Mouse Without Borders vs. ShareMouse for Windows Keyboard and Mouse Sharing

I recently recon­fig­ured my desk into a multi-workstation setup, using both my lap­top and desk­top side-by-side, plus an extra mon­i­tor. Hav­ing three screens* to con­tend with, switch­ing between two sets of key­boards and mice just doesn’t cut it.  In my efforts to find an eas­ier solu­tion, I recently had the oppor­tu­nity to try both Share­Mouse and Mouse With­out Bor­ders.  (Feel free to skip ahead if you just want to know which one is bet­ter, in my hum­ble opinion.)

(*Yes, that’s my nerdy triple Hunger Games wall­pa­per you’re seeing)

Share­Mouse

To try to rem­edy the sit­u­a­tion, I first found and installed a “free­ware” pro­gram called Share­Mouse.  Share­Mouse uses your exist­ing local area net­work con­nec­tion to trans­mit key­board input and mouse cur­sor move­ments between mul­ti­ple com­put­ers.  You install it on each com­puter you want to con­trol, des­ig­nate which com­puter is the server (the one con­trol­ling the oth­ers),  then adjust set­tings to con­fig­ure your mon­i­tor arrange­ment.  It also allows for con­ve­nient drag-and-drop file shar­ing between con­nected com­put­ers that have Share­Mouse installed.

The “free” ver­sion of Share­Mouse worked great—except for the fact that it inex­plic­a­bly stopped work­ing alto­gether for me after only two weeks.  I got an error mes­sage telling me the “beta” trial period has expired, and to con­tinue using Share­Mouse I would have to “down­load the lat­est ver­sion.”  Which, of course, I did.  And after going through the motions of unin­stalling and re-installing, I still got the same error mes­sage upon try­ing to launch the program.

Sus­pi­cious, I went to ShareMouse’s web­site and started comb­ing through the FAQs, where I found this:

“Per­sonal home use.”  I fit that descrip­tion.  So far so good.  But that still doesn’t explain why Share­Mouse stopped work­ing.  After click­ing the link, I found this:

Well now,  that changes things a bit, doesn’t it?  I’m only using two com­put­ers, but I’m using more than two mon­i­tors if my lap­top screen is counted.  Also, I have soft­ware “which is typ­i­cally used in pro­fes­sional envi­ron­ments” installed, e.g. Adobe.  But I won­der what else counts?  Does the Microsoft Office suite count?  That’s cer­tainly typ­i­cal of pro­fes­sional envi­ron­ments.  What other soft­ware is included in that sneaky “etc.”?  The Share­Mouse pol­icy also seems to equate “pro­fes­sional users” with “power users,” although you have to drill deep into the FAQ to fig­ure that out.

So basi­cally, the rea­son Share­Mouse stopped work­ing for me, with­out warn­ing, is because the soft­ware deter­mined that I fit their vague def­i­n­i­tion of either a pro­fes­sional user or a power user.  It would have been nice if Share­Mouse informed me of all of the “gotchas” before I installed their “free­ware” soft­ware and got really used to it!  After wast­ing sev­eral hours of my life try­ing to fig­ure out why the blasted thing wasn’t work­ing, I finally got fed up and started look­ing for other solutions.

(By the way, if you do decide to pur­chase a license for the full-blown ver­sion of Share­Mouse, another “gotcha” is that a sep­a­rate $24.95 license is required for EACH com­puter run­ning Share­Mouse.  And since Share­Mouse is pretty much worthless/unnecessary for single-computer setups, why would you EVER pur­chase just one licence?  So the real price of Share­Mouse is $49.90 for a two-computer setup).

Mouse With­out Borders

For us Win­dows users, thank­fully there is a very use­ful and 100% FREE piece of soft­ware called Mouse With­out Bor­ders from the Microsoft Garage.  It essen­tially does all the same things Share­Mouse does, except its func­tion­al­ity is lim­ited to Windows-based PCs.  It’s much eas­ier to install and use.  Instead of hav­ing to install it on all your com­put­ers and then hav­ing to mess with cum­ber­some con­fig­u­ra­tion set­tings, Mouse With­out Bor­ders works automag­i­cally after a sim­ple prompt:

Basi­cally all you have to do is install it on both PCs, and enter a sim­ple code to begin shar­ing.  You can down­load Mouse With­out bor­ders right here.

tl;dr

For Win­dows users in need of a dead-simple key­board and mouse shar­ing solu­tion, Mouse With­out Bor­ders is supe­rior to Share­Mouse and doesn’t try to bait and switch you into buy­ing a paid ver­sion.  You can down­load Mouse With­out bor­ders right here.

‘The Beaver’ Will Make You Sort of, Kind of Like Mel Gibson Again…Maybe

“Hello. I’m The Beaver. And I’m here to save your career.”

Whether you’ve for­given Mel Gib­son for his self-righteous behav­ior, anti-Semitic tirades, racist rants, and alleged wife-beating ways or not (in which case I com­pletely under­stand), I think it’s a tragedy that one of the best movies of 2011 will prob­a­bly never get the recog­ni­tion it deserves because it stars a man who occu­pies a spot on Hollywood’s per­ma­nent blacklist.

