Gaming, Music, The Internet, Whatever….

This time of year E.g. the first nine months of the year are usually a pretty barren spell with regards gaming; the games industry has/had become so obsessed with mimicking the film industry that it believed that the only way that it could actually make any money was by releasing all it’s major games in one three month period. Of course, the film industry, to a certain degree, grew out of this a few years ago and it would seem that the games industry is slowly following suit.

Mainly in no small part to Modern Warfare 2. Predictions that it was going to sell “shitloads” proved to be accurate and most of the major games that were scheduled for launch late last year quickly decided that going up against Infinity Wards behemoth wasn’t for them. So instead we now have a wonderful situation where in the early stages of 2010, we have AAA games being released on a monthly basis (though why the American Automobile Association is doing releasing games I’ve no idea.

Two of them, Perfect Dark Arcade and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, were two of these games and I must admit that I am looking forward to them, particularly as both series hold a place in my heart.

Perfect Dark Arcade is a semi-remake of the N64 original and as you can see in the vid below, it finally lives up to some of the promise it showed 10 years ago. I played my original cartridge of it recently and lets say once the rose tinted spectacles came off, things weren’t as I remembered them.

I was looking forward to this before; Almost obscenely looking forward to this now. Arrives on Wednesday for a not at all obscene £7.

Next up is Metal Gear Solid : Peace Walker. Now my feelings on this were the complete opposite; the last PSP MGS (yes, it’s acronym central from here on in) didn’t inspire me at all, particularly when it came to controlling the camera. But this gameplay video looks like a hell of a lot of fun. It’s obvious that Kojima’s direction is helping to firm up the gameplay a lot. And that soundtrack? Want a copy of that on CD ASAP. Certainly makes a change from the endlessly looped 2 minute tracks that were in Portable Ops (another major annoyance I had with the game). So very much a want now from me.

Metal Gear Solid : Peace Walker is out late May, and hopefully in time for my birthday. Which would be nice.

The last week can pretty much be summed up in one word: snot. Managed to pick up a cold last weekend and let me tell you trying to fight a cold while trying to starve yourself of food is something not to be tried (new diet is on hold until the weekend now).

One thing that has been keeping me entertained through the phlegm and the coughing has been the whole Conan O’Brien/Jay Leno/NBC Clusterfuck. And after carefully evaluating every side of the story, I think the big winner is clearly David Letterman…

Yes, Dave, I get the impression you are enjoying all this QUITE a lot.

The upcoming film version of the graphic novel Watchmen is remarkable for several reasons.

1. That despite many people, including directors such as Terry Gilliam, claiming that it is unfilmable, that there is even a film version coming to the big screen at all;
2. Despite these said people claiming for nearly 20 years that it was unfilmable, once it appears that it is and that it might be PROFITABLE, two of the big Hollywood studios are now fighting over who gets the lionshare of the profits (20th Century Fox who claim to still own the rights to the novel despite never optioning a film version or Warner Bros., who now technically do and have funded the project from start to finish.) And that even more ironically, said lawsuit could HOLD back the release of the unfilmable novel;
3. And perhaps most importantly, any film version could possibly satisfy the endless stream of fan(boy)s who view the book with the same religious fervour that a religious fanatic would view The Bible or The Qur’an.

*Quickly checks spelling of Qur’an on Wikipedia in case he ends up being hunted down like a Dutch MP before moving on*

And it’s that third one that I think is so relevant. Even though I have read Watchmen and thoroughly enjoyed every last page of it, I am also aware that the novel means so much more to so many, each one having there own interpretation of the text. While this is always a sign of good writing in any medium (several possible meanings, each one valid, yet the reader/audience never being told or lectured to as to whether they are right or wrong) it does lead to everyone picturing things in different ways. For example, even as a fairly “entry level” fan, I still don’t think Rorshach sounds nearly gravelly or sadistic enough, at least if this trailer is anything to go by.

And I wont even get started on the news that the ending might not be as described in the book, which personally speaking always seem a bit weird and never properly explained, but that is for someone with a better knowledge of the book than me to get into. But going back to that first point, maybe that it was why so many people have claimed that it is unfilmable; not that it’s impossible to film, more that it SHOULDN’T be as so many people have their personal interpretations and visions as to how the project should look and sound. Frankly, as long as they get the Dr. Manhattan sections (arguably the best written and most moving pieces of the book) right then everything is fine by me but I’m sure the AICN crowd wont be so easily swayed.

It would seem that the new version of Ghost In The Shell has a similar problem too, recently reviewed at Tim Maughan Books and getting alot of traffic as a result; so many people have come to love and admire what the original version has to offer, that any update (however good it clearly does look) is always going to upset or annoy those fan(boy)s. Although there is an argument that no matter what they do, they are always going to be upset but then that is the very nature of the fanboy/zealot.

It’s interesting to see how everything pans out with regards Watchmen. While there is news today that the lawsuit is close to being resolved (ie Fox will be paid a large sum of money) it still remains to be seen just how well Zack Snyder has brought the project to the big screen. His previous two films, the remake of George Romero’s Dawn of The Dead and the homo-erotic masterpiece that was 300, had a style and look about them that would clearly work extremely well within the Watchmen “universe” but can Snyder nail enough of the minor details to sate the fanboys? Keep watching to find out.