“It is of no use, old friend. Your time of ruling this province is over.” The figure in the white cloak spoke a word and the flames died.

Lonnigyn hissed, “You’ll never take it from me, Gondorff. You didn’t have the power in the time of the Thirsting Moon, and you do not have it now.”

The people of the small town watched from windows, doorways, and from behind wagons and other cover. A duel between wizards was nothing to get involved with. They avoided the middle of the dusty street where the two faced off, all the while hoping that the white wizard would free them.

Lonnigyn snarled and chanted in the ancient tongue of mages, hurling lightning at his nemesis. Again, the figure in white shook his head and the lightning evaporated into an ozone-scented mist.

“Your days of cruel tyranny are at an end, Lonnigyn!” Gondorff advanced and his staff blazed with white light. Lonnigyn shielded his eyes.  A ray of light shot forth and struck the staff of the evil mage. Lonnigyn shrieked as his arm burst into silver flames.

“No, damn you!” The white-robed guardian stepped back, and Lonnigyn crumpled to the earth. Flames licked at the black robes as Lonnigyn writhed. In moments, the evil sorcerer was gone, nothing more than a pile of ash on the scorched ground.

There were few seconds of silence, then the townspeople began to cheer.

* * *

The white-robed figure materialized inside his tower. He stood still, taking in the moment. Once upon a time, having a room like this had been a dream. Large stone fireplace, stone floor, heavy oak bookshelves, massive desk. Now, it was getting old. He was starting to feel restless, perhaps even a little bored. While helping the villagers was enriching, it always seemed to end the same way. There was no thrill to it anymore, no fulfillment. It was too easy. He set his staff in a corner of his study and slumped into an overstuffed chair next to the fireplace, letting the heavy bag he carried hit the floor with a loud clank.

“Cruel tyranny?” A familiar voice sounded from the jacuzzi. “That was overdoing it a bit, don’t you think, Jack?”

Jack, shrugging out of his white cloak, grunted. “It did the job. We have to give the audience what it wants, don’t we?”

He touched a spot at the base of his neck and the tingling started. He caught his reflection in one of the mirrors along the opposing wall. The visage of the elderly wizard was gradually being eaten away. His hair shifted from white to its natural auburn, his forehead smoothed, his eyes shifted from blue to hazel, the deep crow’s feet faded away. The long white beard was replaced by his reddish sideburns, his nose lost its hawkish bent and became snub and slightly upturned. His lips regained their perpetual smirk. He never grew tired of watching the change happen. In under a minute the wizard was gone and Jack was left there looking like he was dressed for Halloween.

“Where’s the tackle box?” he called into the next room.  There came the sound of splashing and Paul, once known as the evil necromancer Lonnigyn, replied, “Under the desk. Hang on, I’ll be out in a minute.”

Jack stood and tossed the rest of his costume onto the chair as he removed it, leaving him shirtless in black breeches. He reached up to the back of his neck and peeled away a small disc with his fingernails. The disc was about an inch and a half in diameter, flexible, and made from a nearly transparent material. He placed the disc into his palm and tapped it twice with his fingernail. A small display appeared and showed what they knew to be a power reading, even though the icons on the display were unintelligible. The device was nearly out of power.

He chuckled. Paul walked out into the main room, bare feet slapping against the stone floor. He tightened the belt on his robe and pushed the desk’s chair out of the way. “What’s so funny?” he asked, feeling under the desk for the box.

“We almost had another Baroness Incident.” The moniker referred to an event about a year ago during a job in Ysperia. Paul’s disc ran out of power while he was flirting with Baroness Ilchatka. She was none too pleased to discover her pretty young maid was actually a dark-haired bloke in a dress. The vision of Paul streaking down the main hall while trying to shed the troublesome dress was probably still talked about to this day.

Paul shook his head. “We need to be more careful about that. We still don’t understand much about the tech.”  He rested a hand on the top of the wooden box, next to the heavy brass handle. “It’ll get us killed if we’re not careful.”

“Or it will expose our crossdressing fetish.” Jack smirked at his partner but Paul didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he undid the brass clasps of the box and opened the lid.

They called it the “tackle box” because that’s what it reminded them of most. It was made of rosewood and was about the size of a middling toolbox. Unclasping the brass fixtures allowed a thin veneer of wood, joined at a right angle to cover the top and front, to slide upward and fold back. This revealed a panel with four knobs, three brass toggle switches and a set of three lights: red, amber, and green. At present, the amber light was illuminated.

The front of the tackle box had small handles. Paul pulled the first of the four and a drawer, empty save for four slots along the front, was revealed. Three of the slots had discs in them already. Jack placed his into the empty slot, and Paul closed the drawer. There was a small click, and the amber light went out. The red came on.

Jack said, “That’s never happened before.”

Paul looked down at the box. “Mmmhmm.”

They both stood there for a long moment, looking at the dials with their obscure symbols, at the seemingly useless toggles. For a month after the Baroness Incident they studied the device. The second drawer was empty, the third and fourth were either locked or jammed. The dials didn’t seem to function, and so far only one of the switches did anything at all, and that was to make an ear-splitting high-pitched noise when it was flipped. Other than the discs, the box was useless. Which was a drag, because for a long time they thought they might be able to use it to get back home.

