Not sure if a general gaming blog was such a great idea...I do not feel like writing much...and given that I've moved most of the RPG stuff to separate blogs...I don't expect to be doing a lot of posting here. Not in the near future anyway.

I actually got around to watching the Mutant Chronicles movie the other day. It's been sitting on my self for a couple of weeks after I found it in a bargain bin (NOK 49). Expectations were not very great. This looked very much like a B-movie. But hey, it's a couple of hours of sci-fi and at a very low cost. I also know the Mutant Chronicles setting fairly well, although it's been quite a few years since last we met...

Overall I was rather pleasantly surprised. Sure, it was a B-movie. Big time. But I was never bored - at times I was well entertained. The special effects were decent and the action sequences not too bad. And although acting isn't high on the list of the film's strengths the band of unlikely heroes contained a rather interesting mix of characters (which any role-player would appreciate - I liked the Steiner fellow in particular).

Hot Asian Chick - she gets cut in two unfortunately

The story was pretty basic - Evil Machine lands on Earth 10.000 years ago sending forth mutant minions to destroy humanity. Heroic human tribes fight back and seal away Machine. Stupid humans forget about machine and wakes it up, letting monsters loose. End of the world imminent. Ancient religious order the has preserved lore about the Machine steps forth to gather unlikely heroes to make suicide raid to destroy machine and save humanity. Lots of quasi-religious stuff included. Faith and hope - that sort of thing. Not terribly good, but not incredibly bad either.

The films strongest point was atmosphere. It managed to convey a dark and gritty future pretty well. I think they overdid the steam-punk aspect a bit, but that's just me. I don't like steam-punk too much to begin with. But overall they had stayed consistent to a very bleak Sky Captain of Tomorrow/Steampunk imagery.

Where the movie didn't do so well was in the plot department. The basic story was basic and unimaginative, but the actual plot was so full of holes you could drive a car through them. My 'favorite' was near the end when the hero found his old army buddy who had been captured by the mutants six weeks before during their initial breakout...found him being dragged away by his captors to meet his mutating doom inside the Machine...presumably the muties had been dragging the mortally injured man around for six weeks. Rather inefficient...seeing as how they managed to overrun the entire world  - on foot  - during the course of those six weeks, including dragging back hordes of people to the Machine as to make new muties. But hey, maybe the one dragging 'old army bud' had gotten lost in the tunnels? That was daft enough to (almost) ruin the film for me (and it was a completely unnecessary scene too!).

Oh, and there is one more thing. The director took one look at the setting material, wiped his ass with it and then CAME UP WITH SOMETHING HARDLY RELATED TO MUTANT CHRONICLES AT ALL! That was something of a disappointment. It was like watching a 40K movie and have the God-Emperor alive and well and Chaos reduced to just some raving mutants. I suddenly understood why companies like GW protect their IP so vigorously...

In conclusion: If you know nothing about Mutant Chronicles to begin with and have a love of sci-fi/light action and can borrow the film from some one I'd recommend it.  Otherwise I won't recommend it - but I won't warn you NOT to see it. It wasn't all that bad and it's not like you get a lot of movies in that genre.

...I've had the misfortune of watching a few games now...and when Brazil vs. North Korea was one of the more entertaining ones...France and England in particular has disappointed me (I'm sure there are worse teams out there, but I'll limit my critique to things I've alcutally watched). How is is possible for a country like England to have something like Premier League and then manage THIS!?

Ilary Blasi...married to some Italian footballer...who cares?

FIFA World Cup...doesn't belong here you say? I wholeheartedly agree. Although football is a sort of game, it's not one that lends itself well to PbP or PnP play styles. Ergo doesn't belong here. That said I did my time on the football field when I was a kid - was never any good...at least not initially...and when I did start to bloom my gaming and drinking hobbies caught up with me. As an adult I played a little football with my military colleagues, until one of them broke my noes with his elbow back in 2006. That was the last time I touched a football in anger. After that I rolled a little ball with my son, only he IS pretty good, so that at age 9 he's really catching up with his old man. So I better stop with I'm ahead! Hmm, played a bit of football manager games on the Amiga - maybe I should get into that again? Nah, too little time.

