Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

 Just saw it! This movie was somehow both amazing and completely average. I was torn between the fact that I knew, as I watched it, that the stuff I was most enjoying was already being lambasted by critics, and based on some of the after-view commentary I overheard, including from some chubby 20-something talking about how he has "lived long enough to see his childhood hero fail," that I suspect this movie won't play well to audiences. Its third act was amazing.....just not in a world today populated by Marvel multiverses and DC Flashpoints. Gah.

Anyway, I'll just say that while this movie was hardly necessary, it was a fine adventure and in most spots managed to feel much more like a true Indiana Jones movie than the fourth film. It's clever use of real archaeological details mixed with clever fictions (in the Indiana Jones universe the Antikythera Mechanism is a much more dramatically intact and useful object...the eponymous Dial of Destiny in the title, if you will) made for a kind of more familiar mixture of classic Indiana Jones, sullied only occasionally by moments where the set pieces felt too CGI enhanced. That said....a lot of this movie felt like it was more traditionally filmed with live action sequences, making the moments where it seemed like CGI was in use stand out all the more.

I enjoyed it, overall. I would give it a solid A, and having seen all the other blockbusters this year so far, this is the only one I really felt like commenting on in the blog. Unfortunately I think that general audiences today are both too cynical to enjoy this movie, too divided over the old Lucas Film properties and what should be done with them, and too burned out on big set-piece action films that have to compete with Marvel movies to really care about this one. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. This will probably be the last "smart" action movie we see for a long time if it bombs. A real shame. And if you want to argue that point with me, then my contention above is proven correct. I think this was a good movie....not a great movie, and its perceived failures stem only from being #5 in a series that was much better when it was new and young, but I think anyone with an earnest appreciation for Indiana Jones, and who maybe was old enough to see Raiders of the Lost Ark when it originally released in the theaters, that you might just find this one a fun watch, and a bit sentimental, too.

Minor Spoilers! Here are the three things I disliked and five things I very much liked:

Good: the clever use of mixing archaeological fact and fiction to define the Antikythera Mechanism (just called the "Antikythera" in the movie) with the historical foundation lodged in Archimedes and the Siege of Syracuse to craft an interesting McGuffin for Indiana Jones to pursue. 

Bad: Harrison Ford's CGI de-aging didn't work for me as much as I thought it would, and his voice sounded too old for the age they were depicting.

Good: The movie handled a transition from the last film surprisingly well, and made it character relevant in a way that I thought worked. They refrained from too many callbacks which was good (and the ones we had were generally "relevant" as opposed to gratuitous, though Sallah maybe was just there because they could). 

Bad: A bug scene callback that proves the Indiana Jones universe just has a lot of really big bugs out there.

Good: The final act was amazing, I was very excited that they actually did what they did (won't say what, but it was brilliant).

Bad: Indiana Jones should have stayed. You'll see what I mean if you watch it! That would have been a true send-off. The maudlin actual ending was fine, too....but....grrrr. I was with him on that one.

Good: It's over, I feel like maybe they can please let Jones (and Ford) retire forever here, it was a fine final tale. 

Random Thought: why are there no Indiana Jones book or comic tie-ins? His early adventures could be exploited that way. I know my kid would read them (and I would too if they aren't aimed at the YA audience). Maybe those do exist and I just don't know about it. Or maybe modern audiences, no longer being readers of such staid forms of entertainment, don't make it worthwhile to produce such stuff? Hmmm. (EDIT: An Amazon search reveals a lot of old novels in a series, but we're talking books going back to the "written by Steve Perry" era of tie-ins. Also, lots of Scholastic adventures from 12-15 years ago, it looks like. So...yeah.....YMMV on these I guess. I'll stick to other stuff).

Grokking Mork Borg

 Recently I took time to pack up a lot of my books in anticipation of future moving, and in the process shuffled some of my collection to a stack of "must go" product. In the course of this, I reallocated precious shelf space to the myriad zinerpgs, chapbooks and other weird micro-indie-rpg products I have been slowly accruing, and among those lies Mork Borg.

