2013 in Video Games

Like last year I kept track of my video gaming progress on the CheapAssGamer completed games log.

I was thinking for this year, maybe I’ll cross-post these as they happen on this site, but for now, here’s my 2013 gaming-in-review. My goal, once again, was to complete 40 games.

January (3):
: RAGE - Rails FPS for the iPad. Kind of fun once you get the hang of it. Loads more achievements than I chased, which is good since there are only three levels. It almost feels like cheating to start with this. Just played through it because it was a big drive space hog I wanted to get rid of. 3/5
: Little Inferno - Platinum Rainbow Elite Status in the Tomorrow Corporation Loyalty Program achieved. I think I hoped there would be more videos, or a longer endgame. This was kind of fun, and better than people in the steam thread made it sound, but not nearly as wonderful as that kotaku review would suggest. 3/5
: Devil's Attorney - Courtroom strategy kind of game I saw on some best-of-year lists. Gameplay is fine in bursts, and it got me through a dreadful open mic last night. Voice acting is good, but the writing is pretty terrible. Like if you had an uncle who wasn't funny, and he didn't think he was funny either, but someone told him he has to be funny for the kids and then he can go back to reading his Clive Cussler novels. 3/5

February (3):
: Hundreds - iPad puzzle game. I thought the difficulty would ramp up until I just had to quit, but I made it through! 4/5
: Biolab Disaster - I don't remember why this was on my phone. And now that I've seen it's 10 minutes of gameplay through to completion, it isn't. 3/5
: Tiny Tower - I guess I would count it if I just played some DLC for an existing game. Tiny Tower added a few sets of new floors since I 'completed' it last year. I've collected all of those and all the new missions, and all but one perfect employee. Disappointed there weren't new costumes to go with the new floors though. (Update in May: They did another update, 8 more floors, 1 more costume, I'm caught up again.)
(Update in August: Something happened that ruined my tower. There are people employed on floors that are empty, and all the costumes are gone. The only way to get people out (because they can’t be evicted while restocking the nothing) is to guess correctly what I had on every previous floor. I think I’m done with this one forever.) 3/5

March (4):
: Spec Ops: The Line - I'm torn over this one, but not for the usual reasons. On the one hand, I would say this was way overrrated, and possibly I would have liked it more if I hadn't heard so much about it in advance. I didn't read any spoilers, just how crazy and twisty and so on it was going to be. On the other hand, I would have never played what appeared to be a generic military shooter if I hadn't heard all that stuff. It reminded me a lot of Bulletstorm, plus some of that Medal of Honor game I played last year about how war isn't good. I love Apocalypse Now, but once I hear we're looking for Col. [C/K]onrad, it's pretty obvious what the story is going to be. It was a good enough value for $2, but maybe a little too ham-handed for me. Saw four endings, two difficulties, all but 2 achievements. 3/5
: The Button Affair - Perfectly fine little game for what it is. Uses the phrase “Shut your beak, Victor!” which is excellent. Saw two endings. 3/5
: 400 Years - This year's first little web thing to make the list. It's like Das Rad: The Game. Pretty neat. Found two endings, although they weren't as congruous as I might've hoped. 4/5
: Ridiculous Fishing - Nothing wrong with it, but now that I've collected everything, I'll probably never open it again unless there's an update. Saw ending, filled fish-o-pedia, bought all hats. For an indie hat simulator, it's okay, but it's no TF2. Not worth the money, imo. 3/5

April (2):
: X-COM: Enemy Unknown - Pretty great. I wanted to be sure to play it since it was one of the most expensive purchases of my holiday season. One victorious run on normal difficulty and exactly one multiplayer match took about 25 hours and earned 32/55 achievements. Bit of an anti-climactic final mission. Might go again, but I probably need a break first so it's not totally infuriating to go back to untrained troops with no gear. 5/5
: The Darkness 2 - Pretty lousy. I picked this one up because of all the discussion over in the steam thread when Amazon had it for a couple bucks. All the yip-yap in this game... sheesh. I finished it since I heard it was short, but nothing about the plot was for me at all. Best part was Johnny, when he's telling you about your artifact collection. Just the one ending, on one difficulty, 41/50 achievements. 2/5

