March 2006 Archives

I've been into comics long enough to distinctly remember the days when Marvel was king and DC was for queens. Er, kids. In fact, DC used to use the highly pathetic slogan of "DC COMICS aren't just for kids!" as some kind of sissy self-defense slapfight.

So why is it that when I pick up any given Marvel Comic today, these are the ads I see inside:

Kids apparel, boys accessories, pogs, and that passable toy line with a lousy game stapled to it. (These are all taken from Ultimate Fantastic Four #32, and presumably run in every Marvel book printed this month.)

I don't ever want to hear one of you zombies talk about how adult and realistic and mature the Marvel books are ever again. Seriously, Marvel... pogs?! We know you're mainly a licensing company these days, but have some dignity. Maybe you can let a few pages go by without reminding us how you sold your soul to claw your way out of bankruptcy yet again.

At least when I'm reading a DC book, I get the feeling that somebody somewhere might actually have paid good money to run a print ad inside it... instead of all these backroom licensing trade agreements.

They even copy/paste identical generic clip art in the ads... that same Captain America figure shows up in three out of the four.

Pogs. How did that conversation go?

"Hey, Marvel? We're the guys who make pogs and we're trying to re-launch the brand..."

"When do we get the check?"

Man, show some fucking restraint.

Just read the unedited version of Nintendo President Saturu Iwata's GDC keynote speech. He starts out with a clever switcheroo, where you think he's talking about the Nintendo-Sony rivalry but he's actually making a point about Pepsi vs. Coke.

Then he tells the story of the upcoming Brain Age DS game, which is based on a mental exercise fad currently gripping Japan. He has this to say about the initial meeting he held with the professor who kicked off the brain improvement fad:

I�m sure some people at Nintendo wondered how I could spend so much time on the kind of meeting on the very day of the DS launch, but I think it turned out to be a good idea.

On the day of the DS launch. Can you imagine Peter Moore or J. Allard or any other Xbox tool saying that? Blowing off a launch day just to do some fact-finding research on a quirky-ass non-game game?

Brain Age turned into another DS mega-hit in Japan. We get it shortly. You do tons of little quizzes and math puzzles and such, and the game scores you with a "brain age," which is supposed to indicate how old your brain is, based on how smart you are. Presumably there's a curve to it, and you want to hit a age somewhere in the twenties... rather than having the brain of an 8 year old or of an 80 year old. What makes it so accessible is that you hold the DS like a book and write your answers with the stylus.

It sounds to me like a totally nerdy WarioWare.

Then Iwata kinda tap dances around Nintendo's Wi-Fi strategy for a bit. Yes, Iwata-san, it's easy. But it's really not giving me the "choices" you seem to think it is. That's not going to happen until you find a way to cover the very issue that has kept you out of online gaming for the past five years: the presence of assholes. Because giving us choices means that some of us are going to make bad ones. Your Friend Code system neatly rules out much of the online assholery, but it also makes it stupidly difficult to find good people to play.

Nintendo's system is pretty much based on you getting all of your real-world friends to also buy Nintendo gear. Because if you can arrange that, playing Animal Crossing online with pals is smooth sailing. If your friends lack DSes, well, good luck making new ones.

I'm glad to see the success of games like Animal Crossing: Wild World, Nintendogs, Tetris DS and Brain Age... because that's the kind of junk that Nintendo is banking on. Non-traditional games developed for non-traditional players... players, not gamers. If nobody wanted Nintendogs, if Nintendo wasn't hearing stories about grandmothers getting hooked on Brain Age, they wouldn't be in such a strong position now, and the Revolution would be looking D.O.A. To use the Pepsi-Coke analogy, just as Pepsi branched out into sports drinks to pull ahead of Coke in total sales, Nintendo is reaching out to non-gamers to pull ahead of Sony.

Well, not that Sony doesn't have broad-target games in their arsenal - these are the guys who gave us PaRappa and Katamari - just that Nintendo wants to bring in new demographics and expand the definition of what a "video game system" can do.

Against all predictions, the DS is taking daily craps on Sony's PSP. Even Wal-Mart has done the brown on the PSP, having just dropped carrying all those stupid UMD movies. Nintendo's strategy is working.

But he was quick to point out that Nintendo still will make games for gamers, current and longterm gamers that is. Like Metroid Prime Hunters, New Super Mario Bros, and a new Legend of Zelda game for the DS.

Then he goes into the development of the Revolution's crazy remote control nun-chuk thing:

Early last year a young team leader of the controller development group came up with a disruptive idea: what if you could play with just one hand?

Of course someone young would come up with that.

This sounded good, but when we shared the idea with our Metroid Prime producers, they objected. They said their games would not work with what we invented.

Hey, Metroid Prime guys, WTF? Jeez, make one great game twice and you get more clout than you deserve. Aren't these guys American anyway? Iwata gives them credit for adding the floating plug-in analog stick, so you can play two-handed games.

His next announcement surprised me, but it shouldn't have:

After we announced the virtual console concept for revolution last year, many people asked me if only games for Nintendo systems would be available. Today, I have a better answer. I can announce that games specifically developed for both the Sega Genesis and the NEC Turbo Grafx system will also be available for Nintendo Revolution via the Virtual Console.

Sega has whored out their library to anyone who comes knocking with a big bag of money. Like GameTap, which is about to die sinking into the mud, and rightfully so for being 2005's Stupidest Idea Ever. I guess I was surprised solely on the premise of Genesis games being playable on a Nintendo. I'm old enough to remember when that sentence made as much sense as taking the company whale out for a drive to Jupiter.

I enjoyed his assessment of Tetris: The Modern Pitch...

In our business, too often people with a fresh idea don�t have a chance. I believe if Tetris were presented today, here is what the producer would be told:

"Go back." "Give me more levels." "Give me better graphics." "Give me cinematics." and "You�re probably going to need a movie license to sell that idea to the public."

The producer would go away dejected. Today, Tetris might never be made.

Of course, what he's overlooking is that Mr. Alternate Universe Tetris would then head straight to PopCap. But that raises a question, in a World Without Tetris, would PopCap even exist? Would it be nothing but Battleship and Checkers clones?

I consider our virtual console concept the video game version of Apple�s iTunes music store.

Oooh, I like that one. Just make sure I'm actually buying the damn games, not renting them for the life of the online service. If I download DeCapAttack, I want it living on my Revolution HD and playable for as long as I own the Revolution, whether I'm online or not, and whether the Virtual Console still exists or not. We don't want GameTap. We don't want Napster. We want iTunes.

One of the nice things about playing Tetris DS online is that nobody is out there cheating at it. I mean, what could you do, set it to only give you the long pieces?

