Using Walkthroughs: When It’s Not Cheating

How many times have you got­ten stuck in an adven­ture game because you missed one tiny lit­tle pixel you some­how neglected to click?  Or because you couldn’t make sense of the con­vo­luted story hinted at within the 300 pages of books and diaries the game expects you to read?  Or maybe you didn’t real­ize that you were sup­posed to com­bine the rope with the rub­ber chicken (how silly of you) which turns out to be mirac­u­lously crit­i­cal in mak­ing your great escape.  It’s hair-pulling moments like these when the temp­ta­tion to use a walk­through is at its strongest.  It’s the inevitable eth­i­cal dilemma all adven­ture gamers must face: do I con­tinue to waste hours get­ting nowhere, or do I take one lit­tle peek at the answers?  We’re torn between the desire to feel sat­is­fied in solv­ing puz­zles for our­selves, and on the other hand, the desire to merely get on with the rest of our lives.

If you’re like me, you’ll reach one of these mad­den­ing impasses and at least try to give it your best shot.  You’ll click and double-click every­thing, retrace your steps, talk to every­one, and exhaust a good hour or two of play­time before your brain trans­forms into Jello and your once opti­mistic pow­ers of rea­son­ing dete­ri­o­rate into thoughts of obscene and utter con­tempt for the mak­ers of such mind­fucks, that were obvi­ously designed specif­i­cally to destroy you.  I’ve been there.

Case in point:  Last night while play­ing The Black Mir­ror , I got stuck in William Gordon’s tower study room and for the life of me could not fig­ure out why.  I knew I was look­ing for a diary, and I knew it would be in this room.  I picked up every object there was to pick up, tried com­bin­ing items to no avail, and clicked and double-clicked on every square pixel of screen real estate that I could.  Yet the game would not let me leave the room, stat­ing that “I need to explore this area more thor­oughly.”  When I real­ized I had wasted over an hour in this sin­gle room, I decided to sac­ri­fice my pride and guiltily con­sult a walk­through, feel­ing stu­pid and defeated.  And you know what it turns out I was doing wrong?  I needed to right-click on the damn desk drawer to find the secret hid­den diary, not left-click it.  (WTF!)  So even though I had already fig­ured out exactly where to go and what to do, an unfor­tu­nate tech­ni­cal­ity pre­vented my progression.

When it comes to adven­ture games, I believe there’s a fine line between dif­fi­culty and poor game design.

Let’s be hon­est, game design­ers some­times do things that are just plain stu­pid and/or  make no sense.  And it’s cir­cum­stances like the one described above when I will hap­pily con­sult a walk­through and not feel guilty after­ward.  When we learn puz­zle solu­tions in a walk­through, we will usu­ally expe­ri­ence one of two reactions:

1. Wow, how could I have missed that!??
2. OMFG that is SOOOOO stupid!

The first reac­tion typ­i­cally leads to feel­ings of guilt and shame for hav­ing looked up the answer.  But if it’s the sec­ond reac­tion, should we feel jus­ti­fied?  I say yes.  Can it really be con­sid­ered cheat­ing if a game’s poor design or quirky con­trol sys­tem prac­ti­cally requires you to cheat?  (Of course, the only prob­lem is, you won’t know the dif­fer­ence until you’ve cheated…)

So in the inter­est of restor­ing everyone’s dig­nity dur­ing our moments of des­per­a­tion, I’d like to pro­pose the following:

Using a walk­through is not cheat­ing when…

• You already know where to go and what to do, but can­not fig­ure out exactly how to do it.
• You dis­cover some­thing impor­tant or con­nect the dots ear­lier than the game’s pro­tag­o­nist, and you must then do exces­sive amounts of back­track­ing to bring your less intel­li­gent alter-ego up to speed.
• Ter­ri­ble con­trol or inter­face designs make oth­er­wise easy tasks exceed­ingly difficult.
• The game has known bugs that inhibit progression.
• Exces­sive use of red her­rings fea­tured in the game.
• Puz­zle solu­tions turns out to be almost com­pletely illog­i­cal, with no prior clues given for how to go about solv­ing them.
• Solu­tion requires com­bin­ing two com­pletely unre­lated objects in a non­sen­si­cal fash­ion to become key­stone of epic McGuyver-like proportions.

