I have never been a total fan though. At the end of the day, they are tools that I use to get things done throughout my day. I don’t hold them in any higher regard than the PCs that I use at my workplace (or grew up with). I’ve had my issues with their products as well and I’ll be the first to point them out. I will also be the first in line to point out that Apple has ‘screwing their clientele’ down to a high art. I mean, they have a release schedule and setup that makes sure that everyone that purchases their wares will be jealous of those who purchase the next iteration. They can really be dicks like that. They engineer demand so well that there should be a degree in it available to higher education locales.

But as of Thursday, July 7th, 2011, I can say that I am now a loyal customer of Apple. Still not a fanboy, but they’ve secured my loyalty. And all it took was an email.

The Story

To understand my new-found loyalty, we have to roll back to July 1st, 2011. Canada Day, for anyone that is unaware happens on this day. As a proud Canadian I went off to the large London-based party that took place in Trafalgar Square. It was a fun day despite a gross lack of cider, and fun was had by all. I was decked out in Canadian stuff (shirt, tattoos, etc.) and I was even wearing shorts! I almost never wear shorts due to a general lack of ownership as well as a general distaste for them.

As the day wore down, I, along with my friends, decided to head on home as we were a bit drunk, a bit tired, and in my case a bit (a lot) sunburnt. We took the district line from Embankment, and then transfered to the National rail at Liverpool street. After getting off the train and walking half way home from the station to my house, I noticed that my phone was missing.

Now I knew that I had my phone when I got onto the underground at Embankment, so I had either lost it or my phone had been nicked whilst I was on the train. This can basically be blamed on my shorts – damn you shorts! – since they have wide, shallow pockets, and that’s a bad thing when you are sitting down with a long phone in said pocket. Regardless, my phone was gone.

Fuck.

For those that have never lost their phone, let me describe it to you: it sucks. It sucks badly. It sucks even more if you’re a tech addict like me, and even more so if you legitimately need your phone to do thinks like call people and services.

As soon as I got home, I jumped onto my mobileMe account. Thankfully, I’m involved in the iOS 5 beta (thanks @geofas), which means that I have free access to their Find My Iphone services (something that will be free for everyone, and was formerly a paid-for perk of the mobileMe service). I sent a message to the phone – ‘If you could turn this phone in, that would be amazing’ –  but I had to wipe the phone anyways. Why? Because it’s a company phone, and it’s got a lot of stuff on it that I’d get hell for if it leaked. Nothing sinister, but important work I.P. stuff.

Anyways, once you wipe your iPhone you can no longer track it. This was a sad reality that I just had to take. I had no hope of anyone actually turning in an iPhone 4. I mean, it’s an iPhone 4 in full working order.

On monday, I got the IMEI and SIM numbers from my work and logged the phone as lost with the TFL and National Rail. I wasn’t expecting much. I didn’t even bother reporting it to the police, because in all truthfulness, there isn’t really much they can do. I logged an order with my work for a new phone, and whimpered at the £450+ cost attached to my own stupidity. It was an expensive mistake.

“But Corey!” you sputter, ” Surely a man of your rugged good looks and shining brillance would have phone insurance, no?” No. I didn’t. I almost do now, I have to wait a week after upgrading my bank account but I didn’t have it at the time. Some friends suggested I get some for a phone that I no longer possessed, wait a week, and then report it lost. Basically they suggested I commit fraud. I declined, because I was going to take my costly lesson with as much good grace as I could muster. The high ground sucks sometimes.

I’ll skip the part where I went through horrible tech withdrawal. Suffice it to say, it’s horrible, and I totally understand people who are quitting smoking. Well, the mental portion anyways. I didn’t suffer from the shakes or anything, but I was irritable as shit and perpetually frustrated at everyone around me that still had their phones. It was bad, man, real bad.

As the week went on, I kept an eye on my email, hoping that I’d see an email show up from TFL or National Rail. On Thursday the 7th, I got an email from Apple Support. Now I hadn’t logged anything with them, and so I thought it was probably spam. Just to be on the safe side though I opened the mail, and was given the following:

Mr. Corey dutson

We were contacted today, because your iphone was found, it is in :
Shepherds Bush Police Station
226 Shepherds Bush Road
Hammersmith
London
W6 7NX

kind regards,
andreia, apple team*

*This is actually the address for the Hammersmith Metro Police station. Apple sorta screwed that up, but looking at the street name, I totally get why they could screw that up.

Now either this was the most specific spam email ever, or it was a legit email from Apple. I was willing to take that chance. I dropped what I was doing, jumped on the train, and made my way to the address. Then I went to the real address after I found out Apple gave me the wrong one. I walked into the police station and 5 minutes, some joking, and a lot of thank yous later, I was re-united with my phone.

We had celebratory Thai food that night. It was divine.

What happened?

As near as I can tell, when I logged into the Find My iPhone system and wiped my phone, Apple must have flagged the IMEI number in relation to my account. When the phone was plugged in, charged, and processed at the police station, Apple must have been alerted through the phone popping up in iTunes or the like. They then emailed me to let me know where it was, and I got my phone back, against all the odds.

The result?

Apple didn’t have to do that. I hadn’t logged a support request with them, nor ever paid for mobileMe. They had no obligation to do anything about it, and yet they did. Sure it’s not a large amount of effort on their part, and I’m sure most of it is automated anyways. The point is: they did me a small kindness, and I got my phone back.

What basically equated to about 40 seconds of effort on their part reunited me with my phone. If they hadn’t done that, I would have to purchase another one of their products. Their emailing me actually stopped them from making a sale. It did, however, make me see them in a new light and they’ve secured my pocket book for a good long while to come now. That’s an amazing long-term view and a gamble, and more companies should think like this. It fosters loyalty that you just cant buy with discounts or free soda.

So you know what? People can go on and on about how they screw their customers, their price-points are insane, and all their stuffs for hipsters, designers, etc. All I know is they’ve made themselves one more loyal customer, and all for sending an email.

One more thing…

The police wouldn’t give me the contact details for the woman that turned in the phone. I totally understand, but I’m a bit sad because I can’t thank her myself properly. I will say this though:

Thank you Ema. Thank you so much for doing what many others wouldn’t have done. You’re a swell human being, and I hope you get that promotion you want because damnit, you deserve it. Also, your hair looks amazing today. Seriously, you’ve got like, TV hair goin’ today. And hey, have you been working out? You’re looking really good! I am totally jealous.

You’re awesome, but you already knew that didn’t you.

The whole ‘open world, do what you want, oh by the way there’s some actual story here if you wanna play it’ model never really did much for me. It’s neat and all, I get the appeal, but I never really got into it.

So then they start talking about L.A. Noire, and my first thought was “oh good, GTA in the 1940′s but this time you’re a cop and will get shot at by bad guys instead of the other way around. Yawwwwn” and promptly ignored it. But then they started releasing the trailers for L.A. Noire, and I watched them. And then I watched some more. And then I started reading about what L.A. Noire was really going to be. A detective game, but with chases, shakedowns, shooting, and moral implications.

Then I got excited.

I’ve read many a thing about L.A. Noire since it’s come out, but the best one I’ve found so far is “It’s Phoenix Wright, but with claws” and I think that’s a very good way to put it. L.A. Noire is, at it’s core, an adventure game. You track down clues, you talk to suspects, and you try and make an arrest. That is the core of L.A. Noire, and it does it very, very well.

It still has the city-driving that GTA-lovers will enjoy, but you cant just walk into random stores and talk to people, you can’t just shoot everyone, and (as far as I know, being 60% done the game as of this writing) there’s no actual involvement of your home life. You apparently have a wife and kids, but I’ve yet to see a trace of them.

You’re also punished for running into people, smashing cars, and destroying property. Yeah, that’s right; you can’t just go flying around like a maniac, decimating the city in a manic attempt to bring it under your heel.

Synopsis

The year is 1947, you’ve come back from the war, and joined the L.A. police force to act as a beacon of hope and fortitude in this crazy city. You’re a go-getter though, you don’t just do what you’re told, but make the extra effort to make sure things get done and done right. This moxy gets you noticed by the higher up detectives, and you are told to “get yourself two suits, and get them pressed.” Soon you’re starting your illustrious career in the detective world, interviewing folks and finding clues.

Gameplay

The game splits up the gameplay into ‘cases’. You can only have one case going at a time, which I think was done to keep your head from exploding. The stories can get fairly intricate, and trying to do them all at the same time would probably kill you. Each case opens with an in-game cinematic of the crime itself, but done in typical noire fashion; that is to say that  you never see the perp, only the end result of their mis-doings.

The mechanics of the game can be broken into five sections: Free-roam, Clue finding, Interviewing, and The Chase, Intuition

Free-roam

Yes, you can drive around the stunningly re-created 1947 L.A. should you choose to. There are some incentives to do this as well. There’s all the monuments you can find (30) film reels you can hunt down (50) and the badges for those that pre-ordered the game (20?). On top of that, there are 95 different vehicles to drive, and 40 street crimes to address.

Having said that, when you are on route to a destination and a street crime pops up… well driving across the city is only fun the first time. Especially when cars don’t get out of your way, even when you’ve got your siren on. Really, most of the free-roaming should be left to the end game, so that you can find everything without worrying too hard about the costs you will wrack up at the end of the case.

Clue finding

Rockstar must have thought hard about how to handle this. The reason I say this? They did a damned fine job with it. When you enter a clue-gathering session, the music goes into ‘detective mode’ and your character walks slowly. You walk around until a small cue (rumble and staccato music flourish) when there’s something to investigate. The catch is that not everything needs to be looked at. Much of the time, they will be random items that do not pertain to the case. But if you want to find all of the clues, you’ll look over everything, like I do.

When you pick something up, you can move it around, looking for important details. On top of that, many clues can be further investigated, which can reveal even more for your case.

All the relevant clues are then logged in your little black book for use during interviews.

Interviewing

Interviewing people is an enjoyable, if somewhat frustrating part of L.A. Noire. When talking to someone, you will be given 3 options when any exchange has ended. You can assume they’re telling the truth, you can doubt what they’re saying, our you can call them on a lie. Only one of the options is correct.

If you think their lying, but you’ve got no proof, you can use doubt. That’s what this is really for. It took me a while to understand what they meant with ‘doubt.’ I thought you would ask further questions when in fact it’s more or less calling them a liar without calling them a liar.

When you call someone out on a lie, you’ve got to pick the proof that backs up your claim. This gets harder as the cases go on, because you start amassing a lot of evidence and it becomes somewhat more difficult to find what evidence backs your claims. As it stands some items in your roster never actively come into play, but sit there, ruffling their red feathers at you.

When you pick the correct answer, you’ll hear a certain piano tinkling of keys. When you pick the wrong answer, you’ll hear a different, slightly more depressing tinkling of keys. It only takes a couple screw-ups to have these sounds embedded in your skull.

The Chase

More often than not, you’ll have to run down a guilty party. They always run. Always. It’s irritating at the best of times. You either run people down on foot, which usually results in a football tackle; or by car wherein either you smash the hell out of their car and they crash, or the game feels sorry for you and eventually smashes them into something for you.

Thankfully, if you’re terrible at chasing people down (as I am with the car chases) the game will only force you to try 3 times. After you’ve failed that many times, it gives you the option of skipping it without any demerit applied to your end score. Now, I’m a stubborn bastard, so I haven’t used this yet, but I’ll admit the 2 times that the option has been offered… well it’s been tempting. I wouldn’t blame anyone for taking the game up on the offer; it lets you focus on all the other, more entertaining parts of the game.

Intuition

Intuition is an interesting concept. It’s basically a way of applying a gut feeling, when you’ve not got one yourself. In less fancy terms, you can use it for 2 things: revealing all the clues in a location (like a crime scene), or to remove one of the 3 options when interviewing someone. I should state that it only removes an option for that specific talking point, and not for the entire conversation. It also strikes out any evidence that doesn’t pertain to a lie in that conversation branch.

I’ve used intuition enough during the game, and there’s no shame to it. Some people are just really hard to read.

Graphics

In some ways, L.A. Noire is amazing to look at. The obscene amount of work they’ve done with facial scanning really shines. If they don’t use this technique in every game after this, they’re insane. It is really, really good. And that’s important in a game that bases a good bulk of itself around reading peoples faces. You can’t skimp on that, and Rockstar did anything but.

The rebuilding on L.A. is impressive as well. Rockstar has a habit of making their game environments as realistic as possible, and L.A. Noire is no exception. They pull this off by using whatever they can. With GTA, they drove around and took pictures. With L.A. Noire? They used extreme vintage aerial photography. Yeah. They found a huge stash of vintage photos taken by a half-insane aerial photographer, and used those to make their L.A. as close as they could get it. They’ve done a really good job of it, too.

They’ve also done a swell job with the cars. Then again, this shouldn’t come as a surprise, as a good part of their fortune is based on a game that involves a lot of car stealing/driving/destroying.

But then there are things that just don’t quite do it for me. Namely in the people. Despite the amazing facial work, the body mechanics have some work to be done. Everything ends up being jerky, regardless of how much motion capture they do. There are also some textures that seem really low-rez, despite the fact that so many others are super crisp. If they can capture these things, they’ll be set.

