It turns out I'm not dead. Also, the ending of Mass Effect 3 was bullshit. But mainly that first thing.

I think I'll start doing videos again, now that life is very nearly back under control. I think, furthermore, that I'll start with Xenosaga. I've wanted to do that one for ages.

...the boss fights. The goddamned motherfucking piece-of-shit boss fights.

"It’s a narrative decision, essentially...the whole game is story-driven so if we gave all these opportunities to get through the bosses it created some headaches for us to get the narrative to work, so we had to make that decision."

--Frank Lapikas, game designer

Really? They managed to keep the narrative working for the other ninety-seven percent of the game. 

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The dumb is out there.

...wow. Schindler's List was a loooong time ago, wasn't it, Mr. Neeson?

(UPDATE: Just read a bit about the plot. Apparently the aliens came to Earth because they were working on some new way to generate power or something, so I assume all the shooting in the trailer is the stupid humans' fault somehow. I can't help but think this movie might've been acceptable if they ditched the Battleship part entirely and just kept working on that bit. Like, what if aliens made first contact with totally peaceful intentions, how would humanity cope with it, would there be--but wait, then the writers and producers might come dangerously close to an original thought, and the moviegoing public just wants tits and explosions. Never mind.)

Okay, I paid for the stupid domain name and made the site look all nifty and stuff, so I guess I need to put something else up here. Hmm...oh, how about this: I think I'm done with movies. 

It's still kind of weird saying that--I never thought I'd see the day. I used to go to the theater almost every single weekend. I was literally raised in a video store. Movies were mother's milk to me. And now, most of the time, I just can't be bothered. Yeah, the theaters are full of remakes and reboots and reimaginings and sequels and adaptations and blatant ripoffs, every one committee-designed and watered down to maximize their appeal to the lowest common denominator. That's a big part of the reason why I think I'm done with movies, but here's the other part: video games. I play a lot more of them now than I used to. They're just better than movies, in general. 

This occurred to me a week ago, about an hour after I finished Infamous 2. I'd seen the Thor movie and X-Men: First Class by then, and as comic-book superhero stories, I'd say all three are at about the same level, somewhere between "pretty good" and "great." But with the movies, I was always oddly aware that I was sitting there in the theater, completely passive, just...just watching. The game, on the other hand, literally engages you in the story--and no, I don't just mean the bits where you jump off rooftops and shoot guys with lightning bolts. Yes, the Infamous karma system is almost laughably simplistic, but it did get me invested to the point that, when Cole [SPOILER DELETED] at the end, I actually cared. I recognize that the movies were good too, but I didn't really care about them, not in that same way. 

Interactivity makes all the difference, I guess.