Alan’s Blog of Monkey Bloginess

Dungeons & Dragons Online has done something that every other MMORPG should have done years ago: gone free! As a casual gamer, I will never pay a blanket monthly fee to play a game. In particular, I would never, ever pay $50 for a game and then pay $15/month access fees on top of that. D&D Online has actually gotten me to play a MMORPG for the first time by making the game free.

Now, 100% of the game is not free, but to play, have fun, and experience the game is free. As you get to higher levels, some character races and classes require in-game points to access. There will also be in-game accessory packs and level packs available for purchase through a store, but those are all optional. The points can be purchased with real world money, or you can earn them in-game for free. So, it is possible to play the game 100% free and get the additional content. But personally, if the game is able to hold my attention that long, I’d likely be willing to shell out a couple bucks for the content. Show me that I want to pay money, and I’ll happily give it.

This is the direction media consumption is heading. Music, movies, TV, games; pretty soon basic content will be free, money will be made on add-ons that bring more value to the basic product that people will want to pay for. Of course, music has always been free, it’s been physical delivery methods that people have actually paid for.

Turbine is beginning to recognize this, and they recognize that by giving their basic game away, they’re really investing in marketing. More people play the game because the price of entry is $0, and then they tell their friends about the game, and their friends try it out because the price of entry is $0. Eventually, they’re hoping to make add-on content compelling enough to get enough people willing to pay. It’s a marketing plan that has worked for decades in the illicit drugs black market with great success.

The game itself seems pretty interesting. My major complaints come from not enough mouse interaction. I feel like I shouldn’t need to use the keyboard except in extreme cases. Such as, movement is done with the W A S D keys, where as I would prefer to right-click a place on the screen and have my character walk to it. Quick weapon switching would be nice, as would the ability to mouse click from weapon to spells instead of having use the interface to select options from icon menus, which takes precious time and concentration away from the game. In the heat of battle, this can be more than obnoxious. Perhaps with more practice transitioning between weapons and spells will become second nature, but as a beginner the interface leaves much to be desired for efficiencies.

Character customization seems impressive with enough options to create the visual type of player you want to be. Classes are fairly standard for D&D, as well. Though in both cases, not all classes and races are available to free players. Some require those points that can be earned or purchased. For me, I was able to create an elf necromancer, which is slick, though Drow elf will require money if I wish to ever go that route and recreate my last table-top character.

Adventures can be played solo or in a group, and common areas exist to interact with other players. Still in the beginning areas of the game, I haven’t seen if there’s an expansive free-roaming area. I used to play text-based RPGs in the ’90s, and I hardly ever went for any missions instead preferring to venture into the wilds and kill whatever was unfortunate enough to stumble in my way. I have yet to see that level of experience recreated here, but maybe I haven’t found it yet.

All in all for the steep price of FREE, I cannot recommend at least trying this game enough. If it’s not your cup of tea, then toss it out and move on. No loss.

In 1987 “The Tracey Ullman Show” aired on a fledgling network called FOX. As bumpers to ease the show in and out of commercials, a short cartoon was produced. Conceived of by Matt Groening, “The Simpsons” quickly won over my 7 year old heart. I would stay up late Sunday nights to watch “The Tracey Ullman Show” with the hopes of catching “The Simpsons” bumpers. It’s not that I didn’t like the rest of the show, ’cause I did, just that “The Simpsons” were the highlight for me. The antics of the Simpsons family resonated with me, along with FOX’s other original program, “Married with Children”. FOX’s dysfunctional family trend was a great balance to NBC & the wholesome “The Cosby Show” (which I also watched and enjoyed).

Then in December of 1989, as if ol’ St. Nick wanted to reward me for having been the best little 9 year old boy in the world (I hadn’t), “The Simpsons” received their own half-hour show for Christmas with “Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire”. I anxiously awaiting the premiere, counting down the days more anxiously than Christmas morning itself. The day finally arrived and then more, even better news: what I thought was just a Christmas Special was actually the start of a regular series to begin in January 1990. Happy 10th Birthday to me! (”Bart the Genius” aired just 6 days before my birthday)

And thus it began. Here we are, over 22 years later and “The Simpsons” are in their 20th season having already been renewed to 22, and I am still a fan. To the right is a picture of me wearing my favorite t-shirt in 1990. That shirt disappeared one day, I never found out where it went. Presumably my mom threw it away as it was nothing more than technically a shirt after a couple years in that a halo of fabric kinda of wrapped itself around me. I had a plethora of Simpsons related merchandising from Bart Simpson dolls to stickers and posters. As I’ve gotten older, my Simpsons merchandising has simply matured. Instead of a simple t-shirt, I have a Pin-Pals bowling shirt and a Kwik-E-Mart shirt that button up to a Homer Simpson full-head rubber mask. Through gifts I’ve been given puzzles, card & board games, dolls & action figures, post cards, key chains, hula dancers, coasters, Magic 8 Balls … just about a little bit of everything. The one item I’ve always wanted and have never gotten: Simpsons Chess.

