Nick and Nora Charles, played by William Powell (in a Best Actor-nominated performance) and Myrna Loy, became one of the screen’s most successful couples after The Thin Man’s release. A few minutes into the film, and it’s easy to see why. Nick, a former private investigator, becomes embroiled in a murder mystery thanks to past associations, but he doesn’t tackle the caper with the tough guy mentality Humphrey Bogart would later popularize in the 1940s. Powell energetically bounces between flippancy, nonchalance and sharp wit, playing Nick as a devilish gentleman who has far more interest in drinking liquor and teasing his young wife than solving a murder. Loy does just as much to hold up her end of the couple, going toe-to-toe against her on-screen husband with comical facial expressions and banter aplenty.

In fact, the entire production of The Thin Man plays up Hammett’s underappreciated talent for comedy, resulting in an amusing twist on the typically serious detective genre. The film skews more on the side of entertainment than complex mystery, making a few minor adjustments to Hammett’s novel to for the benefit of the Hollywood presentation. Clyde Wynant (the titular thin man) actually makes an appearance at the beginning of the film, while he is only spoken of but never actually encountered in the novel. The first scene establishes Wynant’s character and his relationship with his daughter Dorothy, which ultimately leads to the girl meeting Nick and pleading with him to find her missing father.

In the novel, a thing aren’t packaged quite so neatly — Dorothy hasn’t seen her father since childhood, nor is she the pure hearted innocent she appears in the film. Her brother receives similar treatment, having his role marginalized in favor of a one-dimensional, goofy persona purely in place for the laughs. Even so, once the film establishes its story to simplify things for viewers the plot moves along at Hammett’s brisk pace. Several portions of the backstory are excised for the sake of time, but everything comes together in the final moments in classic form, as Nick lays out the tangled, murderous details at a delightful dinner party packed with nearly the entire cast.

Hammett’s complex plot hardly seems to matter next to the electric relationship between Powell and Loy, who went on to star in five more Thin Man capers as the flirtatious husband-and-wife team. If the series had been established after John Huston’s genre-defining film noir treatment of The Maltese Falcon, Hammett’s penchant for devious mysteries may have taken on a more serious role in the film.

Thankfully, the Hollywood of the 30s took the laughs and ran with them, resulting in a rare balance between crime and comedy. In fact, any film made since 1934 combining the two genres may owe The Thin Man for writing the recipe of a perfect murder-comedy cocktail.

In 1987, the popularity of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe had reached its fever pitch — the cartoon show and its spin-off She-Ra had just concluded, and the toy line from which the series was first born was still going strong.  It was time to take the muscle-bound, uncomfortably homoerotic hero to the big leagues.  Though this decision undoubtedly thrilled legions of 10 year-olds around the world, the resulting film was, not-so-surprisingly, a mess of bad acting, an utterly asinine script, and a hodgepodge of movie clichés.

The opening titles of Masters of the Universe look and sound as if they were ripped straight from 1978’s Superman, and the legions of ineffectual soldiers are dead-ringers for the black-helmeted crewmembers of the Death Star.  Even borrowing heavily from its betters, Masters of the Universe may have been a salvageable effort if it took place in the creative sci-fi/medieval fantasy world of Eternia.  Instead, everyone involved decided it would be much more fun to throw the heroes through a wormhole, drop them in New Jersey, and pair them up with a couple troubled teenagers (including a pre-Friends Courteney Cox).

If the relocation to Jersey wasn’t a clear indication, practically nothing in Masters of the Universe corresponds to the original He-Man comics.  Most of the major characters are represented, but other heroes like Stratos are nowhere to be seen.  And Orko, He-Man’s floating sidekick whose blunderings once served as comic relief in the animated series, is replaced by the film’s ugly Hobbit/troll mashup Gwildor.

Though Dolph Lundgren would’ve been a far better He-Man without ever opening his mouth, Frank Langella’s Skeletor may be the highlight of the film, simply because his make-up looks a little cool.  Considering how limited his facial expressions are behind Skeletor’s yellow-white skull exterior, Langella’s voicework outpaces the rest of the cringe-inducing cast…until the finale, anyway, when Skeletor transforms himself into some sort of Golden God and utterly ruins everything.