But I’m not here to throw a pity party for Mel Gib­son.  I don’t think any man who hits beau­ti­ful women, dri­ves drunk, and owns an island the size of a small coun­try is deserv­ing of much pity.  But acknowl­edge­ment for his extra­or­di­nary act­ing abil­ity? Sure.

Like the guy or not, I think there are few peo­ple who would deny that Mel is a tal­ented actor.  I mean, not once dur­ing The Beaver did I feel like punch­ing him in his douchey, N-word spew­ing face, and that is say­ing some­thing.  I went in with low expec­ta­tions and a healthy dose of cyn­i­cism, yet by the time the end cred­its rolled I felt ready to take back every harsh word I had ever said against Mel Gib­son.  Well, okay, not exactly…but it kind of felt like that!  That’s how a good actor is capa­ble of mak­ing you feel.

And I have to agree with the crit­ics who are say­ing The Beaver is one of Gibson’s best roles. For 91 min­utes, I was some­how able to com­pletely for­get all about Mel Gib­son the per­son and warmly embrace Mel Gib­son the clin­i­cally depressed hus­band and father of two, who after a men­tal break­down and sub­se­quent sui­cide attempt decides to wear a beaver pup­pet on his arm and com­mu­ni­cate exclu­sively through his new stuffed friend’s per­sona thereby regain­ing his con­fi­dence and abil­ity to func­tion.  It’s all very Lars and the Real Girl (a bril­liant film) except per­haps with bet­ter direct­ing (Jodie Fos­ter), more of a focus on dys­func­tional fam­ily dynam­ics, and a bit of a shock ending.

Though a ridiculous-sounding premise, The Beaver is a thor­oughly enjoy­able dram­edy that just seems to work and the rea­son why it works is Mel Gib­son, who man­ages to pull off two simul­ta­ne­ously demand­ing roles in a sin­gle film.  Despite his sta­tus as one of America’s most dis­liked peo­ple, I am not so jaded by the media’s anti-Mel Gib­son cru­sade that I am inca­pable of rec­og­niz­ing tal­ent when I see it.  If you’re able to sep­a­rate an artist’s abil­ity from his or her per­sonal life and appre­ci­ate their work despite per­sonal short­com­ings, well con­grat­u­la­tions on being a ratio­nal per­son. You know, Polan­ski may be a rape artist but I’m not afraid to admit that I really enjoy his movies. And Michael Jack­son may or may not have been a kid-toucher, but when­ever Bil­lie Jean comes on, I always turn that shit up.

Go see The Beaver. It is a beau­ti­ful film that will make you laugh, cry, and all that good stuff if you just give it a chance. And if you can’t sus­pend your per­sonal dis­dain for Mel Gib­son, well, you just might be miss­ing out on a really great movie.

Why ‘Reality is Broken’ Is a Must-Read for Every Gamer

And now for some­thing com­pletely different…

If you con­sider your­self a gamer in any capac­ity, you have prob­a­bly not gone through life with­out some­one telling you, at some point, that video games are waste of time, or you have no life, and other insult­ing mis­con­cep­tions that non-gamers often spew at us.

In her new book, Real­ity is Bro­ken, vision­ary game designer Jane McGo­ni­gal hopes to change such attitudes.

Let’s be hon­est: Video games typ­i­cally get a bad rap.  Blood, sex, vio­lence, gore, moms seduc­ing 13-year-old boys on Xbox Live, the boy who shot his par­ents for tak­ing away Halo… Sen­sa­tional head­lines about video games tend to over­shadow the medium itself.

But what about all the pos­i­tive ways in which games influ­ence our lives?  Beyond basic read­ing com­pre­hen­sion and hand-eye coor­di­na­tion, video games can teach us how to set and achieve goals, adapt to new sit­u­a­tions, learn from our mis­takes, help and influ­ence oth­ers, and even how to be an effec­tive team member.

For the mil­lions of Amer­i­can gamers (over 174 mil­lion, to be more pre­cise) who already real­ize these ben­e­fits, Real­ity is Bro­ken is a refresh­ing and encour­ag­ing study of how video games improve our lives and the rea­sons why we need them.  Jane McGo­ni­gal advo­cates that video games are so omnipresent today because they are able to ful­fill basic human needs that we are oth­er­wise lack­ing in our mod­ern lives.  In short, “real­ity is bro­ken” and McGo­ni­gal believes video games are the “fix.”

“Draw­ing on pos­i­tive psy­chol­ogy, cog­ni­tive sci­ence, and soci­ol­ogy, Real­ity Is Bro­ken uncov­ers how game design­ers have hit on core truths about what makes us happy and uti­lized these dis­cov­er­iesto aston­ish­ing effect in vir­tual envi­ron­ments. Videogames con­sis­tently pro­vide the exhil­a­rat­ing rewards, stim­u­lat­ing chal­lenges, and epic vic­to­ries that are so often lack­ing in the real world. But why, McGo­ni­gal asks, should we use the power of games for escapist enter­tain­ment alone? Her research sug­gests that gamers are expert prob­lem solvers and col­lab­o­ra­tors because they reg­u­larly coop­er­ate with other play­ers to over­come daunt­ing vir­tual chal­lenges, and she helped pio­neer a fast-growing genre of games that aims to turn game­play to socially pos­i­tive ends.”