Home. Jack sighed. “Three years.”

Paul nodded. “Yeah.”

Jack waited a beat. “You know what I miss most?”

Paul shook his head. “What?”

Jack grinned. “Porn.”

Paul’s look of exasperation as pulled the lid over the box closed was not unusual. The clasps were snapped shut with a little more force than was necessary. After placing the box back under the desk, Paul straightened, shook his shoulders as if loosening up, then clapped his hands together. “So,” he asked, “how did we do?”

Jack moved the pile of costuming to the floor and untied the knots of the sack. He pulled the pieces of his reward for slaying the evil wizard Lonnigyn from the bag and placed them on the coffee table. A handful of silver fell from a brass cup and skittered across the stone floor. There were necklaces, some amulets, a couple of rings, a bundle of silverware wrapped in an old cloth.  The final piece emerged, a longsword with an ornate hilt. “We’ve got enough for rent this month, if this heirloom sword is what I think it is.”

“And that would be?”

Jack’s eyes twinkled. “Well, magic, of course.”

Paul shook his head. “No. Really. *They* might believe in magic. We know better. What is it?”

Jack looked pained. “You take the fun out of everything, you know that?”  He unsheathed the weapon. The blade was exquisite. It was silvered, highly polished, and looked to have a razor-sharp edge.

“It’s definitely higher quality than what we usually take in,” Paul said. He peered at the shape of the blade. “Wait…that looks…”

Jack nodded. “Yeah…like a katana blade from back home. I’ve never seen a weapon like this in the Middle Kingdoms. It’s sharper than anything I’ve come across to date. I’m thinking we could give it a fancy name and sell it to one of the nobles in Heronwell. Convince him it’s an ancient dragonslayer from the Milm dynasty or somesuch. We should be able to bag enough to set us up for a few months.”

Paul mused, “We could call it ‘The Blade of Sundance.’”

Jack turned the sword over in his hands. “We could.” He sheathed the weapon and set it on the table with the other goodies. “But what are we going to do when we run out of Newman-Redford movie references?”

Outside, the bell at the front door of their tower sounded. Paul chuckled, “We’ll move on to Reynolds-DeLuise.” He nodded toward the stairs. “You’d better get that, Bandit.”

Jack reached over and pulled a brown shirt over his head. He walked down the stone stairs to the first floor of the tower. There was little down here…it was more like a sparse waiting room than living quarters. They didn’t want anyone to know what they were up to. People here had never seen a jacuzzi before. They might not know how to handle it.

The bell rang again, then a soft thump against the door. Jack opened it and looked down.

“Paul?” Jack called upstairs. “You’d better come down here.”

“Why?” Paul called back.

“There’s a dead girl on our doorstep.”

At his feet, blood soaked the young woman’s dress where the arrow pierced her breast.

(to be continued….)

“Peel!”

“Dump…”

“Bananas!”

These are the words you’re going to hear most during a fast-paced word game my family has recently discovered. What’s it called?
Bananagrams!

For a game that only cost me $14.95 at my FLGS,¹ it is surprisingly well made. The 144 tiles are of a faux ivory, much like dominos. They feel good in your hands, and come in a cloth sack in the shape of, you guessed it, a banana.

To play the game, you simply put the tiles face down in the middle of the table. This is known as the Bunch. Then, each player draws out a number of tiles and places them in front of him. The number of tiles is based on the number of players. The fewer the players, the more tiles you’re going to draw to start the game.² The game supports play from 2 – 8 players.

Once tiles are drawn, someone yells, “Split!” And you’re off. Tiles are flipped face up and everyone begins trying to build a crossword puzzle of interconnecting words in front of them, using all the letters they drew. Also, the words you build aren’t set in stone, you can re-arrange and and re-build your words as often as you need to.

When you’ve created words using ALL of your original tiles, you yell, “Peel!” At his point, you and every other player MUST draw a tile from the Bunch in the middle. Place the tile on a word if you can or begin rearranging all over. Once it’s used, yell, “Peel!” again, draw another tile, and keep going. I found this to be very frustrating when someone else makes me draw another tile, just when I thought I was done.

If you have a letter that you just can’t find a place for, you have the option of yelling, “Dump!”³ turn the letter over and shove it back to the middle of the table, and in turn you get to draw three more tiles. This move, however, does not affect the other players.

I’ve found it actually beneficial to dump a couple of times in a row, just to get a few more letter and, thus, options, to build faster. This also has the side-effect of shorting the game, actually, as you quickly cause the Bunch to decrease in tiles.

Play continues until there are fewer tiles in the middle of the table than players of the game. Once that happens, when you’ve used up all your letters, you yell “Bananas!”

At this point, play will pause as everyone checks over your words. If you misspelled or made up a word, you’re the “Rotten Banana.” Your tiles are flipped over, shoved back into the middle of the table, and play resumes with you sitting out and forever⁴ the loser.