I don't think it was specifically just Mork Borg which got me in to its strange blend of Dark Souls, Swedish Death Metal design and grim horror thematics. That stuff is cool, but not the reason. No, I think I have to blame some other artsy and weird RPGs for this moment of revelation in which the beauty of Mork Borg finally made sense to me: Mothership, certainly, but also Death in Space and Into the Odd, Screams Amongst the Stars, Into the Zone and Liminal Horror.* All great games, all with their own interesting design quirks and a desire to aim for minimalist mechanical design in hopes of exploiting inherent creativity and storytelling in the process. They are all spiritually OSR in the sense that the games want to exploit the players' inherent desire for challenge and need for unanticipated emergent gameplay as core to the experience, while also aiming for simple but modern rule structures that eschew procedural elements as much as possible. For these games, the intent Dungeon Crawl Classics aimed for, to capture that feel of being weird and different and surprising in the way D&D felt in 1974, is simply the starting state.

Mork Borg owes my sudden interest to the newish playrole.com VTT site, which appears to cater to theater of the mind and nonstandard RPGs extremely well, mixed with a moment, when I got some of my players into a room there with the ultra lite RPG Dead Malls, where rolling three main stats is one half of character generation, an the other half is picking three items of equipment. I realized that the liberating effect of having the minimalist, essential rules structure in place allowed me to do whatever I wanted with the rest of the game, which is about exploring urban decay in abandoned malls, and the hint of danger that comes from an era where the world online regularly invents monsters like slender man and siren head. 

It was then that I realized: Mork Borg is doing the same thing. The story of its world is all meant to inspire and evoke the genre it is depicting, sure, but the point is to have rules that inform the story, rather than the story being informed by the rules. If I am tired --and boy, am I tired!-- of D&D or Pathfinder with the hundreds of pages of exception based rules on every thing, then is Mork Borg, a shining blacklight in a sea of deep ones swimming ashore, with an entire magic system defined on a couple pages, and a setting where character growth of necessity is defined by how marvelously you manage to suffer and mutate due to the stress and pressure of  a dying fantasy world over time, if you don't just die outright. 

It's not for everyone, but it is definitely for me at this moment....as are its many cousins, such as the inimitable Mothership, Cy-Borg and so many more. I think, at last, I am going to start taking these games not just more seriously, but as maybe the zone I should start focusing on for a while, give the big fat-book RPGs a break for a bit, see if this is what my waning interest has needed to spark some interest in the hobby again.  

*I need to write more about and on all of these games. Liminal Horror is fascinating in and of itself. 

Transformers vs. Flash: Nostalgia Wars! (a Comparison Review of Two Venerable IPs)

 First, The Flash was a genuinely good movie, as superhero movies go, and I was overall quite impressed with it. I also like to note that I am an old DC fanboy and I have a lot of history with the IP in general, so it would have been hard for this movie to fail with me. That said....Ezra Miller was great in the movie, and it was fun to see Michael Keaton back as a retro Batman again. The core conceits of the movie captured the entire Flashpoint concept of the DC multiverse quite well. It had some rough spots, but overall this was a more generally enjoyable movie of its sort than the last few I have seen (with the caveat that Guardians of the Galaxy is unique in its role as a film that transcends its own medium). 

The week before we also caught Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. I spent a lot of that film's runtime just mildly bored as I watched the director try to merge the Michael Bay style of excess with the more human level of development found in the Bumblebee movie. It sort of fails at both styles as a result, but that's okay, because about 20% of the way in to the movie I started cataloging all of the little "childhood" logic moments that basically made this a kid's movie (or at least a teen film). It was operating on the fuel of a story told for kids, with the logic that makes sense to kids (and audiences with mild expectations). 

In the end, the new Transformers movie was a bust for me personally but it entertained my son (a bit; he's not really in to the Transformers). My wife liked it, but she is a bit younger than me. My entire Transformers experience is encapsulated in a time period from about 1983-1988 and is especially focused on those old "original generation" cartoons and the Marvel comics of the time. Anything after that point is more or less lost on me. She, however, grew up loving Beast Wars Transformers or whatever it is called, so she was looking forward to seeing more of those characters (even though all but two got precious few lines in the film).

