While Oren Peli‘s Paranormal Activity is blowing up in theaters and making tons of cash, he is prepping his next film for Paramount Pictures, Area 51. He has cast his lead actors in the film, and guess what. No one’s heard of them… yet. Reid Warner, Darrin Bragg and Ben Rovne are the people who will star in the film. I don’t know about you, but I like that he is using people we’ve never heard of. It will add believability to the story.

Area 51 has been shooting in Utah for a month already. As we’ve said before, it will be one of the found footage films, like the Blair Witch Project, and Paranormal Activity. It’s being described as a claustrophobic terror. Peli says,

I’d rather not say anything about Area 51 except that I am very pleased to be working with the same team who stood by me for the two or three years it took Paranormal Activity to get into theaters.

He has a much bigger budget to work with this time around, and I’m interested in seeing how this project turns out. The film follows three teenagers whose curiosity leads them to the legendary and mysterious Area 51 Air Force base deep in the Nevada desert.

Check out the official press release below for more details:

LOS ANGELES, October 6, 2009 – Writer-director Oren Peli is set to start production next week on AREA 51, his follow-up to the supernatural chiller PARANORMAL ACTIVITY which after creating exceptional underground notoriety since its production in 2007 is now in the early stages of its US release by Paramount.

The AREA 51 storyline is a closely guarded secret but is reputedly centered around three teenagers whose curiosity leads them to the legendary and mysterious Area 51 Air Force base deep in the Nevada desert. AREA 51 will, like PARANORMAL ACTIVITY employ a “found footage” narrative strategy. Though Peli will enjoy a significantly larger budget than the $11,000 he spent to make PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, he will continue to work with undiscovered actors.

AREA 51 is produced by Jason Blum under his Blumhouse Productions banner, with Room 101’s Steven Schneider and IM Global chief Stuart Ford serving as executive producers. The film was co-financed by Aramid Entertainment Fund and Incentive Filmed Entertainment, with IM Global handling worldwide sales and CAA co-repping the title in the U.S.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY has enjoyed sell out midnight screenings in 33 cities over recent weeks and Paramount is set to expand the film to around the clock screenings in 40 cities this weekend.

Said Peli: “Actually, I’d rather not say anything about AREA 51 except that I am very pleased to be working with the same team who have stood by me for the two or three years it took PARANORMAL ACTIVITY to get into theatres.”

Said Blum: “Oren has already proven that he has a unique gift for using technology and our inherent fear of the unknown to tell simple yet emotionally compelling stories. In this case his canvas is just a little larger.”

Said David Molner, Chairman of both Incentive and Aramid Capital Partners:” Not since ‘Blair Witch’ has such innovative film-making set off such a stampede among young movie audiences. We are proud and privileged to be in business with Oren and Jason and our longtime partners at IM Global.”

Said Ford: “We’ve already had a crazy ride with Oren and Jason on PARANORMAL ACTIVITY that looks set to get even crazier. It’s exciting to be launching into AREA 51 with Oren just as a worldwide audience is discovering his thrilling debut.”

When you look at a cartoon, see an advertisement in a magazine, or are merely bumbling through the internet’s endless stream of photos, you must remember that someone made that. Someone spent time and energy to create that graphic or image. Likewise, we must remember who creates pinups, as they are a large part of art’s history and it’s future.

For some, sexually appealing images have a value that is multifascited and helps to explain our world as well as the people in it. For others, it’s something to simply gawk at. The bottom line for most artists, however, is will sell and help me to survive? Well, as you may have guessed, sex does, in fact, sell, and artists are finding new ways to convey it. Laurie B is one such artist.

Laurie is able to mix cute with sexy, whether with different characters in the same panel or even with a single character. From the information I can find online about her, she must be a fairly modest person, not wanting to flaunt her personality or work, too much. Her humility, however, will not be on display here as I fully intend to showcase a few of her pieces. Here’s a sample of her “about me” from ArtofLaurieB.com:

Once upon a time, Disney aired a documentary about Feature Animation. I was shocked to discover that Goofy was not a real actor in some 2-dimensional world too expensive for our family to travel to on summer vacation. Still, I watched in awe as the animators flipped pages at their desk and made their drawings move. Sheer magic. It was at that moment that I knew I wanted to be an animator. I was 12 years old.

I always loved to draw, and have been drawing for longer than I can remember, but growing up on a farm in Alberta, Canada, I was a long way off from my career goals. There wasn’t anyone I could ask about it or job shadow for a day, no books at the library, and certainly no studios even remotely close by. I owned a single animated film on VHS – a copy of Disney’s Robin Hood – so I began there, freeze-framing through it all, and filling my sketchbook.

After I finished high school I began searching more aggressively for a career in the animation industry…

I currently work from home, freelancing on both industry and independent properties as well as traveling the convention circuit. We continue to call Calgary home.

Even if you hadn’t seen the original series, you were likely to find out what the hype was all about. If you had seen the original series, like me, you were likely trying not to get too excited like you did for the recent Transformers and G.I. Joe movies, in the attempt to avoid massive disappointment. If you didn’t watch tonight’s episode, or if you did watch it, but don’t know what your own opinion is, I’m about to tell you, and I’ll do it without referring to the original series. This will have spoilers, however.

The story, so far, of V has established several characters that we can assume will frequent our screens, given us our setting and have also shown us turmoil. All of these are necessary for a proper story to be told, and V does it rather well, for television.

For our characters, we have:

Female FBI agent, Erica Evans, who is a single mother of a 17 year-old boy after a recent separation with her husband. Her personality displays great skepticism, but her beliefs are based on logic. She won’t believe it until she sees it. As an FBI agent specializing in monitoring terrorist cells, she has a talent for understanding human behavior when in a group, but when coupled with her logic, she shows a lack of compassion and understanding for people on an individual basis. Basically, she’s set up to be the the rock-hard pillar static, badass, action hero character of the series.