Kids may blissfully overlook the terrible acting and moronic plot, delight in Skeletor’s cliché blundering henchmen and be thrilled by the clumsy choreography of each painful fight scene.  They’ll even get a kick out of the real-world setting and the infusion of distraught teenagers, who rise to the challenge of helping a mostly naked man save his home planet and are rewarded with true love forever. For everyone else, Masters of the Universe is a textbook on how to make a bad children’s movie — take a terrible story, cast bad actors, and try to make it look as cheap as possible.  New Jersey seems to boast a population of about twelve people, but maybe that’s understandable — nobody else wanted anything to do with Masters of the Universe.

A History of Violence begins with a lengthy, continuous tracking shot, seemingly easing into the story with a relaxed nonchalance.  The same casual air continues for the first twenty minutes of the film’s running time, introducing us to Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife (Mario Bello) and children, a seemingly perfect family in an idyllic small town.

That all comes crumbling down when Tom kills two vicious robbers in self-defense, exposing his long-hidden identity to the demons of his past.  When those demons manifest in the form of the menacing Carl Fogarty (Ed Harris), the Stalls are tossed into an incredibly tense battle for survival and sanity.  The slow build-up of the first half of A History of Violence introduces a cast of realistic, human characters, and the slowly-mounting tension continuously heightens the suspense.  The film gives us just enough information to understand each scene as it unfolds, keeping us guessing all the way through—is Tom really an experienced killer with a history of violence, or is he simply an ordinary man caught up in an extraordinary situation?

Cronenberg’s film deftly maintains a level of balanced believability that makes its story so gripping — despite the insanity of the circumstances, each character reacts like a real person, and it’s that subtle storytelling that elevates A History of Violence well past its comic book roots.  Wagner’s story possesses none of the subtlety of the film, immediately beginning with a random murder and delving straight into Tom’s fight in his diner.

From that point forward, it’s obvious that Tom’s hiding dark secrets, and the eventual revelation leads into a long backstory substantially different than the brief glimpse of Tom’s past we get in the film.  We discover Tom committed all his misdeeds as a teenager, alongside his friend Richie; in the movie, Richie (William Hurt) is a mobster, Tom’s brother, and the evil Tom must ultimately confront to end his cycle of violence.

Despite the Tom of Wagner’s graphic novel seeming like a more normal everyman than Mortensen’s character, the comic strings together explosions, shootouts, and insanely evil forces.  Even the film’s fantastic characterization is nowhere to be found — Tom’s son “Buzz” throws out lame catchphrases, and his wife’s quick acceptance of his bloody past is almost laughably simplistic contrasted with the emotionally-wrenching fracture that comes between Mortensen and Maria Bello.

Vince Locke’s rough art continuously felt like the bare minimum of functionality needed to convey Wagner’s story — only a few rare scenes stood out or managed to exaggerate the horror of Tom’s ordeal.  The black-and-white sketchbook ugliness may be in keeping with the story’s tone, but with Cronenberg at the reins, A History of Violence tells a better story and wraps it in a superior package of haunting cinematography and an understated score.   Where Wagner’s comic tells a contained story that leaves little to the imagination, the film’s ending can only leave us yearning for more, as if A History of Violence was a glimpse into the lives of real people that’s over far too soon.

Cinema as a form of entertainment has been around for about a century, now, though its constant evolution has ensured that the films of 2010 don’t look or work much like the films of 1950. The way movies convey drama, for instance, has evolved considerably in the past fifty years, thanks in large part to the changes in camera technology.

Take Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, for example. The film derives its absolutely incredible intensity from hand-held camerawork, moving in so close to the characters that its impossible not to feel tightly linked to every moment that plays out on the screen. Scenes filmed in the cramped confines of compact cars never betray the fact that a camera is in the midst of actors ducking in and out of shots with precise timing, and as a result it’s one of the most immersive examples of cinematography in movie history. By being invisible, the camera performs miracles.

Which brings us to Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a game that hews closer to the realm of Hollywood high adventure than perhaps any video game since the medium was born. Nathan Drake’s globe-spanning, Indiana Jonesian adventure comes alive with beautiful, immaculately-detailed environments, delightful character interaction, and one unbelievable set piece after another. But like Cuarón’s Children of Men, the real marvel is at work behind the scenes — Uncharted 2 is such a perfectly designed video game, it comes closer to achieving the storytelling power of the movies than I could have possibly expected.