Anyway.....I realized that the Transformers film was destined to fail for me because my nostalgia for the giant transforming robots is limited to a roughly 5-6 year window in my youth, after which I effectively left it behind. Indeed, my general lack of excitement for the modern movies is probably due to this; no modern conception of the film is going to come close to embracing my recollection of those early days, which is clouded by my own Transformers headcannon of collecting all those figures. The movies today need to reflect decades of the franchise, and the totality of a vast audience with many, many different takes. The only certainty is that they have successfully captured the inherent lack of overall logic or consistency in the many, many variations on The Transformers. It was never, ever the most consistent or plot-hole-free series (though the old comics certainly made an effort).

Meanwhile, The Flash is reflective of my obsession with both comics in general and DC in particular, especially Batman, which started when I was a tiny kid dressing up as the caped crusader, all the way to my thorough embrace of collecting DC following the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and my largely (mostly) successful effort to collect various DC comics for going on four decades now. My familiarity with the vast range of stories, characters and variations used to construct, like Frankenstein's monster, a movie out of the DC comic universe makes more sense to me. Seeing a return to an aged version of Batman from the 1989 film, now a reflection of a broken timestream by Barry Allen, is a genuine treat, as that movie informed much of my entertainment experience in 1989, along with the increasingly amazing Batman comics of the day, such as Dark Knight Returns and Arkham Asylum, both of which I used to write multiple papers on the transition of comics to film back then in one of my college classes, as well as an argument for how film noir had informed comics as a medium and Frank Miller in particular. So yeah, The Flash is not only better able to capitalize on the long history of its own universe, but I am also better suited to embracing it due to my own immersion.

It also helps that The Flash was just a better overall story with more vivacious actors who were given better lines (and Ezra Miller effectively steals every scene except when Keaton is present). If Transformers had better writing, I might be thinking more about how I enjoyed it.....but alas, it did not. 

Anyway, take this as a positive review of The Flash and if you are not a DC hater or burned out on superhero films I give it an A+! But for Transformers....go see if it you have kids who want to see it, too, but I can't say its really all that worth watching, except as pure family entertainment. 

ASUS ROG Ally vs. Steam Deck (Part 1)

 Yesterday my anticipated reserved ASUS ROG Ally came in for pickup, and I spent most of the day waiting patiently for the Windows 11 environment (and Armory Crate, and the firmware, and the bios...) to update, after which I loaded a variety of games from different platforms to test it out: Epic, Steam, Xbox so far, GOG coming soon.

You might be looking at one of these bad boys and wondering if the $699 pricetag is worth it over the equivalent Steam Deck for $629. Here's some observations I have made in the last day and a half of messing around with the ASUS ROG Ally to contrast with the Steam Deck, which I have had for about a year:

LINUX vs. WINDOWS: The Ally operates on Windows 11 with heavy use of the touch screen interface. Steam Deck, by contrast, is a Linux product, which has its own advantages and peculiarities. Right off the bat I can tell you that my many years of grudging experience working in Windows encironments means I find the Ally a more comfortable device to work with; I know what to do with it. The Linux environment of Steam Deck has been an interesting learning curve, and my greatest victory there has been getting some Epic games to work on it....while also failing to do so on almost every other level; my acumen for Linux is just not strong enough to figure out how to successfully do things like get Battle.net to work right, or run emulators, things Youtube Techies all seem to take for granted. Maybe my kid can figure it out, he's heavily into the modding scene these days.

So for now, the ASUS ROG Ally's Windows 11 based environment makes sense for me over Steam Deck, but it is nice to have an incentive to learn how to play in the Linux environment. Sort of.