The character who will be acting out the role of human compassion, confusion and immeasurable sixth sense and/or intuition is Father Jack Landry. Father Jack showed an immediate unwillingness to accept the visitors with such haste as they had revealed themselves and we are to assume it was because of his fear that the visitors might be worshiped as gods.

The conflict of racism will doubtless revolve endlessly around character Ryan Nichols, a visitor disguised as a black man. He knows that the visitors have been around planning to take over Earth for decades and is a traitor to their cause. Ryan wants to help the humans, but because he is a visitor himself, he will definitely be accosted with distrust and blatant, senseless racism from humans, and a distinct lack of compassion from other visitors.

Other important characters, so far, include:

Anna, the leader of the visitors. She has shown herself to be very manipulative and to have a keen understanding of the human race. She knows what humans want and how to get them to like her.

Chad Decker is the television personality who the visitors, mostly Anna, con into becoming their human spokesperson who sacrifices his journalistic integrity and sells out the human race in the hopes of furthering his career by heralding the greatness of the visitors, as Anna sees fit. I expect him to die about the same time he grows a conscious, but before he actually gets to do anything significant against the V’s.

Tyler Evans, Erica’s son, who, motivated by his uncontrollable teenage sex drive which is manipulated by visitor, Lisa, has joined with the visitors’ ambassador program meant to enhance humanity’s acceptance of the V’s. This will surely become important as our stone-cold action hero will probably risk humanities survival trying to convince her son that the V’s are evil.

Valerie Stevens is Ryan’s fiance, and her role will probably be to confuse or enhance human opinion concerning Ryan. I wouldn’t rule out, however, the possibility that she is also a visitor manipulating Ryan.

There are also several minor characters that will mean as much to the story as turtle shells in any Mario game (essential to make the story what it is, but not dynamic, evolving or even that interesting). One such character is Erica’s partner who turns out to be an anti-human visitor, Dale Maddox. Another is Marcus, Anna’s right-hand man and obedient visitor servant. Then there’s Gorgie Sutton, the leader of the only anti-visitor organization that knows how long the visitors have really been around and what they’ve been planning. Besides that, there will probably be characters that mean something emotionally to these various main&not-so-main characters that will probably die and/or turn out to be visitors themselves, creating a small amount of conflict within the main characters for us to watch.

The story so far:

Aliens. They’re here. They say they’re going to help us, cure us, take something, and then leave. Plus, they look hot. Almost everyone in the world wants to give the aliens anything they want and become mindlessly devoted to them, almost instantly. A select few question or just out-rate hate the visitors. Of these select few, the ones the story focuses on are those that meet together in a secret place to discuss what the visitors really are, how to recruit more to resist the aliens and how to militarize a resistance force. This meeting is interrupted, however, and almost everyone is killed, except those characters listed above. Erica’s son joins up with the V’s. Ryan, an old resistance comrade of leader Gorgie’s, saves Gorgie and reveals himself as a traitor to the visitors. Erica looks up into the sky and decides she’s going to blast the aliens to hell, after she defended her life against her partner (and, maybe, lover?) who was a visitor spy, and confirms Father Jack’s fears that humanity my well be doomed as they are all being manipulated to worship false gods.

The other stuff:

The overall feel of the episode was somewhere between made-for-TV movies and well funded sci-fi programming.

I’d rate the graphics about on par with Farscape, but higher than something like Stargate SG1 or Star Trek: The Next Generation and it’s various counterparts. To be fair, however, the visual graphics used in V focus around CGI, whereas those in Farscape focused on set design, make-up and puppets. As far as make-up effects go, V has done well in the first episode, what with fake human flesh ripping away to show reptilian skin, and all, and the integration of CGI into live-action scenes isn’t horrible, but it is noticeable.

The music should really be called aura, I suppose, since it barely shows up or enhances anything in the show. Much like other modern sitcoms or prime-time programming, the focus is on the dialog between characters.

I want to say that watching V gives the same feeling as watching Grey’s Anatomy minus the sex the audience wants to happen mixed with Bones minus any humor. You’re intrigued enough to see where the story goes, the scene transitions and prolonged focus on any character’s face as they emote ominously aren’t too over-the-top, but there is the same amount of predictability. You know where the story is going and what the characters will likely do, even if you never saw the original series. I’m really hoping to be surprised by some twists and turns, but only time will tell.

Ask any person who may not even consider themselves a gamer, per say, what it was that they enjoyed about any game made prior to the year 2000. You’ll most likely notice a glaze over their eyes as they stare into space, as if they were literally looking into the past, and then present you with information concerning simple stories, epic struggles of good, evil and turtle shells, hours spent playing with friends and family, and how enjoyable every last bit of it was. I, for one, remember waking up early and running to the houses of friends and cousins, getting there before even our parents were awake, to play games of Mario, Star Wars and the like.

Years later, when gaming had evolved and become more interactive with various peripherals, most notable of the lot being light guns, arcades seemed more fun than playing the consoles at home. Many of my favorite games of all time involved shooting aliens, zombies, and various other baddies. Unfortunately, I didn’t always have the money to attend the arcades or to even, later, buy consoles, games and peripherals to play the old games I fell in love with at home in my very own bordello of game lust. It is thanks to, let’s be real, emulators that I was able to play many a classic title, and many more obscure ones. One of the best, lesser known titles of all being The Typing of The Dead.

There are many awesome things about arcade games concerning their peripherals. There’s the light guns, sure, and ones that embarrass you a bit, like the Dance Dance Revolution stage, but then there’s cool ones. Cool ones where “cool” equals “geeky”, but not “nerdy” because you’re totally using a keyboard in an arcade to kill zombies by typing.

