Beach Justice: The Academy is basically an homage to ridiculous 80s movies and revolvers – specifically Tequila’s revolver in Hard Boiled.

I always loved scenes where the main character basically has one shot because as soon as the scene starts, you know exactly how it’s going to end – he’s going to shoot the bad guy with that one bullet. So then, it’s really about how ridiculous and overwrought we can make the scene. The idea was to draw out for as long as possible what should be a simple scene.

We had the entire layout of Airdog Airsoft’s formidable facilities in Atlanta at our disposal. They had decorated the place for what’s known as the Atlanta Zombie Apocalypse – a massive zombie themed haunted house for Halloween (we shot a couple days before Halloween).

A zombie movie seemed to be the most logical thing to do here, but unfortunately, zombie armies require their own armies of make-up artists and volunteers – two things we didn’t have much time for on the road trip. Wandering around, we found roof access and sat around up there kicking around ideas until we stumbled on this one. We planned on doing a big Twitter push to convince people there really was a 90 minute movie we shot on the road trip, with the ridiculous hard drive story and all. Based on the comments, it seems quite a few people were fooled. I guess we better do a feature film, huh?

Clint, of Cardboard Warfare fame, and his posse came by to help us out. Our idea didn’t necessitate a massive crew, but we used the extra hands to their full extent handling the reflector, pouring the flour/cocaine into bags, and providing a plethora of extra props.

The sound design/music played a big part in how this one came together – watching the edit without sound or music, a lot of cuts felt too long, so we had to have a clear idea of what the sound effects would be, because they would necessarily influence the pace of the cut. The music as well had to be anticipated in the edit, especially as a lot of key points of the sequence sync up with musical stings and downbeats. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how the picture and sound came together.

That’s a picture of the Pro Tools session. As might be readily apparent, my track organization goes right through the window when I’m doing short YouTube movies, so don’t look to this as a good example of how to lay things out (because it’s pretty terrible). A big part of why our videos take so much time to do (and why we do one a week) is because each short goes through the exact same process that a full feature film in post production would take – something that we’re familiar with due to a little bit of prior experience messing around in post production for direct-to-TV/direct-to-DVD features.

In short, that process is:

1. Picture Lock
2. VFX Work (if applicable. Tool of choice is Adobe After Effects)
3. Sound and Music Composition/Edit (Pro Tools and an Mbox 2 for sound and Apple Logic for music)
4. Sound Mix (Pro Tools)
5. Color Correction (this happens concurrently with sound work. Brandon uses Apple Color)

For a more involved video, shooting takes a day, picture editing takes a day or less, sound and music another two or three days, VFX one or two days, and color correct a few hours. All said and done, it can take us anywhere from two to five days to finish a video (not counting the shooting day). In this case, we already shot the video in Atlanta on our road trip, but it took three days of post-production to finish.

As is the case with nearly all of our other videos, the music for Beach Justice was written by myself in Apple Logic. This was one of the more complex videos for music simply because of the range of cues, as well as the need to get electric guitar in there. I use a range of samplers and software instruments – I’m a big fan of the Tonehammer libraries, which are awesome libraries for Native Instruments Kontakt at very reasonable prices. For guitars/bass, I run them through the Mbox through Native Instruments Guitar Rig. Purists will guffaw at the use of software based guitar amp emulators, but the guitar is usually sitting in a mix, and most people aren’t watching YouTube through incredible speakers, so I found it really doesn’t make too much of a difference.

For Beach Justice, I used a lot of random animal noises for sounds. The infamous red tailed hawk screech makes its way in there no less than three times throughout the movie (Brandon suggested doubling up on the hawk screech at the very end every time it cuts to the wide, which ended up being one of my favorite parts of this video). Besides that, there’s a bunch of cougar and lion sounds sprinkled throughout.

Because the video was all about evoking a bad made-for-TV movie, I wanted the sound to be over the top and hyperreal, and the music to be as cheesy as humanly possible (most of the sounds are just Logic’s default synths). Every single sound of the gun handling is layered in a bed of whooshes, animal noises, and non-related sound effects that fit (like leather creaking when my hands tighten around the grip). A big part of the sound is also big cinematic hits and rises, which serve to punctuate the various scene changes and make the video flow along.

I found one of the best ways to make an impact shine through in sound is to build up to it, but right before the sound hits, to give it a breath of silence right before. It’s a matter of subverting anticipation – people expect a build to end with a hit, but by delaying it, the strength of the hit comes through much stronger because you compare the volume and impact to the silence preceding it, rather than the cacophony of the build-up. This was a technique I used to emphasize the single revolver gunshot – build up, both with score and sound design, right up to the point of pulling the trigger, and delay the gunshot.

