Post date: Dec 02, 2009 3:45:41 PM
So I am going to abuse my right as a Blogger with this quick post to review 3 "apocalypse" items that I have been exposed to recently - a book, a movie, and a game.
First the Book - Level 7 (4 Nukes/5) is a 1959 science fiction novel by the American writer Mordecai Roshwald. It is told from the first person perspective (diary) of a modern soldier X-127 living in the underground military complex Level 7, where he was expected to reside permanently, fulfilling the role of commanding his nation's nuclear weapons. The book is an interesting view into what life would be like in a military styled "vault." My only advice would be to skip the introduction and the "alien" analysis, read the diary, then come back to the introduction, as the intro spoils the whole book. Of the many apocalypse books, the dry and analytical writing of X-127 does not pull in the reader but if you want an interesting perspective of shelter building during the 1950's I would whole heartedly recommend this book.
The Movie - The Road (2.5 Nukes/5) - This movie is based off an amazing apocalypse book by Cathy McCormac. A book I would recommend to any one who is a fan of the genre. The movie on the other hand, did not live up to the book. All to often this is the case, so I was not surprised. The visuals were solid, but the music gave the movie a treacly feeling (Contrived Sentimentality), and the scenes felt like they were stitched together like a patchwork quilt of pastiches. Still, I did cry at the end, I must be getting soft in my old age. Here is what I think happened. This movie was supposed to come out a year ago, but it got put in front of one test audience after another and they pulled the teeth that this movie could've had. They removed the points that illustrated the complete fall of mankind in this movie and instead added additional scenes with Charlize Theron to explain what happened to his wife. I found the product placement portions of the film to be interesting (who knew that Vitamin water would have a long storage life and that most Delmonte canned fruit would still be good 8 or more years after the end-times - when in reality its is 36+ months).
The Game - The Borderlands (2.5 Nukes/6)- So I saw this game on a friends Xbox (Hiya Doc), and while I admit I suxorz at any kind of FPS, the intro video peaked my interest as the goal of the game is to find a mysterious "Vault" on the wasteland of a planet Pandora. The claim the game made was it was as if FPS and RPG had a child. Still I was uncertain, until on Black Friday, Amazon offered the PC version of the game for $20. So I got it, installed it, and my weak laptop was able to run it (albeit at a much lower resolution than the sexiness that a console system). So far I am not too long into the story or setting but I am having a great time spotting the various nods to Fallout: from a Bobblehead at the intro, mailboxes with ammo in them (appealing to the scavenger in me), the desert like landscape, and various other elements. All good games have a great soundtrack and I am excited to see that on December 8th the OST will be released, as this one is a great marriage to the ambient sounds for Fallout 3 and will probably make its way into that playlist.
So that's it for this blog entry. In short: Level 7 - read it, The Road (movie) - skip it, The Borderlands - play it.