[-] What is it?! [-]

TotD, not to be confused with “thought of the day” … though it should be one, wasn’t originally a typing game, oh no. TotD is, actually, a modified version of House of the Dead 2, which is part of a series of awesome all about using a light gun to blow away all sorts of creatures who have no business living, dammit! **SLAMSFIST**

There is a bit of story that prequels TotD, seeing as how it’s actually a sequel, and all. It’s got something to do with some sort of evil corporation that developed some kind of something that turns animals into giant, evil things and people into zombies. It basically is just another version of the same story that’s in Resident Evil and the like. All that’s important is that you are here to kill zombies by typing at them with the SEGA Dreamcast that’s attached to the back of your sexy, sexy suit.

[-] My Experiences [-]

GRAPHICS

Considering this is a game from 1998, and it’s a SEGA game (you know what I’m talking about, here), the graphics are pretty suck.

The characters look like someone took those cardboard blocks you used to play with as a kid, stuck them together and made people. The textures are pretty lame, too. Somehow, though, the game is able to combine enough sucky graphics in just the right way to let you get a good picture of what’s going on. It really does give you a sense of urgency.

I blame the constant camera movement, a technique that action and survival movies only recently started using en force.

SOUND

The sound is pretty crappy, too. I have to admit.

Sound effects get the point across when coupled with animations or graphics, but probably couldn’t stand alone. I know that when I hear something that sounds like yetti screaming at me from ten years ago through a microphone connected to a guitar peddle set to “grunge” using the sound production quality of an ear bud, something bad is probably about to happen. When I hear the same sound, only shorter, I know someone shot a gun.

The music is also pretty terrible quality, but not terrible composition. I can feel the emotion they’re trying to convey (terror), especially when the music is used in the background, as it should be.

Voice acting? Except for the typical SEGA announcer guy with the dead voice, the voice acting is crap. It’s not really acting. I suppose I could give them credit for being the most monotoned persons ever to speak into a microphone and then have it published, but I’m not.

GAMEPLAY

I really like light-gun games. I don’t have to worry about moving my character around with a controller, mouse or keyboard. I just let the camera go around and I shoot things. It’s much more of an interactive movie experience, really, and TotD does it well.

As I mentioned before, the constant screen movement, even while focused on one scene, helps add to the realism and sense of urgency. The flowing hordes of zombies flying at the screen helps with that feeling quite a bit, too.

Another huge feature that adds a lot to this game is, of course, the keyboard. Typing to kill zombies may sound ridiculous to read, but think about it. If you had to type like your life depended on it, could you survive a zombie apocalypse? Oh, it starts out easy enough. Just type a quick “To” here or a random “KO” there, but pretty soon you’re blasting out sentences connected to a central theme while a giant, headless monster is chasing you with a chainsaw as you run backwards through a maze. Here’s a video of it.

What could possibly add more awesome to something already that awesome? How about making the sentences and phrases you type to stay alive have nothing to do with zombies, death or survival, at all? One of my favorite sentence series to type was “It’s hard to ride a bicycle uphill” [dodge zombie attack] “I have to push hard with one foot and then the other” [dodge zombie attack] “My kid brother has polio” [dodge zombie attack, start laughing, screw the next sentence up and die].

ISSUES

I don’t really have any issues with this game. It’s so old that it is what it is. It’s come, it’s gone and the only people who play it are people who think the same way about old games as many think about old movies. They’re classics.

[-] Overall [-]

If this were a new game, I’d rank it something terrible, I’m sure, but as this is a retro review and I’m playing something the likes which we don’t get the chance to play any more (novelty, I’m talking novelty, people!), I’ll give it a nine.

This game is really fun, at least to me. I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who was even remotely interested. It has very helpful tutorials, various game modes, and even training and practice levels to help you with your typing speed and accuracy.

If you play this game, you will get better at typing and learn to not look at the keyboard. Also, if you’re in an office with the sound turned off, you’ll look like the busiest employee in the history of looking busy.

This happened to me not two weeks ago while sitting at my desk. Something caught a snag of an old memory from a time before childhood, but after infancy. I spent the rest of my afternoon digging around frantically through my brain, searching the internet for clues with terms I attempted to mold as warmth became brief images and brief images became words. I looked and looked, but couldn’t find it. I earnestly wondered for hours if I had only dreamt such a feeling.

After work, I called my sister to ask for help. I told her about my ordeal, but that I could at least remember a small boy named “Nemo” and a bed that could move, somehow. She told me that I wasn’t dreaming and that it must involve something named “dreamland.” We went searching. It was not 10 seconds later that we had found it: Little Nemo: Adventures In Slumberland.

Turns out, I couldn’t have seen it at as young an age as I had thought, since the movie was released in the U.S. in 1992. I was not put off, however, and went straight to work finding a copy to watch so that I could relive a childhood memory. Fortunately, I found a copy, and began watching, immediately.

[-] Synopsis [-]

The main character of the story is Nemo, a young boy, maybe around 8 years old?, who is the only child in an upper-middle class home. The setting for his home looks to be early 1900’s and could be geographically located any place close to Marry Poppins. Nemo’s father is the type of character who is not too snooty to play with his son; he’s just too busy obsessing with his work. His mother doesn’t look to have a job other than fussing about Nemo and baking pies for him to sneak out of the ice box at night. Oh, and Nemo has a pet flying squirrel, Icarus, that chirps out enunciated English so well, we might as well be talking.

Nemo likes to spend most of his time in some sort of near-death coma, during which he dreams about some crazy place called Slumberland. Actually, he was gathered by a royal entourage lead by one Professor Genius who entered his upstairs window via dirigible and presented him with a royal invitation. When Nemo arrives, he’s greeted by a festival in his honor, meets a princess (Camille) who thinks his pajamas are cute, is lead around by a dirty, cigar smoking clown riding a giant crow (Flip), and is told by a toy train loving gargantuan of a king (King “Morphy” Morpheus) that he, Nemo, has been selected as the heir to the thrown of Slumberland. At this point, Morphy gives Nemo some sort of magical key that unlocks any door in Slumberland and is told there is one door he must promise to never, ever open.
So, later that night… Nemo opens that one door he promised not to ever open, lead into mischief by Flip, the dirty clown. The gala being held in honor of Nemo’s coronation is interrupted shortly after when an amorphous blob of darkness swallows King Morpheus. Everyone else is left unharmed, but curious as to who opened the door. Then they all simultaneously slapped their foreheads and walked slowly towards Nemo, mumbling his name like an undead horde.

