Everywhere I Go

 

And I fall on my knees tell me how’s the way to be

tell me how’s the way to go

tell me all that I should know

 

And I fall on my knees

tell me how’s the way to go

tell me how’s the way to be

to evoke some empathy

 

Danger will follow me now everywhere I go

angels will call on me and take me to my home

well this tired mind just wants to be lead home

 

And I fall on my knees tell me how’s the way to go

tell me how’s? the way to see

show me all that i could be

 

And I fall on my knees tell me how’s the way to? be, yeah

tell me how’s the way to go

tell me why I feel so low

 

Danger will follow me now, everywhere I go

angels will call on me and take me to my home

well this these tired eyes just want to remain closed

 

I don’t see clearly

cant feel nothing, no

can’t you hear me?

 

And I fall on my knees

 

And danger will follow me now, everywhere I go

angels will call on me and take me to my home

Tags: , ,

Borderlands Vs. Fallout 3

Late to the party…

All the sausage rolls are gone and the attractive people have paired up on the dancefloor; All that remains now are the fatties, the ugo’s and a tray full of tuna sandwiches… on brown bread.

Touted by the developers as a ‘funner’ alternative to Fallout 3, Borderlands was fairly well hyped, and received favourable reviews.

I really like both games, Fallout 3 for it’s storytelling and fictional world, borderlands for its mindless violence and co-op.

But upon completing Borderlands I realised that Fallout 3 wipes the floor with it in almost every respect.

Now although both games require you to run around the respective game worlds, each game has some quick-travel features. Fallout 3 lets you warp to any previously discovered waypoint on the map as long as there are no enemies nearby and Borderlands has cars and warp points. The addition of cars is nice but the physics on them is ropey at best, poor collision detection, the handling isn’t great and they just don’t feel as fun to drive as they should. Also the warping isn’t very well thought out, some locations have more than one warp-point but it’s hard to remember which one is closer to where you need to get to. Fallout 3 shows you on the map where you actually need to go (rather than where the transition zone to the next area is) and lets you warp to the nearest waypoint. A much better, more intuitive system.

On the subject of transition zones, Fallout 3 seems like one large play area. The only times you have to sit through loading screens are when you enter a town area or dungeon. Borderlands doesn’t have one contiguous overworld, it’s split into areas connected by what are essentially big warp pipes. It makes the game world seem a lot less immersive.

The ‘gazillions’ of weapons in Borderlands was a massive exaggeration. It seems like there’s a lot but in reality there’s only the elemental/levelled versions of each of the weapon types. Fallout 3 has less weapons overall but they’re a lot more varied and are a bit more satisfying to use thanks to the VATS targeting system. Although, getting headshots with the revolvers in Borderlands is a lot of fun.

The main issue I have with Borderlands is how it handles the story. i.e. it doesn’t. A lot of it is told via audio recordings that you collect in various missions. But I found myself not listening to them most of the time while I made my way to the next one or I would get distracted by enemies. I got the gist of the plot but there’s absolutely nothing to help the player engage with or be interested in the story. And the arbitrary  way the bulletin boards dole out missions isn’t that fun, you start to think “why should I do these missions for some random person that I never see?” and what’s worse is getting missions from the actual  non-playable characters, the missions are only displayed as text that I never read. You see “kill so-and-so” and close the mission window and go and kill them. The NPC’s just seem so static, you’ll see them stood around but they’ll only say one line to you unless they have a mission and it pops up with the block of text.

Fallout 3 always kept me engrossed in the story, perhaps it was because it used scripted sequences more and showed your avatar as a baby and child. Perhaps it’s the better interaction with the NPC’s; actual voice-acted dialogue with a good choice of dialogue trees. Perhaps it was just better. The characters were a lot more thoroughly developed and I actually cared if some of them lived or died. The voice acting definitely keeps you more involved than textboxes, and when you enter a conversation the camera view changes and you can’t move till you’ve ended the conversation which, while inconvenient some of the time, means you actually pay attention to what’s going on.

