Cricket: Color Me Confused.

I am American.  Soccer is played with your feet, and football is primarily played with your hands.  Baseball is the national pastime, and the team will never take a food break.  Yet, in all my sporting glory, I found something on ESPN that baffled me – Cricket.

Ladies and Gentleman I have been confused, astounded, baffled, intrigued, and above all else frustrated with the sport since I found it on my ESPN app on my Xbox360 a few nights ago.  I was instantly enthralled when I found nothing else was on other than recaps of games I had either seen, heard the outcomes of, or just didn’t want to see.  Now cricket, that’s not something you see very often here in the states.  In fact, the sport is most popular in England, South Africa, the West Indies, Australia/New Zealand, and India.  In any event, I watched a little of a test game between Pakistan and Bangladesh.  First off, test games have some different rules than a regular match.  This added to the initial confusion.  Secondly, the cameraman would always focus on the ball.  This made figuring the game out even harder seeing as I had no clue what the batsman was doing during this time.  I assumed he was running, but to what end?

So, to educate myself on the sport, I went to the one source I know will never fail me: The internet.  After dodging past the puffery of articles on the sport and league informational websites I found the Wikipedia page for Cricket.  Now normally I do not advise the use of Wikipedia, but as far as sports go I have found it is fairly accurate.  The page is direct and to the point, which is exactly what I was looking for.  Am I going to waste my time explaining the whole process to you in this blog?  No.  Of course not.  I will however mention that after watching part of one game, reading the basic rules of play on Wikipedia, and mulling over the confusion this brought, I have found that I keep searching my Xbox ESPN application for new games.  I am strangely intrigued by this foreign sport.  Wicket, bowling, batsman, innings (plural and singular are innings – weird, right?).  New words to add to my vocabulary.  Alright, so maybe I knew that their pitching was known as bowling, and I knew that the three sticks at either end of the pitch are called a wicket, but that’s beside the point.

However, this does bring up a new question in my mind: Did cricket have some influence on J.K. Rowling’s creation of the game of Quidditch?  Think about it.  The area of play that sees the most action is called the pitch.  The name of the Quidditch field is the pitch.  A wicket is a group of three sticks at either end of the pitch which the bowler aims his throws at and the batsman defends, for the bowling team will get credit for taking a wicket if the wicket is hit.  A Quidditch pitch has three hoops on either end of the pitch which will be defended by the keeper, and chasers try to throw a ball through the hoops to score.  The batsman defends the wicket by hitting the ball away with his bat.  Beaters are armed with bats (that look like a hybrid between baseball and cricket bats) with which they strike bludgers, aiming at the other team to try and throw them off.  The game of cricket is played on an oval shaped field of play.  A Quidditch pitch is in the shape of an oval.  Am I wrong or does there seem to be more than a few similarities between the games?  JKR is English, after all, so it is quite possible that the sport had some influence on her – if even subconsciously – when she was creating the magical pastime of Quidditch.  Maybe I’ll write her a letter and ask her someday.  Still, it’s some food for thought.

Cricket on a Quidditch Pitch.  It's a sports mash-up!

I hope you all enjoyed this very random distraction that ended up being a comparison between fictional literature and reality.  I thoroughly enjoyed discovering both!

Stealth Rules the VG World

In the wake of Spike TV’s Video Game Awards 2011 (which aired Saturday, December 10^th at 8pm EST) I wanted to share one of my addictions with all of you.

I am very much a gamer.  Why?  Because it’s hands-on entertainment!  I feel like I’m really a part of the story.  Yes – I get wrapped up in the stories of video games.  There is no problem in that.  Any gamer out there will tell their own story.  They love the graphics, or the action, or the plot, or the characters.  For me it’s a mix of all of these things.  

Now when it comes to shooting or war games like Modern Warfare or other Call of Duty games, I’m more of a sniper kind of girl.  I like to hide out and take head shots from a safe distance.  That’s where I’m lethal.  Games that involve running out into the thick of things sometimes gets me in trouble.  I wasn’t a fan of cover in the beginning (thanks to playing Mass Effect on insanity I learned to love cover) and I was the type of person who just wanted to be in the middle of the action.  I would run right into the middle and try and get a good look at everything while killing people up close and personal, but I would die too quickly to do too much damage.  I just figured you can always respawn.  Well, after a while I learned how to work out a middle ground, but I’m still not a huge fans of shooter games like CoD and MW.  I either have to be far off sniping, or up close and stabbing.  Basically, I’m a fan of stealth moves.

