So it's been a while...

I have been reasonably busy the past week, what with a new night job and other nagging responsibilities... I kinda forgot about the crackpot. But no more! I guess I could talk about Netflix shows I'm trying to get into. Scandal is shaky, soapy, and ridiculous. But I can't shake the fact I kinda like it. In Bruges just popped up and I highly suggest you all watch it. It's both the funniest and most sympathetic performance of Colin Farrell's career. Plus he punches out Zeljko Ivanek. It's delightful.

Gaming wise I'm back on a self destructive Civilization bender. It's taken me almost 8 years but I've finally got one of these:

Weee!

I  managed to pull off a science victory on normal mode. I feel like I finally "get" Civilization. Again, it's taken me quite a few years to get here. Game after game of me stumbling around in the dark tripping over feature after feature and slowly figuring out what to do with it all. Diplomacy? the hell do I do with that? Why do I have so many spies? Why is my entire empire represented by a red frowny face? But I think I get it now, maybe in another 10 years I can give hard mode a spin.

Games for Windows Live is irritating even in death.

I hate GFWL. I've hated it ever since it made Fallout 3 run slowly, locked me out of dlc in Bioshock 2 seven times, and just generally acted like a fidgety piece of garbage designed by people who live in a place that just rains bandwidth. But thankfully Microsoft is finally driving a stake through it's desiccated corpse.

Good news right? Well it turns out all GFWL save games are encrypted... so all of your saves are going to get wiped. Three days after I got back into Arkham City, BAM! The 30 some-odd hours I put into it's riddler trophies and challenge rooms evaporated. I love that game, but there was no way I had the patience to go through all that again. Thankfully my save files were still there, but I'd have to do some coding back flips to get steam to read them again.

The wages of sin in pc gaming is hexadecimal... and death.

After a solid three hours trying to untangle GFWL's wires I had nothing. But the great thing about PC gaming is there's always someone more talented than you out there working on the same problem. That person's STEAM id was Andrew and he patched up my files good as new.

Thanks buddy. I won't forget this.

He's one of the good ones, folks.

Ubisoft's delay of Watchdogs hit em' hard.

According to a up and coming indie rag called The New York Times, Ubisoft's stock has plummeted by a quarter following the decision to delay the game Watchdogs for would could end up being six months.

I'm all for new franchises and taking your time to get them off the ground right, but to the public it seemed like copies of the game would be ready to ship in a couple weeks. They even offered bundles of the game for the new Xbox and PlayStation. Something is seriously wrong with this company and the market has already said as much.

The rift between production and marketing was fatally massive in this instance. The left hand didn't know the right hand was months behind schedule and the whole company is taking the hit. The thing is, if the game really is as good as I hope it is, (I've got the same wait and see stance I had with Beyond: Two Souls on it) no one in the gaming community will care.

Like most art, nobody remembers if something was late, just that it was good.

All is Lost is apparently one of, if not the best, movie of Robert Redford's career.

So why is this the first I'm hearing about it? There I was this morning on the lovely rotten tomatoes casually trying to remember what The World's End's box office was, and bam! A 93% film pops up that I've heard absolutely nothing about.

I pride myself on my nerdly fact checking ways. I'd like to think I have my ear to the ground with most things pertaining to news, movies, and games. In that order. I'd written Redford off years ago as his stint as a director dried up in the late 90's. He wasn't bad or anything, just not worth keeping an eye on. Now he's in a one man perfect storm with rave reviews? Shame on me, I guess.

Would you just look at that righteous crag? The man was born to be nautical.

Sleepy Hollow Episode 1-4 Review: The Most Lovable Kind of Bonkers.

Hand to god... this does not suck.

The first few minutes of the pilot were off putting. The haphazard conveniences that throw the main cast together was even harder to sit through. From the first time I heard about the show's premise I was out for blood. This was all so ridiculous, so stupid, why was I doing this to myself? I don't really know. I could have spent those three and a half hours somewhere much more productive, but I didn't. You know what? I didn't mind.

