Something about video games.

Sometimes a hiatus is required when you go gallivanting around Japan.

What? Yeah I was in Japan what of it?

I don't really speak or read Japanese so it was sort of difficult for me to get around and it turned out I flew into the wrong city altogether. I wanted to rent a GT-R and replicate what Top Gear did a couple series' back but apparently those credit cards you get in the mail don't work in Japan. I figured any establishment worth their salt would recognize the clout of having credit with the Platinum First Premier Bank and fall atop themselves to serve my every whim, but it was not to be. So in order to get to Kazunori Yamauchi at his Batcave in Polyphony Digital I ended up having to walk the entire way from Miyakojima to Tokyo. It is quite a hike, let me assure you.



After I straightened out my financial situation I promptly bought several hundred flavours of Kit Kat and a translator. My mission was clear: Seek out the head of Sony's biggest racing producer and ask him what the fuck was taking so long with Gran Turismo 5.

Interview with a vampire Kazunori Yamauchi

Snakes and Sparklers: Gran Turismo 5 has been a long time coming for everyone involved: you, your company Polyphony Digital, Sony, fans, Sony's shareholders and even your dear old mum. What importance does this iteration have as compared to previous installments in the series?

Kazunori Yamauchi: It is the most important thing we have done to date; it is life to me (laughs). All of the experience we have accumulated over the years culminates in this and I'd like [Gran Turismo 5] to represent everything we've learned up to now.

SnS: Was Gran Turismo on the PSP a major goal for you or was it an obligation to Sony to branch out?

Yamauchi: I had been wanting to do a portable Gran Turismo since the PSP was released but other projects put [GT PSP] on hiatus. With the upcoming release of Gran Turismo 5 it was now or never (laughs). It was never only an obligation to Sony, it is a project I've been wanting to pursue from the beginning.

SnS: After hinting so much at a 2009 release date for so long and announcing a 'major advancement' before Tokyo Game Show 2009, the March 2010 [Japanese-market] release date for Gran Turismo 5 came as a shock to some fans. Was this the only announcement you had on hand for TGS?

Yamauchi: (laughs) We actually had several things to announce about Gran Turismo 5 at the show but when I got the chance to try Forza Motorsport 3 at the show I became quite nervous about the state of my game and asked Sony for a six-month extension to the development time, which they graciously entertained.



SnS: This begs the question: What the fuck's been taking so long? (Okay I didn't word it like that but it's what I was thinking!)

Yamauchi: Well, I was taking a cue from George Broussard and pretty much just spending investor money on doing stuff I loved, like eating endangered animals and driving a submarine and then occasionally releasing a screen shot or other news that I was really working on the game so I could get some more investment money, but when 3DRealms went bankrupt I became scared and decided to actually seriously work on the game.

After a series of expletives were thrown from my mouth to Kazunori's face I was unceremoniously kicked to the curb for being disrespectful, and they took my recorded interview, too. It's a great thing I've got such an excellent memory for me to transcribe the entire thing here for you today.

Unfortunately I don't have much to show for my Japan trip because I couldn't find a way to bring all 4,358 Haruhi statues I bought in Akihabara back on the plane with me.

Terminator rides again.

For the past few months I've been trying to figure out whether Terminator: Salvation is a sequel or a prequel. The John Connor of the future sends his dad back in time to stop the the Terminator from killing present John Connor's mother before present John Connor could be born by Connor's dad who is younger than future John Connor, so by the time the first movie starts the future's already happened and we're looking at the past but it takes place in the present time so it's now. So Salvation begins before future John sends his dad to the past so that two sequels could be made but yet it still happens in the future and after the events of the first three movies but at the same time before them.

Fuck there's blood coming out of my left ear.

As a picture, Salvation is a very pretty one that visually fits better with the series than did the third movie. There are also touches here and there that tell me the movie was made by people who actually care about the franchise and paid attention to details. Unfortunately these caring individuals can't write a good twist so by the end of the movie I felt a bit cheated at how inept and human they made Skynet. Also some of the robots were clearly men in rubber suits. That was a shameful detail considering how expensive this movie was to exist.

