Tag: Star Trek (page 4 of 6)

Playing With Others (instead of just myself)

January 14, 2010 / / 9 Comments

As my darling wife has mentioned (What’s that? You didn’t know she was blogging? Shame on you, go read her awesome posts, I’ll wait), there are several MMOs of various flavors on their way. Following her fine example, since she followed mine in getting a blog started in the first place, I’m going to take some time to talk about why I’m interested in playing some of them, and why some of them don’t interest me at all.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

Deathwing
Woke up on the wrong side of the continent.

As a former WoW player (my weekly twelve-step meetings are going well, thanks for asking) I do understand the appeal of a new expansion. Some areas of the old world map have fallen quite behind in terms of quest quality, population and overall aesthetic. New dungeons promising better loot is a major draw as well, and tying in old threads from previous games in a way that’s loyal to the typical Blizzard atmosphere of a world going dark (Diablo, for example) isn’t all that bad.

When I wrote this section earlier I was focusing on the few bad experiences I had that turned me off to the repetitive dungeon grinding in MMOs in general and WoW in particular. I however had some good experiences as well, rendering this entire section moot as well as making me out to be a blatant liar. Therefore I have redacted this section and will be spending the rest of the evening in an act of contrition too horrific and stomach-churning to relate here. Suffice it to say it involves jumper cables, running water, a roll of duct table and no less than six very angry ferrets.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

Kotor 2 Poster by some artist who isn't me.
Nostalgically delicious.

I’ve said on several occasions that I used to love Star Wars, but George Lucas slowly and surely strangled all joy out of the original films and my childhood memories of them. The closest I’ve come to the pure enjoyment I once got out of Star Wars was playing Knights of the Old Republic. Both of those games had a heavy emphasis on story, being rooted in BioWare’s development mentality, and those stories were, unlike those in the prequels, very well told. The Old Republic setting, from the original graphic novels to those two games, painted a much deeper and more vibrant picture of both the Star Wars universe in general and the Jedi in particular.

When it was first announced that the Old Republic would be the setting for a new Star Wars MMO, I was excited. Despite some major problems, Star Wars Galaxies still had something to offer in terms of both gameplay and nostalgia. However, it’s diffcult to balance the classes when you’re pitting normal beings with high technology against space samurai with psychoflexus powers that can toss heavy objects and people alike around a room with almost casual ease. There’s also the fact that, as rich as the setting might be and no matter how much text BioWare will be dumping on the players, all of it is eventually lurching towards the time in the future when all of the Jedi will get murdered at the hands of a super-powered politician with a partially melted face and an asthmatic boy-man who spends most of his formative years stomping his feet and bitching people out over the unfairness of his life.

I feel like I want to vomit already.

Star Trek Online

Hot Trill for Beta testing
If I’m going to deal with lag and bugs, I might as well have something nice to look at.

Star Trek, on the other hand, has had ups and downs in all sorts of flavors and colors, and I still think there’s lots to like about it. The MMO is set in the ‘prime’ reality, rather than the ‘alternate’ one created by Abrams. You know, the one people say craps all over Roddenberry’s dream of the future, which would be biting comments if they hadn’t been said about episode of Deep Space 9 or Voyager or Enterprise or some of the later films? Anyway, my feelings on that subject are well-documented and I’d rather talk about the game.

I’m working on a ‘first impressions’ that encapsulates my experiences in the open beta of Star Trek Online, but suffice it to say I’m liking what I’ve experienced so far. Fleet actions that work a bit like WAR’s Public Quests, skill trees that take the place of arbitrary levels, an Away Team system that ensures you have help when beaming into hostile areas and the ability to customize just about any visual aspect of both your character and your Bridge Officers are a few of the highlights of the game’s current build. I’m still toying with the Away Team AI, looking forward to more missions that don’t involve the usual straightforward “go to location X to kill Y hostile craft/creatures belonging to Z”, and curious about this Replicator system that allows me to sell random drops without having to visit a vendor. More to come on this, but up until now my experience has been positive.

Warhammer 40,000

Stole this one from the wife.
Unprotected sex is heresy. Heresy is punishable by death.

I love the world of 40k. There’s a lot going on, plenty of diverse and dangerous cultures and situations and the overall grimdarkness of the atmosphere puts it far and away from the worlds of either Star Trek or Star Wars. Characters in crapsack worlds tend to be more interesting, which is why encountering people in Fallout 3 is a treat more often than not. However, I think a lot of people are going to look towards this game and try to find out if they can be a super-powered Space Marine.

