This may come as a shock, but in addition to being the coolest dude I know, I’m also an incredibly talented artist. And a nerd who really likes Star Wars. Check out my amazing artwork below!
(Please note this is entirely a joke. I know I cannot draw well. I just thought it was hilarious.)
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Several years ago, I was introduced to Bioware via my love for Star Wars. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic debuted on the original XBox in 2003, developed by Bioware. I absolutely loved it. In 2005, they released Jade Empire, another game I really enjoyed. More recently, I played Dragon Age: Origins, another fantastic product by Bioware. So, when Mass Effect 2 came out, developed by Bioware, I was facing a bit of a conundrum. It was developed by Bioware… and I love every Bioware game I’ve played. But I never played the original Mass Effect. How could this be?
Apparently, I somehow managed to miss Mass Effect’s release in 2007, and have been going about life entirely unaware. Well, no longer! I’ve finally managed to get a copy of the original Mass Effect, and I must say I wasn’t disappointed, despite the game being a couple years old now.
As with all Bioware games that I have mentioned, Mass Effect is a roleplaying game. In this case, you play the part of Commander Shepard, a human officer assigned to the Alliance Fleet. The game takes place in a futuristic world, in which humans have learned interstellar travel by the means of ruins found on Mars. We have made contact with alien races, who, oddly enough, also learned the ways of interstellar travel by means of ruins they have found. The mystery of just who built these ruins really drives the story behind the game, and it is the story which makes Biowares products so outstanding.
Don’t get me wrong, this game does have some issues. Occasionally the closure at the end of some missions was a bit lacking. A lot of the areas in the game seemed repetitive. And if you simply played through the main storyline of the game, it would go by pretty quickly. But this game was released in 2007, and it is still outstanding even today. I can hardly believe I missed it for so long, and I can’t wait to get my hands on Mass Effect 2.
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The Polish equivalent of Air Force One crashed today in Russia, killing 96 people, including the Polish President Lech Kaczynski. The Russian designed Tupolev 154 crashed as it descended toward Smolensk Airport in a dense fog. While the Tu-154 has largely been replaced in Russia, the older plane isn’t the reason for the crash. According to ITAR-TASS news agency, flight controllers recommended the plane divert to Minsk due to the dense fog, but the pilot chose to attempt to land in Smolensk any way.
Among the 96 killed were President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria, Wladyslaw Stasiak (Chief of the President’s Chancellery), Aleksander Szczyglo (Chief of the National Security Office), Slawomir Skrzypek (Chairman of the National Bank of Poland), Jerzy Szmajdzinski (Deputy Speaker of the Lower House), Andrzej Kremer (Foreign Ministry’s Undersecretary of State), Stanislaw Komorowski (Deputy Minister of National Defence), Przemyslaw Gosiewski (Deputy Chair of the Law and Justice Party), Franciszek Gagor (Chief of the General Staff of the Polish military, Andrzej Przewoznik (Head of Poland’s Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites), and Tomasz Merta (Chief Historical Conservator).
The sad irony of the crash is that they were heading to Katyn forest in Russia to recognize the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Forest Massacre, in which the Soviet Union killed approximately 22,000 Polish officers in 1940, during World War II, in an effort to entirely wipe out the Polish officer corps. Due to Poland’s conscription policies at the time, all university graduates were required to serve as officers, it had the effect of wiping out many of their brightest young citizens. The Katyn Forest was already a dreadful place for the Polish people, and now it has claimed 96 more of Poland’s best.
President Kaczynski’s predecessor, Aleksander Kwasniewski, summed up what must be the overwhelming feeling in Poland today, “This is unbelievable — this tragic, cursed Katyn.”
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I’d meant to post about this sooner, but for some reason I didn’t. So, here it is.
Last Saturday, April 3rd, I watched the new Clash of the Titans movie. I had rather high expectations, which is something I hate to do before seeing a new movie, but how could I not? I absolutely loved the first one. I went to the movie theater hoping that I wouldn’t be disappointed and eager to see a childhood favorite brought to life with modern digital effects.
Clash of the Titans (1981), directed by Desmond Davis and starring Harry Hamlin (Perseus), Laurence Olivier (Zeus), Maggie Smith (Thetis) among others, was a real fixture of my childhood. It was a movie that, while not perfect (the specials effects and some of the acting are really quite poor, now that I watch it again), really drew me into the world of Greek Mythology and inspired a lot of further reading and movie watching for me. And having gone back and watched it again, I maintain that it is a fantastic movie. I also noticed that Maggie Smith, who played the Goddess Thetis, a nominal enemy of Perseus throughout the film, has moved on to Harry Potter fame as the actress who plays Professor McGonagall.
So, when I went to see the new movie, I hoped, basically, for a simple refilming with modern special effects. Unfortunately, that isn’t what I received. The movie immediately diverted from the script of the original, as the scarred and disfigured enemy of Perseus from the first movie… isn’t the same scarred and disfigured enemy of Perseus in the new film. Perseus never meets the kindly old playwright from the first film. And while there is a touch of a romance in the new film, it isn’t the one I was expecting. Rather than a story of the romance between Perseus and Andromeda being the driving motivation for Perseus to defeat the Kraken, Perseus is angry at the Gods, specifically Hades, and eager to spite them.
While I enjoyed this film, it strayed violently from the original, and I really don’t think it improved by doing so. What should have easily been my favorite film of the year has fallen regretfully short.
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WikiLeaks, an organization which according to their website, “publishes and comments on leaked documents alleging government and corporate misconduct”, released a video today which was taken from onboard a US Army Apache helicopter which attacked a group of insurgents on July 12, 2007, in the process killing two Iraqi reporters working for Reuters news agency. Reuters had been attempting to gain access to this video via the Freedom of Information Act since the attack, without success.
The video is fairly damaging to the US cause in Iraq, as it shows not only the deaths of two unarmed reporters, but the injury of two children who were wounded in a van that stopped to attempt to help one of the injured reporters. The soldiers aboard the Apache can be heard speaking to one another, one saying “well it’s their fault for bringing their kids to a battle,” the other replying, “that’s right.”
While I certainly don’t approve of all of the conduct of the Apache pilots as seen in this video, it is fair to point out that several of the men do appear to be armed, and I can easily see how the camera could have been mistaken for a weapon, especially as the reporter is crouched at a corner, reportedly pointing it in the direction of US troops. However, I find it extremely disturbing the way they attacked the van which seemed intent only on helping a survivor of the attack. And if a weapon was pointed at US troops (did they mean the helicopters?) why did it take so long for those troops to arrive? Couldn’t they have fired a warning shot or a flare to warn off the van instead of shooting it? That part of the video really bothered me.
Overall, the entire video shows an unfortunate tragedy.
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© 2013 by Matt McBrien. All rights reserved.
