Thursday 27 November 2008

IMO: The Top 5 Worst Video Game Mistakes


This is going to be a tricky one. When I say Video Game Mistakes, I don't mean something silly that is left in the game by accident, I mean when the makers of a game go ahead and fuck everything up and do something that is so totally stupid that you lose the will to live. This has happened many time, the most noteable that people talk about is Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness which took the first two words of the title "Tomb" and "Raider" and figured they didn't mean anything, having no Tombs or Raiding to be done. This however is not on my list.



5) The Half Life 2 plot.



Half Life was an epic First Person Shooter, it didn't need cutscenes to tell a wonderful narrative. The game was clever, gripping and fun to play.


The plot of Half Life 1 is thus, you are Gordon Freeman, a scientist who works in the Black Mesa


laboratory. When of your experiments goes wrong, portals to an alien world open and the lab is over-run by strange creatures. All you know is that you need to escape. Halfway through the game, troops arrive but you find out they are to clean out the lab and leave no survivors. A mysterious man in a suit is seen at different moments in the game and as the game ends he offers you two choices, join him or die. The "cannon" ending is that Gordon joins him.



The game itself is awesome to play through, there were moments of sheer joy when you had an epic firefight and then were able to take a few breaths to get yourself calmed down, only to be in another one a few seconds later. Add into the mix a sense of exploration in a secret government laboratory and you had one of the best FPS games ever made. Everyone wanted a sequel, fan made sequel mods were made but years passed as everyone looked to Valve to bring Gordon Freeman back for a second round with monsters.



Half Life 2 was released in 2004 to rave reviews but as much as everyone loves it and worships it, you cannot deny one thing, it doesn't feel like a continuation of the story. It was like Half Life was Chapter 1 and Half Life 2 is Chapter 3 or 4. There is something missing in the middle. There is a huge chunk of story that is missing and because of that I, personally, feel the game is harder to get into. Gordon left Black Mesa with the G-Man and at the start of Half Life 2 the G-Man is telling him to wake up, so he's been asleep the whole time? That is just lazy! And I don't mean Gordon, I mean the storytelling. I think Valve looked at Half Life and cacked their pants, they knew they had a epic story and had to top it, so they got baked and watched a whole shit load of Sci-Fi movies and Anime and came up with the idea for Half Life 2 in this future where Earth is over-run by an alien race called The Combine. There is no other reason to do this storyline. I do not deny the game is good and some moments are impressive but the plot leave a lot to be desired. If you are going to tell a story, fill in the blanks, don't drop us off in the future and go "enjoy". Its bad storytelling, and I doesn't feel like a continuation of the first game. They could have released this as a different game and still got great reviews and had Gordon Freeman come back in the REAL Half Life 2.



4) The treatment of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid series



Lets be honest here, 90% of the Metal Gear Solid fan's first introduction to Solid Snake was in Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation. Hardly anyone played the first 2 games on the NES and MSX. Its the truth, and Metal Gear Solid is an epic tale, it rates up in there in my top 5 games of all time, it is like a movie in which you are the lead and I loved every damn second of it. So much so that I have completed the game numerous times. When Metal Gear Solid ended, the world cried out for a sequel, people wanted to play as Solid Snake some more.



Metal Gear Solid 2 was released and had you as Solid Snake infiltrating a tanker. This introduction to the game lasted about forty five minutes to an hour depending on how you played the game. Once the tanker section was done, wham your some pussy little white haired bitch called Raiden. I mean, what the fuck? I don't care about Jack and his Girlfriend Rose having their "deep" conversations over codec, I want to play as the epic soldier Solid Snake. A short time into the story you team up with Snake but he is masquerading as a Delta Force solider, and its only at the very end does he reveal himself and you fight beside him.


The game ends and that's it, the big wait for MGS2 and you play as Snake for an hour! That was it? Come on! Well we didn't have long to wait as MGS3 was announced, yay! And we were told that yes, you would be playing as Snake, teaser trailers showed this.