Movie silence is rarely ever really silent – in this case, there’s two sounds there – a high frequency sine wave tone, to simulate the ringing you sometimes hear in your ears, and a low bass rumble, to balance the audio spectrum and suggest something imminent (I’m not sure why it seems to suggest that, but I assume there’s something hard wired in human beings because deep rumbles tend to come right before earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and other suitably impressive acts of nature). The gunshot is preceded almost immediately metallic clicks, which I recorded from Niko’s (real) revolver by pulling the hammer back quickly.

Sound has a funny way of blending in your head after you’ve heard it – if I layered the click with the gunshot, you wouldn’t be able to hear it because it’d be masked by the gunshot itself. By putting the sound of the hammer right before the gunshot, the effect is that it seems like the click is both audible, distinct, and part of the gunshot – something that’s not possible if everything was layered together.

Overall, there’s a bunch of little stupid audio and musical jokes sprinkled throughout the video – the kind of thing that you only find funny after staring at the editing scene at 4 in the morning, but I’m happy with how everything came together, especially the ending (which was one of the things we thought of right away when we were kicking ideas around for the video) which is making fun of how TV stations will distort the credit scroll in order to tell you what’s coming up next. In this case, it felt like a natural extension of what one might expect if this was really a TV movie.

Related Videos

Behind the Scenes

The single player of Brotherhood may be true GotY quality stuff, and loaded with content, but it’s the multiplayer that will have me playing this game for months. Assassins Creed Brotherhood’s multiplayer was developed by Ubisoft Annecy of Splinter Cell fame, and shares some of the same victim/pursuer dynamics of that series.

The main multiplayer mode is an 8 person free-for-all called Wanted. It plays like a digital version of the school yard game Assassin. If you aren’t familiar with Assassin, you probably didn’t have fun in school.  You get issued a card with your target’s face on it. It is then your job to go find that person and stab their face. At the same time someone was issued a target with your face on it that they want to stab. What puts it to the next level is the levels are populated by NPCs that use the players’s character models. This essentially makes it a city of clones and blending in is a sort of reverse Turing test. The end goal is to have your pursuer’s hammer smash the face a helpless NPC instead of you.

Most multiplayer is a symmetrical battle between two “equal” opponents who both have the same goal, kill the other player more than they kill you. If you die, you respawn and go back to the exact same goal of killing that same person(s). Highest score wins. Sure, search and destroy present different objects for both sides, but they are still two teams relatively equally matched trying to kill the other.

In Brotherhood, you can’t kill the person trying to kill you. Your victim and your pursuer are two different people, and you are trying to locate and remain hidden from them equally. These people also change the moment you die, or lose your target. At any moment, your playfield is consisting of 3 different parties, and those parties have different abilities. The gameplay is not symmetrical. Killing your pursuer is no longer a tool of defense. You are as helpless to your pursuer as your victim is  too you. More so, as you get close to killing your victim, you are likely more exposed and easier to be killed. This is some paranoia inducing stuff.

Another mode, Manhunt is just a variant where two teams of 4 take turns hiding and being attackers. This is similar to Left 4 Dead’s flow of switching between Zombies and survivors. You tools and objectives and means of scoring are completely different when playing as either side. I should note, that while hunters usually get more points, I have noticed that the scores remain rather close if the teams are good. This sort of asymmetrical multiplayeris hard to balance, and so is rather rare to find. It is too bad, as asymmetrical competition can create some of the most interesting dynamics.

Watching from a hay bale as an assassins jumps from the roof and slashes the neck of a NPC that he thought was you, is about as good an experience you can have his generation. While 4 modes is a bit light, I can only hope for support from Ubisoft though out the months. However, with 50 levels, containing MW2 type perks and abilities, it is still a fully realized  multiplayer mode demanding your attention.

Speaking of MW2’s progression system, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit has an innovation that will be copied just as endlessly. It will also probably prove to be more important. Social Networking maybe or may not be something you have been hearing about every moment for many years. Game companies have been fusing it into their games for a while now. Bungie has its Waypoint, Blizzard has battlenet, and Steam is slowly becoming a social network itself. Almost all of these systems are essentially ways to track stats and speed up the process of jumping into a multiplayer game. Even single player games have tried it with limited success, such as Uncharted 2 sending a facebook message to your friends, everytime you picked up ammo, or grabbed a ledge. Almost no game as fused the actual ideas behind facebook so fully into its system as Need for Speed.

The front menu has links to your wall (think facebook), photo gallery, multiplayer, campaign, store, extras, etc. What is best, is even the updates of all your friends will simply appear on the front menu. “Freddie just bested my time on x event”. Jimmy posted a picture of his Dodge Charger 50 feet in midair. It is done with a slick interface and design, and is never distracting. Well it is, but in the good way; in the way that changes the way you play. You will be distracted by the wall comment “you are a bitch” placed below a time 10 seconds faster than yours. That would be a nice little feature, but not all that worthwhile if you had to work your way through menus to find that event. In NFS you can simply click on the comment, and it will bring you straight to that event.