On the very plus side, sound was fucking excellent and I really wanted to see more of the obsolete endoskeletons so I could hear their joints move. The title animation for this film puts Bay's Transformers to shame. It's too bad that Bay's movie has fun being dumb while Salvation is hampered with a nearly suffocating seriousness at times. Oh well, it's either that or Terminator 3 again and if something that awful happens again I'll shoot myself seventeen times.

If this review sounds confused and muddled well...it is. I can't really figure this thing out. I enjoyed myself and didn't want to hide my face in shame like I did while watching Wolverine, but I still wouldn't call it a good movie. I guess if you had to put this movie on the "Omni Consumer Products Scale of Goodness" it'd go like this:

Terminator 1&2 ≥ Robocop
Terminator 3 ≤ Robocop 3
Salvation = Robocop 2

EDIT: Ha ha I just noticed Star Trek already used "The Future Begins" tagline so you fail, Warner Bros.

ReStar Trek

The long-awaited and newest entry in the absolutely elderly Star Trek franchise is a welcome addition to both the sci-fi and action genres. The film starts with a bang as we see a fast-paced and explosive ship battle and the stride rarely slows from there. The few lulls in the movie seem placed to allow the viewer to rest from the heady action but allow for a good deal of character development and humour. When dealing with Star Trek you inevitably have the theme of time-travel woven into the plot and that does a good job of explaining the many contentions one might have with what they've done with the events tied to some of entertainment's most beloved characters. It doesn't really explain the ship and tech design changes but the re-imaginings of things like the communicator and the Enterprise itself are done with great respect to the source material and 'feels' very Star Trek.

Die-hards are going to pick these things apart but everything was done so well I have little argument with the way things were presented. A couple of plot devices used seemed a bit silly, but it was of little demerit when measured up against the rest of the film. The movie only seemed to be an hour long despite its 127 minute run time, an extremely telling yardstick of how engrossing it really is.

I can't help but say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys an exciting feature. I know I'm gushing and it's perhaps not the Star Trek I was expecting but it's definitely the Star Trek Paramount needs.

Always Bet on Duke's Unemployment.

With news that George Broussard's extra-tardy baby will probably never see the light of day, I must confess that my first reaction was to sit in a darkened room clutching my Duke Nukem 3D box whilst sobbing quietly, the only other sound the occasional patter of tears on cardboard. My red tank-top is off and my shades have been placed in a drawer to be forgotten about until the next owner finds them in five years after I've hawked the nightstand in a yard sale.

Then I realized I'd be dead before Duke Nukem Forever released anyway so I've gotten over it. Funny comparisons to John Romero and Ion Storm aside, it's actually been a fun ride watching several different versions of the same train wreck repeatedly for thirteen years. I think the most frustrating thing is that we could've had several major Duke Nukem games if it hadn't been for crippling perfectionism. Imagine a genius kid creating a cure for cancer but completely scrapping it because the cure didn't also taste like cotton candy.

Here's to you George, you magnificent retard.

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X-Men Origins: Wolverine

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is quite the uneven fare. The first third of the movie plays out fairly well, sticking to latter-day Wolverine mythos better than expected whilst appending some new details into canon. It also does a very good job of not stepping on the toes of previous established fact from earlier films. Characters are introduced dutifully and with barely more than the necessary number of lines but it gets the job done and provides for entertaining action. I was ready to call this movie better than X-Men 3 until slightly beyond midway when they introduced Gambit. He seems to have been shoehorned into the movie rather clumsily and scenes including him feel unnecessary. And most everything after that felt to me like I stepped into another film. I suppose if I were walking into the theatre to see Fantastic Four part 3 I'd expect lots of camp but not in this series.

My beef isn't so much with the liberties they took with regards to accuracy; I notice but easily forgive it. It's the sheer lack of forethought in the placement of events and people, and the film lacks the feeling or meaning behind the first two X-films (a problem which plagued X3). If the first outing of the Origins sub-franchise is this mediocre then I fear it won't get any better.

Pluses: Airwolf
Minuses: No cajun accents :(
Potent Notables: I was too impatient to sit through the credits so if you could tell me how that went...

Sega GT Online is rubbish. Sega GT Online has cancers. Sega GT Online is the do-nothing father of my children.

