May 2005 Archives

I briefly hung out with Mike this weekend. Played some Doomtown, played some Fatal Frame, played some Resident Evil 4 (unlocked 2 new characters in Mercenaries mode!), a little bit of Mario Tennis, WarioWare, a game of Gloom. During all of that, Mike managed to build, like, two new Doomtown decks.

I have a deckbuilding problem... my desire to play the game is directly at odds with my compulsion to keep the cards all nicely organized in boxes. It's all very OCD. With Doomtown, especially - having five digits worth of cards - it is a logistical nightmare. Because I have so many extra common cards, I pulled those out early on. I kept up to five of each card in the main 3000 count box (which grew to two) and put any amount over five in the extra 5000 count box (which also grew to two.) Sounds reasonable. I mean, there are some commons of which I have almost a hundred copies.

But the trouble quickly manifested: now I have four massive boxes to sort through to build decks, if I want to keep the sacred split going. And then there's putting cards back if they come out of a deck. The end result was that I fell off the deckbuilding train, lost under the neatfreakiness of it all.

Scott once made the offhand comment that I was more of a collector of cards than he was... his intended point being more about his own card-buying habits than mine. At first I felt minorly impugned - "I'm a gamer!" and all that - but he was right.

Mike's solution to card storage is the standard baseball card binder. For Doomtown, he has them all separated by suit/value and thus can quickly leaf through the pages when he needs a 2 of diamonds or 6 of spades, or more likely, additional 8s of clubs. I did the binder thing with OverPower and Magic, and I was never comfortable with it... although I liked the visual display value (and in the end, that's all OverPower was good for) the stupid sleeves would tear, and if you jammed more than 4 cards in a pocket, it would lose its snap and never hold less than 4 cards again. I crave a solution halfway between the easy access of a binder and the satisfying simplicity of a box. I've often looked at those multi-compartment nail-and-nut storage units with the little doors and gone all wistful.

So, to restate, I built a Green Lantern deck. I only have about a thousand and a half Marvel/DC Vs. cards, which is well under the stress threshold for organization that I've hit with Doomtown, Pokemon, 7th Sea, etc. 50 card deck: 27 characters, 5 equipment, 13 twists, 5 locations. I have no idea if that's a good ratio or not, but it's about what I run in the other Vs. decks I've built. What I like about the Lanterns is that every damn one has Flight and Range! I used entirely cards from the Green Lantern Corps set, because I wanted to play with the light construct cards and the willpower stat.

Willpower is this expansion's new big trick, but it's an easy one, unlike that obnoxious concealed/hidden zone introduced in the Marvel Knights set. The problem with Vs. is that they don't do starters for each new expansion, so when cards start showing up with all new abilities and never-before-seen keywords, you're on your own, laddie. Their website absolutely blows; Upper Deck hasn't updated either the Marvel or DC half since the launch set for each. If you want to find new rulings, you have to dig into their stark legal database where they keep the official wording for tournament use. What should be happening is both sites should have a list of all the expansions, buoyed by the usual marketing speak, but also delineating the new damn rules. What's cosmic or evasion do? What is a construct? How does the hidden zone change your attack phase? To find that out, you have to find the fansites on your own. Absurd. UDE has managed to push gamers away from their own website.

Another issue I have with Vs. is that each set introduces four new factions. For instance, the GL set contains the Manhunters, Anti-Matter, Emerald Enemies and the Lanterns themselves. If you want to make a GL deck, that's only 25% of the cardpool, meaning you'd have to buy a crapton of boosters to get the raw material to work with. And if you're an X-Men kind of guy, forget it, you're never buying this set ever. Since the game punishes you for mixing faction characters, it seems like each set further paces people out of the game. Magic has five colors. I, even having not bought a Magic pack in years, can still walk into my comic store and pick up a booster from the latest release... and will still see cards I could splash into my age-old collegiate decks. Those colors reach across the expansions, across the years. If I have a Gotham Knights deck that I'm working on, what possible reason would I have to buy from the GL set? To hunt down that one rare out of 200 cards that has the Gotham affiliation?

Thankfully, we have singles sites for that. Which is where I sent $50 of my money getting every Green Lantern card I wanted, rather than dollar after dollar lost chasing booster boxes and getting loser Anti-Matter dorko cards. The Crime Syndicate! No self-respecting comics fan likes those guys... they're a writer's crutch, a plot device, a holdover from the non-continuity '60s that should have stayed dead in the Crisis.

That whole team affiliation rule is something they're going to have to address, or else lap back around to the characters that people like again. If they keep putting out sets with b-grade factions like the Marvel Knights (Brother Voodoo?!), the Qwardians (a suckload of generic soldiers who are regularly mopped up by even the lamest of Lanterns), X-Statix (should have been a subset of the X-Men faction), and the Fearsome Five (a nothing team of nobody villains)... well, people are just going to walk away from it. Sure, you'll keep the hardcore who see the underlying game rather than the IP dross and are out there crafting new strategies for making a Revenge Squad deck... but no game can subsist for long on purely the hardcore.

