Thursday, July 24, 2008

Digital Live Short: Traffic

Well I bought my friend's digital camera and I've been doing a few tests with it and making these artsy shorts. This one is called Traffic.
"7 Ghost I" by Nine Inch Nails is the song.
Leave a comment!

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Batman 3 Theories

Warning! This post contains spoilers about The Dark Knight. If you don't want to know how it ends then press the page down button until you pass the picture of the Tumbler.

Greetings, my overactive brain has been thinking about the 3rd Batman movie in the Batman Begins trilogy. So far we've had Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, both are excellent movies and should be seen. Unlike the end of Batman Begins, there's no clear nod to the next villain in the third movie. Christopher Nolan (the director) and Christian Bale(who plays Batman/Bruce Wayne) are under contract to do 3 movies and with The Dark Knight blowing away all expectations and sale records, the 3rd one is most likely in the works. We might have to wait a few years, chances are Nolan will do a movie in between.

Spoilers Begin Below Image:


So we know that Batman has taken the fall to keep Harvey Dent's image in tack and keep a ton of criminals behind bars and has now become Public Enemy Number One now that the Joker is behind bars. Bruce Wayne's idea of Batman is on shaky ground and Batman has to redeem himself to Gotham City. Batman will not give up until the city is in order, no matter how many people are against him. The newly named Commissioner Gordon will not have completely abandoned Batman and will still hold secret meetings with him to discuss current going ons.
We also don't know if Harvey Dent is alive or dead, sure there was that funeral, but there's a chance he's alive and locked up somewhere secret, driven insane from hate. The 3rd movie could have Batman coming to see Dent in a Silence of the Lambs quid pro quo information session on how to process a mob boss. Then there's a chance of escape for Two-Face..
So far overall messages of the movies have been Fear and Chaos, the next one might be Hate. Hate differently plays well with Batman trying to redeem himself.

Here's a few ideas for the movies:

A) Bruce Wayne seeing that Batman isn't quite doing the job decides to help with the city and begins to donate a ton of money around to places like schools and help update the transit system. Batman's presence hasn't gone unnoticed and a film is being made and Bruce sees it as a good way to drum up support and buys the company in charge of the production to help it along. Sadly Garfield Lynns is working that that production and with a bigger budget because of Wayne. Because of the news he botches up a stunt and costs thousands of dollars worth of damages and he's fired and decides to get revenge on Wayne. Garfield becomes Fire Fly and goes around town destroying things under the name Wayne.

B) With an agent of chaos being Fire Fly a natural choice is to get an agent of order, a villain who loves structure. Two choices here, keeping close to the Nolan Universe set of rules are The Clock King and The Riddler.
B1) The Clock King could be a city worker or attorney and catches the public transportation system with the Mayor, who is trying to prove the city is safe. The Clock King, aka Temple Fugate (in the 90's cartoon) or William Tockman (in the comics) takes the mayor's advice and tries to break his OCD like habits and try something a little random and it completely ruins his life and he seeks revenge against the mayor. Also being unhinged he pulls off some extraordinary heists with precision timing also studies Batman and gets to know how fast he takes to throw punches and such.
B2) The Riddler could go two ways here, but I highly doubt they'll have Mr. Reese from the Dark Knight (Mr. Reese = mysterious, lolz) as the Riddler. He could be called in by what remains of the mob or the police to crack the mystery of Batman. If the Riddler is in the cards for the 3rd movie we could get the title of The World's Greatest Detective, but might be a little misleading.

C) Theory 3 could be one of my biggest fan boy dreams. We could get a live action version of Mask of the Phantasm, albeit a bit different. A former girl friend, Andrea Beaumont, from Bruce's college days comes back to town and a new dark stranger is going around knocking off mob bosses. Needless to say this Phantasm story would be a bit different from the 90's animated one, epically since Health Ledger has passed away. But could be substitute with Harvey Dent who failed to put them away.