If, however, all your words are spelled correctly, you win!

This is both an extremely fun, fast and at times frustrating game. The more we played, though, the more I would see words jumping out at me as I flipped over letters. My wife showed off a bit by spelling ‘ingratitude’ as her first word, building off from there, during one of the games.

The rules say that a single round of this can last as little as 5 minutes, though I’m not sure how true that is. Honestly, I wasn’t keeping track of time, so it could very well have been that close for one of our rounds, though it felt like forever as I tried to find a word to spell with the Q, got frustrated, yelled “Dump!” to trade it in for three others, and found another Q in the stack I drew. Yes, such is the way of the game.

Also in the rules are other variations to play to either make it less hectic, or to play in a café, or even as a solitaire game.

The name came from the saying “The anagram game that will drive you bananas!” – hence BANANAGRAMS!!⁵

My gaggle loves Bananagrams and highly recommends it to anyone looking for a fun, fast-paced, educational game.

Enjoy! And keep gaming!

1. Again, Underhill’s Games.
2. 21 being the most you’re going to draw for a 2-4 player game.
3. Though this word I’ve found isn’t yelled so much as growled.
4. at least until the end of the game
5. From the Bananagrams website.

Apart from the fact that there are a handful of films on the list—Alexander Nevsky (1938), Blackboard Jungle (1955), A Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Saturday Night Fever (1977)—that I’ve never seen, I have no quarrel with the TCM list. I can point to a particular piece (or cue) in each soundtrack as having some influence on me personally, even if it’s just as a pop culture reference that I can be certain a majority of people will understand. Fifty years after the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, you’d probably be hard-pressed to find someone under the age of thirty (and maybe younger) who doesn’t associate a certain, screeching violin cue with an impending shower stabbing. As far as I can tell, every soundtrack TCM lists is very qualified to be there.

On the other hand, I have no desire to queue up Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho score when I’m driving around or relaxing on a Sunday afternoon. As influential as that score might be, I don’t find it particularly enjoyable. What makes a soundtrack influential and what makes it one of my favorites are two very different things. So here, in chronological order, are my Top 15 Movie Soundtracks (of OMG, EVAR!). Why fifteen? Because I’m dividing them into two separate lists: Scores (typically instrumental, composed and conducted by a single person) and Ensemble Soundtracks (typically comprised of songs by various artists).

Top 10 Movie Scores

1. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980) by John Williams. What does this soundtrack have that the original didn’t? A little ditty called “The Imperial March”, that’s what. Bum-bum-bum, bum-pa-bum, bum-pa-bum…
2. Blade Runner (1982) by Vangelis. Vangelis’ score for Chariots of Fire (1981) may have won the Greek composer an Academy Award, but Blade Runner resonates more powerfully with me. I’m tempted to give his score for 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) an Honorable Mention, but I wouldn’t want to come off as a Vangelis fanboy.
3. Akira (1988) by Shoji Yamashiro. This is an album I play when I want to be alone, mostly because the sound of it is generally enough to drive my wife from the room; I suspect it has something to do with the mildly-discordant vocals or the occasionally cacophonous (and arrhythmic) percussion.
4. Batman (1989) by Danny Elfman. The soundtrack album for Tim Burton’s Batman features music by pop legend Prince, which I felt was a waste of perfectly good magnetic tape. Thankfully, Warner Bros. also release Danny Elfman’s excellent score, which has since been used in Batman: The Animated Series as well as the LEGO Batman video game. In the years immediately following Batman, much of Elfman’s work for film and television sounded very Batman-like—especially his scores for Darkman (1990) and The Flash (1990)—but he seems to have broken free more recently and his score is still one of my very favorites.
5. The Hunt for Red October (1990) by Basil Poledouris. Sadly, the official soundtrack album for The Hunt for Red October is incomplete and the tracks are not arranged in the order in which they appear in the film (they were apparently rearranged to allow them to fit properly on a two-sided cassette tape). It’s still a powerful, dramatic score; quite possibly Poledouris’ best work, though fans of Conan the Barbarian (1982) might disagree.
6. The Last of the Mohicans (1992) by Randy Edelman and Trevor Jones. Sweeping, romantic, dramatic and sometimes frantic, Jones and Edelman’s score has a lot going on, and it all works pretty well. The closing tune (“I Will Find You”) from Irish group Clannad is icing on the cake.
7. Medicine Man (1992) by Jerry Goldsmith. I’ll be honest: I wouldn’t know genuine Brazilian music if it bit me on the ass, but Goldsmith’s score for Medicine Man—filled with perky flute, percussion and strings—certainly evokes a tropical rain forest feeling to me (malaria not included).
8. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) by Tan Dun. Perhaps the most melancholy score ever associated with a kung-fu movie; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon does have has its up-tempo moments, but it is Yo-Yo Ma’s mournful cello that makes the music memorable.
9. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) by Howard Shore. Nothing short of “epic” could describe Shore’s score to the first in Peter Jackson’s eighty-four hour trilogy.
10. Batman Begins (2005) by James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer. Rather than stick with Danny Elfman’s “classic” Batman motif, the reboot of the caped crusader took the music in an entirely new direction. The result is a deeper, darker sound, every bit as suitable to the dark knight detective, if not quite as hummable as Elfman’s theme.