I remem­ber play­ing adven­ture games before the Inter­net.  Before walk­throughs, before Game­FAQs.  Before you could just Google a descrip­tion of the exact part of the game you were stuck on and be met with hun­dreds of detailed, pic­to­r­ial solu­tions.  Those were the days.  You felt a real sense of accom­plish­ment when you com­pleted games.  Nowa­days it’s far too easy to Google up the answers, or worse, unin­ten­tion­ally stum­ble upon cheats and spoil­ers posted online.  I guess one solu­tion could be to avoid the Inter­net com­pletely while you’re play­ing a game, but let’s be real­is­tic here.  These are the rea­sons why I’m thank­ful for sites like Uni­ver­sal Hint Sys­tem which is help­ful with­out giv­ing too much away.  After all, the very rea­son we play adven­ture games is because we enjoy games that reward us for our clev­er­ness and intu­ition, not pun­ish us with frus­tra­tion and feel­ings of inferiority.

A love letter to the Sega Genesis/CD

Remem­ber the sheer awe­some­ness of Sonic the Hedge­hog?  Remem­ber how great the 6-button con­troller was?  Remem­ber Sega Visions mag­a­zine?

I got my first glimpse into that 16-bit world one sum­mer when my older cousin came to visit and brought along his shiny new Sega Gen­e­sis .  All I knew at the time was that it wasn’t a Nin­tendo, the only con­sole I’d ever really known.  The Sega Gen­e­sis was black and mys­te­ri­ous, almost as if it were inten­tion­ally designed to be in stark con­trast with the pedes­trian light gray of Nin­tendo.  I had no con­cept of graph­ics, hard­ware, or these things called “bits.” I just knew video games were fun to play.  But when my cousin showed me those early Gen­e­sis games for the first time–games like Golden Axe and Alex Kidd–my world changed.  These games looked like noth­ing I had ever seen before.  I vividly remem­ber the first time my cousin and I played Altered Beast.  The char­ac­ters looked real. The sound effects used real voices (POWER UP!).  It blew my lit­tle 7-year-old mind.  Sud­denly my Nin­tendo games seemed bor­ing and amateur.

And you must admit, the graph­ics were amaz­ing for 1990.  It was at a time when most kids had never heard of Sega Gen­e­sis, and if they did, their par­ents prob­a­bly couldn’t afford to buy them one.  And if they could, good luck con­vinc­ing them it was some­how dif­fer­ent or bet­ter than “that Nin­tendo you already have.”  Lots of beg­ging and tons of chores later, I was one of the proud but few kids in my neigh­bor­hood with a Sega Gen­e­sis.  When I went to the local video rental store (this was before Block­buster), I was one of the hand­ful of cus­tomers who had any rea­son to go near the small but brand spank­ing new selec­tion of Gen­e­sis games.

Two years later, Super Nin­tendo arrived.  And inven­tiably, us kids were divided on whose video game sys­tem was supe­rior. (Funny how some things never change.)  The lucky kids had both.  The rest of us were forced to choose one or the other.  The Super Nin­tendo kids were the soft­ies, the kids with the “toy” con­sole.  Us Sega kids were the hard­core gamers, the ones with the con­sole that actu­ally showed blood in Mor­tal Kom­bat.  Choos­ing your alliance was crit­i­cal to your social sta­tus and geek cred, and I defended my console’s honor with a noble fist.  A side-by-side screen­shot com­par­i­son of every sin­gle game looked more real­is­tic on the Gen­e­sis, and that was all the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion I needed.  And though years later I even­tu­ally did get a Super Nin­tendo (and yes it was a great con­sole) for the major­ity of the 1990s I was first and fore­most a Sega girl.

Remem­ber this?

Nat­u­rally when the Sega CD came out, I knew I had to have that too.  And like the Gen­e­sis, the Sega CD blew me away with its graph­ics and sound.  Video games on a com­pact disc?  Sega has always been ahead of its time.  (Their exper­i­men­ta­tion and for­ward think­ing is per­haps the rea­son for where they’re at right now, but that’s another blog post for another time.)  Before Playsta­tion, even before the Pana­sonic 3DO, us Sega CD own­ers were play­ing mas­sive games with full-motion video and CD-quality sound.  The Sega CD is also the con­sole (or should I say pseudo con­sole) that really ignited my love for adven­ture games.  Willy Beamish, Snatcher, Rise of the Dragon; no other con­sole was putting out games like these.  I remem­ber lust­ing after the CDX, one of the first multi-purpose con­soles on the market.

Although it even­tu­ally became unpop­u­lar, I kept right on play­ing my Genesis/CD, even when the games began to dis­ap­pear from that local video rental store.  There were so many great games, the con­sole kept me play­ing for a long time after its even­tual demise.  Over the years other con­soles came and went in my life, and some­where in between I got Sat­urn and Dream­cast too.  But my fond­est Sega mem­o­ries cen­ter around the Genesis/CD years, which to this day remains my favorite con­sole of all time.

