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Wednesday Review: Portal 2

Matt — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 19:18:48 +0000

Anyone who has been following us here at Seattle Geekly for any length of time will already know two things that are going to influence this review; first, I have been excited about the prospect of Portal 2 since I finished the first game right after it came out and second, in general I cannot stand to play multi-player FPS games, at least with people I don’t know well. One of the biggest criticisms I have had of reviewers of games like the Halo series, Gears of War II and even Red Dead Redemption is that they gloss over the single player modes of these games to focus on multi-player. To be completely frank, I don’t give a single crap about the muliti-player aspects of games of this nature. I want to know up front if a game has enough value for a single player to justify the price I am going to have to pay for it because chances are good that is the only way I will ever play it. Now that we have that established, let me talk about Portal 2.

The short version is that I loved it. Every aspect of the game lived up to the standards that people have come to expect from Valve. I was playing it on an approximately three year old PC (that wasn’t top end when it was new) and it still ran smoothly and looked amazing. The voice acting, especially Stephen Merchant as Wheatley, was very good and the writing kept the same snarkiness and irreverence that made the original game such a standout.

The basic premise of the game hasn’t changed; you get your portal gun and use it to maneuver through an increasingly difficult series of test chambers. Many of the same techniques that were used to solve the puzzles in the first game still work but the addition of new elements, repulsion and speed gels, catapulting platforms, hard light bridges and the like, kept it fresh enough that it really felt like a new game rather than just a Portal expansion. If you enjoyed Portal I can’t think of a single reason that you would not thoroughly enjoy Portal 2.

The question is, though, does the single player campaign by itself justify the $50 retail price and, much as I enjoyed the game, unfortunately I have to say that it does not. While the single player game is definitely longer than the original Portal, I was still able to finish it in just a couple sittings. I do highly recommend picking the game up, but if you have absolutely no intention of ever playing the co-op mode, I would wait until Portal 2 goes on sale and pick it up then. $50 is a lot to ask for ten to fifteen hours of gameplay.

For myself, in spite of my aversion to multi-player, I do intend to try the co-op mode but I am going to wait until I can schedule time to play with a friend rather than risk the vagaries of random partners from the internet.

Portal 2 is available now on Steam, XBox 360 and PS3.

Monday News Roundup 04/25

Matt — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:46:52 +0000

The big convention weekend has come and gone and, as far as I can tell, Seattle survived! Attendence numbers for Sakura-Con and Norwescon were both impressive, though on very different scales. Sakura-Con topped out at over 19,000 and Norwescon had it’s largest convention ever with 3,600 attendees. We spent the whole weekend at Norwescon and had an amazing time which we will be talking about in some detail in this week’s podcast!

The Monday News is under the fold.

Books

The British Science Fiction Association Award winners were announced this weekend at Eastercon. The winners are:
- Best Novel: The Dervish House by Ian McDonald
- Best Short Fiction: ‘The Shipmaker’ by Aliette de Bodard
- Best Art: Cover for Zoo City by Joey Hi-Fi
- Best Non-Fiction: ‘Blogging the Hugos’ by Paul Kincaid

The winner of the Philip K. Dick Award was also announced this weekend at our very own Norwescon. The award went to The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder, with a special citation to Harmony by Project Itoh. The award cerimony was live-streamed to the Internet for the first time ever this year and the response was good enough that it will most likely be streamed again next year.

Last but not least in awards news, the Hugo nominees were announced this weekend at a joint ceremony held at Norwescon and Eastercon. The nominees include:
The full list of nominees is available at the Worldcon 69 Website.

Amazon announced in a press release that “Library Lending”, a new feature launching later this year, will allow Kindle customers to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 libraries in the United States. Kindle Library Lending will be available for all generations of Kindle devices and free Kindle reading apps. No specific release date was given.

