So Arkham Horror was described to me as a board game and an adventure game, with RPG elements. I think that is a very apt description of that game and having played close to a hundred hours and sinking several hundred dollars into it, I guess I can call myself a fan. In Arkham Horror, the players are set against one of the Great Old Ones stirring in their slumber and it’s up to the investigators to attempt to find and seal the portals to the mysterious other worlds.

The first thing that is immediately obvious about Arkham Horror is that this isn’t your daddy’s board game. The rules are complex, some of the game mechanics can be cumbersome, and there is a ton of stuff to remember to account for that can make a dramatic difference in the gameplay and the experience. Arkham is not a typical American style game that most of you are probably familiar with, it’s not like Risk or Monopoly or Scrabble. Nor is it a European style game ála Settlers of Catan; as I mentioned the mechanics can be clunky and obvious. What Arkham is, is a delightful blend of both the good and the bad aspects of both styles.

As I mentioned this is set in H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, which allows the wonderful theme to stand out against some of the rougher edges in the base game. You are cast as an investigator, plunging through the streets and locations in Arkham, Massachusetts trying to unravel a mystery that prevents the malevolent Great Old One from awakening and devouring the whole of creation, starting of course with you. A player chooses an investigator from a healthy stack of quasi-typical role-playing archetypes, but with a distinctive pulpish twist. As the theme is 1920s Arkham, the highlights include a healthy blend of mysticism, pulp fiction, occult, and Prohibition-era politics. For example, instead of a magic user like a wizard or a sorcerer, one can play as Professor Harvey Walters, a visiting professor at Miskatonic University and a sometimes dabbler in the arcane arts of the Mythos.

Characters play a bit lit they would in an RPG save for the fact that you can’t build them or chose their names, but they do have statistics that are generally related to their ability and to the roles they are assigned during the game. While players choose characters to play as investigators the role-playing in this game is significantly reduced, which for many players like myself is a very big bonus. In the city of Arkham, there are unstable locations that a are spawning gates to the Lovecraftian Other Worlds and spewing monsters from them. The main goal of the players is to use their Investigators to work together to close and seal the gates to the Other Worlds, thus preventing the Great Old One from awakening and destroying all that we hold dear. Investigators travel the board, collecting items, clues, and allies which they will use to seal the gates and prevent the Old One from awakening. Monsters of various dimensions and strengths roam the board thwarting investigators and the weight of the ever-prevalent Mythos leaves little rest for the weary as they trundle through Arkham denying the Ancient One.

There are many portions of this game that have a “RPG-lite” feel to them. Modifiers and checks are all made with dice. Items grant increases to the modifiers, spells are cast with sanity and grant increases to combat modifiers, and allies provide stable, omnipresent, and stackable bonuses. Gathering clues is a key part of the strategy as they are used to stop more gates from opening. There are dozens of mechanics that litter the field of Arkham Horror and they are transparent to the user, transparent in that you watch the machinery of the game chew up your character. See, boys and girls, Arkham is hard. Being a cooperative game means the the objective needs to be all that more difficult to reach. Sometimes if feels as if you’re fighting a maleviolence; no not the Great Old One that you need to vanquish, but the game itself.

Arkham Horror is many things, but it’s not for people who aren’t sure that they like board games. It’s also certainly not for people who are beginners in the board game universe. And that means people who haven’t played anything but Beach Boys Monopoly* or Cluedo probably wouldn’t like having to make sure that their combat rolls all account for physical and magical immunity on the Colour Out of Space. That is of course not saying that this game isn’t fun or engaging, but fair warning needed to be given.

On of the places where this game shines is with it’s atmosphere and its setting. H.P. Lovecraft was one of the most influential horror writers in the 20th century and created a eerie, horrifying and maddening universe of “weird fiction” that still sits today, some 80 years after being written, as incredibly bizarre and unique. So it’s heartening to me that t he designers of this game didn’t just take the monsters and the great old ones slap a patina on them, bundle them together with the mechanics and call it a finished game. One of the more integral parts of the game is encountering, which involves moving your token to a location in the game, say the Witch House, and leaving it there a turn. Then a card is drawn from a stack, flavor text is read and the investigator often has to do something, pass a certain check to gain something or even to just not have something bad happen to them. The is quite a bit of great text, characters, locations, events and pure environment that is drawn directly from Lovecraft’s works and presented in an accessible and interesting fashion. It works wonderfully to bring you into the pulpy, campy, larger-than-life style that is Arkham Horror, while blending it with a genuine dose of Lovecraft.

In one way the game is driven by the story, in a more accurate way, the story and the environment are layered atop the vicious cardboard beast that eats players alive. Stopping the Great Old One from awakening is really the only good way to win. Obviously one is not going to have much luck fighting great Cthulhu with a tommy gun and a magic sword, but even defeating a “balanced” old god is nigh on impossible. No, Arkham Horror really is the game where you lose more often than you win, that is until the game mercilessly beats you into submission and you start playing it the way that the game thinks you should. Then the fun begins.

All in all Arkham Horror sessions last about 3-4 hours, sometimes shorter, sometimes longer, depending on the Mythos pulls. It truly is a game where you can see the working parts, the machinery of the thing. In fact, you often watch it first hand as it slowly devours you and your teammates. Arkham is also a game that I get sick of while playing and almost never want to do back-to-back sessions. And yet come every successive game night, Arkham Horror is there right near the top of the pile staring at me with its loathsome eye.