MGS3: Snake Eater was released and once again we were not playing as Solid Snake, you were playing as Naked Snake, aka Big Boss. Who is Solid Snake's father, or we should say, Solid Snake is a clone of Naked Snake. It's all very convoluted, but the fact remains, you were not playing as Solid Snake. We wanted to play as Solid Snake, as he continues the story that began back in the first Metal Gear Solid. That was the game that introduced us properly to Snake and where we realised how epic he truly was, we wanted to play as THAT guy again, not his father who is in the jungle in the 60s.



The announcement then came that Metal Gear Solid 4 was in production and WOULD continue the MGS story, and you WOULD be playing as Solid Snake finally! Then we were introduced to Snake in a trailer for the game, WHAT THE FUCK? Snake is an old man? We are finally getting to play as Solid Snake again and he's an old timer! What the hell is wrong with you Hideo Kojima(creator of MGS and Solid Snake)? Are you on crack? Do you not realise what people want? They want to play as Solid Snake from the MGS and MGS2 era, and have some new sneaking missions, they don't want to play as the Snake who has to get up 3 times in the middle of the night to take a piss. Then we get some babble about how Snake has aged prematurely and its integral to the story that he be that way, well you know what Kojima, FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU UP YOUR STUPID ASS! You didn't have to do that, you could have kept Snake at the same age and had some cool shit happening, but no, you had to tell your "story" and in doing so basically give the finger to all MGS fans. Sure the games may be good, but most fans would rather have 5 more Metal Gear Solid games as Solid Snake, than this convoluted mess of a story you have concocted. A lot of MGS diehards and probably thinking to themselves, "hey those games were great", maybe they were. I don't care, I wanted to play as Solid Snake, not Raiden and not Naked Snaked. Solid Snake bitch! That's where it's at.



3) Making Super Mario Sunshine about cleaning!


A lot of people claim Mario 64 on the N64 changed platform gaming as we know it, and yes I have played it on occasion and enjoyed it, but it didn't rock my world. It was only okay. But when it got levels right, it was fun. Its all about platforming fun, which is what Mario games should be about, be it 2D or 3D. Mario 64 redefined platform gaming in the generations to come because it got all the elements right and to this day people still play it.


It was only a matter of time before a succesor was to follow, but it would follow on the Gamecube years after Mario 64, in what people thought was going to be Mario 128 and turned out to be Mario 64 and a bit.


Mario Sunshine has Mario and Peach and the gang all travel to the wonderful Island Delfino for a holiday but when they arrive they find a monster made of some strange goop on the runway and Mario is given a backpack that acts as a hose to fight the monster and clean the goop off the runway. After this is done, it is revealed that someone posing as Mario is mucking up the island and causing monsters to appear and the people of the Island believe it is Mario. So he is to continue using the hose to clean up the island.


And for the majority of the game you are using the hose to clean goop. You also use it to reach higher platforms but most of the time, cleaning goop up. So Mario's big debut on the Gamecube was about....cleaning? I know Nintendo like to masters at innovation, but that move was just plain retarded. Don't get me wrong, the game isn't bad. Its quite good, but its not a classic Mario game. It feels like an offshoot game because it doesn't feel right. In some levels, you jump througha Portal and right at the start your backpack is stolen and the level is pure platforming and those levels are the most fun in the entire game. In the following months, Nintendo heard back from the fans, we want a game of just these levels.


Now Nintendo needed a strong Mario game, because the Gamecube was the underdog in a 3 way console war, and going up against the PS2 that had the Metal Gear Solid and Devil May Cry series and the Xbox which had Halo, the Gamecube needed a stand out Mario Game and instead got Mario Sunshine, in which you cleaned up stuff. The gamecube never really got a good foothold in the market and only now, throught the Wii are people looking at Gamecube games, thanks to backwards compatibility.


