OT - your fav games

[tinkthank]

Originally posted by Arryn:
UPDATE: Having seen "I, Robot" this evening, I have to say that while Asimov would not have approved of the script (I can go into the reasons why if anyone really cares), the movie wasn't bad, and was a helluva lot closer to Asimov's "universe" than "Starship Troopers" was to Heinlein's. Go see the movie and enjoy it (ignoring the impossible physics of the bots will help).

The beauty of Starship Troopers was that it was camp; it made Heinlein into something enjoyable.
Both Heinlein and actually to a stronger degree Asimov are in my opinion miserable writers; the entire "robot" series was puerile and lackluster. (Like the results of what happens when 70% of most Hollywood teams get their hands on a Phillip K. Dick story.) I wasn't planning to see I Robot, but you have got my interest piqued.

[Leif_-]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
The beauty of Starship Troopers was that it was camp; it made Heinlein into something enjoyable.

Only in the same sense that "Boxing Helena" made heavy weight boxing enjoyable - the movie "Starship Troopers" had nothing but superficial similarities with the book, so it can't really be said to have "made it enjoyable"

Both Heinlein and actually to a stronger degree Asimov are in my opinion miserable writers; the entire "robot" series was puerile and lackluster.

True in a sense - both Heinlein and Asimov, and many other science fiction writers of the time, were idea-writers, who used their stories as a vehicle to present ideas. If you don't find their ideas interesting, their writing and stories aren't good enough in themselves to be worth reading.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
The beauty of Starship Troopers was that it was camp; it made Heinlein into something enjoyable.

If, by "making into something enjoyable", you mean "gutting of all previously existing substance", then yeah, that's true.

However, catering to the lowest common denominator does not make for a truly good product....it just makes for crap that is quickly forgotten. In 20 years, the book will live on. The movie will be forgotten.

[ July 21, 2004, 11:32: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Vicious Love]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Those are ninjas, obviously. And as you well know, ninjas fight in public all the time!

Oh, yeah? If he's a ninja, how come he's not hardcore? He didn't even use one of those sickle-on-a-chain-with-a-doorknob-on-the-end things. Ninjas always get the coolest stuff.

Oh, and I agree that Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke and the like all left much to be desired, writing style wise. Aside from Neal Stephenson(Who mostly wrote Cyberpunk, not PROPER SciFi at all), I can think of very few SciFi authors from Back in the Day who had more than a rudimentary way with words.
I'm also acutely aware of the fact that most of Asimov's stuff was mediocre or worse, conceptually as well as stylistically speaking. None of this mitigates the fact that Will Smith's I, Robot is the sixth sign of the apocalypse(The other five were all "Ernest" movies). I mean, honestly, it wasn't even based on anything by Asimov, they just nabbed the title to try and dupe the unwary into watching it.

[tinkthank]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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Originally posted by tinkthank:
The beauty of Starship Troopers was that it was camp; it made Heinlein into something enjoyable.

If, by "making into something enjoyable", you mean "gutting of all previously existing substance", then yeah, that's true.

However, catering to the lowest common denominator does not make for a truly good product....it just makes for crap that is quickly forgotten. In 20 years, the book will live on. The movie will be forgotten.

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Substance? Heinlein with Substance? Please!

I said the film was "camp"; I like camp; camp is enjoyable. Camp is crap. Sometimes, this is good. (Think: "Buckaroo Banzai"). Camp is useless. Tom Stoppard once said of some of his plays that they are like a golden Mickey Mouse statue: completely useless, but somehow cute.
I like that sometimes when it is clever; Starship Troopers was clever. (No, not the hack-n-slash bits, but the rather clever and ironic way in which war and dogmatism were portrayed; it was a very nice parody of American fachism.) Starship Troopers is thus a valid dystopian criticism of Heinlein's weak and uncritical optimism. I would think that you, of all people, Norfleet, would appreciate that!

Asimov at least had a couple of ideas; these, however, were and are much better found elsewhere.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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That's what so great about KotOR: it has a real plot, great characters, and the only people trying to kill you are scripted to do so for logical (plot) reasons. No random (stupid) mayhem.

KOTOR had several planets with extremely hostile and violent wildlife that displayed incredible resilience to being shot. I'm also pretty sure they showed up more or less randomly for the sole purpose of mayhem, since I'm pretty thorough about clearing things out behind me, and when I came back out of a dead-end passage, there were more of them. But I feel a little bit of random mayhem every now and then is a healthy thing.

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If you'll reread my posting a wee bit more carefully, you might notice I said "people" when referring to random mayhem. Not critters. KotOR doesn't have such things as random dark jedi (random ninjas) or wandering random stormtroopers.

The critters outdoors on Dantooine do respawn, as do the mutant ghoul thingies on the first planet.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Vicious Love:
I can think of very few SciFi authors from Back in the Day who had more than a rudimentary way with words.

Try Frank Herbert.

Heinlein, Asimov, and Clarke (as has been mentioned by Leif) were full of interesting ideas that they wrapped into stories. Asimov and Clarke weren't particularly good writers, but they were prolific and intriguing. Heinlein, I must disagree, did write decent novels. Especially his non-children's books. It's just that his style doesn't appeal to everyone. Just as I know people (who I think are culturally blind) who don't care for G.R.R. Martin or Steven Erikson (yes, odd as that may be to believe).

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Arryn:
If you'll reread my posting a wee bit more carefully, you might notice I said "people" when referring to random mayhem. Not critters. KotOR doesn't have such things as random dark jedi (random ninjas) or wandering random stormtroopers.

Actually, I'm pretty sure the final level did. I remember ducking into a room to catch a breather, after making sure everything looked cleared, and coming out to find that a MILE WIDE MASS of "wandering random Stormtroopers" had set up shop there. This happened multiple times, so I can only figure they were random, respawning hordes.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Actually, I'm pretty sure the final level did. I remember ducking into a room to catch a breather, after making sure everything looked cleared, and coming out to find that a MILE WIDE MASS of "wandering random Stormtroopers" had set up shop there. This happened multiple times, so I can only figure they were random, respawning hordes.

The station had areas that would keep spawning bots until you destroyed all the bot generators in that zone. And there were areas that would keep spawning troopers and jedi until you did something else. They weren't exactly random as it was quite predictable. Since you had no way to seal doors, and it was a HUGE station, it made sense that reinforcements would keep showing up to slow your progress.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Arryn:
Since you had no way to seal doors, and it was a HUGE station, it made sense that reinforcements would keep showing up to slow your progress.

Well, yeah, that reasoning makes sense, up until (and I tried to keep out) you've killed about about 500,000 of them. It took several days.