Microreview [film]: Spirited Away by Miyazaki Hayao

The Meat

Spirited Away, by famous Japanese animator Miyazaki Hayao, is a fantastic feature-length film that focuses a sullen, willful, and spoiled 10-year old girl named Chihiro. The story opens with her in the back seat of her father's car, moping while they are moving to a new town. On the way, her father gets lost in a dark forest, and winds up at the gate of what appears to be an old amusement park, abandoned after Japan's bubble era. Although apparently abandoned, as evening falls, some of the food shops appear to open, and Chihiro's family find that they are lined with exotic, tasty delights. Chihiro's parents pig out on the food, scaring their young daughter, who just wants to leave. Within moments, Chihiro's gluttonous parents literally turn into pigs. Making matters worse, as twilight sets in, Chihiro finds the way back to home blocked by a vast lake. 

As night sets in, a boy named Haku appears as Chihiro's guide, and leads her to a towering bathhouse. Haku informs Chihiro that to survive in this new world and to save her parents, she first has to work. Haku thus sends Chihiro to Kamaji, an intriguing, bearded eight-limbed creature who works in the boiler room deep in the innards of the boathouse. After seeing Chihiro's guts firsthand, Kamaji tells Chihiro that she must make it to the top of the bathhouse and demand a job from the proprietor and sorceress, Yubaba. From this point on, Chihiro ventures in to the bathhouse, only to get a first glimpse into a wondrous new world. In the process, her name is stolen by Yubaba; she is renamed Sen. And Chihiro/Sen begins a magical and extraordinary adventure to save her parents and to find a way back home.  

Yubaba and Chihiro

Chihiro is different from the heroic figures that populate some of Miyazaki's and many other animated films. In her spoiled and sullen way, Chihiro is a unique antihero. To save her parents, this antihero engages in a number of what a willful 10-year old girl might be consider Herculean tasks: exploring an old bathhouse; demanding a job from the proprietor; cleaning dirty baths; helping her friends; and riding the train alone. These seemingly ordinary acts are imbued with a magical quality, and allow Chihiro to guide the viewer through a world teeming with endless imagination. The adventures she has, the friends she makes, and the love she experiences ironically make this willful 10-year old at times feel much more adult than her own parents.  

True to form, Miyazaki's also creates a subtle and layered antagonist, one who is not exactly the poster girl for evil. Yubaba is a complex character. Although overbearing, intimidating, and driven almost wholly by greed, Yubaba has a softer side that she reveals sporadically throughout the movie. Whether  by her motherly softness, her praise for Chihiro, or through the occasional soft-hearted decision, Yubaba defies the simple caricature of evil incarnate. Yubaba's twin sister, Zeniba, is equally complex. She would not hesitate to kill to protect her magical properties, but at the same time she is kind-hearted and more than willing to take care of Kaonashi (No Face). The movie thus effectively blurs the lines between good and evil, presenting at times more realistic picture of life.

Miyazaki also uses Spirited Away as a vehicle to promote an environmentalist message in a surprisingly effective manner. After joining the bathhouse, Chihiro's first client is Okutaresama, a river god whose body had absorbed all the putrid sludge, stinking junk, and discarded objects that people threw in over the years. In this funny and delightful scene, Chihiro finds herself helping the river god discard all the junk it accumulated over the years. And Haku, her love interest, also has a an eco-unfriendly back story. Perhaps because these messages are told in a subtle manner (through side stories), the environmentalist critique in Spirited Away is more powerful than any other Miyazaki movie since his early masterpiece, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind.

Spirited Away shows off Miyazaki's boundless imagination, enthusiasm, and endless creativity, both in its animation and in its overall story line. The animation stands apart from most other animated movies (especially Disney) because it is hand drawn with a degree of care that is rarely found in feature-length films. And the design is equally beautiful. I have never seen in one movie so many different types of plants, monsters, gods, and other beings.