June (1):
: Go Round - 99 level matching puzzle game thing on the phone. Basically fine. Fun side-thing to do during a boring movie or open mic or something. 3/5

July (5):
: Chopper - Short little side-scrolling jungle strike kinda game. Some blog pointed out how it was free supposedly as part of the iTMS anniversary sale. Shrug. 2/5
: Mirror's Edge - The story of a girl who will stop at nothing to collect purses. She flips out over 'em. Like the console version, the running around is a lot more fun than the being shot at. The final 'boss' is absurd and inconvenient. This actually was part of the above-mentioned sale. 3/5
: Hard Reset (and Exile DLC) - Very old-school shooter with frustrating level design, predicated on not being able to crouch, and the need to cut or restore power to just everything. Essentially 3 enemy units. The 3 or 4 boss battles were especially enjoyable as an alternative to walking down the blue hall. I was excited it was over, but then I was dropped right into the free DLC extension for a couple hours. The Exile DLC comes with one new enemy type, one new boss, orange halls instead of blue, an incredible amount of backtracking, and no more cut-scenes between levels (which is fine, really). At some point I just accepted that there's no actual story explaining why these robots must die, put on All Day, and circle-strafed my way to the unsatisfying conclusion. Started on hard difficulty, quickly dropped to normal after discovering the unevenly spaced checkpoint-only save system. 2/5
: Infinity Blade II - Another item from the iTMS anniversary freebies. Had fun. Finished the plot. Still playing a little, leveling up items and stuff. There are a couple of areas and fights I haven't seen through yet and I want to find out what's there. LATER: I seem to have been to the secret areas, although there are a couple of things I haven't completed, and I would have to play for ages to level up all the gear. I mostly moved on instead. 4/5
: Gunpoint - Great writing, fun gameplay, sneaky hidden achievements, and I think I might have to play through it again to see everything, even though I was already doing lots of replaying missions to try alternate dialogue. Of course, most of the time when I get to this point, instead of restarting the game, I simply never play it again. 5/5

August (2)
: Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - I am sure this installment is full of technical improvements that I don't really notice since it's been over a year since I played part 1, but I'm pretty sure I liked the first one better. This was mostly fun, and the non-standard levels (trucks, Andy) were neat. I think the 'variety' of locations made it feel less cinematic and more like any old video game that trudges through a typical cycle of scenery. The dialogue is embarrassingly full of clichés. I petted all the yaks. Played on Hard, got about 35% of the treasures, since I still think shiny-hunting is really immersion-busting. Played a little more to find more and rack up some missing gun trophies, but I don't think I enjoyed it enough to want to bother finishing the platinum. Oh, and spoiler: I felt vindicated when the guardians turned out to be guys in suits. I called it when fighting the first one. He just looked like a guy in a suit to me. 4/5
: The Room: Epilogue - This was such a rad ipad treat at the end of the year last year, and it just added a new level, which only added around half an hour, but I ran through the whole thing again. I'm surprised that in 9 months, nobody has copied the premise. I really like exploring around and examining and opening the ornate puzzle boxes. Can't wait for part 2 later this year. 4/5

October (4):
: I've been investigating and experimenting with some TWINE games, to test whether I'd want to use the system for something. I'm not sure I want to list them individually here there, since they're often only minutes long, and few have any actual gameplay, per se. But...that's still something to note, besides just racking up the movies below.
: Pixel People - This app is the closest thing I've been to having a virus on my iPhone. The interaction with notification center is atrocious, and the actual design of the app isn't much better. The loading screen is slow and awful and mandatory even when switching between apps rapidly. I liked the idea of combining a time management game with one of the elemental combination games, but the implementation here is truly sub par. All that said, I've collected 271/271 jobs and almost every achievement that doesn't require me to hassle people on facebook. Revisiting my (sadly corrupted) Tiny Tower now makes that game seem so amazingly crisp and responsive and pretty by comparison. Looking forward to Tiny Death Star, I guess. I didn't hate all of the time spent with this game, but I don't really recommend it to anybody. 2/5
: Dinorama - Free app of the week in the app store. Just finished the above time / sim game and looking for a new one. It's cute, but not exactly the same genre. I completed / collected the available content in an afternoon. 3/5
: Pivot - A previous app of the week. It took me a surprisingly long time to understand what the controls actually were, but it was fun to feel the 'level up' once I caught on. This is a game of dexterity. I enjoyed it. 3/5
: Don't Look Back - By Terry Cavenaugh. Short but good. I was surprised that you start over when you leave the app, but I kind of appreciated that, and blasted through parts that I had found tricky while I was learning them, just like it should be with an 8-bit platformer kind of game. We're probably lucky there's infinite lives. 4/5