No mat­ter what kind of gamer you are, from the week­night WoW raider to the casual DS gamer—even non-gamer—you will find your­self inspired by the views Jane presents in her book, and per­haps even in awe at all the inno­v­a­tive, ground­break­ing ways that game design­ers through­out the world are using their tal­ents for the greater good.

Book Give­away!

Would you like to win a copy of Real­ity is Bro­ken? Cour­tesy of The Pen­guin Press and TLC Book Tours, one hard­cover copy of the book will be given away to one of my read­ers in the U.S. or Canada.  If you’d like to enter to win, sim­ply leave a com­ment below using your email address.  I will ran­domly select a win­ner on Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 28 and will con­tact you fur­ther by email.

Good luck!

Review: Reasons to Love ‘Deathly Hallows: Part 1′

When I first learned that Warner Bros. was going to split Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows into two movies, there was much kick­ing and scream­ing on my part.  I was not alone.  There were plenty of fans and non-fans alike who felt it was a poor deci­sion, and one that fur­ther painted Warner Bros. as greedy stu­dio execs who were try­ing to milk the Harry Pot­ter fran­chise dry.

I saw Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows: Part 1 last night and I am happy to report that my atti­tude has changed.  My faith in David Yates still wan­ing, I went into the movie with slightly low­ered expec­ta­tions.  But when the cred­its rolled, I walked out of the the­ater with only pos­i­tive thoughts.  Reflect­ing on the fin­ished prod­uct, I now under­stand not only why it was nec­es­sary to make two films, but also why the film­mak­ers felt it was impor­tant.  They wanted to give us a proper farewell.

Right away, the decay­ing Warner Bros. logo sets the tone: this will not be a happy movie.  Dum­b­le­dore is dead, Volde­mort and his Death Eaters have infil­trated the Min­istry of Magic, and the wiz­ard­ing world is at war.  Times are so dark that even the Mug­gles are flee­ing their homes–nowhere is safe.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione have said their good­byes to Hog­warts (the warm, famil­iar school set­ting is notice­ably absent) and set out on a jour­ney to destroy the hor­cruxes: objects con­tain­ing the seven pieces of Voldemort’s soul that are the keys to his destruction.

The dan­ger is emi­nent from begin­ning to end; this is the dark­est Harry Pot­ter film yet (which should be no sur­prise to those who have read the books).  There are some gen­uinely fright­en­ing scenes and, of course, more deaths of beloved char­ac­ters.  Yet all this doom and gloom is punc­tu­ated by sur­pris­ing lit­tle moments of joy.  I found myself cheer­ing at grand entrances, for exam­ple, when [spoiler] Dobby bursts into Num­ber 12 Gri­mauld Place wrapped around Mundun­gus Fletcher;[/spoiler] and at other times laugh­ing out loud like when [spoiler]Harry tests out the wand that Ron gives him, which unex­pect­edly shoots out a pil­lar of flame[/spoiler] (it’s much fun­nier than it sounds, trust me).

There were also many moments in the film that felt like a love let­ter to fans.  There was an espe­cially lovely scene where [spoiler]Harry coaxes a melan­choly Hermione into danc­ing with him; it was a touch­ing and fit­ting trib­ute to their seven years of almost sibling-like friendship.[/spoiler]  We were also treated to an early scene where [spoiler]Hermione per­forms a mem­ory charm on her par­ents, know­ing she will have to leave them behind.  In the books, we never get to see Hermione’s “Mug­gle” life, so I really enjoyed this lit­tle bit.[/spoiler]

I some­times take issue when this type of fluff is injected into books based on movies, espe­cially if they replace scenes that are more crit­i­cal to the plot, but I could not find much to com­plain about here.  Even the book’s most ten­der moments are han­dled with great care [spoiler]like the death of Dobby (which man­aged to make me cry)[/spoiler].  There are, of course, some dif­fer­ences between book and film that improve the flow and pac­ing of events, but over­all I felt Deathly Hal­lows: Part 1 was a very faith­ful adap­ta­tion that cap­tured the same feel­ings of iso­la­tion and impend­ing doom.

There were some low­lights for me, how­ever.  Let’s start with Xenophilus Lovegood–I didn’t care for Rhys Ifans’ per­for­mance.  I real­ize the char­ac­ter is sup­posed to be eccen­tric, but I felt really dis­tracted by his screen-time.  Also, I love Helena Bon­ham Carter as Bel­la­trix Lestrange, but with every Harry Pot­ter movie she gets more and more ridicu­lous.  When­ever she’s on screen I feel like I’m watch­ing the Helena Bon­ham Carter show–I wish she’d tone it down a bit.  Then there was Alexan­der Desplat’s score, which was not spec­tac­u­lar, but it gets the job done.  Those are my only com­plaints, and yes, they’re nitpicky.