In the end, Spirited Away weaves a simple fairy tail of a young girl trying to save her family and return home. In doing so, it tells, in a surprisingly effective way, straightforward messages of the harmful nature of greed, the negative human environmental impact, the difficulties of growing up, and the importance of believing in yourself. Although not my personal favorite Studio Ghibli film (that honor goes to Porco Rosso), Spirited Away deserves lavish praise as Miyazaki Hayao's best, most complete movie. It never fails to put a smile on my face or a laugh to my day. This film is fit and fun for any age, from young child to adult. Run, don't walk, to your nearest computer to download or buy this movie. Spirited Away is without a doubt the finest animated film ever made.

The Math

No Nerd Coefficient necessary. This movie rocks on all accounts.

Total Score: 10/10 "Mind-blowing, Life-changing, Best. Animated. Movie. Evar!"

AiIP: The Rise of Hybrid Publishers

The Rise of Hybrid Publishers

It wasn’t that long ago that Amazon essentially changed the way books are read, sold and marketed. In fact, it was only in 2007 that the Kindle was introduced, and in the six years since ebooks have become as standard of their paper forebears. This has opened the door for the indie book industry to boom- a ship that is still in the process of righting itself.

For the indie author who wants to pursue self-publishing, costs can be prohibitive. And with the big Five (formerly Six) publishers cutting costs and pulling crap like this, a new field has emerged- what can be termed Hybrid Publishing, independent imprints that focus on ebook distribution and marketing that are generally supported by smaller print runs. What is lost in a large presence in brick and mortar stores (but not necessarily non-existent) is made up for (for the author) in much larger royalties via a focus on ebooks.

John Scalzi has chimed in extensively, speaking up that publishers should offer an advance and if they do not, it should raise red flags to the author. More to the point, that contracts should be fair to both parties- this applies if there is an advance or not.

Readers care about this, too, and it benefits the industry as a whole. If the creator is actually getting paid, for example, people are less likely to pirate something. The perception (and reality) of contracts not favoring musicians led, in many ways, to the first wave of music piracy. If the reasoning is that creators aren’t being paid anyway, why not get it for free? The recent success of Fireside Magazine, for example, proves this. 12.5 cents per word for fiction is crazy good and readers are willing to rally around that cause.

So it goes for many small presses. For the moment, they will rarely lead to massive success in reaching every reader out there. But with higher revenues and a larger share for the authors, they can make just as much money. And as more of the market share moves to ereaders, this will only grow, making it more inviting for authors to move to smaller publishers.

Holy Buckets, Did You See the Veronica Mars Kickstarter?

$2.4 million dollars in its first day. Thassalottamoney (really, spellcheck? That’s a word? Aces, champ. Aces). I know this doesn’t fall strictly under the umbrella of publishing, but that is something we should all pay attention to. I jumped on it pretty early and spoke broadly to what it meant to Kickstarter as a whole- namely, big names getting involved and funding projects via crowdsourcing methods. I think it is a really good thing and will only help breed the next set of big names.

Similarly, the Success of Fireside’s kickstarter, which I highlighted here last month, is a big deal, not because it raised millions (although $25,000 is nothing to sneeze at), but because it shows that there are quality projects coming out of crowdfunding. Again, it’s not the future, but it’s part of it.

As a small aside: If you have a Kickstarter for anything that would be covered here on the site, share it with me. If we dig it, I’ll plug it here. if it’s really cool, we might interview you or do a separate post on it. We’re geeks; we like cool stuff.

This is the Part Where I Normally Interview Someone

But this month, you get something special: Some inside info and a preview of my upcoming release, 3024AD: Short Stories, Series One.

From 'Temperance'

I started working on 3024AD about a year ago, and while I have written for years, I fell in love with the universe. One of the things I really wanted was a rich, vibrant setting where any character, no matter how small of a role they played, could have their own compelling story. So as I wrote, I started telling those stories as well. Most of them make up this collection.

