Idea File: Social Network Rom-com
Idea File: A romantic comedy built around social networking. I don’t have a plot, or characters, or a clever situation, or anything, but I do have a bang-up title:
“It’s Complicated.”
Isn’t that great? If someone in Hollywood isn’t working on a rom-com with that title yet, they should be.
Idea File | Comment (0)Assassin’s Creed
My latest Playstation 3 game is “Assassin’s Creed”, and despite the mixed reviews, I’m loving it. There’s a trend in video games recently to be more open–games that allow you to decide how to solve a particular problem, instead of having to guess how the programmers intended you to solve the problem–and AC really exemplifies that trend.
Let’s take an (admittedly extreme) example. A little background: Assassin’s Creed is set in the Holy Land in the era of Richard the Lionheart’s crusade. The protagonist is an Assassin, in the original meaning of the word (although hashish is never mentioned–guess killing people is ok, but drugs are evil), who’s sent to kill various evil men. An unrelated piece of background: Before picking up Assassin’s Creed, I played through a chunk of Half-Life 2, which is a game that everyone raved about, claimed it was one of the best video games ever, and so on.
Now, imagine a gate that you need to get past, that’s guarded by a bunch of armed guards.
In Half-Life 2, there would be exactly one way to get past that gate. Probably just by killing all of the guards, but possibly by finding a lever somewhere to pull to make a machine come out and kill them all for you, or some such nonsense. Either way, there would only be one solution, and you’d have to find it.
In Assassin’s Creed, here are the ways at your disposal to get past that gate:
- Just kill all of the guards.
- Run past the guards, lose them in the crowds, and hide in a haystack (or some other hiding place) until they stop searching for you.
- Find a way around the gate, such as by climbing a nearby building and leaping to the top of the wall.
- Find a group of scholars, who the guards will allow to pass unmolested. Disguise yourself as one of them, blend into the group and simply walk past the guards.
- (And this one really impresses me) Find another nearby guard who’s by himself. Stick a knife in his back. When a civilian finds his body, they’ll raise a ruckus, and the guards will come and investigate. Sneak through the gate while they’re away from it.
As I said, that’s an extreme case, but the whole game’s like that–for any given problem, there are a bunch of different possible solutions. You never feel like you’re stuck trying to read the programmer’s mind, as you do in games like HL2. It’s a real breath of fresh air.
Also, the game is gorgeous. There are three Crusades-era cities modeled in the game, and they’re incredibly detailed and realistic. And the protagonist looks incredible–very detailed model, and his movements are so fluid you’d swear you’re watching a real person move. But I’d play it even if it didn’t look so good, just because it’s so open.
Games | Comment (1)Simpsons Repetition
I just saw a new Simpsons episode where Bart nearly gets married.
This wouldn’t be notable except for the fact that there’s already been an episode of The Simpsons where Bart nearly gets married.
I think that proves that the show is officially out of ideas.
TV | Comment (0)Tired Jokes
Attention comic strip writers: Please stop using the following jokes:
- “It’s snowing outside, what ever happened to global warming?”
- “(Strip main character) is such a loser, identity thieves don’t want to steal his identity!”
- “Those crazy kids these days, they talk on their cell phones/text message each other even when they’re in the same room!”
- “Man, they sure have Starbucks everywhere!”
Link: Manly Cocktails
This list of the 11 manliest cocktails in the world is spot on. I completely agree with the top 2, and the rest of the list is great too. I love the recipe for Gin and Juice:
2 1/2 ounces Gin.
1 oz. orange juice.
Equal parts mind on your money and money on your mind
Renaming Languages
This came up in a conversation I was having the other day: What if we renamed languages so that they were named by the country that has the most speakers of that language, instead of the country that the language originally came from?
Portuguese (which sparked the conversation in the first place) would clearly have to be renamed “Brazilian”.
Spanish would be called “Mexican”.
English is debatable…depending on which set of statistics I trust, it would either be called “Indian” (see for instance this source) or “American” (see here.)
French would still be called “French”…guess they were less successful in the colonization game.
Wordplay | Comment (0)