Most of all, it was the ending to Borderlands that disappointed me. I was fighting my way through what I assumed was near the end then all of a sudden there was a really short cutscene (bearing in mind there hadn’t been a cutscene since the beginning of the game) and an ensuing boss battle. I Killed the boss far too easily, there was none of the ARGHAHRA FINAL BOSS fear that I usually have in a game, it wasn’t even as nerve-wracking as some of the earlier bosses in the game.

Perhaps it was because I hadn’t followed the story properly but the final boss seemed to come from nowhere and was a massive anticlimax, literally. You’re sat there getting hot and heavy with some armoured soldiers and aliens then all of a sudden you’re at the final leg. But the game can’t take the pace and blows its pixellated load all over the place.

It just sits there; pants round ankles, covered in cum, cock rapidly diminishing. The feelings of hopefulness and exhilaration now replaced with disappointment and regret.

Another cocktease of a cutscene plays and you’re rewarded with one tiny extraneous dribble of a mission that requires you to take an item to someone AND THAT’S IT. Game Over man, game over. Nothing left to do but play it again. CBA TBH TTYL

SO YEAH, overall I much prefer Fallout 3. That’s not to say Borderlands is a bad game, it’s just not as great as it could have easily been. I’ll assume some of its shortcomings were because it was a new title and perhaps wasn’t afforded as big a budget as Fallout 3, (the follow-up to Bethesda’s massively successful Oblivion and the 3rd in a well established franchise)

Tags: , , , ,

Johncox88’s Film Club – Week 2: ‘The Breakfast Club’

This week was the John Hughes classic film about a group of mismatched teenagers trapped, and ultimately united together, in detention.

Playing out the usual high-school archetypes are Molly Ringwald as the girly-girl, Emilio Estevez as the jock, Anthony Michael Hall as the geek, Judd Nelson as the rebel and Allison Reynolds as the arty loner.

“Now this is the thought that wakes me up in the middle of the night. That when I get older, these kids are going to take care of me.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

The film is entirely set in the school, with the students confined to the library by their stuffy, asshole of a principal. The group initially clash, however after a few altercations and a little self-sacrifice by Judd Nelson,  the group begin to see past their respective archetypes and bond over some joints and casual mischief.

One cathartic conversation about the students fates and a quick dance break and detention is over and the kids all go home – after the popular kids break high-school social hierarchy and smooch the weirdoes though, obviously.

I want to like the film. It has cheesy 80’s music, decent acting performances and well observed script. But I just felt it was a bit slow going and the formation of the couples at the end just seemed tacked on. What about Brian eh? Emilio Estevez will be up to his armpits in clunge, he doesn’t need some weird girl. Will he still be kissing her on Monday?

“Dear Mr. Vernon, We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did *was* wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us – in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. You see us as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess and a criminal. Correct? That’s the way we saw each other at 7:00 this morning. We were brainwashed.”

It’s a great film, it’s just not my film. I think people with more spectacular high-school experiences are the ones that love it but I’m completely indifferent towards mine.

Stick with it until the emotional finale though, it’s the best bit. Oh, and the dance break that follows it of course.

 

coxcol64x64

coxcol64x64

coxcol64x64

coxcol64x64

coxcol64x64

coxcol64x64

coxcol64x64

coxcol64x64

coxcol64x64

coxcol64x64

7/10

 

Trivia:

Emilio Estevez was originally going to play Bender, but Hughes couldn’t find someone to play Andrew Clark so Emilio agreed to play Clark.

The joke that Bender tells but never finishes (while crawling through the ceiling) actually has no punchline. According to Judd Nelson, he ad-libbed the line. Originally, he was supposed to tell a joke that would end when he came back into the library and said, "Forgot my pencil", but no one could come up with a joke for that punchline.

