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Everything’s Coming Up Dead

Above is a cast photo for the Plants vs. Zombies video I shot with some good friends recently. Stay tuned to this blog to see the fan-created homage go up in all its videographic splendour.

Shooting it was lots of fun. And it ties nicely in with what I threatened to talk about in more detail a few weeks ago, the brilliant Typing of the Dead. Now I was going to crack my writing knuckles and really get stuck into some praising the bizzare Mavis-Beacon-meets-Resident-Evil game, but I happened across this article a in the meantime over at Offworld.  The article stopped me in my tracks beacuse I think Margaret Robinson has really said all I wanted to say about the game, and probably more succinctly than I would have managed.

Bottom line, it is fun AND extremely educational. So track it down. Play it. Master touch typing and revel in the horrors of the polygonical living dead all at the same time. (The system requirements are extremely meagre so maybe you could run it the old laptop that won’t manage anything else, get some use out if it!)

I’ve also been playing another of my game loot titles, “Titan Quest,” so I may talk about that a bit more about that click-fest in a subsequent post. For the moment I have to get to editing and uploading some video!

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Sunday, Twitchy Sunday.

I think I’m suffering actual physiological withdrawal symptoms, though its hard to tell if this is a result of abstinance from gaming, or from other sundry things I am currently denying myself. If I wanted to be scientific about this I shouldn’t have drastically limited my chocolate, confectionery and carbonated beverage intake at the same time as screwing the lid tight on to the gaming jar.

So it is with palsied hands, a sweaty brow and much grinding of teeth I continue this post.

I saw MEL GIBSON’S ‘Apocalpto’ last night. Having not seen any previews or heard anything at all about the film I didn’t know what kind of movie I was strapping myself in for. It turned out to be a stock standard action/adventure film paper-mache’d over with back issues of national geographic and then dipped in gore. Not really my cup of tea. It felt surprisingly familiar at times – the waterfall sequence could have been straight out of the Fugitive. (well, if Richard Kimball was all tatted up and Tommy-Lee was packing a spear instead of a pistol) And as for the the old solar eclipse stay-of-execution bit, well I was squeezing the arm next to mine and hissing the finer plot points of one of Tintin’s adventures well ahead of time.

Mel Gibson certainly seem to have a penchant for celluloid sadism though, that much is certain.

So in the spirit of excessive violence for my next post I’ll list some of my favourite games, in order of approximate body count.

Until then.

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Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave…

I went to a rooftop cinema to see Labyrinth last night. I enjoyed it. Though it was my elleventy-upteenth viewing of the film it was actually my first on the big screen.

In a movie so packed with detail it makes a big difference, some of the little goings on in the background are gold. (Speaking of packed, David Bowie’s crotch elicited quite a crowd reaction…)

I’ve loved the movie for years. I was nine when I first saw it and had an instant crush on Jennifer Connelly that continues to this day. I sat through the Rocketeer for that woman! (Little did I know that years later her ‘ass-to-ass sequence’ in Requiem for a Dream would do irrepairable damage to my fragile mind.) My crush on David Bowie took a little while longer to gestate but has been none the less enduring..

It never ceases to amaze me how many great people pop up in the credits. Bowie, Henson, ex-python Terry Jones, Brian Froud, juggler Michael Moschen, Danny John-Jules (of Red Dwarf) the list goes on. I’m also a big fan of Ron Mueck’s subsequent work. I had the privilege of viewing some of his staggering work at the Saatchi gallery in London a few years ago and haven’t forgotten it.

Anyway, they don’t make ‘em like that anymore. Labyrinth is one of the Enduring Six – Labyrinth, Dark Crystal, Willow, Princess Bride and the Star Wars trilogy – repeated viewings of which and interminable quotings from took up the bulk of my childhood and early teen years. Come to think of it for a no-necked American hack George Lucas has had quite an impact on my life. Ours has always been a rocky relationship however, and though I can accept Howard the Duck as a unfortunate accident, some things – like Episode 1 – are unforgivable.

Did anyone else out there have the good fortune to play the Commodore 64 game version of Labyrinth? An early offering from Lucasarts, a company who for a while there, could do no wrong in my eyes. (I won’t start talking about Monkey Island at this juncture or the post will never end.)

Sorry. This is my first blog and urge to scatter parenthetical comments like rice at a wedding is powerful strong.

I will try to resist. A friend suggested I might like to adopt a choose-your-own-adventure style. “To to continue the explanation of how the author learned all he needed to know about Buddhism from watching “Monkey” turn to page 9, or to hear him rant about Asterix comics and what they tell us about 1st Century BC turn to page 13…)

One of my favourite things about the game was that it started out in a traditional text-based adventure style, which I loved in itself, (“GO EAST,” “TAKE POPCORN”. I remember “go DINNER” resulted in a memorable passage with the protagonist’s cheeks squelching against mashed potato and gravy…) and only broke out the cutting edge 1986 graphics when you started watching the film in the local cinema.
The game play itself was quite engaging, and though I never managed to finish it – always got stuck at the goblin palace – it still gave me a strong sense of achievement to get as far as I did. Plus, it added the word ‘adumbrate’ to my 10 year old vocabulary. So what’s not to love?

Ok. Last night’s outing provided a much needed distraction from my gaming withdrawal and so for I am still on the wagon. I have been getting more sleep the last few days and I’m even thinking about trying out this Bye Bye Browser to get me off to dreamland at a resonable time.

I’ll keep you all posted.

(Photo taken with my new Nokia N73 mobile-phone.)