Ia! Ia! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.

Linky -

Arkham Horror at Fantasy Flight Games

Arkham Horror at Board Game Geek

*Seriously I checked for this.  I would have been fucking terrified if this actually existed.  Thankfully, my faith in humanity has been partially restored.

The above phrase is written on the first page of my notebook. It’s been there since I got that notebook back in May. Below it is a short paragraph about “The Conundrum of Reading from a Computer Screen”. The thesis is basically this, since the invention of writing, it’s been hand held or at least hand-holdable. For the last 25 or so years, more and more people have been consuming the written word on a vertical surface that is between 18 and 30 inches from their face. I would wager that most people read more off of their computer screens than they do off of them. I understand why. With the surge in the internet for consumption of news, the creation of reference websites like Wikipedia, and the power of online journals or weblogs to drive the “interestingness” of the content on the web. Coupled with the immediacy of the internet, it is no surprise that consumers would be flocking to the web for all sorts of interesting content.

The problem lies with the ergonomics of reading from a vertical surface that is 18-30 inches from your face. Firstly, you must be sitting upright to read it. All sorts of variables including the position of lights, the comfort of the keyboard/chair/mouse, whether or not the lights are producing a glare, so on and so forth. I’m not saying that ergonomics are necessary for writing with a pen and paper, but it’s certainly easier to move into some place more comfortable to do the job. And that doesn’t just go for writing but reading as well; the phrase “curling up with a good book” wouldn’t be so evocative if that weren’t the case. So we have books, newspapers, blogs, RSS feeds, YouTube, etc. All of these items require you to sit in front of a computer, which if you want to do it for long periods of time is uncomfortable.

About 20 years ago we invented smaller more portable computers that run on batteries that you can sit on your lap. This would seem to be the ideal solution to the conundrum. They’re more ergonomical and adjustable than your average computer, you can very easily change the angle of the screen and you can sit in a comfy chair on on your couch to do those things that you like to do. Still we run into the issues that, navigating with a mouse or a mouse substitute isn’t really that comfortable, even on the couch. Pluse we have the problem with the “curl up” factor.

The solution to this problem really started to surface in 2007 with the iPhone and moreso in 2008 with the advent of the app store for what is now called the iOS.* There were problems though. The iPhone screen was too small. It worked, it just added a new dimension of uncomfortableness. I can personnally attest to this. After reading the last half of The Sum of All Fears on my iPod touch, I can say I greatly prefer to read it on the iPad. Amazon’s Kindle was the first real device to tackle this issue. There were some execution problems, button placement etc., but it worked really well. Essentiallty the rest has been an iterative process. But Kindle can’t handle the web and all of it’s content. It does very well with the content that it has, eBooks and newspapers, but reading Fark is a bit beyond it.

CouchMac is a word that I toss about when people talk about a computer that does all of those things that most of us want from a computer most of the time. Web, email, video, light gaming etc. iPad is just the first of those CouchMacs. In the years to come we’ll have CouchMacs of various manufacturers that are much more capable than the iPad and that is saying something. So after a 25 year blip in the ergonomics of reading, we’ll get back to where we used to be using those things from Star Trek.

*Yes I’m aware of the Android solution, but they weren’t even remotely up to the task until about 8 months ago.

“So, my nerdiness is getting in the way of my geekiness. I was thinking the other day what I would do if I had a time machine. Would I go back to witness some important historic event? Would I do something like see what the dinosaurs are really like? No, I’d go back to 1996-7 and kill George Lucas with a Shovel.”

Thus begins the wonderful track from Werewolves and Lollipops entitled “At Midnight I Will Kill George Lucas With a Shovel” by comedian Patton Oswalt. Yes, it’s funny and ridiculous, but part of the reason why it’s so damn funny is because there is a lot of truth behind what’s going on here. Star Wars is considered by many, and even by people who, aren’t even nerds and geeks, to be one of the best science fiction movies ever made. It blazed the way for science fiction to become mainstream and profitable again. The ressurection of Star Trek was built on the success of Star Wars in 1977. The story of Star Wars is the story of success it’s true, but it’s also the story of the one director and one man’s vision of how this story should unfold. Or at least that’s what LucasFilm and George Lucas himself wants everyone to believe.

Vision and perserverance are the two major themes behind the rise of George Lucas. It’s pretty clear that Lucas always wanted to make a Star Wars-like film. American Graffitti only exists because Francis Ford Coppola challenged Lucas to write a script for a regular movie. Lucas sat on Star Wars, because of rejections and script problems, for almost five years. The road to actually creating this mammoth of a project was plagued with script issues, prop problems, cast conflicts, and directorial constraints. Yet through all of this there was a good movie lurking. The power of the simplistic and cliched, but memorable, story and broadly painted, but interesting characters, pushed through all of this. The greatest thing that George Lucas ever had was the company of some of the most notable friends in all of cinematic history; Brian DePalma, Francis Ford Coppola, John Milius, and Steven Spielberg. With colleagues and friends like this to act as a sounding board and the perisisentence to see the project through, Star Wars ignited a science fiction rennaisance.