Comics

Greg Rucka announced in an audio interview with Stumptown Trade Review that he will be creating a new steampunk webcomic. Titled Lady Sabre and the Pirates of the Ineffable Ether the comic will feature art by Eisner Award winner Rick Burchett and will be a “steampunk, pirates, western thing” with airships, floating islands, gunslingers and sword fights. Rucka said that this was planned to be an ongoing series and that he hoped to launch in July.

Tabletop

WizKids has announced the upcomming release of a series of Street Fighter Heroclix. The series will include a starter pack with Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Dhalsim, Blanka and Guile and will also have 21 additional Clix including M. Bison and E. Honda. , the starter set will retail for $19.99 and individual figures will be priced at $2.99. The Street Fighter set will, of course, be compatable with the entire HeroClix line and is scheduled to be in stores this August.

Video Games

Sony’s PlayStation Network has been down since Wednesday due to “an external intrusion.” The netwrok was not crashed but was turned off by Sony in order to “conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of network services going forward” according to the announcement on the Playstation Blog. As of this morning the network remains down and the most recent entry posted by Senior Director of Corporate Communications and Social Media Patrick Seybold says that “I don’t have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time” as far as when service might return.

Monday News Roundup 04/18

Matt — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:37:36 +0000

Game of Thrones premiered on HBO last night. You don’t have to worry about any spoilers here though. I can’t really talk about the show since, due to my ridiculous day job schedule Monday mornings, I was not able to stay up and watch it. What I can talk about is the genre snobbery in the mainstream press reviews.

Disdain for genre fiction is certainly nothing new. The Culture Show on the BBC recently aired a special titled ‘The Books We Really Read‘ that was so dismissive of genre fiction that it prompted a letter of protest signed by 85 science fiction, fantasy and horror authors ranging from Iain Banks to Michael Moorcock. Authors like Margaret Atwood have spent their entire careers fighting against having their work classified as “science-fiction” no doubt in some part because of the stigma attached to the label by critics. Given that, it isn’t surprising that some reviewers have been pretty contemptuous of the Game of Thrones premiere.

The New York Times review is particularly bad. The reviewer praises HBO for shows like The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood and Big Love but goes on to say that “when the network ventures away from its instincts for real-world sociology, as it has with the vampire saga ‘True Blood,’ things start to feel cheap, and we feel as though we have been placed in the hands of cheaters.” So real world = good, vampires or fantasy setting = bad. Got it.

The review also criticizes Game of Thrones as being “boy fiction” to which HBO added sex and romance “as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise,” an accusation so egregious that George R. R. Martin took the rare step of responding to the critic

I am not going to get into it myself, except to say

if I am writing “boy fiction,” who are all those boys with breasts who keep turning up by the hundreds at my signings and readings?
and

thank you, geek girls! I love you all.

The worst part of the review is that it fails to do any kind of actual review of the show itself. The reviewer talks about how expensive it was to produce, complains about the fantasy setting, explains how the show came to be on HBO, makes a couple of cracks about the use of invented languages, takes a swipe at D&D players and makes her laughable and vaguely sexist “boy fiction” comment all with virtually no discussion of what the show is actually about.

As I have mentioned before, in spite of the rising popularity of geekdom, the easiest way to prove your cool cred in the mass culture is still to make fun of the nerds and that is pretty much all the New York Times is doing with this review. Game of Thrones is something geeks would like, therefore it can’t be any good.

I will be watching Game of Thrones at the earliest opportunity and since I am both a boy and a D&D player I anticipate enjoying it thoroughly

The Monday News is under the fold.

Comics

the 2011 Stumptown Comic Art Awards were presented at Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland over the weekend. The winners are:

Manga

Manga publisher Tokyopop has announced that they will be shutting down their North American publishing division as of May. Founder Stu Levy put a posative spin on the closure in a post on the Tokyopop website saying “our community has fought the good fight, and, as a result, the Manga Revolution has been won –manga has become a ubiquitous part of global pop culture.” Tokyopop’s film and television projects and European operations, including the German publishing program, will not be affected by the North American office closure.