Screw that, I say. Being overpowered and motivated by faith and loyalty alone gets really dull after a while. Ask most Jedi, if they’re not just interested in waving their dicks lightsabers around. I’ll take Ibram Gaunt over any Space Marine any day of the week. A former Guardsman pressed into service as a mercenary to try and make a living, the assassin masquerading as a nobleman to get closer to his targets, a Dark Eldar privateer looking for his next big score… you could probably come up with many more character ideas and possibly port them into the other sci-fi MMOs, but 40k’s world is so grim and so dark that it’s probably the best and most interesting sandbox in which they can play.

Final Fantasy XIV

Stole this one from the wife, too.
Stole this one form the wife.

A few of the Final Fantasy games turned out pretty well. I particularly like games in the series that incorporate the Job system. Apparently, in this upcoming MMO, the system will be returning in a way that sounds intriguing. From what I understand changing your equipment is what changes your job. My wife covers the game a bit more in-depth and I’ve already stolen both the concept for this post and a couple images from her, so I’ll let her take it from here.

It seems like just about anything can be made into an MMO. My interest stays mostly within speculative fiction, however, so I’ll be keeping an eye on the aforementioned IPs. Hopefully the soulless corporate money-makers won’t try to make absolutely anything into an MMO. At least, I hope not. It’s not like there’s a Twilight MMO in the works.

…What? There is?

Twilight


…

…

NO. NO. NO NO NO JESUS O’ BASTARD WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE THERE WILL BE STABBINGS THESE PEOPLE ARE JUST BEGGING TO BE STABBED NO NO NO CHRIST NO.

I really, really need to see Daybreakers. I need to restore my faith in the fact that people out there know how to portray vampires that act like fucking vampires. For your own safety and the safety of others, await my review of this film. Help support me seeing it, and avert the oncoming torrent of hate-filled stabbity death.

Carl Sagan Shoveling Coal

January 11, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I’ve mentioned sfdebris a couple times now, most recently in my post discussing my favorite critics. I bring him up because he’s relevant to something going on in my day job currently. In his review of the Star Trek: Voyager episode Good Shepherd, he covers the opening in which Seven of Nine gives an efficiency report, and mentions that a crew member with 5 degrees in theoretical cosmology is at the bottom of the ship doing menial engineering tasks.

Courtesy Paramount
Why no, I didn’t use this photo just because Seven of Nine’s in it, why do you ask?

Chuck puts it another way: “On a ship meant to explore the wonders of the universe, you’ve put Carl Sagan in charge of shoveling coal.” While this is more inexplicable than normal in a semi-utopian future world set in space, it still happens in the normal, everyday world. Over-qualification is something that happens in the workplace, especially when the economy isn’t behaving as well as most would like.

When companies cut back in areas, it’s usually in places they’d like to expand but simply don’t have the capital to invest. This means that a lot of the people who get axed are people with ideas, creative folk with esoteric backgrounds who might not be focused on business or profitability. When losing their jobs, they do what they can to look for further employment, brushing up their resumes and beginning the arduous search for a job, a search that is every bit as tedious and uncertain as the search for an agent or publisher. Those who still have jobs, on the other hand, might find themselves in a position where, in addition to their regular tasks, they’re doing things like answering the phone for other departments or watering the boss’s plants or something.

Courtesy Enquirer.com
Times are tough, even for a Nobel laureate physicist like this gentleman.

Either way, you have creative people doing menial tasks – like Carl Sagan shoveling coal. I don’t have any sort of real solution in mind for the issue, other than keeping one’s eyes peeled for better employment elsewhere. And one should continue to make time for creative pursuits, because as the man has said several times, if one isn’t fortunate enough to be pursuing their dreams on a full-time basis, it becomes a spare-time endeavor. But that doesn’t mean one should give up.

It just means one might have to get by with less sleep and, really, who needs sleep? I don’t. And now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s coal that needs a-shovelin’.

At least, if I’m lucky, it’ll be coal and not something else.

