Assassin's Creed II

Assassin's Creed II, God of War II

Scores out of 5

Combat: 2,4

World: 5,3

Story: 2,2

General polish: 3,4

Overall: 3,4

ACII was pretty boring and tedious for me. I'm too impatient with video games to savor the open world right now, which world was most of the quality of the game

GWII combat was great: difficult but doable, haptically satisfying, diverse yet consistent. ACII I never mastered in that way, nor did it serve itself to my mastery like GWII did. Fighting always felt awkward and unpredictable in ACII. GWII was clear -- you could tell when you were doing damage, you could tell when your hit was going to hit, and you could tell when it hit.

Both stories were dumb, especially the cut scenes / dialogue.

GWII had some frustrating moments, but it was typically for lack of mastery, or super tricky puzzles. But ACII had lots of frustration that I couldn't have done anything about -- basically glitchy parkour or whatnot. That stuff is so frustrating. GWII was only frustrating when it was hard; sometimes the easy moments of ACII were frustrating; that's not a good sign.

The parkour is amazing. Not always, mechanically, but generally. Freely parkouring Renaissance Florence is a killer premise for a game -- probably one of the finest I could find.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The middle half was so long. It doesn't help I watched this with commercials, but I think the movie itself was drawn out. I didn't need the Civil War side plot at all, nor much of the main plot. I just need the first quarter and last quarter, the setup of the trio and the money, and the showdown at the end. Just a little bit of journey in between.

The dub is brutal. I don't see how professionals can do such terrible work. It's distracting.

Eastwood is kind of cool. I like some of his outfits, like the poncho-hat combo at the end. Why is he constantly cringing? That must be so bad for your face? His hair is bad, and his voice is kind of high and sensitive, oddly enough. He feels too youthful to be a symbol of masculinity. But he's kind of cool.

I almost watched Once Upon a Time in the West instead, as ChatGPT told me it was more artistic. I'm glad I didn't, because ChatGPT also told me it was slower and more demanding. If GBU was supposed to be the fun one, OUTW must really not be fun.

OK Computer

I'm starting to wonder if Radiohead is not my favorite band. Today I listened to some OKNOTOK and KID A MNESIA and most of it didn't hit. I mean it hit like, cool, but not like, I enjoy this. It's so hard to say what music I actually enjoy nowadays. Certainly some jazz and classical, and otherwise the randomest of songs. I think I can honestly say I enjoyed "Uncle John's Band." But none of this Radiohead is hitting, and Kendrick feels more like a memory of adoration than adoration. My taste is up to some shenanigans I don't understand.

I'll definitely still say Radiohead is my favorite band. Hopefully In Rainbows hits so that statement doesn't feel so empty. But the fact remains, a lot of their music, especially pre-2007 and especially especially pre-2000, isn't my style. It's probably the best punky grungy music has to offer, but it's still punky and grungy. Then even some of the refined stuff is too oblique. Some of my favorite songs of theirs are their most straightforward (still oblique).

"Let Down" is clearly my #1 jam off OK Computer.

Sinners

Driving, bold, but ultimately flailing, like Django and The Menu. You got the feeling it felt like it had said something profound, like we'd all endured something life-changing, and it savored it through several false endings, when really it was just a juicy thriller that passed in a flash. The ending, and false endings, also reminded me of Casino Royale, yet in spite of Sinners' allegory and Bond's ephemerality I look back on Bond as the thicker movie.

Sinners never lulled until the end, when it drew out its long anticlimax even past the credits, overly sentimental unto itself like a first-time novelist who'd put her whole heart and soul into the thing, spending more time on the dedication, foreword, preface, prologue, epilogue, appendices, acknowledgements, and self-interview with the author than the novel itself.

I suppose the allegory is that prejudice, like vampirism, is contagious: once you let it in, it sucks out your soul. It's a fair idea, but there are two issues for me. First, this is not the setting for me to really connect with (1930s Mississippi). The idea would hit better for me if it was jazz instead of blues, or some other kind of music... something between Sinners and Kpop Demon Hunters as far as genre used to tap the supernatural. Also 1930s Mississippi is, for me, as for many others, not quite idyllic. Also there's my race. Second, the execution is sloppy. It's a sequence of ideas, one rushing into the next, with shoddy connective tissue, like a soloist more concerned with chords than counterpoint, who just bangs around each triad in the progression with no concern for voice leading.

(Yikes, I must have interpreted Franzen as an excuse for verbosity. My sentences have been more convoluted like his ever since)

They say it's a horror movie... it wasn't scary. It was more of a thematic period thriller with some black comedy -- one of those recent movies like The Menu with some big idea and some shock value that gets everyone hyped and is not actually all that great in the end.