I guess what I’m really try­ing to say is, I heart you, Sega. Thanks for mak­ing my child­hood a lit­tle more awesome.

Coraline: A modern day Wizard of Oz

“You prob­a­bly think this world is a dream come true… but you’re wrong.”

Cora­line is one of those movies I knew I would love before I even knew any­thing about it. Between being writ­ten by fan­tasy god Neil Gaiman , directed by Henry Selick (The Night­mare Before Christ­mas) , and fea­tur­ing dark and dreamy stop-motion visu­als, it just had my name writ­ten all over it. Nev­er­mind that I had never read the story*. I knew I had to see this movie the moment I heard about it.

And I was not disappointed.

From begin­ning to end, Cora­line is an absolute delight on the eyes and ears. It was sort of like watch­ing the inhab­i­tants of a Vic­to­rian doll­house come alive and invite the entire toy box over for tea. Every char­ac­ter was lov­ably quirky, funny, and mem­o­rable; includ­ing the per­son­al­i­ties of the not-always-inanimate objects. Even the voice act­ing of Dakota Fan­ning and Teri Hatcher, two actresses whom I ordi­nar­ily don’t care for, was very well done. I found myself so absorbed that it didn’t even occur to me which famous per­son I was lis­ten­ing to, which is one thing I typ­i­cally dis­like about ani­mated films–I tend to hear the celebrity, not the character.

And the visu­als were top-notch, as usual, which seems to be stan­dard for all of Henry Selick’s pic­tures so far. Kudos to LAIKA ani­ma­tion stu­dio and the hun­dreds of tal­ented peo­ple who brought the world of Cora­line to bril­liant life.

But Cora­line isn’t just eye candy. Like most of Gaiman’s sto­ries, Cora­line has a good mes­sage, and deliv­ers it with a bit of clever wit wrapped in child­like intrigue. Movie­go­ers may find Coraline’s sto­ry­line sim­i­lar to Mir­ror­mask , another of Gaiman’s stories-turned-movie, in which a young girl becomes dis­en­chanted with her life and par­ents, escap­ing to a dream­world where the grass seems greener at first, but soon dis­cov­ers it to be a warped and night­mar­ish ver­sion of her own reality.

I’ve seen some crit­ics already refer to this movie as a clas­sic , and I don’t think I would dis­agree with that. In many ways, the story of Cora­line is rem­i­nis­cent of another clas­sic, The Wiz­ard of Oz. And like Dorothy, Cora­line reminds us that there’s no place like home.

*Note to the book Nazis: Cora­line is pretty faith­ful to its source material.

Rock Band 2: The Perfect Game?

Okay, I know Rock Band 2 has been out for a few months, but after get­ting it for Christ­mas and being com­pletely con­sumed by it ever since, I feel more than a lit­tle com­pelled to declare my love for it.

My pre­vi­ous Rock Band expe­ri­ence had been lim­ited to a one-night stand with Rock Band 1 at a seedy karaoke bar in Bal­ti­more where the gui­tars and drums had seen bet­ter days and the same bunch of drunk douchebags kept get­ting up to play “Wanted Dead Or Alive” over and over and over again.  And know­ing how expen­sive it was to buy the whole out­fit, I fig­ured I’d wait it out and keep myself occu­pied with the Gui­tar Hero series I already owned and loved for PS2.  Besides, I had heard about Rock Band’s hard­ware issues, the drums break­ing, the guitar’s strum­mer suck­ing, and felt fully jus­ti­fied not ever buy­ing it.

So when Rock Band 2 came out and I heard about all its fea­tures, new songs, and improve­ments over the orig­i­nal Rock Band, it imme­di­ately went on my wish­list.  But being some­what broke around that time and try­ing to save money for Christ­mas shop­ping, I held off.

And then I got Rock Band 2 for Christ­mas, and I felt like Ral­phie open­ing his Red Ryder BB gun.

Fun Solo Play

I took it home and set it up imme­di­ately, where it is cur­rently dom­i­nat­ing my liv­ing room.  I cranked the vol­ume on my sur­round sound sys­tem and tried a cou­ple of Quick­play Solos on the gui­tar just to warm things up–I’ve had dif­fi­cutly putting it down ever since.  Since I was already famil­iar with the Gui­tar Hero series, I had no prob­lems play­ing gui­tar for Rock Band 2 and was suprised at the qual­ity of the gui­tar con­troller.  Very smooth, nicely weighted, and realistic-looking.  Next I tried out the drums, which I had never played before, and I admit it took some get­ting used to.  My hand-eye coor­di­na­tion is awe­some, but my foot-eye coor­di­na­tion?  Not so much.  Hit­ting those beats embed­ded in the foot pedal beats were rough, and I’m glad nobody was around on my maiden voy­age of rock to watch me make a com­plete fool of myself.  But still, the drums are FUN.  Sur­pris­ingly so.  And I’m get­ting bet­ter.  Then I tried out the mic and sang for a few songs (again grate­ful that nobody was around) and by that point the sun was com­ing up and I couldn’t tell you where the time went.

