My Mind, or: The Haunted House

There have been a few requests for me to get up on the soapbox again. I have a general habit of picking apart and analysing every film I watch. Many misunderstand this. They see me as evaluating and not enjoying a film. That could not be further from the truth. Maybe it's just me, but I would find myself becoming bored if I only considered "What's happening?". It's simply a case of, guess what, I can concentrate on more than one task at a time. I don't, for one second, think that others cannot.  I look at camera angles and shots, art direction, costuming, story-line and plot (of course), character development, dialogue, soundtrack...a great many things. Perhaps that's a curse of being a graphic designer, and being extremely interested in design, broadly.  Wynand and I came up with the 21 scale. Now, I've already talked about it once or twice, in online form. Let me reiterate though, it's not about being funny at all. I genuinely believe that it...

Ok, this is all about me. With that in mind, I’m delaying the “Top 10: Films” list because, I realized, last night I could only think of one thing. Nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, gets you over someone like meeting someone else. Yeah, sometimes you’re not ready blah blah. Still. It helped with the disappointment of my second date, lifetime, and boy did it help yesterday. J and I are no more. He was so intelligent, charming and just downright nice. Oh well, the reason for our break-up is that he really wants to study medicine to go with his 4 degrees and 3 diplomas, and that’s more important than me. Fair enough. I have no right to try change his personality, I would just never have made that choice myself. I hope the Dubai-venture works out for him. We’re still friendly, and it’s by no means a sure thing that he will be emigrating, but he didn’t feel it was fair to put me through that emotional turmoil of not-knowing. I appreciate that. So in response, I put myself out the...

I realised, through doing this, that my own system of time management needed a bit more thinking about before unleashing it. That's great, since that was the original intent of the blog, and still is. It's for me to externalise stuff that's been on my mind. Due to the urging of certain communists, some of them Chinese, I will be going for penile enlargement, as well as starting a Top 10 Films of All Time next week. Park Acoustics has been busting my balls...if they don't want cash I've sweated for, so be it. I've tried my best, with a working credit card, to buy tickets for almost a month now. Perhaps I'll be there a bit early to see if I can get some, because I do really want to see the guitarists performing. Other than that, it's the ruggers this weekend, and after last week's beating, I think the line will be somewhere around 'boks -30, but we'll see. I've been loving  An Idiot Abroad recently. I've tremendously enjoy...

A list, then? How to make sure Step 1 is correct? In short, you can make it as accurate as possible, but you can't make it 100% correct, that's like living a perfect life. C'est impossible. You can make sure the goals you set for yourself are what you desire out of life, but no-one can tell you that you don't want something. Think of three things you want out of life, right now. A perfect body? Endless patience? The social life of a rock-star? Someone to share life with? Fair enough. Those aren't SMART goals though. You've obviously heard this term before. For a goal to be SMART, it must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. Instead of saying “I want a perfect body!”, rather say “I want to weigh 75kg on 2013/09/31” or whatever. Let's check: Is this Specific? Yes, I want to weigh less than I currently do. Measurable? I can certainly get on a scale and check. Achievable – Well, the plan is to do cardio three times a week...

How many times have we heard that? We spend hours in front of the t.v. blah blah blah (almost boring myself here). The point is, we waste so many minutes each and every day that we could easily spend the time to do it. How do I manage my time? Do I make little Excel spreadsheets with every minute of every day accounted for? Maybe I carry a little stop-watch around to make sure I spend exactly 00:01:17.427 on a task? Do you reckon I'm crazy? Of course not!  You know what I never seem to only have one or two of, but heaps instead? Receipts. For a species about to destroy the planet and all its natural resources, we sure do love to waste some extra of these by printing receipts. I often ask cashiers, "Please...no receipt." only to be informed that I can "Throw it away, here." or "The system does it automatically." It absolutely breaks my balls, but that's another point entirely. To answer the original question regarding the way in whi...

One of the greatest joys of video games, is being able to take you on extreme adventures. There's certainly nothing more extreme than this. Set in the future, everything is similar, although not-quite the same. It takes you on a journey that thrills every sense that humans possess. Let's start with Alex Brandon's attempt at a soundtrack. Quite simply, let's not talk around the main point here... It's the best ever. It's absolutely delightful. Anyone who can listen to “DX Club Mix” and not be completely thrilled, well they're probably the type of vegetarian who does it not to save animals, but to deny themselves pleasure. Or a monk committing to a life of celibacy. “UNATCO”, “Enemy Within” and “Mission Eight” are just some of the many marvels. Seriously, I can't tell you how good this is. Forget Crusader: No Remorse, any Nobeu Oematsu creation or even Command & Conquer. This stands out above all others. So, what about the story then? Any g...