But it’s not just an assortment of shorts. They all tie together and cross paths and overlap. There is a main story arc, which follows a character nicknamed Digger. He has a haunted past and is a thief with an education and a love for history.

Many of the stories are the people who cross his path. Some of them play larger roles later in other stories, some just exist within their own. All have their own causes, loves and hates, and stories to be told. I wanted to create a setting where even the characters who don’t have their full story told could.

In addition, I wanted it to be a universe that could happen. To that end, ships don’t have artificial gravity, trips between planets don’t happen instantly and inertia actually matters when a spaceship has to change direction or slow down. So there is a distinctly different flavor than the scifi that is out there in a lot of ways. Which isn’t all that terrible, but I wanted it to require a bit more thought. With space travel beginning to advance (rapidly) again in the real world, I wanted to tie that into fiction.

It will be available April 23, on all major ereaders and in paperback shortly thereafter. There will be samples up for free at 3024AD that you can download (you can currently read my drafts, if you want to be all hipster about it). I hope you’ll check it out!

Everybody Loves Links!

If you’re curious what the self-publishing process is like, SC Harrison has a pretty excellent summary.

If anyone wants to buy me this, I’d be pretty OK with that.

Did you know there is OTHER stuff on Kickstarter? There totally is! Long Hidden is a historical fiction anthology that is fully funded, so you can basically grab a copy.

Random thought: How cool would a comic anthology be? Has anyone done that? Rather than around a character or story, it has a theme. Someone should do that.
Mechalarum, by Emma Larsen looks to be a solid scfi novel, and I always endorse a strong heroine. You can even read the first chapter (there is also a really good breakdown of her costs near the bottom, if you’re into that sort of thing). If you’re a Kickstarter geek, her blog is also excellent.

Are you sick of hearing about Fireside yet? Because they just opened submissions for Flash Fisction (<1,000 words). So if you have something, go forth and submit.

Some small presses to check out:

Candlemark & Gleam

Apex Publications

Small Beer Press

Thursday Morning Superhero

Big news made in the world of comics at South By Southwest this week.   Marvel announced that its Marvel Unlimited service would be available on iOS and it also shut down ComiXology when 700 first issues were made available for free download.  The nerds were none too pleased with the outage.  In addition, this week gave us the second chapter in the Age of Ultron, a new arc in Batman, and Rick's plan is taking shape in Walking Dead.

Pick of the Week:
Walking Dead #108 - The details of Rick's plan are starting to come together.  With the help of Jesus, Rick is introduced to King Ezekiel, Tiger wielding ruler of the Kingdom, and plans on joining forces for an all out attack on Negan and the saviors.  The big question on the horizon is going to be who can you trust?  As more people are included in the plan the greater the likelihood that one of them may be a Negan supporter.

What makes this issue shine is the juxtaposition that Kirkman uses with extreme effectiveness.  From Negan's ping pong prowess to armored knights leading Rick into the elementary school that is the castle of the Kingdom, Kirkman manages to maintain an air of freshness and surprise after 108 issues.  Well done sir.

The Rest:

Age of Ultron #2 - For the second consecutive time, Age of Ultron was edged out as pick of the week in this post apocalyptic tale with a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

Batman #18 - A solid start for a new Batman arc that should be enjoyable under the mindful pen of Scott Snyder.

Aliens vs. Parker #1 - I think I will stick with Futurama for stories featuring a space delivery boy who finds himself in sticky situations.

WE RANK 'EM: Aliens and Predator Movies

Science fiction, action and horror are hard to disentangle in the cinematic world. This is often a bad thing, and limits cinematic "sci-fi" to a more limited range of stories and themes when compared to its print cousin. Every once in a while, though, a series gets the formula right. The linked Alien and Predator series have, on occasion, done just that. But only occasionally. So without further ado, I rank all 10 films in the dual-series for your reading pleasure...

10. AVP: Requiem

Bad acting, bad script, bad direction? This one has them all in spades. What it doesn't have is a sense of humor about itself, intentional or not. The worst kind of bad film--the boring one. AVP: Requiem, arguably, is the Storage Wars of action movies.

