CrazyGamer

In one of the all-time great episodes of “Seinfeld,” George Costanza will do anything to preserve his high score on an arcade game of Frogger — even if that means lugging the fridge-sized console through rush-hour traffic to plug it in before it loses battery power. George has nothing on Billy Mitchell, a real-life gamer whose arcadian rhythms long ago earned him the top score in the history of Donkey Kong. So when Steve Wiebe, a likable science teacher from Seattle, submits a videotape of himself hopscotching over barrels to break the record, Mitchell, along with the insular gaming community, is quick to question the unknown upstart’s bid for the title. What ensues in this documentary is more sublimely hilarious than even a Christopher Guest mockumentary.

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All that matters is that I know what a reviewer means when they give a game a specific score. But the more 1 thought about it, the more I realized that your method is actually inferior to the method used by most other reviews. The reason is that the other method is so familiar to everyone. Most people in the U.S. grow up receiving grades on a similar scale (A, B , C. D, and F). Just as kilometers, kilograms, and Celsius have less meaning to me than miles, pounds, and Fahrenheit, your 5 out of 10 means a little less to me than the other guys’ 71 percent. While the benefits of switching to the metric system are obvious, I don’t see any benefit to scoring differently than everyone else. It’s just a minor annoyance

I’ve been a big gamer my whole life, but this past year or so, I’ve been shying away from longer, more involved games, I’ve devoured many great casual games (Bookworm Adventures springs to mind), sometimes beating them in as few as two sittings, but I just cannot commit myself to anything tiiat would require an emotional investment (Obiivian, Prey, or even Half-Life 2, for god’s sake). Is something wrong with me?

Dungeons & Dragons Online, and Guild Wars (i have no life). Vanguard has the best graphics by far of any of the games I just mentioned. Mr Sharkey needs a new computer if he thinks the graphics aren”t up to par. What is he talking about?

What sensible MMO developer wouldn’t try to use the interface from the most popular game of all time (WOW)? Also, what fantasy MMO doesn’t have “boring quests and highfantasy cliches”"? Even the great WOW has those…all pretty much cloned from D&D way back when I was starting to game on the PC in The late ’80s (yes - 1, too, am an old-timer at 39). I hope your readers are bright enough to try Vanguard for themselves, as your magazine has a history of low review scores on newly released games that were pushed out too fast (which, I agree, Vanguard was). I know, not your problem. You are just doing your jobs, and you do your jobs well, most of the time. I think you missed it on this game, though.

I have an idea: You shoufd get reviewers who actually enjoy the type of game they”re reviewing.

It sounds to me like Sharkey doesn’t really like MMOs at ail. If you needs any help in the reviewing of MMOs, I will gladly volunteer, as long as you put me on the payroll.

I have tried just about all of the MMOs out there (except Auto Assault, as it was shortlived).

With the exception of EQl. I tired of the others very quickly. WOW was just too darn easy (no hate mail, please). Leveling l-to-70 in a month is OK for some people, I guess (4 gazillion subscribers cannot be wrong)…but I prefer a challenge. I’m looking forward to enjoying Vanguard for a long time. I just think Sharkey blew it with this review, and hopefully, the game will make it - even though he pretty much burned it to the ground.

Granted, there were a lot of bugs when Vanguard released. Things are much better now, which makes me wonder when Sharkey reviewed it. The March 29 patch fixed all the bugs that I had problems with. Maybe I am just lucky, but I doubt that.

When “Stardust” was first released, critics aptly compared the swashbuckling fairy tale to “The Princess Bride.” Adapted from a graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, the story follows Tristan (Charlie Cox), a man on a quest for a shooting star in order to win over his true love, played by Sienna Miller. The anthropomorphic star turns out to be a cranky Claire Danes, who is pursued by a jumble of other characters. The most memorable is Michelle Pfeiffer, stunning as a witch scrabbling desperately for her lost youth and beauty - which can only be reclaimed with the heart of a fallen star. Robert De Niro makes an unexpected cameo as Captain Shakespeare, a flamboyant can-can enthusiast who pilots a flying pirate ship. Not terribly memorable extras include a making of the film with Gaiman.

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Mira Nair (”Monsoon Wedding”) returns to familiar themes of cultural conflict in her adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri’s family saga about a young couple, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli (Bollywood stars Irrfan Khan and Tabu), from Calcutta who struggle to adapt to their new life in New York. Their children are equally conflicted, especially their son, the unfortunately named Gogol - played by Kal Penn with an energy and humor that lifts the character out of cliche - who, as an all-American teenager with a WASP girlfriend, initially rejects his family heritage. Nair tries to cram too much of Lahiri’s sprawling novel into two hours, and the emotion is often broadbrush, verging on sentimentality. But her penchant for pictorial vignettes, the loving shots of New York and Calcutta - “a portrait of two cities as if they are one” - and outstanding performances make the film truly moving. Special features include Nair talking to Columbia students about moviemaking, sure to interest amateur filmmakers.