Nemo wakes up in his bed and decides it was all a dream, but King Morpheus’ giant royal scepter of all things light and dreamy laying next to him in his bed says different. Disregarding the foreign object in his bed, Nemo goes down stairs to get some pie but upon opening the ice box, his house is flooded. So, he jumps on his bed and rides it through the water to the safety of a vast and featureless expanse of blue, surrounded by fog. There he bumps into Professor Genius who informs Nemo that Morphy is now a prisoner in Nightmareland. Nemo convinces the Prof. that they should use the power of the King’s staff to enter Nightmareland for a rescue operation, but the only person in Slumberland who knows how to get there is Flip, the dirty clown, who everyone hates… and who is being prepped to be shot out of a cannon by order of Princess Camille.

Nemo and Genius stop Flip from being the first clown in space and grab the princess, just to make sure all the principal characters are together, and head to Nightmareland.

Once in Nightmareland, the Princess is nearly drowned by weird, flippery creatures and the group stumbles into the three of the only four friendly goblins in the whole of evilness. Later, a group of flying monkeys take everyone away and Nemo is powerless to stop them.

Again, Nemo wakes up in his bed, and again with the scepter. This time, he also has the three friendly goblins with him and the fourth one falls from the sky. Nemo, the four things, and Icarus jump on the bed, at which point it grows legs and walks through the city to gallop into a giant vortex. After that, the bed choses to simply fly.

Nemo leads the group to the dark fortress center of Nightmareland where we don’t see many creatures, but we do get to see a freaky, flying, hammer-head manta-ray and the giant, bat-like evil king of all darkness. Using the scepter, the King Morpheus’ incantation (delivered from nightmare prison via good goblin, earlier), and Icarus like a music lyre, Nemo blasts the king of darkness into nothingness. Everyone captured is now safe, but Nemo is looking a bit on the dead side. So, Morpheus uses the scepter to bring him back to life. Next, everyone has a huge party as Nemo leaves Slumberland to wake up in his bed, leaving all of us to wonder if any of it ever really happened.

[-] Review [-]

This movie is definitely a fun one, but doesn’t quite rank with the likes of other epic animated movies form the past, like Miyazaki. There is an obvious mix of styles as the character designs look American, object motion looks Japanese and the environment looks of ambiguous origin. This alone makes Little Nemo a unique film to watch, but that does not mean it is necessarily the kind of animation you would like to see.

All of the characters are as memorable as the characters of, say, Adventures of the Gummi Bears. Not especially memorable, but not really all that forgettable. The four friendly goblins suffer the unfortunate circumstance of being completely flat characters. Flip, while memorable visually, is not so well remembered for his lines or voice acting (Mickey Rooney). Even Nemo isn’t very interesting; most of the time he’s screaming out garble about pajamas while trying to remember the incantation to use the scepter. Morpheus is a typical epic kind of character, like most any other king in a children’s movie, but still flat. Princess Camille definitely ranks most memorable as the most outspoken one of the bunch who is allowed to convey the most emotion. Camille laughs, cries, cuddles, insults, is sarcastic and even punches Flip in the face. Plus, at the risk of sounding somewhat pedophilic the combination of her voice, personality and physicality makes her very attractive.

The movie seems to move through a lot of story pretty quickly just so it can spend more time establishing moods for scenes other places. This is something I always dislike. I really don’t mind a longer movie if it means that all of the story is told. We are supposed to see connections between the real world and Slumberland based on subtle queues from the background and such. For instance, Nemo must like planes and dirigibles since they’re hanging in his room, but never focused on, hence why there are lots of balloons and blimps in Slumberland. Also, I feel as though the movie is trying to convey the sense that we are watching a dream, but it doesn’t quite get me there.

The world of Slumberland changes four times from pristine, to flat and neutral, to dark and evil, and back to pristine, again. Each of these changes are transitioned by Nemo waking in his bed with some element from the dream in hand. This should be like a dream in that the entire landscape changes drastically, without warning, and that Nemo’s mind is tricking him into seeing his room, but the dream persists even there, as if he were about to wake up, and then went back to dreaming, again.

The story is pretty classic good versus evil, and there is at least one lesson about keeping promises presented as a sort of theme throughout the movie. So, I guess there’s some substance there, but if I were to watch this movie as a new release, today, it would have to have some serious hype for me to recommend to any serious movie goers.

When it comes down to it, the only thing this movie has going for it is my infatuation with it from childhood. It gave me a lesson in the form of pure emotion that can never be expressed in words, but it can all be expressed in one scene of the film that happens near the very end: the kiss scene.

[-] The Kiss Scene [-]

The kiss scene is between Camille and Nemo. Nemo is just the guy. In almost any kiss scene, ever, the guy can be replaced, but Camille cannot. She has been established as a woman, essentially. Her qualities up to this point show that she is sensitive to feelings of others, aware of her duties to her kingdom, and in control of her emotions to a certain point, which makes her more personable than someone who always retains control. In this scene, Camille shows a myriad of emotion and messages through three simple acts.

[1] The first act is cuddling with Icarus who she expressed dislike with earlier in the movie. [2] The second act is shedding a tear while thanking Nemo. [3] The third act leaning out to kiss Nemo.

What this all means to me is that Camille knows she is a figment of Nemo’s imagination and that the whole of the events were a dream. She’s passing out kindness because she feels that this moment may be her last moment in existence, which she expresses by holding Icarus. When she tries to thank Nemo for creating the dream and letting her experience the adventure they shared, she means to dole out kindness as she did with Icarus, but she cannot. She sheds a tear because she realizes cognitively what she was feeling subconsciously: she will miss Nemo. So, finally, she leans out to kiss Nemo and to claim a bit of comfort for herself that makes life worth living, the kind that is shared between two people in one act of committed love and acceptance, the kind that, at this age and in the face of nonexistence, is also as pure and innocent as it can possibly be.

