JFCC - Jason F.C. Clarke

Gamerbore

Posted under Blog, Videogames on April 24th, 2007 by JFCC

I’ve written before about the Xbox 360’s Achievements system, which rewards you for performing certain tasks in videogames and adds points to your overall Gamerscore. It’s arguably an old-fashioned idea, a return to the days of the arcades when players wanted to get their initials in the #1 spot on that Space Invaders cabinet.

But other than that, there’s no real use to one’s Gamerscore. It’s just one more way videogamers can compete with one another. Videogamers are a competitive lot, to be sure, so I suppose I should not have been surprised by the existence of LevelMy360.com. But I was, nonetheless.
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Halo vs. Metroid

Posted under Asides on April 18th, 2007 by JFCC

Okay, this is kind of amazing.

Halo comic coming this summer

Posted under Blog, Videogames on April 17th, 2007 by JFCC

I’m probably the only person I know who cares about this, but Marvel has a listing for its new ongoing Halo comic, due out in July a few months ahead of Halo 3. Here’s the description:

The Eisner Award-winning team of superscribe Brian Michael Bendis and artist extraordinaire Alex Maleev unleash an epic story of mankind’s struggle against the alien threat of the Covenant. Picking up from the conclusion of blockbuster video game Halo 2, the must-read issue reveals how the Master Chief, while onboard a hostile ship headed towards Earth, is battling against Covenant forces! Intertwined with Master Chief’s interstellar one-man-war is the saga of a great American city’s rebellion and downfall, two disparate lives’ collision and shared fate, and the Convenant’s hunt for an ancient relic of untold power and value. With hope dwindling and the fate of humanity hanging by a thread, is there any chance for a future? Read this debut issue to start the journey into the Halo universe!

Pitch perfect

Posted under Asides on April 13th, 2007 by JFCC

I was told today that a pitch I’d made to a major magazine was accepted. I can’t go into specifics—I’m not even close to writing the article yet, and the issue won’t be out for months. But I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone who reads this blog.

Opening Day

Posted under Blog on April 11th, 2007 by JFCC

I’ve been wracking my brains lately for a topic for this blog. Even yesterday, as I watched from the bleachers while the Red Sox thumped the living crap out of the Mariners at their home opener, I was thinking to myself, “what can I write about?” It was only just now, as I sat here thinking yet again, that it occurred to me that I could write about…going to Opening Day!

First, some background. For her birthday, my father got my mother tickets to the first five games of the Red Sox season to ensure they got to see Daisuke Matsuzaka throw his very first official pitch in Fenway Park. But since Dice-K wasn’t going to be pitching the home opener, they were so incredibly generous as to hand the tickets off to DG (my girlfriend) and me.
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Dead Slumping

Posted under Blog, Videogames on April 4th, 2007 by JFCC

Last month my cousin kindly loaned me his copy of Dead Rising, an Xbox 360 game in which you have to survive in a zombie-infested mall a la Dawn of the Dead.

Having lost some interest in zombies after finishing my as-yet-unnamed novella, it wasn’t until last week that I finally fired the game up. My main motivation for it was to pad my Gamerscore with some quick achievement points.

Unfortunately, I found myself getting bored pretty quick.
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Gwoemul (The Host)

Posted under Blog, Movies, Reviews on March 31st, 2007 by JFCC

Until recently, the last movie I’d seen in the theater was Pan’s Labyrinth; before that, Casino Royale, and before that, I think it was Pirates of the Caribbean 2. I don’t get out to the theaters much, so it was a bit of a coup when I managed to see two movies in the theater last weekend. One was 300; the other was the South Korean monster movie Gwoemul (“The Host”).

Ever since I was a wee tyke, watching Creature Double Feature on Boston’s WLVI 56 on Saturdays afternoons, I’ve been a fan of monster movies. Godzilla was always my favorite, but I had a soft spot for King Kong, Frankenstein, Dracula—all the movie monsters detailed in those old Crestwood orange hardcover books you used to be able to find in your local library. I also enjoyed films such as the original black-and-white The Thing and, when I was older, John Carpenter’s 1980s remake.
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Jason F.C. Clarke