25 Years of NES Part 22: Metal Gear
Author: skoce
Thoughts on Mizzou’s coaching hire and baseball
The Tigers hired a new coach and after a week of thinking about it, I’m still not too happy with the hire. It is not necessarily a bad hire, Haith had Miami competitive if not consistent and Miami is not really a basketball school, but the flirtation with Painter and Tubby Smith made me think they were going to get a big-name, proven coach. But they apparently could not lure any big name to Columbia. Which is okay. I’m surprised that the talk with Painter got as far as they did, considering the situation Painter was in. He has is alma mater is great shape, why would he leave that for a school that is at best equal in standing. Other than money, which Purdue matched when they heard Mizzou had Painter’s ear. It was a worth chase, but I’m not sure Mizzou ever had a chance at success.
Frank Haith coached Miami for 7 mediocre seasons, with only one trip to the NCAA tournament. He apparently (i.e. according to wikipedia) ran a clean program off the court, with success in getting his players to graduate, which is definitely good thing. However, that will not help him keep his job if the Tigers do not win on the court. The big problem is that it is a small-splash hire when the fans were expecting a big one. I hope he is able to overcome everyone’s doubt, but I’m not confident.
I am glad Mizzou did not go for, or get, VCU’s Shaka Smart. I know he is the hot name, along with Brad Stevens, after the Rams great Final Four run. He got VCU deeper in the tourney than Mizzou has ever been. But his record at VCU has not been exactly stellar. They have been good, and I hope that they continue to do well, but I do not think it would be a good idea to pay him the money they were offering when he has only 2 years of head coaching experience and his team hasn’t finished higher than 4th in the Colonial Athletic Association. Maybe the potential of Shaka Smart would have been better than the known talents of Haith, but I a little glad Mizzou played it safe. I’m at least confident the program will not fall apart under Haith, I’m not so sure about Smart. At worst, MU looks like they did this year for the next 3 or 4 before trading up for a good coach and maybe hitting a home run with that hire. At best, Haith works out and the Tigers maintain what Anderson has built over the last 5 years.
It is also the start of the MLB season. I don’t watch much baseball, usually only opening day and the playoffs. This is because, as a Royals fan, I kind of hate baseball. I am unfortunately just old enough to remember the days when the Royals were not only relevant, but also actually good. They won their only World Series about 2 weeks after I was born. The first baseball I watched was the waning days of the George Brett era. The amount of attention I pay to baseball correlates directly with how good the Royals do, which means I usually pay little to not attention to baseball. I don’t think I was ever going to be a big baseball fan, but the complete collapse of the Royals organization didn’t help. But hey, through the first 2 weeks of the season, the Royals have at least been entertaining, though I do not expect their success to continue.
So I hope all the baseball fans enjoy the season. I’ll keep watching as long as the Royals are in the picture and check out when they inevitably trail off into irrelevance. But I’ll be back in October for the World Series.
Futurama Episode 10
Last Month in Reading: March
This was not a good month for me, reading wise. Mostly because all the new handheld games I intend to buy this year came out this month and I used time that would normally be reading time as Tactics Ogre and OkamiDen time. But I still got four books read, so it wasn’t a complete waste.
Fer-de-Lance Rex Stout
This is the first of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries. I can see why he is considered one of the greats of the genre. This is a terrific mystery. Nero Wolfe seems to be a progenitor of the irascible, eccentric detectives popular today, like TV’s Monk or House (Doctor, yeah, but House is totally a detective). Wolfe’s eccentricities, for those unfamiliar, has him refusing to leave his house to investigate, leaving it all to his assistant Archie Goodwin, who is the narrator. Archie Goodwin does all the legwork, but Wolfe uses his findings to solve the case. It is an interesting, workable good set-up. The actual case they solve is not exactly complex, but it is not too simple. The brother of an acquaintance of Wolfe turns up missing, then a respected man turns up dead with little explanation. Wolfe puts the two together and realizes that they are connected. So he sends Archie to look around. It follows in the standard manner of mysteries, with Archie and Wolfe getting closer and closer to the truth. Though it ends with Wolfe crossing the line from eccentricity to sociopathy. I’d recommend it, and I’ll be reading more of Stout’s mysteries.
