Unfortunate Events

First of all I thought that "A Series of Unfortunate Events" is a rather strange title for a series of children's books. But on the other hand, it's quite fitting.

I've bought the whole series of 13 books on amazon in a very nice box (it's part of my "luckily the state gave me my money back" action). I'm halfway through, too (volume 7, "The Vile Village"), but had to put a few other books in while reading. (I'm also still in the middle of "Neverwhere" by Neil Gaiman.)

And yes, just in case you wonder: I also read children's books when I think they're interesting. And especially for a writer analyzing the work of others on stories and characters, looking at children's novels (which usually are a bit less complicated) is quite educating.

What I personally like about the series is both the style of the author (I like his many 'definitions' of words in the text) and the fact that there's no "everything will turn out well and they'll live happily ever after" message in the text. Given the fact that most books for children end happily, that's a nice difference. And to a certain degree - if your definition of the word "happy ending" is "the main characters survive" - the stories do indeed end happily.

Diablo 3

This post isn't really about "Diablo 3", which has, by now, become some kind of running gag among gamers worldwide. Just like the latest part of the "Duke Nukem" series, "Diablo 3" has been 'in production' for years - and by now nobody knows when and if the game is coming out. This post is about a game dubbed by some 'the new Diablo 3', because it promises to be pretty much what fans of the former two parts of "Diablo" are waiting for: action-packed role-playing gaming. The name of this game is "Hellgate: London".

As the name already suggests, the main enemies in the game are undead creatures and demons. And, unlike many other role-playing games released for PC and consoles, "Hellgate: London" is set in modern times, so the player can choose from a large variety both of modern and ancient weapons.

One short look at the ingame-scenes of the latest trailer I downloaded shows that "Hellgate: London" looks a lot like a modernized version of "Diablo". It has the same two bubbles set on the lower end of the screen "Diablo" has - even using the same colours for health (red) and mana (blue). Between them are the fields for quick-use items like weapons or health-packs. And, of course, the new game is completely in 3D - not much of a surprise either, the 2D-levels of "Diablo 2" were even outdated when the game came out. "Hellgate" looks pretty good, that much can be said.

And in that new trailer I've even seen a female close-combat warrior! That's an unusual thing in role-playing games which define class by using various main characters (as "Diablo" has from the very beginning, making the player choose between the muscle-packed male barbarian, the thinner, but also male mage and the female Amazon as a fighter with ranged weapons). The trailer shows both a female fighter that is obviously the modern equivalent of a mage and a female fighter with two katana going for close-quarter fights with the undead hordes. And, of course, there's the loads of male fighters from huge, armour-encased tanks (which is game-speak for close-quarter fighters that can take a lot of damage and thus pull the attacks on them so the ranged fighters like mages can attack the enemies without being taken down - which can happen quickly with a mage) right to the male equivalent to a make and the agile assassin (in the add-on of "Diablo 2" a female character, actually).

The trailer looks as if the game will have a very fast game-play, which is good. It also shows great graphics, which won't hurt either. But only time will tell if it can gain that many fans about the non-hardcore role-player, just as "Diablo" and its sequel did. Good graphics aren't everything, even to gamers.

Mr. Sherlock Holmes

As I already announced before, this is a post about "Sherlock Holmes", or rather about a series of movies featuring Mr. Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Nigel Bruce (I might have given a wrong name in one of my last announcements, but currently I'm too lazy to check) as Dr. Watson. Here it is.

The movies I'm referring to are in black and white, naturally, as they were filmed in the late 1930s and early 1940s by Universal. At that time movies in colour were still some years away (though I've not researched how many exactly. They are released in Germany at the moment in four DVD-boxes (three are currently out, I got No. 3 this Saturday) and that means they're digitally remastered and - in this case - also complete. They were first released in Germany - for the movie theatres - in the 1950s and had been cut (although today it's hard to say why ... but then, that's usually the cause with censorship after a few decades). The DVD-boxes contain the complete movies, fitting in the cut scenes with the original English voices (and, of course, the English version is on the DVDs as well).