Tetris DS is actually about the easiest version of Tetris I've ever played anyway. Not only do you get the "ghost piece" function, which obliterates any need to shift your penetrating Tetri-gaze anywhere away from the crucial bottom half of the dropfield, but you also get to see the next six pieces that are coming. Not to mention the hold feature, where you can stash a piece for use later. I don't know when these ideas became standard, but it sure beats the original B&W Game Boy bust-yer-ass-blind Tetris. I hope Nintendo threw another token check at Alexey.

It's the usual weird stab at online play though. Again we have to endure Nintendo's Safety At All Costs friend code setup, where even if I play a bunch of great games against a complete stranger, it's impossible for me to tag him as a friend to seek him out tomorrow. And there's only three online game modes, none of which are customizable. 2P Standard, 4P Standard With Items, and 2P Push. Why can't I choose to play 2P with items? Why can't I choose a gleeful Mario character as an avatar to stand by my board and needlessly animate? Why not 3P?

My Tetris DS friend code:

Tetris supports a longer friend list than Animal Crossing, so email me if you want to friend up.

As you may know, Tetris DS is overloaded with NES retro imagery, so much so that they could have titled it Mario Tetris and you wouldn't bat an eye. Nobody gets as much use out of their 1985 sprite catalog as Nintendo. It's easy window dressing for a handful of new ways to play Tetris, but at the least it's more fun to look at than all those dreary Cold War USSR backdrops you had on all the other Tetri back in the day. I was glad to NOT see the stinking Kremlin on the bootup screen, but I miss those three classic tunes from the hit-making GB era.

By the way, that rogue Tetrimino picture is from Mega64, a video game skit show. It's amateurish and uneven, but full of video game refs. Though I did enjoy their new Katamari skit.

So say you're a guy who drove his SUV into his living room, let the property sit untouched for weeks, then decided to continue to live in said property despite township ordnances suggesting otherwise.

And spring has officially sprung, with several nice weekends already under your belt with plenty more on the way.

What would you do?

You'd get out the duct tape.

Two months, one week, and counting.

In light of the theoretical PS3 launch date, I'm going to artificially extend the regular Farewell to the PS2 feature. Starting next time, we're going to switch to bimonthly and only cover three games an entry. This should get us into August or later!

We enjoyed several DDRs back on the PS1, but I'm not sure why I waited for MAX2 to get one for the PS2. It's not like there is a great deal of change between versions.

This game sparked a serious DDR-as-exercise phase in fourhman.home, to the point that I set up a permanent DDR area in the basement. This series will kick your ass, even on the "low impact" exercise setting. The game tracks your burned calories and such, which looks pretty impressive in rather short order. You might recall the media suddenly realizing that DDR exists about this time, and half-assed stories slugged "a video game that IMPROVES your HEALTH?!?!?1//1/1/!??!?1 WTF!" all over the place.

I'm looking forward to DDR morphing into more of a lifestyle thing, where you can use your own music and regularly download new songs and dances. It could become a huge exercise tool if they would evolve it outside of pure video games.

Favorite track: "Love at First Sight" by Kylie Minogue. Yes, it's in iTunes.

Memory Score: You have to get two dance mats. It's a given.

Where did this come from?

I'll tell you where: from the Let's Rip GTA Retro-Style department. Seriously, this came out of nowhere - well before the remake movie hit - and even had a crazy, no-one-is-going-to-do-it-but-Joe peripheral gimmick. And I'm not kidding: this game is totally Classic Starsky & Hutch, with the original actors' likenesses and everything. There's even the gigantic in-game shrine to Huggy Bear, with photos and interviews and bios. I'm guessing he wouldn't sign off on his character's inclusion unless they let him turn the game into his own personal street team.

Anyway, the game is mostly an all-driving GTA, which we used to call Driver. What sets it apart is a 2P mode that allows the use of a light gun... one player drives the car while the other player shoots stuff. This was the whole reason I got the game and a very specific high point in the history of the GunCon2. We had a grand ol' time, although the last few missions became unreasonably hard on the shooter.

Memory Score: There's this hilarious cutscene that makes it look like Starsky and Hutch kiss.

Peak of the franchise thus far.

Ups the life counter, lets you upgrade your weaponry, much more sidebar missions, even rewards you for having played the first one. Just off the top of my head, I'm calling this the best action-platformer of this generation. Of course, what's the competition, fucking Sonic Heroes?

I will say that I don't care about the Ratchet Universe much beyond R&C themselves. The punny characters, comedy cliches and cartoon plots feel a little too desperate to me. I especially hate Captain Qwark.

No, this game excels in the environments (distinctive without being overbearing, a tough line to ride) and in the action. When I think about Ratchet & Clank 2 - and I did think about it quite a bit when #3 turned out so average - I always flash back to cracking that energy whip across throngs of swarming little blue puffballs. It was definitely a game that could put you in the zone.

Memory Score: R&C have fully occupied the former Bandicoot center of my brain.

Gimmick purchase.

Like Nintendo's eReader, the USB EyeToy is a wacky peripheral that arrived on a wave of big promises... and then never really paid out. The history of video games is littered with such technology. EyeToy fared better than most - rumors say it will appear next on the PSP - but it never became a must-have.

Part of the problem is that Sony only released a few EyeToy-exclusive titles (and then packaged most of them with more EyeToys, so if you bought them all you ended up with enough EyeToys to run a home security network) and dragged them out over years. By the time Anti-Grav hit, no one cared anymore. And the US will likely never see Chat, which combined video conferencing with one-on-one games like Chess and Battleship.

The other half of the EyeToy's slow start is this initial Play disk, which forces you through an obnoxious interface (camera usage for the sake of it) to play an vastly uneven set of mini-games. The best ones are a kung fu punching game and a color-matching fireworks game. And even though you can register several players, there's no overall scorekeeping method and no way to declare an end to it. You just keep doing stuff randomly until somebody wonders aloud where the eReader is.

It just wasn't a very enthusiastic start, and probably turned more gamers off than it turned on. The music to Wishi-Washi is pretty hilarious though.

Memory Score: My EyeToy has been used most to play poker.

Next time: Two movie games and a Dreamcast port (they still make those?!)

I knew that as soon as I put the Chibi-Robo disk into my Nintendo GameCube, it would be the last time I played Metroid Prime 2.

And I was right.

It's a great little game. You're this tiny robot helper who is set to work inside a family's house, cleaning and tidying and fetching stuff. (Shades of Gyro Gearloose's Little Helper, actually.) Since you're so small, the adventure of the game comes from figuring ways to navigate up shelves and staircases, and using common household items to perform your tasks.