Lucas is rightly regarded as a technical visionary and Industrial Light and Magic along with Skywalker Sound became names bandied about in professinal filmmaking. Star Wars was a blockbuster phenomenon and because Lucas had the foresight to capture and exploit the merchandising rights to Star Wars, his split with the Director’s Guild didn’t really hurt him that much. So George set about making the inevitable sequel. Difficulties with handling his growing empire and the disasterous experience that was personnally directing the first Star Wars movie, Lucas hired screenwriters, producers, and Irvin Kershner to direct. As a result, the story was tighter, the movie was better paced, and the quality of the acting improved dramatically. The Empire Strikes Back is one of my all time favorite movies for those reasons. Star Wars and Lucasfilm were at the top of their game in 1980 when Empire hit the streets, but like any good wave it has a crest and a trough.

For whatever reason, the hands-off approach didn’t sit well with Lucas and when it came time to do the other invitable sequel Lucas pushed himself back on the set again. His directing second unit work and supervising overall activity on set was apparently irritating to Richard Marquand, the director hired to take the helm of Return of the Jedi. In short he got his sticky little fingers back in the pot, problem was nobody knew yet to swat them away.

I would argue that the Star Wars succeeded in spite of Lucas. Surely there was driving force behind the film, but it was not really Lucas perservering and by all accounts the first take of the film was dreck. For Empire, it was George Lucas doing what he did (and does) best, working to better things behind the scenes. He financed the movied with his own dollars, he paid the DGA fines against Kershner and Kasdan, he created the environment that those fine fellows worked in. Best of all there were no Jawas, Ewoks, or silly words with too many vowels. Empire was the best of Star Wars.

This article, despite the somewhat misleading opening paragraph, is not about the Star Wars prequels. As awful as they are and as possibly relevant to the topic of GL keeping the fuck out of the actual “making” part of filmmaking, this is about the good old Star Wars. Before there were episode titles, before Jar-Jar, before the Dark Time.

For all of its flaws at least Return of the Jedi was a complete film, there were very interesting moments vis a vis the Emperor, Vader, and the resolution of the Luke/Vader conflict. Jedi wasn’t great, but at least it’s watchable. If I had my druthers, I’d have wanted Lucas to make other choices, but it’s too late now, it’s not like you can go back into a film that was already released and make substantial changes. Wait… What? You have got to be fucking kidding me!

I remember when Lucasfilm launched the Star Wars Special Edition. I was excited, having been born after Star Wars premiered, I’d never seen the movie on a screen larger than 20 inches and if there ever were a movie that needs to be seen on the big screen, surely this was one of them. I went I saw it, I still thought it was a great movie, but something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on bothered me. Years later, the second round of special editions came out on DVD and I was excited. All I had were tapes that had started to sucumb to the rigors of being run through my VCR hundreds of times. So I plunked in Empire, it had been a while since I’d seen that movie, specifically looking for the new changes. I saw them easily, you know why? Because they stood out so tremendously against the pacing and the action of the original movie. One of the extended scenes in Empire is Darth Vader boarding a shuttle back to his Star Destroyer. What. The. Fuck. It’s right after Luke and he have had their climactic battle and Luke had apparently jumped to his doom rather than submit to Vader. So right after the most tense sequence in the film, where the audience is unsure if Luke is going to be rescued by Leia, Lando, and Chewie, we have the villian boarding a ship!?

I was dismayed. I continued to watch the remastered 2004 editions looking for more incongruities. I went back to Star Wars and found all of the CGI splattered across the screen incredibily distracting and irritating as well as supremely out of place for the film. In one sequence in Mos Eisely the action is completely obscured from view by some computer generated donkey. Oh, and Greedo shoots first. Putting aside that I don’t care for most of the additions, generally they were purely cosmetic. When the additions make substantial, but often subtle, changes to the characters and their motivations and results then as a filmaker you aren’t “doing what I couldn’t in 1976″, you’re changing the tone of the film. There are three scenes that deserve special attention that were either altered or added.

1. Hayden Christiansen as Anakin Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi. Aside from being a slap in the face (mask?) Sebastian Shaw, it doesn’t make any sense. Why would The Force have returned Anakin back to his younger self? It didn’t do that for Obi-Wan or Yoda. There is a theory out there that this is supposed to be pre-corruption Anakin, but doing that is idiotic for other reasons. A return to a pre-corruption Anakin would elminate the whole character arc that he had. It would obviate the need for the redemption and lessen the impact of the prophecy that Anakin would bring balance to the force. Aside from that it’s clearly just a blatant attempt to shove the bastardized world of the prequels into the original trilogy. Considering that it shows exactly how much out of step the prequels are with their older brethern, I don’t know what it accomplishes in the story. The replacement of the voice actor in the Vader speaking to the Emperor scene also runs in this vein.