Top 5 Ensemble Soundtracks

1. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986). Sadly, no official soundtrack has ever been released for this movie. Choice songs include “Danke Schoen” by Wayne Newton, “Twist and Shout” by The Beatles and “Oh Yeah” by Yello.
2. The Crying Game (1992). Choice tracks: “The Crying Game” by Dave Berry, “The Crying Game” by Boy George, and “Stand By Your Man” by Lyle Lovett.
3. Blown Away (1994). Choice tracks: “In the Morning” by Big Head Todd & The Monsters, “Return to Me” by October Project, “With or Without You” by U2, and “Take Me Home” by Joe Cocker and Bekka Bramlett.
4. Magnolia (1999). Choice tracks: “One”, “Deathly”, “Save Me” and “Wise Up”, all by Aimee Mann, and “Goodbye Stranger” by Supertramp.
5. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Choice tracks: “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” by Chris Thomas King, “Didn’t Leave Nobody But the Baby” by Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch, “In the Jailhouse Now” by The Soggy Bottom Boys (featuring vocals by Tim Blake Nelson).

Honorable Mention

1. Legend (1985) by Tangerine Dream, featuring “Is Your Love Strong Enough” by Bryan Ferry and “Loved by the Sun” with lyrics written and performed by Jon Anderson. The original European release of Legend featured a score by Jerry Goldsmith, but that was replaced with the Tangerine Dream score for the U.S. release. I’ve not heard much of the Goldsmith version, so I don’t know whether it deserves an entry of its own.
2. The Princess Bride (1987) by Mark Knopfler. The simple, guitar-driven theme works exceptionally well, even if some people think the lyrics Knopfler sings over the end credits are corny.
3. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) by Wojciech Kilar. I have to be in a particular mood to listen to this score, namely the mood to gnaw on Winona Ryder’s jugular vein.
4. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) by Edward Shearmur. Heroes don’t come much pulpier than Sky Captain, and Shearmur’s score is full of bombast and bravado, a perfect pulp anthem.
5. Rogue (2007) by François Tetaz. An honorable mention for the score from a film about a killer crocodile? Yes, indeed. My love for killer croc movies is well-documented, but even I was a bit surprised.
6. Moon (2009) by Clint Mansell. I know what you’re thinking: You only saw this movie a week ago, Johnson. Is Mansell’s score really that good? I think it is, yes, though I have to admit that I don’t actually own the album. Yet.

But What About…?

Here are a handful of films that may or may not have great soundtracks, and why they’re not on any of the lists above.

1. The Godfather (1972) by Carmine Coppola and Nino Rota. This one consistently makes “Top X Movie Score/Soundtrack” lists, so why didn’t I include it? Simple: I’ve never seen the movie.
2. The Blues Brothers (1980) featuring songs performed by The Blues Brothers, James Brown, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and various other artists. Why didn’t I include it? Because it’s a musical, that’s why, and musicals don’t count. Ditto for Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Chicago (2002). Who says musicals don’t count? I do. And that goes double for animated musicals.
3. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) by John Williams. The collected film scores of John Williams would probably make up 30-60% of this list, but if I’m limiting Vangelis to a single entry it’s only fair that Williams be limited to one, too. So Raiders isn’t eligible; nor are Jurassic Park (1993) and Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (2001).
4. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Dead Man’s End (2003-7) by Klaus Badelt and Hans Zimmer. I love the zippy, synthabrass, swashbuckling anthem, but I wanted to limit myself to one Zimmer score and Batman Begins took the ring.

Did I leave something off these lists? Of course not; they are all exhaustive and complete. However, I understand that such things are entirely subjective, so by all means feel free to nominate your own scores and soundtracks, point out how ego-centric it is that my lists are confined entirely to films that were released within my own lifetime and otherwise call into question my judgment and musical taste.

And, of course, the iPad. For this, we go to video…

Starring Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey, Sam Rockwell, Dominique McElligott, Rosie Shaw, Kaya Scodelario, Sam Rockwell, Benedict Wong and Matt Berry

Written and Directed by Duncan Jones

Music by Clint Mansell

If there’s one movie from 2009 that I regret missing during its theatrical run, that movie would have to be G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra, because director Stephen Sommers clearly subscribes to the Michael Bay school of filmmaking: lots of things moving very quickly (often in slow motion, which may or may not be ironic) and oh, the explosions. G.I. JOE is just the sort of spectacle movie theaters—with their digitally-projected images on forty-foot screens and their booming surround sound—are designed for.

Moon, on the other hand, is a quiet movie. Sure, there’s a robot (GERTY, voiced by Kevin Spacey), and there are giant, futuristic machines; there’s even a moon base with artificial gravity and lots of sexy control panels. But nothing—absolutely nothing—explodes. A lunar rover crashes, yes. But it doesn’t explode. There is a fight that results in a character bleeding, to be sure. But neither character involved in the fracas is a mute ninja (or any other kind of ninja, for that matter) and not once does the action slip into slo-mo to emphasize how incredibly awesome that fight is. Oh, and the giant, futuristic machines don’t turn into robots, nor is the robot (which remains a robot at all times) an unstoppable killing machine.