It's a little rough around the edges... most characters are a little too simplistically created and the dialogue sections take fooooreeeeveeeer to scroll through. But it's a satisfyingly bright and happy experience, a world to be explored at your leisure.

Yet another awesome brand new IP from the company that everyone says doesn't do anything but sidebar Mario rehashes. FACED.

ToyFare #105 is the annual NYC Toy Fair coverage issue. It's easily the best issue of the year, every year. The cover shouts "Over 286 pictures!" So, does that mean 287 pictures total? Morons.

Anyway, here's some stuff I liked that's coming to the toy aisle.

The 14th Marvel Legends series has Mojo as the giant build-a-character piece. What this means is, if you want the wildly awesome Mojo figure, you need to buy all the other figures in the wave. Previous build-a-characters have included a Sentinel and Galactus. If this was ten years ago, there's no question I would have all these, because the big figures are terrific. These days, I'm satisfied just to look at the pictures and wonder if anybody is out there selling completed giant figures on eBay. Because I just don't need or want all the third-tier jerks that populate these waves, like Longshot, Baron Zemo or the Falcon. In every wave, there's maybe three guys I want and five that stink. Which, if I only bought the cool ones, would leave me with Galactus's right arm, upper torso and left big toe. Rather than having 1/3 a Galactus lying around, I choose to buy none of them.

That Mojo is freakin' sweet though. And Series 15's build-a-character is MODOK! MODOK!

These, however, I do definitely buy.

Something about these cutesy Marvelites is irresistible to me. Most of the line is packed with alternate Spideys like Karate Chop Spidey, SCUBA Diver Spidey and Extreme Surfer Fireman Spidey... but they usually sneak in some other chibified characters that I always stalk. Look at Baby Beast! He's great!

ToyFare did an interview with the people behind the Spider-Man And Friends line a bunch of issues back, where they said that they can't do figures of characters like Human Torch and Ghost Rider because of the fire element... which is far more reproducible for kids than adamantium claws. The article ran some concept art of a rejected Friends-style Ghost Rider that was adorably incredible. Shame there's no way they could offer Ghostie as some kind of adults-only mail-in. There's huge adult collector support behind this line... which is evident every time I check the racks and find all the non-Spidey figures missing. Toy Biz, we would all send you envelopes of cash for that Ghost Rider toy and sign waivers promising never to give it to children under 3. Start sculpting that mold!

I don't particularly like the DC Direct line, because they're almost always unposeable little statues. They're also mad expensive. They look great, sure. You just can't do anything with them.

So I'm happy to see DC sneaking out a new retail line (DC Direct only provides to collectible shops) that is their answer to Marvel Legends. They're not up to the Legend standard yet... the packaging is dead boring, and the included free comic book muddies up the line's presence on the racks (I'd turn the backboard into a folder and slip the comic inside). But the figures themselves are a nice surprise - comics-accurate, detailed, articulated - given that most of DC's retail toys are cartoon tie-ins.

That Darkseid will be in my cart as soon as I find him. Can't tell from the image if he's in scale with the various Superman and Batman figures, but I have high hopes.

The last time I mentioned ToyFare, it was to bitch about their annoying Monthly Rag feature. I'm happy to report that they have apparantly received a lot of negative feedback about this division of the mag... so they changed it up. The Monthly Rag (Which, by the way, is an awful title. And they wonder where all the female toy fans went!) is now all comedy. No real news reports in there at all. While I'm glad I no longer have to browse this Daily Show-ripoff to try to guess what is real toy news and what is lame amateur comedy, I'm still pissed that it takes up 10 pages each issue.

The big news is out: Sony just might maybe sorta definitely have a date for the PS3 launch. Kotaku says November 11th, which is one of those days that's great for marketing reasons. I can see the television ads now, where some stupid Matrix effect turns a PS3 logo into 1 1 / 1 1 or vice versa.

In Japan, candy giant Glico owns 11/11 as Pocky Day, since it looks like a bunch of Pocky sticks standing upright. Can you just imagine the business meeting with all these staid Japanese executives from Sony and Glico coming to terms on this?

Sony is going for a worldwide launch, which is traditionally very difficult to pull off. If Microsoft can screw up their Xbox 360 global launch and end up with supply shortages, unwanted core systems, and retailer-spawned overpriced bundles... well, how's the guy with over 70% market share going to do it? Microsoft boned it, and they're (globally) third place... so in raw terms, they had an overpromised and underdelivered launch of the console nobody wanted. The PS3 is the system people are waiting for: all Sony has to do is sneeze incorrectly and the whole thing will fall apart.

There's nice odds that Sony will be forced to delay the US launch anyway, despite what they indicated this week. And if so, I say go right ahead. Nintendo will still hit the Revolution in November, and we can get our shiny blu-ray PS3s in March 2007 or so. That 70% isn't just going to evaporate overnight, nor is it going to make any kind of disasterous shift into Nintendo or Microsoft's waiting arms. There's still some big name games coming for the PS2 anyway, and plenty of time to shit out another Ratchet and Clank game for Holiday '06 should Sony be forced to lie down this Christmas.

I don't agree with some pundits' assertions that a delay is good news for Microsoft. I don't even agree with using the word "pundit" in a sentence. I don't think that there's a huge population out there who is now saying "F this noise, I'm not waiting any longer for the PlayStation3, I'm picking up an Xbox 360!" I mean, I just don't know which audience would say that. Certainly not the fanboys; no PlayStation fan is going to bail out, short of hearing that Sony has fallen into the sun. The Xbox fans have already bought their 360. And the Nintendo fans are in a dreamlike zen trance arranging space in their entertainment center for the Revolution in their minds.

This only turns into good news for Microsoft if Sony bungles the price point. If Thanksgiving of this year shows a $250 Nintendo, a $300 Xbox 360, and a $400 PS3... that's where things get murky for Sony. So it's not the delay that can bite them, it's the dollars. If waiting until Spring of next year means a more reasonably priced PS3 with a stronger launch library, Sony will be unbeatable yet again.

By the way, Sony also announced an EyeToy for the PSP. If this leads to some kind of crazy awesome PS3 / PSP / actual camera Fatal Frame game... I'm sorry, I can't stand to imagine any further.

I watched the Ultimate Avengers DVD over the weekend. I think I picked it up just out of sheer curiousity, since I'm not a huge Avengers fan. The Avengers are, quite frankly, a haphazard collection of b-teamers. You have the core three - Captain America, Iron Man, Thor - and then a bunch of hangers-on. And actually, I don't think much of Thor either. So there you go. My point seems thoroughly proven in that Marvel's current New Avengers book has added moneymakers Wolverine and Spider-Man to the team.

But I wanted to see just how Marvel would handle a direct-to-DVD animated feature. Plus it was cheap, $13.