Anime News Network is reporting that Fruits Basket creator Natsuki Takaya will launch a manga series called Liselotte and Witch’s Forest starting this May. Takaya wrote Fruits Basket from 1998-2007 and the series was published in the U.S. by Tokyopop starting in 2004. The new series “centers around Liselotte — a girl who, until now, has lived a different life from others on the very easternmost tip of a country.”

MMO

Developer Bigpoint announced in a press release that their browser-based Battlestar Galactica MMO has passed the one million subscriber mark since the open beta started in February. The game centers around space combat and allows players to fly missions either as Cylons or Humans and has story based PvE missions as well as strategic PvP battles for resources. BSG Online is free to play with optional microtransactions.

TV

Farscape creator Rockne S. O’Bannon created something of a stir with a tweet on Saturday. The tweet, saying only “Great meeting at Syfy yesterday. New project. HUGE. New series. Very excited. Very, very excited” has created a lot of speculation about what the nature of this project is and how huge it could be. Farscape ran on *shudder* SyFy from 1999 – 2003, was plagued by changes in time slots and was finally cancelled by the network due to the show’s high production cost. We will be watching for further developments on this.

We mentioned a few weeks ago the rumors started by SGU producer Joseph Mallozzi that if the ratings were good enough for the final episodes of the show that an SGU movie was not out of the question. Well those hopes have now been pretty definitively dashed by an announcement by executive producer Brad Wright at this weekend’s Creation Stargate convention in Vancouver. Airlock Alpha reports that Wright told an audience at the convention that financing for future Stargate projects had fallen through, partially because of the recent bankruptcy and financial restructuring at the show’s studio home MGM. *shudder* SyFy officially canceled the series in December and the last episode is scheduled to air in May.

Monday News Roundup 04/11

Matt — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 15:35:08 +0000

I wanted to start out with some local news that I am excited about – Hello Earth is bringing back Outdoor Star Trek this summer and you could be a part of it! Straight from the press release:

Open call for actors for Outdoor Star Trek project.

Hello Earth is a grass roots community enterprise formed with the intention of presenting free entertainment in outdoor spaces. Last year’s inaugural Star Trek episode, “The Naked Time,” was a great success and this year will be even more spectacular.

Needed: Actors to fill all roles (except Kirk and Spock), which will be cast without regard to the gender or race of the original series characters. We are not looking for impersonation. We are looking for creative people who want to be part of the process both on and off stage.

Auditions: Sunday, May 1st from 1-3 pm OR Monday, May 2nd from 7-9 pm

Location: Stone Soup Downstage, 4029 Stone Way N.

Auditions will consist of cold readings. Please be prepared to stay for the entire time; we may not need you for that long but we will be holding callbacks after hearing everyone.

Performances will take place on July 23, 24, 30 and 31 and August 6 and 7 outside at Blanche Lavizzo Park.

Please contact us at helloearthseattle@gmail.com with any questions, or if you wish to help with the production in another capacity.

Last year’s production of ‘The Naked Time’ was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to see what they are going to do this year. If you have ever aspired to be on stage this would be a great way to take the plunge.

The rest of the Monday News is under the fold

Awards

This year’s class of inductees to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame have been announced. Artists Vincent Di Fate and Moebius, author and editor Gardner Dozois and professional iconoclast Harlan Ellison will be inducted in a ceremony as part of the Science Fiction Awards Weekend, June 24-26, here in Seattle.

Books

The nominees for this year’s Scribe Awards have been announced. The Scribe awards are presented by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers and “acknowledge and celebrate excellence in licensed tie-in writing—novels based on TV shows, movies, and games”. Of particular interest to the geek set will be the nominees for Best Novel (Speculative Fiction) which are:
- Guild Wars: Ghosts of Ascalon by Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb
- Star Trek: Mirror Universe: The Sorrows of Empire by David Mack
- Star Wars: Force Unleashed II by Sean Williams
- Supernatural: Heart of the Dragon by Keith R.A. DeCandido
- Warhammer: Bloodborn: Ulrika the Vampire by Nathan Long
The full list of nominees can be seen on the IAMTW website. The winners will be announced this July at San Diego Comic Con.