[This gets a bit spoilery.]

What Moon has instead of explosions and ninja fights is Sam Rockwell, who is an acting ninja. Rockwell’s character, Sam Bell, is nearing the end of a three-year contract with Lunar Industries, a company that harvests Helium-3—a vital energy source—from the moon’s surface and packs it up in canisters which are then shipped to Earth. Sam has spent two weeks shy of three years alone on the far side of the moon, tending the Helium-3 harvesters—giant, roving machines mildly reminiscent of the spice harvesters in Dune. Sam’s only companion in the moon base is a robot named GERTY and, due to a malfunctioning satellite, live communication with Earth has been impossible for nearly the entire length of his contract; the only way he can communicate with other human beings is through recorded messages that are bounced off a relay satellite orbiting Jupiter. With only two weeks remaining in his contract, Sam is eager to return to Earth, his wife, and a daughter he has never met.

Unfortunately, Sam is going a bit stir crazy. He has begun to see things that aren’t there, and it’s becoming a bit of a distraction; so much so that he crashes his lunar rover into the back of a Helium-3 harvester. Injured and trapped, the last thing Sam sees is the lunar regolith kicked up by the harvester covering the rover’s cracked viewport.

Sam awakens in the moon base’s infirmary with no recollection of the crash. GERTY informs him that there was a minor incident with one of the harvesters, and in a recorded message Sam’s superiors at Lunar Industries order him to remain in the base to recover; a rescue team is en route to handle the stalled harvester. Restless, Sam convinces GERTY to let him out of the base to check the outer shell for meteorite damage, then hops in another rover and drives out to the scene of the accident.

As expected, Sam finds the crashed rover and the stalled harvester. He also finds himself, injured but still alive, trapped inside the rover. That’s when things get interesting.

In all honesty, I really do wish that I’d seen Moon on the big screen. It doesn’t have the flash and bang that makes me forget I’m in an auditorium surrounded by chatty people with cell phones, but there’s a visual depth that my poor, old 27″ RCA television doesn’t quite manage to bring across. Watching Moon a second time on my PC (with commentary by director Duncan Jones and producer Stuart Fenegan—totally worth watching, by the way) I noticed a lot of little details that I missed on my first viewing.

It’s entirely possible, though, that some of the little visual details were overlooked because I was watching Sam Rockwell, who delivers an excellent performance, which then turns into two excellent performances after Sam Bell quite literally finds himself. Rockwell is utterly convincing in his portrayal of two men who are identical—apart from the fact that they’re separated by three years of loneliness, three years of being physically and technologically unable to interact with another human being, three years of learning to come to grips with one’s own frailties, and three years of living a colossal, cruel lie.

Rockwell’s ninja acting is aided by visual effects and trickery that are nearly flawless—whether the trick is convincing the eye, ear and mind of the audience that there are two Sams interacting with one another or painting a believable portrait of the barren and desolate lunar landscape—and a beautiful, haunting musical score by Clint Mansell. All the elements—story, performance, visuals and music—are blended into a single original, thought-provoking and heartbreaking film that manages to be an entirely different kind of spectacle; one without explosions or car chases or the need to check your brain at the door.

Rating: 5 out 5 Sam Rockwells.

For years now, I have been eagerly following the development of Star Trek Online and gleaning whatever news I could gather. From its awkward, failed start at P2 Entertainment to the license’s transition to Cryptic Studios in early 2008 I have been hoping not for a “Warcraft-Killer”, but for something new and exciting in the MMO genre.  Could Cryptic actually deliver a compelling Star Trek game where players take part in galaxy sized events? Could Cryptic get past the grind heavy mechanics of its previous games like City of Heroes? Would Cryptic’s obligations to deliver Champions Online in 2009 hinder Star Trek Online’s development?

What Cryptic finally delivered with Star Trek Online is essentially two games in one heavily stylized package.  Star Trek Online gives the player a very authentic Star Trek setting with all the special effects, computer displays and sounds that bring you into the experience. If the thought of LCARS displays or Okudagrams gets you fired up then you will feel right at home in the User Interface. The game itself is primarily divided between a planetary Ground component lifted from Cryptic’s Champions Online engine and a Space component that evokes memories of the venerable Starfleet Command series of games.  But that duality between a player’s avatar and ship causes the game to feel disjointed and I found the Space-based game play to be significantly more polished than the Ground-based missions.

Damage control is easy. Reading Klingon, that’s hard.

I just want to take a moment to comment on the overall state of the Open Beta. I am here writing this the morning of January 23, 2010, during the last weekend of the Open Beta, and I still have random disconnects during zoning. For days now, when I attempt to zone between sectors, beam between my ship and a planet or starbase or even take a turbolift to new zone there’s a chance you will be disconnected. I have seen the screen below way more than I should at this late stage of Beta.