Awe­some Mul­ti­player

The next night I invited fam­ily over, anx­ious to try out the mul­ti­player.  I should pref­ace this by say­ing  that except for my brother-in-law, my fam­ily does NOT play video games.  But with a few drinks in them and my sin­cere promise not to laugh, they let loose–on Easy mode, of course.  The game­play is so infec­tious on mul­ti­player since everyone’s try­ing to do their best so they don’t screw up the song for the other peo­ple in the band.  And it helps that the music is great.  I was really impressed how much fun it was for a bunch of non-gamers.  Also, the char­ac­ter cre­ation process was really fun; every­one had a good time with that.

Tour Mode is Addic­tive

Then my boyfriend and I started a band (I’m the drum­mer, he’s the lead gui­tarist) and play­ing through all the venues and rack­ing up fans and cash is super fun.  Although I think some gigs com­pletely whore you–$20 bucks for a 5-star per­for­mance?  Seri­ously, GTFO.  Warn­ing: play­ing Rock Band 2 with your sig­nif­i­cant other will lead to argu­ments.  Like when I want to spend all our money on cute slutty out­fits for my char­ac­ter, and he wants to save up for bet­ter qual­ity instruments.

New to Rock Band period?

Here’s why you should buy Rock Band 2 instead of Rock Band 1:

• Abil­ity to pur­chase lots of addi­tional tracks = unlim­ited replay value
• Improved drum set, com­pat­i­ble with cym­bal kit add-on (sold separately)
• Improved gui­tar with bet­ter strum bar and more real­is­tic feel
• You can import all the songs from Rock Band 1 (for $5/500 points)
• No Fail mode
• Online world tour play

I can’t see any rea­son to even go back and pur­chase Rock Band 1.  Rock Band 2 is really that much better.

Awe­some solo game?  Check.  Awe­some mul­ti­player game?  Check.  Kick­ass music?  Check.  Fun for both gamers and non-gamers?  Check.  Just a few rea­sons why I think Rock Band 2 is the per­fect game.

2008 Kind of Sucked for Gamers

Neko qui­etly reflects.

So it’s New Year’s Eve, and right on cue my annual bout of gamer’s ret­ro­spec­tion is kick­ing in.  This is nor­mally the part where I look back on all the games that came out dur­ing the year and reflect on how awe­some the year in gam­ing has been.  But as 2008 comes to a close, I’m left feel­ing more dis­ap­pointed than affec­tion­ate over this past year’s offer­ings.  And I’ve come to a some­what alarm­ing real­iza­tion: 2008 kind of sucked for gamers.

2008 was sup­posed to be “the year for gamers” right?  But what did that really mean?  For the video game indus­try (well, except per­haps Sony ) it meant huge sales fig­ures and over­hyped sold-out game launches, despite the fail­ing econ­omy.  (What recession?)

But for us gamers, 2008 was mostly a year of sequels and rehashes that we gladly lined up and shelled out big bucks for–again.  Block­buster titles like Grand Theft Auto IV, Fall­out 3, Fable 2, Gears of War 2… Notic­ing a pat­tern here?  Where was the orig­i­nal­ity and inno­va­tion in 2008?  And I’m not just talk­ing about killer graphics–that’s some­thing none of these games were short on.  I’m talk­ing about the game­play itself.  Riv­et­ing and unpre­dictable sto­ry­lines, amaz­ing char­ac­ters, truly immer­sive worlds you can spend hours get­ting lost in–where were these things?  The games of 2008 seemed to be all style over sub­stance, more hype and high-tech than mov­ing and mem­o­rable.  Brit­tany Vin­cent over at TGR sums up my feel­ing exactly .  Where is the heart?

What was this year’s big “it” game?  GTA IV, accord­ing to Spike TV who awarded it Game of the Year.  Seri­ously?  I won­der how dead the horse has to be before the game com­pa­nies stop beat­ing it.  I don’t think I could bear another Call of Final Grand Theft of War 5 release.  I don’t care how real­is­tic a game looks if that’s the only thing worth play­ing it for.  I don’t care if I can pick up and throw every object I see.