Napoleon’s Wars An International History 1803-1815 Charles Esdaile
Charles Esdaile’s Napoleon’s Wars is a thorough account of the Napoleonic Wars. I should have known how annoyed I get with this book when I purchased it. Esdaile is British, I am a Napoleon apologist; should have known his take on Napoleon would be one I did not like. Don’t get me wrong, the book is well written and accurate, but he seems to be trying to equate Napoleon with Hitler and cajole readers into thanking Britain for saving the world from him. Every good thing Napoleon did is set as merely a ploy to get to more war and killing. While no one can argue that Napoleon was not inclined to battle, I do not think the rest of what he did is easily swept aside. The wars of the time were almost as much the fault of the leaders of other nations as Napoleon. Still this is definitely a worthwhile read, though possibly more dense that a casual reader would appreciate.
Mariel of Redwall Brian Jacques
Mariel escapes from the pirate Gabool the wild, journeys to Redwall and then goes back to rescue her father, Joseph the Bellmaker. (Remember the Joseph Bell from Redwall?) Joined by new friends from the Abbey she treks back to the fortress of the increasingly insane Gabool. I actually like the cast of this book more than the ones from Redwall or Mossflower. Martin is kind of boring in life, but as a ghostly protector, he is great. But here we get Mariel and the first more nautically themed Redwall book. Also, the first female main character. It is kind of hard to separate these books after a while, because they all are very similar.
Martin the Warrior Brian Jacques
This is my least favorite of the Redwall series so far. The bad guys are ridiculously incompetent, and the knowing what happens next makes the book is predictable. It seems like Jacques realized that Martin did little in his previous book (Mossflower) and needed another book to make him seem as important as he does the books where only his spirit appears. This book details an adventure of Martin’s before he comes to Mossflower. As usual, there is a horde of vermin and imperiled good animals. The most interesting thing in this one it the troupe of traveling performers, who sadly get to do little performing. Martin and his newly met friends escape from , then bring an army back to take him down. You know, the usual Redwall stuff. The fun of these books is not in their plots, which are standard adventure fare, but in the execution. And Martin only slightly under delivers on that.
Wolf Pups and Trotmobiles
I want to fully recommend OkamiDen to anyone who owns a DS, but I can’t. Not because OkamiDen is not a great game, it is, but because it too similar to its prequel Okami.
The original Okami, whether on the Wii or PS2 version, is one of the best games of the last ten years. It is one of the few games that not only uses the Zelda action/adventure formula, but also uses it as well as the Zelda games do. Aside from playing perfectly, Okami also looked and sounded wonderful. It looked like a Japanese watercolor painting come to life. Okami was just a joy to play and even to watch. Video game consumers upheld their reputation for ignoring wonderful things by ignoring Okami. Twice.
OkamiDen, part sequel, part remake, part port, is just the same as its predecessor. Capcom did a terrific job fitting the game on the DS. But in the first 5 hours or so, I have seen nothing that was not present in the first game. It is arguably the best Zelda-like game on the DS; the only actual complaint I have with the game is that the first few dungeons are a bit too simple. However, if the original Okami is available you should play it instead. But that little wolf pup (Chibiterasu, the main character) is just so damn cute. I can’t help but love him. Play OkamiDen. Buy it right now and play it. Just don’t expect the same mind blowing experience as the original Okami.
I also beat Steambot Chronicles this week. I need to write a big long love letter to this game, but I can’t. Not right now. Maybe it’s the fact that I played most of the game more than 2 years ago and it’s a little fuzzy. Or maybe that fuzziness comes from the fact that I just had my wisdom teeth removed and am currently taking Vicodin. Either way, I don’t have it in me right now. But Steambot Chronicles is a very good game. Made by Irem and published in America by Atlus, Steambot Chronicles is a somewhat clunky sandbox game (GTA) with a great hook: you control a mech (called a Trotmobile in the game) through a Miyazaki-esque world. About half of the game is played by piloting a mech. The controls take a little getting used to; one control stick controls the left leg, the other the right, L1 and R1 attack with the left and right hand respectively. But once you master them, stomping around in a giant mech is just delightful. Your mech originally called the Earl Grey II but you can change it to whatever you want, is highly customizable. There are all kinds of weapons/arms, legs and bodies, as well as different headlights and roof attachments. In it, you can do all sorts of things: fight in arenas, transport people and goods, go mining, etc.