The dandruff that Allison shakes onto her pencilled drawing for snow was achieved by sprinkling Parmesan cheese.

The scene in which all characters sit in a circle on the floor in the library and tell stories about why they were in detention was not scripted. John Hughes told them all to ad-lib.

Tags: , ,

Sleep Is For The Weak

They say that sleep is for the weak,

but for a week I haven’t slept

and I don’t feel very strong.

 

It’s when I need to sleep the most

that all these thoughts flood my brain

as if hidden by the shadows all along.

 

Thoughts I do not want.

Thoughts that haunt my dreams.

at least, I hope they’re dreams.

 

The slightest noise disturbs my thoughts,

an engine; a footstep; a voice

but it’s the thoughts that disturb my sleep.

and they say that sleep is for the weak…

Johncox88’s Film Club – Week 1: ‘Stand By Me’

Hello, welcome to the first meeting of my film club!

For those of you who don’t know what I’m on about, let me explain.

While ticking of which of IMDB.com’s top 250 films I’d watched I realised that there were a lot that I hadn’t seen that people always rave about. So I decided that this year I would watch a film every week. I think I will try and watch each film over a weekend and have the write-up on Mondays.

So this week’s film was ‘Stand By Me’, based on the novella by Stephen King and directed by Rob Reiner and starring River Phoenix, Will Wheaton, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell.

The film is engineered to induce nostalgia. The main plot being framed by scenes of the writer, Gordie LaChance (Richard Dreyfuss, played as a boy by Will Wheaton) in the “present”. A device that separates the viewers from the actual story, in order to accompany the retrospective narration.

“I was 12 going on 13 the first time I saw a dead human being. It happened in the summer of 1959-a long time ago, but only if you measure in terms of years. I was living in a small town in Oregon called Castle Rock. There were only twelve hundred and eighty-one people. But to me, it was the whole world.”

The main narrative takes place over one Labour Day weekend in 1959 when Gordie and his three friends Chris Chambers (Phoenix), Teddy Duchamp (Feldman) and Vern Tessio (O’Connell) decide to go on an adventure. A weekend that epitomises the boys’ childhood whilst marking the inevitability of its end.

After following the story of a missing boy and overhearing his brother mention the location of the boy’s body, Vern has the idea to go and find it. Thinking of the glory and fame the boys will receive in their small town they agree and head off along the railway track.

“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?”

On their travels they encounter and angry junkyard owner, are almost run over by a train and get covered with leeches.

Eventually they find the body, however the local gang shows up and threatens to take the body. There’s a tense stand off as Gordie threatens him with a gun that Chris (Phoenix) had brought along. The gang leave and the boys decide it’s best to leave the body and make and anonymous call to the police.

They return to the town and say goodbye to each other, knowing that their lives will no longer be the same.

The futures of the boys are revealed by the narrator as he finishes his memoirs and takes his son and his friend out swimming.

“We’d only been gone two days, but somehow the town seemed different, smaller.”

I really enjoyed the film. The young actor’s performances were brilliant and the script was insightful and true to life, if a tad contrived.

The flaws of each character were nicely varied and well portrayed. The concepts of death and grieving were played out well and were actually rather touching.

It’s a haunting, and rewarding coming of age drama with touches of genuine humour.

I’d definitely watch it again.

Trivia:

While practicing his lines, Jerry O’Connell was incredibly impressed that, as an 11-year old, he was being allowed to swear.

Another actor was originally cast as The Writer. After those scenes were shot, Richard Dreyfuss was cast in the role and the scenes were re-shot with him.

When they were filming the scene where Gordie and Vern are about to be run over by the train, Will Wheaton and Jerry O’Connell did not look scared enough; In frustration Rob Reiner yelled at them to the point where they started crying and that’s when they were able to film the scene.

In an interview by Stephen King in the special features of the DVD, he reveals that the scene with the leeches actually did happen to him, when he was a child.

Tags: , , ,