Although I would forgive all their trespasses if they would do a Zoo Crew team.

Caught an evening showing of Revenge of the Sith Monday night. It occurs to me that "Revenge of the Sith" is the first Star Wars subtitle in five years that I haven't been embarassed to speak in public. Unfortunately, the damage is done and the tendency is to simply refer to the movie as "Episode Three" or even just simply "Star Wars" in polite conversation, in effort to avoid accidentally saying "The Phantom Menace" or whatever. Regardless, after watching the film, I have to wonder just who the Sith are revenging against... because they've been pretty much in charge and uncontested through Episodes 1, 2 and 3. The only thing they really have to fight for is screen time.

The first hour more or less sucked. For the exact reasons that I and II sucked. There's an ad running now quoting the New York Times as saying "better than the first Star Wars!" which just proves to me that newspapers are a dying media and will be the first ones with their backs against the wall when the revolution comes.

Again and again and again we have to watch Battle Droids acting like it's a Marx Brothers bit. Why would the Trade Federation build their mass-produced, barely-intelligent, cannon fodder droids with a fear response?!? Their function is to stand around and blast the piss out of whatever trooper or Jedi or CG monster is running towards them. Shoot until you get cut in half. Instead they tend to drop their weapons and run around with hands in the air, comically intoning "Uh oh" in that robot rumble that Lucas must find so entertaining.

Any scene with both Anakin and Padme in it is pure torture. ("Hold me!") This movie has quite a bit to raise awareness of the word "wooden." I'll even go one further and declare that any scene with Anakin talking in it is questionable. At no point in any of these movies do you have any reason to like Anakin. He's an insufferable little snot in Episode 1, an insufferable horny teen in Episode 2, and now an insufferable abusive husband completely out of touch with reality. Now, I personally think that it is fine to not like the guy; he becomes Darth Freaking Vader... but it's obvious from the get-go that Lucas wants you to like him, wants Anakin to be sympathetic. But it never works because, as a character, he's drawn so plain. He's never complex, he rarely struggles. By Episode 3, we're supposed to believe that his path to the Dark Side is the result of his youthful anger (at what? Being raised as a slave? Not having a father? Not seeing his mother for ten years? Not being allowed into the Jedi's No Anakins Club?) and the patently absurd notion that galactic society has no means to protect a woman in difficult childbirth. We're intended to swallow all that, that's what supposed to make you identify with Anakin. But since that doesn't work - and all the other characters in the movies circle around that flimsy premise - the whole thing turns shallow.

I counted about five seconds from the time Palpatine makes the offer until the time Anakin accepts it on bended knee. It's scenes like that that drive home the notion that nobody cares about the story here; we just want to see more impressive CG visuals.

Spoilers are about to start creeping in soon.

No reason to include Chewbacca. None at all. I'm fine with visiting the wookiee planet. Just seeing them would have been cool enough. But having Chewie specifically stand as one of the wookiee guards that hangs with Yoda when the major crap goes down is another stupid, pandering contrivance.

This one surprised me: they wipe Threepio's memory but not Artoo's. So Artoo goes through the next three movies knowing everything? And saying nothing? So he knows the Darth Vader built Threepio, that Vader is Luke's father, that Luke and Leia are twin siblings, where both kids went sent to be raised, where Obi-Wan goes in his exile, that for a brief time everybody hung out with a Gungan outcast who introduced the bill that kept Palpatine in office, and he has firsthand knowlege about the courtship and early days of Anakin and Padme (something both Luke and Leia would presumably be dying to hear, Luke especially since he got the poverty option in the deal.) And poor Threepio... Bail Organa doesn't even give a reason why they should wipe him. Just do it. There's not even a line like "wipe the protocol droid's memory, no one can know what happens here today."

I liked Grievous. Mainly because he's neat looking. (And I'm ashamed that I didn't pick up on why he spends most of the movie coughing... Josh from work had to remind me that Grievous gets manhandled by Mace Windu in the Clone Wars cartoon. The cartoon! It's canon, dammit! Even the bit with the donkey people!) Although I admit that you could probably excise Grievous's entire presence from the movie and not affect much of anything. To wit: he kidnaps Palpatine as the movie begins... but since the kidnapping is staged, anyone could have done that. Then he gets the rep as the new leader behind the droid army, but the difference between the Jedi hunting down the army's secret headquarters and the Jedi hunting down General Grievous in particular is negliable. So he's eye candy. Good eye candy, though. I wish he'd been in Episode II so his sudden appearance in III would have a more villainous weight. Makes watching the Clone Wars cartoon all the more important, because that movie shows a much more effective Grievous.

I think what impressed me the most was how the sets gradually turned into a look closer to Episode IV. At one point there's a scene change and you realize you're seeing the stark white hallways and candylike buttons we all remember from the classic trilogy. And seeing everybody in the gray Empire pantsuits was great, but all too brief. Young Grand Moff Tarkin! Easily one of my favorite characters from IV, happy to see him here, wish he had some lines.

