Ex Miscellania: Fear and Red Star
Sep. 15th, 2005 03:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caraigA few of things here. First, sorry for the whiny tone of my last post. My thanks to all that replied; I'm going to keep on truckin' and doing the best I can and I'll get out of this funk by hook or by crook.
(Trivia: I always thought that phrase meant 'By means fair or foul.' By hook: dastardliness. By crook: by gentleness, i.e. the shepherd's crook. But it turns out that it was actually a phrase used by Queen Elizabeth (who as a dearly departed and wonderful history teacher I had in High School would put it: "Lovely, wonderful lady, and wicked smart.") in plotting out a strategy to attack the French. On a map, she had the choice of landing her troops on two different peninsulas. She declared that, "By Hook or by Crook," the British would win the day. So... uhm, yeah, trivia time over!)
Second: if you like being scared, or enjoy a good thrill, or like cinematography and music that's creepy, you're going to enjoy F.E.A.R., a game coming out in October by the Evilly Inept Emp-- uh, by Sierra-Vivendi. It's quite bloody, though, so if you don't like gore then you should give it a pass. On the other hand, there are some wonderful elements to it that make it into a first-person Silent Hill. Except, of course, even if you're packing a particle beam weapon, it'll do you jack. It has a few psychodramatic moments when it seems like you're suddenly somewhere else. Visuals are excellent for conveying otherworldly horror.
Basically, FEAR is a first-person shooter and you're going to be spending about half the time first-person shootering. It's when things get quiet, and you don't see any enemies about, that you start going, "Oh, crap." Because that's when things get weird and you know you're about to get hit with some serious (but very well-done) horror and scare-you-out-of-your-skin moments. I actually came to welcome the times when I saw the insanely tough enemy soldiers up ahead, because then I knew it wasn't going to pull any Stephen King psycho-fu on me.
Oh yeah. And it has bullet time. Which adds to your combat options but the mechanism alone also adds to some very interesting cinematography.
And if the girl in The Ring creeped you out, then this definitely will
The one problem I ran into is that the demo brought my computer to it's knees and made it beg for mercy. It chugged along at a framerate of one frame per second even when I reduced the performance options to 'minimal.' Even if they fix this for the retail release, this is definitely going to be a game for high-end machines.
So. Final analysis, I'm probably going to get this game at some point. It's just too darn good, even though I KNOW I'll have to avoid playing it at night or alone in the house. If you aren't turned off by gore, then download the demo and watch it just for the intro, it's surprisingly well done, and all the elements -- visuals, music, cinematography -- come together very well.
Thirdly: Just picked up The Red Star Campaign Setting. Even if it's d20, it's still a good read and chock full of very interesting stuff.
For those of you who don't know, The Red Star is a comic series put out by Image. It's partially computer rendered, and it has some great visuals and design work. I'm not so clear on the story, but the setting is incredible. Take the world as we know it. Now render all of history into almost mythic archetypes. The decline of the British Empire, the Second World War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the decline of the Soviet Union... all of it in mythic tones. Add in a touch of magic and superscience, an epic, ancient battle between -- not good and evil, but Truth and Deception, and you get a decent image of what The Red Star is about. If you are at all interested in it, have a look at the first volume, The Battle of Kar Dathra's Gate. It gives good background to the story and is a good intro to the setting. This is a setting that I'd love to play in.
Anyway, not much else going on. Pax.
(Trivia: I always thought that phrase meant 'By means fair or foul.' By hook: dastardliness. By crook: by gentleness, i.e. the shepherd's crook. But it turns out that it was actually a phrase used by Queen Elizabeth (who as a dearly departed and wonderful history teacher I had in High School would put it: "Lovely, wonderful lady, and wicked smart.") in plotting out a strategy to attack the French. On a map, she had the choice of landing her troops on two different peninsulas. She declared that, "By Hook or by Crook," the British would win the day. So... uhm, yeah, trivia time over!)
Second: if you like being scared, or enjoy a good thrill, or like cinematography and music that's creepy, you're going to enjoy F.E.A.R., a game coming out in October by the Evilly Inept Emp-- uh, by Sierra-Vivendi. It's quite bloody, though, so if you don't like gore then you should give it a pass. On the other hand, there are some wonderful elements to it that make it into a first-person Silent Hill. Except, of course, even if you're packing a particle beam weapon, it'll do you jack. It has a few psychodramatic moments when it seems like you're suddenly somewhere else. Visuals are excellent for conveying otherworldly horror.
Basically, FEAR is a first-person shooter and you're going to be spending about half the time first-person shootering. It's when things get quiet, and you don't see any enemies about, that you start going, "Oh, crap." Because that's when things get weird and you know you're about to get hit with some serious (but very well-done) horror and scare-you-out-of-your-skin moments. I actually came to welcome the times when I saw the insanely tough enemy soldiers up ahead, because then I knew it wasn't going to pull any Stephen King psycho-fu on me.
Oh yeah. And it has bullet time. Which adds to your combat options but the mechanism alone also adds to some very interesting cinematography.
And if the girl in The Ring creeped you out, then this definitely will
The one problem I ran into is that the demo brought my computer to it's knees and made it beg for mercy. It chugged along at a framerate of one frame per second even when I reduced the performance options to 'minimal.' Even if they fix this for the retail release, this is definitely going to be a game for high-end machines.
So. Final analysis, I'm probably going to get this game at some point. It's just too darn good, even though I KNOW I'll have to avoid playing it at night or alone in the house. If you aren't turned off by gore, then download the demo and watch it just for the intro, it's surprisingly well done, and all the elements -- visuals, music, cinematography -- come together very well.
Thirdly: Just picked up The Red Star Campaign Setting. Even if it's d20, it's still a good read and chock full of very interesting stuff.
For those of you who don't know, The Red Star is a comic series put out by Image. It's partially computer rendered, and it has some great visuals and design work. I'm not so clear on the story, but the setting is incredible. Take the world as we know it. Now render all of history into almost mythic archetypes. The decline of the British Empire, the Second World War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the decline of the Soviet Union... all of it in mythic tones. Add in a touch of magic and superscience, an epic, ancient battle between -- not good and evil, but Truth and Deception, and you get a decent image of what The Red Star is about. If you are at all interested in it, have a look at the first volume, The Battle of Kar Dathra's Gate. It gives good background to the story and is a good intro to the setting. This is a setting that I'd love to play in.
Anyway, not much else going on. Pax.
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F.E.A.R.
Date: 2005-09-15 07:44 pm (UTC)Do you watch the new Battlestar Galactica, by the way? It had a "haunted house" episode of the troops stumbling in unpowered parts of their ship against very intimidating cylons.
You almost never -saw- them fire their weapons, but as dialogue between the crew and captured mosied on, we clearly -heard- the gunfire and shrieks and combat echoing throughout the ship.
Good to see you still giving hell to the pixels, though.
-PSV
no subject
Date: 2005-09-15 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-16 07:27 am (UTC)Reading comprehension for teh lose!