Monthly Archives: October 2012

Freaks and Geeks

Posted on by tjkopena

Recently I watched the first and only season of Freaks and Geeks.  I had seen mention of it here and there of being an amazing series, and I have to concur.  I highly recommend it for basically any and all.

To me the obvious comparison is to The Wonder Years.  Personally I don’t find Wonder Years to have aged well.  It does actually have a lot of good stories and character elements, but it’s all drowned in a lot of overly smarmy self-importance.  At every moment it reaches for some sort of poignance and then rams it into your skull with a twelve inch spike of overlaid narration.  It also just goes on too long, and I think loses a lot of focus fairly early on.

Freaks mostly doesn’t pluck the heartstrings in the same way, overtly hamfisted or otherwise, but that also keeps it from being nauseating.  It does though have a lot of great moments.  By far its biggest strength is that almost every character is fully realized, has ups and downs, and no one is consigned to either cardboard or irredeemability.

Freaks.

Geeks.

Confused Lindsay.

A great example of this is Coach Fredericks, the gym teacher.  A couple episodes revolve around him, so he’s not a minor character, but not a huge one either.  What he is though is extremely well done in both writing and acting, and entirely surprising.  Without revealing anything, there are multiple points as the series goes on where it’s made clear that he fits well inside the mold of standard TV gym teacher stereotypes, but actually has a lot more to him.  It’s actually fairly surprising, warm and comfortable, and adds a lot of depth behind the cliches.  His character treatment is actually what really won me over to elevate my estimation of the show from good to great.  Similar can be said of Mr Rosso, the guidance counselor.  Especially toward the end of the series he has some moments of vulnerability that really give pathos and drama to his character and backstory.  Even the typical school bully character is given his moment of depth and sympathy.

Coach Fredericks.

Mr Rosso.

With that though, the show doesn’t really pull back or sugarcoat everybody.  Freaks is definitely a comedy and mostly upbeat, but everybody has some darker aspect.  Several of the characters have reasonably dark home lives and there are some scenes that stop just short of uncomfortable.  The school bully character can’t actually make the leap to being fully redeemed.  It’s not clear that Lindsay, the main character, is actually going somewhere positive with her life.

Of course, a major part of the success of the show’s execution is the acting.  It’s really fascinating to watch the series go on and realize just how many of the actors have gone on to become pretty well known.  You can really see the bulk of Judd Apatow’s circle coming together here for the first time.

Kim!

Geek! Pygmy geek!

Finally, it’s certainly the case that being cancelled after the first season prevents the show from wearing thin.  Fortunately the writers and producers were cognizant of this possibility and both steered the season finale earlier in the production cycle in case they were cut off, and engineered it to serve as a workable series finale.  I would actually say the final episode is more than workable, it’s great.  Each of the three storylines would more than stand as their own episode leads, and each intertwine really well.  Nick’s final scenes in particular are amazingly well executed, Daniel’s are heartwarming, and Lindsay’s are open, optimistic, and rebellious, exactly how the show should end.

On the road!

e7

Posted on by tjkopena

In a discussion about mutable terrain somebody mentioned e7, which turned out to be pretty amazing.  The first, most obvious standout is the gorgeous visuals:

These static shots don’t do it justice.  You really need to see the parallax, lighting, and the little details like meteors or ships crashing in the background to fully appreciate it.  Although very sparse, the world does also have some nice little touches like the sunken ruins you can see in the first screen shot.

Excellently complementing those empty, haunted scenes is some similarly quiet, eery audio.  Most of it consists of just the wind blowing and occasional beeps and knocks as you do things, with just a few musical notes to accent the mood.  It’s very subdued and conveys a quiet, exploratory, introspective atmosphere perfectly.

Finally, the gameplay is pretty novel.  You slide around the world like a little hockey punk of a drone or ship, deforming the terrain (maybe via some local gravity generator or something???) and then releasing to launch yourself around as it rebounds.  Using this you need to jump and wall jump between platforms, as well as hurl yourself at unfriendlies to knock them apart.  It’s a really interesting mechanic and implemented well, it all runs really smoothly even on my older laptop.

The one downside of the game is that I think it takes the mechanic a bit too far.  Some of the fights are very difficult, time consuming, and very easy to fail at the last moment and have to start all over.  I couldn’t bring myself to play through the last third of the game and wound up watching a YouTube recap to catch some highlights and the end of the story.  The latter was also somewhat predictable, but basically the way it had to be given the atmosphere.

So, e7’s not a game that I think has a ton of replay value or long term engagement as it’s somewhat of a 1-trick pony, but it’s well worth giving it a play for the great aesthetic and the novel gameplay mechanics.  You can check it out on Jay is Games as well as a bunch of other places.

Luftrauser

Posted on by tjkopena

I stumbled across this game Luftrauser from Vlambeer the other day.  Personally I think the imagery trends just a bit too much toward glorifying the 3rd Reich—and the sequel Luftrausers they’re ostensibly working on is much, much worse in that regard—but there’s no denying the gameplay is very very good.  There are some weird jags in the motion every now and then, but otherwise the planes fly super smoothly, the controls are intuitive yet interesting, and within a super limited aesthetic they create some really neat effects, like the water spray when you fly too close to the deck.  Definitely worth giving it a spin.