One thing I've never been clear about, and Episode III did not elaborate: Are we supposed to assume that the Stormtroopers from IV, V and VI are still clones? Nobody mentions shutting down the clone operation, but by the Luke days they do gripe about the Empire conscripting new recruits from the planets they subjugate. And the way they refer to the "Clone Wars" always sort of suggested to me that clones were a thing of the past. But even if the Kamino operation is ended sometime in the 20 years between trilogies, there would have to be some veterans still serving in the Empire, right? Boba is still around, after all.

One of the sequences that really got me was the slaughter of the Jedi portion. Melancholy music, unexpected betrayals, the clones as sleeper agents... plus the pacing was so well done that you really wonder if Yoda is going to make it. I was surprised that we saw so little of Anakin's death parade through the Jedi Temple... the clone troopers do most of the Jedi extermination anyway. Much internet hay was made over Anakin killing the younglings, but the movie itself sidestepped that visual, thankfully.

Human-form Palpatine was great. When he's lecturing Anakin during the opera, the difference between a good actor and a bad actor is all but printed in bright red subtitles. He is slick, manipulative. Of course, his best line in the scene is the one played in all the previews, after Anakin asks how he can learn these new and dangerous powers: "Not from a Jedi." There's also a riff in there that might be implying that Palpatine had a hand in Anakin's lame-o virgin birth... but I think most of the audience has completely forgotten that midi-chlorian nonsense from Qui-Gon's Space Jesus speech in Episode I, so no one is going to connect those dots. And when Palpatine goes all final form on us, is his wrinkly, puffy face his true skin, or his ruined face after an extended lifetime of serving the Dark Side?

Also: if you intend to lure in impressionable young students who are powerful in the Force, try not to refer to your team as the "Dark Side." That's sort of a giveaway that you're evil. Had Palpatine spun that angle a little better, he could have gotten Anakin to turn in three seconds instead of five, I feel.

The assembly of Darth Vader had some great single shots, the stuff of fanfic dreams... but ends with a silly Frankenstein homage that is completely unecessary. Like anybody needs Lucas to remind us about a similar theme to Frankenstein. Please.

Oh, I'll see it again. But that's more out of slavish devotion to the source material. If you feel anything for these characters, it's because of what you brought into the theater yourself, not of anything these new movies have brought to you.

Private message to Natalie Portman: Your three film contract has been fulfilled. You made it! Whew!

Planet GameCube has a preview of Animal Crossing DS up, straight from E3. This being such a huge game for me, I thought I'd dupe their article and include my commentary.

In our interview yesterday with Takashi Tezuka and Katsuya Eguchi, we learned several new details and got some clarifications on features for Animal Crossing DS. One of the driving forces behind the development is to encourage communication between players. They feel that the DS's touch pen and wireless features really help to facilitate the next step in Animal Crossing's evolution. The touch screen simplifies the gameplay significantly, allowing you to access menus and type more naturally or even navigate the world by pointing the stylus in the direction you want your character to run or by tapping objects to interact with them.

Obvious benefit. Typing in AC was always a chore, and aside from a couple notes written largely to amuse myself, I bailed on it pretty quickly. There was only the barest suggestion that the AC townspeople could actually understand your letters to them anyway... and I think that was only based on a simple grammar checker. As for controlling your character with the stylus, that's fine. I would suspect we'll get both methods of control anyway, stylus and d-pad.

When asked about what specific character interactions we could expect, the developers didn't say much about what they had implemented into the game, focusing instead on how players can interact with each other as they would in real life to create their own games of tag or have fishing tournaments or negotiate with each other for items.

Now that's lame. If that's final, they just dumbed down AC multiplayer to trading and selling items. No one is going to self-organize fishing tournaments or a game of tag, come on. There really ought to be some sort of unique features and options that pop up when you meet other real-life players... items that can be activated to trigger mini-games. Like a jump rope to start a timing jump game, NES Balloon Fight to play a 2P match on the top screen, little sailboats to do a mic-blowing boat race. There needs to be some level of game-directed multiplayer. Playing tag. WTF. It's that kind of silly ephemeral junk that gets Nintendo in trouble with the mainstream.

Eguchi did confirm that the game will allow you to play cross-regionally with players across the globe. As opposed to the region-specific versions of Animal Crossing on GameCube, the DS game will be the same worldwide, with holidays specific to the Animal Crossing world. Basically, the way multiplayer works is that one player will act as host, and up to three others will be able to visit that person's town.

I read elsewhere that going wi-fi might bring up a list of towns you can visit, presumably placed on the network from players across the world and labelled as "accepting travellers" or something. This raises the question, will you really be able to open up your town to anybody? Or will there some kind of block so that only pre-approved people can see you online (like parental controls)? I don't know what to expect here... on one hand I'd love to interact with gamers in Japan and all over, but what's to stop some jerk from chopping down all my trees or painting obscenities on the town bulletin board?

In terms of local play, you can now build your house wherever you like in the town, whether you want a beach house or want your pad close to Tom Nook's shop. Four players can still play using the same card, but they all live in the same house. As your house expands, you can build separate rooms for each character and negotiate with each other to determine who gets which room.