What I do care about is “that feel­ing” and I’m sure you know the one I mean–that euphoric feel­ing that can only come from play­ing a really amaz­ing video game.  And that’s some­thing 2008 hasn’t given me.

Sony PS3 Sales Slip, Not Surprisingly

Today CNN Money reports that sales of Sony’s PS3 have plum­meted 19% from last year’s fig­ures and the con­sole is lit­er­ally “dying on the shelves.”  Mean­while, Xbox 360’s 2008 sales have improved over 2007 and Nintendo’s Wii con­tin­ues to be a sell­out since its launch.

So why am I not surprised?

Huge Pric­etag

When it launched in Novem­ber 2006, the PS3 cost $500 for a 40G model, and $600 for a 60G model.  And that price only included one con­troller and no games.  Who could afford to spend that kind of money on a bare-bones video game con­sole?  Cer­tainly not me, and I’m a sin­gle adult in the 18–35 demo with a great job who loves video games–their tar­get mar­ket.  So I can’t even imag­ine how par­ents strug­gled to afford this price-bloated piece of plas­tic plus a $60 game game or two, try­ing to give their kid a merry Christmas.

But even though the console’s price has dropped sev­eral times and there’s now a wider range of mod­els to choose from, the still-pricey PS3 con­tin­ues to strug­gle.  If Sony’s con­sole sales hadn’t been dis­ap­point­ing since launch, I might chalk it up to the reces­sion, but that’s not easy to do when nearly every other game com­pany seems to be thriv­ing despite the economy’s cur­rent hard knocks.

Con­sole Com­pe­ti­tion

When it comes to video games, Sony is a rel­a­tive new­comer to the scene com­pared to Nin­tendo who has main­tained a huge fol­low­ing since the orig­i­nal NES ignited a love for video games in many of our hearts as kids in the 80s.  And over the years, Nin­tendo has always put out qual­ity sys­tems (I like to pre­tend Vir­tu­al­Boy never existed) with great libraries of games that have been fun and inno­v­a­tive.  The Wii, despite its silly name, was des­tined to be just as suc­cess­ful.  So why did Sony think it was a good idea to choose a launch date for PS3 so close to the Wii’s?  This is where I think they really under­es­ti­mated the competition.

The PS3 also launched at a time when the Xbox 360 had been out for a year already.  But Microsoft had been qui­etly bid­ing its time improv­ing the 360’s hard­ware, build­ing up a solid library of games, and win­ning play­ers over with its Xbox Live expe­ri­ence.  If Sony was expect­ing 360 own­ers to buy a PS3 as well, they cer­tainly didn’t have much of any­thing new to offer.  I’m will­ing to bet that most peo­ple who already owned 360s went out and bought Wiis instead.

Noth­ing New to Offer

Sure the PS3 has “amaz­ing graph­ics”, which has been its main sell­ing point.  But is that all that really mat­ters to gamers?  Sony’s sales have indi­cated oth­er­wise.  Other than improved graph­ics and offer­ing a Blu-Ray player at a time when most peo­ple didn’t even know what Blue-Ray was, what else did the PS3 offer?  Cer­tainly not an impres­sive library of games or inno­v­a­tive design over its pre­de­ces­sors.  Even the PS3’s con­troller design was more of the same.

Dis­ap­point­ing Game Library

The PS3 launched with a pretty under­whelm­ing selction of games that either nobody heard of, or titles that had already been out a long time on the 360.  Com­pare that to Nin­tendo Wii, whose launch titles included mega hits like The Leg­end of Zelda: Twi­light Princess and Metroid Prime 3: Cor­rup­tion.  Sony should have off­set the console’s huge pric­etag by at least offer­ing more com­pelling titles, espe­cially at launch.  If a con­sole has great games, gamers tend to over­look the price, no mat­ter how ridicu­lous.  After all, what good is a tech­no­log­i­cally supe­rior video game sys­tem if it doesn’t have good games?   Like many, instead of buy­ing a PS3, I waited to see if any titles would launch later on that com­pelled me enough to pur­chase this sys­tem.  Two years later, I’m still wait­ing.

It will be inter­est­ing to see what Sony does to try to win over gamers and dig itself out of its hole.  CNN sug­gests deep price discounts–that would cer­tainly help.  I guess.  My advice to Sony: count your losses and just focus on Playsta­tion 4.

New Documentary for Disgruntled Star Wars Fanboys (and Fangirls)

I have a love/hate rela­tion­ship with George Lucas.  I sus­pect we all do.  On the love side he has given us mas­ter­pieces like the orig­i­nal Star Wars and Indi­ana Jones films, and on the hate side he’s shit out things like Jar Jar Binks and The King­dom of the Crys­tal Skull.