The Writing/Storytelling

When Rockstar wants to make a game as close to a film noire as they possibly could, they’ve done a pretty bang-up job. A lot of obvious care has gone into the game, and that really shows in both the writing, as well as the directing of each and every scene.

There’s not much I can say about the writing other than it’s fantastic. It’s accurate to the time (which means there is a lot of speech that lands itself right in the middle of ‘totally inappropriate’ territory with the modern day). It works perfectly for L.A. Noire though, because it’s a time piece so Rockstar can get away with pretty much anything.

Something that really needs mentioning though isn’t so much the writing (once again, fantastic), but the art direction and scene directing. Now I’ve not played much of Rockstars fare (as previously stated) but I’ve got a feeling that they usually do a good job with directing. However, I think it’s safe to say that due to the noire aspect to the game, they really had to step things up a notch.

The direction given in this game is some of the best I’ve ever experienced. I actually care about the outcomes; I care about the characters I should care about, and I dislike the ones I’m supposed to dislike. I am putty in the hands of Rockstar with L.A. Noire. The long cinematic scenes aren’t agony to watch, in fact it’s quite the opposite: I look forward to seeing them.

As any avid game would know, most of the time the cut scenes are the boring bits that try and convey a story in-between the fun bits. Such is not the case with L.A. Noire. No no, you watch these scenes, soak them up, and that makes the fun bits just that much more fun.

Music

I’ve always been a fan of Big band and the like, so I think it’s safe to say that I’m a fan of the music in L.A. Noire. But just mentioning the ambient music you hear in cars, diners, and piped through the radios of 1940′s L.A. would be a sin. It would be a sin because the actual music that was composed for L.A. Noire is really, really fabulous. It’s stunningly good mood-setting music. From the low, eerie tones of the investigation, to the fast-paced chase music, the composed music for L.A. Noire is stunning.

Issues

Despite the obvious amount of gushing I’ve been doing about L.A. Noire, there are a couple issues that really annoy me. It’s like having a fantastic burger served up to you, but then finding a topping on it, say tomatoes, that just takes away from the whole experience.

Also yeah, I’m not a fan of tomatoes. Deal with it.

Issue the first is the inability to save when you want. I’m not sure what the reasoning behind this was, but the fact that I can’t save between looking for clues and then interviewing people really bugs me. Especially since I’m a completionist, and want to get every conversation right. The game more or less picks and chooses when to save, and you’ve no control over it what so ever.

Hell, lets say you just wanted to free-roam around, and wanted to save at a specific part of the city. That’s a decent enough request right? Well too bad. You don’t get the option. The game saves when it wants to, and you’ve got little control over it.

That said, I have found save ‘areas’ that seem to trigger the save ability. These are usually outside of the station or investigation areas. This of course assumes the game is going to let you waltz out of the area without failing you. You’ve been warned.

My second issue, which has become infinitely more irritating for me is the driving. Not just driving around town, which can be irritating and dangerous as it is (people don’t really move out of the way, even when you’ve got the siren on). No my issue is that everyone you chase in a car seems to become this amazing rally driver, able to pull turns that don’t make any sense. They’re obviously scripted, but there is no way my car can pull the stuff they’re pulling.

The result?

I end up smashing into cars, lamp posts, and anyone on two legs. This is not a good thing. It negatively affects the end of case results and ranking. I mean I’m not a good driver in games at the best of time, so forcing me to rally race around a heavily populated L.A.? Yeah, that’s not going to end well.

Tailing on that last one, I’ll lump my last issues together: People are too fast. Every car goes as fast as my squad car with the peddle floored, and everyone I have to run after seems to become an Olympic sprinter. This includes the 70 year old man I had to gun down, as well as the fat motherfuckers that I’ve chased all over hells half-acre. It makes no sense!

Overall

A fantastic game, and I’ll happily purchase all of the DLCs as they come out. There are only a couple issues, and I can deal with them mainly due to the fact that the rest of the game makes up for them by being totally bad ass. If you’re into detective games, good story telling, and compelling stories, I’d suggest you grab yourself a copy of L.A. Noire.

9/10

Pretty much everyone who played the first Portal has been chomping at the bit for a sequel of sorts to come around. That being said, Portal was a bit of a sleeper hit (and meme generator). It took a while for it to become popular. It took even longer for for it to become popular to release on its own. It did, of course, and I’ve been the proud owner of Portal: Still Alive (the XBox 360 release) for a good while now.

So when I heard about a Portal 2 coming out, I became very excited (along with a good portion of the Internet). What’s interesting is Portal came out in 2007. There is a 4 year gap between the two games, which is a long time in the game industry. With that kind of gap, people are going to be expecting a lot from this release.

So the question is: does it stand up?

Yeup.

A friend of mine who happens to be on Steam gained access to Portal 2 early due to Valves early release crowd-source thing. A brilliant marketing scheme, it has to be said. Get loads of people to buy and play other titles on the Steam network, and they’ll release the game that everyone wants early… maybe.

Brilliant.

Anyways, his description of Portal 2 was two-pronged. The first statement I got was “It’s like Portal, but with money thrown at it.” The second: “It’s what Portal really should have been the first time.” I think these two statements sum up Portal 2 almost perfectly. I’d go on to say that a re-release of the original Portal with the new engine used in Portal 2 would gain a whole shedload of new sales for Valve. Yes it’s that good.

I should say that this review is based on the single-player experience of Portal 2. I haven’t had a chance to play the co-op mode, so I can’t speak to how amazing that most certainly is. If anyone reading this has Portal 2 on the Xbox and wants to play, lemme know. When I do get a chance to play the co-op, I’ll update this review. Anywho, on with the review!

Synopsis

You’re back in Aperture Laboratories.

After a brief wakeup from your stasis (for tutorial purposes), you’re woken again to a very different scene. You’ve been asleep a long, long time, and now Wheatley – that’s the robot that cares for all the humans in the facility – is trying to save you from dying. You get a refresher course on how to use the portal gun, and then you’re off the races.

You run into GLaDOS again, and she’s just totally psyched to see you since you killed her ‘n all. You get thrown back into the testing ring, with GLaDOS feeding you back-handed compliments and offering up some of the best writing ever. You work your way through the tests, until things get weird, and then they get much, much weirder. I’d explain the whole thing, but I can’t bring myself to spout off any major spoilers because, honestly, it’s so much better to just play the game and experience it.

Gameplay

Portal 2 plays out almost exactly the same as the original. The portal gun still shoots 2 portals, you can still fall from any height, but can’t swim. Also, pretty much everything can kill you. Nothing too surprising there. The floaty electro-orbs have been removed, in favour of using more of the thermal discouragement beams that you have to aim into targets. You also get excursion funnels, repulsion/propulsion/conversion gels, light bridges, cubes for redirecting lasers, and faith plates. Yeah, you lose the bouncy energy murder balls, but you get a lot more to play with. I’ll try and break it down for you:

Thermal discouragement beams (and the redirection cubes)

Lasers. Seriously that’s what these are. Lasers that go in a straight line, hurt anything that isn’t a cube, and are used to power switches and the like (just like the bouncy energy balls from the original Portal). The redirection cubes do exactly that: redirect. Specifically, they redirect the beams. Straight-forward really, much like the beams.

Light bridges

They’re bridges. Made of light. You can walk on them, block bullets, etc. It’s a wall you can walk on, basically.

The gels

The gels were probably some of the neatest additions to Portal 2. They more or less do what they say on the tin. The Repulsion Gel makes you (or anything else) that hits it bounce. Objects you coat in the blue stuff will also become high-speed bouncy balls. Propulsion Gel makes you move fast (somewhat exponentially). Conversion Gel turns any surface it’s a part of into a Portal-friendly surface. This is something I wish you had access to more often throughout Portal 2, but sadly is rather limited.

Excursion Funnels

These are basically levitation tunnels. You go in them (or put anything into them) and you will be pulled along in the tunnel until you hit a wall. You can slide out of the tunnel at any point, but you cannot fight the flow of the tunnel or move faster within it. You can basically only go sideways.

Faith plates

These launch you (or other things) through the sky to land on a target somewhere across the way. These are probably the most terrifying things you come across in the game, and yet they are the safest thing you’re likely to interact with in the whole game. It’s one of the few things in the game that can’t really kill you, since the landing spots are always the same.

Graphics

In many ways Portal 2 looks like the original Portal. At the very leave the look ‘feels’ the same, except it’s been polished so goddamned much it burns an awesome-shaped hole in your soul. It looks stunning. Effects aren’t over-done, but look stunning. The lighting is impressive, and their attention to detail with all of the decay is astounding. The views you get in this game are enough to make you stop and stare. The Ratman’s artworks are back in Portal 2, and these ones are very much of the ‘art’ variety. They’re worth finding, if only to look upon them and be moved.

All of the normal elements you interact with in the game have been obscenely polished as well. Companion cubes hum a little tune and glow pink in their cores. When you walk into rooms, Panels clean themselves up. Liquids are really, well, liquidy. Everything you interact with just shines with the effort and love given by the Valve team.

The writing/storytelling

Oh my god the writing. The writing in Portal 2 has been on a level beyond professional. The writing in Portal 2 surpassed the writing from the original by a mile. It’ probably helped that there is more than one person to write for, and back and forth banter is always better than writing monologues at the player. Here are a small, hopefully not very spoiler-y sample of the brilliance within Portal 2:

“Most test subjects do experience some, uh, cognitive deterioration after a few months in suspension. Now, you’ve been under for quite a lot longer, and its *not* out of the question that you might have a *very* minor case of serious brain damage! But, don’t be alarmed, alright? Uh, although, d-do feel alarmed. Try to hold onto that feeling, because that is the proper reaction to being told that you’ve got brain damage!” – Wheatley, upon waking you up from stasis.

“Well done. Here are the test results: You are a horrible person. I’m serious, that’s what it says: A horrible person. We weren’t even testing for that. Don’t let that “horrible person” thing discourage you. It’s just a data point. If it makes you feel any better, science has now validated your birth mother’s decision to abandon you on a doorstep.” – GLaDOS, upon your finishing one of her tests.

“Most people emerge from suspension terribly undernourished. I want to congratulate you on beating the odds and somehow managing to put on a few pounds.” – GLaDOS, basically being a bitch.

This is, of course only the lightest sampling. Much, much better stuff exists in Portal 2, but to avoid massive spoilers, I’ve opted not to include them. The fact that Cave Johnson is voiced by J.K. Simmons really should be enough to have anyone play. If you’re from the UK, Stephen Merchant does the voice for Wheatley, and he does an amazing job as well.

Moving beyond the basic banter writing (which is some of the best game banter I’ve heard in forever), the story itself is compelling in its simplicity. You are given a lot of history and a lot of explanations. The story is paced out perfectly, and you get a lot of closure by getting through it all.I have to commend the Valve writing staff for this one. They’ve always done good work with their writing, but Portal 2 is a work of art in terms of writing and story-telling.

Music

Not much to say with the music in Portal 2. Well, not much that I can say without giving away even more of the game. What I will say is that where there is music, it’s used to very good effect. Never really over-bearing, but still helps set the mood of the scene and gets into your head. Also, do yourself and have a listen to companion cubes, and the end points for lasers and switches. They all have little tunes that both delight and annoy.

Issues

Nothing I can really say other than one or two of the puzzles just baffled the crap out of me. I did well overall, but some of them just had me sitting there wandering aimlessly until I happened to notice some platform or ledge that I needed to get onto.

My only advice is that as you get further into the Lab, you’d do well to take a moment and look around (in every direction) and note anything out of place or interesting. Chances are, you’ll need to interact with that point in order to finish the puzzle. Don’t forget you have a zoom option in Portal 2. Seriously, don’t forget that. It’ll help.

The other issue is that the single player campaign (as I haven’t been able to get into co-op yet) is shorter than I would have liked. I logged somewhere between 10-15 hours, and I would have been fine with another 5-10 in there. Then again, maybe the co-op will handle that. I guess I’ll have to wait and see about that.

Oh, and while not actually an issue, this is more of a note: If you haven’t played Portal 1, you do yourself a disservice if you don’t play it before playing Portal 2. You’ll still enjoy Portal 2, but you’ll be missing out on a lot of the jokes.

Overall

Brilliant. One of the best games I have played in a very long time. brilliant story, brilliant writing, everything’s been polished to a hefty sheen, and it’s basically amazing. You will be doing yourself a disservice if you don’t pick this one up.

9.5/10

However, there are a bunch of legitimately interesting movies coming out right now. So much so that I am willing to go to the movie theaters to watch them (though I’ll admit that this decision is assisted heavily by the 2 for 1 deal I can get every wednesday).

One such movie that has just come out here in the UK is Black Swan, staring the ever impressive (to me, anyways) Natalie Portman, and the spunky Mila Kunis who shocked me with an actual acting ability. Classed as a psychological thriller, Black Swan draws you in, and then effectively horrifies you on any number of levels for most of the film. For those too lazy to read the rest of this review, I will leave you with the words I uttered when the credits began to roll:

“Holy shit… Holy. Shit.