November (2):
: Serious Sam 3 - Fun in co-op, as this series always is, but in some ways this seemed like the least Serious entry yet. It might be the shortest Sam, and I'd say it really doesn't punish you for picking up power-ups the way previous games loved to do. The big bosses didn't seem quite as big, and the L4D2 finale ("fill the gas tank") level seemed out of place. 3/5
: Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions - This was among the more frustrating Spider-Man games to play. A lot of Spider-Man games aren't great, but I really like web-swinging around, so I always check 'em out. But this one was buggy, featured a camera that nobody ever tested with the wall-crawling mechanic, replayed banter clips in the wrong order and often, and just had some odd design choices. It reminded me of this essay about letting the artists design the game instead of designers. On the plus side, a good lineup of villains, and as is often the case in the games, Mysterio as the big baddie. Also, just for fun's sake, it's too bad you have to complete every single thing in the game to get the best costumes. Then there would be no game left in which to wear them, and I'm definitely not replaying the whole thing to get the final achievements to unlock them. 3/5

December (4):
: Halcyon - This is like a match-two game. Just ruined an afternoon or three trying to beat the STARS level, but I did it. I'm like a hero. I liked playing this, and found it easier with a stylus, but I'm so relieved I can stop now. 4/5
: The Room Two - Last night I replayed the whole first game, just in case there was some benefit to having a completed save game on my ipad (which might not make sense with iOS sandboxing, but I'm allowed to hope). By the time I was finished, part two was in the app store. Easily worth the $5, even if the game was a little shorter than I would have liked. Although really, almost any length would have been 'too short.' I appreciate how the game was fundamentally similar to the original, but almost no specific puzzle mechanics were repeated. The multiple tables and boxes in each room were neat, but I haven't made up my mind yet whether I think they made the game more or less difficult than the previous entry. It's a cool and natural extension of the idea, and I liked how, especially in the lab, I really did need a minute to look at everything before I was ready to proceed. But I think that was true before, and there's just something elegant about having one, impossible, apparently bigger on the inside, hellraiser box to slowly coax open. I guess all that's left to do now is hope that there's going to be a part three next year. 5/5
: Final Fantasy:ATB - This is a Final Fantasy game for people who like FF, but hate having to slog through all the story. It's just fights, except for people who don't like having to strategize how to manage their team in a fight. It's for people who just brute force their way through random battle by mashing the A button, but there's no A button, you just drag your finger over the heroes and they hit the bad guys. It is a worthy successor to FF: Mystic Quest. Truly Final Fantasy USA here. It so happens that I reached level 99 and saw the credits and collected all the non-premium heroes, but since you only play for a minute or two at a time, a couple times a day, that's not much of an investment. You can pay $1/ea. for up to 30 recognizable characters from other games, or $10(!!) each for packs of extra levels. I did not. That is completely nuts, crackers, and crazy. 3/5
: Journey - As predicted last year, when replaying this in the new year, I will add it to the list again, even though I've played it before. It could just be because of when I was playing, but it really felt like more of a slog than I remember. In some ways, also shorter than I thought it would be to run through again, maybe because I kind of skipped one area, but it just seemed like a chore. 3/5

Played, enjoyed, but never really end: Left 4 Dead 2, Letterpress, Hero Academy, FTL (well, FTL has an ending, I just can't get to it...), Rock Band 2

Totals: : 18 : 9 :1 : 2
All Games: 30

Another strong showing, and I'm declaring success. Like last year, I finished 30 games, played a lot of at least 5 that never really end, and have recently spent time on another 7 or so that I'm not done with yet. The biggest surprise to me was how much of my gaming turned out to be iOS based this year. I think it comes from the same place that used to make me play another round of L4D2 or Team Fortress 2 instead of spending an hour on a game with a story - wanting to keep the gaming from getting to involving and distracting.