So nat­u­rally my inter­est was peaked when I heard about upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary film The Peo­ple vs. George Lucas , that “explores the unique, ambiva­lent, and some­times con­flicted rela­tion­ship that Star Wars fans, for the past thirty years, con­tinue to enjoy with the Star Wars fran­chise and its cre­ator, George Lucas.”

I don’t know if “enjoy” is the right word, but “con­flicted” is true enough.  Haven’t we all had those moments of quiet reflec­tion upon our 85th re-watch of The Empire Strikes Back where we think to our­selves how life was some­how bet­ter in the days before George “per­fected” his vision?  Anyone?

The doc­u­men­tary will voice opin­ions from fans on both sides of the Lucas love/hate dichotomy, and is cur­rently solic­it­ing contributions–in the form of self-interview video submissions–from Star Wars fans around the globe.  Some lucky fans may even end up star­ring in the film–how cool is that?  The film’s web­site has a link to a detailed sub­mis­sion guide­lines PDF (and of course a release form).

So if you’re an opin­ion­ated Star Wars fan, now’s your chance to grab a video cam­era and air your com­plaints and griev­ances and/or undy­ing love for George Lucas.

The Twilight Effect: A Followup

A few days ago I wrote about a curi­ous phe­nom­e­non I’m call­ing The Twi­light Effect , or in other words, how a movie and book series full of medi­oc­rity and unin­ten­tional hilar­ity aimed at 15-year-old girls has man­aged to com­pletely cap­ti­vate thou­sands of oth­er­wise sen­si­ble grown women with (usu­ally) good taste.

Exhibit A

Since my boyfriend would sooner light him­self on fire than be caught dead see­ing Twi­light, I dragged three of my girlfriends–who were com­plete Twi­light virgins–out to the the­ater on a cold, snowy Fri­day night.  On my left was Joanna, who I can always count on to embrace the cheesi­ness of any dorky phase I hap­pen to be going through.  She thor­oughly enjoyed the movie, and bless her, had no prob­lem admit­ting that.

Exhibit B

And on Joanna’s other side sat my much snarkier friends Julie and Stephanie, who spent most of the movie mak­ing fun of it (“OMFG GLITTER VAMPIRES!?”). Which is pre­cisely why I find these emails hilarious:

Finally, and most alarmingly–

Exhibit C

My 70-something year old Grand­mother asked to bor­row my books.  (And she loved them.)

A vampire movie done right

How does a movie man­age to be dark and deeply dis­turb­ing, yet ten­der and touch­ing in the same breath? Swedish vam­pire film Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) is a beautifully-told macabre fan­tasy story that accom­plishes exactly that.

Oskar (Kåre Hede­brant) is a quiet but trou­bled twelve year old who is bul­lied by his class­mates and doesn’t know how to stand up for him­self. His life begins to change when he befriends Eli (Lina Lean­der­s­son), the mys­te­ri­ous girl who moves into the apart­ment next door.  But when Oskar’s small snowy home­town is dev­as­tated by a series of grisly mur­ders, he starts to real­ize his new best friend and love inter­est is not the girl she pre­tends to be.

“Squeal. Squeal like a pig!”

“I’m not a girl…”

Let the Right One In is part com­ing of age story, part atmos­pheric hor­ror.  Never too obvi­ous or overly delib­er­ate, it’s a sub­tle and slowly-building story punc­tu­ated by gory visu­als that are jar­ringly ter­ri­fy­ing against the film’s oth­er­wise serene and iso­lated snow­bound set­ting.  Direc­tor Tomas Alfredson’s use of spe­cial effects is wel­com­ingly under­stated in favor of a few blink-and-you-might-miss them moments of pure shock, under­scored by grue­some visu­als and an uncom­fort­able feel­ing of foreboding.

Most dis­turb­ing, how­ever, is Oskar’s dan­ger­ous infat­u­a­tion with Eli despite the hor­ri­fy­ing things she is capa­ble of.  It’s the focus on the del­i­cate rela­tion­ship between these two alien­ated youths that really sets this film apart and estab­lishes new stan­dards for what good vam­pire movies should be.

Top 5 Most Anticipated Fantasy Flicks for 2009

#5 –The Elf­s­tones of Shan­nara

The Elf­s­tones of Shan­nara is the story of two inter­twined destinies–that of Wil Ohms­ford, grand­son of leg­endary Shea Ohms­ford, and Amberle Elessedil, who must go on a quest together to save the Ell­crys, the dying Elvish tree.  Ell­crys remains the last strong­hold of magic pro­tect­ing The Four Lands from the onslaught of the Demon World, and only Amberle, last dis­ci­ple of the Druid Allanon, has the power to save it.

