of gameplay.

So, not suprisingly, as the original was its own class of scary, Fatal Frame 2 is a very tense game that occasionally shines with moments of outright terror; the boy jumping up suddenly in front of a window Paul was creeping up to while in first-person viewfinder mode easily ranks up near the top as one of the most brazenly (a little TOO brazen, really) startling things I’ve ever seen.

Aside from the scares and technical value, however, the game just isn’t that interesting to keep playing. Fatal Frame 2’s plot is built on an fascinating basis: The setting is a town that used to hold a ritual in which one twin kills the other to stop a great evil from spewing forth, and the main character is trying to stop her possessed twin from reenacting the ceremony. But while the idea itself has great potential, the actual play of the storyline is a little too forward in getting the, ah, friction between the sisters through and not enough time on the infinitely more interesting folklore that surrounds the setting and interactions.

The verdict: Fatal Frame 2’s looks and scares are good enough for a horror game fan and passable for anyone else, but although there’s a decent story and some great environments with spooks, it’s about a B-grade title.

Next up: This beauty, which is turning out to be not only one of the best action games I’ve ever played — the gameplay is incredibly tight and seriously white-knuckle frantic — but a top-tier game in all respects.

Goofy rock group The Darkness has put the entire new album, One Ticket To Hell…And Back, on MySpace for streamin’ and listenin’ pleasure.

If you don’t mind your music composed entirely of concepts on sex, drugs, and various drunken philosophies made harmonious by a screamy-high voice, an infinite assortment of catchy hooks, and a generally simple technical side — well, this is rock music after all, is it not? — check ‘em out. Or at least check out the new album’s awesome cover art.

I enjoyed Permission to Land, the Brit band’s first offering, and I like what MySpace’s served up, so the probability of picking this one up on Tuesday release is high.

When Father Anderson brought out the turkey this morning for its pre-consumption ritual of

seasoning thoroughly with high heat, he noticed that the 16-pound bird purchased had been

switched overnight with a significantly larger 22-pounder. If sixteen pounds was a far more than enough meat for feeding four people…

The Official Anderson Fridge is currently giving a free winter vacation to about ten pounds

of delicious light and dark meat. It is probable that the members under this household will overdose on

tryptophan within the coming days as we augment our soups, salads, gravies, and desserts

with the remainders. It is also possible that alternate uses for the

leftover entree will be researched, such as if frozen turkey slices as tiny daggers would make reasonable weapon for wintery self-defense.

throwing.

My favorite after-Thankgiving-meal spawned from the inevitable leftovers, however, is a

turkey sandwich concotion that my sister Beck introduced to me several years ago. Write this one down on a recipe card:

A Turkey Sandwich

Act I

• Get some turkey. Real turkey — Tofurky is not eligible.
• Bring out some of that cavity-steamed stuffing as well. It is wise to place the stuffing in the vicinity of the turkey for convenience, but if you want to place the stuffing out in the mailbox and the turkey under a mattress in the attic, be my guest. We're on holiday after all — leave the smart thinkin' for next Monday.
• Cranberry sauce. Put it wherever, as long as you have it. And don't forget where it ends up.
• Mayo! And two slices of bread, which unlike moulded jelly salads has thankfully never gone out of culinary style. I suppose you could make do with a nice warm biscuit leftover instead of the bread, but if you’re going to deviate from the recipe, which is damn near canon, then you might as well go get yourself some Tofurky too. Yeesh.

[Intermission]

Act II

• Make the sandwich. If you've never made a sandwich before or don't know what one looks like, please consult the nearest Subway or Secretary of State.

  Or, if you're too lazy to hit the bricks and do a little research (and I wouldn't blame you for that after Thankgiving meal an' all), here's basically how sandwich making goes. First, decide which ingredient will be the one doing the actual sandwiching — the sliced bread is popular in this regard. Next, put all other ingredients in between the ingredient o' sandwiching; a good meter for deciding if you followed this step correctly is poking a yardstick through one face of the sandwiching ingredient until you hit the other face — if you've hit every other component on the way, success!

Act III: The Reckoning

• Eat up! I recommend accompanying the meal with a cold glass of milk.

Enjoy! Don't eat too many and die!