Now people may chime in with their idea on when the Simpsons have “jumped the shark”. As in the point in the shows history where it reached its apex of quality and signals that we are now on the slow decline of the show. While the show really experienced its heyday in the mid-to-late ’90s, it’s still managed to hold strong throughout the ’00s. And I’ve always contested anyways: even a bad episode of “The Simpsons” is still better the best episode of most other TV shows. As with a hometown sports team, I stick with the show through good episodes and the bad episodes, ride the low seasons along with the high seasons. In the end, the show still makes me laugh.

This is just about one of the most moving songs I’ve ever heard. It takes speeches given by Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Barry Goldwater and puts them to a techno beat to create one of the best liberty-minded songs ever created. Please check out the video and really listen to the chosen words.

See larger image Katamari Forever (Video Game) List Price: $29.99 USD New From: $20.97 In Stock Used From: $25.00 In Stock Released September 22, 2009.

First, let me start off by saying I have never played the Katamari games before. It’s not from a lack of interest, but just that I never owned a PS2 and the PS3 I got is backwards incompatible. So, before the latest Katamari offering for the PS3, the world of creating Soylent Stars from people has been off-limits to me.

While this game is pretty much a “Best Of” compilation of previous Katamari games, it’s all new to me! I find the levels quite challenging the first time through and would like there to be some sort of GPS system … or giant ominous hand to point out important places to go.

The controls of the game are easy to get the hang of, though different from many other games. The game is played with the dual analog sticks where the katamari is pushed in a tank-style method with little necessity of use of other buttons. There are additional controls for jumping to the opposite side of the katamari for a quick turn about or revving up the katamari for a dash, both using the analog sticks. A flip up on the Sixaxis controller and the katamari jumps, though I find pressing the jump button to be far easier to execute.

The best part of the game is the totally wacked out story and themes. The game consistently challenges the brain to wrap itself around the logic behind what it’s seeing, and generally it ends up a mangled mess. It is brilliant.

The replay value on the levels is very high. Besides getting cousins and presents to change playable characters and appearances, there is also just the challenge of the puzzles themselves. Katamari is primarily a puzzle game where you solve goals and find the best path through a course to get to the largest size as quickly as possible. As you roll your katamari over items and gain in size, you are able to then pick up larger and larger items. Objects that were initially obstacles later become fodder. Eventually you’ll start hearing screaming and notice you’re picking up people.

The most convincing reason I can give why you should give this game a try is that my fiance, Mercedes, enjoys not only watching me play but enjoys playing herself. Even when I’m not around; she’ll tell me of her exploits attempting some of the more challenging levels and her triumphs on some of the earlier stages. She’s shown moderate interest in some Wii games but never picked up a PS3 controller previously. Katamari has gotten her using the PS3 for more than streaming media to the television.

Zombieland opened last Friday night, and it is definitely the movie to see right now. From start to finish, it’s a smart zombie movie that brings laughs to both the scariest and the most heart-touching of moments. For a zombie movie, there was an overwhelming low number of zombies for the first 2/3 of the movie; not that there weren’t any, but one would have expected more. Though I haven’t laughed so hard and much in quite a while, that the lack of overwhelming zombie hordes was not missed. And when the zombies do finally appear in full force, you see they chose to concentrate their zombie budget instead of blowing it over the whole movie.

This is the zombie movie for zombie movie fans. There are a series of rules the narrator & main character employs to secure his survival over the forces of the until-recently-deceased. These rules are continuously references and reinforced throughout the movie, so in essence Zombieland acts in large part as a zombie primer for developing your Zombie Plans with a good rulebook. The top four rules often repeated are:

Rule #1: Cardio
Rule #2: Beware of Bathrooms
Rule #3: Seatbelts
Rule #4: Doubletap

There are more rules in the main character’s rule book, and a couple more get revealed & one added, but most of them aren’t discussed in the movie.

Woody Harrelson’s performance as “Tallahassee” is dead-on awesome as the anti-hero with a heart who hunts the undead because he has nothing left to live for but to kill zombies, and to find the last Twinkie on Earth before its expiration date. The idea that Twinkies have a 50-year lifespan is an urban legend; they in fact have fairly normal shelf lives as other cellophane wrapped pastry treats. Though all-in-all, I would like to have Mickey Knox on my side in the Zombpocalypse.

Jesse Eisenberg from Roger Doger and Adventureland plays “Columbus” and is the narrator. His performance as the awkward geek who was likely voted Most-Likely-To-Be-Zombie-Chow by his high school class was appropriately … awkward. Its his rules that are repeated throughout the movie, and ultimately keep him & his compatriots alive.