Direc­tor Mike Newell (Harry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire) will bring The Elf­s­tones of Shan­nara, the sec­ond book of The Orig­i­nal Sha­narra Tril­ogy by Terry Brooks , to the big screen in 2009, release date to be announced.

#4 — The Alche­myst: The Secrets of the Immor­tal Nicholas Flamel

The Alche­myst: The Secrets of the Immor­tal Nicholas Flamel is a cont

empo­rary fan­tasy that mixes ancient phi­los­o­phy and renais­sance his­tory with a modern-day set­ting. Twin teens Josh and Sophie New­man work at a San Fran­cisco bookstore/café for a book­keeper whom they soon dis­cover is actu­ally Nicholas Flemel, the leg­endary ancient alchemist and keeper of The Codex. Nicholas and his wife Perenelle have been liv­ing eter­nally by drink­ing the Elixir of Life. When necro­mancer Dr. John Dee steals The Codex, Josh and Sophie are unex­pect­edly drawn into a world of magic and mys­tery to help Nicholas recover The Codex or face the world’s destruc­tion at Dee’s hand.

The first book of the six-part The Secrets of the Immor­tal Nicholas Flamel series by Irish author Michael Scott , The Alche­myst will be a major motion pic­ture by New Line Cin­ema in 2009. The film is cur­rently in pre-production, with no offi­cial release date yet.

#3 — Ink­heart

Ink­heart is the story of a book­ish young girl named Meg­gie and her father Mo, who has an extra­or­di­nary abil­ity: when he reads books aloud, he brings them to life. The first book of the widely suc­cess­ful Inkworld tril­ogy, Ink­heart is a charm­ing tale by beloved children’s author Cor­nelia Funke . Sim­i­lar to 2008’s The Spi­der­wick Chron­i­cles, Ink­heart is geared toward a younger audi­ence set, and a def­i­nite fam­ily film.

Although not one of my favorite books (sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing how much I adored The Thief Lord also by Cor­nelia Funke), the film’s trailer looks promis­ing enough, and full of action, which is some­thing I felt the book sorely lacked. Ink­heart stars Bren­dan Frasier as Mo and child star Eliza Ben­nett as Meg­gie, and is set for a Jan­u­ary 2009 release.

#2 — War­craft

What we know: War­craft will be a live-action movie by Leg­endary Pic­tures based on Blizzard’s hugely pop­u­lar War­craft series of PC games and World of War­craft, the mas­sively suc­cess­ful MMO. The PG-13 rated movie will be told from an Alliance per­spec­tive, and its sto­ry­line will be set one year before the events that unfold in World of Warcraft.

What we don’t know: Any­thing else. There’s still no images, no trail­ers. Not even an offi­cial web site. Yet Bliz­zard has con­firmed, through a series of cryp­tic winks and nudges, that this movie is still very much in pro­duc­tion. It’s hard to believe this movie will be a real­ity in 2009, con­sid­er­ing how shrouded in mys­tery it seems to be. Not a word was breathed about the film at Bliz­zCon 2008, a huge dis­ap­point­ment for thou­sands of fans anx­ious for any kind of update they can get.

Update 1/23/2009: Quote from Bliz­zard:

“We are in fact work­ing on a movie with Leg­endary Pic­tures, but we don’t have any new infor­ma­tion to share with every­one just yet. At the 2007 Bliz­zCon, we even had a spe­cial panel with a lit­tle bit about the plans for the film. I’m sure you can find video on it or reports on it.

Just as an addi­tional infor­ma­tional bit, it will be Live Action.

I’m quite sure there will be plenty of action, but there’s a story to be told too. I couldn’t tell you more though. ”

Update 7/22/2009:  Sam Raimi con­firmed as direc­tor!!

#1 — Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince

Imag­ine look­ing for­ward to a movie you’re really excited about. Not just any movie, but the sixth and most cru­cial film adap­ta­tion of the best­selling book series of all time. The release date draws near. You start see­ing posters, pro­mo­tions, pro­duc­tion stills. Your excite­ment builds. You watch the trailer, and it looks amaz­ing. You can­not wait to pre-order your tick­ets. And then you find out it’s get­ting delayed. By eight months.