I attempted to participate in the CAG Video Game Spending thread this year, but I gave up because I wasn’t keeping up with it and doing detective work to fill it in didn’t seem worthwhile. Even without the numbers, I suspect I did less collecting this year than last, which is also something of a win. I kept up with the tab all year long, and I beat my scores in a number of areas - More movies, tons more board games, and more stand-up performances. I slipped on books in an embarrassing way, but I bet I'll rebound next year if I can just finish all the books I'm halfway through at the moment.

My Year-End Totals for Various Media (and last year's scores):
Video Games: 30 (30)
Seasons of TV: 24 (30)
New-to-me Movies: 82 (71)
Books!: 7 (11)
Board Games: ~95
Standup: 113 (86)

2012 in video games

From time to time, especially during Steam sales, I frequent the forums at CheapAssGamer. Last year, a little after all the hullabaloo had died down, I discovered one of their sticky threads, the Completed Games Tab. This is where users track what games they've played all year long, many of us trying to hit goals in clearing out our backlogs.

I suspect that CAGs are among the worst in having exorbitant backlogs, because for many of us, buying and collecting games on the cheap becomes the game. And being constantly on the lookout for a deal means buying something now when it’s 80% off, not next month when you might actually get around to playing it. (Never mind that in two years when you are ready to play it, that price will have dropped even lower.) For some CAGs, their favorite game is trying to own literally every game for sale on Steam. A few are getting pretty close.

So this year I signed up for the completed games tab, and I set myself a goal of 40 games completed. Here’s how I did:

January (4):
- Bastion - finished once - going through in NG+ for the other ending, achievements. 3/5 (How optimistic of me, I never made it through the second play)
- Medal of Honor (2010) - Glad it was only $2 from Amazon. The campaign was 4 hours long on hard mode. I expected this going in and thought for the price, short is fine, it'll be like a cool action movie. It was like Lions for Lambs: The Game. 2/5
- Conan - I was told this would be fun by someone that I hope was thinking of another game. I have never read the Conan books or seen the movies all the way through, but from this I gather it's the story of the world's worst swordsman, or perhaps a foot soldier separated from his regiment and quickly killed. Buggy, dumb design, bad acting, stay away. 1/5
- Zuma's Revenge (Adventure Mode) - Thankfully, neither this game nor Picross 3D have gotten the obsessive hooks into me the way their predecessors did back in the day. One level towards the end gave me a lot of grief, so I finished on my last life, which was pretty exciting. 4/5

February (2):
- Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (Platinum) - This was fun. Much more the 'action movie' experience I was looking for earlier. Hunting around for shiny treasure breaks the cinematic experience a little bit though. UPDATE: My first Platinum trophy! Played through Crushing mode, then went back to find the treasures I missed, then went back through to get the treasures I just got but didn't save properly somehow. 4/5
- Coinbox Hero - Just a little diversion. Not as much fun as Achievement Unlocked, from the same dev. Sure, it's weird to count this. 3/5

March (1):
- Crackdown - This was a little like Brink meets inFamous. Open city, people constantly shooting at you like crazy, story doesn't make a lick of sense. All I wanted to do was collect green orbs and I ended up killing a crazy amount of so-called "criminals." I ended up with 444/5 00 green orbs, 88/300 blue orbs, and 435/1250 gamerscore. I jumped everywhere on rooftops and barely got in any of the slow, fragile cars, so I'm not going to bother with the 16 driving achievements. Overall, more fun at the beginning than the end, since there was no more leveling up to do in the last third of the game, and the third borough is much less friendly to jumping around everywhere. 3/5

April (1):
- Faerie Solitaire - I won this on steamgifts. Played it extensively while doing some research tv-watching for a script. I've finished the story and got every achievement except the one for finding all the (randomly distributed?) pets. 3/5

May (1):
- Hero Academy - Didn't think I'd stick with this as long as I did, but I've bought 2 expansion teams, racked up enough wins to get into the top 2000 players (of 170k or so) and got almost every achievement for the teams I have. The art design is terrific. 4/5

June (1):
-* TMNT: Turtles in Time* (Hard Mode) - Local Co-op classic. Almost no achievements. 3/5