Visu­ally, Deathly Hal­lows is a mar­vel of film­mak­ing, from the cin­e­matog­ra­phy to the spe­cial effects.  The spells, appari­tions, fly­ing and bat­tle scenes all looked amaz­ing.   As much as I missed Hog­warts, this film makes up for its absence with breath­tak­ing nat­ural back­drops.  See­ing it on an IMAX screen was truly a mem­o­rable experience.

But as spec­tac­u­lar as part one of Deathly Hal­lows is, it’s almost a bit unfair to review it as a com­plete film.  Even at a whop­ping two hours and twenty six min­utes long, I guar­an­tee you will be dis­ap­pointed when it ends; feel­ing rather like some­one pulled the rug out from under you.  And like all good two-part movies, this one ends on a major down note.  For those won­der­ing what part of the book serves as the end­ing to this film, I will only say this: they made a very good decision.

There were so many things to love about Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows, and I am con­fi­dent it will go down as one of the best films in the Pot­ter movie fran­chise, if not the best. The only bad thing about this movie…is that it ends.

Review: Gray Matter Was Worth the Wait

For gamers who have been antic­i­pat­ing the release of this game for over seven years (prac­ti­cally an eter­nity in game devel­op­ment), Gray Mat­ter will inevitably polar­ize us into two groups:

1. Those who will crit­i­cize it for not being per­fect despite “all that extra time” the devel­op­ers have had to work on it
2. Those, like myself, who are sim­ply so grate­ful to finally be able to play this gem that we are will­ing to look past its shortcomings.

The most glar­ing crit­i­cisms are the game’s graph­ics and ani­ma­tions.  (Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way, shall we?)  If you are expect­ing an adven­ture game with cut­ting edge graph­ics and ani­ma­tion, you will not find it here.  What you can expect, how­ever, is a game that is rich in story, mys­tery, and the super­nat­ural.  In other words, it’s all the things that fans of Jane Jensen’s games have come to expect.  Gray Mat­ter tells a beau­ti­fully crafted story with inter­wo­ven themes of sci­ence vs. magic, love and obses­sion, death and for­give­ness. Set in Oxford, the game is steeped in his­tory and atmos­phere, and fea­tures real loca­tions from around Eng­land ren­dered into beau­ti­ful, softly lit backdrops.

There are two main char­ac­ters that the player con­trols alter­na­tively in dif­fer­ent chap­ters:  Saman­tha (“Sam”) Everett, a young, spunky ex-goth street magi­cian who has spent most of her well-traveled life in and out of fos­ter care, and Dr. David Styles, a bril­liant but reclu­sive neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gist with a tragic past.  Both of their lives begin to change when Sam shows up at the doorstep of Dread Hill House one rainy night, des­per­ate for a job and a place to stay.  Still mourn­ing his dead wife and con­sumed by his exper­i­ments, Dr. Styles soon becomes entan­gled in pow­er­ful forces he does not under­stand, and it’s up to Sam–who has an agenda of her own–to help him.

The story unfolds in a care­ful, sus­pense­ful man­ner that gives us insight into both char­ac­ters’ minds and emo­tions.  Nei­ther of them hold all the clues or know all the answers, and both of them are deeply flawed in one way or another.  That’s all I will say with­out giv­ing too much away.

The voice act­ing ranges from just okay to great, with Sam’s voice lean­ing toward the low end of the spec­trum; a bit dis­ap­point­ing given her huge role.  There are cer­tainly moments when her voice shines, but over­all I felt it didn’t quite fit her char­ac­ter and wasn’t always gen­uine.  On the oppo­site end, David’s voice was excel­lent.  The game’s score and sound­track is another high­light.  The few sub­tle musi­cal tracks are won­der­fully com­posed, if a bit repet­i­tive. (I’m now a Scar­let Furies fan, by the way.)

The game also fea­tures graphic novel-style cutscenes that have a hand-painted look and feel.  I very much enjoyed the game’s art style, but crit­ics will most likely ding the cutscenes for being a byprod­uct of low bud­get.  I at least applaud the devel­op­ers for doing some­thing unique and cre­ative given their limitations.

Most of the puz­zles are log­i­cal inventory-based puz­zles that fit the sit­u­a­tion the pro­tag­o­nists find them­selves in.  You will not encounter any ran­dom, out of place puz­zle mech­a­nisms that seem to exist just to slow your progress, or be required to go on any tedious pixel-hunting tan­gents.  The game’s magic trick sys­tem is inno­v­a­tive and pro­vides some unique game­play, but it’s also not much of a challenge.

Over­all, the puz­zles aren’t that dif­fi­cult, but they are some­times pre­sented in a non-linear fash­ion that I often found con­fus­ing.  For exam­ple, gold loca­tions on your map indi­cate that there’s “some­thing left to do” at that loca­tion.  How­ever, the game will not let you progress until you go to another loca­tion, work on a sep­a­rate puz­zle for a while, then come back later.  You will find your­self check­ing the Chap­ter Progress screen frequently.

