Movie o' the day: How to Train Your Dragon

Slow day at work, an early show of a new, animated film, you know I'll be there. Today, How to Train Your Dragon sucked me in.

It's a pretty straightforward story, which I'll outline in broad strokes: smart Viking lad constantly gets into trouble trying too hard to prove himself as much a Viking as anybody else in the village, which is constantly raided by dragons; he discovers dragons aren't just rapacious raiding machines, ends up (somewhat) taming a dragon in secret; when he tries to demonstrate what he's learned to his village, they assume he's turned his back on the Viking way, taking the side of the dragons instead; hasty words set up a 'final battle' situation, the Vikings get in over their heads, the lad and his friends save the day, and an imperfectly happy ending wraps the whole thing up.

I'm not going to go into any more detail than that... I'll just say that the story isn't quite as grim as the broad strokes would suggest, and the imperfection of the happy ending actually serves the story quite well. My only quibble with the film is the hero himself... as a "smart wannabe Viking", they cast him as excessively sarcastic, and almost world-weary when things are going wrong for him, which I can't see the Vikings putting up with without a few well-placed cuffs, chief's son or no.

So, my verdict... I liked it, and wasn't sorry to shell out $7 to see it in 2D... but then, I'm an animation fan. If you're on the whole 3D kick, I can see how this could be a good one to watch that way on the big screen... otherwise, unless you're a fan like me, or are looking for a film to take older, grade-school children to (I did hear an anguished "NO!" from a young child towards the end of the film, thanks to the lead-up to the imperfectly happy ending, so if your child still takes movies excessively seriously, be warned), you might want to hold off for a matinee, or even wait for the DVD. Still, I'd say it's worth seeing.

GOP: screw you guys, I'm going home

So, this is what politics in Washington have devolved to.

Unable to stop the passage of health care reforms, the GOP has decided that the best policy they can take... is to shut down all the committees they can at 2pm daily. Thanks to a Senate rule (which the best explanation I've seen so far as to its existence is that it might date back to the days before air-conditioning), the majority and minority leaders have to agree to let committee hearings go past that time... so today, several hearings got cut short, including defense, judiciary, and veteran's affairs hearings.

Will this happen on an ongoing basis? Or, maybe, on random days of the GOP's choosing? It's beyond petty... the very essence of "the game's not going the way I want, so I'm taking my ball and going home".

New games section

Yep, love me some lists of links... if you look to the right, there's now a list of games that "have my attention", games that I'm actively playing or keeping an eye on their release. Your tastes may vary... but now, you can at least know what I'm playing, without waiting for me to post a review after the fact.

Spot on!

I try not to just link off to other sites' stuff without some personal commentary, but this one's got the topic covered, with humor, so there's not much for me to say... except that it's a must-read for videogame-philes and -phobes alike. Why Your Loved Ones Hate Videogames

EA's "crown" falls to Activision

Yep, I've been pretty constant in my disdain for Electronic Arts... in fact, I'm pretty certain that I've successfully avoided buying any product of theirs for years, with the one exception of Spore (which was as much a reward for trying something different and rewarding the efforts of the founder of Maxis as anything else). However, it looks like I have to take EA off the top of my "game companies to avoid" list, since Activision's management has taken things to a whole new level.

Here's a link to a better description of what's going on in Activison-land, but here's the basics... Activision bought a game developer some time back, and part of the contract for that promised royalties on that developer's products to their founders. As pay-up day approached, Activision let their investors know that they were going to fire those founders for "insubordination" (the nature of which hasn't come to light to date), which, I gather, would mean that they wouldn't have to pay out those royalties, and that they were likely to get sued in the process. Sure enough, those founders are suing, and the detailed descriptions in their legal filings of the thuggish behavior they endured on approach to firing speaks volumes, compared to the bland accusations of insubordination by Activision.

I suppose it could be argued that I should wait until all the facts of the case come to light, etc., but calling people in on a holiday weekend for a 6-hour interrogation session, and demanding they turn over their personal electronic equipment to company lawyers for review, never mind any of the other items alleged in that filing, crosses way over the line of appropriate corporate behavior for any company. As such, no more Activision games for me... luckily, I haven't played World of Warcraft for years, so I don't have a major addiction to give up to "do the right thing". I'll just have to check my collection of recent games when I get home, and see how guilty I should feel for helping Activision grow to the size it is today.