Those clever British chaps over at Criterion understand that people don’t like to do anything more than they have to, and they will do something if it is easy and fun. People don’t want to find times to beat, or friends to play against. If you tell them a time to beat and give them a way to do it, they will. This means, even when playing campaign, you will see events with an icon indicating that a friend has a comment about that event. Even if you choose not to go into an event specifically, every race will end with your friends’s best times as well. The more friends you have playing, and the more you use autolog, the more personal, competitive and social your gaming becomes. In perhaps the best feature, aptly titled Autolog Recommends, the game will actually find friends for you, based off of the friends you have, so you can make sure to have a good group of people to compete against.

Autolog simply facilitates the way you want to play with your friends; talk about what you did, challenge them, compete against them, and show off cool moments. It just lets you do it all within the game, with a tracking system, and other tools to make it easier. Autolog is just another sign that game franchises are slowly turning into platforms themselves, and as they do that, they will be adding social network functionality more intensely. For gamers, that is a good thing.

Check out both games. Beyond their multiplayer, they are close to the best single player experiences of their genres this year.

Also, do any of you remember the greatness that was Conker’s Bad Fur Day’s Beach Multiplayer. One of the my favorite asymmetrical modes ever. Someone needs to do a game like this again. We would even put cardboard up between the TV, so the two sides couldn’t see each other… I was really popular during elementary school.

Matt’s Note: I will be doing a blog of this sort every monday about what ever it is I have been playing or saw over the last week. Let me know what you guys think.

From Final Day: Phoenix Meetup, posted by Freddie Wong on 11/11/2010 (15 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

Photo Galleries

Front Page of Gallery
Days 1 – 2: California
Days 3 – 4: Oregon
Days 5 – 6: Hanging out in Seattle
Day 6: Shooting in Seatle
Days 7 – 9: Montana and South Dakota
Days 10 – 11: Minnesota
Days 12 – 15: Minnesota Round 2
Days 15 – 18: Chicago and Centralia
Days 19 – 20: Hanging out in Atlanta
Day 21: Shooting in Atanta
Days 22-23: Shooting in Mississippi
Days 24-25: Austin and BBQ
Day 26: Carlsbad Caverns and Albuquerque
Days 27-28: Checking out Colorado
Day 29: Navajo Reservation
Day 30: New Mexico Shoot
Day 31: Final Day – Phoenix Meetup

From Day 30: New Mexico Shoot, posted by Freddie Wong on 11/11/2010 (14 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

Photo Galleries

Front Page of Gallery
Days 1 – 2: California
Days 3 – 4: Oregon
Days 5 – 6: Hanging out in Seattle
Day 6: Shooting in Seatle
Days 7 – 9: Montana and South Dakota
Days 10 – 11: Minnesota
Days 12 – 15: Minnesota Round 2
Days 15 – 18: Chicago and Centralia
Days 19 – 20: Hanging out in Atlanta
Day 21: Shooting in Atanta
Days 22-23: Shooting in Mississippi
Days 24-25: Austin and BBQ
Day 26: Carlsbad Caverns and Albuquerque
Days 27-28: Checking out Colorado
Day 29: Navajo Reservation
Day 30: New Mexico Shoot
Day 31: Final Day – Phoenix Meetup

Brandon had been talking about two things the whole way to Minnesota. The free samples at the Mall of America cheese store, and going on the alpine slides. Only one of them actually happened. Lucky for you, we didn’t do a video about us eating delicious cheese. Lucky for us, the good folks at Wild Mountain opened their doors for us, and the alpine slides were just as awesome as Brandon said.

We all loved Social Network, and Brandon especially, loved the ridiculous crew race with Trent Reznor’s extreme version of In the Hall of the Mountain King. You can clearly see that is what inspired this video.

Shooting it was ridiculously fun. We spent a good 3 hours going up a ski lift, and down the slide. Brandon and Freddie took turns with the small go pro camera on their cart. Each time down, Brandon tested his limits more and more, until it became an obsession to get as much air as possible on the dip. In the video it doesn’t look like much, but the amount of air Brandon got their is pretty insane, and he nearly wiped out. Being the man he is, he recovered triumphantly with not even a scratch. This of course, was not the case with Freddie who pushed passed his limits on the second run, and made the mistake of putting out his hand to slow himself down. That gnarly burn you see in the video was the result.

I got the honor of having to go down the slide with one hand – the other holding a camera. The first few runs were pretty hair raising as I would be trying to frame the shot and would often find myself leaning in the opposite direction as a curve came dangerously close to flipping me over. How can you complain though. It was probably the most fun shoot we had. I mean – we went super fast down a mountain of concrete and fiberglass on plastic sleds with your speed in your hands. It rocked.

In case you didn’t see it yet, check out the original video:
Epic Alpine Race

Brandon and I feel the need for speed at Wild Mountain’s alpine slides. Watch in white-knuckled terror as we tear around the corners at unheard of speeds, mere inches from an untimely death!