Despite the limited speed of the Playstation 3’s Blu-Ray drive, Uncharted 2 continuously streams its lush world with nary a hitch, and loading screens only show up between clearly defined sections or episodes of the game.  Even the most exciting moments of powerfully cinematic games like Mass Effect 2 take a break to load with some frequency; not Uncharted 2.  Among Thieves’ train section illustrates Naughty Dog’s development chops, standing out as the most breathtaking moment of a game filled with unbelievable spectacles; the jungle streams in seamlessly, the train jerks and groans along its track, the enemies advance through boxcars to close in on Drake’s position — and it never once stutters.

Essentially, what we’re talking about is momentum, and a lot of it.  And while the train chapter of the game is probably the most obviously wowing, I found myself more impressed by the environmental changes Naughty Dog could pull off while still leaving Drake’s actions completely in the hands of the player.  Last generation, fluidly animated cinematic cutscenes in games were the method of choice to convey over-the-top dramatic moments, and they were often aided by quick time events to keep the player involved.  Just think of God of War II’s intense final battle against Zeus, or Resident Evil 4’s knife fight against Krauser.  Both used cinematics to do things with camera angles and character animation you wouldn’t usually see in the directly controllable portions of the game.  But in Uncharted 2, Naughty Dog affects massive changes to their environments without a single second of hesitation.  One second Drake is hiding behind a desk in an office building, firing at a crew of mercenaries — the next second he’s staggering to retain his balance as the building begins to crumble and tip over.  Full player control?  Still there.

Every second is made all the more impressive by the character animation, no doubt bolstered by a fantastic motion capture crew.  When Uncharted 2 does transition to cutscenes, it happens so instantly they retain that essence of seamlessness — it feels like the camera has just taken control for a moment.  Other games employ much more obvious triggers for cutscenes that suddenly find your character in a different position than you’d been just moments before, when in control.  But Uncharted 2 makes it all seem natural and authentic, a testament to the balance between storytelling and interactivity Naughty Dog has created.  Games in the future may trend closer to being movies with bits and pieces of interactivity (Heavy Rain springs to mind), but if anything finds a better mesh of cinema and game, it’ll likely be Uncharted 3.  Naughty Dog has taken the best pieces of bombastic high adventure film and incorporated it into a compelling video game experience, without sacrificing the power of player control.  It’s like being guided through the coolest movie ever.  And that is good game design.

I haven’t played every game Bioware has created — in fact, Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect are the only ones I’ve spent much time with — but I understand their pedigree.  They consistently produce some of the most sophisticated, complex western RPGs on the market, game where characters have character, where plots have intrigue and adventure.

Which is what makes most of their games so good…but on the surface, they’re often a bit of a mess.  The original Mass Effect is a perfect example: some janky animation and framerate issues popped up from time to time.  And, of course, there were those elevators.  And the horribly clunky inventory.  For the most part, their games are awesome in spite of technical flaws.

But with Mass Effect 2, Bioware may have, for the first time, created a game that plays just as well as it lays out a feast of roleplaying possibilities.  In practically every way, it’s an improvement on its predecessor.  Streamlined, fast-paced, in some ways simplified.  And while I’d definitely play it over the original in a heartbeat, there are still a few elements I miss from the first Mass Effect.

Pouring one out for those abandoned mechanics

1. Weapon and ammo customization – Mass Effect 2 takes ammo in a radically different direction; weapons no longer overheat, they have clips like typical modern-day weaponry.  Ammo is no longer a limitless resource that can be specially customized to alter the potential of a gun.  It’s the same for every weapon, and ammo types have now been relegated to character abilities.

Fire ammo, armor-piercing ammo, etc. must be equipped manually, and thus can no longer be used at will by every character class in the game.  This also eliminates quite a few ammo varieties, such as the massive explosive rounds or hammerhead rounds of Mass Effect.  It’s all in the interest of speeding up the combat and keeping the game out of the menu system, and the ammo variants still in place as character abilities are just as fun to use as they were before.  But I still miss that progression through the ranks of upgradeable ammo, finding mk. 7 hammerhead rounds that could blow a Krogan off his feet, or the toxic rounds that would melt any poor bastard in a matter of seconds.