Nintendo learned from their mistake and the next Mario platform game on the home console was Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii and this was truly the next step in Platform gaming. The game rocked and blew everyone away. And honestly it is one of the most fun games I have played on the Wii.


So that is a hint for the future Nintendo, when your making your next Mario game and you think of something innovative, put it through some focus groups first, because Mario Sunshine was a HUGE mistake.


2) Having the follow up to Kingdom Hearts on the GBA


Ever heard of Kingdom Hearts? Of course you have. Kindgom Hearts is the game that melded Final Fantasy with Disney and was a concept everyone shit on, even me. A game in which Disney and the characters of Final Fantasy meet? That's a recipe for disaster, it couldn't work, could it?


Hell yeah! Kindom Hearts is a giant slice of awesoness, and had you taking control of Sora as he venutres to different worlds to rescue his friends Riku and Kairi. During his quest he teams up with Donald Duck and Goofy and fights along side them. Again this all sounds horrible but in execution and wonderful story telling it is great, Donald and Goofy are on the search for King Mickey who has gone missing to. The plot revolves around a group of beings called the Heartless, they want to steal peoples hearts and are led by Disney villian Malificent. You travel from world to world, but really you travelling from movie to movie. There is Alice in Wonderland, Tarzan, Aladdin, Pinnochio (well Monstro the wale), Peter Pan and more. The game was well recieved and well loved, but it ended in a bit of head scratcher and we knew more was to come.


So if you waited until Kindom Hearts 2 and played through the first 3 or 4 hours you are still confused because things are in motion that didn't happen in the first game, in fact your not sure what is going on at all. Well the reason for this is because the true sequel to the game is called Chain Of Memories and was released on the Game Boy Advance. It fills in the gaps between the 2 games and is actually pretty damn important considering how much of the story is filled in.


Released it on the GBA was a huge mistake because most of the fans of the game would not have heard of Chain Of Memories, it was not marketed well and most fans wouldn't even have a GBA to begin with. I can see some of the reasons behind it, it introduced a new card based battle system and certainly was suited in some places for a handheld format, but that is because it was designed as such. It left in its wake people who had followed a story in one game on one platform confused about why the supposed sequel to the game made no sense, then Square where like "oh no, I know we called this game Kindom Hearts 2, but its more like Kindom Hearts 2.5, you need to play Chain of Memories first".


Imagine watching The Fellowship Of The Ring, then 2 years later the Return Of The King is cinemas and everyone is like, what the fuck? There's a huge chunk missing, why is Gandalf pimped out in white clothes? What are the walking tress? This messed up. But Peter Jackson says, "dudes, we released Two Towers on DVD, you need to go buy that before you watch this film, duh!".


This really annoyed me and I eventually got the GBA version but to actually play the game, I found myself distracted, and I think it was because it wasn't on the PS2. Well Square rectified this mistake and have made the PS2 version of Chain of Memories, titled Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain Of Memories. However there is no real stance on a EU release of this game, it looks like Japan and USA only. So to play this on the PS2 it looks like import only.


1) Making every game into a motherfucking trilogy!


Nowadays when a game comes out, we are set into a routine of if it is good, a follow up will come out sooner or later. Its just taken as fact, Splinter Cell did really well so we have had a series built off the back of that.


Now an even more worrying trend is of Video Games being trilogies. A game comes out and when the game ends abrubtly with no real ending, we look to the maker of they game and they shrug their shoulders and say "it's a trilogy, bitch!". Assassin's Creed, Too Human, Halo, Bioshock, Mass Effect, they are all in the trilogy department now.


And we all know who to blame for this: GEORGE FUCKING LUCAS!


Yes that bearded bastard is the one to pin this on, because ever since he released the Star Wars Trilogy all those years ago, every child who grew up on them and now makes games has decided that they need to be like Lucas and create an "epic trilogy" to rival that of Star Wars.