July (6):
- Borderlands - Played as the sniper. This is like Diablo FPS - shoot and loot. And fetchquest. I'd gotten about 1/2-2/3 through a while back, and since lost the save game. Definitely got a little dull by the time I made it to about that point again. Doing all the missions meant I was perpetually a few levels ahead of the mission ratings. DLC awaits. 3/5
- Borderlands DLC: Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot - This isn't beaten exactly, but I'm done with it. What a slog. 25 waves of enemies you can fight for no XP, times three, nets you three levels of 100 waves each. This expansion is like a 2 gallon bowl of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes. Iiiiiiiiiiiit's Tedious! 1/5
- Borderlands DLC: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned - For contrast, this was lots of fun. I think I had more fun working through this self-contained module than I did playing the main game. Some nice design touches, couple good jokes, and that irritating Defiler. 4/5
- LIMBO - This was terrific. Interesting and stressful and worrisome and also fun. And there's bear traps! I like bear traps. Short, works with the 360 controller, puzzle platforming but not overly fiendish. Only picked up half the achievements on the first run, and finished it in one sitting except for pausing to recommend it to someone. 5/5
- Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet - Also pretty rad. A little like Pixeljunk Shooter, with looks not unlike Samurai Jack, with exploratory gameplay like Super Metroid. Maybe 6 hours to complete the story. Now I want to play the MP mode and go back to figure out how to get in the one area of the map I missed. 5/5
- Bulletstorm - This feels like an arcade game that should have a big rumbling plastic machine gun. Hopefully it's supposed to be a joke version of a Gears of War. Some fun set pieces and cool levels. Lots of quick time events. Lotsa bad dialogue. The AI companions love to stand between you and a target. It's lucky bad guys don't know to shoot barrels. Tricky plot, which made for a longer game than I'd expected. Beat the story in one 8-10 hour evening, mopped up some achievements the next day. Don't plan to try the multiplayer, but I got my $5 worth. (I guess that seems like a lot of negative bullet points, but they don't all have to be home runs. Singles and doubles are fun too.) Also: There's kind of an underlying Buddhist or Zen (I don't know either one from the sound of a hole in the ground, really) message to the whole thing, as various characters keep proclaiming that the only way out is through. 3.5/5

August (2):
- Hero's Adventure - A very short RPG from Terry Cavanagh. Almost scratches the itch I get from playing Torchlight or even Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet where I start to get the sense I'm not the good guy. 4/5
- Tiny Tower - I'd been playing almost daily since February, when they had their scuffle with Zynga. I have done every achievement, and every mission. I have the zippiest elevator and a large surplus of coins and bucks. I have 170 floors, which is every floor plus one empty one where there's nothing left to build. The tower is at full capacity of citizens who are all working in their dream jobs and have a 9 skill level in that job. This game is DONE. 5/5

September (1):
- 10000000 - some blog or another was raving about this, so I tried it out even though I don't especially like or feel good at bejeweled type games. Took about 4 hours to collect everything and win my freedom. Catchy song, although it reminds me of something else. 3/5

October (1):
- Heavenly Sword - The ending of this game would've made me cry. If I'd purchased it at full list price. As a goozex trade, it's a little better. Quite short, but that's a mercy. A God of War clone where every level of enemy can easily block you, and they all know unblockable techniques! That's in the button-mashing sword levels, not the almost-sci-fi gun and crossbow levels. Co-starring Bjork as your flighty little sister on the goofy, video-game inside jokey comic relief. 2/5

November (1):
- Frog Fractions - My next, apparently quarterly weird internet game. The first time I found it, I just lost a couple rounds and quit, but after someone else linked me to it again, I was impressed with just how far it went. Mathematical! 3/5