One issue I have with many adven­ture games is the copi­ous amounts of read­ing.  Though Gray Mat­ter does have its fair share of in-game doc­u­ments and other printed mis­cel­lany, it’s usu­ally pre­sented in such a way that’s easy to digest and actu­ally some­what infor­ma­tive and inter­est­ing.  (You may even find your­self learn­ing a thing or two about magic–who else tried some of Sam’s tricks out on their friends?)  And of course, in clas­sic Jane Jensen style, there’s plenty of humor, in-jokes, and pop cul­ture references.

Gray Mat­ter proves, as most great adven­ture games do, that graph­ics are not the only thing that makes a game good.  If you can look past it’s rough edges, Gray Mat­ter will reward you with sat­is­fy­ing game­play, lov­able char­ac­ters, and a truly riv­et­ing story that comes to an excit­ing and sat­is­fy­ing con­clu­sion.  But per­haps the more amaz­ing story is how Gray Mat­ter sur­vived through years of devel­op­ment hell and lived to tell its tale.

Yes, Gray Mat­ter was absolutely worth the wait.

Hands On with Gray Matter, the New Adventure Game from Jane Jensen

Gray Mat­ter is finally here!  (Well, sort of.) It’s the adven­ture game fans of Jane Jensen, the game designer behind the beloved Gabriel Knight series, have been wait­ing a looooong time for (since 1993, to be exact).  Though the offi­cial U.S. release won’t be until Feb­ru­ary 2011, you can get your hands on the Ger­man PC release that also includes an Eng­lish lan­guage ver­sion.  The German/English ver­sion of Gray Mat­ter is avail­able on Amazon.de for 35,99 EUR (about $50 USD).  There’s also an Xbox 360 ver­sion of the game, but you won’t be able to play it in Eng­lish until next year.

(UPDATE: You can also pur­chase a dig­i­tal copy of the game from Gamer Unlim­ited. Thanks to Fien @ Adven­tureGamers for this link.)

There isn’t much game­play footage of Gray Mat­ter avail­able yet out­side of the offi­cial trail­ers, so I decided to fraps my first  few min­utes of play­time and share it here.  Hope­fully it will encour­age you to go buy it!

Here’s the ani­mated intro/opening sequence:

And here’s the first few min­utes of actual game­play, which involved a tuto­r­ial sequence:

My first impres­sions of Gray Matter:

• The gothic art style is inter­est­ing and unique
• Nice music in the intro screen…
• …But the intro screen itself isn’t much to look at. Not a big deal, though.
• It’s hard to think of a game the open­ing ani­ma­tion sequence com­pares to; it almost reminds me of an anime I’ve seen but can’t put my fin­ger on it
• Game­play graph­ics look a bit sim­i­lar to Still Life
• Char­ac­ter move­ment is pretty fluid
• Not sure if I like the tooltips that appear when you hover over items; hop­ing these can be disabled
• Con­trols are sim­ple and straightforward
• The inven­tory sys­tem is well designed and pretty to look at; it loads a bit slow on mouseover, though (could just be my PC, though)
• Voice act­ing not bad at all so far
• The tuto­r­ial bit seemed a bit ele­men­tary, but I’m try­ing to keep in mind that it’s prob­a­bly meant for peo­ple who’ve never played a point-and-click style adven­ture game
• Saman­tha, the game’s pro­tag­o­nist, is cute and witty. I won’t mind spend­ing time in her shoes.
• I really, really, really hope this game does well.

I don’t know if Gray Mat­ter will live up to the hype and expec­ta­tions that Jane Jensen fans have been build­ing up for the past seven years, but I per­son­ally could not be more thrilled to finally have my hands on what I’m sure will be an amaz­ing game.  I’ll be post­ing a full review when I fin­ish it. (UPDATE:  My review can be found here.)

And now it’s time to go explore the secrets of Dread Hill House…

Heavy Rain is, well, heavy. (A spoiler-free review.)

Every so often, a game comes along that changes the way I feel about video games.  Heavy Rain is one of them.  It’s been a long time since I’ve played a game that has absorbed me as com­pletely as this one did.  I sup­pose I should pref­ace this review by admit­ting that Heavy Rain is the main rea­son I finally broke down and bought a PS3.  (Sure, I’m a month or two late, but that’s what I get for pro­cras­ti­nat­ing on my taxes.)  I had been lust­ing after this game for well over a year, all the while lament­ing my lack of PS3.  But the game’s highly antic­i­pated release, along with PS3’s much more rea­son­able $299 pric­etag, was, for me, a win­ning combo I could no longer ignore.