It seems to be rather late in the development cycle to be dealing with what I consider to be a critical issue for players. By Cryptic’s own admission, they got slammed unexpectedly by the number of players participating in the Open Beta and did not plan their server infrastructure accordingly. What makes me raise a skeptical eyebrow at this is that Cryptic are the ones controlling the number of Beta keys in circulation as well as having all the metrics on the keys being activated or requested through Beta Applications. And even with crushing server problems and players unable to login or maintain a connection, Cryptic is still handing out Beta Keys on their Twitter feed this morning!

I am sure that Cryptic is sitting on a super-server cluster for Star Trek Online’s launch day but promises of ordering additional hardware for the Open Beta appear to have never been fulfilled. And even with a limit on the number of active players and instanced zones, lag and dropped connections is still a very serious problem in the game, especially during ground missions.

Five to Beam Up

I am going to jump right in and discuss the Ground missions within Star Trek Online as I feel this is the weakest point of the gameplay experience. Star Trek Online’s Ground missions are typical MMO fare and if you have played Champions Online you will notice the similarities immediately. Other than the Star Trek reskinning of the User Interface, every other facet is essentially the Champions Online engine and game play mechanics being reused. Some of the new additions are the ability to flank enemies, deliver extra damage or even the ability to incapacitate or expose enemies to a coup de grace attack which can immediately vaporize them. Players may also include their bridge officers in the away team and allow them to use their special Ground classified attacks and abilities during the missions. For example, bringing a Science class bridge officer on an away team may offer an ability to recharge shields faster or heal physical damage.

All players and NPCs on the mission have the typical MMO slots for armor, weapons and personal shields but one interesting option is to equip the player with special Kits. Essentially, Kits are super-abilities on a lengthy timer. For engineer Players, Kits include the ability to beam down phaser turrets or shield generators. For Tactical player Kits include area of effect weapons like photon grenades and devastating charged shots. For Science players, Kits include buff and debuff abilities that can strip away enemy shields & resistances. As your character advances in rank, Kits will include more than one ability, but with a limitation that only one can be activate at any given time.

All of this sounds pretty good, and as a player beaming down with yourself and a small contingent of officers on a mission to wipe out a Klingon listening post can be fun but whether you are solo or in a team with other players, there is crippling lag constantly affecting the gameplay. I would not expect this at all given the fact that only a handful of players (5 at the most) are in an instance at any given time and that walking through the corridors of a space station versus a large expansive outdoor setting should barely tax the engine. But time and time again, I found myself at the mercy of lag and sudden bursts of activity from the game where I would be near death or running into a wall or mob of enemies that appeared from nowhere. I recently played Champions Online and even in an instance with 20 players running around simultaneously, beating up thugs in the distance, I never saw performance this poor. And given that its essentially the same engine, I expected a far better experience than I had. This is almost a complete polar opposite to what I have found in the Fleet Action space battles, where I’ve flown with 20 allies against swarms of Klingon ships or engaged Naussican raiders in a dense asteroid field and had a rock solid frame rate and experience.

All Hands, battle stations!

In comparison to the Ground campaign, I found the Space campaign to be an absolute thrill to play. Players start off with a fairly basic ship and can choose from three styles of hull; the Miranda-class vessel that was introduced in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, as well as the Centaur and ShiKahr hulls. As your first ship, all three hulls are the same and give the player the ability to customize 2 fore weapon hard points, 1 aft weapon hard point, and a selection of ship components including shields, engines and consoles. As part of the load out, players are also allowed to assign 3 bridge officers, one of each class (Engineering, Tactical and Science) to their bridge crew and use their special abilities during combat. This ability to swap out bridge officers is a critical component to the space combat and I found myself keeping several officers on standby when I would change tactics or weapons and  need specific abilities to knock out enemy shields or overload my torpedoes.

Space combat itself is fairly straightforward. Move into 10 kilometers of range, target the enemy and press the Spacebar to fire all energy based weapons that can hit the target or press Ctrl and Spacebar together to fire torpedoes or mines. The UI also features buttons for Fire All or firing weapons individually but going to keyboard route or assigning the firing buttons to extra buttons on your mouse is the best way to go. Sounds simple enough but where the game goes from boring to tactical splendor is that the player must keep the enemy within the firing arc of their weapons, watch their energy usage and perform maneuvers in space that keep their damaged shields away from enemy fire so that the stronger ones can absorb their hits.  Pulling off this “dance” takes a fair bit of practice but Star Trek Online doesn’t shy away from giving you opportunities to destroy pesky Borg or Klingon foes. The game features a random mission generator and players are able to quickly find quests and wandering enemies to keep themselves busy without the need to visit a quest giver on some far flung starbase.