December (9):
- Guilty Party - Silly, but fun. Kind of like Clue(do). Played through 2-player co-op story mode and then 1 versus game. We had a good time being detectives for about 4 hours. Uncovering clues, playing mini-games that were at first numerous enough to be delightful and then familiar enough to be dreaded, eating pudding, just doing all the things detectives do. Would have been kind of a drag at list price though. 3/5
- Kirby's Epic Yarn - Played through in co-op. Finished the story at around 91% complete, telling myself I'll go back and collect the last few things. UPDATE: This time I did it! At about 18 hours, we hit 100% complete! Liked the variety. The ice skating and sledding levels were lovely. Decorating Kirby's pad is kind of boring. The soundtrack has songs that have a musical phrase here or there that strongly reminds me of various unrelated tunes, but it happens in like, constantly. 4/5
- Batman: The Brave and the Bold - The way the training re-uses dialogue in the first 3 minutes had me worried for this one, but the dialogue turned out to be the best thing about it. It's a brawler with cameo-based special attacks like X-Men on the Genesis, and gets a little repetitive with some of the same goons and security robots apparently employed by a staggering range of villains. The quality of the levels and their humor declines steadily over the four episodes. Also, they contain an unusual number of Flash villains. Maybe the bat-villains were all licensed elsewhere. Huge plus for including the Gentleman Ghost, minor minus for him being kinda lame. 3/5
- Picross 3D - Done! Finished it! I put too much time in back in the beginning of the year to not get this one on my list for the year. Finished every puzzle with 3 stars / no mistakes. Some of them took a while. 4/5
- The Room - A puzzle box you open with your ipad. Or, like 4 or 5 of them. Really satisfying and delightful to solve, not terribly tricky. Worth a buck, and I gave one as a gift just now. The final chapter was a little dull compared to the earlier ones, but at the same time, I wish there had been several more chapters. 5/5
- You Have To Burn The Rope - You do. And I did. This won prizes? I feel like I'm just padding out my year-end stats. 2/5
- Gravity Bone - Yawn. 2/5
- Journey - I saw it through to the end, but I know I'm going to have to go back to look around more and maybe understand more of what's happening. It's great when there's a friend running around with you. I love the gliding / surfing around kind of moves. I dream about stuff like that. I was also delighted that I, myself, personally, referring to me, found the ending a little underwhelming. After all, it's about the Journey! (also, I played it twice. I see some people counting beating and rebeating a game, but I don't think I would count that in one year - I didn't for Uncharted. But I did count the Turtles game and I've played that before, so when I run through Journey in 2013, it'll be back on that list, I guess.) 4/5
- Papo and Yo - Very strong start - I really liked the way the initial interactions with the world made sense in a daydreamy, imaginative way. I wish that aspect had not only been the main subject of the game, but the main mechanic explored. I could have done without the robot, or honestly even the conflict of Monster (although of course Monster is the point of the thing) since I was having fun exploring the world. I think some of the puzzles stopped making 'on camera' sense, and especially needing to fix the robot to fix the problem with the monster caused by fixing the robot… The ham and odd message of the ending detract from the opening experience, which I was enjoying more than Journey. It's weird that this serious game on a somber topic comes with a 'collect all the fun hats!' new game+ mode. 4/5

Played and Enjoyed but not beaten, or essentially never-ending: Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Letterpress, SpyParty, FTL.

Totals:
: 15 : 4 : 5 : 3 : 2 : 1
All Games: 30

I'd say this project was a success. I didn't finish 40 games, but I did play at least that many. 30 completed, with 5 that have no real end point, 7 more that are in some state of progress. I'm glad I kept up with it throughout the year. Of course, it's still a net loss on the backlog, or the shelf crowding, but there you go.

I kept track of some other stats while I was at it:
New-to-me Movies: 71
Seasons of TV: 30
Books: 11
Stand-up sets: 86

#1,892: Dirty Harry

Here are some recent movies, including an inadvertent trilogy of films with doubt about ghosts:

The Exorcism of Emily Rose - Pretty satisfying. Almost everything I would expect a courtroom drama about an exorcism to be, I guess. B+.
Existence of the supernatural: [UNCONFIRMED]

Hereafter - Three intertwining stories of people dealing with the possibility of a spirit world. The main thing in one of these movies is that you're just waiting for and/or trying to figure out how they'll all eventually intersect.
Existence of the supernatural: [CONFIRMED]

Red Lights - I was so excited to see this one. It's from the director of Buried, which I liked, and here's the setup: Sigourney Weaver is a James Randi-like debunker, Robert DeNiro is a world-renowned psychic, and one of them has to be wrong. Sometimes a movie sounds so great , like Time After Time, (Jack the Ripper steals a time machine, and it's up to HG Wells to stop him!) that I wonder if I should just never see it, in case it's no good. Red Lights didn't go how I might have guessed, and maybe the first half was more fun than the second half, but I still liked it.
Existence of the supernatural: [REDACTED]