Special thanks to Wild Mountain in Taylors Falls, MN for allowing us to film this video! If you’re in Minnesota, check them out! We showed up right before the snow came – they’ve opened up for skiing and snowboarding:

Wild Mountain is located at
37200 Wild Mountain Rd., Taylors Falls, MN 55084

http://wildmountain.com

Click to RT! http://bit.ly/RTAlpine
Check out the behind the scenes

The E3 trailer for Kirby’s Epic Yarn was met with laughter and cheers. The game was so adorable that even during a time where all the latest and greatest in AAA mature titles were being shown, the cynical gaming press had their heart strings pulled by the pink ball of yarn. Now that the game has been released, the reviews speak loudly; the game is fantastic.

Yet, Kirby’s Epic Yarn is about as by the numbers as a platformer gets. It’s comprised mostly of jumping, pushing blocks, and pulling levels. Platforms go up and down, and sometimes they even go left and right. You can jump on enemies (smash them) or grab them and throw them. It has vehicle sections, which play like children’s adaptations of various ones in other games. The bonus missions and extras are often tedious and uninspired affairs: longer vehicle sections which overstay their welcome, basic house customization and speed runs. It doesn’t sound like it should be one of the best-reviewed games of the whole year, beating out even Call of Duty: Black Ops. So why is the game just so darn good? Simple; Playing with yarn is fun.

There are lots of reasons something is fun; too many to name here*. Games are fun in a social setting, because you are solving a puzzle, because you blew some noob’s head off with a pistol from half way across the level, just to mention a few. However, the most common reason a game is fun is the satisfaction of overcoming an obstacle. The game presents an obstacle, you look into the game rules and figure out which tools you need to overcome it, and then you use those tools to do so. Creating a plan, even one as simple as “I will jump this gap” by using the A button and then accomplishing it is satisfying. Being rewarded for it is fun. Often the visual representation of your success is a reward in of itself. Watching the bloody remains of the noob’s headless body tumbling down the hill with ragdoll physics is fun. These visceral responses are often saved for the biggest successes.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn concentrates on creating inventive visual rewards of every tinyaction rather than on the actual inventiveness of the mechanics themselves,. as they are tried and true platforming Nintendo has perfected for years ago. Essentially it’s reward overload, and it makes every tiny thing you do as rewarding as said bloody headshot, except it’s made of delightful, stringy, yarn.

Take some one of the simplest and often reviled aspects of platforming/adventure games; pushing a block, or in this case, pulling a block. It’s the simplest puzzle possible. Sometimes something is too high, so you must move something to let you get there. Or a block shaped button needs weight on it, so you push a block to open up a door. Whatever it is, it comes down to moving a block to X so that Y path opens up. Games hide it in a variety of ways. Sometimes you push bookshelves, or robot parts, or dead bodies, or some games get real clever and you push different colored blocks than the ones you pushed before. This simple mechanic of grabbing something and pulling it is used in essentially every level in Kirby. The “block” in Kirby’s Epic Yarn is a sewn on button. Any time you see that button you know you can grab it, pull it and the obstacle open up so you can progress. No different than a block. Any other game with as much block pulling would probably have me killing myself out of boredom, but Kirby’s Epic Yarn takes that tiny moment and makes it a miniature display of clever animation, physics and surprise.

Early on, you simply grab a yarn car by the wheels and roll it along. The initial surprise is simply that the physics of a yarn car work as you expect. It’s cute, but it is also only used that one time in that one level. You see the same button later and pull it, but this time you didn’t notice the button was attached to yarn strung through the fabric background. What do you know? – It pulls the yarn tight, squishing the castle wall revealing a hole. This is now fun in two ways. You cleared an obstacle, which is good and all, but more interestingly, you tightened yarn to literally alter the fabric of the castle so you can drop down. It makes meta-sense. It makes sense in a way outside of the game space. If I had constructed a yarn castle it would work in the same way. You have now accomplished two acts in at once. Conquered an obstacle, and played with yarn. Sounds lame, but it’s really double the fun, because you have been doubly rewarded.

The volcanoes are a great example of how much visual reward can be had on both levels. How would you stop a volcano of yarn from spitting lava? How about make it a marble bag. Same mechanic, simply pull the button, the string tightens, but instead of squishing a whole piece of the background, you tighten the volcano/marble bag preventing lava from coming out. Now the volcano bulges, yarn smoke comes out, but it is safe to cross. One of the rewards is progression, as I am able to cross over the obstacle as simply as if it was merely a door and I pulled a switch. However, there is great reward to be had from the tactile feel of closing a virtual marble bag, and the surprise of the visual solution the designers came up with for a simple obstacle. I can’t think of the last time I was so amused at a mere visual in a game.