This may be fantastically over-romanticized, but it’s what I felt as a child and what I appreciate more, now, that I can assess Camille for her character qualities.

[-] In the End… [-]

I think that the movie is worth watching just to gain the knowledge and experience that goes along with, what looks to be, a fantastic comic strip spanning from 1905 to sometime in the 1920s. The original strip is now past the expiration of copyright protection and I plan on buying it form whoever may have it published. I’ll have to find out who’s got the latter strips.

If you want to find out more about the story behind the story, check out this wiki page.

[-] What Testing is All About [-]

Before any gamer geeks out there start panting hard and fogging up their screens while they think (with all too much enthusiasm) on the possibility of playing a new game before many else gets to, realize that it won’t be what you’ve experienced before. I’m not making reference to the various features Global Agenda offers in contrast with other games, as I will elaborate on later while attempting to not repeat statements in my previous GA article, I’m referencing to that fact that beta testing GA is just that: beta testing.

All too often, a select few, anxious gaming enthusiasts are given the opportunity to join in beta testing of a game that has not yet been released. Nine out of ten times, this experience has nothing at all whatsoever to do with actual testing, but is, instead, all about you experiencing a polished and finished game before anyone else and then telling the rest of the world all about it.

If anyone out there actually thinks that they were making major contributions to games like Aion or will make a difference in SWTOR’s beta testing, think again. Most people who played Aion beta payed for the privilege, and BioWare stated before opening beta sign-ups (in an interview that I can’t find, now) that studios don’t learn anything new from beta testing. So, most studios don’t expect anyone invited to beta test to actually test anything at all. Hi-Rez Studios, however, thinks much differently.

They make sure to issue an email about one week before every not-on-site test, explaining what they want players to look for and be aware of. They also make sure to include a snippet to motivate beta participants to test, not just play. A real tester is going to find bugs, write them down, report them, and try to duplicate the bug until the studio fixes it.

[-] My Experiences [-]

GRAPHICS

I rank the graphics as one of the highest in quality for an MMORPG, which shows through even better when I play from my gaming rig at home. It takes a few seconds at the login screen for the graphics to really kick in, but I have absolutely no performance problems in-game. I’m not so big on the smooth lighting textures that Hi-Rez chose to use for character, items and environment, but it’s not a deal breaker, either. It kind of reminds me of Doom 3.

SOUND

The music and sound quality are great. I really am glad I invested in those 5.1 surround sound force feedback headphones because games like Global Agenda are definitely making use of it. Whenever you’re involved in PvP combat against other players, every queue an enemy can give you to let you know they’re attacking is worth watching and listening for. Precision gaming audio equipment will give you that much more of an edge, making the difference between number one and second best.

USER INTERFACE & ITEMS

As for the user interface, I have mixed feelings. I really like the helpful info stations that a player can query to find specific locations, such as the armor store, and it generates a three-dimensional path hovering above the ground for the player to follow. As for equipment and talent windows, they’re not quite there, yet.

It was very confusing for me to figure out how to have any equipment or abilities at all. Most players are used to filling up their skill trees, dragging combat ability buttons from a menu to a hot bar and then equipping weapons to a character slot from the inventory. Not in Global Agenda. Fill up the trees, select the abilities you want to use, and then select your weapon designated by how you set up your tree. In short, weapons aren’t items in an inventory that you need to buy or find, but are given to you after setting talent tree points.

Don’t worry, you can still upgrade your weapon, armor and more above another player’s through the use of special mod items. These mod items are supposed to have something to do with nanotechnology, but they’re used the same way as gems in WoW.

The controls and interface are a bit different than any MMO you’ve probably played before, it doesn’t take long to figure out. In fact, the only hindrance to playing the game most intuitively is not moving around the map, but using the hot bar to initiate attacks and special abilities as you run around in the same manner you would in an FPS (first person shooter).

GAMEPLAY

The game runs smoothly. I have no complaints, there. I have not yet been able to test the orientation portions of the game, including any missions that grant experience. I’ve only been able to test PvP, so far, and while it is definitely pretty good on the PvP side (that’s the part Hi-Rez wants to focus on), I really, really want to get in on some PvE.

The PvP has a few different maps and modes. There’s a capture-the-flag type map, with three flags to capture/defend until time runs out. There’s a sort of escort mission that doesn’t use an MVP, but instead forces one team to move an object from one side of the map to the other, while the opposing forces try to stop it’s movement. The object cannot be reset or reversed and moves sort of slow. The only other PvP map I played besides those two looked to be a different version of capture the flag, but my team was getting pwn’ed so hardcore, I can’t tell you what it’s about.

COMMUNITY

In general, I like Global Agenda’s community. The dev’s all have characters and play the game, though it’s usually for testing, and they’re all super nice and/or helpful in game … even while they’re stomping you into the ground in PvP. Though almost every last one of the players in beta testing, right now, are high schoolers, they’re not entirely unruly. My chat box is not constantly overfilled with cursing and derogatory comments, which is nice.

I asked a lot of newb questions when I logged in on the beta, and while most of the testers who could read me didn’t respond, there were a few that actually answered my questions, were super helpful, and even offered me in-game currency to buy equipment that was, at that point, purely aesthetic.

ISSUES

The only issues I experienced had to do with things on the game coding side. I couldn’t participate in the first beta because there was some sort of issue that prevented me and several other players from being able to run the program. That issue, however, was fixed before the second beta, during which I ran around trying to learn the classes and how to play them in the short amount of time I had. During the second test the only issues I had were (1) the game was unstable in windowed mode and would freeze or crash regularly, and (2) after leaving an instance based mission, the game would either crash or freeze.

The reason for the score? Any issue that keep me from and discourages me from playing the game is a big issue.

During the second test I had developer David Tyler in chat the entire time, so I was very well taken care of on the support side of things. Thanks, David!

