My Gamer’s New Year’s Resolutions for 2009

In 2009, I resolve to:

Quit buy­ing into the indus­try hype lead­ing up to huge game launches.  So far it has con­tin­u­ally lead to disappointment.

Give more love to my old game sys­tems. I have a closet full of old con­soles and games that prob­a­bly miss me.  I hope to find some time in 2009 to fall in love with them all over again.

Fin­ish games before start­ing new ones. I am prob­a­bly least likely to suc­ceed at this one, but it’s a noble aspi­ra­tion all the same.

Mas­ter the Hard mode on gui­tar in Rock Band.  I do all right on Hard, but some of the more wicked solos make my fin­gers hurt and my fans dis­ap­pear.  Of course, then I watch things like this and it makes me weep.

Level my war­lock to 80. I have less and less time these days to play WoW, but I’m hop­ing I can carve out a few days in 2009 to level my oft-neglected alt.

Play more adven­ture games. Even though it’s get­ting harder and harder to find decent titles within this unpop­u­lar genre, I’ll con­tinue try­ing to seek out and dis­cover great new point and click style games I love so much, and feel good about sup­port­ing the mostly indie devel­op­ers who still make them.

Embrace the game industry’s desire to make games that appeal to girls, even though they’re get­ting it all wrong.  At least they’re try­ing, right?

Stop spend­ing so much money on Wii & Xbox Live points. It’s just too easy and con­ve­nient to get in trou­ble going shop­ping on these next gen con­soles!  Actu­ally, I think I’m just addicted to watch­ing Mario run across my screen…

And finally…

Break down and buy a widescreen HDTV this year. Because right now I look too much like the guy in the above pic.

It’s a tall order, but my mind is open and my thumbs are ready.  Here’s to a fun and pro­duc­tive 2009!

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?)