The same holds true for the weaponry.  Doing away with an accuracy statistic, thereby cutting out that “roll of the dice” RPG feel of Mass Effect, eliminates the question of whether or not you’re actually going to hit something if you aim at it properly.  This is absolutely a good thing.

However, the loot-based item system made hunting for new and better weapons a lot of fun, and created a sense of character progression the sequel doesn’t really seem to have.  There are upgrades to increase the power of a weapon class by 10, 20, 30 percent, and so on, but it’s hardly the same as finding that new shotgun with an insane damage stat.  Armor, too; remember how exciting it was to buy that armor with so much shielding you could step out into direct fire without breaking a sweat?

There are a few new weapon upgrades, but I wish there were more; as much as I hated the inventory system in Mass Effect, I miss the looting.  Granted, it’s not nearly as important as it is in a game like Borderlands, and the actual combat is much improved.  That game-spanning progression just doesn’t exist anymore.  In Mass Effect, I grew into a badass as I obtained the ultimate armor and weaponry…in Mass Effect 2, I feel like a badass from the start, and don’t seem to be moving upwards too far from there.

2. Leveling at Will – Mass Effect 2 clearly takes a more mission-based approach to level design than the original game.  Cities can still be explored, of course, but Bioware listened to feedback about boring, cookie-cutter planetary outposts and gave each quest its own little area.  These areas are essentially progressed through linearly, and only once, and completing them awards experience (and a level up, most of the time).

But by gearing up the combat and doing away with the complex experience-based stat system, Bioware relegated experience to missions and sidequests.  That means killing enemies nets you no XP, making it impossible to go into combat just to level grind a bit.  And sometimes that was fun.

3. Sidequests with some meat – This is an even more minor complaint, but it seems like Mass Effect 2 has cut back on the number and variety of sidequests. In some ways, this is good, since the original’s identical planets and little hives of mercenaries got to be pretty dull.  But the sequel seems a bit spartan, in this regard.  Acquiring each squad member is a mission in itself, as is winning their loyalty — and those are awesome.  Outside of those tasks, though, most of the sidequests seem to consist of finding a single lone object in some environment, then delivering it to a single lone alien who’s clearly lost said item.  It’s basically too streamlined, yet again.  Of course, that’s a better choice than excruciatingly dull back-and-forth fetch quests, but the need and desire to explore has definitely been curtailed slightly.

4. The Mako – Nah, just kidding.  Good riddance.

Toasting the improvements, in brief

1. The crew – Mass Effect had some great characters, certainly, but the sequel is brimming with them.  In the first game, I never had much trouble choosing a squad; Wrex, Garrus, and Tali were easily my favorite picks.  But the expanded crew is so packed with awesome fighters, I’ll have to play through at least three times to give everyone their due.  Well, Jacob’s a little boring…but you can’t win ‘em all.

2. Martin Sheen – Good god, yes.  I didn’t know how much video games need Martin Sheen until Mass Effect 2 (hint: they need him a lot).  In fact, the voice cast in general is outstanding, even if male Shepard is still a tad bit ho-hum.

3. The gunplay – Poppin’ space baddies never been so good.

4. DLC Potential – It may be a way to gouge us out of handfuls of money, but the original Mass Effect’s DLC options were seriously lacking.  Bring Down the Sky was decent fun, but a new crew member and the wreck of the Normandy available day one made a believer out of me.  Bioware’s going to give us some worthwhile missions, this time.

I’ve never been to war.  I’ve never been shot at, never had my life seriously threatened.  I’ve never killed another human being, or seen one die.

It is impossible for the reality of any of those sensations to be fully conveyed to someone who has never experienced them.  No film, no matter how powerful or insightful, could truly encapsulate those feelings.  But as Tim O’Brien wrote in “How to Tell a True War Story,”

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things they have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.

The Hurt Locker is a true war story.  It may be impossible to understand war without living it, but the film captures the essence of that experience.  Through remarkable cinematography and utterly convincing  performances, it communicates the intensity, the fear, the confusion of desert warfare with a calm sense of authority.  If it wasn’t such good filmmaking, it would be all too easy to believe the events were completely real.