This will require some thought: where do I put my house? Do I go for that seaside view, or keep it close to Nook's and the post office? And how big will it get... I don't want to place it so that future stories will block something awesome. I have a feeling this will require some soul searching.

Four players on one card is a nice favor. They could easily have said "one person per card!" and made you buy a second copy of the game if you have a wife or sibling who wants to play too. Sort of demonstrates how much storage space those DS cards hold, since it took an entire GameCube 59 memory card to one an AC saved game... the DS card has to keep the save file plus the game data.

When asked if Animal Crossing had any sleep mode features, similar to the bark mode in Nintendogs, Eguchi stated that they have not implemented anything yet, but are considering an option to allow someone to draw something in PictoChat and post it directly to the bulletin board in the other person's Animal Crossing town. They are also open to explore other ideas as development continues.

It's good to know that PictoChat isn't stuck on its own little LAN island... hopefully Nintendo left a back door in that will get PictoChat online as well. That said, I don't really understand what that example actually means, and it certainly has nothing to do with the Nintendogs sleep mode that started the question.

Many of the special NPCs such as Mr. Resetti and Tom Nook will return, in addition to some new characters. Likewise many of the popular items and furniture sets will make a return, with a number of new sets and new types of items such as the hats and face gear seen on the show floor. One set of items that will be left out of the DS version is the collection of NES games. This time, the developers have decided to focus on the Animal Crossing world, instead of including the classic NES titles or Game Boy titles as some people had hoped.

Or rather, Nintendo Revolution's new downloadable game library means that they don't want free NES games hidden inside Animal Crossing DS, which is a big mistake. The NES games were a major buzz topic that helped the original AC get attention. It sucks that we won't have that to look forward to.

AC DS better have a ton of new furniture and items. 5x as many as the first game would be nice. With wi-fi play, the random distribution of the rare stuff shouldn't be near as obnoxious, since I'm sure AC DS trading zones will pop up as soon as the game is released. In fact, if the tech allows it, I'll open up my city for regular entry and post about it here at fourhman.com. And hopefully we'll all have more to do together than trade sofas and play freakin' tag.

The last bit of info we gleaned from our time is that players can now set the Animal Crossing clock to match their play patterns. So if you usually play the game at night, but want to experience daytime events in your town, you can change the time settings in the game without having to change the main clock in the DS firmware.

Guh? You could do this before, and it was called cheating. No thanks.

What would be cooler - and still tricky - would be to travel to somebody else's town who lives in a different time zone if you missed an event. Depending on the holiday, you could literally have two full days to catch an event... just hop over to a friend's town in Tokyo.

Still, these details are bare and a lot can happen until the November release. Animal Crossing DS has been consistently referred to as the DS killer app, so it has a lot to live up to.

I've been watching G4's live E3 coverage this week. Predictably obnoxious and terribly stacked with commercial time. They waste an awful lot of time doing unfunny comedy skits and extra-long lame intros and outros. Adam Sessler really needs a talent coach, because his on-air presence has become amateurishly awful. He always had a problem with tilting his head back and making you stare up his nose, but now he's degraded into a complete spastic... talking so fast that he can't form a coherant sentence.

Been a lot of surprises this E3. Nintendo showed off some very early pics and stats on the Revolution (is that actually going to stick as the console's name?) Sony blew everybody away with completely unexpected PlayStation3 footage. And the one team that we knew had a lot to say and a ton of hype to grind, Xbox, ends up being evasive, unimpressive and outclassed. Haw!

I don't want to be a fanboy, but Microsoft just blows. They had two things going for them this generation: great graphics and Xbox Live. Now, after the PS3 stuff, all the graphics whores who have been all over Xbox for the last few years are going to bail out to Sony... so there goes that group. They're fickle anyway, unreliable. And as for Xbox Live... be honest, isn't that a service they should have provided for PC games instead? Instead of coming out and absolutely ruling PC gaming a few years ago, Microsoft figured they already had that market sewn up so they invented the Xbox as a new money stream. They've never been about the gamers, they've been about the monopoly. If anybody could have kicked PC gaming into line, standardized everybody, made PC games work without requiring painful installs, patches and specific hardware... it would have been Microsoft. But they chose instead to lateral the PC gaming tech into a living room console. Four years later, PC gaming is still a stagnant mess positioned around a handful of tentpole games a year, the Xbox division has yet to turn a profit, and the vaunted Xbox 360 just had all its thunder ground under Sony's heel.

And what's this nonsense about backwards compatibility? Sony says yes: PS3 will play PS2 and maybe even PS1. Nintendo says yes: Revolution will play GameCube, plus they're putting together a downloadable catalog of games across the entire history of Nintendo. Microsoft says yes: Xbox 360 will play Xbox games, then they say Xbox 360 will play some Xbox games, then they say Xbox 360 will play a select few Xbox games (IE, Halo and Halo 2) once they've been recompiled and, presumably, purchased again.

