Who makes the blood flow?

When it comes to the wide world of horror and sci-fi movies, special effects are beyond important. Creepy aliens, gushing blood and dramatic fights would be nowhere without the creative geniuses who apply the makeup and the effects. 

Some names will live forever in this world, names like Rick Baker, Bud Westmore, Dick Smith and Stan Winston. Today I have a documentary about two others, Tom Savini and Greg Nicotero. 

Be advised that this video contains disturbing images, so if that's not your thing, stay away. There may also be some spoilers, well known spoilers but be aware.

That said, enjoy, and join me again next time. Until then, have a great week!

Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOaqAVwFr5Y 

 

 

Too intimidated to try.

As a bit of a Christmas present to myself, I bought Total War: Warhammer One and Two together with some of the DLC. As an old school Warhammer Fantasy fan, I've been eyeing these games for years. So why haven't I gotten them before? A small part of the answer is money, huge games are expensive, and I hate paying a lot for something I'm not even sure I'll like, but the discounts on the Steam Winter Sale were really good.

The bigger part of the answer though, is intimidation. I'm not much of a strategy player to begin with, and the Total War games are in themselves a bit daunting. I did play Total War: Empire ten years ago, and it was fun but I never went back. Now I figured it was time to get back on the warhorse.

That is the topic for today, being too intimidated to try something you want. This can cover anything really, learning a new language, taking up sewing, joining a club etc, but I'm looking at it through the lens of gaming.

When I first fired up Cyberpunk 2077 it intimidated me in no time flat. Everything seemed threatening, and I had no idea what kind of consequences my actions would have. Then I did the tutorial which appears just before your first proper mission and wow that was a lot to take in! Sneaking, hacking, quickhacking, melee with parrying and dodging, cybernetics and so on and so on. I closed the game and it was over a year before I tried again, but now it is one of my all time favorite games. It is absolutely superb! What I came to eventually realize is that you can't do everything in Cyberpunk, you also don't need to even try to. Don't feel like melee? Stick to guns. Annoyed at hacking? Get a time slowing Sandevistan and kill your enemies in slow motion. Once I understood this, I was liberated and free to just have fun.

Back in 2010 I watched a Skyrim preview event and saw the hero dual wield weapons, sling spells and cause a storm that forced a dragon to land before killing said dragon. Epic stuff, but I wondered how I was ever going to manage all that. Turns out that none of it was difficult once you got a bit of practice, and certainly nothing you had to do immediately. I have over 1000 hours in Skyrim across several versions.

I have never been a Soulsborne player, in part because of the intimidation factor. FromSoft are geniuses at making their enemies terrifying. The most likely first boss in Bloodborne, The Cleric Beast is a perfect example. How it looks, how it moves and definitely how it sounds are all intended to scare you into screwing up and failing. But if you look at an experienced player you'll see that they are not intimidated. They know what they are doing and although you can never let down you guard in games like Bloodborne, they can kill The Cleric Beast with ease.

Getting over the intimidation factor isn't always easy, but at least in games you can ask “what do I have to loose?”. Time is the answer. Even if you screw up so badly that you have to restart the game, you have learned something, which is never a waste of time.

Applying this logic to other parts of our lives isn't an exact comparison. If you're learning to sew, the fabric can get ruined if you really mess up, but with all learning, you need to start small, start with raw materials you can sacrifice on the altar of knowledge and try. Theory and Practice are two different things.

This brings me back to Total War: Warhammer. I have watched a lot of lets play's from different creators. What they have in common is practice and lots of it which makes it looks so easy. Then I fire up the game and nothing works like what I saw, and of course it didn't. I haven't practiced yet, but I'm getting there.

I'm not sure I've made any sense today, this is just something I wanted to get off my chest. I guess I want to encourage you to do something you've wanted to, but haven't yet. Besides, if you mess up, you don't have to tell anyone.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

 

The Odessa File

Over Christmas, I read:

The Odessa File (1972),

by Frederick Forsyth, the same author who wrote The Day of the Jackal. In The Odessa File, our hero is Peter Miller, a young German freelance reporter. He mainly works for picture magazines, and earns a good living doing so. He even drives a black Jaguar, which is his pride and joy.

