The memories of those who came of age in the eighties have become a kind of ghastly rummage sale, a tilled up cemetery where icons lay tilted over bones draped in ancient finery. Pork caught a preview of Transformers on Monday, and he claims that it is not, in fact, heresy - but I don’t know how calibrated our respective tastes are. I was going to make a statement about how any constantly shifting image could entertain him, enthrall him, command him, until I realized that this viewing was late at night, in the twilight period we call Pork After Hours, when his medication wanes and his blood is frenzied by some dark moon. For him to have focused on anything at any time after nine o’clock is actually high praise.
They must be nearing the darkest corners of these childhood vaults, their flashlights slicing across the looted remnants of our ancient treasure - but this barrel does have a bottom, and when they find it, it will almost certainly be scraped.
Return on Friday for explosive excerpts. (!!!)
We’re starting to learn more about FolkSoul for the PS3, and the GameSpot summary - "This fantasy action-adventure game stars two magical heroes who are attempting to solve a series of murders" - is the sort of hot talk that daddy likes. It has an Irish sleuth-wizard named Keats, for fuck’s sake! And you yank souls out with motion controls (and dig holes with voles on the dole)! The way your collected abilities manifest has a Lost Kingdoms vibe to it, which ought to please Gabriel, being the only Lost Kingdoms fan on record - it was a game that relied more heavily on the CCG aspects of collecting, but never really had the technology or the budget to execute its ideas fully. FolkSoul (already released in Japan, I believe) looks like the kind of dependable, ship of the line title that the system needs.
If you watch the recently released Rock Band video closely, there’s definitely some food for thought - for example, the way that a kick drum note is represented by a glowing bar on the staff. Or that the drummer is given fill sections to extemporize after sections. Or that there is a huge freakout at the end of a song that feeds into a universal bonus. They have a lot of expertise on the vocal side with their own Karaoke Revolution, so it’s nice to see normal, bonus, and atonal sections in play. I have seen other things in the video - terrifying, and beautiful - but I know not if these be visions, or the mad spirals of a mind in its descent to hell.
(CW)TB out.