As players level up through the ranks, they will unlock new tiers of starship hulls (including the Defiant, the Galaxy, the Sovereign and the Constellation hulls) that allow them to specialize into damage dealing roles (tactical escorts), tank roles (engineering cruisers) or status affecting buff/debuff roles (science vessels). Players aren’t pigeon holed into one branch though, and I’ve seen my fair share of science vessels cutting apart enemy ships with disruptor cannons and quantum torpedoes. As well as new ships, players also have the ability to improve their Ground- and Space-based abilities by assigning skill points to improving their stats and promoting and assigning skill points to their bridge officers as well. This becomes extremely interesting as bridge officers unlock new abilities as they increase in rank as well.

All of this customization means that no ship, no crew and no captain will ever be exactly the same and that there is literally a universe of options to consider in both the Ground and Space portions of the game. All of this uniqueness, though, carries a cost…

Please state the nature of the medical emergency.

There is, unfortunately, a big problem understanding exactly how all the little customization pieces in Star Trek Online actually work together. As you progress through the game, especially during the space missions, you’ll be rewarded with new items and weapons that have stats with no explanations as to what they do. It’s the Techno-babble problem that made some of the newer Star Trek series a mess to watch and now Cryptic has created a game where bonuses and attributes have no explanation.

For example, here’s two items I found during combat. The item on the left is what I have currently equipped on my starship but I recently found this “better” version on the right. The item on the right is worth more, is a “Mark 2” but there is no in game documentation about what effect “Starship Emitters” are or what the difference is between “Starship Sensors” or the “Starship Sensor Array”. And since I have no bridge officer abilities that use the Tractor Beam option, the item on the right appears to actually weaken my ship’s abilities overall.

Here’s another example. Again, the item on the left is the one I have equipped. Both weapons are “Energy” based but is there a difference between the Phaser and Disruptor weapon types? I assumed the firing arc and damage rate were the only differences but there are undocumented bonuses for all of the energy based weapons. Some inflict extra damage to shields, some penetrate shields better, some disable subsystems better and some have damage over time capability.

While the tutorial mission performs admirably in getting players up to speed on the basics, there is a strata of intermediate game play and techniques that are never taught to players. Simple tricks like right-clicking to set one fore and one aft weapon hard point to auto-fire are found by digging through the message board forums. Learning how to drop missions (Press J, then click Drop) or even assign bridge officers is never covered and can be found by asking for help in the chat room.  A popular meme throughout the Beta has been “Where’s Sulu?” in reference to Akira Sulu, a patrol quest giver located in the Admiral’s office  in the Sol starbase that new players have been consistently unable to find due to poor or inadequate text descriptions. Perhaps it’s a by-product of Star Trek Online’s rapid development cycle but it appears that a lot of corners were cut on the end product to get it shipped out in early 2010 ahead of the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion, Cataclysm, and Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO in 2011.

Resistance is futile.

And for all of its problems, the bugs, the crashes, the broken quests… I can’t stop playing STO. I am absolutely hooked on the space combat and how solo friendly Cryptic has made the game. It seems sort of strange to be playing an MMO and staying isolated but Star Trek Online’s automatic instance grouping means that you rally into a mission with a few other humans and without the endless “LFG” text messages. Just play the game and as you go you’ll find yourself working with other to take down Klingon battleships or pursuing Undine infiltrators. It’s a social abstraction that lets Star Trek Online almost become a casual game and lets people not interested in huge guilds or party planning participate in those galactic events I was hoping Cryptic could handle.

So, it’s not a perfect game and it’s not going to scratch every itch but I have confidence in Cryptic to make this something special. The ground missions might be rather pedestrian but if you’ve ever wanted to take command of the Defiant and blast quantum torpedoes into the side of a Borg cube or remember the Starfleet Command series then this might just be the game for you. But for $15 a month on top of the $50 – $60 initial purchase, there could be a point where a player becomes bored with what the game can offer in its current state if Cryptic flounders on the promised episodic style content.

Whereas Overlord Miller is a seething cauldron of barely-contained fury and does not enjoy a good on-screen splatterfest, I have all the pent-up rage of a two-week-old kitten and likes me some cinematic blood and guts. It ought not surprise anyone, therefore, to learn that it was I—and not Overlord Miller—who watched three Friday the 13^th films in the last four days.

I don’t claim to be a connoisseur of horror films in general, nor of the Friday the 13^th franchise specifically, but I do enjoy watching Jason Voorhees dispatch a camp of college students from time to time.² The machete-wielding giant in the hockey mask, more than any of his ilk (Leatherface, Michael Meyers, Freddy Krueger), fascinates me. To me, Jason Voorhees is the bipedal equivalent of a giant crocodile, and we all know how I feel about giant crocodiles.