Willing To Explain Why You Suck

January 9, 2010 / / 2 Comments

Courtesy leadershipdynamics.wordpress.com

Internet criticism is certainly nothing new. In fact, just about anywhere you turn along the so-called “information superhighway” you will come across critics of one form or another, even if an argument made against a particular point only takes the form of a lolcat. However, some Internet critics have carved out niches for themselves either through focus, format or both. Three come to mind, for me, and act as something of an inspiration for my IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! reviews.

sfdebris

Chuck (again, not Magic Talking Beardman Chuck) has spent quite a lot of time assembling what he calls an ‘opinionated episode guide’ for Star Trek. Specifically, he started with Voyager. He later began to cover Enterprise as well as the British sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf. He also wrote a sweeping fiction series crossing Star Trek with Star Wars, for which he won an award. No, really. And this was before he started his YouTube channel.

In addition to being comprehensive and funny, Chuck often reminds us that his criticism of a given episode, series or movie is just his opinion. He welcomes discussion and even opposition to his ideas. He, like my next critical exemplar, encourages the audience to think, rather than sit back & switch off higher brain functions in order to take in some shallow, pandering, distracting colors & sounds that call themselves ‘entertainment.’

Confused Matthew

Rather than focus on a particular series or even genre, Confused Matthew went about his video reviews of films with thoughts like “Why did people like this?” or “How did this movie even get greenlit?” While these lines of thought have caused him to add to the many critics pointing out the things that went wrong with the Star Wars prequels, the Matrix sequels and Star Trek: Generations, he’s also gone on the record as saying that The Lion King is a pretty terrible film and that Minority Report is awful despite the ringing praise of critical luminary Roger Ebert.

More often than not, when Matthew begins a review, he establishes a basic premise as to why the work is fundamentally flawed. As the premise continues to be referenced, he becomes more and more annoyed. While this drives home his point, it also makes the reviews more hilarious. He takes turns chewing out Lucas, the Wachowski Brothers and Ira Steven Behr, executive producer of Deep Space 9. “Come on!” Matthew pleads. “You’re better than this!” His confusion is our comedy.

Red Letter Media

I just recently was introduced to this critic, and all I can say is it needs to be experienced to be fully appreciated. Comprehensive, researched and merciless criticism of science fiction films is paired with an old man’s ramblings about pizza rolls and other less family-friendly subjects.

I don’t want to give away any more than that so, if you’ve the mind, head over in that direction. His Phantom Menace review stands out. It’s 70 minutes long, but worth every one.

Star Trek: Farraday 1.2

January 3, 2010 / / 2 Comments

Courtesy The Light Works

Previously…

The USS Farraday, en route to Earth for refit or decommission, encountered odd subspace message fragments and tiny black holes in and around the Regula planetoid. The fragments indicate the involvement of an Admiral Kirk, which is odd considering Kirk was only recently promoted to captain of the Enterprise following the Nero incident.

Continue reading

On Star Trek, Good Writing and Bad Direction

January 2, 2010 / / 4 Comments

Homer's brain
Behold, the target audience of most summer action flicks!

I’ve had this opinion brewing for a while. I touched on it in yesterday’s Netflix post. While the prevailing sentiment out there in the dark and wild expanse of the Internet is that the new Star Trek is, on the whole, good, the film has taken some criticism that the writing was sub-standard, some of the acting was wooden and a lot of the big ideas and brainy philosophy that marked the old series as innovative and locked it forever in the hearts of nerds like myself has been stripped away to be replaced by the kind of kitschy, generic action that appeals to beer-guzzling frat boys. I’m not about to completely poo-poo those arguments, but at the same time I think that while they have some merit, there is enough good in the new Star Trek to balance out the bad.

In case you’ve been hiding in a cave for the last few years, here’s what lead up to this film. Star Trek had, by and large, been languishing in the smell of its own failure for quite some time. The dangerously insidious one-two punch of Star Trek:Enterprise pissing on some of the established history and conventions and Nemesis pitting the Next Generation crew against an ailing Romulan clone of a Frenchman had all but slain the franchise. Enter J.J. Abrams, visionary director and apparently a man with gonads cast in the same metal used for the hull of a starship. Already known for his work in Lost and Cloverfield, Abrams set his sights on one of the most beloved and long-running universes in the history of science fiction. He also had previously done a movie called Mission: Impossible III, which was also a revisit of a franchise that had somewhat tanked and made it cool again, if not quite as good as the original. The best chance for repeat success was to team up with the writers who penned MI3 and also had helped Abrams launch his wildly successful show Fringe: Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman.