Newsflash: NO YOU DON'T! If you have a story that is too big to tell in one game, make it to two, because you will run out of steam before the end and the third game will just be terrible and way too short (yes Halo 3, we're looking at you). Also do not announce a game is a part of a trilogy before the first part is even out, because god knows what will happen if the first part is shit and no one buys it (yes Too Human, we're looking at you now). Make a first game that tells a story on its own (Halo) and then decide if it is worth expaning the plot into a trilogy. The same can be said of Star Wars: A New Hope, on its own its a self contained plot that COULD and DOES lead to sequel, but had it been a flop, it could have remained as one film.


I made that choice number one because it is the one that bugs me most of all, you want to tell an epic story, good for you but don't do it at the expense of the gameplay or at the expense of someone investing the time at the end for it to have no real ending (ahem Assassin's Creed) and then expect us to wait until you churn out the second part because you have a "vision".


Well that's all for me on this post, this one was quite difficult to write to enjoy.

Tuesday 25 November 2008

IMO: The Top 5 Worst Comic Book Movies That Should Have Been Epic!


Comic Book Movies, they are all the rage now. The Dark Knight, Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man 1&2, X-Men and X-Men 2, are all staples of what Comic Book movies are all about. But with the good must also come the bad, but as stated in the title this is IMO (In My Opinion) and these are the Top 5 Worst Comic Book Movies That Should Have Been Epic!




5) Superman Returns


Since Superman 4: The Quest For Peace, movie goers have been deprived on The Big Blue Boy Scout stopping Lex Luthor and fighting bad guys. On the small screen we have had the truly fantastic Smallville to keep us satisfied, and it has done. We have a truly evil Lex Luthor and a brilliantly portrayed Clark Kent struggling with his powers and what he should do with them.


Along comes Bryan Singer, fresh off of making X-Men and X-Men 2, he is given a mega budget and told to make a Superman movie. The movie world was a veritable buzz of information regaridng this movie, not only where we getting Superman, but the man behind the first 2 X-Men movies was taking the helm. The cast was announced and one cast member really caught everyone's attention: Kevin Spacy as Lex Luthor. This was going to be good, we all knew it.


How wrong we were.


Superman Returns was awful, it told a slow plodding story that was in the end pointless. The crux of the matter was : Does The World Need Superman? He had been gone in space for X number of years and was now back, but did the world need him? Now if this was my movie, I would have thrown down a super villian that only Superman could deal with and have them slug it out. This movie? Have Lex Luthor involved in a real estate scam and have Superman not throw a single punch. Everything about this movie was bad, it was slow, it was boring and by the end of the movie you just didn't care about anyone involved, least of all Superman.


Warner Bros are considering a new Superman movie and the new rumour is that it is a complete reboot of the Superman franchise, if not it better be one hell of a sequel.




4) X-Men 3


When you have 2 films as good as X-Men 1 and 2, there is always the fear that if you plan on making a third movie it could be terrible. But if you lay the groundworks of a good story arc in place, then you don't have a lot to fear. You have good characters in place, good backstory, and story arcs that weave throughout all the movies. The first X-Men movie was an introduction to the characters, it told a story but it was just a taste of what was to come, X-Men 2 was the first movie on speed. We have more mutants, more action and one truly epic moment, the mansion attack! Troops raide Xavier's mansion hunting the mutants and Wolverine defends the mansion against the attack, everything about this scene is great. The movie delvers into Wolverine's past, Magneto escapes from prison and joins forces with the X-Men for a time, before betraying them and Jean Gray sacrifices herself to let the X-Men escape. She is engulfed in a tidal wave of water as a damn bursts and using her power she holds the water back just long enough for the X-Men to get out before it kills her. As the second movie ends, the camera pans to the lake where she died and skims the water, and under the water we see a shape forming before it cuts to black. The shape fortold the coming of Phoenix. Everything was in place for a third chapter to this story. Bryan Singer opted out of the third chapter to do Superman Returns and instead we got Brett Ratner. Ratner is only of note for the Rush Hour movies and the movie Red Dragon. Of them he only got Red Dragon right.