There are plenty of things to do outside the mech. You can choose the amnesiac main character‘s, named Vanilla Beans, dialogue. You can play him as a cocky jerk, a shy hero or anything in between. It can make each playthrough slightly different. One of the first things the player does is join a band with the people who found him on the beach. By playing a Guitar Hero-esque mini-game, you can play a dozen or so instruments. The songs are cheesy, but they fit the general tone of the game. That tone is earnestness. This is a very earnest game. It is somewhat sloppy, somewhat unfocused, but very earnest. It is not a game for everyone; someone could easily be put off by the somewhat clunky nature of everything in the game. But the world and tone make it a game that is easy to love in spite of its flaws.
Sucker Punch Review
If you have read the reviews of Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch you have no doubt heard that it is insultingly bad, a complete failure of filmmaking. While the glee some reviewers seem to be taking in eviscerating the movie is disgusting, there is some truth to them. Sucker Punch is largely a failure. But many of the reviews seem to miss the point entirely. Roger Moore‘s, of the Orlando Sentinel, review called it “an unerotic unthrilling erotic thriller.” While I am sure he pleased with his wittiness, the quote exposes just how much he missed the point. Sucker Punch is something of a thriller, it sits in between that and about five other genres, one thing it is definitely not, nor is it intended to be, is erotic. Though someone judging the movie based on its trailers could be forgiven for thinking so. Sucker Punch appears to be cotton candy; light and sweet and wholly insubstantial, but it is not. It is cotton candy wrapped around a corn dog; there is substance there even if you maybe wish there were not.
Sucker Punch tells the story of “Babydoll”, a young girl whose evil stepfather has her committed to an insane asylum and scheduled for a lobotomy in order to get his hands on her inheritance. With the help of some fellow inmates, Babydoll masterminds an escape attempt. Instead of this simply occurring in the asylum, the movie takes place in two levels of imagination. The first, which is seen through the bulk of the movie, is the asylum as a bordello. The corrupt orderly becomes a ruthless pimp and the doctor trying to help the girls becomes the Madame. When the women attempt to retrieve one of the items needed for their escape the world becomes a fantastic battlefield, where the characters become soldiers.
Problems arise with the exact relationship among the three levels of reality. Sometimes it works great, like the lighter (with a dragon on it) needed becoming a fire-breathing dragon. Sometimes the parallel is not clear. In the bordello, Babydoll entrances everybody with an implied striptease, but what is she doing to draw attention in the asylum? The concept is interesting, but the execution is less confusing than confused itself.
The missions, each set to a different song that it just too meaningful, are the films highlights. Whatever problems Snyder may have with storytelling, he knows how to film an action scene, slow motion notwithstanding. The mission’s settings are not believable because the settings are intentionally and inherently unbelievable. They take place in fantastic, but coherent worlds. These are the cotton candy. The young stars, Emily Browning, Abby Cornish and Jena Malone, do a great job in the action scenes. The enemies they face are delightfully unbelievable. 20 foot-tall samurais and clockwork zombie German soldiers. They are beaten by barely more than teen girls, but these scenes are expressly fantasies, they are deliberately unreal. Though the movie may falter in other places, the actions scenes are great.
The bordello/asylum parts are less good. It seems like parts of it were not completely thought out. Dr. Gorski’s position is particularly problematic. If she is a doctor, shouldn’t she have a better idea of what is happening with her patients, especially is she is supposed to care. It does play with the viewers expectations. Positioned as a “geeky” movie, shown at comic conventions and whatnot, Sucker Punch is not what they expected. While the characters are dressed in somewhat skimpy outfits, and I’m being generous to call them somewhat so (I mean really look at how much skin is showing), Snyder makes sure never to titillate. While the setting and outfits may suggest sexiness, the movie is deliberately unsexy. It is the same with Babydoll’s dances. We know they are sexy due to everyone else’s reactions, but we never see her dance. Babydoll and friends are put into the most powerless position possible, then take control of it. We are supposed to know they are exploited, but not given a chance to revel in the exploitation.