Synopsis

Nina, played by Portman, is a ballerina at a large theatre house in the city she lives in (both, as near as I can tell are unmentioned). She’s a dedicated performer that hopes to become the next leading lady in the house’s production of Swan Lake. Her mother, played terrifyingly well by Barbara Hershey, is a failed ballerina that has in turn focused all of her energy, hopes, and dreams into Portman’s career. So much so that their relationship is far from healthy.

As the movie progresses, Nina wins the role but is told that she must be both the White swan – fragile, beautiful, a ‘virgin’ – and the black swan – evil, manipulative, seductive – which is a mental state that Nina cannot easily summon. This is due to her borderline insane home life that has cocooned her in a semi-child-like life and has stunted her sexually. She starts noticing scratches on her back, and starts to see a darker version of her as she walks around or looks in mirrors.

Then you have Lily, played by Kunis, who is for all intents and purposes, Ninas opposite. She’s sexy, she’s carefree, a rebel, and a dancer that doesn’t conform to perfection, but flows naturally to the music and as such can lose herself in the moment. Effectively everything Nina is not. They strike up an odd friendship that just goes all over the place. There is a shockingly passionate scene between the two in the film, but when Nina confronts Lily about it, Lily denies it ever happening. This adds weight to Ninas worries that she’s losing her mind, and her paranoia goes through the roof.

As the movie nears the end, Nina distrusts Lily, thinking that Lily is trying to steal her spot as the Swan Queen. As all this is happening the movie gets more and more surreal, with Nina visually losing her mind, not understanding what is going on or even why. Her personality becomes more erratic, and she’s terrified of what’s happening to her.

The movie climaxes with Nina taking her spot as the Swan Queen – much to the chagrin of Lily. As the white swan, she’s nervous and actually blunders one of the scenes. There’s an altercation with Lily where Lily is killed before the show, but at intermission we find out that she’s not dead at all. This confuses Nina, but only for a moment before she transforms herself into the black swan. She dances ‘perfectly’, transforming on stage into what appears to be a human swan. In actuality no such thing happens, but this is what Nina sees.

The end of the movie is very much the same as the play in which the movie surrounds itself with. She embraces the role, and as she says she was ‘perfect.’ This carries so much gravitas, and caused me to go slack-jawed from the power of its delivery.

What I liked

Oh where to start? I could gush for a very long time about Black Swan, but I’ll do my best to stay at least somewhat objective about it.

The acting

Everyone in Black Swan holds their own. The casting was shockingly well done, with everyone managing to click. Portman, Kunis, Hershey, and Vincent Cassel do an utterly amazing job of making you give a shit about the story. Everyone plays their part perfectly; Portman plays the insecure and fragile ballet dancer that just wants to be perfect; Hershey plays an unstable mother with control issues stunningly; Kunis plays what is probably an easy role for her as the sultry, carefree temptress; and Cassel does an amazing job of playing the manipulative, greedy, semi-antagonist.

The chemistry of everyone on screen is explosive. Each direct relationship works perfectly. Real cudos should be given to Natalie Portman, who does an amazing job throughout the whole film. While all the supporting actors work perfectly in their roles, Portman does a good portion of the movie solo. This is a hard thing for any actor to do, let alone one that must demonstrate a degrading psyche with bouts of paranoia and an emerging split-personality. Tack that onto the fact that this girl is fragile in so many other ways, and you are left with a performance that will leave you awed.

The music

You never really realize where some scores are from until it’s spelled out for you. In this case, pretty much all of the music is pulled directly from Swan Lake itself. The tone and flow of the movie fit unsettlingly well with the scores chosen. While many of the scenes in the movie can hold their own without music, the accompaniment of scores from the ballet do so much to help underscore the joy of some scenes, the adulation of others, and the reserved , crushing sadness of the rest. Whoever set up the score for this movie deserves a medal.

The cinematography

This is probably the first film I’ve watched that does a follow-cam to good effect. A good portion of the film is shot over Nina’s shoulder. This happens more and more the further along the movie you go. The technique is used to brilliant effect, and the entire time it’s happening you feel like you’re literally watching her from over her shoulder. This in turn makes her seem uncomfortable to the watcher. There are scenes that are shot in this method where you can hear Ninas breathing, and mild panic-y grunts as she dances trying not to step out of perfection. Sounds are ramped up during many of these scenes so that you really get a feel for how she’s feeling.

Other shots are done with an experts eye. Mirrors are featured heavily throughout the film, and there are many shots that take full advantage of them. Many of the special effects applied are through these mirrors, and of them, most are subtle. If you’re not looking at the right spot at the right time, you can actually miss some of the more unnerving elements of a scene. Many scenes will have just a moment of something off-putting: a face in the mirror glancing in the wrong direction; a ripple in Ninas skin texture; the off glances; the list goes on.

Symbolism

Oh man. Ohhh man. If I was in university for say, psychology or mental illness or occult studies or something, this movie would have made me cream myself. There are layers and layers to this movie that you could spend hours ripping apart and analyzing. You’ve got the creepy one-on-one relationships, Nina’s youthful room, the scratches, the use of mirrors, the self-visualizing Nina does, the sexy-time scenes, the eyes, the use of blood, and a billion other things that I won’t bother listing.

What impresses me about these though is not so much that they’re strewn throughout the movie, but that they’re applied with such academic perfection, that in many cases you don’t even realize what’s going on unless you’re looking. Yet the fact that they’re there affects your interaction with the movie regardless of your noticing them or not.

The movie operates on so many levels that it actually took me a good while of thinking about it to really start to understand just how much was truly going on. I mean on the surface, the plot is not dissimilar to Swan Lake (how meta), but under that there are layers of emotion and concepts that the movie is trying to convey to the user. The strain of being in Ninas position, the stress her mother puts on her, the pressure she gets from Thomas Leroy (Cassel), this list goes on and on as well. Under all that, the movie opts to explore mor basic human nature and needs. Seriously there’s enough going on in this movie to let you analyze it for days.

What I disliked

Shockingly little ends up in this section. Other than a couple of odd bits of CG use that just didn’t look as polished as they could have been, I’ve got no real complaints about Black Swan. I wish there was more to say about what fell short with this movie, but honestly there’s nothing. The only thing I could think to mention is some people seem to dislike Portman for no reason, and seem to transfer that dislike over to the movie itself. This is a damned shame, but people are allowed to do that.

A word of caution

Black Swan is fucked up. I don’t mean that in a zombie-fest sort of way, or in a Chucky sort of way. I mean fucked up on a truly disturbing and upsetting  level. A common phrase to use for Black Swan is that it is ‘difficult to watch.’ This is very true. Black Swan pulls no punches, and while some movies love to roll around in the field of your personal discomfort (laughing all the way), this movie does not. It makes you uncomfortable because you need to be to really get into this movie. Black swan takes no pleasure in upsetting you, but does it so that you can understand (or at least try to) just how tortured Nina is.

If you dislike movies with a lot of thinking, movies with deeply unsettling themes, or scenes of people being sort-of taken advantage of, you will not like Black Swan. Please trust me when I say that this movie will not be for you, and you will be angry at yourself, the movie, and its creators if you go to watch it.

Black Swan is fucked up. It’s amazingly fucked up, but it’s fucked up all the same.

Overall

I could go on and on about Black Swan. It’s one of the best movies I have seen in a long time, and will easily land itself in my favourites list.

The acting was stunning, the score was perfect, the technical aspects were spot on, and there was enough content to read into that could keep my chronically over-analyzing brain happy for a long time. It’s screwed up, it’s dark, it’s revealing, and it’s a work of art.

9/10

That said, the new Professor Layton came with a veritable feast of new mini-games, new puzzles, and one of the best story-lines in a game I’ve played in the last while. As a result, the newest addition to the series (Professor Layton and the Unwound Future) ends up being the best of the series (thus far).

Synopsis

The Unwound Future takes place after the events from the Diabolical Box. Layton and Luke have been invited, somewhat at random, to a scientific demonstration of an apparent time-machine. Things go south (as all preludes in this series do), and days later you get a letter from Luke that has a posting date from 10 years in the future. Now since Layton has conquered ghosts, missing peoples, phantom trains, and imaginary clockwork people, solving a temporal mystery just seems the next logical step.

Luke and Layton follow the instructions, and end up at a mysterious clock shop (surprise, surprise). When brought into the back of the shop, a giant clock awaits them. This is, apparently, a time machine, and before they can think it through, the shop owner throws the switch and Luke and Layton are thrown into the future. Here they notice the changes (and similarities) between them. Eventually they run into Future Luke, and things just get weirder.

As the story unfolds, you find out that the scientist from the demonstration and Layton have some shared past. Namely, they went to the same school, and happened to be in love with the same girl: Claire. The scientist (Dimitri, in case you’re wondering) at first seems to be out to get Layton due to Layton’s winning the affections of Claire. Things, though, are not what they seem. As the story progresses, things get well messed up, and it really does take right up to the 11th hour for everything to come to light.

It ends with, in my opinion, one of the saddest endings I have ever witnessed on the DS. Possibly one of the saddest endings on any Nintendo title that I’ve played. Things are tied up well, if not nicely, and you’re not really left with any questions other than ‘WHY DID THEY JUST DO THAT TO ME?” I was honestly more upset than I thought possible, given the game I was playing. I didn’t sob or anything, but it did move me.

Mechanics

The core mechanics of the game have been left pretty much unchanged. New faces, new places, but the environmental stuff hasn’t moved on much. It doesn’t really need to, either. They got it right the first time, so there’s not much of a need to change it. Tap everywhere to find puzzles and/or hint coins. Solve said puzzles with or without the help of said hint coins. Move on.

The mini-games have changed again. You now get a toy car game, a parrot-guiding game, and the sticker-book game. The toy car game is similar to the hamster game from the last Professor Layon, with a few obvious changes (water, comes to mind). The sticker-book game is fun because you have to put the correct stickers in the correct spots on the page. When this is done, you get to read the whole story. It’s a bit juvenile, but entertaining.

Then there is the parrot game. I hate the parrot game. I hate it more than slider puzzles, and I really hate slider puzzles. The idea is to draw ropes from peg to peg in order to help the parrot (who can only seem to hop short distances) get to end flag before the timer runs down. I’m just going to say right now: I cheated. I don’t even feel bad about it. Know why? because I spent hours and hours trying to legitimately figure the damned parrot puzzles out, and to no avail. Well screw that noise, I have better things to do (shutup I do so) than to run the same parrot simulation over and over and over and over and over and motherfucking over.

The Highs

The laytest installment (see what I did there?) comes with a heaping dose of wonderfully animated cut-scenes, which are pretty much par for the course by this point. The music is wonderful (the alteration of the main/professors theme is sublime) and as goes well with both the puzzles and the story points. Some new items have been added to the score selection, though the puzzle theme remains just as ponderous as it always was.

A special shout-out has to be made here for the grace in which the Professor’s history is handled. While I enjoyed the previous two stories for being entertaining, the Unwound Future is the first in the series that actually made me care about any of the characters. Even Luke, who in many cases I find to be grating, was given a lot more … Luke-ness. That’s a good thing, surprisingly. They really went the extra mile to make the characters mean something more to you than simple puzzle gods, and it shows.

The Lows

Slider puzzles make a shining return in the latest installment, which of course means that I stared at the DS’ screens for a while, scowling in hate until my fail-safe method of random sliding paid off. On top of that, the writers really went out of their way to include more utterly ambiguous riddles. I’m talking about the kind of riddles that legitimately have more than one answer (which makes them shit riddles to begin with) but will only accept whatever cryptic answer they keep locked up in their brain-can. Also, there were a small number of puzzles that looked eerily familiar to past Professor Layton puzzles. I worry that they may be running out of puzzles for the series. Hopefully not.

I also have to say that one of the lows was the feeling of utter depression I got upon finishing the game. I could spoil the ending for you (though I will not) and ruin your day, but suffice it to say that it really struck a chord for me. The only thing that makes a depressing ending worse though, is an unnecessarily depressing ending. They didn’t need to do what they did,  but I guess they felt that the best ending to a light-hearted puzzle game would be to break everyones heart. Repeatedly.

Woe upon the parents who buy this game for their 11 year old daughter, only to have her run into their room, sobbing uncontrollably.

Overall

A great addition to the Professor Layton series, and what will probably go down as my favorite. That is of course until this comes out, and I am forced to purchase a 3DS just to play it.

Regardless, it’s a great title, if not a bit depressing at the end, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the series. I would suggest picking up the previous two if you’re new to the series because it will allow you to appreciate Unwound Future so much more.

9/10

Anyways.

On top of all of this, Bioshock hits the market and ends up getting a whole slew of reviews and press. No solid reviews have come out beyond the wank-fests of the big game rags, and he Internet waits for the independent reviews to start coming in.

That’s where this review comes in. For those that don’t want to play along, yes this is a review for a game that I only just got around to playing about 3 years later. I was a busy man, probably.

To the review-mobile!

Overview

Bioshock is the story of one mans trip through another mans dream come nightmare. Not in a weird outer-limits sort of way, but in a legitimate ‘I built a city under the sea where the success of he individual is more important than the thriving of he many, but something went terribly wrong and now the city is falling down around my ears and I am half-blaming you’ sort of way.

