How To Enjoy 2012

(Minorish spoilers for 2012, but trust me, it doesn't matter)

Do you love movies about the apocalypse? Sure, we all do. One of the most unpleasant aspects of being aware of your own mortality is dealing with the fact that the world actually DOESN'T revolve around you, and once you're gone the story of mankind will continue just fine. In apocalypse movies, not so!  Sure, you're going to die, but take this lovely parting gift with you; everyone else and the world!

As much as I love seeing famous landmarks fall down, it's a sad fact of Hollywood movies that the better the special effects, the most emotionally dishonest the story is going to be. I don't go to an apocalypse movie to feel good about how mankind's plucky will to survive can withstand even supervolcanos and ash blocking out the sun for a million years - I go for the catharsis of oblivion!

2012 does has some wonderful action setpieces in the first hour, and does a nice job of ramping up the tension on their way there. I would not entirely disuade you from spending 10-12 dollars on it, as long as you follow my advice on how best to enjoy it:

1. Sneak a beer in
2. Watch the first hour, or however long it takes them to get to China

Third and most important step after the jump...

This is What Crazy Sounds Like: The Music of Batman

Batman's theme song. What's the first melody that comes to mind? I'd guess that most of the world's population would go with the pop culturally entrenched camp anthem of the 1970s: ba nananananana BATMAN!

But for those of a geekier stripe, there are other options. The classic minor ascent by Danny Elfman, or Shirley Walker's emotionally wrought variations on the theme. Aficionados of the Nolanverse might even be able to recall Hans Zimmer's two note motif from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. If you're a child of the 90s you might even come up with Elliot Goldenthal's booming score from the Joel Schumacher films; it's a far, far more recognizable theme than the average nerd might care to admit.

My point is that many fine composers have taken a shot at scoring the most emotionally rich superhero of our time, The Batman. An overview of these attempts can be found on "The Music of Batman", an album recently released by Silva Screen Records that takes a cross-composer tour of Batman scores as performed by the Prague Philharmonic. After several listens, I've come up with a unifying therom of what characterizes a Batman score.

Individual looks at each composer's take on the Dark Knight, and my shocking conclusion, after the jump....



Danny Elfman (Batman, Batman Returns)
As the first composer tasked with creating a dark theme for the recently re-imagined Dark Knight, Elfman knocks it out of the park and sets a standard that all subsequent composers had to have taken into account. The Batman of Tim Burton's world is a cold, intensely violent vigilante, who has the distinction of being the only movieverse Batman to actively attempt to kill the villain. Accordingly, Elfman's theme is that of a madman. The classic five note theme arcs up like a sneer, only to descend into a minor resolve.

The theme eventually speeds the pace up to galloping march, a headstrong "going to war" theme that could easily place in the mind of a psychotic with delusions of grandeur. This is just barely a hero's theme; there is something cruel and dangerous lurking beneath the false nobility of the french horns and string sections.

Elliot Goldenthal (Batman Forever, Batman and Robin)
Say what you will about Schumacher's Batman movies, but Eliot Goldenthal's score is solid. Goldenthal had the unenviable task of evoking Elfman's iconic score without repeating it, as well as creating a new theme more suited to Joel Schumacher's dayglo comic-strip idea of what Batman is about.

Given these parameters, Goldenthal's theme (making only a modest showing on the disc with the "Batman and Robin Main Titles") is a success. The motif still arcs up and back down like Elfman's, but the feel is much more grandiose. This is still the music of an outcast hero, but one who embraces the pageantry of his crimefighting ways.
Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight)
The fascinating thing about "Eptesicus", the lone track from Batman Begins, is that it introduces a theme not so much for Batman, but for Bruce Wayne. The first several minutes are pure sorrow, stuck in the sort of numb trance of grief that Bruce existed in before he realized his insane destiny. Only in the last 1/4 of the track does the music rise to the call of vengeance, ending in a fearsome resolve.

Then we get an idea of what Zimmer and Howard think Batman proper really sounds like, with "Aggressive Expansion" from The Dark Knight. The reoccuring "hero" motif is only a grim pulse of two notes, but it subtly captures both the menace and determination that defines Nolan's more realistic Batman. The track ends with a high tension "ticking time bomb" beat, which speaks more to the feel of the movie at large than the character of Batman, which is to say it is almost unbearably tense.

The CD also includes Shirley Walker's gorgeous hymnal reworking of the Elfman theme, Neal Hefti and Nelson Riddle's swingin' theme songs from the 1970s TV series and film, and even Christopher Drake's credits music for the direct-to-DVD Batman: Gotham Knight, which has lots of Elfmanesque flourishes and flat out repeats the first four notes of Goldenthalfs central motif.