So a few days ago I wasted no time break­ing the seal of the PS3 box, breath­ing in that deli­cious new con­sole smell (I know you know what I’m talk­ing about) and chris­ten­ing my Sony expe­ri­ence with this amaz­ing game.  I won’t bother delv­ing too deep into the plot or the char­ac­ters, as I’m sure you can find more than enough infor­ma­tion about them else­where.  Instead I’d like to focus my review on con­grat­u­lat­ing Quan­tic Dream for craft­ing a gam­ing expe­ri­ence like no other.  It seems incor­rect some­how to refer to Heavy Rain as a video game, when really it’s more akin to an inter­ac­tive film.  The direc­tion and art design demand your atten­tion right away, with graph­ics so real­is­tic you almost feel like you’re intrud­ing on these character’s lives.  (Side note: the game def­i­nitely lives up to it’s M-17 rat­ing; it’s def­i­nitely not a game I’d let my kids play…if I had kids).  The metic­u­lously detailed envi­ron­ments, rich sound­scapes, and of course the game’s sig­na­ture relent­less, pound­ing rain com­bine to cre­ate an atmos­phere of intense fore­bod­ing.  It’s an emo­tion­ally heavy expe­ri­ence that pro­gresses from light to dark; from sad­ness to full on despair.

Although there is but one over­ar­ch­ing objective–to iden­tify and stop The Origami Killer–the four main char­ac­ters each have their own story to tell.  Your actions and deci­sions as a player impact their per­sonal nar­ra­tives, for bet­ter or for worse.  There is no right or wrong in Heavy Rain, there is only cause and effect.  The best course of action to take is not always the most obvi­ous; and some­times the game throws a deci­sion at you so fast you can eas­ily miss it.  Yet the game pro­gresses even if you fail or if your actions don’t unfold as intended.  By the way, Heavy Rain’s auto-save fea­ture pre­vents you from going back for “do-overs.”  Thus, life goes on and you must live with your choices.

With that final thought in mind, I’ll try not to beat myself up too much for unin­ten­tion­ally killing off 3 out of 4 main characters. ;-)

My thoughts after fin­ish­ing Heavy Rain:

• Damn, I fucked up.
• Damn, I fucked up a lot.
• Now I’ll need to play through it again just to redeem myself.
• The iden­tity of the Origami Killer…wow.  Did not see that one com­ing.  At all.
• Yes, Heavy Rain was worth the wait. (And worth my PS3 pur­chase, for that matter.)
• This theme music is going to be stuck in my head for a long time…

And now, a few small gripes (because Heavy Rain, although amaz­ing, isn’t perfect):

• It was shorter than I had hoped.  On the other hand, like a well-edited movie, it was no longer than it needed to be.
• Some­times the game is too lin­ear for my taste; it’s often too obvi­ous where to go or what to do next.
• Some of the but­ton com­bi­na­tions are frus­trat­ing as hell; be pre­pared for rig­or­ous fin­ger exercises.
• It could just be my shitty TV, but some­times it’s really hard to see the action icons.  There were mul­ti­ple times when I inter­preted an action incor­rectly because either my char­ac­ter was hid­ing it, or it was too small to see.

Despite its minor flaws, I loved every sec­ond of Heavy Rain and I wish there were more games like it.

I didn’t realize New Moon was a comedy

All this week I pur­posely stayed away from the spoil­ers, the leaked clips, the early reviews, the 3 a.m. tweets, and the rav­ing fan­girl Twi­hards in social­me­di­a­land.  I wanted to see New Moon with­out my already low opin­ion of Stephe­nie Meyer and her ilk taint­ing my expe­ri­ence.  So tonight I cast aside the Twilulz and gave New Moon a chance.

I want my $10.00 back.

New Moon started badly, ended badly, with plenty of suck in between. Now, I real­ize The Twi­light Saga isn’t exactly pro­found lit­er­a­ture.  I also real­ize I’m about ten years older than this franchise’s tar­get audi­ence.  But I also know the dif­fer­ence between good and bad movies, and New Moon is a ter­ri­ble film.  The Twi­hards must be happy, though.  If they were hop­ing for a per­fect smoldering-glare-by-smoldering-glare trans­la­tion of the book, New Moon delivers.

It’s not like the con­cept of vam­pires ver­sus were­wolves is any­thing new, nei­ther is the injec­tion of a trite love tri­an­gle.  But when you take already-ridiculous sub­ject mat­ter and try to turn it into a seri­ous film, usu­ally one of two things hap­pens:  1) You get some­thing akin to Under­world.  2) Hilar­ity.  New Moon col­lapsed under the weight of its own attempt at being seri­ous.  There were some moments when I felt like I was watch­ing One Life to Live.  At other times, an after-school spe­cial.   Sure, I laughed dur­ing the parts where I was sup­posed to laugh.  There were plenty of inten­tion­ally funny moments pep­pered through­out the film, and these I enjoyed.  But I knew the movie was bad when I couldn’t stop laugh­ing at the seri­ous parts.  I wasn’t alone, either.  I heard snorts and sti­fled gig­gles all around me.