Basically your plane crash-lands right at the entrance of Rapture, an under-water city built where the free man could truly be free. You walk into the spire, and are treated to an introduction by the man himself, Andrew Ryan. However, when you get to the city, you quickly realize that something is a bit… off. You are then sucked into a whirlwind adventure that is similar to a bad, bad trip though an abandoned theme park. That’s under water. Where everyone is addicted to self-alteration. And everything wants to wear your skin as a fine suit. You know, that tired, old story again.

As you work your way further into Rapture, more of the story unfolds with Ryan trying to kill you and Atlas, the perky Irishman talking you through the place to help keep you alive. Things, of course, are not what they seem to be and nothing can ever just be straight-forward. Especially in Rapture, the city of scaring the shit clean out of you.

A you get further and further into Rapture, you start to learn about how it used to be, and were it all started going wrong. The lines start to blur between the good and the bad, and you realize that even your own actions can have repercussions.

Gameplay

Bioshock plays more or less like your standard shooter. You have a melee weapon, your pistol, your shotgun, your machine gun, your explosives, and your sniper derivative. However it also comes with the added bonus of Plasmids, which are more or less ways of altering your genetics to allow you to do such things as shoot electricity from your hand. These Plasmid skills work along side your normal weapon arsenal to allow you quite a lot of freedom in how you deal with the local combative population: the Splicers.

The splicers come in a variety of flavors, from melee fighters, to explosive-toting assholes, to these jackass splicers that can disappear and reappear somewhere else just to fuck with you. They are all super-duper extra crazy, and when they’ not trying to rip your face off, you can listen to them saying any number of creepy, upsetting things.

Now, Plasmids don’t come cheap. Well okay yes, the Plasmids you find laying around are, but the good ones have to be purchased, and you cannot buy them with cash. In order to get your greasy palms on Plasmids that don’t suck, or to upgrade your health etc. you need to get yourself some ADAM. This is where things get worrying.

You see everyone wants ADAM, and theres really only so much to go around. The solution then is to recycle it from the dead because, hey, they don’t need it anymore now do they? So what’s the best tool for that job? Why genetically altered little girls with glowing yellow eyes, underwater sea slugs imbedded in them, whom have giant metallic body guards, and say creepy things like “look Mr. Bubbles, I can see the Angels.” Mr. Bubbles is the giant metal guard dog thing, just to keep you in the loop here.

You get the choice: do you harvest the little girl(s), getting way more ADAM but killing the girl; or do you rescue her, leaving you with less ADAM but lets you sleep at night. Are they monsters or victims? It’s your call.

So this is all pretty much par for the course in Bioshock. Pretty much everything in Rapture is meant to upset you, scare you, or put you on edge. Believe me when I say, Bioshock does a very good job of this. Hell, this is part of the reason it took me so long to even play Bioshock; I don’t do well with scare-tactic games. That is to say that I get wayyyyyy too into them, and this causes me to get really scared, really easily. Attach that to my itchy trigger finger and you get a guy that is running around scared and out of ammo for most of the game.

There are also the hacking and photography aspects to Bioshock that I should touch on. Hacking is pretty straight forward: you hack things to have them work in your favour. Hack a vending machine, and you get cheaper prices and a greater variety; hack a turret, and it’ll work for you instead of trying to shot the hell out of you; hack a safe, and you get its contents.

The hacking game is literally that old windows game Pipe Mania where you have to guide a glowing blue liquid from the start to the end without screwing up. This gets old pretty fast, and the only way to get around most of the hacking comes from photography.

Photography in Bioshock is something you really want to invest some time into. As you photograph Splicers, turrets, security cameras, and little sisters, you get perks. These range from increased damage against said genre of beast, instant hacking ability, or slight increases to your health and EVE (the juice your Plasmids use). Fully research something, and it usually ends with a Plasmid or Combat tonic (basically the same thing). Totally worth it. If nothing else, the ability to auto-hack turrets was a god-send.

I’m also going to say here that the levels are massive, sprawling, and filled to the gills with secret passages and hidden treats. Even when you finish a ‘level’ you will probably be tempted to explore every inch of the place before moving on. Actually, scratch that. You really should explore every inch of every level, because your whole Biohock experience will be that much better.

Also, it’s a total bitch to go back to a previous level.

Graphics

Rapture is pretty, in that exploded, ruined, and drug-adled sort of way.

I am playing this game 3 years later on an xbox 360 (with the framerate unlocked, which actually tones the graphics back a bit), and I can state with confidence that Bioshock is one of the best-looking games I have ever played for the 360. I’m sure there are others that can beat it, but remember that his game is 3 years old and still holds it’s own.

It really comes down to the little details in Bioshock that make it shine: the detail in the plaster walls, the screwed up make-up of some of the female splicers, the 1950s style art deco fixtures and posters, the list goes on. Simply put: Rapture is simply gorgeous to look at.

Music / Sound

Rapture may be wonderful to look at it, but its the ambient noises that will put you on edge right from the get go; creaks, pangs, haunted footsteps, distant screams, the list is endless. There isn’t a lot of music in Bioshock, but the music that does exist is well placed, and generally contrasts the situation so drastically that it only helps to increase the tension.

To cite an example: when you are walking around an abandoned apartment waiting for something to jump out at you, and “how much is that puppy in the window” is plinking away in the background, well… It screws with you.

Lets not forget all of the wonderfully terrifying things that everyone says. I am torn for my favorite; its either the woman singing “hush little baby, don’t say a word” to a pistol in a stroller, sobbing because the ‘baby’ wont cry; or its the lady lamenting how she came to Rapture to be a star, and then screaming “now look at me” is the angriest, most anguished voice possible. Seriously, the first half of this game works your brain like a fine dough, mixing in terror and fear this each knead of your mind.

Sometimes it’s the absence of sound that is more terrifying. There is point in the game that, if you decide to explore a little harder, you turn the normally loud, findable Spider Splicers (they climb walls and shit, yeah you read that correctly) into mute clay mannequin versions of themselves. They no longer talk, and no longer make a noise as they crawl up behind you. Trust me when I say that this is so much worse. It means that even in silence you are no longer safe, which was up until that point your one sole indicator of relative safety.

There is also a lot of background sound going on that I highly suggest you stop and listen to. The ‘Rapture Reminders’ change throughout the game, and give hints as to the situation and its deterioration. The info bytes featuring Mary and Jim start off as helpful tips, but slowly turn into a propaganda machine and they too help outline what is going on to Rapture and yourself.

There are also the audio diaries you pick up along the way. These help outline what is really going on, expand on the main characters, and even give you some random insights into the day to day life of the once brilliant Rapture. If you want to get the most out of your time in Bioshock, I suggest you find as many of these tapes as you can.

Issues

I’m really hard-pressed to find issue with Bioshock. The only glaring issues are the obvious ones: hacking is a pain in the ass, and taking photos of enemies basically gives them free-reign to rip you apart while you try and frame them just so.

Now as my own pet peeve, I’m just going to through it out here that any and all escort missions should stripped from games. The AI scripting for every escort mission in every game sucks just a little too much. Escort missions tend to become high-stress, annoying interludes to the fun parts of a game. Bioshock’s escort mission is no exception to the rule. It’s long, it’s tedious, and was easily my least favourite part of the game,

The only other thing I can really find issue with Bioshock is that going between levels is hard. Its in no way impossible, but its such a pain in the ass that even when you CAN go back to a previous area, you have no desire to.

Overall

Damned awesome. I wish someone had talked me into playing it when it first came out. I suggest that if you haven’t had a chance to play Bioshock, that you clear out a week in your schedule, kiss your loved ones goodbye, and secret yourself away in front of this game. Make sure only come out when your brain has melted and Rapture has been saved.

9/10

I think it’s save to say that I love stories.

Hell I’ve even tried my own hand at writing a couple of my own. I admit that they’re not Pulitzer-level or anything, but I like to think that someone out there will enjoy them. Regardless, I’ve recently decided that I’d like to be told more stories. Lots more stories. What’s more, I’d like others to have the same opportunity. There are other sites out there that do what I’ve decided to do, but I’ve opted to do something a little different…

My focus is on the story.

I’ve made Tell Me a Story to do one thing: tell stories. The only requirements to tell a story are a title, and the story itself. If you don’t want to leave your name, you don’t have to. If you don’t want people to contact you via email, you don’t have to leave it. Like I said, the focus is on the story. There’s no real limit on the kinds of stories that you can tell, short of crazy graphic porn/slashfic (there are places for that), so I implore you to tell me your stories.

The stories do go through a review process to help strain out spam, stories that don’t match the rather liberal criteria, and blatant mis-use. I don’t expect a lot of stories to be rejected, as I’m pretty open to almost every kind of story telling.

So if you’ve got a story, tell it.

Support the cause

If you feel like supporting Tell Me a Story, you can link to it, twitter it, facebook it, or use this handy badge and link to the site:

So that’s Tell Me a Story.

Thank you.

UP sits right under Wall-E on the awesome scale. It’s not as epically beautiful, nor is it quite as artistically stunning, but it’s pretty damned close.

UP is a story about multiple characters, some present, some painfully absent. Carl Frederickson has always wanted to be an adventurer. As a young, round-faced child, he watches his childhood hero (Charles F. Muntz) on the big screen in wide-eyed wonder.

On his way home, he comes across Ellie, a fellow adventurer in training. We are then treated to a 20 minute montage of love and life with Carl and Ellie with all of the joys and heartaches that come therein. The montage ends with one of the saddest scenes I have ever seen Pixar create. Carl sitting, alone, in a darkened funeral home. I had to choke back tears, and this was only 10 minutes into the film.

We are then presented with is now a typical morning of Carl, placed to classical music, exquisitely timed, and a horrible scene of what will probably end up being me when I’m old. After a shockingly adult altercation between Carl and a construction worker, Carl is forced to go to an old-age home. The day he was to leave, he opts to lift his house out of the ground and finish an adventure Ellie and He had planned to do for years.

That’s when he discovers Russel on his porch.

Gushing Time

I cannot explain just how amazing and subtle much of the dialogue actually is. Listening to Carl talk to Ellie under his breathe is both close to home to all of us (you all know you talk to people who aren’t there) and painful. Carl’s underlying guilt through much of the film is subtle, but there, and it really adds depth to what would otherwise be a straight-forward kids adventure movie.

Russel is another twist for Pixar. In Finding Nemo, we were presented with a single-parent scenario. Something that is usually avoided in kids movies. In UP, Russel has a father that works to much, and a step mom that he calls by first-name. This throws of Carl as well as much of the audience. He puts on a brave face and wears his love and hope on his sleeve when he talks about his dad, but even his pain cannot be properly masked. It was heartbreaking listening to him talk about his family, and I’m sure most of the kids that see this movie won’t really appreciate the depth to which the writers went to.

Russel also has some of the most damningly honest dialogue in the entire film. Listening to him complain about walking is something that every grown up remembers saying, and most parents have heard some sort of variation therein. He’s simple and Carl can’t stand him, but like most children they can’t help but grow on you.

Kevin the Bird and Dug the (talking) Dog are both used to the best of their ability. Neither are over-played, but are used with the flare and understanding that I’ve come to expect from Pixar. Dug provides some of the best lines I have ever heard from an animated film including (but not limited to):

I have just met you and I love you.

Squirrel!                  Hi there!

I was hiding under your porch because I love you.

The visuals in UP are fantastic, if not slightly stylized. That’s Pixars way though. All of their movies tend to have their own stylistic flare while retaining the properties that make the movie inherently Pixar-ish. Fun fact: The balloons were animated by program, because it was impossible to animate them by hand. The same goes for Kevins feathers, and Russel’s hair. It took them over a year to figure out the system for the Balloons alone. That is dedication, and I love Pixar all the more for going that far for a convincing story.

The only thing I could possibly complain about is that the actual storyline in and of itself is somewhat weak. Thankfully there is so much more going on around that initial storyline that it doesn’t even matter. So many other stories are unfolding around it that it more than makes up for any weakness found in the main line.

Partly Cloudy

I have to give a shout-out to the opening short: Partly Cloudy. A story about where babies come from, using the classic stork methodology. The storks fly to clouds that produce baby puppies, kittens, and people. They are then bundled up and flown out to awaiting homes.

But what about the babies that that no one really thinks of? Baby alligators, Sharks, and Porcupines? They have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the Gus the cloud. His partner, Peck the Stork, is entrusted in carrying all of these dangerous babies to their awaiting homes.

I cannot describe just how funny this short is. Theresa and I were alternating between laughing out loud -borderline obnoxiously laughing- and crying and convulsing from the levels of funny that we were getting from the film. I really wish you could watch it online, but it’s a little hard to find.

Overall

Up is magical. It’s stunning, It’s funny, and It’s got appeal for any and everyone, regardless of age. I plan to own it when it comes out, and I will make sure my children watch if both when they are young, and when they get older. There is so much to appreciate in this film that you simply must watch it at different stages of your life.

