Gamer Outraged

I took an interest in the Oldboy (2003) OST, so I decided to find out who actually composed it. I did some Internet research and here is what I found on the most popular sites: * On iMDB there are three different people credited for the OST in question: Jo Yeong-Wook (as director of music), Choi Seung-Hyun and Lee Ji-Soo (both as composers). * On English Wikipedia only Jo Yeong-Wook is credited. This is a good example of how frustrating the Internet can be. All this information is not very accurate. I did some more searching and finally found a person who I decided to contact in order to make things clear, Shim Hyun-Jung . As you might have noticed, her name is not mentioned at iMDB or Wikipedia. This talented composer and a a very nice person agreed to help me. It came out, it was her who composed 15 (out of 24) tracks for the soundtrack, including the memorable The Last Walts . The remaining tracks were composed by Lee Ji-Soo and Choi Seung-Hyun , and Jo Yeong-Wook was the M...

Isn't it wonderful how sometimes when you are thinking about one thing, your mind jumps to another? Only a short time ago I was writing about Rorschach and mentioned its music, which was borrowed from the Oldboy (2003) OST. Soon after making that post, I started thinking about the movie. I watched it a long time ago and could only remember a couple of things from it (not including the fact that the movie was extremely violent, this is kinda hard to forget). For one, the octopus which was eaten alive by the main hero. A really memorable scene - octopus' legs sticking out of Dae-su 's mouth, swirling. And, of course, the legendary corridor fight scene (a very long continuous take, marvelous). This scene was actually the reason I got to see Oldboy in the first place. I heard about it before I even knew what the movie is really about. Anyway, it seemed only logical to find the DVD and watch it again. What can I say? It is indeed a very impressive movie, a thriller with a mess...

Recently, I got a chance to talk to Jens Andersson , an ex-employee at Starbreeze video game developing company, now working at LucasArts . Jens is an amazing guy, not only he was the designer of Enclave , The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (one of my favorite action games of all time) and The Darkness , he also developed an amazing piece of software for Nintendo DS and iPhone - Colors! . In addition to all those things mentioned above, Jens created an independent game called Rorschach . This is a very innovative adventure game. The most interesting part of the game is its dialogue system which revolves around the idea of gathering conversation topics while talking with different in-game characters. The selected topics are stored in an inventory and can be used later on to advance the plot. There is a limited amount of slots in the inventory, so it is important to think ahead and select to carry only the appropriate topics in order to save some legwork. That approach ...

There is one thought that constantly saddens me - there is not a chance in the world that there will be another game as good as Grim Fandango . Never ever. Why? Only because an independent developer couldn't pull such a great game and no major video game publisher will agree to finance something like that, seeing that the world is hooked up on the visually stunning games without caring for a solid plot.

No matter what MMOG you play, unless you block the general channel for one reason or another, it is hard not to notice plenty of people saying how bad World of Warcraft is compared to the current title. I guess this is pretty much inevitable with WoW being one of the most popular MMOGs in the world and all. The real problem about this is people actually feeling the necessity to bash Warcraft . I have been playing the game for almost 4 years. During that time I tried several other MMO titles, some of them I grew fond of, the others were not to my fancy. And of course, no matter what, I always kept comparing (to some extent) all the games I played to World of Warcraft, as it is kinda impossible not to, the game really set high standards. But, unlike so many people, I really couldn't really say that World of Warcraft was clearly better or the other way around. All the major MMO games are really unlike each other, they all provide the different things to the player. The only thing I...

There are real hardcore fans of Command & Conquer series. They collect all the different releases of the games in the series, they make their own movies and write stories based on the C&C universe, and so on. I can call myself a hardcore fan of C&C as well, but my obsession spanned only over a single game in the massive series. I first read about C&C on the Internet. At the time Internet was a beautiful and new thing (at least where I lived), and I didn't know anyone who had access to it at home. That included me as well. I was spending hours and hours surfing the Internet at my father's work place and that's how I stumbled over an article about the original Command & Conquer game. The first thing I've done after reading about the game and drooling over the screenshots, was downloading the demo version. I've already admired the previous Westwood real-time strategy, Dune 2 , and completed it a dozen of times, but when I launched the C&C ...

Spore (released on Sep 7, 2008) - you hear about this game almost everywhere. I've seen dozens of advertisements, read several reviews, watched some youtube movies - the game looked like a gem, so, finally I decided to buy it. At first, Spore really made a great impression but the more I progressed through the different stages, the more I was getting disappointed with it. Foreplay Cell Stage This stage is really fun and is pretty much identical to flOw , the game released for PS3 on Feb 22, 2007. You have to guide a cell - feed it, avoid getting eaten by other cells and grow bigger. Controls are easy at this point, customization is simple but very fun. The stage is over in less than 10 minutes. Creature Stage The stage is great - your life form gets out of the water and starts roaming the land. Creature customization is still pretty simple and is even funnier than before as you can shape your alter ego as you wish, possibilities are endless. Also, to advance further you have to co...