I found these bits espe­cially lol-worthy:

• Grandma Swan’s thou­sand yard stare.
• Edward Cullen’s fond­ness for walk­ing in slow-motion.
• CGI were­wolves emote sur­pris­ingly well.  Almost as good as Fal­cor in the Nev­erend­ing Story!
• Throngs of ambigu­ously gay shirt­less wolfmen.
• Cam­era shots that make every­thing seem EPIC.
• Bella and Edward frol­ick­ing through the woods. Yes, frol­ick­ing.
• The Volturi’s drag makeup.
  
• Bella is evi­dently a Mac geek.  No won­der I hate her.

And those were just some of the good parts.  Aside from mak­ing me laugh inap­pro­pri­ately, the film’s music was another sore point.  The score seemed so out of place in most scenes, it was almost laugh­able.  In other places it was weirdly silent.  I really missed Carter Burwell’s beau­ti­ful Bella’s Lul­laby theme from the first movie; I wish they had reprised it here.  In fact there was no trace of any kind of theme at all in New Moon; just the occa­sional soap opera-ish strings (you know, dur­ing the “smol­der­ing glares”) and and end­less playlist of sedate, instantly for­get­table indie songs.  This is one ille­gal down­load I’ll skip.

New Moon has a run­ning time of 2 hours.  By the 90 minute mark, I was pray­ing for it to end.  Say what you want about Cather­ine Hardwicke’s gritty direct­ing style, but she did a hell of a lot bet­ter on Twi­light than Chris Weitz on New Moon.  It’s sad that I have to say this, but New Moon makes Twi­light—a much lower bud­get film, I might add—look like an Oscar nom­i­nee. I don’t sup­pose it’s entirely Chris Weitz’s fault, though, con­sid­er­ing the source.  New Moon is a shitty book, ergo, New Moon is a shitty movie.  I guess you can’t pol­ish a turd.

God, I hate being right all the time!

Harry Potter and the Half-way Decent Movie

So it’s like 3:30 a.m., and I just got home from the mid­night show­ing of Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince.  I could go to bed, but I had to get a few things off my mind first while my mem­o­ries are still fresh.  Legili­mens!

First, the good.  This movie was a LOT of fun.  As one of my Twit­ter pals put it, Half-Blood Prince felt like return­ing to high school and see­ing all of your old friends.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione have always been at the heart of every Pot­ter film, and HBP doesn’t devi­ate from this win­ning for­mula.  The film doesn’t waste any time get­ting right down to busi­ness, and it’s action-packed from start to fin­ish.  From a plot stand­point, it had a lot of ground to cover (as all the Pot­ter films do) and those two and a half hours just seem to fly by.  Over­all it was a solid Pot­ter film, and I’m sure it will hold up to many sub­se­quent view­ings, which are no doubt nec­es­sary to catch all the things you might have missed.  There was just so much going on in this movie it was almost overwhelming.

And now the not-so-good.  I don’t know if this is a byprod­uct of hav­ing been forced to wait an extra 9 months for its release and hav­ing inflated expec­ta­tions or what, but HBP def­i­nitely had its short­com­ings.  The down­side to cram­ming so much stuff in is that there’s quite a bit left out.  And I’m not even one of those book Nazis that insists all movies must be 100% faith­ful to the book; not even close.  I just didn’t under­stand some of the logic behind the deci­sions made in this film’s case.  They had time to throw in a bunch of lengthy scenes that never hap­pened, but they didn’t have time to include the ones that actu­ally did?  I would rather see a film where they’re forced to leave things out due to time con­straints ver­sus just mak­ing up what­ever the hell they want to.  With­out giv­ing any­thing away, the first 10 min­utes of this film is a prime example.

Many parts of this film just didn’t feel like a Harry Pot­ter movie at all when com­pared to the pre­vi­ous five.  I think a lit­tle too much lib­erty was taken, to the point that some of the things that make Pot­ter movies feel like Pot­ter movies was lost–which is really sur­pris­ing, because I felt Yates did such a fan­tas­tic job with Order of the Phoenix.  Maybe I’m expect­ing too much; it’s just Harry Pot­ter after all.  Or maybe I’m just get­ting too old for this shit.  I cer­tainly felt old dur­ing the romcom-y bits when 90% of the the­ater was squeal­ing like giddy school­girls.  It could not have been more appar­ent who this film’s tar­get audi­ence was.

Speak­ing of get­ting old, when did the stu­dents of Hog­warts all turn 30?  I real­ize Daniel Rad­cliffe and com­pany have aged quite a bit since the first film, but I don’t think I saw any younger stu­dents at all in HBP.  You know what else I didn’t see?  Any infor­ma­tion about the Half-Blood Prince what­so­ever.  I feel bad for any­one who has never read the books that tries to watch this film; you will be hope­lessly lost.

For the rest of you–the ones who’ve read the books–despite my pithy com­plaints, there’s a lot to love about the film ver­sion of Half-Blood Prince:

(Warn­ing: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.  Beware!)