Emma Stone from “Drive” and Superbad plays “Wichita” with her younger-sister “Little Rock” (Abigail Breslin) manage to continuously con Tallahassee & Columbus, and Emma Stone does a great job jumping back and forth keeping both characters and audience guessing on when her character is being genuine and when she should be shot in the head just for being a jerkface.

Now to the true stars of Zombieland: the zombies. The zombie make-up is Grade-A gross. Though the zombies don’t shamble in the classic-Romero shimmy and they have a venomous propensity for vomiting up buckets of blood & guts, these are some of the most eye-catching zombies to grace the screen since the Dawn of the Dead remake. The clown zombie is definitely a colorful cornucopia that will surely leave you cringing in its creepiness.

The zombie deaths are quality, as well. There are a good amount of ever increasingly sized guns throughout the movie, but its Tallahassee’s ingenuity and love-of-the-game mentality behind killing zombies that really makes the zombie efforts worthwhile. It’s one thing to have a beautiful zombie, but then to have it killed in amazingly grotesque and brutal ways is the true pay-off; and Zombieland delivers.

The main characters attempt to find refuge from the zombies in what they hear is one of the last zombie-free places left. Of course, zombie-free does not mean zombie-safe, and the movie comes to a thrilling conclusion which delivers enough zombie mayhem to make any zombie aficionado sigh with affection.

And Bill Murray. I love you, Bill Murray. You’re awesome!

So, if you haven’t gotten out to see Zombieland, don’t wait, go now. It’s worth the price of a theater ticket and benefits from the large format screen. Seeing with a group of zombie fans will only increase your enjoyment because it’s a movie for the Zed-Heads.

There’s a really interesting mocumentary available on Hulu concerning the re-legalization of marijuana that is both highly informative and side-splitting funny: Totally Baked. I hadn’t previously left a review on Hulu, but with the amount of people not understanding the style of film, I felt the need to give my take. It’s not your classic documentary or mocumentary or comedy, but takes elements from several styles of film and threads them together. It’s a very entertaining and humorous film, and I felt it needed an adequate explanation for those who don’t understand film.

This is a genre crossing film that starts with a central story thread and then uses stand-up routines from the 4:20 Hour Stand-Up (on Hulu) and combines it with documentary elements, mocumentary elements, skits, and parodies to present information for the re-legalization of marijuana. It’s a bit scattered in presentation and highly satirical in the lineage of Kentucky Fried Movie and Amazon Women on the Moon, but does so with the intention of teaching facts about marijuana and attempting to dispel government propaganda myths. Every bit of information presented in this film I have heard previously from more reputable sources than I have heard information presented by the government and other interest groups, and it’s all presented in a highly entertaining, laugh-out-loud funny way. I was in tears at the end with some of the skits, particularly the Martha Stewart/How Much Does It Take To Overdose skit. I’m going to immediately purchase this on DVD after I hit submit for this review.

Totally Baked

If you liked my review, go to the reviews page for Totally Baked on Hulu and let people know it was helpful. I’m thinking of getting more into reviews on Hulu, and may post those here as well with links to the video like I did here. Are people interested?

Also, I tried to go get the DVD immediately after writing that review … but failed in finding an in-store copy.

This Friday, Stargate fans get their new fix with a new series as Stargate Universe premieres on Syfy with a two hour “movie”, and then will probably follow Syfy’s wacky season time-share splitting -- sharing Friday with Eureka in some twisted custody agreement where SGU gets Fall & Spring and Eureka gets Winter & Summer. It’s the first new Stargate story since the end of Season 5 of Atlantis; since Stargate: Extinction (the movie that will wrap up the Atlantis story arc) missed its original June ‘09 release.

Teaser Trailer from the 2009 San Diego Comic Con

As you can see, Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting, Full Monty, 28 Weeks Later) is going to be the leadership for this rag-tag group of interstellar castaways. Lou Diamond Phillips is also part of the cast, but I have a hunch his character won’t necessarily be in the series too long. The creators have said that several characters die in the first couple of episodes, and I have a gut feeling Mr. Phillips will be in that group; where he opted for a short commitment that would help boost the series initial numbers while giving Robert Carlyle time to develop his character to carry the show moving forward. We’ll see, any of the Regulators are always fun to have around in a project, so if Chavez ends up flying around the Universe for more than 5 episodes then rock on!

The series is said to be darker with heavier drama, so anyone expecting another SG-1 & Atlantis-style Stargate will probably feel little disappointed. The series is taking a new direction in tone. Personally, I’m looking forward to the new grittiness, and the series taking a different look at the Universe through the crew stuck aboard the aging Ancient ship Destiny. The themes of isolation, despair, and helplessness are definitely more appropriate for a darker Stargate, and it feels like a natural progression from the baby steps made going from SG-1 to Atlantis. It may put a lot of fans of the series off.

