I’ve had a long-standing love/hate relationship with that genre of gaming known as the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG). On the one hand I love the idea of taking the classic pastime of Pen and Paper RPGs and translating them into a video game that can be enjoyed by hundreds or thousands of players all over the world at the same time. On the other hand I’ve found that just about every MMORPG becomes dreadfully boring after a few months of play.

I was there when Ultima Online was released and I’ve played almost every MMORPG that’s been released since either as a beta-tester or after buying the game when it was released. This includes some of the big names like Evequest, Dark Age of Camelot, Ashron’s Call (1 and 2), and City of Heroes. Each one has managed to improve on what came before it, but most of them still managed to fall down in the same areas and I ended up abandoning the game well before ever hitting the maximum level possible. With EQ I never got a character past level 20 even after returning to the game several times when new expansions were released. With Dark Age of Camelot I got one character up to level 36 before giving up. The games just failed to hold my interest.

So it’s no small statement to say that World of Warcraft has managed to fix a lot of the problems that I have with MMORPGs and the proof of this is in the fact that my primary character, a Dwarf Hunter named Balfour, is currently level 55 – a mere five levels from the game’s cap of 60. Not only am I definitely going to make it to the maximum level possible, but I’ll probably do it again with another character or two as I already have a Night Elf Druid named Sanctus at level 20. 

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If Chins Could Kill is the autobiography of one of my favorite actors, Bruce Campbell, who’s one of those actors who never seem to rise above having a cult following. Mention his name to most folks and you’re likely to get a perplexed look followed by, “Bruce who?”

“Campbell, dammit! Bruce Friggin’ Campbell! You know, Ash? From the Evil Dead movies? How about his stint as Brisco County Jr.? OK, how about Autolycus from Xena: Warrior Princess?? No?? WTF, dude??

That’s OK. Just means that those of us who do know of him and count ourselves as fans can enjoy him all to ourselves, you philistines!”

Anyway, this book, as I said, is his autobiography and it chronicles his rise to, well, cult-stardom from his humble beginnings right here in Michigan all the way up through his time touring around promoting If Chins Could Kill. How is that possible you ask? This is a second printing of the book and he added a bit on the end about the tour.

If you’re a fan, and especially if you’re only a casual fan, then you’ll want to pick up this book. Watching interviews with Bruce in the past I’ve always been struck with how he comes across as your pretty regular Joe who enjoys the fact that he’s never had to go out and get a “real” job, so to speak, and that same tone comes across in his autobiography. Bruce is the definition of the “working actor” in that he’s not so much interested in becoming a big box office name (much to the frustration of his agent) as much as making some pretty cool movies and TV shows. In addition to acting he’s taken turns as producer, director, and whatever-the-hell-needs-to-be-done guy.

As it turns out, this book will be worthwhile to fans of Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi, Rob Tapert, the Cohen Brothers, and any of a number of other people that Bruce made the trek out to Hollywood with because it’s really the story about how all of them got their careers underway. Bruce, Sam, Ted, and Rob have worked as a team on all manner of projects ever since the first Evil Dead film with Sam turning into a director with considerable clout after helming two record breaking film adaptations of Spider-Man. By and large they still work as a team even now that Sam’s a big shot director and there’s hardly a Sam Raimi film made that Bruce hasn’t done at least a cameo in. Ted Raimi also shows up in just about every project any of them have worked on. As a whole they brought a little bit of Michigan to Hollywood and they have a very Midwestern way of getting things done. Definitely a worthwhile read.

To say that I was looking forward to the release of Half-Life 2 is a major understatement. The original Half-Life was the FPS that finally made me a fan of this type of game. I had played the DOOMs and Quakes and Duke Nukems that had come previously, but none of them sank their claws into me the way that Half-Life did when it was released. Everything else up to that point had been pretty light on story beyond what was mentioned in the manual and the game play consisted largely of if-it-moves-then-shoot-it until you find the switch or key card that unlocks the next level. Half-Life, however, felt like you were right smack dab in the middle of a movie. Sure there were plenty of enemies that mindlessly came right at you like in the previous games, but that’s what made the marines you encounter about halfway through the game such a big surprise. Likewise the multiplayer aspect of the game was also the first I really liked mainly because of the option of playing team deathmatch and then later the mods such as Team Fortress Classic and Counter-Strike.

The sequel had big shoes to fill; especially after taking 6 years to come along. Valve didn’t even announce it until they felt they were within a year of releasing it and the hype that flew up around it seemed like it would be impossible to live up to. Then the source code theft happened and the game was delayed another year while games such as DOOM 3, Unreal 2004, and Far Cry hit the shelves and left gamers wondering if perhaps HL2 might end up not being quite so spectacular once it finally saw the light of day. I’m happy to report that those doubts were unfounded as Half-Life 2 was everything they had promised and more.

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