2. Han and Jabba meet in Mos Eisley. Yes I know that this was scene that was cut from the original movie. Then again, most things that were cut from movies were cut for a reason and the film is generally better off for it. Problem: this conversation is made for comedy. Jabba is portrayed as a bumbling obeident fool, with Han Solo pushing him around and poking him in the chest and what not. Why is Han afraid of this space worm again? Jabba is so obsequious in this scene that it doesn’t even seem like the same character as the more menancing and evil Hutt in Jedi. Maybe it worked better when Jabba was a human; that’s right Jabba was originally a human. Maybe the interaction worked better and the back and forth was better or maybe this fucking scene was cut because it doesn’t add anything and slows down the pace of the rest of the movie. Plus there is the bit where Han steps on Jabbas tail and the Hutt squeaks. In hindsight it should have been warning of grave things to come.

3. This is the most important change made by George Lucas to any of the three films. That infamous scene in the Cantina where Greedo and Han have a chat. Greedo runs into Han, Han plays it off like nothing is going on while secretly unholstering his weapon and preparing to ice this scumbag. He talks with Greedo for a bit and then proceeds to shoot him in the chest. It’s all bluster and stalling so that Han can pull out his gun and blast him. This is one of those scenes that you don’t really think about when you first see it, but should someone change it or remove it, it profoundly changes the tone of the rest of the sequence. Lucas changed the scene so that Greedo would shoot first. I’m aware that it was “worse” in the 1997 special edition, but the fact that it’s still there, but changed says two things to me. First it says that Lucas or someone on the team was aware of just how wrong a change it was and wanted it changed back and second, that now that the change has been made we won’t acknowledge it in any meaningful way other than this. It’s essentially a “shut the fuck up” to the fans who were complaining the loudest. Why is such a change meaningful? Well, it changes Han’s character arc. Han Solo was a rough and ready guy all set to kill if it meant saving his skin or getting the drop on some bad guy. A churlish rogue, if you will. Changing that changes his characterization slightly. In this establishing scene, we don’t need to see that he has a heart of gold, that comes later when he agrees to help Luke rescue the princess and even moreso when he comes to help Luke blow up the Death Star. In writer-speak, it lessens the import of his transition from anti-hero to a genuine hero. The character arc of Han Solo is one of most interesting parts of the Star Wars trilogy. At this point we emotionally know that Han Solo is a good guy, but when you look at it from the very begining, it’s not really that clear. He’s a mercenary, he killed a man in cold blood, he smuggles, and he only seems to care about paying off his debt. Is this man someone who would sell Leia or Luke or Obi-Wan out to the Empire just to get a payday? We don’t know. I mean Harrison Ford has an open honest face, so he couldn’t possibly be evil could he?

As it inevitabely leads to, we talk about how this kind of changing is bad for audiences and ultimately the cinema. Ever since the advent of digital imaging technology and restoration, there has been a push to issue not only remastered versions of older films, but also different cuts of films in fanatstic box sets with all sorts of documentary features and behind-the-scenes information. Generally, I’m fine with that. For the most part the differences in cuts are a few lines of dialouge here and there and a bit of sex or violence that is excised that doesn’t really change the tenor of the film. There are some exceptions, but changes in cuts don’t change the way that characters act or majorly affect how plot unrolls. A strict remastering should just be that. I would think that we’d (the “we” being film fans here) all be for sprucing up the visuals and the sound to better enjoy our favorite older movies. This is the best kind of film preservation. For example the Doctor Who Restoration Team, has spent the majority of the last two decades carefully and painstakingly restoring the bits of Doctor Who to a quality that can again be realased to the public. They have stringent policy about making it appear as it was when it was broadcast, even fixing mistakes in sound editing and cue can be forbidden.

Or take another example, the Coppola restorations of the Godfather trilogy (the second of the three sacred tryptchs in film). By all accounts the master copies of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II were in terrible shape. A group of dedicated artists went through and painstakingly restored the majesty of the original film. No changes were made to edits or pacing or tone. Characters didn’t start doing unexpected things. In short a great restoration that looks fantastic and preserves the original feel of the film. I don’t think anyone would have batted an eye if Lucas had decided to just clean up the Star Wars trilogy, remaster the picture and the sound and be done with it. Hell, Star Wars looked great on the big screen and sounded great too. It was the added or changed scenes that irked so many fans. The Coppola Restorations is how you treat classic cinema, which until, the 1997 Special Edition nonsense, the Star Wars triliogy was. Now it’s still great but it has fallen from grace.

Let’s take a look at two sequences from two good films and see what happens. We have the aforementioned Greedo/Han Solo sequence and the scene from The Godfather where Michael kills Sollozo and McKluskey in the resturant. Imagine, if you will, Michael Corleone coming from the restroom and immediately shooting those two in the back of the head as they ate their spaghetti. Sounds like a minor change, right? Well here’s why it’s not. See, Michael was the doe-eyed youngster who was on the outside of the family business. His father had plans for him to be a lawyer or a politician or somesuch. He was naive. Still, family is important to him and he wants revenge for the shooting of his father. Tom thinks it’s a bad idea, but Sonny (the headstrong impatient one) immediately latches on to it. You get the sense that Vito wouldn’t condone this; after all that was just business. So why is this important to how soon Michael shoots the two villians? It goes to his motivations, yes immediatly gunning them down is the plan, but his hesitation shows that maybe he’s not ready to go all the way into his family’s life of crime and violence. Eventually he realizes that he’s gone this far, there really is no choice. The hesitation is key. Just like Han shooting the unsuspecting Greedo. It goes to the arc of Michael’s character and how he changes from an innocent youth to a cold calculating bastard. If he went right after that and shot Fredo, it wouldn’t make any sense, but to have Fredo killed later on shows the steady escalation of Michael’s entrenchment into the criminal society.