If you miss the opportunity to see this in theaters, you are doing yourself a grave injustice. I happened to see it in 3D, but I’ve been told that it is just as magical without things pretending to pop out of the screen. You simply have to see this film. There’s really nothing else to it.

It’s not as stunning as Wall-E,, which is the best animated film I have seen to date, but if Wall-E, was a 100 on the scale, then UP is a 98.

9/10

Anyways, back in March, I was given a fantastic opportunity to visit Japan via a friend of mine. Given that it was a trip to frikkin’ Japan, I couldn’t possibly have said no. Had I known how long the flight was actually going to feel, I might have reconsidered. Going there took somewhere around 18 hours and coming back took almost 24. There’s nothing quite like an 8 hour layover to make you consider killing yourself and/or those around you.

Thankfully the Detroit International Airport has a fantastic massage parlor. Best 30 dollars I have ever spent.

I will also apologize in advance for the load of this page. I’ve got a bunch of photos in this one, so if it takes a while to load… well you’ll have to wait i guess! I’m going to note the numbers of the photos from my flickr just so you can sort of follow along.

In case you are too lazy to visit my flickr set, you can jump to the end of the post, where I have a lovely flash dohickey that will rotate through all of my photos.

For those of you taking breaks between reads for this massive monster post, here’s a quick table of contents for you:

• Getting There (Day One)
• First Impressions: Tokyo (Day Two)
• Day Three (Technically)
• Day Four
• Day Five
• Day Six
• Day Seven
• Day Eight
• In the End
• Photos!

Getting There (Day One)

I didn’t really sleep the night before (I think I slept around 2 hours, and that was a toss-and-turn affair) and by 6 a.m. we were at the Toronto Pearson airport, and by 9 a.m. we were on our way to Detroit, where we were given a lovely 2 hour stop over. To Detroit’s credit, the airport is pretty nice. The area we were in was basically a very, very long tunnel with shops and terminals [ photos 1,2 ]. We ended up sitting around until our next flight, which would bring us straight to Tokyo.

13 hours on a plane is, quite simply, too damned long to be on a plane. I took a couple of interesting photos of Siberia and the ends of the world, which you can find on my flickr album [ photos 3-6 ]. I honestly ran out of things to do while on that flight. I studied a bit of my Japanese (a side project that I’ve been neglecting recently), I played through half of Apollo Justice, and watched a movie or thirty. I had painful cabin fever, and ended up spending a lot of my time just walking around the plane.

To those of you out there that can sleep sitting up, on a plane, or even when uncomfortable: I hate you. I cannot sleep in any of those situations, and so I was up for roughly 40 hours (with a 2 hour pseudo nap) when we finally landed [ photo 7 ].

Another weird thing to get used to: You pretty much lose a day when you fly to Japan. You gain a day when flying back. It sounds simple, but trust me when I say that You will be confused when you get there. Everyone at home is 14 hours behind you. Keep that in mind when you think it’s a good idea to call at 4 in the afternoon Japan Time.

Also, I became sick the day we were leaving (of course) and so as we toured Japan, I ended up wearing a face mask for a better part of the trip.

First Impressions: Tokyo (Day Two)

So when we landed we met Yoshi, our guide for the next week, and were escorted to a bus [ photos 8,9 ]. We drove from the airport directly to our hotel which was located in the Shinjuku Business-ish district. I wish to God I had taken photos of the hotel we stayed at because, frankly, it was fucking awesome. Brand new, and each room was basically a small apartment. Kitchen suite, sliding HD T.V. love seat, and a sweet shower.

I was so enamored with the place that I almost didn’t open my luggage to change. Then I tried and found out that I had lost the key to my luggage. I figured I’d left them in Canada, which was epically  stupid of me. Long story short: after being awake for 40+ hours, there I am 8 p.m. Japan time swinging the largest crowbar I’ve ever held trying to hit a lock that is roughly 1/2 an inch wide. In the end I had to buy new luggage, which set me back roughly 160 Canadian.

Turns out the keys were in my wallet the whole time. I had to laugh when I found them. Then I cried.

Anyways we were taken out for some sort of deep-fried wonder dinner, and then let go to pass out for the night.

Oh and every workplace that requires a uniform basically requires that said uniform be made from polyester. This is so the uniforms can be utterly seamless, unnaturally bright, and shaped in some sort of space-aged Doctor Who style fashion. Spotless and perfect. Freaked me right out.

Day Three (Technically)

When I awoke (at 5:30 Japan Time) Sir and I opted to go walk about once the sun was up and see what was around.We were greeted with sketchy bar streets [ photo 10 ], a sort of micro-shrine [ photos 11-13 ], a Seven Eleven (which are frigging huge in Japan, apparently), and some of the business district which featured some very unique building designs [ photos 14,15 ]. I’d like to point out now that unique building designs is the norm in Japan. We suck architecturally compared to Japan.

After exploring the near surroundings, we were politely shoved onto the tour bus, and off we went to explore Tokyo.

I’m going to make an aside right now, and note that our bus drivers were artists with their bus. They weren’t driving those buses, they were one with them. They could feel the road. When the bus turned, it was by their divine will. The road was their bitch, and their bus their mighty stead. They did things with buses that we didn’t know you could do with buses. They were making turns in busses at speeds that I wouldn’t have done with my Yaris.

Meiji Shrine

Our first stop was to the unrealistically picturesque Meiji Shrine. Words really fail to truly describe just how pretty this place was. There was no garbage, everything was green, the sun was shining, and it was quiet [ photos 16-23, 26-29, 31, 33, 34 ]. Despite being sick and sleep-deprived [ photo 30 ].

While we were there, we got to witness a traditional Wedding Procession [ photos 24,25 ], and I even found where some of the wedding photos had been taken. Nothing is quite as classy as a rug and old Victorian High back chair placed outside [ photo 32 ].

East Imperial Gardens

Our next stop of the day was the very, very large Eastern Imperial Gardens. Only the eastern ones are open to the public year ’round. The rest of the Gardens are private excluding on the Emperors birthday. What the Emperor needs with that much garden, I have no idea. It was easily the size of a small town.

There was a lot of walking involved in the Eastern Gardens, but well worth the steps. Though much of the area was very open, and not as green as Meiji Shrine, it was pretty none the less [ photos 35-55 ]. The trees were all in bloom, and it was a pleasingly warm day (14 degrees? in March? I’ll take it.) In the background of photo 52, you can see the foundations for what used to be a giant watch tower. It was, apparently, frigging tall. I’m sad it’s gone, but the foundations remain, and are still very impressive.

Ueno

We were running ahead of schedule thanks to Yoshi’s amazing ability to keep us moving without being pushy, and so we took a small detour to the Ueno shopping district. Here the girls (and one boy) went nuts shopping while I went on a hunt for new luggage. I had savaged my old one getting it open (Hulk Riiiiiip).

If you’re wondering what shopping in Tokyo is like, observe the photo above [ photo 56 ]. Now remember that you’re in Tokyo, and every shopping district frigging looks like this. Packed with people, stored stuffed into any available crevice (I was actually told about a hat store that was literally a set of stairs going down. When you got to the bottom of the stairs, that was the end of the store.) The main streets offered you the big names – Lacoste, H&M, Guess, Mark Jacobs, etc. – and all of the side streets, alleys, and holes in the wall featured wares to fill in where big stores missed out.

Also, there are a lot of hat stores. The Japanese friggin’ love their headgear. Cowboy hats and flat caps were the big sellers. I was very tempted to buy some hats myself, but my funding was limited, and the hats were a bit on the costly side. I died a little inside every time I left a hat store empty-handed.

Senso-Ji

Senso-Ji is apparently the oldest temple in Tokyo [ photos 57, 58, 62-65, 72 ]. It’s also easily the busiest one we visited during our entire trip. There were people everywhere. You could barely walk through the bazaar area due to the mass of people [ photos 61,66-69, 71]. The bazaar is so busy and so popular that shops have spilled out into the streets beyond, resulting in a massive outdoor mall. I later found out that this style of shopping district is actually very common (and damned convenient). It’s literally a mall, but outside. There are roofs protecting the major routes from weather, and roads that run across them at set intervals. These intervals make for great signage possibilities [ photo 70 ].

It was all so pretty. Reds and whites all over the place, (fake) cherry blossom branches hanging everywhere, some very stunning architecture, and everyone was just so happy to be out and about. The only drawback to coming here was one of the main gates was under massive reconstruction/restoration and we couldn’t see what we were told was a fantastic sight.

Also, I missed out on a monkey that was wondering around. To make up for it, a very old man sought me out in the crowd just to touch me. He was so damnably happy just to have met me, and he was nothing but smiles. I couldn’t even be afraid of him, he was just that happy to have seen me. I assume he went home that night and pulled out his big list of things to do in life, and crossed one off:

• stand on head for 3 days
• meet a real read-headed person (no dye jobs)
• sit on the toilet for a whole day

I was also taught how one gets a fortune at this temple. It involves a large wooden shaker of sorts, and you tumble it around for a while before tilting it on its side. A stick with a fortune number written on it slides out. You say (or in our case present) the number, and it is given to you… for a fee. I can only assume that divining the future requires you to pay off the demons that plague the layers between realities. That or it’s a cash grab. At least in my case it was a fantastic Engerishy fortune [ photo 60 ].

Tokyo Tower

After Senso-Ji, we were back on the bus, and off to our final destination of the day: Tokyo Tower.  This is one of those places that every kid who has ever watched anime ever simply has to visit. It’s a thing that you just have to do. To say that you went to Tokyo and didn’t go up the tower will get you stoned in some circles.

It wasn’t as tall as I was expecting, but it totally blew my expectations for how orange it was going to be. I knew it was orange, but it sets the bar for al things orange. If oranges hadn’t been called orange when they were first seen, they would have been called Towers or something [ photos 73, 81, 82 ].

Also, I have to take a knee with you here and say this: the Tokyo Tower mascots look like either dog penises, or condoms. I know they’re supposed to be towers, but I just don’t see it. They look like something related to having sex. Either the tool or the peripheral, but they look 18+.

Just saying.

Anyways we waited in que for about 20 minutes while the exceptionally uniformed ladies let exact amounts of people onto the multiple elevators to go up to the first observation deck. We didn’t get tickets to the second deck, because they were something like 1200 yen more per ticket. That adds up when you have roughly 30 people in your group.

So we got up to the observation tower, and the view blew my mind. It’s not something I had ever seen before, given that I’ve never been up the CN Tower (for shame, I know), and my fear of heights makes me wary of such ventures. All that aside, I have never in my life seen a horizon that was buildings [ photos 74-78 ]. In every direction, all you could see were buildings with the occasional green space sprinkled in. There was a shrine near by that was massive in size. We didn’t get to visit it but when I go back there, I’ll be sure to make a stop there.

Another thing I noticed was that all the buildings were unique. Unlike Canada, where a developer may get the chance to develop an entire area, in Japan each building looks like it was its own project. Like they found a different person to conceive each building individually. Hell, when we went to the Umeda Sky Building (later in this post) I actually saw a building with a highway running through the 8th floor.

That just isn’t shit you see here.

On our way down from the tower, we were delighted to find more Engerish [ photo 79 ], and the scariest I don’t know what the hell mascot ever [ photo 80 ]. I don’t know what it’s for, but man, does she mean business. I wouldn’t mess with her. She’s seen things. Terrible, terrible things.

We were then shooed off to a traditional Tempura Dinner, which I actually took a photo of [ photo 83 ]. It’s the only photo of any food I actually ate, which is a shame given some of the cool stuff I actually got to eat.

I have to say that all in all, I’m not really a Tempura fan. I like fish, but that was a lot of goddamned fish. They had fish in formats I couldn’t even understand. Fish Jello? This is a good idea to someone?

Oh, and we got an egg dish that looked suspiciously like an oil painting. I was not a fan of that, either.

Day Four

Day Four marked our first day outing. We got on the bus, bright and early, and head off to Hakone [photos 84,85, 87 ] . En route to Hakone, we got to see Mt. Fuji off in the distance, which was a treat [ photo 86 ]. Apparently it’s normally obscured by cloud cover, so we lucked out on seeing it on such a bright, clear day.

Hakone

Hakone is lodged somewhere in the hilly landscape that makes up a lot of Japans countryside. It is very much what I would identify as a tourist location, except that it was in no way touristy. The only way you can tell is by the fact that there was no one walking around. Seriously, the only people I saw were either waiting for the boat, selling tickets for the boat, or driving the two cars that went through town.

Having said that, Hakone, much like everywhere else we visited (excluding the downtowns of Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka) it was amazingly peaceful. The sun was shining, the sky was clear, and there was an arctic wind coming off of the lake. How it was so cold, I have no idea. I’m sure there are things going on with that lake that defy science. I assume the spirits have something to do with it.

I’ll take a moment here to explain that vending machines in Japan are huge, and generally have weird advertisements in them. [ photo 90 ]

Lake Ashi

We approached the dock [ photos 88,89 ], and awaited the arrival of what I thought was going to be a typical lake-based people mover. You know, something you’d see in Toronto or Vancouver. Japan doesn’t fuck around like that. Instead we got a Goddamned Pirate Ship [ photo 91].