The Django similarities go beyond the setting and the goatee. Both movies have a hard time deciding on an ending, after a climactic shootout. Both try to inject a little arrogant fun. Both unchain after a character makes a stupid decision that probably nobody would make in reality (Waltz shoots Leo, the Chinese woman invites all of the vampires in [was that intentional?]).

Is this one of those Rotten Tomatoes situations in which few critics think it's all that great, but 97% think it's good enough, so it's 97%? Is that how RT works? If so, people need to know that. 97% just means the movie is almost universally accepted, does not mean it's really good. I don't believe Sinners is really good, but easy to accept.

Nikki Glaser these days

It's getting too dense and mathematical. It used to feel like "she's finding comic gold in every moment" but now it's like "she's forcing comic alchemy in every moment, let me breathe for a sec." The jokes are still good, but it's too dense and calculated as to feel forced. Every other word is a punchline. I think that needs to happen sometimes, but it needs to be balanced with longer setups. If your standup is all about quick punchlines, you need a relaxed delivery with pauses like Hedberg, Wright, Jeselnik. Glaser is anxiously punching us with line after line, good lines, but it's tiring, partly because we feel she must be getting tired of all of this anxious punching. Also the value of an unexpected punchline is not just the quality of the line but the fact that it was unexpected, and Glaser's style forces us to expect big punches every other word. She's not shocking anymore. Her good lines need to be great, or she needs to stop conditioning us to expect such frequent bait-and-switches.

Every joke is a self-referencing web of subjokes, all happening too quickly and consistently to surprise us anymore. But I still think she's a legend.

The Bends

I've heard this is where everything picks up, as distinct from immature Pablo Honey, but the two actually resembled one another pretty closely to me. They say "Street Spirit" is the defining moment in the acceleration (or descent) toward OK Computer... I've never particularly attached to that song. It just isn't quite my style. It's aggro sad, while I prefer melancholy sad. I prefer "Bulletproof" for sad. I prefer maj7s for sad, or at least min7s, not hard minor. "Street Spirit" is hard minor so I never connected, though it's reputed to be the album's clear highlight, like "Blind Willie McTell" foreshadowing Dylan's resurgence. That's another hard minor song I never took a shine to.

So the supposed highlights of The Bends are "Street Spirit" and probably "Fake Plastic Trees". I surely dig the latter, though this duality demonstrates how the album bounces between hard minor and hard major, it's a little too polar. "Nice Dream" is soooo gentle (besides its aggressive bridge!). Still too much grunge left over from Pablo Honey (which will haunt us through OK Computer and even to a small degree later on), and the non-grungey moments aren't typically profound.

My highlights haven't changed since I last listened through this album many years ago: "Fake Plastic Trees" and "Bulletproof". Two of the softest songs, maybe the two softest. Clearly grunge isn't my cup of tea. Nor punk -- some of this album almost sounded like Green Day from the 90s.

It seems obvious this is a progression from Pablo Honey, but not a very ambitious one. They're still a punky angsty band with a lot of talent and too much unbridled anger that they don't know how to harness other than in guitar distortion. Their emotions too easily fall into distortion, one of the cheaper ways to create musical sensation.

I can't say I love this album. Even OK Computer is hit-and-miss for me. I'm all about late-stage Radiohead... though not too late. Mid-stage: 2000-2007

Pablo Honey

Seeds of perfect songwriting and technical innovation blended with cringe grunge. Some likable songs, some talent, some ear scrapeage. I don't feel the need to remember any of these, other than "Creep" of course, which I'll remember more for its impact than its quality.

Packer poles

Highs

• ironically, the first Packer high that comes to mind happened in Minneapolis. I was watching Christian Watson's 3-TD season-turnaround game v Dallas with my close Packer-fan cousins whom I don't see often, at a bar in Minneapolis. This game was big because my renewed fandom was strengthening at the time, the Packers needed a pick-me-up, my connection to these cousins was also strengthening at the time, and I was invested in Watson. Watson was supposed to redeem the Love draft pick and his season start was brutal. This game symbolized a new hope, for Watson and therefore for the post-Love-pick Packers. Which leads me to...
• Rodgers' last win as a Packer, game 16 v Minnesota, which I attended. It was totally critical, to make the playoffs, which felt impossible a few weeks earlier. And it happened, in flying colors. IIRC Jefferson had easily his weakest game of the season, Nixon who was budding had a beautiful return TD, and the Vikings were humiliated. It was needed and it was authoritative. See my Lows for how that story ended.
• blocking the Bears' game-winning field goal last year was pretty lit
• actually, didn't they win that FG shootout where nobody could make a kick? a few years ago. I watched that in Florida with some family and it was a mood
• the last year of Rodgers/Adams was so pleasing to watch, though it was the last