The problem is not with these scenes empowering intentions, but with the clumsiness of their execution. Snyder knows neither subtly nor irony, (I once heard that somebody tried to explain subtly to Snyder, but Snyder punched him the face until he exploded. I assume that is why no one has had the courage to try with irony.) which is often a strength (the action scenes) but here it is a weakness. The setting of the asylum and the bordello is poorly explained and poorly resolved. Sucker Punch wants to be deep and meaningful, but its message is not particularly deep and its meaning is not clear.
Sucker Punch is admirable in its failure. It could have just been the action scenes, and possibly been a better movie for it, but Snyder tried to do more. It does spectacle, and does it well, but the depth it strives for just is not there. It is that corn dog in the middle of your cotton candy; it may be more filling, but it clashes with the sugary sweetness of outside and is not particularly good on its own. Still, you have to admire the audacity of trying to put a corn dog in the middle of some cotton candy.
**
Ninjas, Magic and Revenge
That’s just Bully
I recently beat Rockstar’s Bully and surprised myself by thoroughly enjoying it. My enjoyment is a surprise because I don’t really like Rockstar’s big franchise Grand Theft Auto and Bully does not stray from its famous brother’s legacy. But Bully does fix one of the two big problems with GTA, which allows me to more easily ignore the other one.
As mentioned above, I have 2 major problems with GTA. The first is that while GTA has tons of different things to do, it does not do any of them particularly well. You shoot people, if you can manage the crappy targeting and controls. The same goes for driving, though it is better than the shooting. I would rather play a game that does one or two things well than a game that does lots of things badly. For most players the sheer variety of gameplay options seems to outweigh their relative quality, but I don’t like it. The other problem I have with GTA is the overall tone. Sure the game is rated M for Mature, but Grand Theft Auto is mature in the same way that a 14-year-old is mature. It has a fondness for dirty words and sex jokes but lack anything resembling actual maturity. This juvenile vulgarity permeates the world of the game and makes the experience largely unenjoyable for me. I do see why most gamers love GTA, but I have concluded that it is just not for me.
I could easily have assumed that Bully was the same thing, like the moronic people who protested the games release did. (I do like that they assumed that since the title was “Bully” the game would be about the main character bullying other students when it is really the opposite.) But the setting seemed interesting enough for me to try it out, though it did put it on the shelf for about 2 years after I purchased it.
Bully is just like GTA in its variety of gameplay options. It is maybe just a bit more focused, but in large part, it is the same. There are tons of missions with all sorts of objectives, but none of it is really outstanding. Where it does greatly improve on GTA in the setting. Not that the juvenile humor is gone or has added a layer of sophistication; the big change is that it feels more right in this game. The crude “maturity” fits right in with a pack of rabid High Schoolers. I would say that the characters are still drawn much more broadly than they could be, but the simple school stereotypes work. The switch from outright crime to schoolyard pranks replaces the feeling of general menace from GTA with something more playful, which I would call an improvement.
Honestly, the game fully won me over with the last boss. (Spoilers I guess) When your fight through the various gangs of students culminates in a fight on top of the school I can’t help but see the whole thing as a tribute to the greatest of greats River City Ransom. There is nothing a game can do to make me enjoy it more than echo River City Ransom.
Adjustment Bureau Review
The Adjustment Bureau is not quite a great movie. It poses some interesting questions, but spends more time ignoring them than exploring them. It takes an intriguing sci-fi concept, much like those found in The Matrix and Inception, but does not make that the true focus of the film. Inception is an unfortunately apt comparison, because it also uses a science fiction concept to tell another type of story. In Inception it was a heist movie, in The Adjustment Bureau it is a romance. The comparison to Inception is unfortunate because it ties the two genres together better than the Adjustment Bureau does.
