The Bloated Penguin

The Comedian's Symbol

I’m sure most of you have seen the trailers, read the articles and pretty much followed the story behind the creation of Zac Snyder’s Watchmen film. They promote more than the US armed forces and have spent over 100 Million bucks on the damn thing already. Also, if you live in Vancouver you might have noticed the shoot last year taking place all over downtown.

I’m not a big Snyder fan. I thought 300 was cool to look at for like 5 minutes, then it felt a little too much like a really long opening to gay porn (not that I would know what one of those would be like… seriously…), much in the same way Ultimate Fighting is really just a televised sausage swinging fest. But back to Snyder – is he the man for the job?

Cinema or porn?

I think so and it’s not because of his “skill,” or his “stylized way of shooting a film,” Zack Snyder is the perfect person to make the Watchmen because he’s been set for failure and nobody would really care if he crashed and burned.

As a comic, Watchmen is probably one of the strongest in history. I’m not kidding – you can quote me on that. But as a story, as an experience for a reader – the Watchmen is an untouchable entity. The outcry from Alan Moore (creator and writer of the original) himself should be proof enough that the adaptation shouldn’t happen.

So will I watch the Watchmen? Probably – but not because I’m hoping to see the brilliance of Moore’s story on screen – I’m mostly interested in seeing if Snyder is actually a director – or if he’s Michael Bay’s adopted kid brother….

J-j-j-j-Geee-Mail

What a frosty good morning to everyone out there in Vancouver and the surrounding areas (Surrey not included cause it’s scary and full of drug dealing criminals….). This isn’t going to be long, but I thought I’d share how a tiny, insignificant thing has brightened up my week.

I’m a Gmail whore – as some of you know. I won’t even activate my own personal email for my business because I like the tag “@gmail.com” so much. Lame and a little strange, I know, but blah, this is my blog not yours.

Anyway, I send a lot of files through Gmail and I noticed this week the tiny animated progress bar they’ve started to display to show how much of your file has been uploaded to your message.

:)

Oh the things that will put a smile on my face….

Wizard Defense

Gotta credit Miles for the term “Wizard’s Den,” it’s the name of the room he coined for the WD office over at Big Park. First off, thanks so much for supporting Wizard Defense so far. It’s only been public for a few days now and we’ve been getting a lot of players. I don’t scour the message boards, but I have been getting a few questions from friends that might need some answering in order for them to see the full potential of the game.

So without further ado, here are 3 FAQ’s (okay, maybe not so frequently):

Q – Can I make more than one tower at a time?

A – Yes,  you can make as many towers and purchase as many power up as your lumen (currency count) will allow. The more you kill, the more lumen you will receive.

Voltoss

Q – What does the cloud do? Seriously, I build that fool and he’s like Tayler Pyatt on the Canucks.

A – Voltoss (the aforementioned Tayler Pyatt tower) is actually quite powerful. If you equip him with a Range Power up (green) he can reach lots of enemies at a time. But the intention isn’t necessarily to use Voltoss to kill anything, every once in a while he’ll slow everything down in his path. This proves to be very important when fast enemies like bats arrive.

Q – Is the girl wizard better than the boy wizard?

A – No. Other than their appearance, the wizard’s are identical.

So that’s it for now. I’ll continue to drop some info about the game at a later date. Keep playing and drop me a comment if you have any questions.

Later.

Back in my day...

So as some of you already know, I’ve been “working” for the last month – like in an actual office and stuff….

Anyways, along with waking up with the rest of the world and packing a lunch in the morning, there are a lot of changes. One big one – one that has taken some time to adjust to, is going back to a PC for most of the day. I’m a mac user. Flat out, I love OSX, I’m used to all of the UI’s and I have a routine of things that I do on my home computer that I could probably do blind. Since coming to Sage I’ve been pounding away on an old Dell and its been a struggle.

I’ve used PC’s a lot in the past, hell, most of us grew up on them, so coming back to one was kind of nostalgic once I got over the hump (and thank GOD I’m not on Vista). Probably my biggest adjustment is accidentally hitting the WINDOWS button instead of Apple and screwing up my rhythm (yes, I have a rhythm when I type, yes I am lame).

But now that I’m kind of back in the groove, it ain’t so bad – just don’t tell any of the people I’ve been trying to convince to come to the dark side, a stereotypical “I told you so,” would not be appropriate.

*UPDATE – I just spilled juice all over the numeric keypad. If this were a Mac I would care but… meh.

The most famous naked man in Hollywood

Good morning everyone. I’m assuming everyone watched, or at the very least acknowledged the fact that the Oscars were on TV last night. I’m not going to come out and be all Gawker about it and pretend that this is your best and only source of good info, so read the following with the intention of reading another review from a credible source.

Okay, the good:

Ahem… Honestly, Wolverine did a pretty nice job. He brought a lot of Tony’isms with him to the show, but really brought that movie star quality host back from the dog days of Ellen D (I’m not even going to try spelling her last name) and John Stewart. Nothing against either of them, but the Oscars is too movie focused and I see both of them as TV personalities above anything. So Hugh (who is not the Hugh from House) nice work there. Honestly, I liked the Baz Lurman performance you did with Beyonce and kids from High School Musical and Mamma Mia. Well done.

Wolverine and Beyonce

Another good was obviously seeing Slumdog taking pretty much everything. It’s hard not to agree with the Academy on this one because I think this flick was far and away the best to come out in 08.

The five old winners presenting the five nominees theme. Great concept, I liked it a lot save Sofia Lauren cause she gave me nightmares.

