Well hellloooo! La, la,la! (start it of with an Seinfeld-reference, they'll get it)
So here we go with three new entertainment-thingies. We've got everything you need, your romance story, your claustrophobia, your monsters. Come up come up, don't be shy and read through this weeks post of Simons x3!
Paperman is an Academy-awards nominated silent black-and-white animated short-film from Disney. It was shown in theaters in front of Disney's Wreck-It-Ralph, but can now be found on the internet. The animation is based on a new technique called Meander. It combines hand-drawn animation with CG-animation. How? I don't know, sorry. But what I do know is that I like it, a-whole-lot.
The story centers around a young man who one day has an encounter with a cute woman. They share a moment while waiting for the train. But with an blick of the eye she jumps on her train and our hero is left alone on the platform. He then later sees her from his office window and tries to get incontact with her again.
It's a film about not giving up to easily while trying to get romance.
John Karhn, the director of Paperman, says in a
video that the inspiration for this short-film came from when he took the train to work every morning. And that there sometimes would appear a woman with whom he got some sort of connection with. But who then would get lost in the chaos of the morning subway traffic.
You can see Paperman for yourself over at
Youtube.
Prison Architect is an upcoming prison-management game from Introversion software, who has previously made such low-budget indie games as Uplink, Darwinia and DEFCON. It's in alpha right now, but was made available to the public back in September. You will have to pay to get access to it though, 30$ will get you into the alpha and you'll also get the full version later when it gets released and "if we're lucky enough to get on Steam we'll also give you a steam key". So it was not the final version of the product that I played, and changes will probably be made to it as time goes on.
I've had some experience with these kind of games before. It reminded me of Simcity but mainly of a game I used to play a bunch as a child, Theme Park. In a, some-what amusing,
video that the developers has released they jokingly call it the world's first "lock-em up" and that it was inspired by Theme Hospital, Dungeon Crawler and Dwarf Fortress.
You are in charge of a prison. It's up to you to construct all of the buildings and rooms, hire all the staff and keep all the prisoners locked-up. You can also hire a psychologist to get inside the minds of you're inmates and see what kind of needs they all have, and choose whether you'd like to fulfill those needs or not.
This game has quite a steep learning-curve, or rather a lack of guidance. It opens up with a tutorial where you learn a lot of the basics like constructing buildings and installing electricity. And about what defines a specific room. But then when you are suppose to start you're own prison it (at least it did for me) can feel a bit stressful to go from the tutorials pre-built prison to you're own blank slate.
I had to figure most of the game out on my own by clicking through all of the menus and just by doing. My brother also played the game the same time as I did and having someone to exchange experiences with really helped.
Just the fact that you can have some money-support in the beginning if you choose to meet certain standards, is a huge leg up. And it's never presented to you in any effective way.
In my experience while playing this game prisoners fight A LOT. Almost all the time. And when you haven't even built an infirmary or hired any nurses yet all of the staff and the prisoners will all just go around injoured or just stand there uncountious. This game, just like Theme Park, is fun just to watch. It's like you an ant-farm but with violence. And the very basic art-style adds a lot of charm too.
So if you've got an itch only a lock-em up prison management game like prison architect can scratch then maybe get it early and have that itch scratched right now. Or just wait until the game gets an official release. It will probably take a while but then you'll at least know what it is that you're getting.
Fringe is an science-fiction police drama. It follows a small unknown branch of the Homeland Security that specializes in cases having to do with fringe-science. These can be cases involving a human mutated into some weird transhuman being, attacks from a parallel universe or a character with the ability to foresee peoples deaths.
This x-files resembling show started its first season in 2008. Being produced and created by J. J. Abrams who at the time was the genius behind the hit TV-show Lost and
who you might know is the director for the next Star Wars movie.
I started watching the series the summer before the premier of it's third season. The first two seasons were a fun procedural-series that would often times cause me to eject an audible gasp. It has always had a huge on-going story-arc with some smaller arcs to keep you entertained during the long trip. But after the second season the series changed into more of an serialized-format and picked up some great momentum story-wise and offered it's two greatest seasons thereafter.
The series aired it's final episode just a couple of weeks ago and during it's five seasons this series has given it's fair share of great character developments, oh-shit moments, playful stand-alone episodes, different title-screen variations and fun twists on scientific theories. The greatness of the show lies in the contrast between monster of the week and characters with great depth and interesting backgrounds. And it was with teary eyes that I watched the finally, and I will always remember Fringe as one of the greatest.
Please, if you like science-fiction then give it a chance!
Yeah so that's that then chaps!
Ha en bra dag!
/Simon