Technically speaking the movies aren't great these days, but then, that's to be expected. During the time the movies were produced, it was normal to do no - or almost no - outside production. Instead of taking the actors and all the other stuff (automobiles, coaches etc.) to some place in the countryside, the countryside was filmed and then replayed in the studios with the actors in front of it ... and so on.

But technical means is one thing, a good movie is another one. A new, technically up-to-date movie can be boring and uninspired and an old movie (or one made by amateurs) can be interesting and great to watch. And, as a lot of time has passed, the real bad movies from that period are mostly forgotten, so the modern viewers don't have to deal with them.

The movies are loosely - in some cases extremely loosely - based on the original stories and novels written by Arthur Conan Doyle. There isn't one story which is true to the original from Doyle, but on the whole that's not too bad, either. Some of them (only a few) have nothing to do with Doyle at all and were produced in the early 1940s to serve - at least to a certain degree - as anti-Nazi propaganda. From my modern point of view that's not a problem, but it's one explanation for some of the cuts in the German version. (And, in fact, there's two German versions of most movies, because at that time there were two German states, after all.)

When I first saw those movies I was still a child (and I didn't see all of them) and - as those were the first - and in some cases only versions of the stories I saw - they are still in my head and I'm reminded of them every time I watch one of the innumerable versions of "The Hound of the Baskerville" (which is one of the most filmed stories ever since the beginning of the art of movie-making).

So even today, after all those years, I really like those stories and am fascinated by them. It doesn't matter to me how old they are.

Post 200

Yes, I've not grown sick of it up to now. This is post 200 of my blog and therefore it's a special one, not dedicated to any of my usual topics.

(And yes, Callum, if you're still reading my blog, although I'm just a "dumb cunt", I'll also continue with femdomish posts - including submission and torture. And believe me, I know more about it than you, I've been researching actual torture from the beginnings right up to modern day from my teenage years onwards, so why don't you just add "sick pervert of a cunt" to your vocabulary? I'm sure it fits perfectly with the rest. I didn't get my history major for nothing.)

But back to more happy prospects: There's a post about those "Sherlock Holmes" movies comic up (which will not include any comments on torture or Callum) I promised in the post about "Cat's Eye", I'd also like to write something about "Hellgate: London" because today I downloaded a very cool movie with actual in-game action today and was floored by it. Then there's a post about "A Series of Unfortunate Events" I'm going to write. And of course, as soon as something happens, my crusades about "Killerspiele" and "Size 0" will come up again. I'm currently regrouping, I've not given up.

If I've not grown sick of it by then, I'll do "Post 250" in near future as well.

You've been warned...

Now I know I'm doing it right

While finally going through my comments today (and yes, I'm ashamed, but I presumed that I'd get a notice when there was any comment posted as I remembered something like that in my blog settings), I stumbled over someone who obviously didn't like my post about heroes and decided that a "dumb cunt" like me deserved a flame for it.

Now, I can understand that people don't like my views and it would be a boring world if we all shared the same, but I absolutely dislike people who can't comment on something in a mature way. (And insulting someone and just writing "it's shit" isn't a mature way for me. You didn't like it? Give me your views and do it in a normal way without insults and I listen. Just insult me and I ignore you - or I might show you one day that torture is indeed cool, provided I'm the one doing it and you're the tortured person.) Anyway, flaming isn't exactly new to me and I ignore it on principles (even though I answered that comment, telling the person to read other blogs and to realize that "dumb cunt" isn't the right word to address a woman).

But on the other hand, this comment and the other two I got showed me that at least someone is reading my stuff (and that I must have hit a nerve with the "Heroes" post - just in case you didn't notice: I was referring to a) fictional characters and b) situations in which the tortured person actually likes being tortured due to being a masochist).

Oh, and by the way: "Teria" was just something I came up with while working with "Terra", a name sometimes used for Earth. It's nothing special, but I like the sound of it.

Cat's Eye

There are only a few old anime series - or series of any kind - I can still recommend today. There are some movies (and I'll soon add a post about the old "Sherlock Holmes" movies produced by Universal in the late 1930s and early 1940s) I might recommend, some books I'll always love, but not many series, and especially not many anime series. "Cat's Eye" is one of them.

