Chris

Believe me, you're not missing many "themes". Princess Mononoke is a striking exception that is actually pretty awesome. Most other anime deals with the same lamer overdone themes. And I too hate the ridiculous cookie-cutter stylistic aspects of anime. And I've seen enough anime, believe me, to know that most of it is pretty bad.

Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude?

Yes, this is true. I think one big problem with adventures these days is that while the rest of the gaming world has been striving for more and more interactivity, adventure games seem to just be getting less and less dynamic. Adventure games of old didn't have advanced AI algorithms or anything, but the good ones had well-written characters and situations that made the player feel like his character was actually part of a world. Today's adventure games still don't have any advanced AI algorithms, but they're not compensating in any way, there are just fewer and poorer characters as well as less attention to detail to enhance the environment and events. Adventure games have never been about reflexes or things moving across the screen at fast speeds or lots of action sequences, but a good adventure game should still manage to somehow be exciting or engaging or engrossing or other words beginning with e, rather than being exercises in drudgery.

Fair enough. What I had heard about the game from others and the press led me to believe otherwise. We'll see, I guess. I'm not sure exactly why I want to try Myst IV. I mean, I do enjoy puzzle-solving to a certain extent, but not when I have to put up with a bunch of stupid crap. Myst has, to me, always been a puzzle game first and foremost (when it came out, it didn't even occur to me it was an adventure--that was not a negative judgment, I just never thought of it that way), and if I'm going to play some puzzles I'd rather play them in an environment suited to them rather than in the context of a shitty rest of the game that has no business taking my money. Who knows? Maybe I won't enjoy it. It just looks like a safer bet than most of the other adventures on the shelf right now.

My big problem is that while graphics technology has increased, just about every other aspect of adventure games has either stayed stagnant or gotten worse. Every once in a while a fairly well-written game comes along, but I find it WAY more difficult these days to find a game with compelling characters, interesting themes, well-constructed narrative, solid art direction, creative puzzles, etc. I find most of them to be so static it's absurd. I had a good time with The Longest Journey and Broken Sword 3, and I'm probably forgetting a couple others--those games actually felt like they had some life in them. I'd hesitate to call either really great games but it felt like they had a reason to exist rather than just to fill a market niche. These dime-a-dozen prerendered-in-Maya cookie-cutter so-called-atmospheric (note: a dark palette and lack of non-player characters is not "atmosphere", it's just cliche by this point) games simply don't do it for me. I've made my share of regrettable purchases at this point and I just won't buy an adventure game unless I have really good reason to think it won't bore my ass off. I'm REALLY looking forward to Dreamfall. Now there's a game that looks like the designers truly care about their game. I'm sure crappy game designers care too (it's a silly job to have if you don't care), but unfortunately the crappy games don't really show it. Dreamfall looks like it's been injected with humanity and thought, which are in short supply in the adventure genre today. Fahrenheit looks promising, too. I really want to give Myst IV a try despite not being a huge Myst fan, but I'm thinking I should maybe finish the other games in the series first. I'll get to it eventually though. I find it pretty ridiculous. It would be offensive, except that it's such an obviously defensive and kneejerk reaction that it's hard to actually get offended. I don't think it would speak very highly of my intelligence if I were to subject myself to a game full of vapid dialogue, second-rate art, and a plot that's been done eight thousand times just for the challenge of slogging through some puzzles that in all likelihood are going to end up being poorly constructed (Runaway, I'm looking at you) or ridiculously easy (hey, Syberia) or both or worse.

Pshh. That blue is okay against the solid colors of the brain graphic, but against the shaded greens and stuff of the rest of the pictures it looks gross. It doesn't blend well at all.

A common tactic for Wal-Mart is to open a store in a small town. The people living there don't necessarily know anything about Wal-Mart's business practices, but they see that the prices are lower than the local small businesses, so they shop there. Eventually Wal-Mart ends up putting the competing stores out of business and they can take a good percentage of the town's workforce because there are no longer enough non-Wal-Mart jobs in town. There's not that much that can be done about it, honestly. It's pretty despicable, and that company disgusts me. But I don't think it's fair to say things like "aren't there enough anti-Wal-Mart people?". You can't expect every consumer to be aware of what's going on behind the scenes. Also, Wal-Mart is not unionized, so their employees don't have unions to demand the same rights that most other businesses have to provide. That's one way they keep their prices so low.

Was that the whole show!?

The plateau hasn't really happened with film. A movie can still make big box office numbers, if not longtime appreciation, by just looking really spectacular. However, it's evened out enough such that filmmakers don't really need to think about it if their movies don't warrant it. In games, any developer still needs to constantly think about minimum requirements and compatibility issues.

Not that you have any way of declaring that all Wal-Mart employees are conformist and uninteresting...

Not to mention, I suspect most people that have already hit the level cap are hardcore gamers who are spending more time than most can. I've been playing for a couple weeks now and in that time one of my friends who was level 52 is now just 54. Even if he kept raising at a steady pace he won't be 60 for two more months, except that it's not a steady pace and the higher he gets the longer it will take. He said he's planning on hitting 60 at about mid-April. He's been playing since launch (and playing pretty regularly) so that's at least five months for a top-level character, not allowing for taking time off due to a busy schedule or what have you. That's not bad. That long from now Blizzard will surely have more content (Battlegrounds is coming in the next couple weeks for one). And if you run two characters simultaneously (like I'm doing now), it'll be even longer before you ever have to worry about not having high-level content.

I suspect this will be somewhat improved with the Battlegrounds PvP content, which is partially intended for high-level players. Blizzard has also announced that they plan to create more high-level instances and other content.

Oh, yeah. So how about that Moment of Silence?

Yeah, I admit it's a pretty cool poster. It's a big marble staircase leading up to a big marble building flanked by huge mammoth statues. I don't remember what part of the game it's from, but it looks nice.

I too dislike Syberia. EDIT: And yet, as Jake can attest, I have a Syberia poster on my wall. I only have a couple adventure game posters, which is why I put it up. If anyone asks about it, I just say "Ah, Syberia is an adventure game. Let me tell you about some good, entirely unrelated, adventure games."

The reason for that is that CRT technology has been around longer and is less expensive to manufacture.

Well, it's older technology and presumably cheaper to produce.

Whoa, that rules a lot.

Uh, I don't know, I just wash my face the same way I did when I was clean-shaven. I wouldn't consider it any extra effort.

Most reviews seemed to consider the Xbox one an improvement. I don't really know since I've never played the PC version. For what it's worth, I thought High Road to Revenge was great.

What about Williams Street though? They have a bunch of original cartoons which are anything but conventional. EDIT: Williams Street is the studio that does the Adult Swim cartoons on Cartoon Network

Frank Miller is a pretty good writer but his art in Sin City is incredible. The stuff that guy does with shadows is out of control. He often doesn't use any kind of outline at all, leaving everything to be entirely defined by silhouette. It's gorgeous work.

I saw The Aviator a few days ago partially on Jake's recommendation and it kicked my ass. Man, holy crap. After Gangs of New York I didn't know what to expect from Scorsese but he pulled through with this one. Geez. I still really want to see Sideway; I hope I get a chance before it leaves theatres. I saw the first shown footage of the film at Comic-Con, and I've been watching that trailer constantly since it came out, and I still can't decide if the movie looks retarded or awesome. I'm a big fan of Frank Miller's original comics and I think he and Rodruiguez have done about as accurate a job as one can turning a comic into a movie (at least visually, since I'm just going on the trailer), but I hope that in this case "good adaptation"="good movie".

Cartoon Network, no question. No question at all.