This visual creativity is threaded through every part of the game. Even the simple mechanics like the jump, is represented with Kirby’s feet turn into a bouncy spring. Double tapping a direction in many games will cause your character to sprint. Here, Kirby turns into a car. How awesome is that? If I asked, “Would you rather sprint, or be able to transform into a car?” you would choose the latter. Sorry if I answered for you, but it’s an obvious choice. The mechanic is exactly the same; double tap and hold, and your character accelerates, and continues to run faster. Nothing is different mechanically, but the visuals are fun in of themselves because the fiction of the world makes sense, and it did so in a surprising way.

It really is entertaining in the same way meta jokes are to snobby film or game buffs. This is just meta on a universal level. We aren’t merely seeing game graphics; we are seeing an artist make something first out of yarn, and then seeing that represented with game graphics. It’s layered. It’s entertaining on two levels. The danger of this is that if the meta doesn’t quite work than it can’t make up for poor gameplay. While nothing is bad in Kirby, the game is less fun when the yarn world doesn’t work as well. Yarn robots moving their feet up and down are fun to jump on. Icicles made of yarn that seem to just go through the floor aren’t as much fun. They just don’t make as much sense, and there is nothing physical or exciting about them. The yarn robot feels like a real puppet made out of yarn spun by my great grandma for my father on his 10th birthday because they couldn’t afford the real tin Flash Gordon robot…the icicles feel like a game platform.

The variety and surprises are essentially endless – until the end of the game that is. You don’t merely pull a lever to raise a platform, Kirby grabs the yarn, turns into a top, spins up the yarn into a ball, pulling the platform up along with it. If you haven’t played the game at all, just take a look at what is probably my favorite level thus far: Melody Town. It’s essentially the gaming equivalent of a candy store.

Many games simply can’t – and shouldn’t – do this because the mechanics call for something more transparent. In Gears of War, the architecture is full of 3-foot tall walls, the perfect height for Marcus to take cover behind. It’s funny because it doesn’t make sense in the real world, but it doesn’t bother us because it makes perfect sense in regards to the game logic. The game is simply visualizing the rules, and we understand that. There is nothing wrong with this, but it does limit the amount of fun to be had, because your actions will always only be successful and interesting in terms of the actual rules of the game. I should say many games do this to a variety of degrees. Mechanics in games haven’t changed all that much, so visual variety and creativity has become important. It is simply the sheer quantity and level of creativity exhibited in Epic Yarn that make it so special.

In a way, Kirby seems to have been made backwards. Instead of creating a game made of basic platforming mechanics and then coming up with the most knee-weakeningly cute way to represent it, they found a way to fit those mechanics into their massive brainstorm list of the coolest things they could do with yarn. While that is probably not the case, it’s evidence of just how well their visual wit matches their mechanics. Kirby was just nominated for best graphics at Spike’s Game Awards. In my mind it deserves to win. There is no game out there this year whose graphics enhance the game more than Kirby. Kirby’s Epic Yarn’s graphics make the game fun. How often can you say that?

*What is fun, is another topic, needing a much longer article, and needing a much better author. Raph Koster wrote on the topic with “A Theory of Fun for Game Design” that is worth checking out.

As most of you know, we just completed a month long road trip around the country to make awesome videos with you guys. It was a complete blast, and this site was a perfect tool for it. You all submitted a lot of great locations, you got to see exactly where we were, and you got daily updates to see what we were up too. But Facerocker.com isn’t going to just be a road trip blog and that’s it – the domain name is too cool for that.

We’re still recovering from the trip, but in the next month or so, we’ll be renovating this site for its original purpose. What that is
isn’t totally clear yet, but here’s a quick list of things that you’ll be able to find here:

Latest Videos: We’ll be posting all our YouTube (freddiew and freddiew2) videos here. I understand a lot of you have had some issues with the subscription system, or have no interest in using it. I can’t blame you – as an Internet O.G. I’m used to just visiting websites, so this’ll be a nice, easy place to watch our stuff. Additionally, posting videos on this site will let us link directly to behind the scenes photo galleries, as well as a more in-depth discussion about the video and how we made it – the YouTube description box can be a little limiting.

More Tutorials: As much as I enjoy firing up the ol’ screen cap program and cranking out a step-by-step tutorial, a lot of times, it’s faster and easier for a tutorial to be in a text/screenshot format. It’s faster for me to make them, and it’s about a bajillion times faster to follow along. Truth is, I hate video tutorials because most of the time the pace of the tutorial doesn’t match yours, so you’re either constantly fast forwarding, or rewinding. So look out for way more tutorials and behind the scenes tidbits on the site, in a form that’ll be easier to follow along with than video tutorials.

Forums: It’s clear from our travels that there’s a lot of you guys out there, and a lot of you are interesting in making videos and filmmaking. I took an extensive look around the entire internet (read: 15 minutes of Googling), and frankly there aren’t really that many good filmmaking forums (and the ones that do exist are filled with elitist d-bags). Plus, I’ve been on forums since grade school – it’s a way better way to communicate with people, especially compared to the comment sections on videos. The forums here will be a place to talk all things nerd – our own film projects, movies, games, etc.