It's not horrible, I'll say that. It certainly suffers from Too Much Setup, but you can't really fault it for that since it's the first damn movie. The animation is fine, better than standard TV fare but nowhere near a theatrical release.

The movie is based on the first X issues of The Ultimates, which was in turn based on the early issues of The Avengers. Even though I recognize the classic value to the name "Avengers," "Ultimates" really is a much better name for a heor team of this type. To my knowledge, they're not "avenging" much of anything... but they are pretty "ultimate," in the super-powered sense. Marvel must have figured the Avengers name had more brand power, since the DVD should more accurately be titled simply "The Ultimates: The Movie." Aside from the name change, the Ultimates don't stray very far from the regular Marvel U. Oh, except that Nick Fury is now played by Samuel Jackson.

Overall, there was some seriously strange choices made. For one, the movie is deeply confused about who is in the audience. The action is, for lack of a better term, more violent... yet it remains shockingly bloodless. There are some fairly adult concepts (Thor as a Greenpeace protester, hints of Iron Man's alcoholism, Captain America seeking peace with his lost past, some sexified costumes on the women), yet the Aliens Attack! story is ridiculously random. It's almost a sidebar issue to the team forming, instead of being the real reason as to why they form. So who is the movie for? Simple story and tamed fistfights for kids, or hardcore action and deep characterization for adults? It wants to be both, and thusly fails on either score.

The Hulk plays a big role, both as duplicitous scientist and as runaway monster. There's so much Hulk that he steals the show; at times it feels like an animated sequel to the CG Hulk movie. Bruce Banner is really the only character in the whole movie with a plot attached to him.

Maybe I fixated on Hulk's sequences because the other half of the movie, Captain America's story, was so trite. The opening WWII scene sets the stage in a grandly stupid fashion - Captain America and his wartime brigade storming a Nazi castle to find aliens inside - and he doesn't fare much better after that. The movie does take the time to re-connect Cap with the people he left behind 60 years ago, but in a predictably boring way. And then there's the cliched scenes with Cap getting used to "modern" technology, like televisions at a department store.

The other members aren't left much characterization to fight over. You get the feeling Iron Man desparately wants some screentime to tell his story, but they ran over budget. He is lost amongst the cliches of the rest of the team: Thor the do-gooder, Giant Man the asshole, Wasp the female.

There are some fun action bits, but they mostly center on one character throwing another character into a wall. The aliens reveal themselves to be completely incompetent, mindless villains, and much of the more drastic violence is visited upon them. The movie didn't convince me that these characters were truly fighting against all odds. Thor doesn't even use the sharp edge of his axe, for crying out loud.

One thing that really drags the whole production down is a complete lack of style. The character designs look straight out of any given 1980s boys' action cartoon... which makes them all appear hopelessly out of date when compared to the streamlined, stylized, anime look of just about any boys' action cartoon of modern day. It's an animated throwback. I'm not saying they had to go all Teen Titans with it, but it's as if they didn't attempt anything new and fresh with it at all. It's boring. The only visual trick that differentiates Ultimate Avengers from, say, any given episode of G.I. Joe is a preponderance of air-brushed shadows.

I did enjoy the extras. First, you have a look at Ultimate Avengers 2... and I always like seeing storyboards and such for animated movies in development. Then there's a great documentary that sorta covers the history of the Avengers comic, with plenty of interviews with comics creators who obviously like these characters far more than I do. It's the best thing on the whole disc. And I learned the proper way to say George Perez's name. The emphasis is on the first syllable, duh.

There's also an embarrassing montage of lots of amateur jerks who "auditioned" to be voice talent for Ultimate Avengers. What a win-win: announce that you're looking for fans to do voice work, reap all the free press from an excited comics fanbase, and then say they all suck and put together a video piece to laugh at them. I have to get behind that.

So, pretty mediocre. But then again, $13.

The opening scene of Infinite Crisis #5 shows a slew of heroes attending a religious service, presumably seeking solace in the face of the Earth-shattering cataclysm going on around them.

Almost by definition, this is a stupid thing to include in a super-hero comic, particularly inside a fictional universe as broad and detailed as the DCU. Number one, there's an awful lot of concentrated power wasting time in Gotham Cathedral that would be better utilized out there stomping Alex Luthor's mad scheme.

But number two, how can any of these guys consider themselves religious, given what they do for a living?

Part of the problem with bringing "our" religious ideas and history over into super-hero comics is that we tend to assume that it ("it" being religion, I suppose) would continue to play out the same in both worlds. But in the DCU (and Marvel as well), you're talking about fictional worlds far beyond our experience... where the characters routinely travel to distant planets and galaxies and dimensions with their own belief systems (or lack of belief systems)... where Zeus, Ares and the entire Greek god pantheon exist and regularly communicate with Earthly heroes (and the Norse gods, and Egyptian gods, and alien gods, etc)... and where magic and mysticism are a constant presence. So, if we assume that the Bible is identical in both worlds, how could anyone take it seriously? All you have to do is look out your front door during any given DC Event and you'll see a multitude of evidence that the Bible is of no greater consequence than any ancient text of gods and prophecy... of which the DCU has many.

I'm an atheist on this Earth. If I lived in the DC Earth, where at any moment my hometown could be turned upside down by extra-dimensional Imps or invaded by Amazons... well, I wouldn't see any choice but atheism. Or good old fashioned Founding Father he-made-everything-and-then-bailed deism, I suppose.

The conflict is brought into focus by a brief conversation between Mr. Terrific (atheist) and Ragman (Jewish) as they watch the majority of heroes gather for a presumably Christian or Catholic ceremony. Obviously basic population percentages work the same in the DCU as they do for us, since the book doesn't bother showing us any scenes of Ragman at that temple he mentions. And you can see DC desparately trying to ride the line here, since the church scenes do not include any crosses or mentions of "Jesus," just "Lord" and "God." Maybe it's Unitarian.

Anyway, Ragman's point to Mr. Terrific - and it's the point of every pro-Christian comics blogger out there - is that Terrific must be blind to reality. Ragman points to characters like the Spectre (who is usually described as being God's hand of vengeance) and Zauriel (an angel exiled from Heaven who moonlights as a super-hero). He also names a decidedly non-Christian hero, Deadman, a ghost who was granted the power of possession by the Hindu goddess Rama Kushna (which, from what I can tell, is a fictionalized take on elements of Hinduism anyway).

