2012: A Year In Review

So, I kinda sorta fouled up the whole "daily update" idea, as I always do when I promise daily updates. So instead, I thought I would close out 2012 by talking about some of the highlights of the year.

Best Movie of 2012

Okay, it's really hard to find a good poster of Les Miserables on short notice, so tolerate the limited German. There were a number of great movies this year. The Avengers had an unprecedented effort towards cross-film continuity and was an excellent summer action film. The Dark Knight Rises concluded Nolan's excellent Batman trilogy and actually closed the story of Batman effectively and happily, something that no comic book writer likes to do because then you can't sell more comic books. However, they both pale in comparison to Les Miserables which manages to bring one of Broadway's best musicals to the silver screen in a creative and compelling fashion. They could've been lazy about it and just done the musical but with better special effects or just done a screen play with a few of the songs from the musical in it. In a worst case scenario, they would highlight Taylor Swift's hot new single "On My Own (Remix) ft. Harry Styles".  But they managed to walk the line between adapting all of the highlights of the musical while making necessary concessions to the medium of film, such as a few lines of spoken dialogue. I could go on for hours about Les Mis, but the new years is only 90 minutes away and I have a three more categories to go over! In summary, I shed tears at the end of the movie because it was that movie. I mean, tear. A single manly tear. I didn't just admit to crying at the end of a musical. I'm totally virile, fine honeys, I swear.

Assassin's Creedence Clearwater: A Retrospective of my Favorite Non-Halo, Non-Mass Effect Series

As fans of the Hunger Games know, I am the master of promising and postponing. So we're holding off on the Walking Dead review until I play Episode 5 and going right in with an overview of Assassin's Creed. Why? Because Assassin's Creed 3 (the fifth game in the series, just roll with it) comes out today and I won't get to play it until at least 7 PM because I had to be an idiot and volunteer at a blood drive.This is what service to others gets you: less time to pretend killing Redcoats. Assassin's Creed is one of my favorite series largely because it combines historical settings with many sword fights and also crazy alternate history intrigue. Now I'm going to try and deviate from my normal writing style, because otherwise this retrospective will be 8,000 words and come out in January. I figure I'll talk a little about the plot for each game, what I liked what I didn't like, and then conclude with a ranking of each game in the series. Today, I will do Assassin's Creed 1 and tomorrow, I will review what is known as the "Ezio Trilogy" or "Where the Numbering went FUBAR". Without further ado, let us begin the look back at the Assassin's Creed series:

Assassin's Creed (2007)

If being an assassin doesn't work out, Altair should try the NBA. He's got mad hops, yo.

Fall of 2007 will be remembered as the greatest season for video games of the 360/Wii/PS3 generation. It saw the release of no less than a half dozen phenomenally good games: BioShock (one of the few "artsy" games that is also fun), The Orange Box (specifically Portal), Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (perhaps the most revolutionary FPS of the generation), Halo 3 (which was just fun), Mass Effect (you know, I think I've said enough about this series), and Assassin's Creed. In the game, you play as Altair, a member of the Order of Assassins during the Third Crusade. You are tasked with killing both Crusaders and Saracens who are profiting and prolonging the carnage, because if they did it accurately, you would be in a group of Muslim extremists murdering Christian soldiers and that would be just great for sales. But wait! You are also Desmond Miles from the far off year of 2012, henceforth known as Future Desmond.

"Literally no one likes me" ~Future Desmond

Making the Most of Tragedy

I've spent the last few posts talking about fantasy football. It's easy to get wrapped up in the opiate of sports and humiliating the Bean on so many levels. I could regale you with stories of how the Barry family is solely responsible for 2/3rds of all Bean family defeats this year. But I digress. The thing is, it's easy to forget how fragile everything is. Last night, tragically, in the blink of an eye, my The Walking Dead save file died. Three and one quarter episodes worth of progress gone in an instant.

This painting is a metaphor of what happened last night. The zombie is my save file, the hammer is my Xbox 360, and I am the little girl. I guess Lee Everett (the dude swinging the hammer and the player character) would be like fate or something? I don't know, I'm getting too deep again!

 The silver lining in all this is that, as a part of getting psyched for Season 3 of the TV Show and because I really wanted to play Episode 4 last night, I will be replaying the whole thing starting tonight. I've wanted to talk about the series for a long time now, but I never seemed to get the timing right. But this time, I will blog about the whole shooting match as it goes down! Get psyched for the return of the walkers, people!

No, that's the return of the White Walkers. But both involve large groups of the shambling dead, so we'll call it even.