Blogs and detailed articles: We are all rather opinionated, and we also happen to know quite a few people who are as constantly right as we are. In addition to reviews, (which is all we have put up so far) we’ll discuss more specific aspects of film, tv, games, technology, and whatever else we are interested in.

Podcasts: Still thinking about this one. Definite danger of the whole “tree falling in a forest” thing here – let me ask you – would you listen to an hour of us talking film and ranting about nerd stuff?

Hosting other content: We know people who do great work, we have other work we want to do. Facerocker.com isn’t just going to be the Freddie Wong show – we’re looking to have a bunch of cool stuff here, and not just from us.

Thats the gist of it. We’re working hard to get all of this up and running soon. Thanks to all of you who made the roadtrip possible, and it was great meeting some of you in person.

Rock on.

Tell it to the Frogs

Walking Dead is now in its groove, and boy did it find it quickly. Or course, it had to with only a 6 episode season. After the moody pilot, the show rushed into an exposition heavy, scene setting, action horror episode. Many people were not particularly fond of it, especially Michael Rooker’s character, the racist Merle Dixon. I, however, thought it set a solid foundation for the series, and did a good job acting as a second pilot and moving the show towards where it needs to go.

Nonetheless, Walking Dead needed an episode like Tell it to the Frogs, in order to convince people that it was going someplace worthwhile. This if the first episode that truly feels like Robert Kirkman’s comic. This time, there are only a few zombies in sight, and the majority of the drama comes from the unstable make-shift society, and the conflict between personal issues and the need to survive.

The episode begins with a powerful sequence that hopefully qualms some of the fears about Merle’s character. Alone, exhausted, thirsty, Merle is handcuffed to the roof like an animal. He reveals quite a bit about his character as he deliriously recalls a moment in the army that parallels the moment that got him handcuffed in the first place. In the service, tired of the BS coming down from those in command, Dixon punches the teeth out of a commanding officer, and gets thrown into prison for half a year. Hinting that he has seen his friends killed by poor decision, Merle is obviously a man who has felt the sting of poor authority, and he is one not willing to follow orders from anyone but himself. Soon after this, the zombies start breaking through the door and Merle loses his cool and we see this strong (albeit insane, and racist) man completely break down, switching from begging to God to cursing him. The way he escapes is chilling, and should foreshadow a key moment in the comics. It was a good start to an excellent episode.

After the titles, Rick gets to the camp and finds his wife and kid. I enjoy that this story line is ended quickly, and that the core struggle is not in actually finding his wife and kid. That is a simple, straightforward objective. One of the strongest elements of the series as always been that the marriage is not something that can be easily fixed, and the core struggle for Rick is in trying to keep his marriage healthy while dealing with impossible situations. He does not know what Lori has been through or that she has been with Rick’s best friend, Shane. Nor does either of them forget that when they last saw each other they were having serious issues.

Like most things in life, the joy of reunion is short lived. After a night together, full of apologies and forgiveness, things pick up right where they left off. Rick is a man who cannot let things go, and must always do what he considers the right thing. The problem is, it seems that the right thing is often the wrong thing for his family. Rick cannot live with what he did to Dixon, he needs to get the guns, and he wants to find the family who helped in the first place. When he decides to leave, Lori simply cannot fathom how he could instantly put himself back in danger, and it’s very clear this is the same struggle they were in before the apocalypse. “Sometimes I wonder if you even care about us.” Clearly Rick does, but he is also incapable of letting anything he considers his responsible go without his doing.

The episode introduced us to a variety of conflicts – from Ed and Sophia’s domestic abuse, the women wondering why they are still doing the  “women’s  work”, and of course the new conflict between Shane and Lori. The show often reveals pieces of information that aren’t grand plot points, but simply inform us in a way that makes us re-evaluate a character’s motivation. Lori won’t even let Shane talk to her in a scene that is confusing to the audience at first – Lori seems to be acting completely insane – until she drops “You told me he was dead”. As my girlfriend said, “oh ****, that is not ok”. Was Shane lying on purpose because he has always wanted Lori? Was he just doing what he thought was best for her? Who knows yet, but it clearly makes us question the motivation of who we always thought was the good guy.