Would anyone forgive Francis Ford Coppola if he made that kind of a change to The Godfather? Maybe. Maybe it’s a little change that doesn’t mean all that much. Maybe if that was the only thing changed. Movies, more than anything else on this planet, are sums of their parts. When you start tinkering with those pieces, bad things can happen, formerly great movies can be derailed tinkering with even the most innocous sequences. This is why a good editor can make or break a film. This is why editing is an agonizing process for directors. More often than not, those kinds of cuts actually make movies better and most of the stuff cut was done so for a good reason. I’ll admit that being concise is certainly not one of my strongest suits, but I do understand the need for it and why it is so effective when it can be done properly.

In no small effect, when a movie, a book, or a song is released to the public it becomes part of the public conciousness. In essence, it belongs to the public to a certain extent. Not that the creator can’t and shouldn’t get control of how it’s released or how much they charge for it, but at some point you have to point to a product and say “it’s done”. The kind of revisionism seen in Star Wars is sickening for what it did to the movies from a purely artisitic and enjoyment standpoint, but also from a moral and philosophical standpoint. Lucas has claimed that this is about ensure that his vision for Star Wars is consistent and complete. As the creator of the franchise, he certainly has some claim to the moral right of how a particluar envisioning is established. On the other hand, the director of the film is more responsible for the vision of the project than some crackpot in Marin. Lucas only ever directed Star Wars. There is a reason that they never let him back in the chair after that movie. His universe will continue without his input long after he’s dead. I heartily predict that the effort to contain and control his “vision” will be all for naught as someone will buy the rights and “reboot” it in thirty years time. And it will certianly be better in almost every conceivable way.

Damnit George! Star Wars isn’t yours anymore. It has become part of the cinematic gestalt. Nerds love it. Regular audiences love it. Fuck, I haven’t even watched any of the Star Wars movies in over 6 years because of how distasteful those edits are to me. I didn’t think that anything could ruin Empire for me, but it’s become a collateral damage situation. The need to tinker, the need to keep changing after the horse has left the barn is an understandable urge, but it’s one that every artist really needs to control. Between remastering old classics and totally destroying the franchise with the prequels (as well as his disasterous attempts to “fix” the Indiana Jones franchise), George Lucas has gone from a respected filmmaker and genre genius to the punchline to a bad joke in less than twenty years. That’s the most impressive story about this whole debacle. Run your company George, leave the playing the sandbox to those who are good at it.

PS: The title of this post comes from a fabulous song by Jonathan Coulton “A Talk With George”. No infringement is intended as usage of that phrase was made firmly with tongue embedded in cheek. Go buy it though, great song.

PPS: As long as we’re going to go buy things. Go buy “Werewolves and Lollipops” by Patton Oswalt. Also a great album, funny too. Again no infringement intended.

PPPS: Last one I swear. DON’T go buy Star Wars on DVD. You’ll regret it. If you haven’t ever seen it, try to find an old copy like a VHS tape or something. Make it a retro movie night on retro hardware. Don’t give Lucas any more money, then maybe he’ll get the idea.

This year, it was a very good year, will see the arrival of Civlization V, Valve Software’s Steam platform with Portal II goodness (along with a metric shit-ton of back catalogue) and most importantly Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty. I’ve always been a fan of Blizzard’s games. They are polished, amusing, captivating, well thought out, and just generally fun to play. I have this theory about how they work and seem to capture so many different users. Blizzard just has this ability to create experiences that are genuinely fun to play. I was never really that into fantasy as a young man. Science fiction was my bread and butter. Sure I’d read books like The Hobbit, but who hasn’t. I was a big fan of stuff like Star Wars, Star Trek, and Babylon 5, but never much the fantasy end of that spectrum. To my now enduring love of medieval and fantasy style settings, I have to credit Blizzard.

Warcraft II: The Tides of Darkness was pretty simple gameplay-wise.  As a real-time strategy game it was nothing new. It was simplistic, good v. bad, light v. dark, one side that mirrored the other in almost every conceivable way. Just which shirt you wanted to put on. They were certainly building on the original Warcraft game both in the mechanical side of things and with the story. Again, the mechanical aspects were pretty pedestrian, but they still worked really well. Strategy was mostly non-existent. Build a bunch of guys and send them off to kill the other guy. Sure there were attacks with air units when the enemy didn’t have any defense to them or Paladin micromanagement, but for the most part it was attack-move. For me what really separated Warcraft II from other games in the same era was the story, more specifically the game manual.

It was like a small story book, each unit had a lengthy description about not only its’ role but how it fit into the overall Warcraft universe. The trolls of Lordaeron, the elves of Quel’Thalas, all of it became a building block for an excellent and enjoyable game. I waited patiently for the scroll over and loud booming narration about the goals for each mission. Then the stories in the manual about the universe were well written and filled with backstory; scheming, intrigue, honor, sacrifice, betrayal, and vengeance. Because when you played Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, you didn’t know who had one and there were two endings one for each race, the manual provided the official insight into what happened in the first game and created an official story for each faction. It was great.