Ratner is like Michael Bay, he sees the need to throw in over the top action sequences where they do not need to be. And that is what this movie felt like, a huge long action sequence. Now don't get me wrong, action movies are awesome and to see more of Wolverine slicing and dicing is great, but with the X-Men movies you have great character scenes as well, that built up the characters as well as told the story. Let me give you an example of one of the best scenes in X-Men. Right at the end of the movie, Magneto is being held in a plastic prison, far away from any metals, and Charles Xavier is there in the cell visiting him. They are playing chess and talking, because before their conflict, they were friends. And they sit talking to each other. But its not idle talk on their lips, no Magneto is still trying to bring Charles around to his way of thinking and Vice Versa. Both Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart are at their best in these scenes, because they can flex their acting muscles. It has my favourite exchange of dialogue in any Comic Book movie ever:



Magneto: Doesn't it ever wake you in the middle of the night? The feeling that someday they will pass that foolish law, or one just like it, and come for you and your children?
Professor Xavier: It does, indeed.
Magneto: What do you do when you wake up to that?
Professor Xavier: I feel a great swell of pity for the poor soul who comes to that school looking for trouble.




Scenes like that are all through the first 2 X-Men movies, however in X-Men 3? GONE! G-O-N-E! Replaced with....action sequences, that make no sense. Also one plot point that annoyed me to no end, was the fact that the movie centers around a mutation "cure". In the comics there is no cure, I really hated that storyline from the movie and the only way to rectify it, is to do a fourth movie and they find out the cure wears off after a while and in fact starts killing mutants.


And don't get me started on the Phoenix Storyline because I could go on for days about how badly that was done. And for some reason the makers of all 3 movies hated Cyclops, because he was supposed to be the leader of the X-Men but instead was an ass. And then in the third movie, they didn't even give him an on screen death, so it made you think he was going to show up at the end and save the day....but no.


X-Men 3 was a wasted opportunity and pretty much destroyed my faith in the series. The next X-Men movie is a movie based around Wolverine's Origins, I just hope it gets the care and attention the first two movies got.




3) Spider-Man 3

Oh where to begin with this one. Spider-Man came out to huge acclaim in 2002, it was among the first films to get a comic book movie right. It was a fun, non-stop rollercoaster ride of a movie and was a smash hit to boot. Needless to say a sequel was forthcoming and not only did it better the first movie but added a lot of character development and paved the way for the third installment.


The director Sam Raimi had a clear idea of what he wanted to do in this movie, he wanted to introduce The Sandman and have Harry Osborn become the next Goblin. However the studios demanded that Venom be brought into the movie also and forced this storyline upon Raimi. As such Spider-Man 3 became the film it is now.


Spider-Man 3 is a horrible mish mash of storylines and feels like its going in one direction then goes in another. Some parts of the story are rushed, others are too long, and on a whole the movie is disjointed. As I have said in my gamers blog, I am a huge Spider-Man fan and am willing to forgive a lot when it comes to old webhead, but I could not enjoy this movie. I felt Sandman was a terrible villian and could not understand his motivation at all, the Harry Osborne subplot should have been an entire movie in itself or they could have removed Sandman and had the Venom storyline weave in with the Osborne storyline and finish Spider-Man 3 with Venom appearing and that would lead into a fourth movie. Lets talk about Venom. Everyone wanted to see Venom on the big screen but we all knew the backstory would take a long time to explain, or you could shortcut it in this movie and just say it was alien goo with no real backstory. So when Spider-Man was shown wearing the black suit in posters people got excited. We knew the beginning of the Venom storyline was here, what we didn't know is that the whole Venom storyline was there and it was going to suck balls. A lot of people criticised Topher Grace as Venom, I don't. I think he was a good choice, but we needed more of Eddie Brock's background and we needed more of his transformation to Venom. We needed to see what he could do and what his plans were. Venom was rushed, rushed to the extent where it ruined the whole storyline and then when he was destroyed we were left thinking, "is that it?". Well yes it was. Sam Raimi was forced to add it and now its gone.