Now, I tend not to care about a new console being backwards compatible. The day I get my PS3 is the day I play my final PS2 game. Backwards compatibility is a bone to parents ("Great, my kids can play their old games on their new Christmas present") and to the cheap ("Great, I don't have to rush out and buy all new games"). But the whole conversation shows just how confused and rushed Microsoft is about Xbox. They will say whatever they have to to keep the hype front and center. Faked any screenshots lately? (And just like when they ran Xbox launch demos on PC guts instead of real Xboxes, this time the Xbox 360 demos are running off of Mac G5s! So I guess they've learned something in four years: don't demo your stuff on the machines that crash.)

This editorial is typical of the op-ed pieces I've seen coming out of E3 '05. The best bit is at the end, where the author points out the read-between-the-lines moment concerning Square Enix's attitude towards the 360 and the PS3. A few days ago, Microsoft was crowing about how Final Fantasy was coming to the Xbox 360 with a new version of FF11 (the online one)... meanwhile, Square shows off this incredible FF7 PS3 render showing. FF7 is an unabashed fan favorite - I've never played the game and even I can name the major characters - while FF11 (already all but gone and forgotten on PS2 and PC) was an uneven MMORPG, mostly well received but not really a Final Fantasy game. And the Xbox 360 FF11 won't even have upgraded graphics!

The common console launch cliches have already arisen. Whiny rumormongers are saying the PS3 could cost $450. No, it won't. Jaded anti-gamers are saying the current systems have already reached the maximum density for graphics immersion. No, they haven't.

One thing to watch out for, though: Sony has a reputation for exaggeration. Which is why I've ignored the power numbers they've quoted for the PS3. But that footage they ran of Killing Day? Oh my. Yeah, it's another crappy shooter... but the graphical depth was amazing. I don't care one bit for the gameplay there, but the potential of the machine was made very, very clear. Give me a Kingdom Hearts, a Fatal Frame, a Katamari Damacy, a Metal Gear Solid, a Ratchet & Clank, a GTA with that polish.

PS2 GAMES: Shadow of the Colossus looks cool, but we liked Ico so we're automatically going to like this one. Sly Cooper 3 will have special unlockable 3D levels - like, 3D glasses-type 3D - which I'll love to see. I'm glad to hear Konami is doing a re-release of MGS3, so now I definitely don't have to worry about not getting it; I'll just hold out for the 3.5 version. Deception returns, but now with the lousy name "Trapt." EyeToy: Chat might actually come out in the US this year. There's a very distinctive game called Okami, which looks like a calligraphy-based action game... almost DS-like.

The video for MGS4 (PS3) wasn't too special. Kojima sure loves to do goofy teaser videos. It was cute, but we've sort of seen the "funny" side of Solid Snake before, and it didn't show any enhanced graphics at all.

And Nintendo, cherished Nintendo. Nintendo always comes out of these things with some absurdity that no one expected. And, honestly, it's usually something you don't really want either because the pain of not hearing what you did want to so keen. Last year, it was the DS. This year, it's the Game Boy Micro, a completely normal GBA inside a 2"x4" case. That makes three GBAs on store racks, although I'm sure the original GBA is just sitting as leftover stock. Thing is, the GBA SP is so perfect that the Micro seems wholly unnecessary. It better have a cost to match its size... I'm thinking $40 would do? Otherwise, it's purely a vanity piece, like the similarly named iPod Mini. Still, the Micro has a backlit screen just like the SP, so anyone who has yet to upgrade to an SP is running out of excuses.

CUBE GAMES: Mario Baseball, Mario Soccer, Mario DDR, Mario Party 7. Baseball, eh. I would consider soccer just because video game soccer is sort of functionally equivalent to video game hockey. DDR, already have plenty of DDR on the PS2 side, so it would have to come out pretty cheap for me to want another dance pad (and then I'd probably need a second pad for 2P stuff anyway). Mario Party 7... I was really hoping they could go a year without throwing a Mario Party, mainly because they just don't pack a punch every year. It would have been nice if they hid the series until the Revolution launch, since presumably then we could get an online version.

Odama (Cube). Pinball Real Time Strategy. When this bizarre little number first showed up, it was mentioned that a second player could use the DK Bongos to provide a morale drumbeat for the troops. Now they're saying you use the GameCube Microphone to shout commands to your armies. I hope this doesn't mean the Bongos are out, because I would consider that a very thorough use of Nintendo peripherals if you get to activate both the mic and the drums. All they need to add is a secondary GBA screen hookup and maybe some eCards and they will have justified all of my purchases over the last four years. Getting it.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Cube). Link can turn into a wolf, and there happens to be a hawk or falcon in some scenes... so, people being crazy, everyone is trying to compare the new Zelda game to the craptacular move LadyHawke. This is the most press LadyHawke has received since 1985. It's probably been enough to warrant the movie getting its own Yahoo News Alert.

So, Xbox 360. I don't know. These guys haven't done much for me yet, and it doesn't look like much more will happen. I didn't see it, but all accounts I've read called the Xbox/MTV launch show a complete embarrassment, less to do with gamers and more to do with posers. And all the Xbox camp wants to do is shout about how big their numbers are... RAM, processor, storage. It's been a long time since I've been excited about a machine's clock speed or how much RAM it has or the number of pixel shader pipelines. It's just... so what? I hate looking at numbers and being expected to drool. Show me the games.

Wireless controllers is a must, so good on them for that. Another point proven by the WaveBird. HD is fine, although most people don't have an HD set anyway. And right away, Nintendo issued a few choice press releases, all gently pointing out that they'll have all of that as well. Sony has already announced their next machine will be "twice as fast" as the Xbox 360. So the pissing match begins, and of course everybody has to choose sides.

More Xbox owners ought to be annoyed that Microsoft is pushing their hardware sequel out the door so soon. It's only been four years since that fall of '01 when both the Xbox and the GameCube debuted. But that's a software company for you. When in doubt, force your base to buy everything all over again.

I think it's a mistake for them to be the first team out of the gate, because now both Sony and Nintendo will be able to do it better. I imagine Microsoft's announcement of a fall '05 release made them very happy... one whole player was removed from the table. In the current round, Sony has had to endure the attacks of looking crappy because the other two had hardware that was a year newer. Now Xbox will be the low-rent version on the block: the oldest hardware, the first one to bundle pack, the first one to turn into old news when the new ones hit.

The Xbox's big selling point will remain Xbox Live... and now they're giving those secrets away for Sony and Nintendo to copy if they like. For all its innovations, Xbox Live 2 is the least interesting bit for me. I hate open forum online gaming for the obvious reasons. Hopefully the reason isn't you. Plus the overwhelming majority of online console games are the same old variations on a theme. Running around shooting, which has just become so boring. It's like how every new card game is still doing Magic's Team A vs. Team B shtick. Give me something different, some new. Where's the Doomtown or 7th Sea of online gaming?

I've never been impressed with Xbox's exclusive titles either, online or not. My tastes run towards more fanciful games, I suppose, because I fall asleep browsing the Xbox racks. Everything there is uber-realistic combat driving Matrix-leather shooting with a shiny silver logo. More so than either of the three, Xbox caters towards a specific demo... and then does a mediocre job at that. Sony and Nintendo have a more diverse lineup, so I can get the bloody stuff if I want it, but also the weirdo Japanese stuff, the cutesy colorful stuff, and the crazy gimmicky stuff. Going from Eternal Darkness to Animal Crossing to Donkey Kong Jungle Beat to Mario Party 6 to Resident Evil 4 on one console is appealing to me. As is going from Katamari Damacy to Fatal Frame to Kingdom Hearts to Sly Cooper to Metal Gear Solid. And those are all AAA games, no weaksauce offerings like Toe Jam and Earl 3. Premiering the new console in a big budget MTV special is a sure signal to me that nothing is going to change. Attention Matrix fans: your new console is here!

And of course, those masters of design at Microsoft pulled another boner. It's silver (yawn) with a ridiculously off-the-rack font choice. It's a "box," so we're going to keep making it look like a box. Additional design support by the Generic Rectangle Division of Dell. The controller looks like they never finished the mold; it's too streamlined.

Then there's the PS3, which is also going for the dull silver motif and also had a hideous new controller! I can't believe they'd dump the Dual Shock. At least the PS3 itself has a hip look to it.

And of course, Nintendo will yield no pics of their next system, except to say that it is about the size of three DVD cases. Please don't let it be silver. Or purple.

UPDATE: Nintendo pics released... and although it's not purple or silver, it's not much of a design either.

Today we saw our son for the first time, and now we proudly introduce him to you. His name is Clark Jae Fourhman, "Jae" being borrowed from his Korean name, meaning "talented." (When combined with his entire birth name.) He was born March 2, 2005, weighing 4.8 lbs. This photo was taken a month later. At his last doctor visit, he weighed 7.9 lbs. He is currently in the care of a foster family and is doing well. We anticipate travelling to Korea sometime around September to bring him home.

To celebrate, we have arranged with Wendy's Restaurants across the nation to give away FREE FROSTYs this weekend only! (5/13-5/15) So please join us in our happiness and enjoy a Frosty on us!

"5 months until Infinite Crisis!" is emblazoned across the top of Villains United #1, proving that if DC itself doesn't act excited over the upcoming mega-event, no one will.

So after going through this book and Day of Vengeance this week, yeah, I'm interested to see what happens. The last big event, Identity Crisis, had a hook: who killed Sue Dibny? This event also has a hook, albeit a more mechanical one: which of the four special miniseries (Villains, Vengeance, Rann-Thanagar War, OMAC Project) will contain the event that breaks open the DCU and directly causes the INFINITE CRISIS. And which three will, uh, fizzle out and not lead to anything, I guess.

I can't believe they've already trotted out Jean Loring, so soon after the limp ending to Identity Crisis. It makes me think this was the plan all along, which maybe that was the plan all along: to make you think that. Identity Crisis had a crappy, out-of-nowhere ending. And it was so great at first! A minor character killed a couple other minor characters. (And the current Rogue War in The Flash hasn't even let Boomerang's body grow cold; he's already being reanimated!) So Identity Crisis has been reduced to a warm up to a warm up for another big event, and that annoys me. As weak as it was to twist up forgotten Atom ex Jean Loring, it would have granted her some level of dramatic import had they at least let her rot in Arkham for a couple years before the inevitable return. But no, she's already been Eclipsed, thus combining someone you never heard of with a villain you never cared much for anyway.

Hey, I remember when DC tried to turn Eclipso into the next big anti-hero book after that dopey summer annual event "Eclipso: The Darkness Within." The first bookend issue of that had a life size plastic purple diamond on the cover... which I thought was awesome at the time but now is just putting a dent in the back of whatever comic is stacked in front of it. Ol' Eclipso even got the big Bart Sears makeover, so you were forced to respect his costuming, if not his silly 60s-era name. I guess his return is supposed to excite the fanboy in me, but my reaction was more like "Oh great, he's back."

His return wasn't even in one of these Crisis crossovers, but in a three-parter in the Superman books... where he, predictably, eclipses Superman. He also gets inside Lois for a time, which made me wonder just how many times this kind of crap happens to her and what a miserable life she leads because of it. To break Eclipso out of Superman's body, Captain Marvel and the wizard Shazam have to call in the Spectre (now Jordan-less) and he does the old fickle finger of fate thing... but then everyone fails to care where the disembodied Eclipso spirit goes. Straight to Jean Loring's cell in Arkham, where, in comics time, she has been for about five hours. Sigh.

So anyway, Villains United. Besides having a surprise Ambush Bug ref, there's a surprise duality of villain groups. You have the major power brokers - your Luthor / Deathstroke / Talia types - who are steadily recruiting other villains to join up with them, Legion of Doom style. The impetus being to stand against the heroes after the hushed-up lobotomy trick they pulled on Dr. Light all those years ago. Most of the book, however, is about a smaller group of villains - Scandal, Deadshot, Cheshire, Parademon, Ragdoll, Fiddler - who has an agenda against everyone.

The best part is what happens to Fiddler.

This group's plan is to take over entire continents. They haven't said exactly how yet. But each one of the six gets their own continent... and after Fiddler (a old white man with a violin) is replaced with Catman (a Tarzan-type character who hangs out with lions), they show Catman as inheriting Africa. That makes sense for Catman, but did they really intend to orginally give Fiddler rule of Africa?

They're referring to this team as the new Secret Six, which was once used for a team of heroes back in the day. Each member of the original Six had a different bionic body part... and a TERRIBLE SECRET, as I recall. Best left unremembered, although DC clearly still holds the copyright on the name, so why not use it again. Batman is somehow recycling the OMAC character, so all that's left is a new version of Ultra the Multi-Alien and DC will have the hat trick. What are the Omega Men up to these days?

Speaking of old names being made new again, Day of Vengeance has a corker: Detective Chimp is back! Something makes me think he was already Vertigo-ized a while back, but I rarely read Vertigo books so I wouldn't know. Still, he is awesome. In this book he is wearing a t-shirt that says "Everybody Sucks But Me."

One last thing, this week DC unveiled a new logo. I like it. The previous logo (which has been in place for just under my entire lifespan) was getting dusty. But, it's stupid that they time it now, after their big summer event has already started. Just a month or so prior, and the entirety of the Infinite Crisis could have unveiled under the auspices of the new logo.

Today we got the call we've been waiting for: we have been matched with a baby boy. We don't know very much about him yet. We'll meet with our social worker later this week and go over his file and info... and most importantly, receive our first picture of our son.

He was born March 2nd. Judging from my weblog entries around that time, I was playing Ratchet & Clank 3. If all goes according to schedule, we'll likely be travelling to Korea in September, maybe August. Maybe October. He should be home well in time to enjoy the November release of Animal Crossing DS. We started the adoption process in April of last year (during Puzzle Pirates, Pokemon Colosseum and Crystal Chronicles), so it's been a long time coming. And considering what all we went through in the years before that (going back to around the original Game Boy Advance launch, I estimate), it's no wonder we're ready for this.

It's good to get his birthday under our belt, because the Korean adoption process has slowed somewhat lately... which just kills you inside. I mean, you're at the mercy of international law here. If Korea decides to shut the whole thing down, you're pretty much done. I think our schedule is running about two months behind the average from last year, which doesn't sound like much, but when you're waiting for approval it seems like forever. Was our paperwork incorrect? Was it lost? Do they just not like us as parents? Are they shutting the program down? Will our baby come home older than expected? Once the forms are filed, you have nothing to do but sit around and manufacture reasons why it's never going to happen.

In fact, Korea wants to promote domestic adoptions and keep the kids in their birth country. Just this year, they formally stated a new policy to gradually pare down the number of children being adopted internationally. Which is great news for Korea - changing cultural mores, eliminating social stigmas and all that - but it's not exactly what you want to hear as a prospective parent who has already invested so much emotion into the decision.

So finally receiving news of our baby boy lifts an enormous weight off of us.

Now things really get weird. It's one thing to have a theoretical child and be stuck in limbo awaiting news as it trickles through agencies and government red tape, but to be told that you absolutely do have a son, and he is an entire day's flight away from you... well, that casts things in a very different light. You check your world clock and wonder what he's doing right now. It's 5am in Seoul, think he's awake yet? You think about the people caring for him. You wonder how the agency matched him with you... did something make sense to them as they compared our file with his? Or was it just his turn to be matched and your turn to receive? You think about every day of his life that has gone by without you even knowing he existed... and yet, logically, you knew he had to be out there somewhere. You consider what happens next, as he lives with a foster family. Will they mention you? Will they speak to him of the strange turn his life is about to take?

There's finally an end to this part of the journey. We've never been happier. He is real!

We've been rampaging through multiple DVD sets lately, which I greatly prefer to actual TV. As do all good Americans.

Wonderfalls. This series was quickly cancelled, and I was surprised to see it show up as a DVD set. Only 4 episodes ran on FOX; the set has 13 total. I was bracing myself for the ugly shock that the remaining 9 shows would have half-finished effects or no CG effects at all... but nope, the shows are all complete and ready for the broadcast that never happened. And you know, this show got nothing but better, so it's even more obnoxious that it wasn't given a shot at continuing in prime time. Ah well, this is why it's so rare that I'll even bother with network TV. The Wonderfalls set is pretty sparse, as far as design. The menu screens have no music, and the cover seems to purposefully hide the face of lead actress Caroline Dhavernas. Extras are good, considering how quickly the show disappeared: some random commentaries, behind the scenes featurettes and a music video.

Deadwood. Holy crap, this is a great show. It's almost worth the ridiculous price... which I've seen range from $80 to $100. For 13 hours? On an unreasonable six discs? Is there a valid explanation for using six DVDs for 13 hours, aside from making the box bigger and more expensive? Wonderfalls only uses 3 DVDs for 13 hours. Anyway, Deadwood is awesome. Mega awesome.

Monty Python's Flying Circus. Speaking of too many DVDs, this set spreads 45 episodes (what, about 30 to 40 minutes per?) across 14 discs in 14 disc cases. Ugh. In all fairness, this is an old set and probably manufactured to tightly align with an identical VHS release. Back then, it didn't matter how much extra space was available on a DVD; season 3 volume 2 DVD had to have the same content as season 3 volume 2 VHS, right? Lately I've been doing an episode or two during my bachelor suppers when Rhonda has her evening grad class. I haven't seen them since they ran on Comedy Central, and I swear I recognize what bits were cut for broadcast, but I could be hallucinating.

Red Dwarf. I'm handling this series a little differently. Since I know these so well - largely memorized, in fact - I'm watching these only with commentary on. It's good commentary too... very informal and silly party talk with the cast. Up through year 6 is available, which is right about when the series started to fade, by my count.

My requests for future boxed sets: Twin Peaks season 2. You know, the season everyone bailed on? TaleSpin, duh. All of DuckTales prior to the Bubba Duck / Gizmoduck jump-the-shark moment. I'd also like Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z done in such a way that makes them convenient to collect and keep... so instead of 3 episodes per DVD case, you'd get 20. It would be nice to own complete sets of those shows without having to rent a storage facility.

Reminder: this Saturday is Free Comic Book Day. This isn't a scam free-gift-with-a-timeshare-speech thing, this is a genuine day where you get actual free comics for totally no money.

Now, this isn't grab any book you want day. That's shoplifting. No, what happens here is a ton of comics publishers provide special edition books, usually all tagged FREE. Although some publishers do provide free stacks of unwanted older books they overprinted, which is always funny and sad at the same time.

The general idea is one free book per customer, no purchase necessary. Last year, my shop (Comic Store West! Woot!) did a cool thing: they allowed you to grab as many different free books as you wanted, with the caveat of a minimal donation to a local library for every book beyond the first. Something like 25 cents. That's great for folks like me who can't pick just one book.

There's definitely a bunch I want out of this year's batch. Gemstone is reprinting Carl Barks' first Uncle Scrooge adventure story, which is awesome. Wizard is a magazine-like book covering the top graphic novels OF ALL TIME. Archie is resurrecting a classic character that hasn't seen ink in quite a while, Katy Keene. Bongo is doing a Simpsons book, Dark Horse has a Revenge of the Sith book. And there's always a selection of anthology titles from the small press, which is where all the really good and fresh stuff is hiding. DC and Marvel, despite being the twin 600 pound gorillas in the room, always kinda cheap out on FCBD... instead of offering something special or new, they just reprint one of their latest All Ages books featuring their most marketable characters with a media tie-in: DC is doing the new WB Batman cartoon book and Marvel has a Spider-Man/Fantastic Four rerun.

So find your nearest comics retailer and get down there this Saturday. The free books don't last long.