D) There's 2 villains who could show up, but could be just doing their own thing. Catwoman, aka Selina Kyle, could just be a jewel theft in for the fun and could prove an interesting 3 way love triangle between Bruce, Andrea and Selina. Oo la la..
We could also see a cameo by the Penguin, aka Oswald Cobblepot, as a club owner with a few dealings in the back.


Here the Spoilers End!

So there we go. There's some thoughts about the 3rd Batman movie by Christopher Nolan. Hopefully the team from The Dark Knight will be back, complete with Christopher's brother screen writing and some input from David S. Goyer. We'll have to wait and see what happens in the next couple of years. Good luck to the team!

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Digital Live Short: Water

I seem to have good luck. I've decided to jump to digital and get a digital camera and my friend bought a new digital camera from a friend and wanted to sell his. So I decided I'd give his camera a test drive to see what it could do. I'll be doing a few of these tests, so enjoy the first one called "Water". The song used is "6 Ghost I" by Nine Inch Nails.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Doctor Mario Online RX Review

What game do you think of when I say "Puzzle Game"? Well... if it wasn't for the picture and the title of the entry you'd probably said Tetris. Tetris is the best known puzzle game and has appeared on nearly every single system since it's release. Nintendo has 2 of its own puzzle series, Puzzle League (Tetris Attack) and Doctor Mario.

Unlike Super Mario Brothers, Doctor Mario games haven’t changed since it first came out in 1990 for the NES and Gameboy. Doctor Mario Online RX is practically the same as the original NES/Gameboy, Super Nintendo, or the N64 version. No new game modes, no new moves, no new combos. If anything they took the N64 version, took the story mode out, took Marathon mode out, took out 3 and 4 player mode, and left 3 out of 4 of the music in. But they did add in Virus Buster mode, which I will talk about later.

Anyway, if you've never played a Doctor Mario game I'll explain it to you. Mario, or your Mii in this version, has a bottle with viruses in it. The viruses come in 3 colors: red, blue and yellow. To get rid of the viruses you must place Megavitamins, which also come in the same 3 colors and in variety packs, on them to destroy them. The name of the game is colour matching. Blue pills go on blue viruses. Pretty simple, no? It gets a little more complicated, the pills aren't always solid colors. The pills are divided in half and one half can be a different colour, see the image. So you have to line up the colors, match 4 pill halves together to clear them. 3 with 1 virus, 2 for full colour pills and 2 viruses. You can set up combos and more depending on how you set up your pills.

The game play of Doctor Mario hasn't changed, but presentation wise has, the series has done way with the 2D Mario tossing avatar and viruses dancing around in a circle for some very poorly modeled versions of the Doctor and the viruses, and the Miis. The animation for the Doctor, Viruses, and Miis are all extremely stiff and awkward to watch as an animator. Even more so then Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance in game animation. As far as multiplayer goes... don't try it. The screen is divided up so poorly that you can't see your pill jar very well, a major step backwards, especially since the N64 version had 4 player battles.

The second part of the game is Virus Buster, which comes from Brain Age 2. In Virus Buster mode you use the Wii Mote to point and pull down the pills onto the viruses and get to control the falling junk as well. Up to 4 people can play this mode and it is rather entertaining. During this game play, your Mii and several random Miis from your Mii Channel are shown in a crowd pushing against some viruses. It is rather strange seeing Hungry Hungry Hobo in a doctor's outfit and saying," Never Give Up!" in a text bubble, see below. Virus Buster contains 2 different versions of Chill and Fever, compared to the other mode that just recycles the music from the N64 version. I was very disappointed, considering the awesomeness of Chill from Super Smash Brothers Brawl which was just released earlier this year.

If you want a version of Doctor Mario and don't have your copy of the NES, Super NES, N64 or Nintendo Puzzle Collection for the GameCube and need a Doctor Mario game, then give it a go. There's nothing to unlock, nothing really to draw you back other then the basic mode. If you want a better puzzle game then go for Planet Puzzle League, Tetris DS or Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords on the DS or download Pokémon Puzzle League for the Wii through the Wii Shop Channel. Here's hoping they release The New Tetris for the N64 soon for the Virtual Console.

Grade: C