This week in Editors’ Picks: James reminds you it’s okay to like things your peers don’t, Rollin is in awe of basic electricity, and Ian is secretly terrified.
James’ pick: Not Hating EA’s Origin Just Because the Rest of the Internet Does
You’re a person of culture. We know this, as you visit this site, and by extension, other fine Internet properties. However, the Internet creates a certain hive mind, one mainly focused on personal taste. When Borderlands 2 released, you might’ve noticed that the sheer amount of related posts on reddit made the site something of a Borderlands endorsement. Standing around the water cooler, you might find that it seems every single person in the universe watches and loves Breaking Bad. Opinions are fine, and it’s fine to agree or disagree with someone’s, but after dealing with EA’s Origin service for the first time, and having a better overall experience with it than I have ever had with Valve’s Steam, I felt like pointing out that, hey man, it’s okay to disagree with the Internet.
No, Origin isn’t perfect, and aside from exclusives, there’s barely a reason to have more than one gaming library service. I found myself wanting to play a game exclusively available on Origin, and because of the Internet hive mind, was dreading having to deal with that service. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Valve’s Steam, as I’ve always somehow had various issues with the service — regular crashes, the recommendation engine seeming to only recommend games that I already bought based on the criteria that I already bought them, and it not playing very nicely with other programs running in the background. On a relatively new Windows 7 custom gaming PC, mind you. So, if everyone loved Steam even though I find it has a load of issues, and everyone hates Origin, I was in for a terrible experience, right?
After putting around 30 hours (so far) into my one and only Origin game, I found that I haven’t run into one issue yet with EA’s service. It interacts just fine with all of the background programs, it runs smoothly and quickly, it was able to download and install DLC as I was playing the very game it was modifying, and though I haven’t fully decided yet, I might actually like the UI better than Steam’s. Will I use Origin after I finish this game? I can’t imagine I would, no, because most of my PC gaming library is in Steam, and like I mentioned, there’s really no reason (other than exclusives) to have more than one gaming library service. I’m also not saying everyone should go out and get Origin games right this second. I’m simply saying that the amount of hate or love powerful Internet communities throws at something doesn’t mean said communities know what works for you.
Rollin’s pick: Power
Barring an unfortunate misadventure where one of my roommates almost lit our apartment on fire while trying to, in his own words, “consolidate the candles,” my Hurricane Sandy fallout was relatively minor. This did include the power going out Monday night and failing to return in time for me to ascend in Kingdom of Loathing as I wished, but when compared to those pulling bodies from the wreckage of homes and businesses, any complaints I could potentially convey about my experience feel glib at best. With that said, power is my pick this week because it was such a glorious thing to see it restored yesterday. For anyone that actually pays attention to Geekosystem’s bylines on a regular basis, it’s pretty much been a week without Rollin. This is my first day back since Monday, so one could probably classify this as a terrible vacation.
I work from a desktop, and nearly everything I do in my professional life stems from that point. Sure, I have a laptop at the office, but that didn’t help me when I couldn’t reach the office. Everything I might typically do, bar reading, was suddenly unavailable to me. It’s not like I have a huge yard to frolic in, and that’s not to mention the weather. So, my pick this week is power, because it’s the thing that allows me to be goofy on the Internet, keep up with my family back home, and play games with Australians. There’s really nothing quite like it. One could say my pick is really the Internet, but the Internet wouldn’t exist at all without power.
Ian’s pick: Full Moon Horror Movies
When Halloween falls in the middle of the week, you are allowed two weekends of Halloween parties. This is an inalienable human right protected by the Geneva Convention. Okay, not really, but it should be. We’re starting a petition. That’s not the point, though. The point is that Wednesday Halloween means you have another weekend to put on a costume, watch horror movies, and live on nothing but fun size candy bars and Jaeger shots for another 48 hours. I probably won’t be doing that other stuff, as I am admittedly still recovering from last weekend’s Halloween party. Also, I don’t know if y’all heard, but we had a bit of a hurricane out here, and it’s seeming very much like time for hunkering down this weekend. If you’re in hunker mode, there’s nothing better to hunker down with than terrible, terrible horror movies. I mean just really bad. Like, the worst. While The Asylum is doing some excellent contemporary work on this front, and Roger Corman and Ed Wood are always good for a couple camp horror gems, for me, nothing in the world beats the heyday of Full Moon Pictures for a wonderfully terrible horror movie.
Most people will remember Full Moon for their vaunted Puppet Master franchise, and would be right to do so. After all, those are about half a billion fine, fine films, but there’s so much more to these direct-to-video masterpieces, like the campy vampires and homunculi of the Subspecies series, or the time travelling zombies of Trancers fame, or the more recent Tommy Chong vehicle Evil Bong, which is about — you know what? Guess.
So this weekend, I’ll be welcoming autumn with a big pot of chili, a respectable and rational number of chilled pumpkin beers, and a triple feature of Dollman, Demonic Toys, and the pinnacle of Full Moon’s filmmaking, Dollman vs. Demonic Toys. Because having two Halloween weekends is too precious a gift to waste doing anything else.