Unfortunately, there was no winner to the challenge posted yesterday. Never mind, the blog's never been about such things. Today, I'd like to be your dealer. For just $15 a month, I've got the good shit... This is the heroin or crack-cocaine of games, and that's one of the only reasons it doesn't claim the top spot. I feel it almost should-be-illegal...our children should be protected! We were a group of four guys who used to play together, and we were totally extreme. We all slept at my house until 19h00 (wake up in the gutter), quickly went downstairs to make some toast (score our drugs), then raced back to our PC's to play until 07h00 in the morning (shoot up). We did this in order to get better pings, because Telkom's ADSL offering shaped traffic during the day to help out businesses. It was a 4-month-long binge. We were addicts, plain and simple. You know that scene in Trainspotting when he's passed out on his bed with a used needle lying nex...

People, I'm offering R50 of my hard-earned cash to the first person to guess my top 2 entries correctly. Order matters, and the close is a full day (24 hours - 08h00 a.m.) from now. You can contact me on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, comments or by email/Whatsapp/SMS. Let me buy you a drink, chat about our favourite memories from games, and I give you R50. Something like that. So what have we covered so far? Here's a list: What was it based on? Why isn't XXXXX in there? The attributes the list was based on, were: Fun – A disco-based 80's quirky drug-fuelled fantasy is inherently more fun than a realistic interpretation of World War II. I don't think I really need to go into this. Production – As someone who believes that games have more entertainment promise than film (as great as they may be), I love to see a well-delivered soundtrack, cinematics, story, the overall presentation... Story – Maybe this is too similar to production, but...

The other day, I remember reading a line that said "Final Fantasy VII was praised for its graphics, gameplay, music and story." Well, what the hell else is there?? ***** Warning *****  SPOILERS  AHEAD ***** ***** Warning *****  SPOILERS  AHEAD ***** I was relatively young when I first played this. I remember, my Ugandan/Asian (don't ask, those who know him will know how ridiculous this niggah is) best friend and my ex-boyfriend both insisted that I try this out. I must have been around 16 or so. I know He (he'll know who "He" is) always insisted that it was the best game He had ever played. I was sure he was lying his balls off, as he VERY regularly did. Nevertheless, I ultimately decided I might as well give it a try. Very rarely, if ever, had a game come this close to impersonating a fine cinematic adventure. I can actually only think of around 3 others that had done it, and not one layered such a great RPG on top of it. Baldur...

The perfect set-up: one of the most beloved and brilliant computer game adaptations of the much-enjoyed table-top role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. The game? Baldur's Gate. This absolutely BLEW it out of the water. We all knew it was coming, but nothing could have prepared us for the adventure... ***** Warning ***** SPOILERS AHEAD ***** ***** Warning *****  SPOILERS  AHEAD ** Sarevok proved a worthy adversary in the first game, but Jon Irenicus was something else. The quest to slay him would prove so much lengthier, more adrenaline- and wonder-packed, and enjoyable than the first. The story continues straight from Baldur's Gate, with an option to import your party. Be assured, that does not render the game trivial by any means. What was the hardest fight in the first? Possibly Drizzt Do'Urden, or Sarevok. Both hard-hitting melee characters. How does that compare to dragons, mind flayers (an entire nest...more cockroaches!), adamantite ...

When I played this, never before had I felt that I had such a vested interest in the outcome of a video-game. This was even the one and only occasion I stayed home for two days, pretending to be deathly ill, simply to finish it, which I did in a three-day blitzkrieg. You don't understand, I had to. Yes, it didn't have the prettiest graphics EVAR, but that didn't matter. It spawned two of the most successful multiplayer games ever to grace us in Counter-Strike and Team Fortress. Its successor, which ran on the venerable Source Engine, gave birth to many more, including Dota 2 (which was very nearly on this list), Portal 1 & 2 and Left 4 Dead among the stand-outs. Of course, it's not a very fair thing to do, to list a game engine's creations as part of the success of a game, else Quake III: Arena would have so made it. Instead, I'll focus on what actually made Half-Life great. Not too tough a task, mind you. Where it all started with GREATNES...