LVL Headed

So here’s a picture of the new Star Trek film coming out…

You can find more here.

Alright Hollywood, I’m sick of this.  I’m looking at each of these people, and none of them look older than 25.  Captain Kirk looks like he’s the captain of a college swim team.  I don’t care how advanced the future’s education system is, these people look way too young to be at the helm of a starship.

And while this specific complaint has been brought about by Star Trek, don’t peg me as some kind of geek purist.  I’m not bothered that they got different actors to play in this remake of Star Trek.  I’m not really bothered by Star Trek at all, it’s the entire movie industry I’m bothered by.

I guess this is a little better than it was before.  Before, Hollywood was infamous for making movies about high schoolers starring actors in their early thirties.  I can tell that’s over because I watched Superbad, the first movie about high school that starred people who looked like they were actually still in high school.  But now we’ve got the opposite problem, young-looking actors playing the roles of older characters.  Let’s look at Superman real quick-like…

Here’s Margot Kidder as Lois Lane.  My apologies to Kidder, but she looks like she’s the appropriate age to be a Metropolis reporter.  Not old, but not rediculously young.

Here’s Kate Bosworth who acted as Lois Lane in Superman Returns (though the picture I’m using here obviously isn’t from said film).  Odd that in a film that supposedly takes place after the original Superman movie that Lois seems to have lost several years.  I do like the picture I’m using here because it looks like Bosworth’s kindergarten teacher has just flipped the book she was reading to show all the kids the illustration on the opposite page before she goes back to reading the book aloud.

Hollywood, I know you think we like looking at college-age supermodels.  And I guess that’s probably true.  But nothing pulls me out of a movie more than to see Muppet Babies cast as thirty-somethings.

There’s just too much youthful handsomeness in the movies these days.

So No More Heroes 2 is coming out. Personally, I’m elated.  That’s because I’m a fanboy.  However, in order to become a competent blogger, one must be able to sell one’s own opinion as hardline fact.  So let me just wax a few sentences of why grape is the best candy flavor.

I’ve played No More Heroes.  And I liked it.  The graphics were a little shoddy, the hit-boxes on the cars were way too large, the open-world style hub was completely unecessary, and some of the bad guys were a bit too predictable.  But I still like the game because of the attitude.

No More Heroes is a game that takes our culture of cool violence and strange chivalry, exagerates it, and turns it into a serious parody of itself.  It’s ultra-cool while pointing out how absurd everything cool is.  I mean, you play an assassin who has to do odd jobs like mowing lawns in order to afford your hobby of killing people.  The most mundane parts of our real lives are mixed with our game lives in which we spend most of our time mowing through baddies, not grass.  It’s fun to see that contrast inside the game world.

Suda 51 is said to be an auteur.  I think that’s kinda true.  In this young medium you don’t often see too much experimentation.  Most designers seem to be looking for formulas, for a “science” of game design, while it seems that Suda 51 wanted to play around with expression and experience a bit more than fun.  And so he succeeds with the two former but comes up a bit short with the latter.  Suda 51 is important because he’s making games more personal, giving them something to say, but he (like every other game maker) hasn’t quite gotten everything right yet.  The medium is young, but games like No More Heroes help to bring on adolescence.

I’m excited about No More Heroes 2.  I’m hoping that it won’t just be a retread of No More Heroes, as I want to see more new ideas coming from Grasshopper Manufacture.  At the same time, I’m also hoping that they pin down some of the problems of the earlier game.  In some areas they can definitely do better, but everything behind the game is strong.

At least, that’s what I can come up with to hold up my opinions.

Well, the new Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! is up, and it features a suggestion and quote by yours truly… except he got my name wrong.  Oh well, I don’t really mind since No Twinkie is a great series of articles.  Each one delves into common design decisions that make games less fun instead of more fun.

If you’re curious, I sent in a suggestion about escort missions and waist-high impassible obstacles.  Yes, I know these are the most obvious things to gripe about when it comes to bad game design, but I just wanted to be a part of something.  Do you really want to take that away from me!?

So check the article out.  I’m gonna go get some twinkies.