Month: June 2008
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Thirty-Seven
According to Patton Oswalt, 37 is not one of the 20 birthdays you’re allowed to celebrate. But I want a cake, dammit! (And no offense to my peer group, but I’d like to eat it in a crowd where no one is tempted to point out that the cake is a lie.) I can tell…
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All up in her griddle
A couple weeks ago, my satellite went out, and I seriously considered just canceling the service altogether. Even if I were home long enough to watch TV, all the shows I’m most interested in are available on the internet. And if I ever do get free time, wouldn’t I be better off going outdoors, or…
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I’m thinking of a number between 1 and You’re Dumb
Since this is about adventure games, I feel like I should make my usual disclaimer explicit: this is a personal blog, I don’t speak for my company, and vice-versa. Any opinions I spew out here are not necessarily my coworkers’; in fact, when somebody at work tells me, “I read your blog,” it’s most often…
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It LIVES!
The Spore Creature Creator demo went live on EA’s site today, with the $10 version available tomorrow. I’ve been playing around with it a little bit, and if the complete game has even a fraction of the detail and attention given to the creature creator, Maxis has knocked this one way out of the park.…
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Iz not so great, aktually
This “half-season” of “Battlestar Galactica” ended last Friday with an episode called “Revelations.” I don’t really have much to say worth a spoiler warning, but if you want to know nothing about the episode, you might want to skip this post. Maybe the series has always been like this, and I just couldn’t tell because…
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Spoilers
Last month, news came over the wireless that Steven Moffat is taking over “Doctor Who” when its fifth season starts in 2010. I didn’t think much about the announcement, since I haven’t been paying much attention to the series. It’s turned into kind of a shrill, nonsensical mess with increasingly overwrought finales. Even though it…
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MST3K at Comic Con
Via Andrew P Mayer’s blog, there’s an announcement that almost everybody who ever appeared on Mystery Science Theater are going to be speaking at a panel at the San Diego Comic-Con: We now have full confirmation of the upcoming panel at Comic-Con in San Diego, Friday, July 25, 7:15 p.m. On the panel will be:…
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Espinazo
It’s an old cliche that Hollywood takes the hard work of creative people and squeezes all of the originality and innovation and intelligence out of it, to dumb it down for the mass market. I never really believed it, though: instead of this big, faceless, creativity-sucking entity, isn’t it easier just to assume that some…
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The revolution will be playable on your television
There’s something inherently sad and a little pathetic about being addicted to a videogame. Worse by several orders of magnitude — measured in units that I will from now on call dorkstroms — is being addicted to a videogame that’s not even out yet. The demo for Civilization Revolution came out last week, and I’ve…
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Who’s in control here?
That’s Alexander Haig. Look him up. Also: This post has spoilers for BioShock and Grand Theft Auto IV, in case you’re paranoid about that kind of thing. Previously on Spectre Collie, I made the claim that videogame developers can learn more from “non-interactive” media than just how to make more cinematic cut-scenes and more literary…
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My favorite place on (Google) Earth
Disney has added models and textures for Walt Disney World to Google Earth. While the blog entry describes it as “the second best thing to being there,” it’s a little slow and fuzzy, and it’s more like walking through a papercraft version of the parks and hotels than it is like exploring a new virtual…