Sleepy Hollow knows exactly how silly it is, doesn't care, and makes the very best of a bewildering creative situation. It's pretty good. As funny as it is scary. Nothing on the level of someone like James Wan, but there are very good ideas behind the show's monsters. A resurrected witch whose skin smolders like ember. A Native American sand man that takes on all the properties of actual sand. A physical performance behind the headless horseman that is just so ludicrously bad ass I rewound almost every scene he's in at least once.

The show simply does not deserve the actors it has. Tom Minson as Ichabod Crane and Nicole Beharie as his sidekick... wait, that's not right. The roguishly handsome British lead is totally second fiddle to the black female sheriff. I kinda love that. They are both everything the show needs and more. They can talk about things like headless zombies and apocalyptic prophecy as if they almost believe it. But they nail the levity harder than most dramas do. Ichabod messing with a car's power windows in awe had me chuckling in spite of myself. 

The show speaks to the child in me. One that grew up on Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Goosebumps, and Power Rangers. Sleepy Hollow is the blackest possible sheep those shows could produce, with more than twice the budget of all of them put together. It's a pretty good time If you turn off the side of you that loves Breaking Bad and French New wave, pour a drink or two, rip open some pretzels, and curl up under your favorite blanket in the dark.

It ain't Fringe, it ain't even The Walking Dead, but it's not bad. And as a guy with a violent allergy towards reality TV; I'll take well acted and executed hokum over Toddlers in Tiaras any damn day of the week.

Can we talk about how much I missed Orlando Jones?

Frozen's snowman mascot continues to freak me the hell out.

I get the economics behind children's entertainment. I get why Avatar has all those cutesy hybrid animals. I get why every princess movie needs a Flounder or a Chip or that chameleon in Tangled (which in itself was kind of an awesome about face on what girls should keep as pets).

Which brings me to this... this, thing:

"A flash of lightning illuminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its gigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect more hideous than belongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the filthy daemon, to whom I had given life."

English Major!

It's design is so lazy, yet simultaneously overproduced. Looking at it is like staring the soulless bureaucracy of Disney filmmaking in the eyes and I don't like what I see. It feels like one half of the production just couldn't be bothered to give two sh*ts (design), and the other is pulling all their dead weight (everyone else). If I directed this I'd make sure Olaf was either the most visually intersting character in the film, or that he was barely in the trailer and had absolutely nothing to do with marketing material.

It's gentle swinging hips follow you around the lobby and it is all you will see when you close your eyes at night.

Shockingly, we don't live in a world where we can just wish ourselves to the helm of a new Disney property. But what I do get to do is watch from the sidelines slowly and ominously shaking my head while judging a book by it's cover. You know what kills me though? I like Josh Gad. I really really do. He deserves better than this forgettable, by committee, homunculus.

The Stanley Parable DEMO Review.

You may think it odd I would review a demonstration of a product, being that I haven't actually experienced said product and would literally be judging a book by it's sales pitch. But we aren't talking about books, we're talking about video games! So stop being silly.

I've played quite a few demos in my day, but never before has a demo actually failed to produce a demonstration. In the 15 to 17 hours I spent with the Stanley Parable demo (I couldn't see the sun so time was obviously meaningless) all I saw was a so called "narrator" falling over himself to impress upon me the worthiness of his product. An endeavor in which he failed most spectacularly.

I experienced nothing down there, absolutely nothing at all. No tantalizing foreshadowing, no dramatic irony, no existential guilt, not even a sliver of angst or regret. How dare a narrator tell me how to feel?! It was beyond insulting. Both intellectually and logically... and emotionally.
 
And almost physically.

Perhaps the narrator would be better served in a different vocation, one in which he is not so hilariously ill suited. I am not sure which, so don't yell at me. Just know that The Stanley Parable demo is a spectacular failure of both epic and prodigious proportions.

Now will someone PLEASE... tell me why I can't stop crying?

It's absolutely brilliant.