9. Predators

I had high hopes for Predators, which promised a return to the jungle setting of the original. Only this one is stupid. Okay, fine, so the original was stupid too. But it was a colorful riot of stupid! An ironic masterpiece! Predators, by contrast, is the Keeping up with the Kardashians of action movies.









8. Predator 2

Whereas the original Predator pit the alien hunter against a crack and ethnically diverse band of spec-ops soldiers in the Central American jungle, this one has decided to specifically go after Jamaican drug dealers in Los Angeles. The film never tells us why it targets Jamaicans in particular, but I can only assume we've got a racist predator on our hands. You might say this is the Dog the Bounty Hunter of action movies.

7. Alien Resurrection

If you paired a celebrated, absurdist French director to a beloved Anglo-American sci-fi franchise, what do you think would be the result? How about if I told you nerd-icon Joss Whedon wrote the script? Awesome, right? Or possibly even, super-awesome? WRONG! The correct answer is: utterly forgettable. Like the Bosom Buddies of action movies.








6. Alien3

You'd think a David Fincher directed installment that has Ripley running around a space prison would be atmospheric and scary, but you'd be wrong. As it happens, the studio undermined Fincher at every turn, and he's since disavowed the film, so we'll never know if Alien3 could have reached the "heights" scaled by faux-deep flick Fight Club. Instead, we get a boring film that pees on its predecessors by killing off Bishop, Newt and Hicks ...with little to show for it. You might call this the Baywatch Nights of action movies.

5. Prometheus


Woah...check out the 3D effects, man! That shit is so coool! And yeah, it kinda sorta is. Prometheus gets points for being so damned gorgeous, but uses those up quickly on account of its horrible script and the cringe-inducing moments when director Ridley Scott decides to tell us, in the most ham-fisted way possible, that this story is a parable of Christianity. You could buy this to show off your 3D TV, but you'd ultimately regret spending $30 to do so. Basically the Revolution of action movies.

4. Aliens vs. Predator

Okay, now we're talking! Sure, AVP isn't "good"--the acting is horrible, the plot absurd and its script appears to have been written by Poochie the Dog. But that just makes it the charmer it is, and a true masterpiece of unintentional comedy--the kind of film that's practically begging for the MST3K treatment. Still torn about the best scene: the one where the hero and predator go sledding or the one where they share a tender, loving moment? The Cop Rock of action movies.

3. Aliens

If you dig the Alien series, you're likely familiar with the people who claim James Cameron's action-tastic sequel is better than the original. Those people are, of course, deluded, but they are right about one thing--this is a kickass film. Sure it lacks the atmosphere and tension of the original, but it has big action and a great cast. Lance Henriksen steals the show as the android Bishop while Ripley cements her status as history's #1 ass-kicking action film goddess. Without any doubt, The Game of Thrones of action movies.

2. Predator

Controversy! Predator isn't a better film than Aliens, but if you take camp-value into account, it kinda sorta is. See, Predator is that rare film where you can simultaneously suspend disbelief and laugh at all the corny lines, hackneyed plot devices and, of course, that scene where Arnold Schwarzenegger covers himself in mud and gets in touch with his inner beast man. And no film arguably captures the Reagan-era zeitgeist quite like Predator, which both glorifies the warrior and condemns the suits who make him do bad things. Eminently quotable and patently ridiculous, Predator is the Seinfeld of action movies.





1. Alien

No color-era film exemplifies the sci-fi/horror approach quite like Alien. It's a deeply atmospheric, exquisitely-paced thriller marked by great writing and acting, slick directing, forward-thinking design and that rarest of cinematic beasts--subtelty. Hell, we don't even see the alien until the end of the film! Director Ridley Scott gets extra points for standing by the theatrical release and not insisting that this nearly perfect horror-sci-fi mashup would have benefitted from another 30 minutes of naval gazing. Clearly, this is The Wire of action movies.

Microreview [comics]: Los Tejanos and Lost Cause

The Meat

It's perhaps unfair to write a single review Fantagraphics' collection Los Tejanos & Lost Cause by the late Jack "Jaxon" Jackson, underground comix initiator and comic historian of Texas. The two works, though superficially similar, are subtly different in terms of storytelling and overall quality. It's perhaps unfair to write a single review for the two, but it's getting late, I'm tired, and I teach in the morning.

Jackson will probably always been most well-known for co-founding Rip Of Press in 1969 and for perhaps authoring the first underground comic, 1964's God Nose. But he deserves credit for his contribution to non-fiction and quasi-academic comics. Los Tejanos (1981) and Lost Cause (1998) stem from Jackson's lifelong study of Texas history, research that he published both as graphic novels and as scholarly books. This is not to say that his comic histories are not scholarly. Indeed, Los Tejanos and Lost Cause are the products of serious historical research, and as such they are clear exhibitions of comics' potential as a viable media for academic and journalistic work.

I am serious.

Now, to the review. Of the two works, I enjoyed Los Tejanos more than its companion. Though I found the historical content of Lost Cause fascinating, Jackson's treatment of Juan Seguin -- Tejano and militant for Texas's independence from Mexico -- is far more focused and coherent. Lost Cause tends to meander, lingering on the events of a Taylor clan get-together for a dozen pages, then jumping from event to event haphazardly, leaving the reader a bit confused as to how occurrences relate to one another and to the story's broader historical narrative. Los Tejanos  is a much clearer and measured work -- and therefore much more enjoyable of a read.

If there is a drawback to Los Tejanos, it is Jackson's unwillingness to explore the psychology of Juan Seguin, a man of militant conviction forced by circumstances to switch allegiance from his beloved Texas to his former enemy, Mexico. Jackson's failure to engage fully with Seguin's contradictory motivations and personal struggles may be simply a product of the author's seriousness as a historian: Seguin, after all, left no journal or other documentation that could provide insight into his private turmoil and troubles. But, as an artist and a scholar Jackson was well within his rights to speculate and informed enough to do so. Drama would have lightened the story somewhat, offsetting the often overwhelming historical detail Jackson presents.

(Keeping track of names was difficult in both stories. Perhaps comic creators wanting to explore complex nonfiction subject matters may want to consider using some kind of graphic index. Readers forget many important things. Throw us a bone.)

Now, I am obliged to address the following. I don’t want to be accusatory, but some of Johnson’s characterizations of African-Americans made me uncomfortable. Jackson attempts to disarm his critics by appealing to historical accuracy. His job as a historian is to provide insight into the social world of those he studies, to familiarize these figures so that we can empathize with and ultimately understand why they acted the way they did.

There is something to this. This is why uproar surrounding Django Unchained’s use of…let’s call it “colorful” terminology fell flat. Most of us understand that historical fiction entails a certain degree of suspended offense. Texas in the 1860’s was not a tolerant place -- though, as Jackson shows is Los Tejanos, it didn't have to be this way. The heroes of Lost Cause are people whose morality is alien to ours -- and not only in terms of their views of other races.

But a measure of sensitivity is nevertheless required of an artist and a historian when depicting stigmatized racial groups in an evenhanded manner. There are many panels and a few gags in Lost Cause that I found questionable. I imagine many of you would as well.

I’m not going to get any further into this.

I appreciate that Johnson sticks with the perspective of the “losers” -- Juan Seguin's struggles against racism following Texas’ rebellion and Texan Confederates' struggle to regain a sense of honor following the defeat of their cause. Los Tejanos and Lost Cause demonstrate -- as did much of Jack Jackson's work -- that scholarly concerns and serious research are not beyond the reach of comic books. And for that alone, I am obliged to recommend this collection.

The Math

Objective Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 for serious comic book scholarship

Penalties: -1 for potential cultural insensitivity; -1 for doing so after the release of Birth of a Nation

Nerd coefficient: 7/10

Microreview [film]: The Sid Saga

The Meat

Sid Laverents was the American 20th Century.

Usually, this space concerns itself with cult films of the horror and/or sci-fi persuasion, but for The Sid Saga, we make a bit of an exception. I feel like Sid himself was an exception, yet his experience of 100 years on the piece of ground between Canada and Mexico in a very real (and surprisingly thorough) way sums up the "American" narrative. See, in 1985, a Southern California septuagenarian named Sid decided to turn his scrapbook into a documentary film. Within that scrapbook, he had chronicled his early years as the son of a poor, immigrant real estate speculator traveling around the Western United States, to his teenage years where he migrated to New York and became a vaudevillian and novelty performer as a one-man, 14-piece jazz band. Sid then got married and supported his small family as a sign painter and itinerant musician, before settling down in Florida. For a bit. Then his marriage went south, he transitioned into another one, and moved to California on the eve of World War II. Hearing that guys with defense jobs were less likely to get drafted and deployed, he landed just such a job in the aerospace sector, but got shipped out overseas anyway, spending the war in India. He came back to see another marriage dissolve, and transitioned into another one. Then, in his fifties and after two careers, he got laid off after 20 years building Cold War military gadgetry, and took up filmmaking. He sold a number of educational films he created, and he started racking up awards. That's where he stood between 1985-1989, when he created the first three parts of The Sid Saga by combining still photography, film, and animation. He returned to the project several years later, making a coda on video that chronicled the death of his third wife, his continued experiences as a filmmaker, and his courting of a new wife.

These are cynical times. Nobody seems to remember what America was supposed to be in the first place -- the only thing anyone can seem to agree on politically is that we're all headed in the wrong direction, but they can't agree on the whys and wherefores. I submit that Sid was what America was supposed to be. The child of immigrants, starting with nothing, Sid created and recreated himself over the course of a long life, thanks to his own hard work, ingenuity, and spirit. His story touches on the urbanization of America, World War II, the Cold War, the rise of suburbia, and how those manicured vistas and carefully cultivated fronts often contained families dissolving from within.

Sid's is a fascinating story, well told, and worth seeking out if you have the chance.

The Math

Objective Quality: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for the amazing story wrapped up in what at first appears to be a home-movie package; +1 for general inventiveness and ingenuity in amateur filmmaking; +1 for Sid inventing double-bass drumming 30 years before its time; +1 for Sid's film Multiple Sidosis which often screens with The Sid Saga (see below)

Penalties: -1 for being seemingly impossible to find

Cult Movie Coefficient: 9/10. Very high quality/standout in its category.

[See explanation of our non-inflated scores here.]

Crysis 3

time to save mankind...again

Well, the final chapter in the much lauded Crysis saga is out, and it's chock full of new goodies. Sadly, I never played the first Crysis because I didn't have access to Big Blue or any of the world's other supercomputers at the time it was released. The game was PC only when the first one came out and it was notorious for requiring very powerful CPUs to run smoothly. If you didn't have a top-of-the-line machine, too bad. It was a poor choice, in my opinion, because they effectively limited the number of people whose machines could handle the game, thereby limiting overall unit purchases. Impressive graphics are one thing, but to program your way out of sales is just silly. That said, the second and third Cryses (What's the plural of Crysis?) came out on both PS3 and Xbox 360 so a much wider audience was able to enjoy this unique first person shooter. 

i really want a nanosuit!

There are several new additions to both the nanosuit and your weapon options. It still offers the capability to operate in both stealth and armored modes, thereby deciding what type of gaming experience you will have. They also added the ability to hack certain enemies in order to get them to fight on your side, destroying both Ceph and CELL enemies. It took me a while to figure out that hacking can be performed from a distance, which led to a few untimely deaths, but once I'd mastered the technique it became clear what an invaluable tool hacking could be. 

As you can see from the picture above, they've added a bow and arrow to the vast array of both human and alien artillery. Unlike previous weapons, you can fire this multiple times while in stealth mode without having to allow your suit to restore its energy. In Crysis 2, one shot from most weapons meant you became visible and all enemies immediately began to blow you away. With the bow, playing the game in stealth mode was much more effective and, therefore, enjoyable. The arrows came in four different types: a plain impact arrow, an explosive-tipped arrow, an electrocuting arrow, and finally an arrow that exploded when in close proximity to enemies with the capability of taking out more than one bad guy at a time. However, they were careful to limit your ammo with the arrows just as they did with rifles, making them extremely valuable. I let go with more than one word I wouldn't want my mom to hear when I missed an enemy with one of these precious pieces of weaponry. I can't overemphasize the effect the addition of the bow had on gameplay. It really added an entirely new way to go about the game, which is rare in today's plethora of first-person shooters. 

the crysis universe

As with Crysis 2, I was often confused to exactly what was going on with the plot. While the gameplay is as addictive as any game out there (I played Crysis 2 three times), the story is a bit lacking in continuity and clarity. With gameplay this addictive, it's easy to overlook some of the plot holes, but they're there and they're glaring. -SPOILER WARNING- While I won't divulge all the details or the ending, if you're a die hard Crysis fan and don't want to know anything about the plot before you play it, you might want to skip to the next heading. 

24 years have passed since the events of Crysis 2. CELL (a government/corporate superpower) have held you hostage until now. They have learned to use alien Ceph technology to provide unlimited free power to the planet. Unfortunately, they didn't realize this would help bring about the end of all life on the planet so that it could be colonized by the Ceph. Once released from CELL custody, you join a group of resistance fighters to try to stop the impending doom from alien invaders. They reunite you with one of the former members of your unit, I'm assuming from Crysis 1, and off you go to stop the Ceph. The writers do a pretty good job of creating some emotional connection to your partner "Psycho" as well as his ex-girlfriend and leader of the resistance, Claire, a component that was sorely lacking in the previous game. 

As the game progresses, you learn that the fighting that took place in Crysis 2 was just the second phase in the Ceph's plan for total colonization of Earth. If the second phase is ineffective, as it was, they move on to phase 3. It consists of opening a wormhole to the Ceph home planet and bringing the "Alpha Ceph" to Earth to finish what the smaller units were unable to complete. I don't want to go into too much detail and ruin the game for you, but let's just say there's only one thing on planet Earth that can stop their plan...you!

where this game really shines

As previously stated, this game isn't tons of fun due to the story line. It's a blast because of the gameplay. Playing as a literal supersoldier of the future is an experience many games attempt to create, but none have succeeded on the level of Crysis. You have the ability to engage your nanosuit's armor and charge into a fight with all guns blazing. You also have the option of cloaking and stealthily picking off unsuspecting enemies one at a time. If you're a fan of the Tom Clancy games like Ghost Recon, you should definitely give this one a try. It takes stealth gaming and blows it up to previously unreachable heights using technological advantages that no other title can provide. 

This game boasts many more enemies than Crysis 2, raising the level of difficulty significantly. As you progress through the game, enemies become more numerous and deadly leading up to the final levels that require multiple attempts to clear. I believe I died more in the last two levels than the other six combined. If you missed out on Crysis 2, don't worry. The story plays second fiddle to the action, which is some of the best I've ever experienced. The graphics are second to none. The gameplay mechanics are plentiful and perfect. In short, if you're a gamer who plays for the story, you might want to skip Crysis 3. If you're just in it for the action, don't miss out on this gorgeous piece of explosive excitement. 

the math

Objective Score: 8/10 (I'd give it an 8.5, but we don't do decimals at NoaF)

Bonuses: +1 for the spectacular array of weapons and gameplay options.

Penalties: -1 for the often confusing plot.

Nerd Coeffecient: 8/10 Well worth your time and attention.