This movie being terrible is a crime, but this is due to studio pressure and not the fault of Sam Raimi. I wish I could say I like it on some level, but I really don't and I am huge Spider-Man fan. It has been announced that Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire have signed on to make a fourth and fifth Spider-Man movie with the fourth being slated for release on 2011. We can only hope these films repair the damage of the third installment.


2) Hulk


A lot has been said about Ang Lee's Hulk movie. And rightly so, it is a stinking pile of horse crap. This is what is referred to as the "art house Hulk". Now if you watch the movie you can see what Ang Lee is trying to do and that is tell a complex story for this movie but what Ang Lee doesn't get is that the Hulk ISN'T a complex story and we don't want it to be. So here are my issues with the film in list form:


The Hulk doesn't appear for a full hour into the movie! Yes we have to wait an hour for the Hulk to show up. We're going to the movie to see The Hulk so why wait an hour before we see him. It's like going to see Quantum of Solace and James Bond doesn't appear until an hour into the movie.


Why are there Giant Poodles in this movie? Okay I get that the Hulk needed some monsters to fight, but Giant Poodles? There was no reason to add them but they did.


Hulk's main enemy was Bruce Banner's father who is repsonsible, partly, for the creation of the Hulk. And when Bruce eventually confronts him as The Hulk to end it all, his father becomes some kind of elemental creature which is never really explained.


Why does the Hulk get bigger the angrier he gets? I felt that was a silly addition to the series, and made him nearly invincible, think of it like this: a big monster comes after the Hulk and attacks him, with each attack the Hulk gets angrier and bigger, eventually he will get bigger than the monster and it will no longer be a threat.


So all of those things annoyed me about the film, but the worst thing of all was that it was so boring! It was long, slow and ponderous and we were all dragged along in this story and felt every single second of it. I have never been able to watch the whole film in one sitting, it would be torture to do so.


Thankfully they corrected the mistake of Hulk this year with the awesome Incredible Hulk movie starring Edward Norton as Bruce Banner. This is a reboot of the story, kind of, and tells the origin story of the Hulk in the opening credits and has Bruce Banner searching for a cure when the film starts. The film is short, an hour and a half in length but packs a lot into it and leaves you satisfied at the end. Its great fun and I advise anyone to check this out rather than the Ang Lee movie.


Joint 1st Place) Batman Forever & Batman and Robin

Deep breaths, deep beaths. Ooooh sa! Ooooh sa! Try to remain calm despite the fact that both movies fill you with MURDEROUS RAGE!

Batman and Batman Returns where good movies, Tim Burton had created 2 creative and fun movies with really dark undertones to the characters. Aimed less at kids and more for adults, these films where what people wanted. Micheal Keaton had portrayed an excellent Bruce Wayne and good Batman to boot and people knew a third movie would be forthcoming, they just didn't know when. Then Tim Burton said he wasn't doing it and Micheal Keaton also declined to return.

Later Val Kilmer was contracted to be Batman and everyone seemed quite pleased with this, and felt he could fill the role. Then Joel Schumacher was contracted to direct the movie and that's when it all went to hell. First off we found out that Robin would be in this film, he had been added into the script of Batman Returns but removed due to too many characters. So they added him into this movie. Then the villians were choosen, first off Robin Williams was asked to play The Riddler, he turned it down so the new flavour of the month, Jim Carrey got the part. Tommy Lee Jones was contracted to play Two Face and right away the part got credibility, until people saw how Jones portrayed the character.


Schumacher agreed with the studios that the Batman films should be aimed at kids and that is what he decided to make. Gone were the dark streets of Gotham, replaced with Neon everywhere and obvious studio sets and bag CGI city backgrounds. Batman's car, The Batmobile changed from a two person armoured tank to a one person parade float that someone with severe penis size issues would drive.