Matt Damon plays David Norris, a congressman and prospective Senator whose recent flub, mooning people at his college reunion, has seemingly cost him the election. While preparing a concession speech, he meets Elise (Emily Blunt) whose more relaxed attitude rubs off on David and his speech. The relaxed speech makes him the front-runner for the next election. At the same time, mysterious chapeau’d men cryptically talk about all their hard work. A mistake made by one of the men soon after allows Damon’s character to discover about the Adjustors, a Guardian Angel like group who influence people into doing what their plans deem best.
These Adjustors show both the films strengths and it flaws. While there may be sinister undertones, the Adjustors are simply unassuming bureaucrats. The movie poses a question about free will, but it keeps everything so low key that it never really capitalizes on the issue. The philosophical issues are largely ignored. It leaves the film entertaining but ultimately forgettable. Whether or not people have free will is not really questioned, merely how free it is. The Adjustors claim to have no sinister motive and this is accepted. David does not seem to be troubled by their control, except in one regard. David loves Elise, but the plan says they are not to be together. His struggle to have a relationship with her is the conflict of the movie. Fortunately, the romance is entirely believable. It seems right to the viewer that they be together. Everything David does, as this is much more his story than hers, makes sense. Other than believe what he is told by shadowy controllers.
The different elements of the movie, the sci-fi and the romance, each work well, but they do not tie together very effectively. It is frustrating that the grander implications are ignored, but the movie is still entertaining. The Adjustment Bureau is a small movie. Well-made and thoughtful, but almost too restrained. There is, though, a certain amount of charm in The Adjustment Bureau’s restraint.
3 1/2 Stars
NCAA Tourney Thoughts
What an NCAA tournament it’s been so far, huh? With the Final 4 set, my bracket in complete shambles and Mizzou’s season ending as badly as it possibly could, I guess I have some college basketball to talk about.
First Mizzou. After a very promising start to the season, the Tigers went into a tailspin, going from 17-4 to 23-11. Their season ended by being bounced easily from both the Big 12 and NCAA tournaments. Then Coach Mike Anderson bolted for his old stomping grounds at Arkansas. While Anderson leaving is no big surprise, he has entertained offers each of the last 2 years and Arkansas is his home, the way it happened was one. Anderson said he was staying; then a few weeks later, he was gone. I, naïvely to be sure, thought that Anderson was a stand-up enough guy to at least make his intentions known. But no, he went from expected to sign an extension to new coach at Arkansas basically overnight. His departure clouds his whole tenure at Mizzou, leaving nothing but hurt feelings.
Also, people are now incredibly pessimistic about Missouri’s chances next year. This year ended with disappointment, but MU is losing one player to graduation (and possible a few to transfers). Plus, the core team is not bad. Kim English, Marcus Denmon and Lawrence Bowers are all very good players. Mike Dixon is pretty good and Ricardo Ratliff and Steve Moore can give quality minutes. Sure, they need a few good recruits, and to play much better than they did down the stretch, but this team is definitely good enough to make a tourney run. Mizzou just needs to find a good coach who actually wants to be there.
The Final 4 includes both an 8 and an 11 seed. That is great. While I am very grateful to VCU for knocking off Kansas, (I cannot think of a more disgusting end to the season than the Morris thugs cutting the nets) I think I’m rooting for Butler. I want to see them finish what they started last year. Either way, I’m going to be rooting for the winner of the Butler/VCU game in the final. I don’t really have anything against Kentucky or UConn, but I don’t like either one enough to root for them over the underdog.
Do you want to guess how many Final 4 teams I got in my bracket? None. How many eventual Final 4 teams did I have in the Sweet 16? None. How many of my Final 4 picks made the Sweet 16? 2. This year’s tournament was particularly wild, but I still picked the worst bracket I’ve ever filled out. It was embarrassingly bad. I think the two biggest problems are that there really were not any great teams this year and that the committee did an absolute terrible job seeding. Like K-State as a 5 seed and Texas A&M as a 7. They played in the same conference and Texas A&M actually had a better record, but they got a lower seed. It made no sense. I attempted to address these mistakes with my picks, but they did not pan out. And picking between most of those mediocre teams, which was every seed 4 and down, was a complete guessing game. Honestly though, I’m okay with my bracket being in ruins since the tournament has been so damn entertaining. I just wish TruTV got fewer games, because I did not get to watch any of them.
Skociomatic 