For this reason I love games that let me utilize stealth abilities.  I bought Batman: Arkham Asylum and had a lot of fun with that game when it was first released.  Batman has a lot of stealth abilities that he uses as he hunts down the criminals loose in the asylum.  Thinking out the strategy is half the fun!  I guess you could say I’m a cerebral player.  Soon I’ll get Batman: Arkham City and let you all know how that stands up to the first modern Batman installment.

My November Game of the Month has to be Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.  I’ve been with the AC franchise from the very beginning.  The stealth abilities along with a compelling story make this game series a double threat.  Revelations sees the return of Ezio Auditore de Firenze but he has aged a bit and is now in Constantinople.  Weapons have evolved and probably the best new feature is the hook blade.  It helps Ezio climb faster, make longer jumps, and, best of all, he can now zip-line through the city!  Death from above takes a whole new meaning.  Well, actually it means the same thing, but it looks super cool!!

Showing off Ezio's new zip-line capabilities with the hook blade.

Another new addition to Ezio’s bag of tricks is the bombs.  You can craft multiple kinds of bombs that perform many different actions.  There are three bomb categories or pouches as they are labeled in game: Lethal, Tactical, and Diversion.  Lethal bombs are designed to take down your opponents for good, as the name suggests.  My personal favorite is a poison bomb called the Datura bomb.  Datura is the name of the lethal powder explosive that goes into the bomb and actually kills your targets.  The best part of using this bomb is that it serves two functions: the first being that it kills the guards you are initially targeting, and the second is that it draws any guards nearby out into the open to investigate their fallen comrades.  Tactical bombs are used to gain an advantage over your opponent.  These can be smokescreen bombs that make your opponents blind and send them into coughing fits while you use Ezio’s incredible eagle vision to see his targets through the smog.  Or you could use a Caltrop bomb, which essentially paralyzes your targets which makes taking them down much easier.  The diversion bombs help distract the guards or crowds of people – whether with a loud noise or a bunch of coins – which can give you an opportunity to sneak past while they go to investigate.  You should really try out this new feature and have fun mixing and matching all different elements to create the perfect bomb for any situation.

For me the one thing I was missing from this game was the Italian.  As someone who studied Italian I had fun with AC2 and AC: Brotherhood since the games were set in Italy.  A lot of the people on the street would speak Italian and even when Ezio spoke to someone in a cut scene you would have random pieces of Italian speech thrown into the mix.  This game had very little Italian with Ezio and a woman named Sofia being the only Italians you really interact with in Constantinople.  This, of course, is a personal problem and nothing that would deter me or should deter anyone else from playing/enjoying the game.  I LOVE THIS GAME.  And, without revealing too much, the Desmond story really takes a big turn with a lot of new information into his character personally.

If I had one problem with the game it would be in the new face of Desmond.  I understand graphics are updating on a daily basis, but Desmond literally looks like a completely new person in this game.  His skin is much darker than before, and the structure of his face even looked different.  I don’t know how to explain his new look, but it seems as though he went through some massive reconstructive surgery between Brotherhood and Revelations.  Again, this is not enough to deter me nor should it deter anyone else from playing the game, just an observation. 

The game continues the storyline that was set up in the first three games as far as Desmond is concerned.  His story has progressed normally through the series but this game brings a surprise to the table.  SPOILER ALERT There is no real world Desmond action in this game.  Desmond is stuck inside the animus – inside his mind – because he has fallen into a coma in the real world.  Subject 16, or Clay Kaczmarek, is also inside the animus safe zone, also known as the Black Room.  He helps Desmond as much as he can so the same thing that happened to him won’t happen to Desmond.  You also hear voice-overs of the people in the real world talking around Desmond’s unconscious body.  In fact, one of the biggest lingering questions from Brotherhood to Revelations is answered in one of the first voice-overs: Whether or not Lucy survived.  I won’t spoil that outcome for those of you still reading this.

To wrap things up I would just like to add that this game was a welcome continuation in the Assassin’s Creed line.  I was happy with the playable storyline as well as the multiplayer online portion, a trait started with Brotherhood.  The game was a quick finish but it is nice to be able to go back through and replay portions from wherever you would like.  Your money travels through time with you, which is especially helpful if you forgot to buy the books at the bookstore in Cappadocia and wish to complete the Sage achievement.  Warning: Those books are VERY expensive.  I suggest sending your assassins out on a bunch of missions to earn some money before you waste time going back to that memory.  While in Cappadocia you cannot contact your assassins.  Try and save up 350,000 before you head back (that is Sequence 7: Underworld just for your reference). 