Finally, I th0ught it was a nice touch to have Heath Ledger’s family accept the award. We all knew he had this one in the bag, but I was afraid we might have to sit through an acceptance speech from a producer or “friend.” it was nice to see some honesty with the whole thing.

When credits rolled at the very end we got a 2 second glimpse of Inglorious Basterds!!!!

And now (duh duh duuuuuuh) the bad.

Sean Penn – I saw Milk and loved it, but lets be honest – Josh Brolin made that flick and you jumped at the chance to get in the spotlight again. The fact that you won for best actor is kind of a shame and I’m pretty sure the Academy watched Tropic Thunder and decided to give it to you based on Robert Downey Jr.’s monologue about you playing a “retard” and not being rewarded.

Kate Winslet’s Speech… Again. Man, for the talent and beauty you have, it’s a shame nobody can stand your acceptance speeches. My only comment is, “Cue the band please.”

Will Smith – You have no business being on a stage full of professional actors and to have you present the post production awards was embarrassing. I’m pretty sure the only reason the Academy had you do it is because you rely on special effects so much to get anything worth watching done and you obviously didn’t get it.

Micky Rourke not winning – Not sure if he deserved to win, but man, after watching his speech at the Spirit Awards it would have AWESOME to see him talk at the Oscars.

So that’s the roundup. Take it all for what you will. If you’re still reading this it’s probably the 3 millionth Oscars review you’ll see today.

Finally a Good Sandler Flick

I just took my first look at Judd Apatow’s next release and I will reiterate – dude’s got skill. Funny People not only looks hilarious, it seems to have that warm-hearted quality that most of his films hide in the backseat. Sure his classics involve a myriad of dick and ass jokes, but behind all of that – behind the grotesque language and the ridiculous situations – is always a flick that will make you feel like you just watched someone change. Everything he’s done from 40 Year Old Virgin to Knocked Up and now Funny People, embodies this quality and makes audiences laugh and know that people can change.

Sandler on the other hand needs this more than I need some sleep lately. His last few flicks including Click and that one with gum balls falling from the sky and Courtney Cox have really tanked. Funny People on the other hand looks like this could be that role he’s been looking for that bridges him between comedy and drama. The Apatow crew returns with Rogen, Hill and that woman who always seems to plays characters married to Paul Rudd, but this time they bring Sandler.

BTW – This isn’t the first time Sandler’s colab’ed with Apatow and the gang, check out this clip from one of Judd’s classic shows Undeclared.

Oh yeah, here’s the trailer for Funny People too.

Wizard Defense

Today is official launch day! Wizard Defense hits the Interweb in full today at 6PM PST. You can actually go to the site and start playing now, but the leaderboard will be reset at 6PM today so try it out and then come back later to see where you stack up against everyone else.

Wizard Defense Gameplay

Wizard Defense is my very first venture into the gaming world as a writer. Sure I play a lot of games (some say too much) but this is the first time I’ve ever been involved with the creation of something like this. Built in the “Tower Defense” genre, this strategy-based free flash game is a cross between Starcraft and your regular turned based RPG. You play as a young wizard enrolled at the Espeon School of Wizard Defense and your goal (at first) is to successfully pass all of your courses. Each level consists of a couple of stages and by the end, you’ll have to fight a boss.

Sounds simple enough right?

Wizard Defense Domidos

But before you play and starting commenting on how awesome/terrible/disappointing/ breathe-taking/ offensive/ amazing the game is, here’s a little info that you might find interesting.

Like I said yesterday, I wrote the script for a game that had pretty much already been concieved and one of my tasks was naming all of the characters and levels. So here is what I came up with:

Kana Tahara – I was struggling to figure out a cool name for a level that takes place on the side of a mountain. The characteristics are that it is snow-capped and being taken over by Yetis. I was tossing around names like “Mount Tapestry” and “Mount Snow-cap,” when it dawned on me that an easy-to-spell and easy-to-say, 2-sylable name would probably be the best way to go.

Goran Arevski – The second to last level is a bubbling, magma filled violent inside to a volcano. I needed a name that was imposing, something powerful and something that was makes player remember the level when they chat about it.

Taj Pannun – This was probably the easiest name to associate with the level. Described as a ruined city, a place that used to prosper but is now overrun by monsters, this level just reminded me of the situation out in Surrey right now. And whenever I think Surrey, I think Taj Pannun…. (Dude, don’t be offended – you’re in a video game now)

Wizard Defense Arbok

So that’s it for now – if you’ve got any questions drop me a comment and I’ll answer. Remember, check out Wizard Defense and have a good time. See where you land on the leaderboard and try not to get caught playing at work.

One of the characters from WD

What’s up everyone?

So if you’ve been following this blog you might remember a few posts back that we’re “this close” to dropping our first game (and if you haven’t been following then you’re one of MANY). The free flash tower defense game is still in Beta right now, but at some point tomorrow everything will be good to go.

As this is my first ever video game script you can probably tell that I’m pretty nervous about the release. The story that I can tell about the game without falling into NDA territory is that the game was essentially conceptualized before I was given the riegns.

The mechanics, the idea and most of the art and animation was either complete or in progress by the time I was brought in by Vancouver game comapny Big Park. For some of you who know me personally you’ll recall my many MANY trips out to UBC – well that’s where the studio lives.

When this hits tomorrow I’ll be going into a lot more detail but just to get a few people excited I’ll let you in on a little secret. I was tasked to come up with naming all of the levels and characters in the game and I thought, “Jesus, why come up with something original when I’ve got friends with some pretty interesting names already?”

So – Kana, Taj, Goran, you might recognize a few things when you’re playing.

Like I said before, I’ll drop tons more info as the days go on… And probably a link so people can actually go play it.