Things I liked:

• The bits about Harry & Hermione’s friend­ship, par­tic­u­larly Dumbledore’s “curios­ity.” So cute.
• Jim Broadbent’s turn as Slughorn; great job!
• Aragog’s funeral and Hagrid’s sub­se­quent drink­ing binge.
• Snape bein’ all Snape-ish as only Snape can.
• Happy to see Tonks & Lupin together, how­ever brief.
• Both kids who played Tom Rid­dle (age 11 & age 16) were fantastic!
• Michael Gambon’s Dum­b­le­dore was much bet­ter played this time around.

…And of course,  there were some things that needed improvement:

Things I could have done without:

• Jessie Cave as Laven­der Brown.
• Pan­der­ing to the HP fan­girl set.  Yes I real­ize HBP is the “O.C.” of all the Pot­ter books, but the teen romance por­trayed in this film was just over the top, to the point where I felt like the roman­tic sub­plots over­shad­owed the main one.
• Ran­dom black woman who comes on to Harry in a cafe.  Seri­ously, what is up with ran­dom black char­ac­ters appear­ing in the Pot­ter films?  It’s almost like the direc­tors throw them in there for diversity’s sake.
• The heavy-handed direc­tion.  I swear in some shots you could almost feel Yates think­ing “Hmm, what crazy cam­era wiz­ardry can I do to make this scene look cooler?”
• The Weasley’s house burn­ing down.  Um, WTF??
• Fen­rir Grey­back.  Although an impor­tant char­ac­ter in the book, his pres­ence added noth­ing to this movie.

Things I missed:

• The “feel” and spirit of Hog­warts just wasn’t there for me this time around.
• Did they even bother to put the main char­ac­ters in uni­forms dur­ing classes?
• Where the hell were all the younger stu­dents?  I don’t think I saw even one.
• Dumbledore’s funeral.  I won­der if we’ll see it in the begin­ning of Deathly Hal­lows? I felt the end­ing in gen­eral was kind of a cop-out.
• Cho Chang. I thought we’d at least see her in the back­ground or something.
• Any back­ground infor­ma­tion what­so­ever about the Half-Blood Prince.

P.S.  Did any­one else almost pee a lit­tle bit when Dum­b­le­dore (whom J.K. Rowl­ing pro­fesses to be gay) starts telling Harry how he’s been fond of him since he was a lit­tle boy, and that they need to fig­ure out the deal with the closet??  Unin­ten­tional hilar­ity FTW.

Nintendo at E3: Epic Yawn, for the Most Part

Fol­low­ing along with Nintendo’s E3 press con­fer­ence on Twit­ter, the live reac­tions were less than enthu­si­as­tic.  Well, it’s no won­der with a pre­sen­ter like this:

Does she look excited about Nin­tendo to you?

For the most part, Nintendo’s pre­sen­ta­tion ambled along like an old woman with a bad hip.  The over­all expe­ri­ence was so blah, #nin­tend­o­fail was in dan­ger of becom­ing a trend­ing topic for a while there.

These were the lowlights:

• Wii Fit Plus — Some minor improve­ments to Wii Fit, such as omit­ting wait-times between exer­cises and the abil­ity to tar­get spe­cific areas.  Riveting!
• Wii Motion­Plus — Add-on hard­ware to make the Wiimote sen­sors more pre­cise.  Will run you about $20 for some­thing that makes the Wii func­tion the way it’s sup­posed to.  Oh and by the way, some new games will require it, like Red Steel 2.
  (notic­ing a trend here with the tack­ing “Plus” onto everything?)
• Ter­ri­ble scripted jokes between Bill and Reggie.
• Final Fan­tasy Crys­tal Chron­i­cles: Crys­tal Bear­ers — Yet another Final Fan­tasy title…
• Women’s Mur­der Club: Games of Pas­sion — New “inter­ac­tive fic­tion” game series for DS, adding another nail to the cof­fin of real adven­ture games.
• Style Savvy — Yet another brain­less pink-packaged game aimed at tweenaged girls.
• DSi cir­cle jerk: over 1M units sold in less than 2 months, and DSi gamers will soon be able to share pho­tos on Facebook.
• Wii Vital­ity Sen­sor — Periph­eral that mon­i­tors pulse rate, ner­vous­ness, etc. I don’t even know what the fuck to say about this…

I’m on the fence about:

• Leg­end of Zelda: Spirit Tracks — Demo playable at E3 this week, but didn’t like the few screen­shots we saw.
• Mario vs. Don­key Kong — Play­ers will be able to design their own lev­els, game­play looked kinda fun.
• Golden Sun DS
• War­i­or­Ware DIY — Gamers can design their own minigames from scratch & share with friends; kinda neat, I guess.
• Res­i­dent Evil: The Dark­side Chron­i­cals — Another on-rails shooter from the RE franchise.

But there were a few sprin­kles of cool:

• Wii Sports Resort — Bas­ket­ball, archery, sky­div­ing & more.
• Super Mario Galaxy sequel — yes, yes, yes!  The demo looked awe­some, the graph­ics bright and beautiful.

And then, sav­ing the best for last, Nin­tendo made up for much of its E3 snorefest with the announce­ment of…

Metroid: Other M

Okay, seri­ously, I want this game NOW!

Update: Penny Arcade sums up my feel­ings exactly.