Suffice it to say that the orcs lost the second war. Warcraft II was fun and the story was engaging, but how does that fit into the theory? Like I said, my first real exposure to fantasy was through the Warcraft series; been a big science fiction fan before and still am. But with every Blizzard game that I played, I was immediately enamored with the universe that they were set in. The rich and fertile world of Azeroth with the evil orcs, the noble humans, the elusive elves, the wicked trolls, and the stolid dwarves became deeper and deeper in my imagination as time went by. Then I picked up the dark gothic fantasy world of Diablo and it’s sequel. I went deep into that kind of a world for a long time then too. So my theory is that which ever game of Blizzard’s you’re playing that’s the one that will prime the imagination and make one more receptive to that flavor of story that’s being told. There’s lots to love (and hate) about each of those respective series, but because they were easy to play and fun to get engrossed in, it was more about the total experience than any particular piece of the puzzle. If you’ve ever played Diablo you’ll remember the first time that you ventured into a certain area, like Hell level or the Durance of Hate. It will stick out in your mind the first time you got a right angle’s worth of troll destroyers and leveled that human base. Returning to Tristram, watching Lothar die, opening the seals to let out the big guy, and fighting to the Dark Portal all stick in my mind as great moments in the those games; which were filled with tons of those type of moments.

You may have noticed one big omission in the above discussion of Blizzard’s greatest hits. That’s right friends we save the best for the last. I like fantasy, don’t get me wrong, but I will always be a science-fiction junky. From Ray Bradbury to Gene Roddenberry to Ronald Moore, I’ve always loved sci-fi, which is probably why I immediately dialed into Starcraft. Starcraft was released for PCs in 1998 and us poor Mac users had to wait almost a year to play it. I bought four issues of PC Gamer which previewed this game and the one that reviewed it. I still have the clippings from them. It was amazing, actual problems with the gameplay of Warcraft II had been solved. Three races were in the game with actual differences amongst them, a middle-of-the-road race with flexibility, a weak but numerous and overwhelming race, and a expensive and powerful race. The campaigns were tied together in an order that allowed for telling a complete and total story without having to worry about which side “won”. Control groups, flying buildings, etc. all of these things that we take for granted in modern RTSes all were in Starcraft. I’ve played and liked both Command and Conquer and Total Annihilation, but there were gameplay issues with C&C and TA had little to no story to speak of. Thankfully, Blizzard managed to create a game that excelled at both of these aspects well. While Starcraft didn’t have every single innovation in the genre packed into it’s frame, neither was it lacking in that regard. And the story was probably the single best thing about it. Many gamers don’t consider Starcraft a finished product without the Brood War expansion. And that’s certainly true for the story as well. While the original’s story was certainly serviceable, Brood War brought an entirely different dimension in the respect. There’s not a lot that’s original about the story or even some of the concepts brought out in Starcraft, but it’s very well executed.

1. Snow on the ground – none.
2. Score of the last hockey game – 0-5 UW BC – I might might be ready to talk about that now.
3. Things in life that irritate me – um, might not want to get into that now, that could take up a whole freakin’ novel.
4. New stuff in Mac Land – iPad – got one. It’s freakin’ cooler than LN2. Jokes for nerds! I feel like I live on the Enterprise now. Instapaper rocks; it really has turned the iPad from a neat new device to a futuristic newspaper with all of the awesomeness asscociated with that technology.

Long story short: I didn’t write on this journal. Boo-urns!. Should I apologize to you, my loyal readers? No! I hate you all anyway, I only do this for my own edification so that I can show you how much more intelligent about everything that I am compared to you. You are insignificant to me; I laugh at your inferiority! HAH!
….

Wait, wait! Come back! I’ll be nicer I promise! I love you and I want you to stay with me. I can’t function without you. I promise I won’t go off the deep end like that again.

So, yeah, um prolific. Yeah, that didn’t work. I’ve got a few things that I’m working on. Marco Polo might be ready in the next week or so. I’m working on a post about the iPad and now it represents a paradigm shift in computing and consumption. Also I think I want to talk about Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty at some point. I’m in the beta and it rocks. Also cannot wait for the full game in July and Steam is heading this way. Damn it feels good to be a Mac gamer.

I know that I’ve said this before, but I’ve changed a few things about how I want to go about doing things. For one, I’m not going to be doing all of my writing and posting exclusively at home anymore. I’ve got free time at work and I intend to use it; I’m actually writing this using the, much improved, WordPress web posting system. Another thing is that I’ll actually work on some other things that aren’t so nerd-tastic to post about.

Oh, and about the title. Just sayin’ that you probably shouldn’t let me deal with those. If I can’t be entrusted to keep a regular update to a weblog then I probably shouldn’t know about all those warheads. Not that it’s easy for the general public to just find that information.
Oh wait!

These are are the questions that anyone, if there is anyone out there reading, would be asking. I know that I have stopped reading blogs of people who post more frequently than I do, but not frequently enough. I have no excuses; I feel no need to make them. Life gets in the way. And then there is the problem of when something that you used to love becomes a chore, another item on a checklist of things to do. I sure as hell didn’t think five years ago that I would think of creative writing as a chore.