If I may put words into Mr. Terrific's mouth, I don't think he is in any way denying the reality and power of characters like the Spectre. Nor is he denying their metaphysical origins. What he's denying - what any atheist denies - is that some intelligent guiding persona created the universe with some unknowable purpose in mind. And in the DCU, where we can visit the anti-matter world of Qward, hold parley with the superintelligent primates of Africa's Gorilla City, and then travel to the 31st century to the galaxy-spanning utopia of the Legion of Super-Heroes... I'm just not seeing One Single God's Divine Plan in that. Neither does Mr. Terrific.

This goes for Hell as well, which we visit pretty regularly in DC books. Is Hell really rooted in Christian folklore, or is it just another dimensional plane full of demons and monsters? Maybe this is why Terrific doesn't buy into it: he knows guys who have been to Hell and fought their way out of it... which doesn't sound like the unescapable damnation sold in the Bible.

If I were Mr. Terrific, with the abilities and powers of the JSA at my disposal, I'd hop on the ol' Cosmic Treadmill, travel to "biblical" times, and see once and for all just what went down. I've read several stories where everybody goes back to "the beginning of time"... but none where somebody decides to go suss out the true Jesus. For crying out loud, I don't think anybody's even asked Vandal Savage about it, and he's an immortal caveman (The World's First Murderer, according to his resume.)

If "God" existed in the DCU, Darkseid would have found him and kicked his ass by now.

I suspect that's how atheism plays out in the DCU: the Christian mythology is no more worthy of reverence than the Cherokee or the Atlantean or the Martian. Asking for blessing and guidance during the Infinite Crisis is, in Mr. Terrific's opinion, a waste of time. In a world where myth is real and ultra-powerful gods show up every month, what is to prove that this particular God is any more important than Zeus or Odin or Highfather? Suppose he is just another self-proclaimed charlatan - with an army of "angels" and a kingdom of "Heaven" - like any number of alien beings the Justice League battles on a regular basis. A recent JLA Classified storyline had a techno-sentient alien whatsis go after the JLA to imprison them in their own private hells... and although at first we thought, wow, are they actually in Hell, it turned out to be a techno-sentient alien whatsis. How can a skeptic like Mr. Terrific not apply that reality to Christianity? The whole thing - Spectre included - could be easily explained by the same kind of junk he sees every day on the job. That's what he tries to point out to Ragman. Amazing things may happen in the DCU, but they don't indicate a Creator (as named by humans, anyway.)

As any atheist, Mr. Terrific just wants proof. That proof doesn't come from the ravings of the Spectre any more than it comes from Pat Robertson.

Comics fans, we're truly in a Golden Age. I know I mentioned this before back when I picked up the Booster Gold figure and the Superman + Black Mercy... but when I can walk into Toys R Us and find a three pack of Green Lantern Corps members...

And then one aisle over find a Human Torch packaged with the Impossible Man...

...well, it's a great time to be into comics. Somebody in the biz is looking out for us, because there's absolutely no reason to include the Lanterns' greatest drill instructor or the FF's alien Mxyzptlk clone in a toy lineup.

Of course, the nitpicker in me says that the Kilowog fig there is embarrassingly slim.

The only question is, are these toys out there for kids or for adult collectors? I think I'm happy they exist to serve both. How bizarre to think of 7 year olds going home happy to tear open a package with freaking Tomar Re inside.

I've been slowly playing Metroid 2 lately, mainly because there's not much else going on right now. I have every intention of picking up Chibi Robo, but I feel like I ought to finish Metroid 2 first.

Thing is, Metroid 2 isn't exactly gripping me. Part of the problem is that I've been jumping into it a little too late at night and for play periods that are a little too short. Since there's so much backtracking - and so much travel back and forth between the light and dark worlds - I usually end up wasting the first half of any given session trying to remember just what in the hell I was doing.

Hey, Retro Studios: give your next Metroid game a goddamned Save Anywhere feature, would you? I dig that I'm supposed to be exploring, but I also feel like I'm spending way too much time heading back to the closest save point just because I'm tired of playing for the night.

It would also help if the baddies didn't respawn as soon as your back is turned. Then I could at least trace my way back from a forgotten save point by heading through cleared rooms... and when I find a room packed with slorgs and glubs and shatterbats and all the other dopey creatures, then I'd know I'm back on track.

Or how about a hint system built into that wacky 3D map? The best I can manage is to note which color doorlock I'm up to.

This is not a game for picking up every four days, when you've had plenty of time to forget what's going on. I mean, when I'm forging through a new area and switching guns and sending missiles into new life forms, it's great... I'm just losing a lot of time getting there and it's starting to grind me.

Speaking of the World of Metroid, I'm conflicted on picking up Metroid Prime: Hunters for the DS. I liked the demo; I thought the stylus control worked unexpectedly well. And the pure geek factor of having a kickass online FPS (with pre-level voice chat) on a portable system is awfully compelling. But on the other hand, I'm just not sure the game as a whole is going to hold my attention for long... it is, after all, just another stinking shooter.

I'm still sort of more into the upcoming Tetris DS, actually. Which makes me feel a little ashamed.

After reading Monday's Penny Arcade post - where both lads speak about their burgeoning love affair with Tycho's iMac, I had a nasty thought.

Suppose they're just working up to a month-long April Fool's Joke.

I don't have any evidence, other than that their surprise purchase and one-weekend-turnaround seems painted in language too flowery, too complimentary, too inline with Apple's paradigm to believe.

I think it was Gabe's line about it "playing WOW like a dream" that started me thinking, because I've never heard anybody anywhere describe any game playing on a Macintosh "like a dream." Except maybe Glider. And Gabe was always the one complaining about how expensive a big ol' designers' Mac specs out at.

I just wanted that out in the public record in case that turns out to be correct. The alternative is that they are closet switchers and that the Mac is as awesome as I've always said it is.

We rented a facility that is part of a small local park for Clark's birthday party. It's actually kind of a weird building, because it was plainly somebody's house once upon the '70s and is now on county park property. There's two largish rooms and a kitchen. We set up a receiving table, a food table, and a Clark table in the main room... and used the other room for eating seating and to run the looping slideshow.

Yes, I used iPhoto + iMovie + iTunes and made a Clark slideshow. I'm not proud of being some kind of Apple iLife toady, but it happened. More on that after the pictures.

This is the Clark table, where we formally greeted everyone and performed the toljabee ceremony. In Korea, there would have been a ton more food piled here, but we split most of the food off onto another table. The candy towers, stacks of sweet rice cakes, and the pile of fruit are very typical for a child's tol.

On the left side of the table, we placed a picture of Clark and his foster mother, Grandma Choi. We also burned a candle with four wicks, one each to represent Grandma and Grandpa Choi, and another pair for his birthparents.