That’s right, a pirate ship. Complete with paper mache-inspired fake crew statues [ photo 95 ]. Fun fact: the guy that took my photo with the Cap’n there, was so excited to take my photo that he let out this animalistic scream of pure joy. It took everything in me not to burst out laughing.

As we went along the lake, I couldn’t help but notice just how pretty it all was [ photos 92-94, 96-98 ]. With Fuji in the distance, the picture opportunities just made themselves. If I’d had a more elaborate camera, I would have gone stupid taking photos here.

It took us roughly 40 minutes to get across the lake (Pirates take their sweet-assed time in Japan) and along the way we came across two other ferries. One was a fellow bandit-mover, and the other looked like a prerequisite for riding was a love of champagne and savvy tuxes. Just to make Japan a little more awesome, along the ride, I saw a couple shrines that could only be accessed via boat [ photo 96 ]. Now that’s a shrine that means business.

Mount Komogateke

Mt. Komogatake is one of those mountains that doesn’t look anything like a mountain. When I think of mountains, I think of rock and cliffs and snow caps and climbing equipment. What I wasn’t expecting was greenery running all the way to the top (which is twice as high as the CN Tower). It just looked like a giant hill. Sort of like a grade 6 boy that got his growth spurt way too early. Large, but still kid-looking.

At the base of the mountain-hill was a collection of stores, that I can only assume were for the tourists (a la our group). There was also a golf course, which kind of impressed me, given the local terrain.

We were escorted past all of the shops – salivating for our Yenn like a pack of rabid dogs – to what I can only describe as a cable car station that never had a chance out of the 70′s. It screamed 1973 from every crack in it’s art-deco cement surface. It was all weird curves and… hell it just looked like the 1970s. The one at the top of the mountain looked near identical [ photo 107 ].

We got in the cable car (all 26 of us, as well as natives) and started the 12 minute accent to the top of the mountain. It was a tight group, literally. You couldn’t move in any direction without getting a backpack in the face or a forehead in your eye. I managed to take a couple photos on the way up, though they really don’t give the view any credit [ photos 99,100 ].

Here’s an interesting fact: The tops of mountains are windy. Very, very windy. And cold. Windy and Cold. We were not prepared for this in any way. No one told us these (in retrospect blatantly obvious) facts beforehand. As a result, my ears went totally numb in the 15 minutes I actually spent outside. In that time though, I got some absolutely stunning photos [ photos 101,102, 104 ]. We got the obligatory group shot [ photo 105 ], and then opted to run to the very top of the mountain and visit the tiny shrine [  photo 106]. We came all the way up here, why the hell wouldn’t we run up the muddy, dangerous flag stone steps to see the tiny shrine?

I wish I could remember the story behind the mountain shrine, but all I can recall was a something to do with a dragon that tore up the country side, felt bad, and then settled in the mountains. I’m sure my memory is wrong, but that’s all I can get my memory to pull up.

When we got back into the 70′s building we huddled around a little fire, warming our frozen brains, waiting for the cable car to arrive. When we got back down, we were given some free time to shop, eat, and enjoy the most amazing children’s ride ever [ photo 108 ]. I, as well as some of the students, ended up at a noodle house where I was presented with a very intriguing menu item [ photo 109 ]

In case you’re wondering, I did not end up selecting that specific meal. I opted for something a little less questionable.

Harajuku

After spending far too much money in the biggest gift shop I’ve ever attended, we were moved onto our bus (that somehow navigated the mountain-side and got to the shops before the pirate-ferry had even landed). We coasted along the countryside back towards the population monolith that is Tokyo.

On our way I saw an honest to God Hermit shack. How awesome is that?! I couldn’t even figure out how he got the metal up there to make the shack. Way to go creepy hermit dude. I also found my first bit of graffiti [ photo 110 ], and a dog in a stroller [ photo 111 ]. These were, until the photos were taken, only existing within a realm of theory. I later found out that dog strollers are very common, and graffiti is usually done for effect, and not hooliganism.

Anyways we were delivered almost in the middle of the Harajuku Shopping District. For those of you unaware of what Harajuku is, picture the swankiest shopping street you can. Now imagine that it’s full of alleys that also have swanky awesome stores. Now make it turn in on itself so that it becomes a pretzel of fashion.

That’s almost what Harajuku is, but more majestic [ photos 112,113, 115-117 ].

The girls (and one boy) were utterly beside themselves with joy. To hell with the electric towers (which were awesome, don’t get me wrong) here you could walk around and ogle things in windows with prices that will make your eyes bleed. It was all so pretty, and so very, very expensive.

Expensive, that is, unless you wander down the alleys. This is where the prices go down, the people count goes up, and you get to see some impressively odd stores [ photo 119 ] and and fantastic signage [ photo 118 ]. I counted no less that 5 hat stores in one alley alone, confirming my suspicion that the Japanese have a very (un?)healthy fascination with headgear.

Wandering around Harajuku, I was also introduced to the very publicly advertised Condom Cave. It’s not really a cave so much as a nook. A very,very busy nook. Standing room only sort of busy.

Oh, I also got a can of hot chocolate from a vending machine while walking around. It was warm. And it was good.

The kids piled back onto the bus, laden with bags of over-priced clothing, snacks, and general oddities (we had a kid walking around with a wooden katana and a kamikaze bandanna. We were sent off to dinner, and then more very welcome sleep. I can’t recall what we had for dinner that night, but I think it was pretty tasty.

If anyone wants to know what Tokyo looks like at night here you go [ photos 120, 121 ]:

This photo was taken around 11 P.M. in downtown Tokyo. Notice how bright it is. Tokyo has done away with things like darkness in its streets. Everything was so brightly lit, it was like being at a baseball game at night. With your shadow cast in every direction, you had nothing to fear.

We also took the subway in Tokyo to get around that night. On our way back I snapped a photo for the reserved seating [ photo 122 ]. Fairly normal looking, basically “give up your seat for any of the following: Pregnant Mother, Recent Mother with Child, the Elderly, and the Injured.” All pretty normal right? So why is it that the new mother has a much more pronounced ass? I don’t think the Japanese really thought that pictogram through.

Now remember that I was taking the subway at 11 P.M. on what I think was a Tuesday, though it could have been Wednesday. The amount of people coming out of, and going into, those trains blew my frigging mind. I’ve been on the subway in Toronto, and in London, and nothing prepared me for the mass of buisness suit-clad humanity flowing from those trains. Truly mind-bending.

Day Five

When we awoke, were were shipped onto the bus nice and early so that we could go to the train station.We were being shipped off to Kyoto for the next leg of our trip. We were introduced to the Shinkansen Bullet Train, which went at a speed of around 350… K/H or … M/H… I can’t reacall which, but it was damned fast. I also made sure to get myself a Bento box for the ride.

I was expecting pork, but got fish. The pictures were small and not very detailed. It was still fairly delicious.

Now here’s a story to demonstrate just how awesome Japan is. My friend forgot his camera on the train. we didn’t know this until after it had pulled out of the station at Kyoto. Depressed and despondent, my friend went and told the security staff what had happened. They got him to write down where he was sitting and told him that they would check at the next station.

When the train arrived at the next station (Hiroshima, I believe) the cleaning staff had a look, but could find nothing. My friend was depressed, and assumed that someone had walked off with his camera.

The train staff assured him that when the train was taken in for night cleaning, they would scour the train for his camera, in case it had been moved, or a place overlooked.

The next morning we got a call from the security office in Kyoto. They had found his camera (despite being left where it was for at least 14 hours + downtime) and it was en route, via bullet train, back to kyoto, where it would then be delivered to our hotel.

He got his camera back, completely intact, wrapped in an envelope, wrapped in bubble wrap, and wrapped in another envelope.

That just wouldn’t happen in North America (and wouldn’t, as it would later turn out).

Anyways, when we got to Kyoto station, we were escorted onto another bus that was going to take us around the surrounding area. Our first stop of the day was Nara. Along the way, Yoshi, our tiny yet fantastic guide passed around some candy for us to enjoy [ photos 123, 124 ]. Along the way there, I found a place where taxis are born [ photo 125 ]. There were so many taxis!

Oh, on the way I saw the Nintendo building. I have to say that I was a little let down. I was expecting something more than a white cube.

Nara

Nara is a town about 30-45 minutes outside of Kyoto. It’s a pretty place, and I wish I could have seen more of it while we were there. Most of our time was spend at Todai-Ji – Eastern Great Temple – which is a large temple complex with impressive grounds. It’s a tranquil location that happens to house the worlds largest wooden structure, called the Great Buddha Temple – Daibutsuden – and houses the worlds largest statue of the Buddha Vairocana.

Todai-Ji

Oh, did I mention that deer are sacred in Nara’s Deer Park (where Todai-Ji is located), and the entire grounds of Todai-Ji were overrun with deer (which happen to be protected there)? We were warned not to wave around any paper, because the deer will see it, and the deer will eat it [ photos 126, 128, 133 ].

I have to say that of all the places I visited on this trip, Nara was easily the most relaxing to me. The grounds were clean and quiet, and everything was just so peaceful. I could have spent hours wandering around the Todai-Ji grounds and not even notice the time passing. The grounds were, quite simply, stunning [ 127, 129-132 ].

The inner shrine, housing the Great Buddha Shrine, was a sight all its own. with it’s giant paving stones, it’s golden grass, and it’s fantastic architecture, it was truly something to see. [ 134-138 ]. We took yet another obligatory group shot (I actually don’t have one) and I took another photo of the elusive Yoshi [ photo 139 ]. For a little lady, she did her job amazingly well. To hell with crowds of people and busy schedules. She ruled with a dainty iron fist.

Sadly, most of my photos taken within the shrine itself didn’t turn out. For reasons I can’t understand, 90% of them were blurry. I assume Buddha is camera shy. I did manage to get a couple photos out though [ photo 140-142 ]. Somewhere out there is a photo of my going through a hole in one of the pillars of the temple. From what I was told, if you could fit through the hole, you were eligible to achieve nirvana.

I just fit through. a little wider, and I would have become very, very stuck.

Kasuga Taisha

Also located in Deer Park, the Kasuga Shrine – Kasuga Taisha – is a Shinto shrine created by the Fujiwara family. It’s been rebuilt many times over its life, and apparently has something to do with a renewal cycle. Along the pathways [ photos 143-150 ] were hundreds of stone lanterns that were kept alive via donations from people, familes, and organizations (note that some of the lanterns have papers in them).

When we went into the Shrine, I was amazed at how orange everything was. Much like the Tokyo Tower, this shrine took the colour orange and made it it’s bitch [ photos 151-154 ]. Though it was around this time that I found out about what the colour orange signifies: happiness. Apparently my hair is, in essence, happy. I have happy hair! Alliteration!

In any case the Shrine grounds were very pretty, and filled with stuff that has been standing forever, and just oozed history from their very being [ photos 155-157 ]. This day was easily the most relaxing and reflective day of the trip.

Kyoto at Night

Because if Yoshi’s inhuman ability to get us anywhere ahead of schedule, we had lots of time after dinner in which to explore. We arrived at the hotel (which was not nearly as nice as the first one, but you can’t win them all) we opted to do some wandering around and sauntered over to the Kyoto Train Station.

Bonus: [ photos 158-160 ] these are photos of the 70′s era lounge located in our hotel. Yes, those are porcelain dogs. Yes that’s white leather, and yes, it reminded us all of Scarface.

Now this might sound like a boring option, but if you ever saw the Kyoto Train Station, your jaw would drop. It’s 11 stories tall, including a finished underground area, and it’s full of stores, restaurants (oh my god the restaurants) and was an epic structure in and of itself. It had at least two health clubs in it, and I believe it has two high-end hotels attached to it.

While exploring the outside I came across something amazing:

Astro Boy! [photo 161 ] This is when I found out that Astro Boy (along with everything else done by the same studio) were created in Kyoto! Also, as we went to explore the Train station, I was greeted with some fabulous Engerish [ photos 162-164 ]. Most of the building was closed, sadly, but the restaurants were all open.

All 5 floors of them.

Did I mention that you can go onto the roof of the Kyoto Train station, and walk down to each of the restaurants via their patios? well you can [ photo 165 ]. As it works out, you can actually walk all the way down to the ground level by stairs and escalators. It was awesome. I wish something like this existed in Canada.

On our way back, we opted to stop in at the local 7-11 (seriously, they are everywhere) and see what alcohols they have. I found a rather sketchy rum [ photo 166 ] (at least I think it was rum, could have been anything) but we settled on a rum that came in a medicine bottle. It was called “Dave’s Rum” and from the taste of it, I can only assume that Dave is either an alcoholic, or has no taste buds. As we went back to the hotel, a suped-up van passed us. [ photo 167 ] Now the photo doesn’t give it credit, but I can assure you that it had a totally pink interior.

Day Six

We awoke from our tiny beds, showered in our tiny shower (my head skimmed the top of the shower if I stood up straight, Sir was far less lucky) and were shipped onto the bus to go on a whirlwind adventure through Kyoto. As we only really had one day to see most of the sweet sights, we had to get our A Game on. On our way to our first destination, we crossed a train track (which many of our kids nearly perished on. Don’t play chicken with trains people!) and I snapped a sweet photo [ photo 168 ].