Right away it felt like a kids movie, the introduction of Robin was botched, The Riddler as a villian was terrible and Tommy Lee Jones played Two Face like a knock off of the Joker instead of the three dimensional character that Two Face actually is. Val Kilmer as Bruce Wayne and Batman was.... kind of okay, he was a little too whiny as Bruce Wayne instead of tortured and as Batman he was too wise cracking. Robin was played by Chris O'Donnell who tried his best but the part was terrible. From the opening scenes with Batman rescuing a security guard who was like something out a 50s movie, having to explain everything that's happening whilst screaming for help ("oh my god help me, look coming out the floor...it's boiling acid") was the first sign things had gone wrong. They did not improve from there. By the end of the movie you have a bad taste in your mouth. Schumacher himself said he had a terrible time filming the movie, that Val Kilmer was hard to work with and Carry and Tommy Lee Jones did not work well together because Jones felt threatened by Carrey.


The film was a commerical success because of the kid like tone in it. So instantly a sequel was commissioned. Schumacher decided that he wanted to pay homage to the camp Batman TV series in this movie. And the movie they made was a near two hour gay joke. George Clooney replaced Kilmer as Batman, O'Donnell returned as Robin and we got 2 new villians in this movie. First of Arnold Schwarzenegger played Mr Freeze and Uma Thurman turned up as Poision Ivy. Every line Mr Freeze said in the movie was a quip to do with things being cold. Then they decided they needed more girls to watch this movie so they introduced Batgirl played by Alicia Silverstone.


The film was a horrible mish mash of campness, gay jokes and rubber suits with nipples. Hell Batman even produces the Bat Credit Card at one point. Joel Schumacher was said to have said before each take "Remember everyone, this is a cartoon." Warner Bros signed everyone back on to make a direct sequel to this movie before it was even released. But as soon as the reviews came in, they canned the project, the film made some money but the reviews killed it. And by the time the smoke had cleared even Joel Schumacher himself was apologising for the movie.


So that is the Top 5 Worst Comic Book Movies That Should Have Been Epic, my next IMO: Top 5 will be Top 5 Worst Video Game Mistakes.

Thursday 20 November 2008

Oh no, not another one

My reason for starting an offshoot blog is simple, I need somewhere to vent my non-video game related nonsense. Blogging seems to the be in-thing so I figure I shall put this out there and see what happens. However this will not be the usual nonsense of: 'went to the shops and got a pint of milk, came home and watched old episodes of The A-Team, my day rocked.' This blog shall be used for all my creative stuff that swirls around in my head. I need somewhere to let this creative things in my head roll out, of they stay in there and stagnate. I used to write short stories and very quickly ran out of steam after I delivered what I thought were 5 really good stories. My mind sort of crashed after those stories because when I re-read them I realised I didn't think I could write anything that good ever again.

In a way to kind of try my hand at writing again, I began to write about a subject that was on my mind and something I had a not-so-secret passion for, professional wrestling. I love watching professional wresting, the athletics and the storytelling that are put into some matches just grabs me. So I started on a book, it was titled: Confessions of a Former Hulkamanic or Reasons why Vince McMahon can kiss my ass.
It was a deconstruction of my perspective of watching WWF throughout the years. I was chronicling the rise of the WWF to what I consider its peak and then was going to spend a few chapters at the end detailing how I view wrestling now and what the landscape for wrestling for an average fan is now. It is still a work in progress and I do plan to finish it at some point, mostly because I am stubborn, and that is where this blog comes in. If I use this blog to clear some of the creative clutter that is my head, it may give me a clear head to sit down and finish the book at some point. The book sits at 86 pages so far, 40,225 words, and currently is detailing 1996 in the WWF. I intend to get to 2001 and their peak at Wrestlemania 17.

So more posts to come, generally filled with rabid nonsense and silliness.