What is best about scenes like this is that their effects on the characters continue to influence their action. In perhaps the best scene of the episode, Ed throws his masculine machismo BS to the woman doing the laundry.  Andrea – who we know is a strong woman after seeing her pull a gun on Rick – won’t take the abuse lying down and openly confronts Ed. This escalates and soon Ed slaps Sophia, and starts attacking the other girls. Shane sees this and goes nuts on Ed’s face, and for a moment you can’t help but thing Shane is going to kill Ed right there. What is so great about this scene is how it is informed by 3 moments, that all give it a bit of context, and all do their part to justify Shane’s extreme response.  First is the moment itself;  most good men wouldn’t let a man hit a group of woman. That alone is enough to warrant a similar response. However, we know that Shane has already had issue with Ed before. Ed broke the rules and made an open fire simply because “it’s cold”. Shane told him to put it out, and Ed complied (by ordering Sophia to do it) but this is clearly an ongoing issue. Ed is more concerned for his own creature comforts like warmth, than he is for the group, which rightfully pisses Shane off. Finally, Shane is taking out his conflict with Lori on Ed’s dumb face. It is not too hard to surmise that part of Shane is imagining punching Rick’s face . While happy that Rick is alive, there is no way Shane cannot also hate his guts. It also helps that Joe Bernthal played the scene perfectly, even overcoming some of the poorly choreographed punches.

The crux of the plot involved Merle’s brother, Daryl, who is also in camp. On a hunting Trip, Daryl is introduced as a cocky, but competent man, and a bit of a dick. Daryl justifiably goes for Rick the moment Rick tells him “I handcuffed your brother to the roof, and we left him there”. While he comes off as a hot head,  he also appears somewhat reasonable. He calms down, agrees to take the help from T-Bone, a black man who Merle would never have any connection with. A group comprised of Daryl, Rick, Glenn and T-Bone agree to go back to the city to get Merle and the bag of guns. Thye get to the roof without much issue only to find Merle gone. I like the direction they are taking Daryl, and his reunion with Merle and how that story plays out is now the one I most excited to see.

While I touched mostly on the dramatic moments, you still had a zombie eating a deer, to then be smashed to bits by the whole group of guys, and then finally decapitated in a hilarious moment by Dale. Dale in general I didn’t touch on enough, and is played with great straight-faced humor by Darabont alumn, Jeffrey DeMunn. The sly humor from the comics was actually more apparent in quite a few scenes, such as Rick getting tools from Dale, and Glenn seeing his sweet new Dodge Charger torn up for parts. While I thought the first two episodes were great, it is clear that this episode finally shows us what the show will really be like. Thankfully it looks to be great.

Watch It

Random Thoughts

• Next week’s episode is penned by Robert Kirkman, should be interesting to see what he brings to is.
• Very interested to see what they do with a handless Merle, especially considering what happens in the comic. I have to imagine that Merle is going to die at the end of this season.
• Which reminds me – is the show going to have the balls to kill as many characters, and as often, as the comics do?
• I am curious as to what is going to force them to leave their mountain refuge.
• Chomping Zombie head was awesome.
• Lori has it rough. It’s either creepy, pseudo rape sex in the forest via Shane, or stiff robotic love from Rick.

The last two months have been busy with quitting my job, getting ready for the road trip, and then of course, traveling around the country. I am rather behind on games, so instead of doing full reviews for these, I wanted to compile some quick reviews of the games I have played the last few months.

Dead Rising 2

(360) – Capcom

The original Dead Rising was the first game I ever got on the 360. I had a SDTV, couldn’t read the instructions, but I still played it for a week before getting a HDTV. Needless to say I am a fan. The sequel (and XBLA prologue) doesn’t stray far from the original. It is mostly a case of more, and bigger. As a person who thought the original wasn’t broken, this is fine by me.

The biggest additions are the much needed improvements in quest tracking, which actually make it possible to save most people, and the combo weapons. Combo weapons are made by bringing two weapons – with a blue wrench icon – and placing them on a tool bench. Essentially, this lets Capcom make wild weapons that would have no place in the real world. The weapons range from Shockwave guitars, bottle rocket launchers, electrified wheel chairs, and the list goes on. Favorite being – the drill bucket. It is as it sounds; a bucket with drills in it. You place it on a zombies head, and after a fountain of blood, the head and bucket pops off. Awesome.

If you didn’t like the save system, the sluggish – though I feel appropriate – controls, or the time limit, the sequel won’t change your mind. If you felt all of those generally shunned design choices actually gave the game a unique flavor, and a rare sense of tension and urgency, than you will love this. The characters are more likable, but the story doesn’t come together as well. The presentation is better overall. Simply, it’s a solid and worthwhile improvement.

Buy it if: You loved the original, or can look past some strange design choices to enjoy lots of Zombie killing mayhem.

Comic Jumper: The Adventure of Captain Smiley

(XBLA) – Twisted Pixel

I haven’t stuck it through mediocre game just to see what is next in a long time. I hate to start that harshly as I admire the guys over there at Twisted Pixel. I loved the Maw and ‘Splosion Man. Their personality, animation and character are just what this dull industry needs. The Maw was short and simple. ‘Splosion Man was not quite N+, but had an excellent feel, and clever level design for the first 2/3rds of the game. Comic Jumper however is a hit and a miss when it comes to presentation, and almost all miss when it comes to gameplay.