I was rummaging through my game vault the other day.

Wait. Let's back up a bit for a history lesson.

I have a huge safe on a hill in the middle of Rothburg that I keep filled with all my games. Inside said safe is a diving board where I can plunge into my collection and swim around like a very uncomfortable lunatic. Please note that I have not done this. I was sitting at the end of my diving board contemplating my life when I spotted a disc I haven't spun in years: Sega GT Online. Looking back I should have just committed a lethal belly-flop into a tank full of jewel cases and HuCards.



Sega GT Online is an update to a sequel to a Dreamcast game that aimed at beating Sony at their own hundred-plus auto simulator. Judging by the number of Sega GT fanclubs and the game itself it seems they failed. I once compared the control of Pretty Fighter to that of sticking the gamepad up your ass and contracting your sphincter to press the buttons and it appears Sega succeeded in bringing that experience to the racing genre. It's not as if the controls are unresponsive, no; control problems lie squarely in the physics. Instead of giving the player the sensation of tire grip the programmers decided to simulate racing conditions if they happened underwater. If you could translate Mushmouth dialogue into physics you'd have the soupy-handling cars of Sega GT.

It doesn't stop with the wonderful driving experience either. Each car appears to be made of hardened sugar, with paint finishes that would make Willy Wonka envious. This would be truly fantastic if automobiles in real life looked edible. I've learned from experience that they are, in fact, not edible. Inside all that saccharine lies the heart of a multi-million DUI champion that I've lovingly dubbed "RAMN2U AI". Even though there's no cosmetic or functional damage there is a damage metre which, when when depleted (by hitting anything) will reduce the winnings one receives at the end of an event. Regardless of who hits whom, if two cars make contact you receive a damage penalty so using cars as barriers to assist in making turns is not the greatest idea.



Punitive damage doesn't stop the ingenious RAMN2U AI's muderous intent however. To them you don't even exist, which is just as well because you'll wish you didn't exist after an extended race on any of Sega GT's thirty or so uninspired tracks. Every course was painstakingly designed by Yu Suzuki's mentally and physically handicapped cousin to be as flat and forgettable as possible. I don't mean flat in this regard to mean lifeless though one could certainly apply it here but I intend that they are literally flat. The roads sort of meander and twist because that's what real race tracks do, I suppose, but they forgot the basic lessons learned by Columbus and his compatriots. The world is indeed curved and lumpy and if it weren't you'd kill yourself from boredom.

Sega GT's not all bad, though. It does have a Bugatti, which means this game stops just short making me feel raped by a rodeo clown and that's good enough for me.

I gave away the best surprise.

I just finished watching Re-Cycle, a Chinese horror movie known in the east as . It is the latest and greatest film out of Hong-Kong that I've seen, and watching this forced me to face the realization that I'd completely wasted my time watching The Ring and Dark Water. Perhaps it would have been more to my benefit to watch the original versions rather than the fuckups from the US.

At any rate, the first feeling one gets from the spookier bits is an air of familiarity. I couldn't help but compare what I was seeing and hearing to Silent Hill; the filmmakers decided to utilise dim lighting and dilapidated setwork seemingly inspired from that series, not to mention tense moments punctuated by a very Yamaoka-ish score. It didn't really help that they used the reprise of "Promise" from Silent Hill 2 in the deleted scenes montage.

It starts off creepily enough, but about halfway through it forgets it's a horror movie and does this sort of Taiwanese Alice in Wonderland thing as the main character tries to escape The Nothing by jumping from set to set with Exposition Girl in tow. It's not until shortly after the Hall of Fetuses that the director remembers what he's doing and reintroduces the big bad, who's apparently been on the protagonist's tail the whole time. After a stop in a field of flowers, we learn that the undead don't accept credit cards and are led to the resolution that, while a tad preachy, is still rather touching. Of course, like most good horror what haunts us never really leaves and oh my did I spoil that? You should be ashamed if you expected anything else.

I could take the movie apart further but when it comes down to it I enjoyed myself amid the fantastically-realised visuals and well-characterised lead and her phantom cohort.

Hilldale Community College

I lieu of actually having some content, here's a terrible thing I put together a month back.