Comics

The 2011 Eisner Award nominations have been announced. Hellboy creator Mike Mignola was nominated for a total of five awards including Best Single Issue (or One-Shot), Best Limited Series and Best Cover Artist. John Layman and Rob Guillory’s series Chew was nominated for Best Continuing Series, Best Writer (for Layman) and Best Penciller/Inker (for Guillory). The surprisingly long complete list of nominees can be seen here. The Eisner award winners will also be announced this July at San Diego Comic Con.

April 5

Matt — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 08:15:57 +0000

–

Happy Birthday, Shannon!

Monday News Roundup 04/04

Matt — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 16:14:00 +0000

- Kick off your week with a roundup of the geek news you may have missed -

Putting together the first news post after April Fools Day is always a challenge. There were some great stories out there this week but many of them turned out to be not-so-much true. One of my personal favorites was the story from Comic Mix about Warner Brothers lawyers handing out cease and desist orders to people with “unlicensed” tattoos of DC comics characters. This, in my mind, is how you do it right. The story was juuuuuust plausible enough that it really gave me pause. Think Geek also did a fine job again this year with their lightsaber popsicles and the Angry Birds pork rinds.

I’ve done my best to sort through and find some actual news stories but if something in here seems too good to be true it probably means someone’s joke slipped past.

Books

The short list for the first Terry Pratchett Anywhere but Here, Anywhen but Now First Novel Prize has been announced. The six nominees are:
- Postponing Armageddon by Adele Abbott
- The Platinum Ticket by Dave Beynon
- Half Sick of Shadows by David Logan
- Apocalypse Cow by Michael Logan
- Lun by Andrew Salomon
- The Coven at Callington by Shereen Vedam
The winner will be chosen by Sir Terry Pratchett and four other judges and announced at a party to be held on May 31.

Comics

IDW Publishing announced at Wondercon this weekend that they have acquired the rights to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and would be publishing new TMNT stories along with reprints of the original Eastman and Laird comics. Comic Book Resources is reporting that IDW’s take on the Turtles will be based on the original series but there was no comment on whether or not Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird themselves would be involved in the relaunch. The new series is scheduled to debut this Summer.

According to an official press release, Too Much Coffee Man creator Shannon Wheeler has signed a three-book deal with BOOM! Studios. Wheeler will be publishing Too Much Coffee Man: Cutie Island & Other Stories and a follow up to I Thought You Would Be Funnier as well as an all new graphic novel titled Grandpa Won’t Wake Up under BOOM!’s BOOM! Town imprint. Grandpa Won’t Wake Up and Cutie Island & Other Stories are scheduled to be out this year and the I Thought You Would Be Funnier follow up will be out in Spring 2012.

Movies

Warner Brothers released four minutes of footage from Green Lantern into the wild. This is a “condensed version” of the footage that was a huge hit at Wondercon. Enjoy!

Tabletop

Twilight Creations’ Deadlands boardgame may finally make it in to stores. From their website;

After many delays we are happy to announce that Deadlands: Invasion of Slaughter Gulch (affectionately known as DL2) is at the printers. We expect to have it sometime in late May. We think you will find that it was worth the wait.

The game, which has been listed as “coming soon” since 2009, has players vying for control of a frontier town and the supply of “ghost rock” in the surrounding area.

TV

The BBC continues to crank up the hype for the new season of Dr. Who with a new extended trailer that was released into the wild on Friday. Enjoy!

Events to Watch Out For

Matt — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 17:30:38 +0000

– A selection of some of the great geek events going on in the Greater Seattle area this week –

Kind of a quiet this week but there are still a couple of great events going on this weekend.