One night, on a whim he follows an ambulance looking for a story. In the process he gets his hands on a journal written by a Jewish man who was in the Riga ghetto during WWII. The journal chronicles everything the man saw, including all the atrocities. Central to the journal is SS captain Eduard Roschmann, the commander of the ghetto, and when Miller finds out Roschmann is apparently both alive and free as a bird he sets out to take him down.

The Odessa File is written with Forsyth's usual smooth free flowing style. It never gets bogged down, even when laying down lots of information at once. A lesser author would have been info-dumping, but Forsyth is more than skilled enough to keep it going while never stumbling.

The subject matter is actually based on real facts. There was a real Odessa, which stands for Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, meaning: Organization of Former SS Members. Likewise, several SS officers like Roschmann, Glücks, and a man known only as Werwolf but is likely supposed to have been Hans-Adolf Prützmann were real people. Forsyth details how these men got out of Europe and down to Argentina, and these escape methods were actually used, so despite being a fictional novel, you can learn a thing or two from reading The Odessa File.

From beginning to end, The Odessa File was a real good read. The pacing is excellent, with no boring parts, and there was only one part that annoyed me. Mild Spoiler: At one point, Miller gets help in order to infiltrate Odessa, which takes some time, and then he promptly ruins it by insisting on driving his Jaguar, meaning that whole part was sort of a waste of time. Forsyth does weave it all together so that the story doesn't suffer in the least, but it bothered me that it happened at all.

The Odessa File was made into a movie in 1974 starring Jon Voight as Miller, but I haven't had time to watch it. I do know that the novel and the movie together made enough of a stir, that the real Roschmann was suddenly found dead in Argentina. It is speculated that Odessa killed him to quiet things down, but this is unverified.

So, do I recommend The Odessa File? If you haven't figured it out yet, then yes, absolutely. I hate the term 'unputdownable' but The Odessa File was close to that. If The Day of the Jackal gave me the impression that Frederick Forsyth was a master author, The Odessa File absolutely confirmed it.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week and a Happy New Year!

 

'Tis the Season

Hello and welcome to Eccentric Spheres.

The holidays are upon us, and fun as they are, sometimes we need a small break from the festivities. I still wanted to give you a laugh so I found some old (and I do mean old) but brilliant British comedy sketches. 

Hopefully you'll enjoy them and I wish you all a very Happy Holiday! Join me again next time for the last post of the year. Stay safe and have a great time!  

 

Argo

I just read:

Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood pulled off the most audacious rescue in history (2012).

This book is written by Anthony Mendez and Matt Baglio and is a true account of the events.

Some backstory: in 1979, Iranian militants stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took the staff hostage, demanding the return of the Shah who had fled to the US after being ousted from power. In the chaos, the militants forgot about the US consulate, and six individuals managed to escape. Desperate, they took refuge with the British, until they too were in hot water, but luckily the six managed to find refuge with the Canadians.

Anthony 'Tony' Mendez, was in charge of the Office of Technical Services in the CIA, and was tasked with getting the six, called the House Guests, out of Iran safely. Together with an old friend from Hollywood who did prosthetics and masks for both Mission Impossible and The Planet of the Apes, Tony comes up with and executes a magnificent operation to rescue the House Guests.

This book, being co-written by Tony himself is a joy to read. The language flows well and you never get bogged down in unnecessary details, all without sacrificing depth or detail. You get an interesting glimpse into parts of the CIA in the 70's, as well as parts of Hollywood and the world in general.

Now, I'm not naive enough to blindly believe everything a veteran officer of the CIA says, just because he says it. That out of the way, I don't think too much was left out or changed. The case became big news in time, and Tony was even interviewed by Walter Cronkite some years later. It is a fact that Tony, for some reason changed the name of his Hollywood friend. Why, I don't know. After all, his effects credits are common knowledge.