Gunstar Heroes without any variety, polish, feedback, or fun. That pretty much describes most of Comic Jumper. The game is split into 3 gameplay types – punching, side scrolling shooter, and Sin and Punishment style behind the shoulder shooter. The less said about the one button punching sections the better. The shooting gameplay is nearly identical despite views. You hold down the R button and aim. Things fly at you, and then they die. Obviously you can break down any shooter into this sort of general description, but without any real power ups, variety of enemies, and no sense of feedback, that description is as flowery as I can get. Enough stuff gets thrown at you that occasionally the simple gameplay can be exciting on a difficult-twitch shooter sort of way.

The presentation and humor is tough to call. I laughed quite a bit, mostly at Twisted Pixel’s meta jokes about not jumping in the menu, the stats menu song, and stuff like that. Less is more for me, for the rest of the game. Lengthy dialog scenes are not nearly as funny as say, dancing till a Unicorn’s soul flies to heaven. It gets grating at times. Yet, I found myself powering through just to see what they did next. There are few games this weird, and when it hits the funny bone, it hits hard. It’s just too bad it doesn’t hit enough, and there isn’t much of a game.

Try it if: You love old school shooters and are dying to play one. You find cheesy comic humor hilarious and don’t mind a mediocre game just to get some decent laughs.

Super Meat Boy

(XBLA – soon to be PC/MAC/Wii) – Team Meat

Since 2008, Super Meat Boy has been well known to indie game fans, and hardcore platformers. After beating the last level of N, many find themselves at the charms of this little square of meat. Created by Edmund McMillen and programmed by Jonathan McEntee, Super Meat Boy is a complete throwback to old school, hardcore, die-1000-times-on-one-gap-before-swearing-to-never-try-it-again, classics like Ghosts ‘n Goblins.

I think it bests even those games. Super Meat Boy is a classic. It has the physics driven, polished to perfection gameplay as N, but has the sense of character and style as the old 16bit games like Mario and Sonic. What separates the game are the subtle quirks that become rather important additions to gameplay. The blood trailer splattered on the walls as you touch them are amusing at first, but then become important indicators of what you have tried, and where you have failed. After beating a level, you see all your attempts played out at once; truly putting those 20 minutes you wasted on that one level into perspective.

What pushes the game to true classic status is the sheer amount of content. It contains around 350 levels, including harder dark world versions. There will also be downloadable levels in the future. There are 12 unlockable characters, many of which are Indie game mascots, like my favorite Commander Video from the brilliant Trip.Bit series. There are hidden levels that are made up to look like they are from the SNES, or even classic gameboy. It is just staggering, and I look forward to playing it months to come.

MUST BUY: This is a true classic. Funny, brilliant gameplay loaded with content and ¼ the price of retail games. A platform lovers dream.

Vanquish

(360, PS3) – Platinum Games

Shinji Mikami is a name you should know. First, because gamers don’t seem to pay much attention to those behind their games beyond people like Cliffy B and Will Wright, but also because he is the man behind universally beloved Resident Evil 4, the incredibly freckin awesome, weird as hell, God Hand, and now one of the main men behind the Japanese powerhouse developer, Platinum. They released Bayonetta earlier this year. While it’s not quite on the level of that action marvel, Vanquish truly stands on its own as one of the fastest, most polished, and visceral action games of this generation.

Set sometime in the near future, Vanquish follows Sam Gideon, a bad ass who is called in to help the American military fight the Russians on some space station before it blows up… something. Not quite sure what happens, and it doesn’t matter. Dialog and story are not the strong point of the game, even if the general effect is pure machismo humor. Sam smokes in almost every cutscene, and you can even press the L button to have him pull out a cig during battle. Of course, it can distract enemies. Of course, the game is so fast and hard that you would never bother distracting enemies.

Vanquish is Gears of War on crack, with the fine tune balance of attack elements of a great fighter. There are innovations and creative mechanics everywhere – such as grabbing ammo for a full gun upgrades it. However it is the suit system that creates an incredible balance, and flow of gameplay. Press L button and you start rocket sliding along the floor at Speed Racer intensities. Shoot or Aim, and you go into slow motion. If you jump from cover you also go into slow motion. If you are near death you go into slow motion. Any of these moves, use up some of your suit’s power. A melee attack is an instant kill, but then completely drains your suit. What this does is make Vanquish the most aggressive, offensive heavy shooter around. Cover… sure, but long enough to rocket across the level and kick a man in the face. The circle of slow motion, to cover, to putting yourself in the line of fire is exhilarating, and you will still be learning nuances in the final hours of the short 6 hour campaign. The game has no multiplayer, so only replaying on harder difficulties, or the hoard-mode type challenge rooms will stretch the game behind the short campaign.

Buy it if: You are an action game fan who doesn’t mind a short campaign as long as what is there is near perfect. High scores and incredibly hard difficulties await those who master the complexities of Vanquish’s combat.