Since I'm going to be unemployed in a few weeks, I've been trying to chase down some more writing work to help pad the income a bit. Twitchguru has opened up some new sections to their site that cover other areas that interest me like books, comics, and movies. I should be able to get some stuff up there on those sections soon, but for now just enjoy this Fall Games Preview that I wrote for them. If I can get paid to write up some comic stories and some movies, I can put all the comics, DVDs, and movie tickets we buy as a tax write off. What a country!

posted by Travis at 3:27 PM

|

Thursday, October 05, 2006

I think it's about time we got back to talking about consumable content here on this site. Despite having a baby, Kim and I are still doing our fair share of content consumption. We're still watching movies and playing games in our spare time. I've been playing a lot of Company of Heroes and Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy lately. I was not excited about Company of Heroes at all until I downloaded and played the demo. It was getting all this great press, but all I could think was, "Please...the last thing we need is another World War II themed game." But it's made by Relic and they made Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War, which is a fantastic game, so I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Well, Company of Heroes is awesome. If it had some more unit variety and more factions it might be the best RTS I've ever played. Everything about it is top notch, but the one thing that stood out to me first was that you cannot get it on CD-ROM. It's only available on DVD-ROM. FINALLY! I mean...it's 2006! All games should be on DVD only by now. So if you're a fan of the RTS genre, you need to at least seek out the demo. It will not disappoint.

Now, Lego Star Wars II...I mean...come on. This is a no-brainer. The first game was great, and this one takes everything from the first one and makes it better. I still have not unlocked everything and I think the clock on the game says I've put in almost 25 hours. I bought it for my Xbox because I like the interaction with that game to be on the couch rather than at my desk, but I did play the PC demo and it looked really good at that hi-res. Thankfully, the Xbox version supports 480p widescreen, so it still looks pretty sweet.

And lastly, Kim and I watched United 93 today. Wow. That is a strong movie. I thought it was absolutely terrifying, and I think the reason is because of the inevitability of it. For instance, you watch Apollo 13 and you know they live. There are still some tense moments, but you know they are going to come home (or at least you should). With United 93, you know they are going in the ground and you're just waiting for it to happen. We watch a lot of horror movies and very rarely (The Ring being an exception) will I ever get close to what I would consider scared. But movies like United 93 and Black Hawk Down, movies about bad things that happened to real people, do scare me a bit. This one is almost a documentary, and if you watch the credits many of the people in the film are playing themselves. It's all completely authentic. It was written and directed by Paul Greengrass (who directed The Bourne Supremacy), and he really has a good eye for the feeling of being there. I can't remember any one particular shot that stuck with me. There is just this feeling that I experienced something significant. It's not overly sentimental, it's just flat out what happened. It's really really good.

posted by Travis at 9:59 PM

|

Monday, October 02, 2006

This will not be news to many of you, but it's time it went up here. As you know, I'm on paid family leave right now so I can spend time with my newborn son. This will last another three weeks until approximately October 23rd (a date which may change). When I go back to work, I'm being laid off. I'm still an employee for now with all the bells and whistles that go with that (well...except the paycheck which the state is picking up because I'm on leave), but very soon I'll be unemployed. I've known about this for a few weeks, and it isn't something that is keeping me up at night. You may have expected my reaction to this news to be something like this: "WTF!! Laid off right after having a baby!! That edifice of hate will tremble and fall to the ground in flames sundered by my righteous anger! The cubes will run red with the blood of my oppressors!" However, as the news settled into my brain, a wave of serenity washed over me.

Sure, there was a moment of brief panic where Kim and I looked at each other, looked at the baby, then looked back at each other and both said, "What the fuck are we going to do?" But, we're made of pretty tough stuff, so it passed quickly and new plans fell into place. There will be enough money for us to live for a bit (although I will probably not be buying any Wolverine claw replicas anytime soon), and even if circumstances become dire we have plans to cope with that. I really look at this as an opportunity. So don't worry about us, everything will be just fine.

On an unrelated topic, if anyone knows the safest way to remove a kidney I'd love to hear from you (although this situation may be sort of like closing the gate after the horse is out).

posted by Travis at 11:31 PM

|