Tag Archives: postapocalyptic

Fallout 3 First Impressions

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Fallout 3 Washington Monument

I’ve only played for a few hours, and I’ve only made it a few hundred feet outside the Vault so far, but what I’ve seen, I like very much. The character creation system is clever, starting you out as a baby, and learning how to move around and interact with people. Eventually you take an aptitude test which helps determine which skills you start with. Most important though, is I think they nailed the feel of the original games. It feels a little strange bolted onto the Oblivion engine, but they’ve done a good job of adapting it to allow shooting. The shooting is not quite as fluid as a dedicated game like Halo, but it definitely works, and the addition of VATS for RPG-like targeting works well, and the results are often hilarious, just like the original games. I can’t wait to play more.

I Am Legend (movie): One Paragraph Review

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Will Smith is Not Alone

Will Smith is Robert Neville, the only survivor of a plague that has killed 90% of humanity, and left the rest infected with a disease that turns them into vampire-like monsters. Neville was a military scientist studying the disease, which originated as a cure for cancer. Even as the rest of Manhattan rushes to evacuate, including his family, he refuses to leave because New York is “ground zero for the outbreak.” We catch up on his back story in flashbacks while we watch Neville go about his daily routine, hunting for food, scavenging for supplies, and even capturing infected survivors to test possible cures on. The movie’s plot deviates significantly from the novel, but for the most part, I thought the changes were decent, and reasonable adaptations for the big screen. The ending (which is the biggest change) is somewhat weak, and attempts to pick up the redemption theme that was introduced in The Omega Man. Just like the other movies and the original novel, the best parts of this film are early on, looking into the psychology of a survivor. Will Smith said in interviews that he spoke with prisoners who spent long periods of time in solitary confinement, and that research shows in the way Neville painstakingly follows his routine, staying alive almost out of force of habit, and the near-breakdown he suffers when his routine is disrupted by another survivor. Of the three, this is easily the best adaptation, and even if you hate the ending, the first half is incredibly good. I can’t recommend this highly enough.

This review is the fourth in a four-part series reviewing Richard Matheson’s novel I am Legend, and the three movies that have been made based on it: Vincent Price’s The Last Man on Earth, Charlton Heston’s The Omega Man, and Will Smith’s I am Legend.

I Am Legend (novel): One Paragraph Review

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This May Be The Most Terrifying Science-Fiction Novel You Will Ever Read!!!!!!

Robert Neville is the only survivor of a global pandemic which causes the people it kills to rise again as vampires. At night, he barricades himself inside his home in southern California as the vampires gather outside his house, taunting him to come outside. His days are an endless routine of repairing the house, disposing of bodies, and hunting for the vampires’ hiding places. In the three years since everyone died, the only other living thing Neville has seen is a dog that he spends weeks befriending. So when he comes across a living woman one day, his entire world is turned upside down. Like the movie adaptations, the novel really shines when it focuses on how Neville keeps himself (barely) sane by immersing himself in the constant work of survival. Whenever his thoughts stray to memories of the events leading up to the catastrophe, the death of his family, or even just wondering why he works so hard to survive, he starts to unravel. After all, what’s the point of surviving if you’ll never see another human again? Matheson thought of this as a science fiction novel, and dedicates a large part of the story to scientifically explaining details of the vampire myth like garlic and wooden stakes, but the explanations all feel like too much of a stretch. Still, this book not only led to three movie adaptations, it virtually single-handedly spawned the zombie movie genre, so it’s easy to ignore the weak parts and focus on the day-to-day reality of the last man on Earth.

This review is the third in a four-part series reviewing Richard Matheson’s novel I am Legend, and the three movies that have been made based on it: Vincent Price’s The Last Man on Earth, Charlton Heston’s The Omega Man, and Will Smith’s I am Legend.

Half-Life 2 Episode 1: One Paragraph Review

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Half-Life 2 Episode 2

I was going to write a review, but instead I’m going to quote from an email Miles sent me, because he puts it better than I ever could:

“It cracks me up how schizophrenic it is between apocalyptic horror and tongue-in-cheek wish fulfillment. On the one hand: Alien slavers colonize the earth! They’re sterilizing humanity, draining the ocean for minerals, and infesting our ecosystem with hostile alien species. On the other hand: everyone of any significance to the story is a Physics PhD! SUPEREMPOWERED NERDS DUKE IT OUT FOR THE FATE OF HUMANITY! You spend the entire game running around with a 22-year-old babe who’s a self-taught physicist, roboticist, electrical engineer, sniper, and alien-technology hacker; she’s a crack shot with rifle, pistol, and shotgun alike; she climbs walls like a parkour master, and high-kicks zombies so hard that their heads come off!”

And a bonus paragraph from a letter that Miles is “mentally composing to Gabe Newell about ep2,” complaining about the death of CENSORED.

“I mean, I know that you’re Valve and hl2 is a Dark Catalogue of Human Nightmares like war, zombies, Orwellian fascism, environmental collapse, and extinction, but get real: The player has spent nearly the entire game tear-assing around the Bavarian forest in a chopped muscle-car with his electrical-engineer / commando / babe sidekick crawling across the hood to ride shotgun, with a literal keg of whup-ass hooked to the back bumper, earning the raucous cheers of the men when he uses said keg to dispatch looming alien tanks (with great dispatch, even.) It’s the height of insensitivity to cap this all off with, ‘and then two monsters came out of nowhere and killed CENSORED.’”

The Last Man on Earth: One Paragraph Review

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Vincent Price is Not Alone

As far as he can tell, Dr. Robert Morgan (played by Vincent Price) is the only survivor of a plague that turns its victims into shuffling zombie-like vampires. Through flashbacks, we see the onset of the disease, and the growing horror as increasing numbers of people become infected, including Morgan’s wife and daughter. Price’s droning narrative really emphasizes the growing monotony of Morgan’s daily routine of sharpening stakes, disposing of bodies, gathering supplies and killing vampires. At night he barricades himself and listens to loud jazz records to cover the sounds of the vampires, including a former coworker, taunting him and trying to break into the house. Compared to The Omega Man, Price does a better job of portraying the bleakness of survival for survival’s sake, but Heston did a better job of playing a character on the edge of a total breakdown. This version is much closer to the original novel, especially the ending. In all, I found this version to be more somber, and I felt more sympathy for the character — though having grown up associating Price with horror films, it was hard to accept his distinct voice as a regular familyman.

This review is the second in a four-part series reviewing Richard Matheson’s novel I am Legend, and the three movies that have been made based on it: Vincent Price’s The Last Man on Earth, Charlton Heston’s The Omega Man, and Will Smith’s I am Legend.