Or rather, Jason Voorhees was the bipedal equivalent of a giant crocodile until he got rebooted.³ In Friday the 13^th (2009),  Jason is pretty much the deformed love child of Alan “Dutch” Schaefer and Angus MacGyver; instead of an implacable, lumbering, unstoppable murder machine, the new Voorhees is a nimble, stealthy survivalist whose lair at Camp Crystal Lake is rigged with traps, an elaborate alarm system and a guest suite.⁴

While I could hardly argue that New Jason⁵ fails to get the job done (where “the job” is killing camps of horny, pot-smoking college kids), the way he goes about it lacks a certain je nais se quoi. Okay, that’s not true; I know exactly what New Jason lacks: inevitability. There’s something about the way Old Jason⁶ moves that speaks of a deadly inevitability; it doesn’t matter how fast you can run or how clever you are, he’s going to get you eventually. Old Jason lumbers tortoise-like, where New Jason dashes to and fro like a hare. Granted, New Jason is a hare with a machete, but the simple fact of the matter is that he doesn’t evoke the sense that he’s simply not going to stop until he crosses that finish line.⁷

My personal favorite performance by Kane Hodder as Old Jason is probably the least-popular Friday the 13^th installment among those who are true connoisseurs of the series: Jason X (2001). Also known as “Jason in Space”, the film begins in the far-flung future of 2010,⁸ when a captured Jason Voorhees is cryogenically frozen, and continues more than 400 years later when a group of students returns to a now-dead Earth (presumably on an archaeological field trip), finds the chilly killer and brings him back aboard their spaceship. Upon thawing him out, the students learn why Jason was put on ice in the first place: he’s pretty much impossible to kill. To make matters worse, Jason gets an “upgrade” about two-thirds of the way through the movie; down for the count after facing off against an ass-kicking android (Lisa Ryder), Jason is revived by a malfunctioning medical bay that uses nanobots to turn him into a nigh-invincible cyborg. Nothing but trouble, those nanobots.

Jason X may not be as gritty as some of its predecessors—I’ve dubbed it “novelty horror”—but Hodder’s Voorhees is perfect. He moves slowly with an occasional lethal burst of speed; he is an unrelenting, brutal killer, and he’s always turning up where his hapless victims least expect to find him. Jason Voorhees doesn’t need agility, cleverness or traps to do what he does. He’s not a cat or a spider; he’s a giant crocodile. And above all, he is inevitable.

1. In an invisible cone I call “Miller’s Wake”.
2. Much as a group of geese is commonly referred to as a “gaggle”, a group of college students—in the context of a Friday the 13^th film—is known as a “camp”. At least by me.
3. There’s been a lot of that going around lately, hasn’t there?
4. Oddly enough, the reason given for Jason’s murderous behavior is one often used when large predators seem to kill indiscriminately: he’s just protecting his territory.
5. Portrayed in the 2009 Friday the 13^th reboot by Derek Mears.
6. Portrayed most notably by Kane Hodder, thus far the only actor to ever don the hockey mask more than once.
7. What’s finished at that line? You.
8. Hey…

This is only tangentially related to the best picture I’ve seen in the last week, which must be shared. By astonishing coincidence, Gaiman and Palmer are also the subjects of the photo. What are the chances?

Screw the A-Team. Where the hell is my Rockford Files movie?

Yes, I’m serious. The final moments of the trailer show just how asinine the A-Team movie is going to be: they are in a tank, which is falling from a blown-up airplane, and one of the merry band manages to shoot down the oncoming fighter jet with the tank-mounted machine guns. Really?  I mean…REALLY? I’ve not seen anything so unbelievable since my brother had Optimus Prime fight Darth Vader back in 1982 on our bedroom floor.

That’s the problem with the remakes today: they are conceived of and written by twelve-year-olds. If we can find some adults, some people with both the skill to write a proper mystery AND have an appreciation for the studliness of Jim Rockford, we might have a blockbuster on our hands.

Jim Rockford was to the 1970s what Thomas Magnum was to the 1980s which was what Philip Marlowe was to the 1940s: the quintessential bachelor sleuth of his generation. Resourceful, witty, surviving on little more than charm and dogged perseverance, Jim Rockford was a real guy. He had a cool car, he wasn’t tied down. He lived out of a trailer in Malibu and preferred to talk his way out of trouble instead of meeting with with fists and a gun.

James Garner, when creating the role, said they he took his con-man character from Maverick and mixed it with a bit of Philip Marlowe. Fast-talking, wise-cracking, often confused and befuddled by the twists the cases took, Rockford was THE private eye many of my generation remember, usually from reruns on the local UHF station’s Sunday afternoon lineup.¹.

From the Museum of Broadcast Communications:

The Rockford Files is generally regarded (along with Harry O) as one of the finest private eye series of the 1970s, and indeed of all time, consistently ranked at or near the top in polls of viewers, critics, and mystery writers. The series offered superbly-plotted mysteries, with the requisite amounts of action, yet it was also something of a revisionist take on the hard-boiled detective genre, grounded more in character than crime, and infused with humor and realistic relationships. Driven by brilliant writing, an ensemble of winning characters, and the charm of its star, James Garner, the series went from prime-time Nielsen hit in the seventies, to a syndication staple with a loyal cult following in the eighties, spawning a series of made-for-TV movie sequels beginning in 1994.

Rockford leaves an impression, and in this Overlord’s not-so-humble opinion, he deserves a revival. The franchise could be pure gold.

Assuming they get someone decent to write it.

And direct it.

And…

*pause*

Maybe I’m better off with my memories.

1. The Rockford Files also has one of the greatest theme songs in the history of television. Just sayin’