So, do I recommend this book? Yes, absolutely. Not only is it well written and the content interesting, but with world events being what they are, it gives some background into why some things are the way they are. I generally dislike terms like page-turner, but in the case of Argo, it is true. I stayed awake too long, too many nights because the book was too hard to put down.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

 

Cyberpunk 2077

Anyone who's read this blog for a while probably knows that I am a so called patient gamer. It's rare that I jump on a game on release day, though it happens. Instead I prefer to wait, and that usually pays off.

Today I want to talk about:

Cyberpunk 2077.

Created by CD Project Red, or CDPR, the makers of the Witcher games as well as the good folks who operate GOG, the best place to get older video games that actually work.

Cyberpunk 2077 (CP2077) is based on the old tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020, both written by Mike Pondsmith. This ensures that the story and lore are accurate, which is awesome.

CP2077 is a first person action RPG, where you play as V. You can't change the name, but you can change most other aspects of the character. Included in character generation is your life path; Nomad, Streetkid or Corpo. This life path explains your background and gives some insights and speech alternatives in the game, but don't have too much overall impact.

The game is basically split between two parts; the main story and everything else. You can run countless smaller gigs, race cars, fight in arenas etc. These smaller gigs pay well and can even unlock iconic weapons and grant you vehicles. Merely exploring Night City is extremely rewarding. CP2077 is ridiculously immersive and detailed, there is always something going on, and on this level alone, CP2077 blows every other game in this vein out of the water.

But lets look at the main story. As usual, I'm not spoiling anything, so bear with me. In V's quest for fame and riches, you go on a mission that turns everything on its head and sends V on a spectacular journey. The main story is emotional, epic, and awesome. It can be heartrending, it is sometimes really funny, but always pulse pounding. It is up there in the top five best stories I have played. But sure, it has a few flaws.

First off, I do think the game throws the Main Story at you too quickly. I would have liked to learn a bit about how the games plays, and figure out what kind of build I want before being thrown in to the deep end. I'd like to say so much more, but alas, spoilers.

Mechanically, CP2077 is great. It had a very rocky launch back in 2020, but since then CDPR has done a ton of work and taken a shaky game and turned it into a masterpiece. Again, there are some things I wish were different, but they are small stuff. My biggest pet peeve is the Journal, or quest log. Every time you exit a gig, it automatically activates whichever mission is next in the main quest, complete with waypoints on the minimap. If you want to do another gig, you have to go and manually change that every time and it is annoying. I also dislike how loud V's footsteps are. But hey if those are my biggest complaints, it's pretty damn good!

One thing that threw me off at first is the fact that CP2077 throws a lot at you in the beginning and it can be hard to try to remember it all. Hacking, fighting, blocking, stealth etc can set your head spinning, but the good news is that you don't actually need to use it all at once. In time you'll start using more and more elements, but until you do, you can get far by just shooting enemies in the face.

Building your character is a bit of a headache at first, but if you read the tooltips, it becomes easier in time. The game even has a free one time use re-spec, if you want to redo your talents. I will say that trying to be a jack-of-all-trades really makes you a master of none, and that is not a good idea.

What else can I say? The games is gorgeous, the voice acting is brilliant, and even the smallest side jobs are incredibly well written. The game can be quite raunchy, but there is a so called streamer mode, which if switched on, eliminates most of the sex, but not all!

I know I'm rambling a bit, but I'm trying to go though this enormous game in my head and remember everything I wanted to talk about. I guess I'll just wrap up and say that if you like well written stories, and cool action RPG's you owe it to yourself to play Cyberpunk 2077. There is a DLC, Phantom Liberty, but I haven't played it yet so I know nothing about it. Of all the games that I have played, Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the few that have left a real mark on me.

Oh, and the soundtrack is spectacular!

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!

 

Rome. All of it. Sort of.

Since my day to day is still a bit chaotic, and I haven't returned to my old routines, we are continuing with historical documentaries. 

I found The Complete History of Rome, Summarized. To he honest I haven't finished it as it is three hours long (and that's just a summary), but it is really good.

So without further ado, please enjoy this excellent summary of the historical behemoth that was the Roman Empire. Join me again next time and until then, have a great week!