At any rate - I'll undoubtedly watch a few games...watching Kongsvinger - Moss itwo ubscure 'Elite' teams from Norway) is not my thing, but I can actually enjoy a game at the World Cup level.

England's Peter Crouch lounging in the sun

A while back I got a book as a present from my brother. I think it was last Christmas. Anyway it was The Darkness the Comes Before, by one R. Scott Bakker. Not an author or book title I had heard of before. Today his writings - one completed trilogy called The Prince of Nothing and one started trilogy named The Aspect-Emperor - are rather well-known.

I quite enjoyed the first book of the series. It's well written. Good language. It also has quite a few interesting characters - even if few of them come across as believable. If compared to he doesn't do too well - Mr. Martin is a far superior writer and a LOT better at character description and development. He does describe his world very well through, and manages to balance keeping true to the fantasy genre while also adding something new and unique to the scene. In all I enjoyed the book very much and would recommend it very strongly indeed.

The next two books were not as great. Bakker still has his strengths and weaknesses, but it's clear that after enjoying some success he's decided to water out the ale and only rarely serve the real thing. It's not bad books as such, but it is really only one volume in theme and content, but two (big) volumes in the print. So it gets sort of tedious. Which turns what could have been one very good book into two mediocre ones.

One final note about the third and last book of the trilogy; it's obvious that it's not the last book. It practically screams follow-up. It left me hugely unsatisfied after ploughing through two whole volumes to reach the conclusion - only to find none. I really need to begin reading the end of a book first...

The new trilogy is not really a new trilogy. It picks up where the first one ended. To me it comes across as what the last volume of the original trilogy was supposed to be like. Only now it's not ONE volume, it's THREE BIG ONES. The ale is no longer watered - you're being served watered piss. I found the Judging Eye to be boring, annoying and completely bereft of originality - it even re-imagines Tolkien's march through Moria - with none of the charm of the original story. Crap crap and utter crap!

I hesitate to say this, because the first book was so good and the next two passable, but stay the hell away! Unless you're really patient and for some reason think Bakker is the new shit. For myself I suppose I'll eventually pick up and read the rest of the Aspect-Emperor. Maybe.

I fianlly found time to watch a couple of BSG epsiodes; season 3, epsiodes 13 and 14. The first one, Taking a Break From All Your Worries, was pretty good. The second, The Woman King, was more of a filler episode. It's saving grace was the apperance of Caprica-Six' imaginary friend, Dr. Baltar the mind-ghost. Very amusing.

Anything that has Baltar in it is usually well worth watching. He's by far the most interesting character on the show IMO. Yes, there is his ego and hubris, present on a level rarely seen since Gaius Julius Caesar, but more than anything it's his capacity for self-denial that impresses me. And the ability to always see himself as the victim, rather than the villain.

I think that's very human. Very few people go around seeing themselves as bad or evil. Not in big ways. Not in the small ways even. There is a always some external 'reason' why people do as they do. Always the claim of 'I had no choice' or 'you would have done the same'. Perhaps it's just human nature?

At any rate I find these themes quite interesting to explore in my games. Roleplaying gets infinitely more interesting once you start exploring the byways of the human mind, our morality, and whatnot.

I'll just conclude with a shot of Baltar from the happy Caprica days. It's just a coincident that Tri...Caprica-Six is also in it :-P

I have a plan. And it's a damned good one. I'm going to look at more footage of this blonde. Not that I have anything against non-blondes or blondes other than this one. Far from it. It's just that this particular blonde fits into my plan :-P

Very amusing. Am I. Tricia Helfer stars in Battlestar Galactica movie The Plan. And being a BSG fan it's a movie which I absolutely have to see...especially after watching a clip featuring Cylon Basestars nuking Caprica. Only I've yet to conclude watching Season 3 of BSG, let alone Season 4. And I feel I have to finish that before I commence with my Plan...

For those of you that have finished the series AND watched The Plan AND maybe even looked through the Caprica series, then I would suggest another featurette with Tricia in it (and she's not quite alone). Enjoy!

Hello and welcome to the new Twilightpeaks.net - TP.net for short - news blog!

Here you'll find various blog posts related to my gaming hobby in general, my ongoing games in particular, development news, and anything else I feel like posting.

Hopefully some of it will make sense. To some of you. Some of the time.

:-P