When all said and done I give this game an A because it's that Awesome.  I hope this encourages you to go get a game system and enjoy some hands-on procrastination! 

This game is available on Xbox360, PS3, and PC.

Fairytale Showdown!

Hey Guys! I know this has been a long time coming but I've been doing other things instead of sitting down to right this blog.  Now I know that is unfair, but look, I named the blog "Things I Do Instead of Doing Things" for a reason.  First order of business - The Fairytale Showdown!

And the verdict is in:

NBC's "Grimm" missed the mark while ABC soared ahead with the new series from the writers of Lost, "Once Upon A Time".  "Grimm" had problems right from the beginning.  In television there is such a thing as knowing too much.  The first episode left little mystery in the identity of the killer as early on his face was revealed.  As a viewer you just had to sit back and wait for the main character, Detective Nick Burkhardt (David Giuntoli), to catch up.  As far as main characters go he is not the best.  This is no fault of the actor, but more a problem with the script he was given.  Nick has just learned of his status as a Grimm descendant so now he's seeing supernatural beings everywhere.  Problem?  He knows nothing about that world so he has to study up.  All the normal monsters have weird names, like blutbad - which is the name for a werewolf.  Now I did not read very many of the Grimm fairy tales, but I do not remember coming across any weird names like blutbad or hexenbiest, though the second sounds more reasonable.  The odd names just add to the confusion which, when your main character is confused about everything under the son, does not help to keep viewers invested.  Now with the story being laid out in front of you in mot episodes, waiting for Nick to catch up is less like watching a chase and more like watching a mouse make his way through a maze in search of cheese.  The thrill is just lost when the mystery is gone.  The show is missing that "CSI" vibe - the intrigue of finding the killer with the most minimal evidence to work with.  In these stories the evidence is right there in your face and it takes him an hour long program to get the bad guy?  Not really my cup of tea.

Strangely the one thing I like about the show is a particular character: Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell).  He is a reformed blutbad and serves as Nick's link to the world of supernaturals.  Monroe as informant works because otherwise Nick is lost.  However, Monroe does not get enough screen time to warrant watching the show.  He's only around when Nick needs him, and so far it has been in very little doses. 

Now let's talk about the HIT!  "Once Upon A Time" is shaping up to be everything I hoped it would be.  Some mystery over who knows what, some drama, some fairytale stories thrown on their heads, it's a wonderful tale.  The best thing about the fairytale world for this viewer is the way you can recognize a story for what it is - like Cinderella or Snow White - but it's not the traditional story.  Each one has its own twist.  For instance, Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) becomes a thief?  Well to live her life out in the forest after the hunter spares her it seems that is one way she knows how to survive.  She takes on a bit of a Robin Hood quality and is not the prim and kempt Snow White from the magical world of Disney.  The show has a good variety of characters that one can get invested in, not to mention a story that keeps moving.  By this I mean that there is the big picture story = Get back to fairytale land; the mini-every-episode stories = which fairytale character will be highlighted in this week's episode; and the real life story = a battle between Emma (Jennifer Morrison) and the Mayor of Storybrooke Regina Mills (Lana Parrilla) over their (Emma's biological and Regina's adopted) son, Henry (Jared S. Gilmore).  There is enough to make everything mysterious and intriguing but not so much that viewers just get lost.

My personal favorite thing about the show, however, happens to be a who and not a what: Rumpelstiltskin (Robert Carlyle).  Carlyle plays a fabulous part, transitioning between the upstanding owner of Storybrooke Mr. Gold, and the wonderfully devious and revolting Rumpelstiltskin.  The make-up work on his character alone should win the show an Emmy.  His portrayal of the slimy magically proficient madman is incredible and exactly what you would expect from such a character.  I cannot express in words how interested I am in his character.  More so Rumpelstiltskin than Mr. Gold, however there is one thing that I will never be able to shake with Mr. Gold that keeps him near the top of my favorite real-world characters: Whether or not he knows what is going on.  To me it seems as if he knows more than he lets on.  I feel that he knows about the curse - to some extent, at least - and he's just playing his cards right to figure out how he wants things to play out.  The beginning credits suggest that Regina/The Evil Queen is the only one who knows about the curse, but little things seem to say Mr. Gold knows as well.  And why shouldn't he?  He was the most powerful person in the magical fairytale world.  His magic can't be all gone.  I wait in extreme suspense to see how the rest of this season will pan out - though SPOILER ALERT I will not be happy if they kill off the eye candy that is Sheriff Graham (Jamie Dornan) next week.

Stay tuned for more of what I've been doing instead!!