[-] OVERALL [-]

It must be known by all that this game is still in development, and since every bug I’ve ever experienced or reporting has been fixed, I forgive them any problems I have had. All other aspects of the game, including, to a lesser extent, graphics, and to a larger extent, things like user interface and class abilities, are constantly being updated. Hi-Rez Studios is making sure they get class balancing and intuitive in-game controls as fine-tuned as possible before releasing their baby for the whole world to play. For that, I will delay most of my opinions concerning most any aspect of the game, until the game is released.

When is the launch date? No one knows, yet. How can you get into the closed beta? Create an account and request to join. Will you be playing Global Agenda when it is released? As long as I’m not bogged down with SWTOR or FFXIV (because I have extreme lust issues for anything Star Wars and/or Final Fantasy), I will most likely be playing Global Agenda.

Massively talented writer of various Marvel comic books and urban fantasy novels, Marjorie Liu, recently posted this short litany of writing advice she finds helpful to remind herself from time to time: Get to the point. Get back to basics. Do it with a little pizazz. Don’t lose your edge.

It’s pretty much self explanatory, but why should I let that stop me from explaining it? Okay, not really explaining it, but I thought it would be fun to break it down to its four component parts and examine what I have been able to glean from it so far.

Let’s proceed, shall we?

1) Get to the point.

In other words, quit dicking around by showing off your stellar wit and finely crafted prose and get the story told, with expedience, clarity and honesty. I’m sure we’re as impressed as you are with your artistic turn of phrase and your intricate and poetic word constructions, but those don’t mean a thing if you don’t get the story told.

Orson Scott Card, one of the finest writers in our field, takes writing advice questions on his blog, fielding one from a fellow who was worried about his writing style, and complained his inability to refine his own style was causing serious blockages to getting his novel written. I deeply paraphrased the question and now I’ll do the same with the answer. Card replied that it was a silly distraction to worry about style. Just tell the story as simply as possible. Do that and your style will be whatever comes out of just telling the story.

I mentioned that exchange because, whether it helped that fellow or not, it was a Damascus Road experience for me. The scales fell off of my eyes at the simplicity and obviousness of the advice. I had been struggling to learn prose writing, was finding it difficult, next to impossible, and was about ready to pack it in and stick with comic book writing for the rest of my career. And then Card said that, and it made sense. It was actually a freeing moment, in which a ton of metaphorical weights seemed to drop right off of me.

Don’t worry about theme, or style, or any other extraneous nonsense, and just tell a clear story. Let your readers eventually decide those other matters. And, if you run into trouble between two wonderfully crafted scenes that need to be connected, just write the minimum material you need to do that, almost like notes to yourself on what needs to happen, and that should remove the blockage. Later on you may find that it’s the simple terse connecting material that is the better stuff and those two artfully constructed passages are what needs to go, or at least be slimmed down.

2) Get back to basics.

I see this as, “don’t try to reinvent the wheel.” The stuff of good story isn’t going to change. Trying to do something that’s never been done before, such as writing a novel that’s simply one run-on sentence, or purposely constructing indecipherable passages to “challenge” the reader, or any of a vast number of so-called new literary conventions, are all hooey. At best they’re stunts. At worst they’re purposely malicious. My job is to communicate an interesting story to my readers, and communication can only occur when the reader knows what the hell I’m saying.

3) Do it with a little pizazz.

When Marjorie first posted this, fellow Clockworkian Chris Roberson mistook it as: “Do it with a little pizza,” and said as much, which put pizza in the minds of many of those of us who read the small exchange. I wonder how much pizza was ordered that night as a result of the misunderstanding? I know they got me, and my editor at IDW.

But tastiness aside, pizza is not required to write well. In fact it may be an impediment, if you like to keep a clean keyboard.

Here’s how I think Marjorie’s third rule applies to me. It’s not a repudiation of what I just wrote above about ignoring style. We still ought not to worry about our writing style, because that can only grow organically from our actual writing. I think it has something to do with confidence — as in we should have some. Do it with a bit of a swagger.

Humility is all well and good, and a character trait much to be admired. But it has limited use to a writer. If I don’t have enough ego and confidence to believe I have an interesting story to tell, then why am I wasting everyone’s time by jumping up on the metaphorical stage and shouting, “Give me your money, your time and your attention for as long as I want it, because I have a great story to tell you!” That is an act of bravado bordering on arrogance.

This business isn’t for the timid. Writing is an act of leadership, and no one follows an overly timid leader. When you write, bring your swagger. Bring your confidence. Bring your pizazz.

4) Don’t lose your edge.

I’ve lost my edge before. Hell, I’ve lost the whole damned blade. I think the only way to keep your edge is to keep honing it. Keep writing or your tools get dull and useless. If I go a few days without writing it’s like I’m starting all over again when I start up again. Ultimately writing means sitting alone in a room getting hours of work done one day, and then repeating it the next day and so on, for far too many days in a row. If you can’t stand to be alone with yourself in a room for protracted lengths of time, then you can’t do this. You will all too quickly lose your edge.

That’s what I take, so far, from Marjorie’s four admonitions. I know as I ponder further I’ll get other wisdoms from them. That’s the nature of good advice. I wonder what the other Clockwork boys take from the same four rules. Maybe they’ll share as much in their own posts.

For those who want to go to the source, or maybe find out for yourselves why we’re Marjorie Liu fans here at the Clockworks, you can find her and her books here.

——————–

[-] ARTICLE AUTHORS: [-]

Clockwork Storybook is an ongoing discussion about the art, craft, mechanics and absolute human necessity of storytelling. It’s about whatever interests us, the things we like to argue about, the things we feel worth crowing about, and certain other items we think you might find enlightening and interesting.

It is also a group of five professional writers of fiction, biography, comic books, novels and such. In alphabetical order we are:

Mark Finn. He’s an award winning Robert E Howard scholar, author and playwright. His latest book, Blood and Thunder: the Life and Art of Robert E Howard, is available on Amazon.com, along with other REH-related books to which he’s contributed introductions, essays and stories. He also writes fiction, comic books, and the occasional book or movie review.

