rambling thoughts since 1978
Journey is the latest title from the makers of Flower and Flow, ThatGameCompany, published by Sony for the PS3. It’s hard to review Journey without going into spoilers, but I’ll try.Ā I won’t go on detail about the gameplay, the story or even the traditional review points that game reviews usually feature. I won’t tell you my experience here either, but if you played Journey before, I’m glad to share it with you, just mail me and tell me your experience as well.
Journey is not a game. Journey is a metaphor, an emotional subjective art piece and an exercise in minimalism, all wrapped in a beautiful package with one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever had the pleasure to listen.
Journey is about many things and nothing at the same time, it’s about life, death, friendship, civilization, science, evolution, spirituality and faith. Some will say it’s about religion, but I don’t think so, spirituality yes, but not religion. It’s all of this together bond with your emotional baggage. That’s right, you’ll find that Journey will move you, even more if you are an emotional person.
You’ll finish it several times, mainly because Journey is not a long game, it will take you about an hour or less the first time you play it. The second time, you’ll finish it just to see if it moves you the same way it did the first time, and the third and later times because you’ll want to explore even more, earn the entire trophy collection and the white robe š or just to help some fellow red robes.
In Journey you’ll feel peace, you’ll feel fear and happiness, you might even find friendship in a stranger as he/she becomes a journey long companion. You’ll be surprised, but above all else, as I said before, you’ll be moved by this experience.
Do yourself a favor, buy this game, buy the amazing soundtrack, and enjoy your first time, your first Journey, because that will be the purest of them all.
Ralph was one of the main reasons why the original Star Wars trilogy was is so damn awesome. His work gave shape to what Star Wars came to be, in such a spectacular way that still to this day I gaze to the artwork he created, sometimes enjoying his artwork more than the moviesĀ themselves.
He’s early concepts of the mainĀ characters like Darth Vader, Luke and the droids are indeed one of the best representations of the true Star Wars spirit.
Rest in peace Ralph, may the force be with you… always.
So George… here we are again. One more release. This time, the entire saga. Of course you took my money, but this time, I offered some resistance.
First of all, let me put this straight: I’m not a Star Wars purist. While I prefer the original trilogy, I can watch any of the first 3 episodes without pulling my hair out. Having said that, here’s my 2 cents on this new Star Wars compilation on Blu-ray.
Image quality is astonishing, like it was expected, but Ep. I shows a bit of aging in the CGI… the textures seem somehow low res compared to the rest. Ep II and III are great, still they could have used a bit more quality control on the color correction.
The original trilogy is where this pack shines, image quality wise. It’s more crisp than ever, but it’s normal since we’re getting a transfer from the remaster made in 1080p for the previous DVD release. If you had the chance to watch the HDTV versions, you won’t notice too much differences… except for the obvious changes GL did… again…
As I said before, I’m not a purist, but I grew up watching the original trilogy, untouched. I watched Return of the Jedi when it came out… it was probably one of the first movies I watched in a movie theater. Later, I watched the tv versions, the Beta versions, the VHS versions, and only in the 90’s I would get the chance to watch Star Wars again in a movie theater, with the Special Edition release. Seeing some of those changes was odd back then as it is now, but I accepted the minor tweaks, some of them actually improved the story telling. I even digged Jabba’s appearance in Ep. IV! But Han shooting first! WTF?! Censuring blaster wounds in Imperials! That stupid musical act in RotJ and in the end, again, cutting off Yub Nub Ewok celebration for an entire new scene!? Jeez!
A new release, this time in DVD, and we got more changes… Hayden Christensen’s force ghost in the end of RotJ was the nail in the coffin for me… or so I thought before seeing how George Lucas screw one of the best scenes of the entire saga.
Vader’s silence while throwing the Emperor to the pit was poetic. We could feel the light and dark sides of the force battling inside his mind, the man vs the machine combat and the reaction at the very end, all in silence. Now we get a “NOOOOO!”, a stupid change that ruined it completely…
Unless a new version with the remastered original original trilogy is released, this will be the last time I pay for a Star Wars compilation.
I’m done. I rather have my Star Wars fix from one of the many fan edits you can find on the web, than watching ruined official versions. If you want to watch the original trilogy as it was released, try Harmy’s Despecialized Editions or OmegaMattMan’s Hyperspace Edition, both amazing versions of the original trilogy, you won’t be sorry.
In the end, there’re good reasons to buy the Blu-Ray versions:
I’m not saying that you should or shouldn’t buy the Blu-Ray pack. It’s up to you and your love for Star Wars, if you can, borrow from a friend or rent it from a video club… May the force be with you.
Yes, I’ve gone Android.
For those who know me that might come as a shock. I’m a big Apple fan, I have a Mac since 2007 and never thought of going back to Linux or Windows (until recently with Lion’s release, but those are another 2 cents).
I got an iPhone 3G when they were released in Portugal. The first year using it was awesome, the second was normal, after that Apple turned my phone into a zombie. The last iOS 4 update, 4.2, left my phone crippled, unusable, with most of the new features left out. Still I used it for what I could… email, Twitter, music and a few apps.
Everything else was a bloated and dreadful experience, even the mere act of typing something in the keyboard was a torture, it literally froze the keys for a few seconds. My 3G became a pale shadow of the awesome phone it once was.
I needed a new device, it didn’t have to be a phone, I could perfectly live my daily digital life with a tablet, email, Facebook, Twitter, a good browser, WordPress support and I was set… but there was a problem: I was sick of iOS.
For me, as an iOS user, I got almost no new features for my 3G with iOS 4. So sticking with the same OS for 3 years in a row, can get you pretty tired of it.
I’m up to date on iOS info and rumors. I know what’s new for iOS 5 and I’ve played with a few iPhones 4… and even with all the new bells n’ whistles, I wasn’t buying it. Plus, with a new iPhone 4S or 5 or whatever Apple is going to release in October, it was more of the same.
So, as an Apple fan, I considered buying an iPad, same eco-system but with a few differences here and there, enough to give me something usable and new to explore. I’ve played with a few iPads from friends and co-workers. Hell of a machine. It was on my buy list, until Android crept in…
Harrison Ford in Blade Runner.
I have a terrible “addiction” concerning books. I usually buy them and only begin to read them a few months after, some times this happens with more than one book and suddenly I have a pile of books to read. Today I picked one from the pile, but not by random. Rework is a book written by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, names you might recognize from here.
This is only a slight preview. So far, I read the intro and a little bit into the first chapter –Ā The new reality – and so far I’m hooked. This book breaks all of your preĀ conceived notions of how a business works, specially if you live and work on a country like Portugal, where most companies, big or small, have their grounds based on businessĀ managementĀ academic theories and the other side, some shadowy-not-so-licit policies. Rework, so far, promisses to be a interesting book, even if in the end it manages to be only an exercice to make me compare our business reality to what’s happening (in some cases) out there.