Instead of the traditional angle of battle-hardened footsoldiers on the front lines of combat, The Hurt Locker focuses on a small Army bomb squad, a group of men faced with the most unpredictable and fearsome element of guerrilla warfare.  It is the threat of the unknowable that lends The Hurt Locker its incredible sense of tension; even with its protagonist bulked up in protective bomb gear, the omnipresent danger makes him and his squad seem naked and exposed in the wide open streets of Baghdad.

Nearly every scene in the film is intense and riveting, but it never cashes in its audience’s emotional investment with cheap tricks.  There are no shocking plot twists — in fact, The Hurt Locker does a remarkable job portraying the lives of three soldiers and their experiences in war without trying to tie them into a more grandiose plot.  There is no storyline here, no villain — just the day in, day out threat of death.  There are no random explosions, no contrived conversations.  Even the tenuous camaraderie James and Sanborn develop is strained, natural.

The long moments of eerie stillness in The Hurt Locker become its most compelling because the potential for death always lingers, always hangs in the air (the sparing use of music also highlights the emptiness of many a scene).  The cinematography bolsters the tense atmosphere with tight shots and expert hand-held camera work.  Even though the shaky cameras depict the action from close-up like authentic war time documentaries, plenty of shots still convey the scope of the desert and the rubble-strewn city hiding homemade bombs under plastic bags and broken concrete.

Despite how accurately The Hurt Locker depicts the middle east, perhaps the most powerful shot in the film comes when James returns homes.  A wide shot of cereal boxes in an empty Publix, seemingly stretching across both ends of the screen and into infinity, cause a man who once risked his life on a daily basis to look hopelessly lost.

It is rare for a war movie, especially one about bombs, to be so captivating when no explosions are erupting on the screen.  No doubt writer Mark Boal basing the script on real experiences made The Hurt Locker the powerful film it is, but the work is subtle.  Since there’s no flashy dialogue, the actors all but assume the identities of the characters.  Watching each of them grapple with the war in their own way begs the question: how many true war stories from Iraq are out there even now, just waiting to be told?

Most of them never will be, but The Hurt Locker tells their essence.  No moral.  No rectitude.  Just people.

Bayonetta brought two thoughts to the forefront of my mind as I spent a chunk of my weekend brutally slaying the divine.

1) Nobody can create an utterly incomprehensible, retarded story through whacked-out interpretations of religion like Japan can.

Maybe I’ve simply reached the boiling point; I’ve watched anime, played games where God or angels show up to give humanity some grief, and it never stuck in my craw quite like Bayonetta. Or maybe it’s just that Bayonetta does everything to the extreme.  ”Flock off, feather face?”  ”Don’t fuck with a witch?”  It’s like watching Barb Wire (although, to be fair, the writing is intentionally tongue-in-cheek, and Bayonetta’s voice actress couldn’t be as bad as Pamela Anderson even if she tried).

But then there’s the whole war between Heaven and Hell, thing, and these Lumen Sages and Umbra Witches and somehow they managed to kill each other off even though they seem pretty damn invincible, and then sometime they’re in Purgatorio (which may not be the same as the human world, exactly?) and sometimes poor Luka can see Bayonetta, and sometimes not.  For whatever reason, I could barely tolerate the camp factor, and was itching to skip about half the cutscenes in the game.  Even the “punch each other really fast” left me feeling pretty underwhelmed.  I enjoyed the over-the-top stuff in Devil May Cry 3, but something about Bayonetta simply didn’t resonate.

2) I feel like playing Ninja Gaiden II.

I have no problem admitting Ninja Gaiden II is a flawed game.  It’s got a lot of problems.  The level design early on is kinda bland; the camera is problematic (though I think Bayonetta’s frustrated me nearly as often).  The framerate’s not so solid.  Clearly, it was released before it was completely done.  This is all true.

What’s more, I can guarantee I had a far more frustrating experience playing Ninja Gaiden II than I did Bayonetta.  It’s a harder game (though not as hard as the far more defense-focused Ninja Gaiden.  That is a tough game.)  Bayonetta was a forgiving game; you could die without losing much progress, even during boss fights, and get all your health back to boot!  Okay, so your rating would suck, but I was never putting in the kind of time it would take to achieve Platinum medals, anyway.  Ninja Gaiden had cheap bosses, cheap enemies, and extremely frustrating moments.  This is all true.