The Unifying Factor

Every theme on this CD has one thing in common; repetition and momentum. I'm not talking about the simple repetition of a motif in a song; I'm talking about tightly looped musical phrases and that are pounded out over and over again. You hear it in underscore of Elfman's march, in the shrill, escalating string section of "Aggressive Expansion", and in the up and down waves of melories in Goldenthal's central melody line. These themes explore on the human ability to focus and keep going, no matter what. Even the campy 70s theme is fixed on a very distinct track, and I think this is because it's that sort of tunnel-vision stubbornness that defines Batman. Batman does not have the advantage of magic, alien technology, genetic anomalies or being born with the powers of a god. His only power is determination and mental sickness, and in these songs, we hear what righteous determination of a madman sounds like. Who could resist?

Five Things I Love About Fallout 3

I bought two high profile, well-reviewed RPGs this month. One was Fable 2, the other Fallout 3. One I returned within a week, the other I'm having trouble tearing myself away from to write this article. Can you guess which is which? I bet you can... I love Fallout 3, and here are five good reasons why.

It's an Authentic Post-Apocalyptic Experience

Well, not that I know what a truly authentic experience would be, but this is how I imagine it. Throughout the eight or so hours I've been playing the game, I feel like I'm just barely surviving. There never seems to be enough ammo, so I end up taking a few shots at things and then pulling out my baseball bat to finish the job. Every weapon I find is in disrepair and I have to scavenge parts from other guns to repair them to the best of my ability, which isn't much to speak of. Indeed, scavenging is the name of the game here, which seems like a plausible reality for the post-apocalypse. You can find plans for DIY weapons that require you to hunt for real-world parts, like pilot lights you have to pull out of the stoves in abandoned homes and handbrakes from motorcycles. This isn't breaking open boxes to find items incongruent with the environment, this is a scavenger hunt that you can approach in a realistic manner. I'm always low on clean health supplies, and I have to resort to eating irradiated food and drinking from contaminated bathroom sinks (preferable to the toilets), which gives me radiation sickness. When these aren't handy, I have to resort to taking drugs, which I then become addicted to and when I run out of my pill of choice the withdrawals set in and I find I can't do things I could do before, like pick tough locks or hit the broad side of a barn with my gun. Suddenly rifling through some nice lady's cabinets for another fix doesn't seem wrong, it seems necessary.

It's Got Good Characters

This game is like Oblivion in a lot of ways, but one department in which it has made a huge leap is with the NPCs. There are tons more unique personalities--you don't keep running into basically the same guy over and over again like in Oblivion. The voice acting is all very solid, and the writing is varied enough for different characters that you really do want to have conversations with them and listen to all they have to say. Oh, speaking of voice acting did I mention Academy Award-nominated Liam Neeson plays your father? And geekanerd icon Malcolm McDowell voices the "President?" Yeah, Bethesda is taking this shit seriously.

Its Tough Choices Will Make Your Head Asplode

Pretty early in the game you meet a well-dressed stranger in a saloon that tries to enlist your help in blowing up the town. I turned down the offer, and then next time I ran into the sheriff I tipped him off to the plot. I tagged along while the sheriff went to confront the stranger, and when the guy unexpectedly pulled a gun and killed the sheriff, I pulled mine and killed him in turn. It was like a Quentin Tarantino movie. I went to the sheriff's house and talked with his now orphaned child about his father. As I was leaving the kid opened a bottle of whiskey and took a swig. With the sheriff out of the way, scumbag saloon owner Colin Moriarity is in charge of the town and everyone is miserable. Now that whole sequence was cool and all, but I'm so curious to play again and see how things could turn out differently based on my actions. I want to know what it's like to blow up the town. I want to murder the stranger before he gets to kill the sheriff, and see if I'm punished for my crime--I doubt the "But sheriff, he killed you in an alternate timeline" defense works in the game. I want to let him kill the sheriff but spare his life to see if he takes it upon himself to blow up the town now that the law is out of the way and his plot is exposed. Or will the townspeople descend upon him themselves to murder him? Will the sheriff's kid take that rifle off of the wall and avenge his father's death? Would the sheriff have played a part down the line in my ongoing story if he had lived? There are so many moments in the game where you are given real choices that affect your gameplay experience, and it's hard not to want to experience everything--which is why I know I'll be playing this one a few more times, because there's just no way you can experience the whole story with one character.

It's Got Great Environments

Another are where this game is a huge improvement over Oblivion is in the environment. It may not be as large as the aforementioned game, but where many of the dungeons and much of the countryside in Oblivion were uninspired to the point of feeling randomly generated, every hill you walk over in Fallout reveals a unique, lived in environment. An abandoned drive-in movie theater, abandoned gas stations, abandoned diners, abandoned supermarkets--there's always some interesting abandoned thing you'll want to go explore. I haven't even gone to downtown DC yet to explore the ruins of the US Capitol and the surrounding environs, but I have a hunch it's going to be more interesting than the row after row of dry identical streets in Oblivion's capital city.