GAME COMPATIBILITY: everything I have loaded so far has run without issue (after all updates were applied....there are a LOT of updates). I have several Epic Game store games running, Fortnite, Destiny 2, Outriders, Diablo IV, and so forth....all working great. By contrast, Steam Deck is running smoothly for the most part as long as its in the Steam environment and has met the Linux compatibility issues. Some games don't cut it, though, as they may be online titles that require anti-cheat software that doesn't play nice with Linux, or weird general compatibility issues with control schemes, graphics, or other issues. So far (but we'll speak more as I have time to properly test) the Ally is better here simply by virtue of supporting the OS most games are built for.

CONTROLS: For games with native console support so far both the Ally and Steam deck are totally fine. Both provide extensive options for community or custom setups, through the Armory Crate app and Steam's own support system respectively. All games I've tried on the Ally so far worked just fine with  controller support. Steam Deck has more than enough games without issue, but some games rated yellow or "?" on their platform may have....special issues with controller setups.

Issues both decks will face include games that are heavily mouse and keyboard dependent. Surprisingly I was able to get World of Warcraft running on the Ally, and it played surprisingly well (wouldn't team up on a raid with it, but for soloing? sure). I did not know that WoW now had controller support which you can enable using /console commands. 

Although the mouse pad on the Steam Deck is cool and works well for it, the only mouse movement (without attaching a mouse) on the Ally is the right analog stick. The Ally makes up for this by being very touchscreen friendly. The downside is the Windows environment is by default assuming a larger screen so touching the right area with big fingers can be frustrating sometimes. Windows 11 really needs a "portable touch edition" that works well. Win 8.1, the version used for the Surface, was a good start in that direction. 

GRAPHICS: Both of these machines look good, and I like that the Steam Deck I have uses etched glass to reduce glare. Ally does shine just a bit brighter as it seems to be able to run smoothly at a 1080p setting with higher average framerates and graphic settings. Must test more on this, though.

STORAGE AND CONNECTIVITY: So far great for both. Ally, once fully updated, has some blazing fast speeds on the UHS I and II microSD cards it supports, make sure you get at least the A2 designation (it's faster, trust me), but A1 is perfectly fine. Given both units have 512GB onboard storage, you will want to expand this a bit. 

ERGONOMICS: The Steam Deck is a clear winner here for comfort in holding and using it, but the ASUS ROG Ally is also pretty comfortable to use...just slightly less so due to being a bit more compact. The Ally is abotu the same size as my OLED Switch with the HORI Grips, and fits into the same size case. My official ASUS ROG Ally case arrives tomorrow, though, so I can let you know how that fares.

So far though, in terms of portability the Ally is ever so slightly more portable. 

BATTERY LIFE: time will tell! I'll discuss this more in Part II. I can say Steam Deck's battery life is rarely as good as I wish it were, and I suspect the Ally will probably be just as bad, but I will report more soon.

Okay, this is only Part I! More later, maybe next week, once I've had some time to really mess around with it.

PDF Round One: Fatality!!!!

 So after my post yesterday I had loaded my iPad Air with plenty of useful stuff for the D&D 5E game. Although I had all the D&D books along for the ride, the plan was to see if I could set up and use the iPad Air for some of the work. Here is what I discovered:

So yeah, turning on the device and using it creates an attention/focus vacuum that works in direct counterpoint to the social engagement of the table. I can't "multitask" good engagement at the same time as trying to focus on the device. I'd say this is a skill-based thing, but the truth is, we see evidence of this issue constantly. If we could do better at keeping our eye on things around us and on the screen at the same time then no one would ever complain about people looking at their phones in a park, or while driving, or in social circles, etc. 

It creates a palpable vacuum that is distinct, and as I tried to use the iPad to look stuff up, track initiative and so forth I felt it immediately. About the only thing it was worth doing was taking notes. The sad truth is, for me, it created a big speed bump in my ability to effectively gamemaster at the physical level. I could see being able to use this as a player, since players have "between turn" time to organize thoughts....the GM really doesn't have that time, you need to have your act together consistently, your attention on at all times and focused.

I haven't given up entirely. It may require practice and there are some apps I have for which I could see lots of handy utility (such as for initiative tracking). But for content look-up? Yeah, unfortunately this old dog found it faster and easier to just pull out the book and flip to the right page. Go figure.