Friday, February 24, 2006

Free-for-all - Non-comic thoughts

First off, go check out Len's blog, Commanding Thoughts. You'll do it because I told you.

Second, why does Nintendo keep pushing back the release of The Legend of Zelda:Twilight Princess? First it was to be released in November of 2005, then April of '06, and now it's June. Fantastic. Hopefully it's because they're trying to get all the bugs worked out, and not because they've decided to make it a Revolution launch title. If it's the latter, it'll probably be 2008 before I play it (I'm far too cheap to buy a new game console). Still, when you're console got poned as badly worldwide by the PS2 as the Gamecube did (it's even worse if you look just at the U.S.), I'd think you might not want to piss off your customers by pushing back the most eagerly anticipated game again, and again, and again.

That being said, I am enjoying The Legend of Zelda:The Windwaker. It's even made me stop my rotating game schedule (I was playing about 8 different games for about two hours at a time there for a couple months). I've gotten used to the visual style, even if I still don't love it. Cruising around in the boat is pretty fun, especially once it stops making you go to certain places, and lets you travel as you wish. SPOILER WARNING! I was a little disappointed that Tetra seemed to become so demure when she found out she was Zelda, but I guess that could be chalked up to shock from finding out the truth. She had been so brash up until then, taking crap from no one, kinda Huntress-like, only a good leader.

I played a quick game of Heroclix today, and won. Len gave me a rundown of the rules, and I went up against Jack. I did win, but I was playing with Len's clix, my opposition didn't have his full compliment, and I'm pretty sure he held back. There was a moment early where he was going to do something with Emerald Empress, and Len asked him not to do that to a guy on his first time. Still, pity victory, I'll take it.

SPOILER WARNING! Watching Evangelion last night, it occurred to me that the humans should have lost already. Their Evas are actually Angels, but they've got "armor" on, which actually serves to bind their power. So when they fight, their strength is restrained. How then, are they able to defeat any Angels, whose powers aren't restrained? I suppose in a series as messed up as Evangelion, I shouldn't worry about stuff like that. I further suppose I should just ask Papafred. He is after all, the one who taught me that Evangelion really has three endings, and so you should just pick the ending you like best and treat that one as the "true" ending. Who explained all kinds of things about Rei Ayanami's origin that I would have never gotten on my own, not to mention all the Judeo-Christian symbolism. I'm sure he'd give me some line about how the human soul bonded to the Eva, and that makes it more powerful. Of course, when you've watched the series so many times that you know what the characters are saying when you're watching it in Japanese with no subtitles, and you don't speak Japanese, you damn well ought to know the series inside and out.

A few years back, Papafred takes a film history class. For this, he had to watch a classic film and write a fifteen page paper on it. Papafred was a Computer Science major, so writing astute film analysis is not really his strength. Of course, neither is English in general, just ask Dr. Gathman. There's a reason why he dubbed me his "thesaurus". Anyway, he chose Forbidden Planet (it always amuses me that Leslie Nielsen was once a "serious" actor), and gave it his best shot to describe the undertones of repressed sexuality in the film. Which included our favorite dialogue, "Randy (the Robot), where have you been? I was giving myself a lube job."

Yeah, I'll bet.

Anyway, Papafred got through it, passed the class, and that was that, but we always joked that if he could have written the paper over Evangelion, he could have gotten fifteen pages easily. Hell, in fifteen pages, he probably wouldn't even have gotten past all the stuff about Rei.

1 comment:

LEN! said...

Evangelion. Man, that's some insanity. I've seen it and it's... yeah. I think there might be almost 20 people in the world who can really, completely understand it. And no, I'm not one of them.

I'll say the same thing I always say about this: When you get done watching that, if you haven't already seen it, you should watch another show called RahXephon. It's got a lot of similarities, but, eventually all the questions are answered--and that doesn't always happen with anime.

As far as HeroClix goes, there was that one possible attack with Emerald Empress that Jack could have taken, but even if he had done it, I don't think it would have changed the game all that much. Basically, it was a mostly even game. At least that's my opinion.