Post Apocalyptia is the New World War II

It had occurred to me rather recently that with development houses (with the exception being Activision) that World War II is beginning to fall by the way-side. Not a moment too soon I might add. At a certain point one begins to think that, although the Nazis are pretty much universally considered evil, after 15 years of nonstop, save France; blow up the U-Boat; can I really force myself to care about the fate of Marseilles when people are trying to convince me to be frightened by nukes people are pointing at me now?

This line of thought is not lost on the development community however as WWII seems to be getting systematically replaced with the future remnants of WWIII. As much as I enjoy the idea of nuclear warfare, until the clock really strikes I sort of don't want all of my games to be about everything being all destroyed. Sure it affords us opportunities to shoot mutants (and sometimes the Nazi zombie as if we hadn't had enough living ones), but I'm starting to think there could be more creative excuses for why that dog is bigger than me.

Having said all that, I have to concede that there aren't really that many scenarios that lend themselves to video games well. Modern Warfare, as fantastic as it is, only escaped public outcry because it called Iraq something different (Autostrad if you're interested). Remember Seven Days in Fallujah? What about Superman Returns? (I didn't mean to bring that one up. Don't be mad.) The point is that if we're not in space (New Mumbasa counts), or in hell, the only place we can go and shoot up some shit is post-apocalyptia.

If you'd like my opinion (and I know you do) video games will be stuck in these places until developers stop listening to Glen Beck and start listening to their own artistic inner selves. If you think Fallujah makes a good setting, make that game. I'll probably buy it just because there aren't any Nazis (and as it turns out no nukes either).

Paranormal Activity: Review

It's tough to watch a movie and not know who to root for. Paranormal Activity's style is definitely appealing to the Blair Witch, Cloverfield crowd (of which I am), but where those movies do things like pick up near the middle or are interesting, Paranormal Activity falls quite flat.

The story is told through the camera of the boyfriend of the haunted girl. Throughout the movie Micah (the boyfriend) continually makes himself as unlikable as possible as a vehicle to 'antagonize' the evil ghost-demon thing. The story itself is relatively simple and quite self contained, which is nice, but to my chagrin never really answers questions like why did all of this take two weeks? Why not sleep with the door closed already? Who the hell just has a glass Ouija board lying around?

The movie itself relies on cheap scares that I suppose are genuinely creepy at times, but if while watching the movie you think of a solution to the problem every time the sun rises, you'll understand my frustration.

Overall this movie is not the worst I've ever seen, but I couldn't recommend it unless you are the cheap scare type.