Lows

• game 17 v Lions, Rodgers' last season. IIRC Lions had nothing to play for but pride (spite?), hence began a new division rivalry. I liked the Lions until this game. But in this game I had to watch Jamaal Williams antagonize his former team and watch his current team squash a Packers team who could have done something in the playoffs. You might say they couldn't have, since they couldn't beat the Lions who had nothing to play for. But sometimes loosening up with nothing to lose is exactly what you need, and anyway the Lions proved in the succeeding years that they were no joke. They played us like rivals and thus became rivals in my heart, because this is one of the first Packer seasons I deeply cared about since before ~2010.
• Love's pick that knocked us out of the playoffs two years ago. I was glad it was Love who ruined it, since he's the one who built it, so I didn't feel too tragic about how it ended, but it was tough to see that season end. Things were only looking up, and they hung so tight against a tough team that game.
• Kevin King. No idea when this was, but he blew a promising playoff run
• Watson dropping that opening pass against the Vikings week 1. See my Highs for what he, and that season, meant to me. The Love pick was so hard to stomach, Watson represented our salvation, and he blew it immediately. He never quite redeemed himself, thanks largely but not entirely to injuries.
• playing SF and Tampa in those couple of years in which Rodgers couldn't beat them, especially when it felt like we were making a Super Bowl run

I remember things like Fail Mary, 4th and 26, and the Super Bowl, but they feel remote. I was a different person with different priorities; it's hard to even map those emotions to anything I've felt recently.

KPop Demon Hunters

Easy amusement, which isn't saying much, as its cinematic and musical genres are founded on taking the easiest path to mass amusement. I don't really like the songs -- I haven't really liked any K-pop I've heard -- they all just feel a little factory-generated. The supposedly artsy songwriter of the group can't be very artsy if this is what she produces.

It was easy to pay attention through the duration, and the movie was skillfully crafted -- but skillfully crafted for mass cheap consumption, which lowers its artistic ceiling considerably.

God of War II

Why did I play through God of War II? The answer is as the wind. But here are some things that happened: I grew up in the full joy of video gaming; I beat God of War; I took many years off; I got discontent with the level of drama in my life; I realized I liked epics; I realized a little indulgence now and then doesn't really matter in the grand scheme; I realized the grand scheme is actually pretty brief; I started playing God of War II; I finished playing God of War II.

It wasn't as epic as I remember the first being. There's one scene in the first that really got me, way back when. However, it's -- of course -- generally epic, with the mighty colossus, a whole level of platforms on Atlas' face, etc etc. Epic, mythology, satisfying violence, puzzles... sounds good to me.

And the violence really was satisfying. What a terrific fighting mechanism. The haptics in the controller make it so much better. For most of the game, I just smashed square, with his original weapon, because his original weapon, under the most basic attack, is amazing. Smashing square with the blades of Athena was fast, effective, and so aesthetic. It was enough to take out all of the most elemental enemies. The harder enemies defended and fought back after a few hits, but that attack is fast enough you could connect a few and promptly somersault or jump away. Such a good original attack for a game.

I wish there was a level toward the end that was more epic. And I wish there was a level of basically meleeing a million easy enemies. There was a massive brawl of every enemy in the game, but it was squeezed into various barriers, and it involved plenty of stronger enemies, and I might add was quite stressful... I wanted the satisfaction of just brutalizing an enormous number of easy enemies. I think that would have been pleasing.

Joker 2

Dictated:

I hate how joker two has probably discouraged alt musicals. It's such a cool concept what went wrong first of all Joaquin is not really a singer. He can carry a tune, but it's like gosling in La La Land. He's not really good and his tone is just not a singer tone so listening to Joaquin saying over and over and over isn't pleasant on that note the songs seem to just keep coming in a burden some kind of way. I don't know the distinction between repetition as burden and repetition as thank you for giving me what you said you were going to give me in full dose. I guess that's just a matter of quality whether you want more or less of what identifies the thing in Joker two I wanted fewer musical numbers precisely because they were unpleasant. Why were they unpleasant? Well Joaquin's voice is one thing thing there was nothing musically satisfying about the music. It was just Joaquin poorly rendering old standards usually in a musical, either the singing or the dancing or the instruments are exciting here it was just walking in gray, pretending to be a singer and dancer. Also, his character is not very likable at this point in the series.