Personally, I blame the liberal arts. As a history major at my university, I had a tremendous blast writing about things for classes. At least I did at first. But when you have to write your ninth paper on the economic history of 17th century Russia, you start to lose a taste for it. Stories that I started writing and interesting concepts that I had diagramed out on napkins and notebooks dwindled and shrank. Ideas came less and less frequently. I think two things happened here.

As I matriculated, I read more and more than I ever had at any point previous. Not only did I continue to read fiction and non-fiction for pleasure, but the obscure books and articles that I read for classes and term papers introduced me to new ideas and styles of writing that I had never been exposed to before.

I came to a few revelations about my work and learned a few things:

1. My writing was good for what it was, but there was so much that could be done with the style, the grammar, the motivation of characters, etc.
2. I never quite felt like my work was ever going to be good enough.
3. I finally embraced the drafting system of writing, not formally but enough to re-read work and to edit it.

Then college ended. I graduated, got a comfy civil service job, and have been there ever since. I wouldn’t call my position mentally or intellectually challenging, but I have forced myself to use my writing skills and my brain more than I thought necessary for that type of position. I pushed my superiors to challenge me and they tried. However, with that responsibility came more paperwork, more emails to send, more forms to fill out, more procedures to document. I seem to have discovered that I have a limit to the amount of characters that I will type on a computer screen in any given day. If I have to deal with this number or push myself, I feel exhausted mentally. In short I had become complacent. I went from using one excuse, “I can’t write on my blog/novel/short story/TV idea because I’m working on this American History paper” to “I just wrote a 12-page critique of an idiotic idea that someone at work wants to do and I’m too fucking tired.”

In fact the phrase “I’m too fucking tired” became common-place around my house post-graduation. First it was just me decompressing from a stressful stay at university. Enjoying the fact that I no longer needed to stay up late writing term papers or feel guilty about not reading the 100 pages about women in the 1920s that was due to be discussed at length in the next small section. Then it was because I was being to Epicurian; places to go, things to do. And finally it became a habit.

Not that I haven’t tried to break this habit. Starting this blog was one idea, writing a book was another. I tried my hat at National Novel Writing Month. Didn’t take. I hadn’t spent enough time, nor enough effort in developing characters. Sometimes I would stare for hours at a piece of paper and not write a thing down. This is something that I desperately wanted to try, but I couldn’t get it going.

Recently, I have lamented the fact that used to love to write to my fiancée. I bemoaned how I don’t have the patience any more for it. It’s a shame too, because my writing was one of the things that she was attracted to when we were going out. I have been thinking about this for a while and I finally realized that this was the place to get back in the saddle. I tried the Doctor Who reviews and I may get back to that at some point, but I felt I was restricting myself too much about what I put up here.

That stops now. From now on I will be less stringent about my standards, not that they were that high to begin with. Content is king. Sometimes it will be little bits about my day, sometimes about how awesome a hockey game was, how much certain aspects of life irritate me, or tidbits of my day. It could be an article about Apple or Macintosh, or one about how much snow is on the ground. Just be prolific is the new motto. We’ll see how it goes from there. It won’t always be great, but at least it will be.

To those of you still out there, I’ll try to be more regular, but I need some more mental fiber before that happens.

Sage Advice Merlin.

So please join with me next year and avoid publishing or distributing lame rumors about games, sports, public figures, etc. unless that is your business plan. Let’s put an end to Internet Jackass Day once and for all.

In the meantime, as anyone who has been bitten by data loss will tell you, I decided to make sure something like this would never happen again. I had heard about this product called Drobo for several months prior to the fatal crash, and was intruiged by the innate coolness if being able to hot plug the device and exchange the drives on the fly. The other cool thing that Drobo did was create a uniform pool of storage that could be accessed and used as a primary data pool. Very neat.

There were two problems with the original Drobo. One, the interface was only USB which posed a problem for the seemless transfer and playback of video files which was to be the main point of existance. Secondly, the price of entry was rather steep. At $500 I could use the setup I already had And still have some money left over. Five hundred is just the price of the exterior case, no drives included. I was still interested, but having a solution that already worked and that I had recently purchased I was reluctant to replace it. Then two things happened. The second generation Drobo appeared replete with FireWire 800 (which is absolutley essential for streaming video) and my drive setup crashed, hard.

Even though the setup cost was substantial, I have to say, after using it for several months now, Drobo is with every freakin’ penny. Redundancy, expandibilty, and ease of use trump any other storeage system out there. The abilty to just pop out a drive and replace it when it’s full or damaged means that you can buy for your storage needs now and upgrade when you have the need to without damaging any of the data or even interupting active transfers. It’s quiet, mostly unobtrusive, and above all fast and reliable enough to be used as a primary storage solution. I have enough video sitting on my Drobo to watch continuously for nearly a month. My daily backups also sit safely and redundantly on my Drobo. This is quite possibly the most important purchase that I have ever made for enhancing my digital life style and I couldn’t be happier with it. As the fellas on MacBreak Weekly say, I’m feelin’ Droovy.