I don’t think I could manage to get a photo like that here if i tried.

Fushimi Inari-taisha

Our first stop was to Fushimi Inari-taisha, a shrine to the Gods of business and if I’m not mistaken, also the Gods of Sake and rice. The first set of temples are to the latter Gods, and the temples further in are to the former. As you go in, there are pathways that lead to smaller shrines and temples, and the pathways are covered in Toriis – Gates – that are all donated by businesses.

Now this shrine held foxes as sacred, but unlike the Deer of Nara who populated the area with no sense of self-preservation, we did not see a single fox.

We wandered around the lower shrine for a while [ photos 169-180 ], before moving off to the inner shrines. A couple of us broke off from the pack to go exploring down a side pathway, and we were rewarded with a bamboo forest, and some private shrines [ photos  188-193 ].

The Inner temple was an interesting sight, lined with fortune stalls and charm stations, it really payed credit to Inari, the God of business and success. We got a couple interesting photos including some posing [ photo 187 ], some more Engerish [ photos 183, 184 ], and some just outright absurd [ photos 185, 186 ].

We traveled through the Torii-riddled pathways [ photos 181, 182, 194, 195 ] back down to the bus, and moved on to our next destination, but only after visiting the shops that lined the bottom of the shrine, and my picking up some of the best sushi I have ever tasted. I don’t have a photo of the place, but she had a wooden cash register, which I do have a photo of [ photo 213 - dont know why it's out of order ]. It blew my mind; it was almost totally made of wood. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t even know if it worked, or if she just pretended.

Either way that sushi was damned tasty.

Sanjisangen-do

Our next stop was Sanjisangen-do, which translates, quite literally to Hall With Thirty Three Spaces Between Columns, but is normally referred to as Rengeo-in, which translates to Hall of the Lotus King. Photos were not allowed to be taken within the hall itself, which is a damned shame, because it was stunning. There are roughly 1000 statues of the Kannon. My Buddhism is sketchy, so I can’t recall exactly what she was but from what I understand she had something to do about the embodiment of compassion.

If any accomplished Buddhists would like to correct me, I’d be happy to make the edit.

Anyways, upon entering, we were greeted with some pseudo-engrish [ photo 196 ], and told that we were not allowed to wear shoes within the hall. It was colder in the hall than it really should have been, and man, all those statues were so well done. They were amazingly preserved considering how old they are. The newest ones are from the 13th century, which makes them almost 800 years old, and given how good they looked, I couldn’t help but be impressed.

When we got out of the hall, I put my shoes back on and started exploring the rest of the grounds. I swear it was amazing. [ photos 197-212 ]. They had fantastic trees in full bloom, and if I’m not mistaken, some of those photos have cherry blossoms in them. We wandered around the grounds for a while before we were escorted again to visit our next location

Kinkaku-ji

Kinkaku-ji, also known as the Golden Pavilion Temple, is quite simply the most picture-esque location you can visit in Kyoto. I don’t know if you can take a bad photo in this place if you tried [ photos 214-219 ].

As you can see, the photo above was taken with a normal point and shoot, and it looks awesome (in my own, humble opinion) there were people there with lenses as long as my arm, and I’m sure viewing those photos would melt your brain. The grounds were so amazingly green, and wandering through them really does help instill you with peace, despite the fact that there are at least 800 people walking around doing the same thing.

Now from what I understand about the temple, it used to be a Shoguns residence, but was later turned into a temple by one of his sons. It’s been burnt down and rebuilt a couple times due to wars. The top two stories are covered utterly in pure gold leaf.

That’s right, this house was painted in gold. How many people could say that in this day and age?

As you wander around, there are donation shrines that you are supposed to try and throw money into, like a mystical version of a carny game. The only prize is a private blessing by the higher powers. sadly my only attempt bounded off of the side of the bowl, so no lucky blessing for me. I was still rather impressed that I managed to aim that well.

Trust me when I say that I have terrible, terrible aim.

On the way out I managed to snap a photo of a sign telling us that we may not return [ photo 220 ]. I’m sure that’s not what they meant, but it was still rather funny.

Once we were done being wowed by the serene ostentatious-ness of Shoguns past, we piled back into the bus for our next stop, which was something I was looking forward to way more than any straight guy really should.

Kyoto Textile Centre

We arrived at a very normal-looking building, and escorted inside. At first glance, it seemed like a typical office building. Typical, that is, until we rounded the corner and were presented with a fashion catwalk.

Heading up the stairs, we were then presented with as many silk items as you can imagine, and then tripled. Silk shirts, silk ties, silk kimonos, silk fans, silk silk, silk frikkin’ everything. In retrospect I wish I had dropped the extra coin to get myself a tie or two, because the detailing in them was amazing.

What was even more amazing is that they had looms there. They were making the fabric and clothing right in front of us. Tiny, aged Asian women hunched over a table and cloth, wielding their tools, creating art from the fabric. I honestly could have sat there watching them forever, but there was some shopping to be done, and a fashion show to witness.

I picked up a silk kimono for Theresa, a deep purple one featuring Cranes in flight, and winced as I handed over most of my remaining money. At the very least she now has a fabulous kimono. Now all she needs is an excuse to wear it.

Anyways, with a dimming of the lights, and a sudden increase of thumping music, the fashion show was underway. I had to fight my way through a good portion of the crowds just to get the spot that I had, and I was still a good distance away from the catwalk. I wish I could have been closer, but I can assure you that it was impressive [ photos 221-230 ]. One girls kimono stood out from the rest. Easily the most exquisite the last one that came out [ photo 229 ], it was amazing. My camera couldn’t give it the credit it’s due thanks to the crazy lighting they were using.

A couple of our kids opted to ditch the show and try and find a certain martial arts supply store. They got a little lost, and so did we looking for them. Regardless of the delay, we were still way ahead of schedule. You know what that means?

More shopping.

Shopping in Kyoto

Shopping in downtown Kyoto reminded me a lot of shopping on Queen street in Toronto. Except if Queen street ran through the heart of Chinatown, and then china town was frigging huge. I explored more fantastic side streets, and walked through a department store that blew my mind.

Let me tell you something about department stores in Japan. Here we have things like The Bay, and Sears, and they are wide stores that usually have an underground and maybe a second floor. In Japan? They have an underground floor, maybe two, and then at minimum 6 floors going up. Now they may not be quite as wide, but the total shopping area for Japanese department stores dwarfs anything we have here.

Don’t even get me started on the “electric towers” they have there. It’s like Future Shop (or Best Buy, for our American counterparts) but awesome.

Now something to be said about Kyoto is that their questionable areas and their classy areas are crammed very, very close together. [ photos 231-236 ] You will notice that some of the photos feature such colourful things as the “Fetish House” and “Club Laid” but just down the street was the swanky shopping area. It was an interesting experience to say the least.

That night we had some sort of omni-omelet (Okonomiyaki) which didn’t sit all that well with me. Too many weird flavours going on for me to really enjoy. There was also a good-humoured prank that when totally arwy when the prank tool in question was thought to water. Turns out it was an oil of sorts. That didn’t go down all too well.

Kyoto at Night

Unlike Tokyo, which banishes the darkness, Kyoto seems to use it to make everything as artistic as possible. Shadows weren’t scary, but merely added to the ambiance. A group of the children, myself, and some of the other chaperons went on a night time excursion back to the shopping district, to explore some of the many, many areas that we hadn’t got to before. While the chaperons went to a bar for a drink, I went exploring with the kids.

We found a lot of very interesting things. Amongst them:

• [ photo 237 ] – This phone was found outside of a store. It’s a public-use phone, and it’s sitting on a lop-sided desk.
• [ photo 238 ] – A Koi fish the size of my thigh. We found this monster in a shrine that was located in the middle of the shopping district.
• [ photo 239 ] – A coffee shop exhibiting some fantastic Engerish.
• [ photos 240,241 ] – A collection of girls walking around in Disney-themed pajama one-pieces.
• [ photo 242 ] – A tiny dog party. All the dogs were of the same breed, and there were many more that were off camera.
• [ photo 243 ] – a giant, automated crab for a crab food joint. I later found out that this is a chain, and that all of the chains have these massive crab monsters. That made me sad.
• [ photo 244 ]  – A Company called Omnigod. apparently God didn’t just go corporate, he’s gone to the omega.

On our way back – via the Kyoto subway system – I snapped a photo of the prettiest kimono-wearing girl that I saw in my time in Kyoto. Now I’m not a pervert or a creeper, I’m just saying that that girl looked very, very pretty in her Kimono (which was also fantastic).

That’s something about Kyoto I didn’t mention before: girls and ladies in Kyoto will randomly wear their Kimono. There isn’t always ceremony behind the choice, they simply want to look pretty. I have to say that they honestly do look very pretty. Our Sunday finery just doesn’t come close to their day to day Kimonos.

Oh, interesting fact: if a woman’s kimono has long, hanging sleeves, they are not married. If they are cropped to the arm, they are married, or at the very least spoken for.

Day Seven

Osaka

We had to be up early the next day, because we had to dive into the bus and head to Osaka for the day. Now Osaka was an interesting place; with it’s off-shore airport (which we would be visiting soon) and it’s strange mix of eastern and western architecture. It was easy to pick out which building were built by what district, and it really went to show how boring Western architecture tends to be. Straight lines and box towers, oh boy. I managed to take some photos both before, and during our departure from Kyoto, though I wish more had turned out. [ photo 246, 247 ]

As we went through the city, Yoshi told us tidbits about Osaka. Sadly I can’t remember too much, as I was damned tired from having to wake up early. We hit a slight snag, as where we were originally going to park was closed off for a marathon, so we ended up having to take an impressive detour to get to our destination.

Osaka Castle

Osaka Castle [ photo 248 ] was probably the biggest let down of the trip. From the outside it looked fairly impressive, but much like everything else in Japan, it’s apparently had some fire-related issues. That is to say that it’s burnt to the ground at least three times.

That always instills you with confidence.

Now the inside of Osaka castle was pretty much a pseudo-interactive museum, which was a huge bust for me. I was expecting cool castle-related stuff, but instead I got armour behind glass cases, and miniature soldiers dieing in a miniature war. Not really my cup of tea. On that note, they would let you wear some of the stuff [ photo 249, 250 ].

The view was pretty solid, though not nearly as impressive as Tokyo Tower’s [ photo 251-253 ].

Where Osaka Castle really shines is in the grounds surrounding the castle. If they could have made that park any prettier, butterflies would have been showering down self-affirming sparkles. wonderful pathways that lead all over the place, nice and wide, and there were even mini trains that could bring you around for a small fee.

Along the way, one of the kids and I happened across an old man. This old man realized we were Canadian, and then decided to flip the fuck out in the best way possible. He got a photo with us, his smile shattering reality. He was spouting off random English phrases with such joy and effort that I swear he was starting to foam at the mouth. We were worried that he was going to have a heart attack.

Sadly because I ran into the happy man, I missed out on feeding a parrot.

With my mouth.

That’s right.

On our way back to the bus, I snapped a couple photos of the best gate ever [ photo 254 ], and the most amazing minimalist examples of bathroom signs I’ve ever seen [ photo 255, 256 ]. Simply by moving the intersection of lines, they clearly define who was to go where.

And let’s not get started on the toilets in Japan that aren’t space aged. Porcilin Holes in the ground.

Dotombori

For the afternoon, we were introduced to Dotombori [ photo 257, 262, 265, 266 ]. Dotombori is a major attraction in Osaka, and I can see why. It’s a massive, single street that runs along the Canal that shares the streets name. It’s full of bright, colourful signs, a bing-boggling array of stores, and some amazing engineering in terms of fitting that many people into that narrow of an area.

Dotombori is also where I found the next Giant Crab (there were actually two, if you walked long enough to find em). Wikipedia is telling me that these crabs are roughly 6 meters tall, which sounds about right to me. This would turn out to be the least ridiculous thing I would see in Dotombori.

We stopped at a noodle hut at the start of our adventure for lunch. I can honestly say that the place was so typically Japanese that I almost wept. A little old lady cooked everything, and the years of hard noodle labour gave her a permanent arc in her back. She was so hunched and so short that she could just walk under the counter without having to lift it. I slurped those noodles hard, and for good reason: they were fantastic.

I also had the pleasure of consuming what is noted as being “The Worlds Best Hamburger.” Now I’m a pretty big hamburger fan, and even the remote chance that I could eat the worlds best burger was too big an opportunity to pass up. I bought the 350 Yenn burger (that’s roughly 5 dollars at the time) and consumed. It tasted like lasagna. Not in a bad way, but It was by far the most unique taste experience I think I will ever have from biting into a burger.