And yet I enjoyed it so much more.  Why?  I think it has to do with focus.  Bayonetta is one of the few games I’ve ever played that gives me too much; the volume of button combos, the endless variations of the same two buttons, didn’t feel liberating so much as stifling.  I always felt a bit more in control with Ryu, a bit more balanced, more prepared to launch a devastating attack, dodge out of harm’s way, block the next incoming swipe.  Bayonetta had plenty of awesome mechanics, the Wicked finishers and the torture attacks being especially awesome to trigger after a vicious combo.

But the combat never had the same satisfaction as Ninja Gaiden II’s.  Of course, it’s mostly just stylistic preference — they handle differently, despite their core similarities.  But I think Bayonetta missed the mark of being an evolution for the fighting genre.  ”More” doesn’t equate to “new,” and even if Bayonetta is “More, more, more, more, and more,” it didn’t leave me wowed.

But maybe I just like ninjas.

It’s not too hard to picture pop culture as a massive, interwoven tapestry of media — movies and television shows and books and podcasts all borrowing ideas and themes from one another, trying to offer consumers something familiar enough to be appealing but original enough to be captivating.  And one of my absolute favorite things in pop culture is when the creative types unabashedly reference their favorite works, with in-jokes or overt name-drops.

Brian K. Vaughan, author of the incredible comic Y The Last Man, wears his comic book geekery on his sleeve.  Every issue of Y is utterly packed with cheerful jokes that won’t make much sense to readers whose knowledge of the medium doesn’t match Vaughan’s, but it’s cool nonetheless to see such a good writer pay homage to his own influences.

More recently, the seriously bizarre (but hardly serious) action game Bayonetta has fun dropping cheeky references to other video games.  Bayonetta’s wacko plot may be a bit too out there for me, but hearing one of its characters emulate the Resident Evil 4 merchant was amusing, and Bayonetta’s own “Henshin A Go-Go” a delight.

In most cases, that’s as far as pop culture goes to plumb the depths of its own history.  Surface-level window dressings can be a ton of fun, but how often do such references have a genuine impact on the heart of a story?  Pretty rarely — which is one of the reasons Scott Pilgrim is so awesome.

Bryan Lee O’Malley doesn’t just work in commentary on music, video games, anime.  I mean, he does all that, and he does it well.  But that’s barely touching on what makes Scott Pilgrim such an original, interesting work.  Scott Pilgrim is a surreal blend of the real world and a goofy, magic-imbued fantasy reality, where Ramona Flowers can use subspace to travel through people’s dreams, where vegans are imbued with psychic powers, and where Scott isn’t just a twenty-something loser — he’s a twenty-something loser who always wins his fights.

O’Malley’s art trends towards the cartoony end of the comic spectrum, which is perfect for the offbeat, experimental mash-up of styles and genres present in his work.  Every great comic creates a detailed world for its characters to exist in, and the way that world is realized appropriately mirrors the style of the narrative.  Cartoony, oversized expressions would seem just as out of place in a post-apocalyptic thriller as minutely detailed characters would look in a lighthearted comedy.  Which isn’t to say that Scott Pilgrim is never serious — but in the world of comics, cartoony, iconic characters are easier to latch onto, and the more stylized they are, the more likely we are to buy into the world around them.

Which is important, because the world of Scott Pilgrim is unlike any other.  As they become more and more advanced, video games have been gravitating towards emulating Hollywood to the best of their ability.  They’re trying to adopt the language of movies: the way cinematography works, how scenes are composed, how characters interact.  Comics, on the other hand, have a very distinct style of storytelling, a way of handling time that is very much their own.  But Scott Pilgrim doesn’t quite play by those rules; it incorporates the trappings of video games at a conceptual level.  In a comic, there’s a way you expect characters to interact with their world, and in video games, there’s a way you expect the elements in the interactive environment to work.  But by infusing aspects of video games into Scott Pilgrim, O’Malley has birthed a cool mix of mediums, in which the expected logic of comics doesn’t work the way we’re accustomed to.

