#93 E3 - 2003

The huge, 3-day E3 video game expo is always interesting. This year, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of innovative thinking. You could easily break down many of the new games at E3 into two categories; games where you run around and shoot people and games where you sneak around and shoot people. Despite my growing distain for these games, I couldn't help but feel a certain excitement around the three big guns. Doom III was not playable, but looked great. Halo 2 was shown in a live demonstration, which also looked spectacular. I wasn't able to see Half Life 2 first hand, because the line took a reported four hours. Check out Robotstreetgang for my rundown of interesting E3 games.

#92 Cremaster 3

The final film in Matthew Barney's five-part Cremaster Cycle is a beautiful and obtuse meditation on ritual and punishment. The construction of the Chrysler Building figures prominently in the film. The beautiful skyscraper juts into the sky like an enormous maypole while in the lobby five 1967 Chrysler Crown Imperials crush a classic Chrysler Imperial New Yorker. Barney stars as the Entered Apprentice, who climbs the building's elevator shaft and fills one of the cars with cement, creating a perfect ashlar - a Masonic symbol of righteousness. The film is rife with strange symbolism, jarring and beautiful music and an eerie wordlessness. Because of it's disjointed features the challenging cinema of Mathew Barney could easily be dismissed as off-the-wall, big-screen onanism. I for one, love a good cinematic wank every once in a while.

#91 A Tale In The Desert

MMORPGs are Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, which until recently, meant going online and playing the video game equivalent of Dungeons and Dragons with a thousand or so other nerds. The Sims Online changed all that, removing all the combat and spells, but the result game is pretty much a chat room with pictures. A Tale In The Desert is part game, part social experiment. The setting is Egypt and everyone playing is trying to help build the civilization. Player co-operation is a must and, unlike most games where players lurk just to give you grief, almost all of this game's population are incredibly cool. In addition, the game is independently published and has been created with a great deal of open source software. Lastly, the game is a free download with a $13.95 a month fee - no $50 package to cough up for before signing up. If you're a fan of resource building games and would like to play one with a bunch of really swell online folks I can't recommend A Tale In The Desert enough.