Orci & Kurtzman
WANTED for crimes against die-hard fan bases!

Yeah, the same two guys who wrote the two live-action Transformers films. And the unfortunate victims of a LOT of criticism. Some of it is warranted. Revenge of the Fallen was a let-down on a lot of levels. Unlike the renegade smash hit sequels Wrath of Khan and Dark Knight, the second live-action TF flick turned out to be somewhat hackneyed, confusing at times and pandering to the aforementioned frat demographic. Granted, I’m a paradoxical being, in that I’m a Transformers fan and am also willing to admit that the original cartoon series wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of science-fiction writing that will stand the test of time. However, the writing is not the biggest weakness in either film. Sure, it could have been better, and more could have been done with these concepts and characters, but at the helm of the films was Michael Bay. The writers, ultimately, had very little say in how the final product would be put together. When Michael Bay directs, it honestly doesn’t matter how good the writing is. He could pick up Hamlet, fill it with explosions in Denmark, cast Megan Fox as Ophelia, and have 30 Seconds to Mars do the soundtrack. Guess how bad & brainless it would be. Go on, guess.

LENS FLARES!
“I gotta FEVER… and the only PRESCRIPTION… is MORE LENS FLARES.”

Let’s get back to Abrams. He started as a writer and producer and, while his résumé does include the unfortunate missteps of Gone Fishin’ and Armageddon, he’s also responsible for the television series Lost and Fringe. The latter series is, as I mentioned, the result of a collaboration between Abrams and the supposedly criminal writers – and it’s engaging, thoughtful, funny and well-paced. Blaming the failings of Transformers and its sequel on the same writers who brought us Fringe is, in my opinion, illogical. Here’s an example: the last major contribution Uhura made to Star Trek, back in The Undiscovered Country, was reading haltingly out of a Klingon dictionary. It’s one of the few problems with that otherwise solid film, since Uhura is supposed to be an expert in linguistics. In Abrams’ Trek, Uhura is not only a xenolinguist of the highest order, she has the chutzpah to tell Captain Pike that she can do the comm officer job better than the senior officer whom Pike promptly sends to scrub toilets on the engineering deck. On the other hand, back in Transformers, the character of Jazz, who had previously been characterized as Optimus Prime’s competent and improvisational second in command, has fewer than a dozen lines. Instead of focusing on the established characters, the reason we’re sitting in the cinema in the first place, Michael Bay focuses on the bumbling trigger-happy humans and gives us as many opportunities as possible to ogle Megan Fox. By contrast, Abrams’ Star Trek is all about the characters. Scrape the layer of the TF flicks and you’ll just find blasting caps and thongs. Under the lens flares and shiny objects of Star Trek is something a bit more substantial.

I know some critics wanted Star Trek to be ‘about’ more than just zipping around the cosmos blasting things, but consider this: both Kirk and Spock are living in the shadows of their pasts. Kirk is expected to measure up to the heroism of his father, and Spock has a massive chip on his shoulder when it comes to his mother. They need to overcome these challenges in order to seize their destinies. And yes, relying on the machinations of fate to have everything resolve in the space of a story is a mark of lazy storytelling, and might be the weakest part of the film, but the fact that the story is driven by the characters and most of them are portrayed so well balances this weakness. I also know the themes of the film are not as deep or powerful as, say, District 9, but there’s still something meaningful about it, especially for anyone who’s been held to an impossible standard by themselves or others.

And then there are some individuals, one with whom I’d worked personally on something exceptionally nerdy, that believe that this latest iteration has RUINED STAR TREK FOREVER. Between branching universe theory, the support of such luminaries as Leonard Nimoy, the nearly unanimous critical acclaim and the sheer amount of pure awesome packed into this film, I believe I am entitled to my God-given Internet-based opinion that these individuals have a problem in which their cranial spaces have gotten spatially dislocated into their ventral waste disposal cavities. I’d go so far as to continue this little tirade in Klingon, but I don’t want the Internet to explode from such a dense concentration of unapologetic nerd.

…Still don’t believe me? Fine. Ask these guys.

Older posts Newer posts

Legal Stuff

Creative Commons License

BlueInkAlchemy.com by Joshua E Loomis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Some rights reserved.

Categories

Archives

© 2024 Blue Ink Alchemy

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