The Rocky Horror Show is being performed live on stage at Open Circle Theater, 2222 2nd Ave Seattle, this weekend. Shows are at 7:30pm Friday and Saturday and 4pm on Sunday.

COSTUMES ARE ENCOURAGED! HOWEVER – WATER GUNS/RICE/ANYTHING ELSE THAT COULD BE THROWN AT CAST IS PROHIBITED FOR THE ACTORS’ SAFETY. Thank you!

* Please note: Due to some nudity and adult situations, no one under 18 will be admitted.

Tickets available at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/162535 $18 in advance, $20 at the door and VIP tickets available for $25, which includes prime seating, being seated by Magenta and served snacks.

Manos: The Hands of Felt opens this weekend at Odd Duck Studio, 1214 10th Ave, Seattle. Shows are Friday and Saturday at 10:30pm.

The hands behind “The Knights of Nowhere” return with the story of Harold P. Warren, a man with a dream. A dream of filming a low budget horror film. But time is running out for Hal. Will uncooperative puppet actors, an ill-fated wrong turn and an evil cult spell his doom?

Inspired by “Manos – The Hands of Fate,” Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the story behind “Manos”, MANOS – THE HANDS OF FELT features characters, scenes and songs from the original movie, cut with a healthy dose of puppet mayhem.

Tickets: $12, $10 for students/seniors/TPS/Military/Veterans/Union Members/people escorting a puppet
http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/164180 or at the door

Finally, Toy Box Trio is playing two shows this weekend as part of the Moisture Festival. You can see them at 3pm on Saturday and Sunday at Hale’s Palladium, 4301 Leary Way NW, Seattle. For more info and tickets go to http://www.moisturefestival.org/events/view/153.

Monday News Roundup 03/28

Matt — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 16:33:27 +0000

- Kick off your week with a roundup of the geek news you may have missed -

From the “almost entirely self-serving news” department, tabletop gamer geeks in the Greater Seattle area will be pleased to hear that event submissions for Epic Game Day 2 are now open! If you want to host a game at the event, head over to EpicGameDay.com and fill out one of the event submission forms. There are some very nice perks for those who volunteer to be GMs including, but not limited to, a free menu item and (non-alcoholic) drink voucher at AFK Tavern where the event is being held. Epic Game Day will take place April 30th and is absolutely FREE!

The rest of the Monday News is under the fold

Anime

Japanator is reporting that Sentai Filmworks will be releasing Angel Beats! on Blu-ray and DVD in the U.S. for the first time. Angel Beats! follows the adventures of Otonashi, Yuri, and Angel, three students at a high school that is actually a Purgatory where students learn to give up any lingering attachments they still have from life before continuing to an afterlife or reincarnation. The series was written by Jun Maeda and directed by Seiji Kishi. It originally ran in Japan between April and June of last year.

Books

‘Shada’, the Doctor Who episode written by Douglas Adams which was never completely filmed and never aired, is being adapted into a novel by Dr. Who and Sara Jane Adventures writer Gareth Roberts according to SFX. The episode was intended to be the final serial of the 1979-80 series with the fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, but production was interrupted by a strike at the BBC and it was never completed. Pieces of the footage that was shot were used in ‘The Five Doctors’ and Adams re-used some of the elements of the plot in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. The novelization is scheduled to be released in march of 2012.

Movies

Those who listened to the interview with Brian Herbet and Kevin J. Anderson that was in Episode #94 of our podcast will have heard Brian Herbert talking optimistically about a new version of a Dune movie. It seems that his optimism may have been somewhat… optimistic. *shudder* SyFy’s Blastr.com is reporting that the plug has been pulled on Paramount’s development of the film. The project had gone through two directors and several screenplays and had never built up much in the way of momentum towards actually getting made. The possibility still exists for another film version to be made but it will almost certainly have to start from scratch.