Chris Roberson. He’s published some three dozen short stories and more than a dozen novels, including the Celestial Empire series (The Dragon’s Nine Sons, Three Unbroken, and Iron Jaw and Hummingbird) and the Bonaventure-Carmody sequence (Here, There & Everywhere, Paragea: A Planetary Romance, Set the Seas on Fire, and End of the Century) and he is scripting the forthcoming Vertigo miniseries Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love, and the ongoing series iZombie. Along with his business partner and spouse Allison Baker, he is the publisher of Monkey Brain Books, an independent publishing house specializing in genre fiction and nonfiction genre studies.

Matthew Sturges. He’s written several books for DC Comics, including House of Mystery, Salvation Run, Blue Beetle, and the Eisner-nominated Jack of Fables (with Bill Willingham). He has also written a novel, Midwinter, available from Pyr. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and two daughters.

Bill Williams is the publisher of Lone Star Press which produced many comic books, including Pantheon, for which he was also one of the artists. He’s written comic books for DC Comics and stories in the forthcoming Angel comic book series from IDW. You can find prose books by him such as Tokyo Pop and Other Quinn Stories on Amazon.com.

Bill Willingham. He’s written a ton of funnybooks, including just about every DC Comics character. He’s created several comic book series, including Elementals, Pantheon and the multiple award winning (and multiple award losing) Fables. His first major novel, Peter and Max was released recently.

Zombies are a fun subject to create stories around and to place into existing stories to change their style. In this regard, zombies are no different than ninjas, pirates, the wild west or anything else of the like. They’re exciting because they are fantastic, something we will most likely never see like we do in movies, graphic novels and books, but their origins are tied to half-truths, extreme situations and our general ignorance of things scientific. All of which, makes the possibility of zombies seem more real, and, therefore, more intriguing.

The two best things that zombies do for people, I think, is scare them and allow them something that the world considers okay to beat with a bat until nothing put goo remains. In fact, that want to be scared and that want to release pure, uninhibited violence to lust-point is so strong that since we don’t know enough to say that zombies couldn’t exist, they can, and since we don’t know how zombies could be made, we thought of ways to make them.

Even so, zombie movies, in my mind, aren’t classified into a “zombie movie” category. Instead, they’re filed around inside of other genres, like action, horror, suspense, comedy, tragedy, and the like. If I had to put Zombieland into a category, it would probably be comedy, but it has so much more.

The two main characters of Zombieland make the movie, and the grand total of four human characters makes it cozy. Explanation is coming. In the post-apocalyptic anarchy that is a world completely covered with death, the remaining humans are obsessed with two things: staying alive and staying sane. Rarely, at this point in the chronology of a zombified Earth, will a human see another uninfected human, and if two do meet, they don’t want to stick together because at least one of them is certain to die, and neither wants any more emotional strain. This is how Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) and Columbus (Jessie Eisenberg) feel when they stumble upon one another, and why their names are simply destinations. This theme is reiterated and expanded upon when Tallahassee and Columbus meet Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin). The sisters are focused on survival, which is clearly shown when they con Tallahassee & Columbus out of their vehicle and weapons, but they are also focused on sanity. The two sisters have always been together and will never split apart; they are each other’s hope and salvation. Eventually, however, the four learn to work together and each finds what they were missing or had lost from their lives, previously.

I won’t give away too much, but… the kind of writing that gives so much character definition is definitely OSCAR worthy, not only for it’s complexity, but for it’s ability and willingness to create a comic moment out of a dire & heartfelt situation. That’s the beauty of true comedy: it’s on another level; it’s so good that it can give all the insight to the human soul a Rembrandt can, but it also teaches you to laugh.

The story may have been lacking for some, but the narration of the lead character, Columbus, filled gaps where it would have been otherwise emotionally inappropriate for a character to speak. Without the narration, the movie would probably have been dragged out another twenty to thirty minutes with long pauses where the audience would stare at a Eisenberg’s face, wondering what he was thinking. The story didn’t lack character backgrounds, in fact, the audience knew enough of all four to feel connected with each, but, in all honesty, I feel that if it had any more, the movie would feel too rushed and forced, as so many other recent movies, do. The great part about the writing, however, isn’t about what’s in the movie: [*TIDBIT*] Reese and Wernick actually intended Zombieland to be a television show and this movie is actually just the first two episodes. So, there’s plenty more where this came from.

The graphic quality of this movie is high ranking, for sure, but not without its flaws. The feel of the colors and environments of every scene are very akin to anything you may remember from I Am Legend and the like. Almost always dark, and when there’s light, it’s just as frightening. So, I have to give major props to the editing and direction for maintaining the proper feel of a horror/suspense film throughout, and while I’m not going to cost the film points for things they don’t have much control over (like outfitting Wild Adventures, a working theme park, as a refined movie set), I am going to wag my finger at a few other things.

Make-up and costuming were pretty dammed great. I’d say 8 out of every 10 times I saw a zombie, I was at least partially disgusted by the gratuitous use of blood capsules and ooze dripping from undead mouths. The splatter effects they made were awesome, by the way. Not every zombie, however, looked as awesome and epic. Some simply looked like people in make-up, and whether those people are the center of the frame or not, that just won’t do.

CGI was another thing I could wave my finger at, in general. While the quality was definitely refined enough to put Zombieland into an imported car lot of motion pictures, it was not the most tricked out ride. I think the most obvious example of this is when three zombies chasing Columbus through Wild Adventures get smacked by a strangly pendulous carnival ride, as if it were a giant mace. They do seem to flail quite a bit like redeading undead creatures, but rag dolls and different camera angles probably would have looked better. I doubt it would have cost less, if that’s what you were thinking, as CGI is a bit cheaper, nowadays, than paying people to make dolls, operate machinery, and film inanimate objects.