I’ve already noticed comparisons between this new series and “Star Trek Voyager” being made; while I think this is going to be a very different show than Voyager if only in visual style, I actually felt Voyager had a lot to offer viewers. I feel that SGU is going to be far more different from SG1 & Atlantis than Voyager was from previous Star Trek offerings. If anything, with a leading actor, loss of adequate lighting, and a humbling of an established franchise cast, I see SGU having more in common with Enterprise, only I hope Stargate Universe is met with higher acclaim and sticks around for more than four seasons.

Behind The Scenes of Stargate Universe

The series creators have said there will be aliens (sweet), but there won’t be a single antagonist species as the Goa’uld or Ori in SG-1 and Wraith in Atlantis. Destiny will stop at alien worlds to seed Stargates, so the crew will have opportunities to get off the ship and explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, and to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Again, Stargate Universe premieres this Friday (October 2^nd) on Syfy with a two-hour movie at 9:00/8:00c and a repeat airing at 11:00/10:00c. For people in the Mountain Time Zone, Syfy doesn’t time shift, so the first showing is at 7:00pm and the repeat at 9:00pm. Available in HD. Syfy will also be re-airing the movie throughout the weekend and following week, check your listings.

Personally, I’m recording this on the DVR, going to see Zombieland in the theaters, and then coming home to some new Stargate action. Friday night should be fantabulous!

Coming out this Friday to movie theaters is Zombieland, starring Woody Harrelson in a zombie comedy with a budget. If it says anything for this movie, my fiancé who doesn’t like horror movies is going to see this with me on opening night. The trailers give it a Shaun of the Dead feel where the comedy comes from the human characters and the zombies are played as horror elements. Then they end up in an amusement park. Weee!

And it’s Woody Harrelson, c’mon! How can you not love Woody Harrelson?! If zombie hunting bad-ass Woody isn’t enough … zombie clown? Would a zombie clown be reason to go see it? Because this movie has one of those. If you didn’t have coulrophobia before, then you probably don’t want to click to see this page.

Zombieland Trailer

October 2^nd … Zombieland … record “Stargate Universe” & go see Zombieland. Get your tickets now!

See larger image The State: The Complete Series (DVD) Directed by: Michael Patrick Jann, David Wain, Mark Gentile, Michael Dimich Starring: Kevin Allison, Michael Ian Black, Robert Ben Garant, Todd Holoubek, Michael Patrick Jann Rating: NR (Not Rated) List Price: $79.99 USD New From: $40.38 In Stock Used From: $31.00 In Stock Released July 14, 2009.

If you jump in the Way Back Machine and come with me to the ’90s, when flannel roamed free and teenage angst was a multi-billion dollar industry, there was a cable channel that helped define a generation. With a host of off-beat programming designed for Generation X, MTV produced one of the greatest skit comedy shows with a troupe of young comedians known as The State.

The show was irreverent, hip, and most of all: hilarious. The stable of return characters included such greats like Doug -- the rebel in desperate need of a cause, Barry & Lavon -- the disco swingers with an unhealthy lust for puddin’, and Louie -- who proves that dipping your balls into people’s food really isn’t that funny until it pisses Jesus off. And the one-off skits were frequently completely original and contained both heavy satire and lots of meta humor. Self-referential & self-deprecating, the show quite literally put up the 4th wall for a sketch; it was brilliance. If you never saw this show, you may still recognize cast members in some more recent Comedy Central shows like Reno 911!, Stella, or the movie Wet Hot American Summer.

MTV’s The State -- Bacon

It was the DVD set that almost never was. The State completed their end of the DVD a while ago, but then MTV sat on the project. It looked as if at the 11^th hour, the project was killed. So close, yet so far. And in the end, due to over-restrictive draconian copyright laws, much of the music that defined the time period that the show was made had to be removed, else millions of dollars in licensing fees would have had to been paid. Replacement music was created which does adequate an adequate job, and the skits are still just as funny; but the show has lost some of its connection to the time period it was satirizing and the window into the 90s culture it could have offered through music is closed.

But the whole series is released on DVD finally! So whatever concessions had to be made … fine, because now MTV’s The State is finally legally available in a high quality format for home viewing for the first time. And with some great bonus features. For one: commentaries!, I love commentaries! There are also unaired sketches from the first three seasons, outtakes, as well as special appearances and promos.

So all-in-all, I rate this is a Must Own. I was in a Best Buy and happened to randomly see it, because I hadn’t heard it that it had actually received a release date. Needless to say, I purchased it on the spot without reservation or hesitation. A no-brainer. I recommend the same for everyone else.

DVD Promo

The State are: Kevin Allison, Michael Ian Black, Robert Ben Garant, Todd Holoubek, Michael Patrick Jann, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, Ken Marino, Michael Showalter, and David Wain. All Grade-A Good Beans!