"Cat's Eye" is a story of three young women, sisters, of a trio of very talented art thieves (the same three sisters) and three members of the police force who try to catch those thieves. In 73 episodes the three women steal back their father's artworks, because they contain the last message he could give to them, a secret they really need to know. In 73 episodes three detectives from the Japanese police (one of them enamoured with the middle sister and one - the only female - suspecting the three sisters from the beginning) try to catch "Cat's Eye", as the mysterious thieves call themselves on the visiting card with which they announce each theft.

I first watched the series in French TV, some years before it was first shown in Germany. I couldn't understand much of the story then - my French has always been quite basic, enough to get through the day as a tourist in France, but not enough to understand everything on TV (or write a blog in French) -, but I got the basics.

For an animated series (and at that time, anime wasn't main stream, not even in France) it was quite action filled. The three sisters all had their jobs to do: The oldest, Nami, usually did the reconnaissance, dressing up as an elegant woman that would not be suspected when looking at an art collection. The middle sister, Hitomi, did most of the thefts (normally helped by her older sister when two people were needed). And the youngest sister, sixteen-year-old Ai, created the technical gadgets the sisters needed for some thefts (like backpacks that unfolded into gliders). There is quite some action as well, the three sisters are very agile and use that in order to commit their thefts. There's a lot of climbing, running, jumping and then there's all the gadgets.

The graphics are not too unusual for animated series of that time and often remind me a bit of "Lupin III" (and there's another thief as a hero of an anime series). Unlike what most people expect when they hear 'anime', the female characters aren't cute and child-like (the way most people expect girls in an anime to look), but have normal proportions. The same goes for the surrounding as a such - it looks quite realistic, too. There's no unrealistic hair-colours either (like pink or light blue), most characters (except for those from Europe or America) are either black- or brown-haired (as is to be expected in Japan). The picture I have included shows all three sisters Nami, Hitomi and Ai from left to right in their attire as "Cat's Eye".

The German translation isn't bad on the whole (even though, except for all other characters who still bear their original names, the youngest sister has been renamed and is called "Love" - which is a correct translation of the Japanese word "Ai", but a stupid name for a person in a TV series) and I don't mind the Japanese original isn't on the DVDs Anime Video has started to release this March.

"Cat's Eye" is still a series I can only recommend, especially since the topic (it's a crime story with elements of love story and adventure) isn't exactly 'for kids only'.

Happy Anniversary

Ten years is a long time - and it's even longer in the computer games business than it's in everyday life. Lara Croft has survived in this business for a little over ten years (as the original "Tomb Raider" came out late in 1996, not in 1997). That's a long time for every game character - and it's even longer for the first woman in the action adventure genre (which, accidentally, also brought the first mass interest to the genre).

But back to the beginning. When "Tomb Raider" came out in 1996, it was a large success and gave birth (more or less) to a new genre: the action adventure. "Tomb Raider" was not the first game of that type (there's, for example, "Deathtrap Dungeon", a game based on a special role-playing-book-type created by Ian Livingstone - who, these days, by pure coincidence, is a vice president of Eidos, the games company owning the "Tomb Raider" licence). But "Tomb Raider" was the first highly successful game of that type featuring a female main character (actually, one of the first games of any type featuring a female main character). Admittedly, most of the gamers were men, but men playing computer games quite often find it quite difficult to get into contact with attractive women - and here was their chance to actually control a good-looking woman.

Lara then did not look very realistic. She was extremely well developed (and would have had trouble walking straight, leave alone climb and jump like she did), but she was also very tough - and still is. For a woman with her curves (which then were a little sharp-edged because the high number of polygons necessary to create a round shape could not be processed by a computer in normal game-play at that time) she wasn't stereotypic at all. From the very start of the game (the intro sequence) the players saw Lara fight. She shot a couple of wolves (the scene is semi-automated in the new game) and climbed around in the icy heights of the Andes (dressed in shorts and a top ... but at least with boots).