When characters die, they don’t die like they would in a comic; they die like they would in a video game, leaving behind power-ups or 1-Ups (or bunnies, in one Sonic the Hedgehog inspired incident). Video game iconography often pops up to establish a scene with a minimum of wordy explanation.  Game-esque “stats” are applied to objects and characters, like Ramona’s bat (+1 against blondes!) and Scott’s leveling up.  Anyone who’s familiar with video games will take these things for granted in a game, but O’Malley uses them to tell a story in a way that games never have.  Narrative in video games often disregards the way we interact with them — RPGs will throw tons of stats and levels and weapons at you, but those things almost never have any bearing on how the story plays out.  But Scott Pilgrim tells its story through those tropes.  Pretty cool, huh?

There’s plenty more video game stuff packed into Scott Pilgrim in the form of references like Clash at Demonhead, and some moments that break the Fourth Wall, which seems only natural for such an offbeat comic.  As interesting as the Scott Pilgrim comic is, it’s even more tantalizing to anticipate how Edgar Wright will take the video game elements and incorporates them into the upcoming film adaptation.  Odds are it won’t work in quite the same unique way, but who knows?

Despite Activision/Infinity Ward’s apparent efforts to alienate every PC gamer on the planet, Modern Warfare 2 is still likely to sell an absolutely ungodly number of copies and make stupid amounts of money.  Maybe they’ve made so many questionable choices simply because they can.  Even if they piss off a few thousand people, that’s hardly a drop in the bucket compared to the millions who will still happily buy Call of Duty will sell.  And after spending a good four days out of the past week playing and observing MW2’s multiplayer, I can comfortably say they deserve their money — it’s absolutely unmatched in terms of variety and customization, and everything that made Modern Warfare an addictive experience has been improved or re-tuned for the sequel.

Perks

Working your way through the arsenal of weaponry in Modern Warfare before deciding on the perfect killing machine was easily one of the game’s strongest points, but perks were the addition that really made people stand up and take notice.  Modern Warfare takes the original idea of custom-tuned stat enhancements and builds on them, eliminating the dead weight of certain perks and instead giving each a second “Pro” tier of added benefits.  Using each perk unlocks the enhanced version in short order — it takes long enough to familiarize you with the perk’s effects, but comes quickly enough to guarantee you won’t be playing with a handicap for long.  I’d almost rather see the second tier take longer to unlock — the feeling of accomplishment Infinity Ward has made such an integral part of the multiplayer experience is, in many ways, more satisfying than victory itself.

Streakin’

Modern Warfare 2 is definitely all about “more is better,” and I think this has paid off more with the expansion of Killstreaks than in any other aspect of the game.  The original three tier system of UAV, Airstrike, and Helicopter added a unique incentive to the multiplayer, encouraging some degree of tactical gameplay.  Using an airstrike without a UAV was often worthless, and blindly rushing into the fray one kill away from the Helicopter was a complete waste of potential kills.

Modern Warfare 2 blows the concept wide open.  Killstreak awards are no longer the same for everyone; like weapon customization, everyone’s killstreak loadout is going to be different, and tuned to your own abilities.  There’s now a wide swath of killstreak options to choose from, ranging from cheap benefits like UAV to more expensive ones, such as a heavily-armed Pavelow attack helicopter or a tactical nuke (at 25 kills, that one’s not going to be showing up too often).  If you’re not too confident in your abilities, setting up a low-kill payoff makes for an easy payoff.  And if you’re regularly laying down 10 kill streaks without breaking a sweat, aim high for a juicy reward.

The killstreaks also introduce two new gameplay elements that will pop up in just about every Modern Warfare match — care packages and sentry guns.  Care packages drop in a random killstreak bonus or supplies to supplement your ammo.  But the bonus comes with a catch — care packages show up on radar, meaning enemies can seek them out and steal your goods.  But that leads to the most interesting dynamic of the care package — choosing between grabbing the bonus or setting a trap for your enemies.  Sentry guns offer a similar risk/reward: they have to be called in from a helicopter, retrieved from a care package, and then set up in a prime location.

Finally, there are the deathstreaks, which add a Nintendoesque helping hand to the stragglers.  Find yourself dying again and again without racking up a single kill and you’ll be treated to a deathstreak bonus, granting you a series of increasingly beneficial helping hands.  10 seconds of super Juggernaut can let you soak up the bullets, but the better deathstreaks are even more interesting.  The painfully annoying Martyrdom from Modern Warfare has been axed from the perks list, but it shows up as a deathstreak bonus.  It’s no less deadly, but the change means it shows up mercifully rarely.  And like the enhanced Juggernaut deathstreak reward, there’s Final Stand, which gives you the opportunity to use your primary weaponry in last stand and climb back up to your feet after surviving long enough.