I’ve got too many things to write them in paragraph form, so here we go:

• [ photo 258 ] – Dragon Gate, one of many, many adult arcades for people to spend their money. The lengths that these places go to entice was almost disgusting. There was one here that I didn’t take a photo of, but I can assure you they had bi-planes hanging outside of their hyper-lit shop.
• [ photo 259 ] – A noodle hut with a dragon on it that obviously suffered one too many head traumas.
• [ photo 260 ] – This is a dog in clothing. This dog just came out of a dog cafe; a place for dog owners to take their dogs and talk about dog dressing and other dog-related topics. This was not the first, nor the last dog in clothing that I would see on my trip.
• [ photo 261 ] – I don’t know what the hell this is, but it’s there, and it’s big.
• [ photos 263, 264 ] – The first and only pet shop I came across in my travels. All the animals were kept in small class boxes (as seen in the photos) and I couldn’t help but want to free them all. We were quickly told to stop taking photos. I can only imagine why.
• [ photo 267 ] – Glico Man. The giant running man is actually the logo for Glico candy, and has been around since 1935. Note the insane use of advertising space on any available surface. Now multiply that by a billion. That’s a good start on the sort of advertising saturation you’ll experience here.
• [ photo 268 ] – I assume this was an advertisement for a bottled green tea or something. I don’t know, but I wanted one of those for myself.
• [ photo 269 ] – I have nothing to say about this photo that it doesn’t say for itself. I don’t know what that store did. I doubt it knew either.

I enjoyed wandering around Dotombori immensely, and I’d love to go back again, if only to get a ride on the ferris wheel. It wasn’t operating that day, which broke my heart a little.

Umeda Sky Building Observatory

the Umeda Sky Building looks like it was built by a man who failed physics class. Two spires with various connecting hallways, and an observation deck with a giant hole in the middle [ photo 270 ].

As we ascended the tower, I couldn’t help but notice the numerous emergency stations along the walls [ photo 271 ]. Now maybe it’s just me, but I can’t help but think they look just a bit too much like Hal for my liking. I was just waiting for the elevator to stop half way up, and start talking to us in an eerily calm voice.

When we got near the top, we had to take a transparent escalator to the top [ photo 272 ]. Basically the Umeda Sky Building doesn’t give a shit about anyone who may find heights scary, and assume that if you’ve come this far, then You’ll have no problem going through a tiny transparent tube to your final destination.

When we got to the top (finally) I was shocked at how retro everything felt. The chairs, sofas, even the observation stations. It all smacked of the 70′s with such gusto that I actually sort of enjoyed it [ photo 273, 276, 278].

The view from the Sky Building was fairly impressive [ photo 275, 277, 279 280 ], but what got me the most was the highway that went through a building. Honest to got, they built a building around one of the highway turns [ photo 274 ]. I wanted to drive through that so much that it hurt. Never have I seen something of the like, and it drew my attention like a moth to the flame.

Sadly we never did drive through it, though we did get very close.

I was also introduced to the Spring Stool [ photo 281, 282, 283 ]. You could actually lean like I was in the photos and it supported your weight. Very weird feeling.

There was also a room with some neat seats that effected the projector inside, depending on the pressure of the seats. Anyways, there was a sign outside of the room [ photo 284 ] depicting what was, and was not, acceptable. Now I don’t know what a heart symbol stands for let alone a heart symbol and two people sitting on a couch.

Making out is alright? Don’t do anything on the platform? This stuff basically writes itself.

I also took a couple photos of random funny things that I found [ photos 285-287 ]. The old guard standing along out in the rain struck me as epic in a funny sad way, and then we just have some fantastic packaging.

When we got back to the hotel, we got some more alcohol (terrible, terrible rum, some wine in a can, and some Coronas), and decided to relax and enjoy our final night across the world. Of course things always lead to the immature, and things like [ photo 288 ] are inevitable.

Day Eight

This was a very sad, and a very, very long day. Most of the kids (myself included) would have been quite happy to stay in Japan forever. The catch being that we had people we missed and non-existent visas. Regardless we were piled onto the bus and shipped out to the airport located on the man-made island on the coast of Osaka. While on our travels, I took a couple photos [ photos 289, 290, 296, 297 ] of our travels, and some photos of tiny erasers [ photos 291-295 ] that Yoshi had handed out to everyone. Everyone got a unique eraser, which really shows dedication on both her part, and on part of the eraser manufacturer.

We crossed a 13 kilometer bridge to get to the airport, which was impressive on its own. Now imagine that the bridge is three layers high, and trains run on it as well.

That makes it way, way cooler.

Kansai International Airport

Osaka Airport was an interesting place. Other than having a sweet cross-breeze and feeling very new – construction on it started 22 years ago – you are also treated to ceiling art that actually moves in the breeze [ photo 299 ]. Very neat.

So here’s a funny story: One of our kids lost his passport. Well okay, “Lost” is the wrong term. He knew exactly where it was, but it was not on his person. It was laying on the bed of his hotel room back in the heart of Osaka. Yoshi was on the phone so fast you would have thought it was attached to her head. After some quick work, we had the passport en route to the airport via express taxi.

The gate closed in 40 minutes, and for 40 minutes we waited. Then we waited some more. 55 minutes of waiting, and the passport arrived. 160000 Yenn later (that’s roughly 200 dollars) we were heading towards the gate. We said our goodbyes to Yoshi [ photo 298 ], who was utterly amazing on this trip. I’d recommend her to anyone in a heart beat.

Now in North America, this would be one of those “You’re Fucked” scenarios. What do they do in Japan? They keep the gate open for you. Then they escort you through security. Then they run you, and I do mean run, to the monorail that they are holding for you. Then they have people on corners to direct you to your flight, because everyone in the fucking building knows who you are, what you look like, and where you are going.

And when we got to the gate? The original lady that helped us, who didn’t get on the monorail, is waiting at the gate to say goodbye to us.

She was absolutely amazing, and was the only one of two people to whom I actually bowed. I said thank you and gave the head nod to anyone that helped us on our trip, but this lady went well above the call of duty to make sure we got on that plane.

We had a very brief stop over in Tokyo as we took on more passengers, and then it was off to Detroit, where our souls would die a little.

Detroit International Airport

Fuck you Detroit International Airport. I hate you so very, very much. You may look pretty, and you may have a cute monorail, but no one in their right mind would want to spend 8 hours stuck in you.

That’s what happened to us. You would think that we could have just taken a bus back to Toronto, which we should have been able to. Sadly, due to scheduling retardation, we were forced to wait 8 hours for a connecting flight to Toronto that would only take an hour. We were not impressed

Some of us managed to sleep the time away [ photo 300 ], but those of us who can’t pass out anywhere – me – ended up wandering around the terminal, like lost duckings looking for their mother.

I ended up getting a massage, which felt amazing after being on a 10 hour flight. We also ate, and I killed the rest of my DS’s battery sitting around.

Some kid left their camera sitting around, and when they went back for it, it was missing. We had lost and regained very important things all week, and within the 8 hours we were in Detroit, a camera was stolen. It really makes you think about us on a societal scale, doesn’t it?

In the End

I loved it in Japan. I’d live there if I could. At the very least I’m going back there for a longer stay. I encourage any and everyone to go over there and be amazed at the richness of culture and history that you can find around every turn. My only wish is that we could have visited Hiroshima, which another tour group got to do. They were staying longer though, so it makes sense.

Photos!

And here are all of the photos from my trip. Enjoy!

See the problems with my playing these sorts of games are:

• I’m no good at them.
• I lack the toned fore-arm muscle of the veteran gamer.
• I lacked a console.

Well I now have a console, so I have no excuse as to whether I could try to play them or not. Turns out I still suck at them, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. The forearm muscle is a slow process, and I’ve already given myself muscle strain resulting in a fantastic carpel tunnel attack. You just don’t feel like a man until you’ve got to ice your forearm because of extreme button mashing.

Or is it “You just can’t feel like a man when you have to ice your forearm because of extreme button mashing”?

Either way, it hasn’t stopped me from playing Castle Crashers with extreme vigor.

I am currently very in love with The Behemoth‘s Castle Crashers. It’s a game that I can pick up and put down for an hour or so at any given time. It’s got this quality about it that lets me enjoy it (whether it’s frustrating the crap out of me or not) every time I sit down to play. Maybe it’s the solidity of the game mechanics; maybe it’s the well-placed fake-outs and humor; maybe it’s the constant challenge it provides. It’s very probably because of the joy one gets from beating the hell out of various enemies with reckless abandon.

Probably all of the above.

Mechanics

So as I said, the game mechanics are pretty solid. I’ve only ever run into one issue with the game crapping out, and that was at my friends house where a cut scene didn’t activate. We have no idea how we did it, nor do we know how to recreate it. We weren’t too pleased with that fact, as we had to do the whole damned level over again.

The enemy A.I. is only so complex, and yet it still manages to take full advantage of when you’re down. It thrives on kicking you in the kidneys while you’re on the ground. Revels, one might even say. They see, to have a set pattern of having equal numbers of guys attacking you head on and magicing/arrowing your unfortunate self. It does get aggravating after a while.

Castle Crashers has a bit of an RPG element to it by including an experience bar, four stats you can add points to (Attack, Magic, Defense, Agility), and even has hidden items, weapons, and pets. A neat twist with it all is that you gain experience by landing blows on enemies, and not by killing them. It took my friend and I a while to figure out why he was exceeding me in experience despite my doubling (sometimes tripling) him in kills. This introduces an interesting quandary: Get a weapon that adds to your Physical or Magical attack, or sacrifice those stats for increased Defense (allowing more hits on bad guys).

The sweetest part about the game is that after you’ve beaten it in normal mode, you can switch to “insane” mode and play through it all again. Now I used to wonder why they dubbed it “insane,” until I started playing through it. Hard mode, as it turns out, is for sissies. Insane mode basically triples or quadruples every enemies defense, health, and damage. Believe me that we are actually stuck fighting through a certain area because my friends magic user is useless in it. We honestly can’t do enough damage fast enough to the murder-machines.

Castle Crashers also does a fine job of introducing a variety of game modes. You have your standard side-scrolling bashery, your auto-scroll dodging level, your random swimming level, and even a flying portion. They really manage to mix things up as well as making everything feel fresh. It actually tooke me a moment to realize that there are a bunch of auto-scrolling levels, because they don’t really feel like them. That’s impressive

Humour

I cannot talk too much about the humour of the game without giving away most of the gags therein. Suffice it to say that there are many times when my friend were caught laughing for far too long at a well delivered joke. The active humour aside, many of the animations within the game allow for a solid chuckle. Watching the King bounce around on his Pony while being attacked by thuggish bees is just so absurd that you can’t help but laugh.

Did I mention that you play a game of volleyball as a “boss fight?” No? Well there you are then.

Visual/Audio Appeal

Castle Crashers is, quite simply, nice to look at. Sure, it’s not some insane 3d rendered planetscape where everything looks photo-realistic. In fact it’s almost simple in its cartoony goodness. Having said that, there is obvious polish that has been added to everything. Subtly added things that just help make the presentation of the game that much better. Maybe it’s the fact that you can see a bad guys skeleton when he gets electrified, or how enemies smolder after they’ve been hit with fire. How about an enemy that throws up the horns before you fight?

I have to mention quickly that when you’re not fighting for your life, make sure you give the backgrounds a gander. They aren’t amazing in and of themselves, but they do usually contain within them more humour and added style that makes everything just that much better.

It’s the little things that really bring about a great visual experience, and this game does it in spades. Oh, and the game is HD ready. That’s an added bonus.

Now the audio in this game is something that just cannot not… not not be enjoyed. The boys over at Newgrounds (where some of The Beheamoths crew came from) have released much of the music in their Castle Crashers section if you’re interested. Much of the music loops flawlessly (there are some exceptions, sadly) and I can guarantee that at least one of the songs will get stuck in your head. The common one for me is the song that plays within the Ark.

Throw in some solid action sounds (raising undead baddies never sounded so good!), and you’ve got yourself some really solid audio to enjoy.

Replay Value

This game comes with so much potential replay value that I am tempted to use the term “oodles.” I won’t but it’s right there, in the shadows, waiting patiently. First off, You have all of the Achievements, which are standard 360 fare. Then you’ve got all of the pets to collect, All of the weapons to get (some of which require you to trade with other players online), and 20 unlockable characters. If that wasn’t enough, there are even two mini games added on:

• All you can Quaff: this game is basically an exercise in pain. You mash the X and Y buttons repeatedly trying to eat your food faster than anyone else. First to finish five plates wins!
• Arena: It seems to play the first arena in offline mode, and I can only assume that online mode yields a “to the death” mode with the players.

On top of all that is the fact that you can play Castle Crashers with up to three other people online making it all that much more fun. Many of the Achievements actually require you to play in online mode, which is both a good and bad thing.

Cost

Dirt cheap. I can’t recall the exact price (somewhere around 800 Microsoft Points rings a bell) but it’s utterly worth it. This game pays for itself in play time as well as over all enjoyment. Added to that are DLCs (Downloadable Content Packs) which give you access to new playable characters, weapons, and even a new pet. They currently only have one DLC out (costing 160 Points), though there are many hints as to more.

Overall

Totally and completely worth it. If you have an XBox 360 and you don’t have this game, you are basically shaming yourself. It’s cheap, it plays well, it’s funny, it’s enjoyable, and it’s got oodles of replay value. I can’t think of a reason you wouldn’t want to get it.

9/10

God damn it all to the Abyss I said “oodles.”