The Edge of Destruction is Doctor Who’s first bottle show and perhaps the first bottle show in the history of television (it certainly is the earliest instance that I could find with just a little bit of research). The setting is in the TARDIS, with a grand total of two different sets, the console room and one of the passenger dorms. And it gives us an opportunity to see the rest of the ship. It looks pretty good, but I still hate the food machine. It pulls one out of the story and makes the show feel dated, but other than that there is a lot to like in the early set design.

As far as stories go this one is pretty thin: The Doctor and his new companions are trapped in some kind of cosmic limbo as the TARDIS hurtles toward annihilation with all of its crew-members. That’s it. Now being a fan of Star Trek, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that The Ticking Clock™ doesn’t hold the same appeal that it once might have. However in this portrayal there is a twist, the Doctor, that lovable curmudgeon that he is, suspects his passengers, namely Ms. Wright and Mr. Chesterton, to be the cause of the malfunction that will send them all to their doom. It all makes for a wonderful study in paranoia and suspicion that ends up turning all of the main characters against each other. Coping with difficult and incomprehensible situations leads to some kind of mistrust in the others around you and this is brilliantly illustrated through the straightforward and reliable plot. Sure, there are no bells and whistles, but there are wonderful character moments for nearly all of them.

The Doctor starts off by blaming Ian and Barbara for the damage as well as going so far as to suggest sabotage. When Ian logically retorts that he doesn’t know enough to cause that kind of damage the Doctor dismisses him wholeheartedly. Hartnell plays the suspicious and capricous Doctor to the T and points the fingers at his companions, whom he still views as stowaways. Barbara’s retort is just wonderful. She points out that there is no way of knowing that the Doctor might be the one who sabotaged the ship, as he had done for his own ends twice before in An Unearthly Child and The Daleks. She goes on to make the point that this paranoia serves no purpose and that they are stuck together and should be considering not tearing into each other like this on The Edge of Destruction. The most interesting part is what follows. The Doctor’s mood changes as if he has just been tranquilized. He seems defeated by her logic and withdraws, but the glint in his eye does not spell good things for the crew as he is clearly hatching a plan. Realizing that Barbara is a threat he drugs her and Ian. I’ll repeat that. He drugs them. This is huge. Only Ian is understandably furious at the Doctor and the tension reaches a fever-pitch. Then the Doctor actually threatens to kill them. Only a combination of Barbara arguing with him and Susan pleading with him is enough to pull him back from the brink.

Speaking of Susan, aside from a few nice moments, such as when she attacks Barbara with the scissors, Susan is more and more of an annoyance. The screeching, moaning, and sobbing grates to such an extent that I found it difficult to physically make it through those scenes. From day one Carole Ann Ford’s portrayal of Susan has been over-the-top and annoying. She reacts as an excitable child, more so than what seems necessary to act as a 15 year old. Her mysterious communications with the ship and with, apparently, time itself are weak and preposterous. Well more preposterous than a time traveling phone box piloted by an immortal. If Susan doesn’t get any better, I may have to write off her character, which is unfortunate because there is a lot there that would make splendid material.

Ian is a predictable as ever; trying to work with the Doctor and trying ever so hard to hide is growing frustrations with this man. Russell performs adequately, but there is nothing that shines so much so as to over shadow the true star of Destruction, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara. She is wonderful in every scene that she has, from grappling with an increasingly crazy and vindictive Doctor to dealing with Susan and her issues. Barbara is smartly written and superbly acted throughout the entirety of the serial. She is the first to figure out, both what the deranged Doctor is about to do, and exactly what the actual situation is. She is constantly portrayed as informing the other characters about the circumstance; fitting perfectly as the teacher that she has been written as. The best part is that it doesn’t feel like it was written for her, it feels as if Barbara Wright is an actual person who is reacting to this situation in a real way. Kudos to the entire team this time around. The finest moment comes when the Doctor realizes that he has erred and goes to apologize to the crew. Ian takes his apology in an “all in good fun” manner, but Barbara is much less forgiving of the situation. She realizes what might have transpired and it might be some time before the fledging trust that she had established with the Doctor can be restored. Hill does a wonderful job of playing that vulnerable state that someone is in after a large trauma and she seems just as disconnected as one would be in this situation. The Doctor for his part acts appropriately ashamed and there seems to be room for reconciliation, but the fact that it won’t happen immediately is great and entertaining.

All in all Edge of Destruction is a fine close to the opening character and plot arcs of the series. It closes off the worst of the stubbornness of the First Doctor and the distrust that he feels towards his companions and he grows into the Doctor that we know and love. While misanthropic nature is interesting, it could easily grow tiring and worn if the Doctor continued to second-guess and scheme against his companions for the entirety of Hartnell’s tenure as the Doctor. Furthermore it would have shown a lack of dynamism for such an interesting character, and the very fact that other characters have such an impact on him is refreshing and shows that there is room for grown. Also ends the era of uninterrupted Doctor Who; the next story Marco Polo is the first of the historicals as well first story to be completely lost to history. There are various reconstructions available and this is how I will be reviewing it as well as experiencing it for the first time. I look forward to it immensely and hope to bring you, Gentle Reader, my thoughts on it in the near future.

Expect to see a review for the Edge of Destruction in the next few days.

Paraphrasing a great man “Rumors of my disconnection have been greatly exaggerated.”

I shall return.