Minor annoyances

Nothing here's big enough to warrant a post on its own... but, since they all hit within about 24 hours of each other, might as well round 'em up and get them off my chest.

• My PS3 was one of those taken out of commission by the glitch referred to on at least one site, in standard Internet overreaction, as the ApocalyPS3. It's working now... just from what I could see, I'm pretty sure it was some conflict between the on-board timer and the firmware (outage was over 01MAR10 by GMT, possibly due to the timer thinking 2010 was a leap year, somehow). The fact that only older models were affected implies that a hardware change in newer models eliminated the problem... which raises the question of why the hardware change was made. It could be Sony just replaced an obsolete part with a functionally-equivalent, properly-working part... or it could be that this was a known problem, at some level in Sony's hierarchy, but they decided to try and pass it off as as much of a surprise to them as to everybody else. Either way, somebody's got some 'splaining to do... it'll be fun to see how that comes out.
• Got a mailer from Comcast today, touting their Xfinity upgrade thingy... in particular, faster Internet speeds and "basic" cable for $5 more a month (intro rate, of course). From what I read, it appears that Comcast is going to artificially limit the speed of their existing users' connections to something approximating their current speed, so they can charge more from users for a higher-speed connection. Some days, this might be sufficient to send me off on a Comcast rant, but not today... it just means that, if I see my service quality suffer (primarily as measured by my ability to watch 720p streaming video from Netflix, since nothing else I do these days really taxes my connection in a way I would notice), they have that much less room to beg off on the grounds of concurrent users bogging down the system, since they're extracting extra cash to support that user base, which would likely trigger a serious round of "who else can I get decent Internet connectivity through at a decent price?"
• This one actually hurts a bit... I don't dine out that often (for all I'm a tech geek, I'm fairly frugal), but I do have my favorites when I'm in the mood for food X. I thought I'd stop off on the way home from work tonight to pick up some Happy Family from my favorite local Chinese restaurant, Tasty House... only to drive up to an empty storefront. I don't even know if anybody else does Happy Family in Spokane... here's hoping there is, and they do a decent job of it, and it's not way on another side of town from anywhere I go normally.
  

Get your OCD on: Disgaea 3

OK, I'm going to say, right off the bat, that this game is definitely not for everyone... first, because it's only available on PS3; second, because it is not nearly as "pretty" as you would expect most PS3 games to be; third, because it will let you be as OCD as you want, which can be either a major turn-off for some folks or an extreme hazard for others. In fact, that third part is a big part of why it's taken so long for me to write about this game... so far as I can determine, I have had this game for nearly a year, the playtime tracker on the save games says I just went over the 300 hour mark, and I just recently completed the "main" storyline in the game. So, yes, it's a long game, but it held onto me well enough to get me through the story, too... which is by no means certain in a video game, even these days.

For those of you looking for a proper review, I'd suggest taking this link off to Metacritic, to see if it's your cup of tea. The highlights... it's a "tactical RPG", which means a role-playing game where you control a team of characters and fight out your battles in a turn-based game. The setting is quite unusual... "demon high school", with a strange cute/anime mix to the blend. Beyond that, there are multiple story tweaks and game mechanics to spice up the adventure... and, being demons involved, they pretty well invite you to game those game mechanics as hard as you can.

Speaking of game mechanics, there's one basic concept that I find missing in party-based RPGs in general that Disgaea 3 nails spot on... if you have multiple people ganging up on a single person, the effect should be more than simply additive. Better still, this game gives you multiple ways to embrace that concept, whether it's team attacks, combos, linked attacks, tower attacks, characters wielding other characters as weapons... there are many, many ways to bring great amounts of hurt to your opponents, often in visually satisfying ways (well, given the limitations of the game engine, at any rate).

But now, here's the kicker... like I said, I managed to spend 300 hours over the course of a year getting through the main story. What I've come to realize, especially after sniffing about online, is that the main story line is there, as much as anything, to get you accustomed to the behaviors of the game engine and advance your characters to the point where they are, tactically speaking, interesting to work with. There are extended story lines to pursue after the main story line, if you are so inclined, or you can just play randomly-generated battles if that's your thing. Any way you look at it... I've just completed a 300 hour tutorial on the game. Off and on, I'm going to be playing this game for as long as I use my PS3... and liking it, a lot. What can I say... between what I've written here, and the reviews available through Metacritic, if this game sounds interesting to you, pick it up... if it gets its hooks into you, it will be one of the better game purchases you ever make, especially in terms of playtime to dollars spent.