That’s exactly what Warner Bros. did to mil­lions of excited Pot­ter fans eagerly await­ing the release of Harry Pot­ter and the Half-Blood Prince . Just two months before the film’s originally-scheduled Novem­ber 2008 release date, Warner Bros. announced it would be mov­ing the release date to July 2009. The back­lash was imme­di­ate. There were peti­tions, boy­cotts, and a flood of strongly-worded emails to Warner Bros. stu­dio execs. Their reasoning—some vague excuse about the writ­ers’ strike impact­ing their bot­tom line—was hard to swal­low, espe­cially after watch­ing them rake in hun­dreds of mil­lions from last summer’s box office megahit The Dark Knight. Yet despite our out­rage, we all know that come next July we’ll still be pre-ordering our tick­ets and lin­ing up in droves at the even­tual mid­night release.

(I’m still bit­ter, can’t you tell?)

The Twilight Effect

Last Fri­day night, I dragged three of my girl­friends out to the movies to see a lit­tle film called Twi­light . Per­haps you’ve heard of it?

If you haven’t, I will assume you’re either a shut-in or a male.  After all, it was a 75% female-dominated audi­ence that con­tributed to Twilight’s stag­ger­ing $70 mil­lion open­ing week­end , a huge coupe for direc­tor Cather­ine Hard­wicke and Sum­mit Enter­tain­ment.  To help put that fig­ure in per­spec­tive, Twilight’s suc­cess ranks in the top 4 Novem­ber box office fig­ures of all time–ahead of sum­mer block­buster Trans­form­ers, and the lat­est James Bond flick . As it turns out, Twi­light also boasts the high­est rank­ing box office debut ever for a female direc­tor.  Con­sid­er­ing the eco­nomic cri­sis we’re sup­posed to be in, these num­bers are even more impres­sive.  So impres­sive, in fact, that Sum­mit Enter­tain­ment has already announced plans to begin pre-production on Twilight’s sequel, New Moon.

But none of this news comes as a sur­prise to Twilight’s legions of diehard fans , whose fierce dis­play of buy­ing power pre­vi­ously helped pro­pel all four books of The Twi­light Saga onto the best­seller list, and keep them there, mak­ing author Stephe­nie Meyer a huge suc­cess.  Even Eclipse, Meyer’s third book of the series, dethroned Harry Pot­ter and the Deathly Hal­lows from the best­seller list.

But let’s back up to a few months ago, before I had so much as read a sin­gle page of this hugely pop­u­lar series, before I saw the movie (twice), and before I knew I was on Team Edward, or that there even was a Team Edward.  I remem­ber casu­ally surf­ing the inter­webs, mind­ing my busi­ness as usual, and com­ing across an occa­sional Twi­light glim­mer: a movie ad, a book review, some obsessed fangirl’s glit­ter­ing “Bella ♥‘s Edward” forum sig­na­ture.  It was easy enough to ignore–at first.  But it wasn’t long before Twi­light pro­pa­ganda seemed to creep into every facet of every web site I ever vis­ited.  (My hat’s off to whomever is behind Twilight’s aggres­sive web mar­ket­ing cam­paign, by the way.)  So I guess it was inevitable that I’d even­tu­ally click one of the ads and watch the movie trailer, right?

My reac­tion went some­thing like this:

• That looks pretty cool, I guess…
• And that vam­pire guy is pretty hot!
• Oh hey, it’s Cedric Dig­gory from Harry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire.
• I’m a Harry Pot­ter fan, maybe I’ll like this movie too?
• And Paramore is on the sound­track!? I LOVE Paramore!
• Novem­ber 21st? What a coin­ci­dence, because that’s the same week­end Half-Blood Prince was sup­posed to come out…

The next thing I knew, I was headed for the local library to check out the first book, which I soon dis­cov­ered was a com­plete impos­si­bil­ity.  Checked out; on hold; back-ordered; trans­ferred to another branch–every sin­gle one of the fifty-something copies fell into one of these cat­e­gories.  What was going on here?  Why is Twi­light so pop­u­lar?  Like many unini­ti­ated fans before me, I set out to unravel this mys­tery.  Hell, I thought, maybe if the books are that good, I should just buy them.

So I did.

And that’s how I dis­cov­ered the secret sauce, if you will, of what makes The Twi­light Saga so suc­cess­ful.  The recipe con­sists of teen angst, sex­ual ten­sion, impos­si­bly good-looking main char­ac­ters liv­ing impos­si­bly ide­al­is­tic lives, and a heavy dose of romance deliv­ered to the sap­pi­est degree pos­si­ble.  Sim­ply put, these books are pure escapism.  No real sub­stance, but no real need for it, either.  I could elab­o­rate fur­ther, but I’ve already done that  here , here , and here .  Yet despite how unre­mark­able these books really are, I spent an entire week con­sumed by them.  And I’ve already seen the movie twice.  And I’m anx­iously await­ing its sequel.

What the hell have I got­ten myself into?