The other side has his actual toljabee gear. This is for a traditional fortune telling event, where you put some objects in front of the child and whatever he grabs indicates the path of his life. We had a spool of thread (long life), a Korean 1000 won bill (wealthy), ruler (creative), book (scholar), rice cake (prosperous)... and the last one is usually a bow and arrow or something like that, to indicate that the child will be a great warrior. We used a Nintendo WaveBird controller.

Without any hesitation, Clark went for the thread. You'll notice my hands haven't even left the tray I placed in front of him. You'll further note that I didn't try to influence fate by placing the WaveBird directly in front of him.

And he went for the controller second! So, according to the auspices of Korean tradition, Clark will live a long life and be a great warrior. Game on!

Then we did the American tradition: singing and blowing out candles.

And then we changed him out of his hanbok and set him loose on a cupcake.

Now, about that slideshow. We thought it would be great to compile a retrospective and run it from Rhonda's iPod into a projector. So I started working in iPhoto, starting with paring down our Korea trip collection and adding on Clark photos month by month after that. I used Photoshop to make some title slides and inserted them at logical dividing points. When I ventured into iPhoto's slideshow soundtrack feature, however, I learned that you can't choose start points for songs in the iTunes playlist... and I wanted to fade out some tracks at certain points so I could bring in other music. So I exported the whole slideshow (about nine and a half minutes long) as a Quicktime file and opened it up in iMovie... where you can perform minor clip edits. There I dropped in all the music selections and chopped them up to match. Took a couple hours, and I only had to re-export the video portion once for some minor changes.

Had I been doing this at work, it would have been 100% different. For one thing, since iPhoto's crappy soundtrack feature threw me off, I ended up putting the music in after organizing the photos, which is ass-backwards. And it could certainly be tightened up in about a million places, and the sections really should have been re-structured and evened out. But what the heck, it looked fine and looped often enough that anybody who wanted to see it didn't miss a slide.

And I used Katamari music in it, among other things. Here it is.

This is an underappreciated title. It's easy to pick up, unashamedly silly, and has plenty of replay value. You're sent into various themed worlds looking for errant monkeys, which you catch by stunning them with a light saber and then scooping them up with a net. The gimmick is that all your weapons are controlled off the right analog stick... which will probably be the first time that you've used the right stick for more than camera control.

There's plenty of unlockables, great voice work, lots of variety... and I still would bet that you won't find more than six people in your lifetime that have heard of it, much less actually bought it. I'm not saying it's the greatest game in the world, but if you're still wasting money on Crash Bandicoot and the small army of licensed mascot platformers... well, it is possible to find fun games among all that drek.

I wonder if the Monkey-With-An-Uzi on the cover did them more harm than good.

Memory Score: It's not a franchise I obsess over, but I know a good game when I play one.

This is the sequel to Frequency, and I received it as "payment" for running a banner ad for a couple of weeks. Happily, it's a good little game. Even has online play.

It's a rhythm game where you essentially build popular music songs as you play each level... the goal being to keep the song sounding as complete as possible. For example, the drums are on one track, the bass on another, and the vocals on a third. You have to switch between all three, continuing to hit the beats, to keep each section playing. When you let yourself fall into the groove, it's plain hypnotic. I'm still in love with the song "Cool Baby."

The game only uses three buttons... but it's three weird ones: L1, R1 and R2. I've often thought they should have come up with some funky custom controller for it.

Memory Score: Is it even possible to make a BAD rhythm game?

I needed a light gun, and this game comes packaged with Namco's GunCon2 - the best available for the PS2.

The thing is - and I won't lie, I knew this going in - nobody makes decent light gun games anymore. Which is why I didn't pick up this awful awful title when it first came out... even though Rhonda and I loved playing Point Blank and Elemental Gearbolt with our light guns back on the PS1. There just aren't any worthwhile light gun games out there.

I needed one because of Starsky & Hutch, which we'll get to next time.

Oh, about this game? It sucked.

Memory Score: Dude, the ninjas have guns. Nothing is worse than that.

But until Starsky & Hutch came out, I took a chance on this bizarre light gun sidestep from Resident Evil.

And I will tell you that I am the only person you know who liked Dead Aim.

This is actually, like, the sixtieth Resident Evil light gun game but the previous 59 were so bad they didn't make it to the States. So we can probably forgive everybody else for not bothering to invest much into Dead Aim.

I went in expecting not much, and came out reasonably satisified. If you're a wacky peripheral fan, you'll similarly dig it. You use the GunCon2's rear-mounted d-pad to navigate the third person portion, and when you run into zombies, you simply aim at the screen to enter a first-person viewpoint. Then, you shoot like crazy.

Killing zombies with a light gun is nicely straight forward; it gets less intuitive during the few scenes where you happen upon faster baddies. There, you just have to get lucky.

The main evil scientist-turned-mutant-experiment guy (a staple for any Resident Evil game) claimed to be the jerk who first released the virus into Raccoon City, but I don't think the light gun sub-franchise actually counts as RE canon.

Memory Score: It's like Resident Evil meets Speed 2 in more ways than one.

Next week: We go peripheral crazy with three plug-and-play PS2 physical challenges... plus one of the best sequels ever made!

Today's edition of Stupid Panels of the Silver Age comes to us from "The Brave and the Bold" #29, May-June 1960, DC Comics. The story is entitled "The Challenge of the Weapons Master."

Xotar - the Weapons Master - has enslaved the Justice League but decides to release them one at a time to go on various challenges. He's from the future and has found an ancient journal entry, written by League Secretary Wonder Woman herself, that verifies that he will best the Justice League using one of his powerful and mysterious weapons. The thing is, he doesn't know which one, so he decides to travel to the past and test them out. Flash is up first.

Xotar gives him this clue:

When the ghost walks at Hesperus on the second day of the moonless month, I am waiting to do battle!

Four panels later, Flash has most of it figured out, the key element being the location of Xotar's attack, and then he hits the "moonless month" part...

Oh really, Flash? You think he intends to attack today?

Good work, Xotar! Way to keep the Justice League guessing! A time-travelling villain who decides to attack right now is definitely a candidate for Stupid Panels of the Silver Age!

While we're talking about Penny Arcade, check out Friday's newspost and comic.

I've been reading them for years, and they've always thrown off a more or less anti-Mac vibe. They've kvetched about the iPod's price (which I wholly agreed with until Apple started giving the iPod more to do, like the photo integration, color screen, slideshow output, and now video). Gabe has openly asked Mac fans to explain what makes them so great, because, as an artist, he's about the last one alive that still uses a PC for design work. And as I recall, that convo also ended with a sour note about the price. There is a recurring character who is a Mac fan and was originally this spacey, ADD hippie... but lately has morphed into an angry "screw you" beatnik.