It Restricts Your Character Stats

I know that sounds dumb, right? Restrictions are bad, right? Not so, says I. In much the same way your actions in the game are actual choices because they require the sacrifice of another experience, building your character stats requires actual choice because you simply can't have everything. This is not an RPG where you level up indefinitely and continually boost your stats and eventually become an unstoppable God. Your seven core attributes (strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility and luck) basically remain unchanged for the duration of the game, and you stop leveling up and boosting your secondary skills at level 20--by then you're fully developed. You've made a choice about what sort of character you are and what you're capable and incapable of, and you have to live with it. How wonderful! I'm constantly running into locks I can't pick and people I can't persuade because of how I've chosen to dole out my experience points. There are ways I have to do things that are very different from how a differently built character would go about them, and it's exciting to work within those limitations. UPDATE: Reading the response to this article at RPG Codex, it's apparent that eventually you do start feeling like an unstoppable God. Like I said earlier in the article, I've only been playing for about eight hours so I'm just not there yet. Oh, to remain Level 8 forever...

Not a Review: Eight Things I Love About Rock Band 2

I loved Rock Band, but it was far from perfect. Rock Band 2, on the other hand? Pretty flippin' close. Here are eight reasons why Rock Band 2 rocks my socks off:

1. Insane Song Selection
The math alone is astounding. 84 tracks on the disc + the 55 tracks exported from my Rock Band 1 disc + the pile of tracks I downloaded for RB1 = A WHOLE SHITLOAD OF MUSIC. What's even better is that most of it is legitimately great (or at least fun) music. With 20 more FREE downloadable tracks coming before the end of the year (not to mention the non-free downloads like No Doubt's Greatest Hits!!!) things are gonna get even crazier.

2. No Fail Mode
I've thrown my fair share of Rock Band parties, and way too often I've seen timid first time players cause the band to fail a song and never pick up the controller again. Letting people down is some serious negative reinforcement, and the new "No Fail Mode" removes that completely, letting first timers completely bungle a song while they learn without disappointing anyone.

Six more great reasons to love this game after the jump, including full lyrics for a song readers of this blog might particularly enjoy...

3. Fixed World Tour Mode
The World Tour mode in Rock Band 1 had some serious problems. The most immediately apparent was that the beginning of the tour had you playing the same songs over and over again to progress--my first sit down with the game had me and my pals playing Weezer's "Say It Ain't So" six times. Great song, but c'mon. This is no doubt helped by the fact that downloaded songs and Rock Band 1 songs are integrated into the Tour, so it has much more to pull from. Also, the need to have a "band leader" (a character who is required to be present to play with the band) was a frustrating restriction that has thankfully been removed.

4. Characters Can Play Any Instrument
If you fire up my copy of RB1 right now, you'll see three Albos--singer Albo, drummer Albo and guitar/bass Albo. How stupid is that? RB2 now lets players create a character once and use him/her to play any instrument in the game. Hallelujah!

5. Drum Trainer
Getting taught basic rhythms and fills and then practicing those without guidance in the freestyle mode is incredibly satisfying.

6. Instrument Difficulties Displayed On Screen
I maintained a printed out "cheat sheet" for Rock Band 1 that listed every song along with its difficulty on every instrument. Now I'll never have to flip through the thing again, as that info is displayed right on the song selection screen. It's very useful info for first time players who are looking for something easy, or for long time players that are trying to decide what difficulty setting they should choose.

7. Vocal Scoring Is Much More Forgiving
It never really bothered me because I rarely go above "Medium" on vocals, but I've seen people sing really well on hard and expert and get trashed by RB1's pitch detector. The sequel is much more forgiving. Actually, they might've even gone too far in the other direction, as I've been getting five stars on songs I really shouldn't be, and I watched a friend of mine get 100% on "So What'cha Want" by just mumbling.

8. Speck's "Conventional Lover"
I found myself singing this in World Tour mode without ever having heard it before, and losing big points because I was cracking up at the lyrics. You're reading a site called "Geekanerd," so I'm sure you can appreciate this:

Who left you hanging on that peg all alone
You look near mint to me babe and I wanna make you my own
I wanna be your captain, my Pon Farr is a-risin’
So step on over here girl, my love is enterprisin'

Let me be your conventional lover
Let me show you some conventional love
I don't mean to boast, I don't mean to brag (ooh love long and prosper)
But I'm a man whose only issues all come in mylar bags

Let me be your conventional lover
Let me give you my conventional love
I'll give you my heart, I'll treat you nice (ooh love long and prosper)
And the games that I play only have twenty-sided dice
They're polyhedral!

Let's hit the dealer's room and you something fine
That collectors bust of Cthulhu reminds me of how you blow my mind
Now let me take you dancing in my best Starfleet dress uniform
You'll want to tap my mana once you’ve seen me perform

REPEAT CHORUS

Uh oh... SAVING THROW!

And when we get to mating, I'll always treat you kind
I'll never bend you too far back or ever crease your spine
But there's one thing I won't promise, there's one thing I won't do
Can't leave you in the box babe, this collector is coming through

Let me be your conventional lover
Let me give you my conventional love
I'll give you my heart, I'll treat you fine
And I'll make sweet love to you while we're watching Deep Space Nine

Hell yeah.