I'm comfortable with just going with "kills of sentient creatures". We could throw Mario in there if he is, in fact, killing his enemies. Actually, as I think of it, Samus must have an unholy kill count by that standard. Maybe the best solution is to follow on from the GLOG Murder Report. We can have a category for…

I was thinking more like individual characters. For instance, despite the fact that Snake / Big Boss has been in a lot of popular games, his total kill count is probably moderate because often people choose not to kill anyone when playing as Snake. This would be in direct contract to, say, Serious Sam, who is not…

In reading above that "B.J. Blazkowicz has probably killed more German soldiers than any other video game hero", an interesting idea occured to me of trying to tally up the total kills that each video game hero has committed across all of the playhours of all of their games. Like, if we take the number of people a…

Just tried to do that a bit with Resident Evil 7… and I eventually had to turn the lights back on.

On, the most basic level, in a 3rd person game the horror is happening to someone else, right? I've always felt that it's a bit of a cheat that way, where it's actually designed to reduce the impact. Of course the Resident Evil games have a good reason for the 3rd person view, considering that the original games were…

Awesome! That's hilarious. It's a shrewd move, too. If traditionalists are turned off by the new design, they can just vote for the classic model with their wallet!

This is an important dimension of an effective horror game. Games that kill you all the time are not horrifying, because death becomes routine. The best horror games keep you on the edge of your seat by always teasing death, but rarely actually delivering it. Horror games need to remember that you want to tap into the…

I'm a fan of the way that Resident Evil has generally handled its mythology, in so far as it's by turns pulpy, self-serious, and humorous. The over-the-top nature of the plots helps me enjoy the games more, because it totally destroys any nagging sense of disbelief. Why nitpick the details when the whole thing is such…

It's a bummer they didn't because REmake and Zero were great proof-of-concepts for updating the old model. It's a goddamn tragedy that we didn't get a Resident Evil 2 remake.

Yes! They went so far down the path of video game logic that I stopped being incredulous and just accepted the insanity within.

I hear you. My thought is that given a list of 5 foreign films, I might see one that interests me. Given a list of 10, I might see 2. Not that there's an inherent value there, but in general, the foreign films that break through to America are high quality enough that I'm rarely disappointed.

The role of curator is more important today than it has ever been. For those of us who are not opposed to foreign films but don't seek them out, it's nice to have a certain amount of "recognized" foreign films to consider watching. The more movies that are featured this way, the more likely it is that one will catch…

I always appreciate how Robert A. Heinlein wrote Starship Troopers, The Moon is a Dark Mistress, and Stranger in a Strange Land, and all three books are somewhat utopian (scary utopias, but still…) but each seems to advocate for very disparate social organizations. Starship Troopers is authoritarian, the Moon is a…

The Heavenly Table was great, I enjoyed it immensely. I must admit to be a little confused about his style, though. There was a strong dose of humor throughout the book, which was a bit juxtaposed with the violence and philosophy. The book was great and will stick with me, but I feel like Pollock still has a ways to…

So is it good? What little I know about Patricia Highsmith sounds pretty fascinating. And I'm curious about the actual person who wrote all these crazy people so well.

Ok cool, it just seems weird that there should be two major histories that focus on "Byzantium" rather than the "Byzantine Empire". As far as I'm concerned, Byzantium is the name of a city that no longer existed during the Byzantine Empire. (Obviously, the idea of the "Byzantine Empire" is itself inaccurate, since…

It's probably best to check out exerpts rather than reading the whole history. It's very dry at times, which is unacceptable with a historian whose reliability is suspect. But there are many, many passages that really shine. A mixed bag.

The Arthurian stuff is crazier than I would have thought. There’s a whole section where Arthur conquers Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and France and then goes to war with the Byzantine Empire. Apparently, this part of the history (legend) of Arthur came about because of English jealously surrounding Charlemagne. They…

Wait.. maybe I'm reading the Lord Norwich one? I'll have to check when I get home. The one I'm reading is "the first 1000 years" (amusing). I have a hard time picturing there being two more volumes for the last 100 or so years, since he starts at Constantine. At any rate, whoever wrote this book did something amazing.…

The Master and Margarita is fantastic. All the characters and sequences just has such totemic appeal. It feels like a modern myth is unfolding before you. The weirdness is so perfect. That one stayed with me for a long time. I also really love the sequences focused on Pontius Pilate. The book overstays its welcome a…