TV

Deadline.com is reporting that Showtime is developing a live-action TV series based on the comic book Chew. Supernatural and Eureka writers Terri Hughes Burton and Ron Milbauer reportedly wrote the script and Stephen Hopkins, who has directed episodes of 24 and Californication, is attached to direct. This story has been pretty well confirmed with tweets from Chew creators John Layman and Rob Guillory. No information about a potential air date was given.

Fringe has fought off the “death slot” of Fox Friday nights and been renewed for a fourth season. Ratings have falling somewhat since the move to Fridays, but that didn’t stop Fox from ordering another full 22 episodes. The announcement was initially made in a tweet from series executive producer J.H. Wyman and later confirmed in a press release. In spite of it’s somewhat lower ratings Fringe remains the best performing show Fox has had in the “death slot” and will likely remain there next season.

In more Doctor Who news, the BBC has released a teaser for the upcoming sixth series into the wild. New episodes start April 23.

Wednesday Review – Journal of a UFO Investigator

Matt — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:53:36 +0000

Author David Halperin has written a pretty unusual book in Journal of a UFO Investigator. It is part coming-of-age story, part X-Files, part 2001: A Space Odyssey and part Naked Lunch. It tells the story of Danny Shapiro, an overly intelligent thirteen year-old growing up in the late 60′s. Danny’s life is complicated by a dying mother and a father who seemingly blames him for his mother’s failing health. His only companions are the other two members of his UFO Investigators club and his only refuge from the realities of his life is his UFO journal.

The line between imagination and reality quickly blurs in the story. While researching his own journal, Danny meets the three members of the “Super-Science Society”, precocious teenagers like himself, and joins them in trying to find a missing copy of an account of a UFO encounter that includes handwritten notes rumored to have been written by three Men in Black.

Danny’s telling of events ranges across time and space and includes alien abduction, the Roswell UFO crash, the Men in Black and even touches on the Hollow Earth theory. Fans of UFO lore and X-Files or Fringe style conspiracy theories will find a lot to like in Journal of a UFO Investigator, but there is more to the book than that.

This is David Halperin’s first novel and elements of the story are autobiographical. There is an authenticity to the description of life as a disaffected teenager that is quite clear in the brief times when Danny surfaces from the depths of his UFO investigations. People who grew up feeling like outsiders will find Danny’s character strikingly familiar.

This is a book that could be endlessly debated. There are events that take place that are clearly imaginary and events that are clearly real, but most of the book is one big grey area. This is not a book to pick up if you are looking for a throwaway summer read, but if you are looking for something a little more thought provoking definitely pick it up.

Journal of a UFO Investigator by David Halperin is published by Viking and is available in hardback with a cover price of $25.95.

Events to Watch Out For

Matt — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 15:59:52 +0000

– A selection of some of the great geek events going on in the Greater Seattle area this week –

We’ve talked about Gamestorm and how much we enjoyed going the last two years and this weekend is your chance to find out how much fun it is for yourself. Gamestorm 13 starts Thursday, March 24th at 2 PM at the Hilton Vancouver Washington and runs non-stop until the hotel kicks them out on Sunday. Whether you like boardgaming, mainstream RPGs, indie RPGs, miniatures, wargames, even video games there will be something for you at Gamestorm. Full weekend passes are $45 and day passes are available.

More events to watch out for under the fold

TONIGHT

Hugo House Happy Hours for Writers 6pm at Richard Hugo House 1634 11th Ave. Seattle

Wednesday

Paul & Storm: Nerds & Music 7:30pm at the Triple Door 216 Union Street, Seattle

Friday

Open Circle Theater presents The Rocky Horror Show 7:30pm at Open Circle Theater, 2222 2nd Ave Seattle

Saturday

Outfitting the Fleet: The Costume Design of Battlestar Galactica 2pm at the EMP|SFM 325 5th Avenue North, Seattle

Sunday

Dork Forest Live Podcast 5pm at The Vera Project 305 Harrison Street, Seattle