Guns.  Lots of guns.

More guns.  Better guns.  Cooler guns.  That’s Modern Warfare 2 in a nutshell.  A more diverse, entertaining selection of all manner of real-worlds firearms is on display, ranging from an expanded arsenal of pistols (with the starting magnum and raffika especially fun to whoop ass with) to new rocket launchers backing up the traditional primary selection of assault rifles, snipers, and sub machine guns.  Sidearms may have received the biggest boost–they can now be fitted with various attachments like the larger guns, or be wielded akimbo or with a riot shield.  The latter options are unwieldy — especially dual wielding — and probably won’t have much of a place in competitive play.  Nevertheless, they can still be fun — even if it leads to an early grave, walking around with two .44 six shooters is stupidly satisfying.

The lineup of scopes and weapon add-ons has also increased dramatically, and the much-needed Bling perk allows you to tack on two at once — perfect for adding extended mags, a silencer, or deep impact full metal jacket rounds in addition to a scope (be it the trusty red dot or a new option, like holographic or thermal).  Even the change to explosive weaponry is significant — rocket launchers are how secondary weapons that take the place of a typical pistol loadout, but the addition of homing missiles makes it much easier to shoot down enemy helicopters or UAVs for a healthy serving of bonus points.

At the end of the day, Modern Warfare 2 sill feels very much like the Call of Duty Infinity Ward has built into a billion dollar phenomenon.  Shooting is still precise and a few well placed bullets from virtually any weapon will bring down the opponent.  The game runs silky smooth and feels larger and more detailed than the original Modern Warfare; at times the environments were so packed with urban detritus that I had trouble distinguishing distant enemies from the gritty landscape.

And as impressive as the core components of the game already are, I know there’s more to be discovered — prestige mode, playlists outside of free for all, third person perspective, and everything unlocked after level 43.  Oh, and there’s that little mode called campaign.  That should be slightly interesting.

But sometimes that doesn’t matter.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena updates 2004’s critically-acclaimed Butcher Bay and delivers an all-new standalone campaign of its own, mixing competent FPS gunplay with stealth and satisfyingly brutal first-person melee combat.  Fun, but ultimately forgettable — a few years from now, the gameplay will be more or less gone from my memory, leaving little to indicate I’d ever played it at all.

Maybe Starbreeze predicted that all the shooting and crawling around in the dark wouldn’t make Riddick’s new adventure all that memorable.  Maybe they’re slightly deranged.  Whatever the reason, they decided to populate one room within the claustrophobic confines of Dark Athena with prisoners who have something in common: they’re almost all totally insane.

Thanks to some incredibly sharp (and off-the-wall) writing and even better voice acting, the prisoners provide a wholly unexpected amount of absolutely hilarious throwaway dialogue.  The incongruous comedy room works because it’s so out of place in the Riddick universe, where the concept of comic relief makes precious few appearances.  What drives a man to switch gears from friendly gratification to unquantifiable, screaming rage in a sudden bipolar explosion?  Apparently, he really needed to tell Riddick what a pussy he was, which never seems like an especially wise thing to say to the galaxy’s number one badass.

But crazy man Jaylor’s pussy insults and ravings about murder and necrophilia (necrophilic gangbangs, in fact) pale in comparison to the antics going on in Exbob’s cell.  I don’t know how he got his name — maybe he was, at some point in time, a regular Bob, but clearly those days are long past.  Exbob gyrates constantly in nervous agitation, twitching from side to side and dancing back and forth like a crack-starved parody of Muhammad Ali.  But oh, the things he says.  If there are other games out there with deranged inmates smacking their asses while simultaneously giving you the finger, I need to experience them.

And the bitchjacks.  Ah, the bitchjacks.  Such a little thing — only seconds of the 10 or so hours Dark Athena lasts.  But when Exbob channels his nervous energy into a jumping jack routine, exclaiming “Bitch!” in a hi-pitched squeal at the crescendo of every repetition, I think I saw God.  Maybe I was just trying a little harder than normal to breath, doubled over in convulsions as I was.  Either way, it’s one of those things that sticks with you.  Forever.

(Note: above links are, obviously, profane).