I'VE BEEN BUSY. With things that are art related and a lot more things that aren't. Like video games.

Picked up Modern Warfare 2 and Assassin's Creed II for my birthday; beat MW2 in four hours and just beat ACII today after a five-day stint of doing nothing BUT playing ACII.

Don't have much to say about MW2- it's a very solid game with lots of delicious variety and a very cookie-cutter plot. American military dude secretly instigates war to rise to power, his fellow soldiers try to stop him, Russians (especially Russian terrorists) are jerks. I thought it was executed brilliantly, though. Unfortunately Infinity Ward seems to have mistaken "variety is good" to mean "variety is everything." Scenes like the one in space were cool, but there were so many of them I couldn't really care about the characters I was supposed to care about. Then there was the fact that you die about three times. By the time I was SET ON FIRE I had lost all emotional attachment and just wanted to move on to the next level. Stuff like that only works if it's a rarity.

Also maybe it was just me but the airport scene? Didn't really have the impact I thought it would. It was too easy to detach yourself from the carnage and go look at digital bagels or something while your cohorts did all the dirty work.

Assassin's Creed II is glorious, though. It took me a day just to get to the main plot because I spent all of my time running around Florence and exploring. And when I got to Venice I completely ignored my objectives and just piloted a gondola around for hours, drooling at the scenery. The game is beautiful, plain and simple. The soundtrack is fabulous, the color pallets for the cities are gorgeous, and there's so much to DO. It's like Prince of Persia, Arkham Asylum and Oblivion all rolled into one delicious package, and then set in what is basically my favorite timeframe and country in history ever. The characters are great, the NPCs are great, the accents are great, the architecture is great, the historical accuracy is great, Leonardo DaVinci is great- the whole game is great!

One thing that I love is how everything is strung together. Even the silly "collect 100 feathers" sidequest is woven into the plot and has tangible results, giving you both new items as well as advancing a less important part of the plot. I have to commend Ubisoft for that- it was a really nice touch that needs to be included in more games. The bulk of the "main" plot (set in modern-day society over the course of all the games) is revealed piece by piece in journal entries by Altair, your ancestor from the first game, and clues left in the Animus program by Subject 16, the guy who came before you. It's the perfect way of keeping you fascinated with two stories at once, and the plot twist is a total mindfuck.

The two plotlines converge excellently at the end of the game, though that particular plot twist is... kind of dumb. I won't spoil it, but be prepared to suspend your disbelief to unprecedented levels. It's not that it's IMPROBABLE, it's just... well, buy the game and you'll see.

And speaking of suspension of disbelief...

So having watched "The Duel" several times now, and kept up with the discussion on HBO ([link]), I thought I'd put my thoughts to paper (or screen if you will) This was originally going to be a post on Choco's journal about the same thing but it got a little ranty.

For quotes from Frankie himself you can either read the HBO thread or Choco's entry: ([link])



Somebody should tell Frankie that there's a certain point where "artistic license" is no longer valid and you're basically just dicking around with anatomy. I will admit that seeing the FemLeet in motion made her considerably less awkward looking but I don't think it's even physically possible for the females of a species to have nostrils while the males do not. That's like saying birds and bats are sexually compatible, or that refrigerators can get pregnant. It's their canon and they can do what they want but that doesn't mean it's any less silly.

Also giggling =/= female and just further proves that Bungie/343 Studios needs to get out more. But I guess in the world of cinema if a female isn't giggling like a jackass and adhering to a basic stereotype without any further character development then they must be "fighting warrior queen." Give me a fucking break, Frankie |< At the very least if you're going to make her giggle like a simpleton then get a VA with a deeper voice so it doesn't pierce my inner ear and violently rape my brain. You want to make something female, and relatable to humans? Protip: Give it hips, a sleeker (notice I didn't say slimmer) build, and softer edges. People will get that it's female without adding breasts or pink eyelashes.

To quote myself because I'm an egotistical bastard: "I find it far less difficult to sympathize with a "monstrous"-looking elite than a rastafarian burn victim."

The worst part was the animation, voicework and score was absolutely PERFECT during the fight scenes (with the one exception of the Prophet looking and sounding like he was coughing up a hairball when he said Haka's name). It's just... outside of that it was horrible. People/Elites/Whatever MOVE when they speak. Their facial expressions alter. Their mouths do more than move up and down like a freight door. One of my biggest peeves with a lot of animation these days is that nobody seems to want to animate that, when it's really one of the biggest, most important things when it comes to making a relatable character.

Then the body movements were just... what. They couldn't even be half-assed to animate some minor arm-swaying when someone was walking. Then there was the complete lack of movement when anyone was talking, or looking at something, or, well, ANYTHING. It's understandable when you're doing something frame-by-frame and by hand, but when you're working with 3d models it's just unacceptable. Half the time consumed by traditional animation is freed up- and if traditional animators can find the time to draw something moving realistically then god damn it you should find that time to tell a computer to do it. Hell, Maya and 3ds Max COME WITH WALK CYCLES. I really don't get what's so hard about this. And ten seconds of a freeze frame followed by another three seconds of the same frame desaturated does not count as animation either.

It's pretty obvious that, like with "The Babysitter," They poured their budget and time into "badass fight scenes" and did the less testosterone-filled segments almost as an afterthought. Which I guess I should have probably seen coming and my only complaint is that 343 Studios appeals more to the projected age demographic (13 year old boys) than anything else. Which I think pretty much everyone intelligent in the fandom has been saying for years so lol me.

But yeah, so far we seem to be two for two on Halo: Legends. Lots of promise and potential throughout, but lacking that one, final push in quality that'd make them great. And apparently that makes me fly into a NerdRage lololo derp.

That's all for now. I have some projects in the works that I'll post as soon as I stop hating them 8D