And all through the game Lara stayed true to her character. She never, ever was the damsel in distress and got out of troubles by using her mind, her athletic skills and her trusted twin pistols.

I learned from the bonus-disc of the new game that the name "Lara Croft" actually came from the London telephone book. There's a "Lara Croft" listed there (or at least was in 1996) and her name was chosen for the heroine (which in the first drafts had been a man, but then she would always have been compared to "Indiana Jones" - who has, by now, become an action adventure hero as well).

Not everybody liked the idea of a woman looking and acting like Lara - and quite some of them were women. Especially after the advertising campaign of "Tomb Raider II" and "Tomb Raider III" - which worked a lot with the 'feminine' image of Lara - a lot of women just saw her as some digital play toy or even "a man with balloons shoved up his shirt". I don't really like that ridiculous description, it's pretty much like saying a man who's showing feminine traits is "a woman with a banana shoved down her pants". (Both descriptions don't come from me, the first is from an American feminist and the second is from the creator of Lara Croft.)

The series sold well right up to "Tomb Raider IV - The last Revelation", but went downhill from there. "Tomb Raider Chronicles" - the first game without a number and a sub-title since the first - didn't sell too well. As the game designers had 'killed' Lara in the end of "The last Revelation", the next game portrayed four adventures which had happened in her past, splitting up the game into four different stories told by her friends after she had been presumed dead - even though her old mentor still searched for her in the Egyptian tomb that had become her grave as well.

The game designers decided to try something new. The newly 'reborn' Lara (who was rescued from the tomb at the end of "Chronicles") wasn't sent out to find another strange artefact, just as before, she was thrown in the middle of a hunt for a killer. In "Tomb Raider - Angel of Darkness", Lara became the prime suspect in the murder of her mentor (who'd been rescuing her from the tomb). She was on the run and at the same time trying to find the real murderer (stumbling over some supernatural things even then). But the graphics weren't good, the handling and the controls were even worse and the whole game could have easily been the swan song for the series. The new idea didn't work out.

Time passed until the creators realized that they needed to go back to the roots, to sending Lara out to find a mystic artefact. In "Tomb Raider Legends" Lara went back to doing what she did best: find an artefact.

But the team had been doing a lot of remodelling. Lara looked more realistic, her body now showed muscles at the right places (and looked well-rounded, but with modern graphics cards that's not difficult). The controls have been changed and are quite intuitive, especially long chains of movements up the wall (climbing and jumping between small ledges), swinging on poles and using her new grappling hook to swing over chasms or run along walls. Everything can be done quite well now and one major problem of the first games, Lara only grabbing an edge when the player manages to press the right key at the right time, can be turned off if the player wants to (which doesn't make the game too easy, but takes away quite some of the frustration of having pressed a key a split-second too late). Within minutes the player can manage even the most difficult moves Lara makes - and at the same time the level design has become much more interesting. With the grappling hook, the abilities to swing on poles, the ability to climb ropes and poles (not new in "Legends") and various other possibilities, Lara can do so much more than she could then.

"Tomb Raider Anniversary" (and it took me two pages on my word processor to get here) is based on the same engine, giving Lara the same wide range of movements. The grappling hook has been included, too, but the light she had in "Legends" has been removed - as the levels are bright enough to work without it.

The game splits into two games, actually. There's the main game which is based on the very first "Tomb Raider" (looking for the same artefact and travelling through the same areas - although you wouldn't recognize most of them). And there's a little bonus game set in "Croft Mansion" where the player must perform almost everything apart from shooting adversaries in order to get everything working and opening the door to the gallery.

I'm not through with the main game yet - as I bought it on Friday and spent quite some time with "Croft Mansion" to get a feeling for the controls -, but I've just met my old 'friend' again: the t-rex of the lost valley in Peru. He looks far more dangerous and realistic than before - but I haven't killed him yet ... it's more difficult in the enclosed space that fight is set in now than it was in the large valley before. And I haven't managed to fully understand the Adrenalin Moves now that would enable me to kill the dinosaur quickly.

Nevertheless, from my point of view the new version of the original "Tomb Raider" is a worthy remake and fun to play.