But there has been a sea change. From Tycho's Friday newspost:

Gabriel's MacBook doesn't arrive until... they start arriving, later this month, but save for platform-dependent gaming I've used my own Mac for every computing task this week. What I have ascertained is not that PCs as we know them lack good design, but that PCs as we know them have hardly any design to speak of. I'm not trying to be insulting. Use a Mac for a week, and we'll talk again.

I have edited autoexec.bat files in order to optimize the amount of available conventional memory, and I liked doing it, liked being the sort of person who could. As a PC user, enduring the grotesqueries of that experience is something that we are actually proud of. It's come a long way since then, jokes about "blue screens" and what not ring like tired vaudeville acts. But those struggles were certainly real, the battle wounds considerable, and now the skin has grown over it and to a certain extent we think this is just how it is.

I didn't even understand that's what was going on until I started to write this. Like men who love the wilderness for its savage and untamed qualities, I believe many of us are drawn to this stark brutality. That frontier living, the self reliance, the adversity. The Mac, like The Alliance in World of Warcraft, was easy mode.

I don't think that the Macintosh was inspired by ancient holy scrolls, found in a sea cave and excised from the original bible by a convocation of priests and wise men. But I do like it very much. It is extremely good at what it does, which is to say, exposing functionality.

It's a big topic. I'll go into it on Monday.

That's such a great way to put it. I've had numerous chats with PC users who are considering buying a Mac... and many more with Windows advocates who would rather chuck 'em all into the Marianas Trench. And that whole aspect of the elegance, the design, the functionality of the Mac is very difficult to explain. Because Windows users, as Tycho says, are either really into PC maintenance in the first place, or they're so beatdown that they simply can't imagine that there's another option. A better option.

There's a huge disconnect between the "average" PC owner - who really ought to do himself a favor and buy a Mac - and the "pro" PC owner - who just digs that under-the-hood feeling. And it sucks for Mr. Average, because it's the Pros who are out there championing the Windows cause and marching steadily further and further away from what the Average crowd needs to get done in a day.

I recently ran across a weblog where the writer (an IT guy) was frothing mad about OSX because you can't open an app by highlighting the icon and hitting the enter button. He/she declared OSX "the OS designed to annoy" over that. I didn't bother to bookmark that one. But that's how deeply divided the two camps are (average vs. pro). I'll bet most Windows users have never even tried using the enter key to launch something. I know I haven't. Most Windows users I know have never even heard of using alt-tab.

Even the best laid arguments about the superiority of Windows ignore the vast majority of PC owners. Just today I read another weblog, where the writer was all pleased with Songbird, a new media player for Windows... and which happens to be rather iTunes-esque. He was happy to have the choice to use Songbird instead of, jeez, I don't know, WinAmp or Windows Media or Connect or iTunes or whatever else is there. And he smacked around Apple iTunes fans as being "against choice, whether they know it or not." The point is, most people don't want to waste time floating across the internet downloading random programs until they find one they like. Which is why most PC owners have never dared to venture beyond whatever awful audio program has been pre-installed. But we hear that all the time, about all the available software, and all the choice, and all the free market source code... which is great for Pro users, but it's a major headache for Average users. Because much of the PC software out there comes with compatibility issues, with bugs and viruses, or with confusing non-standard interfaces.

That's not to say that there isn't a venue for lousy Mac software. Mac owners can go waste just as much time grabbing OSX downloads. It's just that stock OSX serves the Average user better than stock Windows does. As for how each serves the Pro community best, that's up for debate. But it certainly isn't relevant to most people out there who need working email and internet and home video and music and Tetris and the ability to turn their kid's photograph into a greeting card.

But anyway, the boys of Penny Arcade are now Mac users. And Tycho, at least, seems absolutely smitten with it. It's not like they will toss their PCs out in the trash; they will both maintain gaming rigs, I'm sure. They can continue to be Pro PC users (gamers, chiefly) and still live through a Mac. Gabe hasn't spoken on the daily newspost about his plans; he may hate doing design work on his MacBook because he's so used to his PC setup. But I trust them to be upfront about their shiny new purchases, even though you can bet they will hit a lot of anguish from the Rabid PC Enthusiast crowd. I'll be looking forward to Monday's post.

Yeah, see, it's a card game. Feel free to bail out now if you thought I was suddenly into some kind of bloodsport.

I recently picked up the Penny Arcade UFS boxed set. The UFS family of games is slated to hit later this year, featuring Street Fighter and Soulcalibur, and for some crazy reason they decided to debut the game with a learn-to-play 1 on 1 set featuring Gabe and Tycho from Penny Arcade. I liked the presentation - two custom deck boxes, one for your Gabe deck and one for your Tycho deck - but I think $30 is a bit much. Most games sell one-player starters at $10, or a two-player set with a pair of half-decks for a maybe a buck or two more. But two full decks at $30 is well beyond the curve, even if you add in those spiffy deck boxes. $25 probably would have been a fairer price, but I gather this is intended to be a low print run collectible.

Anyway, I sprung the game on my Lead Gaming Guinea Pig, Mike. Let's review the damn thing. I'll tell you right now that it is isn't unrepentantly awful like the InuYasha learn-to-play set, and I found it more interesting than when we played High Plains Drifter. Mike probably preferred High Plains Drifter, but then again, he's also never been to Penny Arcade Dot Com and doesn't have any license bias. I almost always have license bias. License bias will drag a lot of money out of my wallet.

This Penny Arcade set is merely a preview of how UFS works... I assume when the fullblown CCG hits, it will be more detailed. (And I already have a Chun Li sample deck from the upcoming Street Fighter release, which does have some subtle rules additions.) The system is set up to square one fighter (one deck) against another fighter (another deck.) Which I like. I like that I have one guy that I'm controlling, one major character. One of my beefs with DC/Marvel Vs. is that, no matter what faction you choose, you always have to field tons of obscure, crappy characters. In UFS, it's like pitting Superman vs. Darkseid without having to suffer through all the third tier characters cluttering up the table.

Layout and Design

Naturally, the PA guys take care of their own artwork, flavor text, and (I'm guessing) card titles. Gabe's art looks great. (But I'll bet he was sorely tested in his work for most of the Tycho cards, as Tycho's gimmick is all "my vast intellect" and "really big words"... and how do you come up with 20 interesting combat images based on that?) I'm sure this was a dream come true for them, a goddamn genuine card game based on their webcomic empire. Unfortunately, the card templates - which are generic for use in any UFS release - are horrible. Amateur work. Most people ought to have the Bevel effect permanently deleted from their copies of Photoshop, and after looking at these cards, I can think of a few other effects I would similarly nominate. But it's the bevels everywhere that truly junk up the layouts. Inner bevels, outer bevels, bevelled strokes. It's a mess.