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Sunday evening I tell my husband I want something to do, something sedentary, I don’t know but not reading not thinking, I feel scattered, vaguely dissatisfied—not sex not ice cream but something mindlessly involving—not television—something for the hands to take my mind off whatever I don’t know and my husband goes out and brings me back jigsaw puzzles: thousands of pieces of autumn landscape and a weathered farm in cardboard boxes and that’s it, that’s just what I had in mind if I had anything in mind. I choose the farm because it’s smaller and easier (the landscape is all fallen or falling leaves), because it has a road with a boy and a fawn-colored cow and their legs will be easy to find. I start with the border, rummage in the box for straight edges, build a frame of reference at the same time turning all the pieces face up, sorting and grouping: the obvious sky the packed dirt road as straight as the road by my uncle’s wheat farm that summer the veils of heat above blacktop the guileless grasses I find the cow’s muzzle the boy’s blue sweater it must be late autumn late in the afternoon there’s a breeze cool and full of promise as the creek that bordered my aunt’s truck farm here’s the rusty farmhouse the barn’s gaping doorway the place inside where light stops my uncle Bill kept cows once and chickens he was surprised I wanted to take the warm eggs out from under wanted to ride on the green combine because my mother didn’t when she was a kid but I needed to let go to be lifted up to a new place a different view to trust his hands were hard and warm the dusty coveralls his hair wheat-colored I wanted to touch to see everything as much as possible all at once to belong to take part and be myself now I place the uncertain ones together at one side maybe the barn roof or shady part of the driveway impossible to tell sometimes till most of the pieces are in maybe the path beyond the border to the marbled fields the harvested ones I search by color by shape for any clue to what comes next fooled by the similar surprised by sudden recognition how often the mind gives up what the eye held clear I know the farm the house and grounds will go quickly now my husband once owned part of a farm he misses the natural order watching the hawks the mice in the grass everything in its place and I miss it for him with him want it for him it all goes so much faster toward the last and then it’s not really a picture you can keep the process is all that matters after all not the product the end result.

Still I pause to admire my work before I break it down, to silently thank the boy, the cow, and the photographer, the puzzle company, the cutting machine. I am thankful for pieces that fit the larger picture for even a glimpse of how it turns out grateful for my husband his love his knowing what is needed for this moment of holding together when everything falls into place.

After Harry Potter defends himself against an attack by Dementors - ghouls that could give even Stephen King nightmares - he stands trial for the underage use of magic. Then, when he returns to school, he is confronted with a new teacher, Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton), who has her own “brand” of corporal punishment. All the while, the forces of Voldemort’s Army gather in the outside world. We’re definitely no longer in “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” territory. This is the shortest, but best, film in the series thanks to improved acting by the teen principals and a villainess for the ages in Staunton. Fans incensed by the curt abridgement of the brick-sized book will find crumbs of comfort in a few deleted scenes and a tour of the set by Natalia Tena, the actress who plays Nymphadora Tonks, the witch with chameleonic hair.

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The Statue of Liberty inscription, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,” comes to vivid life in this early 1900s immigration saga about a destitute Sicilian family’s voyage to America. In the bonus features, director Emanuele Crialese observes that they are voyaging to a literally New World, an idea he underscores in his occasionally surreal visual poem. (When the ship departs, for example, an overhead shot depicts an opening chasm between those on board and those on shore.) Though Salvatore, head of the family, finds romance aboard the vessel, it’s hardly the Cunard line. During a storm, the ship’s hold churns like a clothes dryer. Worse is yet to come. At Ellis Island, a conveyor-belt bureaucracy weeds out “undesirable” peasants. The family’s triumph is hard won.

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In the pantheon of quirky independents, the New Zealand film “Eagle vs. Shark” falls closer to “Napoleon Dynamite” than “Juno.” But where Napoleon was ultimately a winning character and the film more or less succeeded in its flirtation with total absurdity, the oddball characters in “Eagle vs. Shark” too often go over the edge. There is Lily, a sweet fast-food cashier whose mouth is caught in a permanent sheepish sneer. And Jarrod, so self-absorbed, seems undeserving of her affection. They meet, play a video game, sleep together, then make the journey back to his childhood home where he sets out to avenge a youthful slight. Unsympathetic as Jarrod may be, there is something touching about Lily’s unflagging acceptance and devotion.

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