Also…

This Film is Not Yet Rated and We Are Legion: The Story of Hactivists - the former is about the secretive MPAA ratings board. The most fun, if morally dubious, section is when private investigators track down the identities of the raters. The latter is primarily about the organization Anonymous), and interviews the no-long anonymous anons who were arrested and punished for the actions of the group. I'm grouping the two movies together here because in both cases, they offer a pretty decent primer to the subjects, but if you're already familiar with either one, there's not a lot of new information presented. I do remember when Anonymous' Scientology protests were taking place, so I was surprised to see the film report that thousands of people participated. Maybe they were all down on L. Ron Hubbard Way, and not at the Celebrity Centre, which is located across from the UCB Theatre. My memory of it is of maybe 6 heavy guys holding their cloaks and masks and sweating like crazy, sitting on the sidewalk. I wish I'd gotten pictures.

The Nude Vampire - This is an italian horror from the 1970s, which doesn't feature much in the way of nudity, and no vampires at all, unless the one nude girl, who doesn't appear to figure into the plot in any way, happened to be a vampire and nobody mentioned it. I'll accept that as the answer, but if so, it's not an especially apt title. It's definitely no Big Fan or Constant Gardner.
Existence of the supernatural: [CONFIRMED]

Chernobyl Diaries - This sucks. Look through the website that probably inspired the movie instead. Or don't. Go fishing. Write a poem. Do what you want.

Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal - Press Your Luck was a fun game show where your money could get taken away by little cartoons called Whammies that were drawn by "Savage" Steve Holland, director of Better Off Dead. In 1984, a guy noticed that the patterns on the board weren't random, so all you have to do to win a lot of money is learn them and not stop on a Whammy. There you go. Whole movie. You are free to go about your day, citizen.

Dirty Harry - This was great! Sometimes, you see an old movie that was groundbreaking or influential in its day, and it's boring, or trite, because it's been so thoroughly ripped off. But not this one. This was great! A clear precursor to the Die Hards and Lethal Weapons yet to come. Can't wait to see the next 4 movies in the series!

#1,878: Contagion

My plan was to watch Contagion as though it was a direct sequel to Rise of the Planet of the APES, since the idea of a pandemic is only suggested in the end title sequence. The biggest problems with this approach are that a) the virus in Contagion doesn’t turn anyone into an APE, and b) that doesn’t happen in the ape movie either.

Instead, we get a fairly “realistic”¹ portrayal of what happens to us in an outbreak. And the problem with that is that it’s a little bit boring. Although humanity is decimated, it still feels like nothing much happens. There’s no main character, or anyone whose life, death, or infection status seemed to matter. I didn’t really care about any of the humans in this movie, so on that score, it’s right there with APES, except that unlike that movie, Contagion hasn’t got any apes.

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1. : Whether or not the science is accurate doesn’t matter. The movie is realistic in what seems to be a non-fantasy portrayal of what might happen. It’s probably about as accurate as an XKCD What If? ↩

#1,820: The House on Skull Mountain

Sometimes old posts get stuck in draft form because they need more thought and revision.  I have no idea why capsule movie reviews don't get published.  These seem to be from December 2011.

-Hugo - Great 3D, and identifiably Scorsese, from the first shot, a long tracking through the station. Weird script though; characters exclaiming stuff in the same room instead of listening or talking to each other. Also, hints of a hated trope: Can't Spit It Out.  That is, if one character would just speak up when they're a) in trouble and b) in no danger as a result of just using their words, so much trouble could be avoided, and so easily.

- J. Edgar - A perfectly good telling of the story of J. Edgar Hoover.  If you've ever seen or read anything about him before, you've probably got the story down already.  Saw it in the theater with a bunch of chatty audience.  But they were a few guys in their 60s, so nobody had anything to say to them.

- The Lie - This seems like something that would be sold as a drama, but actually: pretty funny. Dark, and funny. Jess Weixler is great. Especially her reaction to her husband's terrible rock song.

- Real Life - Albert Brooks on reality TV.  Really good. I love the nonsense presented as good science and sociology.

And of course:

- The House on Skull Mountain - a mostly black  version of Dark and Stormy Night, or any other meeting for the reading of will in a spooky old house.  Above all else, this was a movie that lives right on up to its title:

This is the very next shot: