Over the Edge + January 13, 2010 UNBC Alumni Bryndis Ogmundsdottir brought huge bragging rights to Prince George during the past decade when her record store “Meow Rec- ords” won the CBC’s contest for best independ- ent record store in Canada! Way to keep the DIY movement strong Bryndis! Indigo Prophecy: The Game Formerly Known as Fahrenheit HAAKON SULLIVAN PRODUCTION COORDINATOR Playing Indigo Proph- ecy isa weird experience, It is a very exciting, very interesting piece of en- tertainment that puts you in the middle of a murder investigation, but it is difficult to even call this an adventure game. The story starts off in a mens wash- room in a small diner in New York. A man is standing at the sink washing his hands when he suddenly gets attacked from behind and brutally murdered by a man named Lucas. After stabbing the man re- peatedly in a frenzy, Lucas sud- denly snaps out of it and begins to panic at the scene as he has no recollection of the last few min- utes spent at the diner. Who is this guy? Is he simply just crazy or is there something more sin- ister going on? What should he do now? From here on, the game steams ahead nonstop - although there are a couple of slow spots - and finding the answers to these questions is what keeps the player glued to the seat. As the story progresses, it is simply amazing how much ~* influence the player has over it, After the murder scene you take control of Lucas and have to make some tough decisions. Should he hide the evidence? If so, how? How should he escape the diner? Like many times later on in the game, how you answer these questions will influence how the story progresses and it gets even more interesting when you play as the police officers investigating the murder scene and dealing with the choices that were made. Without giving away too much more, the story is simply amazing. The charac- ters are deep, the choices are not easy to make, and the suspense is always grip- ping. Near the end, however, the story does take a nose dive in quality when it becomes obvious that the designers began to rush to get to the ending, Story is not everything though. The game mechanics are more lame than watching paint dry, At some scenes all you have to do is smash a button repeat- PHOTO SUBMITTED BY ANDREW BAILEY ANDREW BAILEY EDITOR IN CHIEF If you're a Canadian who listens to Andrew W.K. then you know who The Dudes are. Maybe you like them, maybe you don't, but you undoubtedly are aware that they exist. Granted they hail from Calgary, one of Canada’s most un- popular cities, however when it comes to music CanCon is CanCon and CanCon is good. If you don't know who The Dudes are then you are not a fan of Andrew W.K. in which case we can't be friends, The only excep- tion to this rule is Andrew W.K. himself who is obviously a busy man so I'll forgive him for not knowing the name of every Canadian band who sings about the same subject matter, parties, and loose women that he does, Dan Vacon is The Dudes’ frontman. He is therefore a big shot in Canadian Rock and Roll. Vacon has, like fellow Canadian Rock and Roll bigshot and hurtin Albertan Corb Lund, created a solo project that produces music that is completely different from his famous band’s work. At least, that's what he tried to do with Weapons Grade Romantic the first album under his new project: The Dojo Work- horse. What he has in fact done, is regurgitate the party lyrics of The Dudes and masked them behind soothing vocals and dirty soulful tunes that sound drenched in straight Tanqueray which the musi- cians fail to add pineapple juice to. Vacon's goal with this album, I think, was to create a sound that could be enjoyed both by a sport-loving, party-going, skirt-chasing man as well as his more sensitive Oprah-watching, puppy-petting, Slice-vicing mate. Imagine this scenario: the delightful Claire Denis film Chocolat meets Richard Donner’s awe inspiring timeless clas- sic Lethal Weapon 3 at a party. Long story short: condom breaks and voila, immediately at the point of conception, Weapons Grade Romantic comes to life. That's the kind of scenario, I believe, Vacon was imagining in his mind while he created this album. A monumental task, to be sure, edly or press your analog stick in a cer- tain direction. Sometimes you have to be stealthy to avoid guards, but that’s about it. It's as complicated as playing that “Bop It” game when you were a kid, They even make you do this “Simon Says” kind of game for long periods of time which makes the game go from fun to gruel- ling. If you're looking for fun or engaging game mechanics, don't look here. When it comes to how the game pres- ents itself, it's a mixed feeling. The music fits the game perfectly as it always seems to reflect the situation at hand. The same could be said for the voice acting. Every one of these voice actors did a superb job in representing their character. The graphics are not that great though. The character models are bland and the environ- ments lack detail even for a game made in 2005. Once you finish this game, you can always pick the game up again and have a different A experience thanks to how eas- Vy, Ts ily you can shape the story. Be Overall, Indigo Prophecy is a terrible game but a great inter- active movie, If you want to ex- perience a great story and delve deep into a murder mystery this interactive movie is for you. If youre looking for a game with challenging mechanics or clever puzzles, then you will want to ’ RK avoid this game at all costs, ‘ Story 18/20 Gameplay 7/40 Presentation 14/20 Replay Value 17/20 Overall 56/100 Arts and Culture 5 From The Dudes to The Dojo, One Artist’s Freefall to Obscurity and Vacon should be commended for the notably ample cahones it would have taken to embark on such a seemingly impossible excur- sion. He fails, but not to the extent that you might think. The album, while not quite good enough to deplete the beer fund to buy, defin- itely provides some downloadable tunes. Though trying to fit these tunes onto any type of playlist would be as useless as resisting the Vogon. The albums 7" track, “Laval Street” is unique in that it is a duet in which the male part is sang in English while the female part is performed by Vanessa Lefebvre in French. She has an incredibly al- luring voice, but sadly her presumptively powerful message is lost on me, as I don't speak French. “Ohio,” the 5" song on the album, pro- vides lyrics so uniquely personal that the song’s message becomes too unobtainable for anyone not involved in Vacon’s love life, or one just like it, to fully appreciate. Flat out skip the third song on the album, “T Got Life’; the vocals don’t connect with the music, which makes for a frustrating sense of head confusion, It’s terrible. “Misbehave’ is easily my favourite song on the album. I like it be- cause it is catchy and is about doing it. The latter of that description can be said about every song on Weapons Grade Romantic, the former not so much, The lyrics may be repetitive but this is understandable considering every song covers the same subject matter. In fact, Vacon is so dedicated to educating his listeners about how lonesome he is, and how much doing it he does (which seems oxymoronic, or maybe just moronic) that he refuses to sing about anything else. This causes such an intimate relationship between Vacon and his listeners that by the end of the album we are truly rooting for him to get over his lost love and get on with his life, not because we empathize with him, but because we really want him to shut up about it. Of course this same criticism of repetitiveness could be said about very successful albums, but there is most definitely a reason that An- drew W.K. has never released an unplugged, acoustic, version of “I Get Wet.’ Listening to songs about partying that are too slow and dreary to listen to while partying is like casually watching a Crystal Ray film with your pants on. Fin. Freestyle Free Thinking Set your own schedule with online courses Finding it hard to fit schoolwork into your busy lifestyle? 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