There’s not really a whole lot more about Zombieland that I can write about without doing a thorough, completely spoil-laden synopsis. I laughed out loud, a lot (though Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is still my number one comedy this year), I cried true tears of sorrow (if you’re a father, you’ll understand), and I was honestly scared to the point of a startled jump at least three times (fantastic feat; bravo). I recommend seeing this movie, but only if you understand and accept that it is, indeed, gory, full of lots of violence, suspense, heartbreak, romance, hope, love and zombies.

I think is it is pretty common feature now on igeektrooper to spotlight the work of some very talented artists. This this around, it is my turn and I wanted to feature an artist I have been following for couple years now. Known as belldandies (aka. adi.s.) on DeviantArt, belldandies is a brilliant graphic arts who work features vector-style graphics with simple (but deep) color schemes. Unfortunately, even after hours and hours of searching, there is very information about who belldandies actually is. Other than the fact that he resides in San Francisco, the rest is pretty much a mystery. Some of the most popular work he has done is based on comic and sci-fiction characters. He has given characters such as G.I. Joe’s Baroness, X-Men’s Jean Grey and Storm, and Dave Steven’s The Rocketeer the “belldandies” treatment. belldandies’ vector art style is beautifully elegant and haunting while his meticulous use of various levels of red and black gives the art a vibrant personality. If the world was flat, belldandies would be king.

I know that dvenzo, like me, probably loves every last piece belldandies has posted, and has trouble not reposting the gallery in its entirety. Nevertheless, here are a few selected pieces from belldandies’s gallery:

Dvenzo also added that “If anyone has more info on belldandies, please drop me an email to dvenzo@igeektrooper.com so I can provide more info about the artist!” I’m sure we’d all like to know more!

Liam Neeson in the lead role of a movie that was hyped up to be all about revenge and killing people with guns, and promised absolutely no mentor-like traits for the main character, seemed like an odd fit. Maybe that’s just because I’m not as familiar with Neeson’s pre-21st century work as I should be, but he has always seemed like the mentor to me. I never really understood why he was put into films that involved him moving swiftly, pummeling people with fists or acting otherwise badass. His body type doesn’t seem right for it; he’s so damned tall and lanky. Nevertheless, Neeson seldom disappoints.

The first thirty minutes of Taken seemed devoted to quickly passing through slim shades of character backgrounds, establishing character relationships and a hint of story development that the audience knew would simply lead to some kind of turmoil, in spite of Neeson’s character, Bryan Mills. Though most of this part of the generic action movie formula was easy to see coming, some of it was refreshing. I was glad to see Mills was a military man who made the mistake of trying to have a family, but retired to make time for his daughter, Kim, played by Maggie Grace, who seemed to appreciate him. I was confused, alter, however, when Kim went through a fairly elaborate lie in a successful attempt at deceiving her father. This character trait was emphasized by Mills’ ex-wife and Kim’s mother, Lenore, played by one of my favorite actresses, Famke Janssen, when she basically spoke wrote to the audience, telling us that Kim could never really trust her father.

Thankfully, we were soon finished with typical spoon-fed characterizations and story and were on to the action part of the film. HUZZAH!

So, Kim, the daughter of some sort of ex-military-secret-agent-spy-ninja-kills-people guy, goes alone with other hot teenage chicks to Paris, where (surprise) all the hot chicks get kidnapped and put into an underground black market that specializes in selling sexy, female tourists to rich mob bosses, mostly likely for kinky, old-man secks. When said kidnappers enter the room to collect their ho’s, Kim is on the phone with her father. At first, this seemed kind of “yeah, right”, but my opinion of the writing quickly improved as Mills told his daughter to hide under the bed, try to scream out descriptions of the attackers as she saw them, and that, oh, yeah… she was going to be TAKEN. Dun, dun duuuuhhhhnnnnn!!!!

At this point, Neeson gives a nice little speech to the kidnapper who picks up the phone, telling him exactly what the picture at the top of this post says. Next, Mills commences to hit-manning it up.

/* [ACTION SEQUENCE]

Turns out his old military buddies pinpointed exactly who the kidnappers are and exactly what they were kidnapped for. So, now that pretty much everything concerning story is out of the way, Mills runs to Paris, kills people, talks with some old friend who is high up in the French government (who was in on everything the whole time, but we saw that coming, anyway), kills more people, finds his daughter being sold at an auction, kills even more people, gets handcuffed to a pipe, kills more people, shoots some old dude in the head, then takes his daughter back to America for voice lessons. Oh, I didn’t mention? Kim wants to be a singer, someday.

*/ [ACTON SEQUENCE]

The part that made this movie was the whole action part of it where Mills is gathering information while killing people. One part that made it so nice was that the camera angles and choreography made Neeson look like a professional when it comes to hand-to-hand self defense. Another thing about the action sequence was that it had aspects of the typical, unrealistic action movie followed immediately by something that seemed more realistic. For example, Mills has dinner with the old-friend-who’s-in-on-kidnapping-his-daughter-but-we-all-saw-that-coming-anyway named Jean-Claude (no, not that one) and wants information from him, suspecting he’s in on the kidnapping thing. Old drinking buddy grabs his gun and points it at Mills, but Mills had at some point taken all the ammo out of the gun (…wah?!), but then Mills takes out his gun and asks old drinking buddy for info. Hold up, it’s ’bout to get real, y’all. ODB (old drinking buddy), acts ignorant, so Mills shoots ODB’s innocent wife, but doesn’t kill her, then asks his question, again. See, that’s the kind of stuff that put this movie above other action movies, for me. Mills just plain doesn’t give a damn about anything besides getting his daughter. In fact, I’m pretty sure he left all her friends there to get raped by drug lords.

Pros: information gathering scenes, fighting scenes, shooting innocent people, killing the top-tier bad guy without letting him give a soliloquy

Cons: typical movie formula, no montages, no nudity (that I recall), happy ending (seemed weird to have one considering some of the realism in the film)