We figured it was supposed to be badass-looking, because there's a general theme of "sharp pointy things" in the templates. The whole look, from the logo on down, has a kind of Pro Wrestling design vibe... which is not a compliment. It brings to mind those tribal tattoos that everybody was into a couple of years back... but even then, it's not even a particularly well-done tribal tattoo.

Then there's the iconography, which is the saddest looking aspect of the whole design... even sadder than the omnipresent bevels. Each card has three icons on it that define its "resource type" - typical stuff like chaos, water, justice, death. I don't actually know what they indicate because the PA set ignores them. My Chun Li deck does explain how they affect the cards you can play; it's just purposefully left out of the PA starter set. The thing is, the icon design is all over the map: different line weights, some are overly detailed and don't reproduce well at this small size, some may even be garden variety clip art. Check out that straight-from-1995-web-design skull icon. They lack a consistent, easy-to-understand presentation... as you find in, for example, the mana symbols in Magic.

It looks like a homebrew creation, and it would be mostly fine for a homebrew creation, but this is a nationally distributed professional product that is expected to sit alongside games that found the budget to create nice looking, visually pleasing, graphically uniform card templates.

Sorry, but lousy ass card templates really grind me.

Game Mechanics

You start with one card in play, your character card. As you would expect, it has special powers and keywords. It also tells you your life amount and hand size. It even mentions your dude's height, weight, gender and blood type... which I initially assumed was meaningless stat filler until I read that some cards will reference that. Say, an attack card that only works on characters who weigh under 130 pounds. That amuses me. I would enjoy having to ask my opponent "Hey, what's your blood type? No reason." Cute touch.

Keep in mind, this game is supposed to simulate fast-action video game combat. In that respect, I like the basic card playing mechanic. It's probably close to what the Dragon Ball Z CCG should have done, instead of the unintelligible muck that game went with instead.

Because, you can play as many cards as you like during your turn - achieving the wonderful fighter-game valhalla of being in the zone and delivering a flurry of punishing blows on your foe. You just have to pay an increasing cost - your "control" - to continue to play cards. Each card has a difficulty cost... each successive card played has that difficulty upped according to the number of cards that have gone before. If you fail paying that cost, you have lost control and your turn ends. (Of course, your opponent can stop your advance with a reversal or minimize the damage with a block.)

Paying that cost is weird, however. Every card in the game has a control value on it. You flip cards to reveal these control values in the same way you would roll a die... it's to generate a random number. So if I need a 4 to play a card, and I flip a card with a 3 on it, I have failed. The cards are balanced so that some jerky deckbuilder can't cobble up a deck where every card has a control value of 6 (the highest I've seen.) Generally, the higher the cost to play a card, the lower the control value on that card.

Attacks are played and discarded at the end of the turn, but assets and foundations (there's a martial arts buzzword for you) stay on the table. These cards will have interesting game effects on them... but they can also be used to help add to your control value pull. You just tap them, excuse me, you commit them. Sigh.

Which brings up a problem with the Gabe vs. Tycho decks. Tycho has an inordinate number of cards that cost 5 to get into play... 16 of them compared to Gabe's 2. Gabe's cards are split almost evenly between costs of 2, 3 or 4. Tycho has more 3s and 5s. And when it comes to those control values - the means by which you pay to get cards in play - Tycho has 19 2s, 8 3s, 18 4s and 10 5s. So a third of the time, Tycho is going to pull a 2. Gabe's deck has 12 2s, 20 3s, 8 4s and 14 5s... that's 14 5s that he doesn't even need, since he only has 2 5-cost cards to play (plus a couple of X cost cards, which pulling a 5 for those is like openly peeing into Tycho's face.) Gabe will only flip a 2 value 20% of the time. (I'm rounding.)

The idea is that Gabe is a faster player, while Tycho is stronger in the late-game. The issue being that, if Tycho doesn't get his low power cards onto the table to help pay for the bigger cards, he'll never be able to afford the costs of the higher attacks. It seems unbalanced. Gabe has cards he can easily play, while Tycho can get mana-screwed right off the bat.

My advice to you, in a stage whisper: pick the Gabe deck.

That doesn't mean this is a bad game, just a poorly balanced starter set. Mike and I didn't get to try it, but maybe a Gabe vs. Chun Li game would be a better match. As it turned out, Mike (as Tycho) just sat there getting pummelled because he couldn't play anything to stop my Gabe's fists of fury.

Combat

So you see how cards are played: flip for quasi-random control values to play cards of increasing difficulty. The attack cards add another layer of possibilities, because all attacks are defined as taking place in a high- mid- or low-zone. Like, kicking somebody in the head, punching somebody in the gut, or doing a leg sweep to knock them off their feet. Attacks can only be blocked by playing a block card with a matching (or nearby) zone. A high-zone attack can only be blocked by a high- or mid-zone block, and so on. The blocking player has to perform a control check as well (so Tycho gets screwed even when it isn't even his turn), and if the block goes through then the attack damage may be lessened or stopped entirely.

What is interesting is that there aren't really "block" cards, per se. Any kind of card can have a block symbol on it... and if so, you can play it as a block. It's the kind of dual-use cardplay that I like so much in Doomtown, 7th Sea, and my own TaleSpin.

But naturally, they let the art design team screw this up. The block symbol is overpoweringly large and sits in a highly obvious location: upper right. It's not even set off in any way, just blasted right overtop the artwork. Attack cards all have an attack symbol, which is mid-right, smaller than the block symbol! That's just backwards. Note that both of these are more than simple icons: they contain numbers and that whole zone thing. It is confusing to look at an attack card that also contains a block and try to immediately parse which number is attacking when you play it. Bad design makes the game harder to get into, folks. I bet that once you fully internalize the game's workings, it becomes second-nature... but you have to fight your intuition to get there. An attack card's primary function is to attack, and the attack's strength should have prime placement on the template.

Final Analysis

I like the increasing difficulty gimmick. There's this neat momentum engine that handily represents your character gaining the edge in the fight. The PA webcomic art has never looked better; it's nice to see cartoon-style artwork taken seriously, because most card games feel they have to use photo-realistic painted pieces. The custom boxes are great.

On the negative side: design, layout, design, design, design. And also layout. The icons are embarrassing, the whole frame work an amateur job. The timing trigger keywords are simplified to E:, R:, F:, which is ridiculous considering how easy (and much more legible) it would have been to just type out Enhance:, React: and Form:. As an introductory set, the decks come out of the box unbalanced. And it's a tad pricy.

When the Soulcalibur set hits (April), I'll pick up some and see how it feels.

Tomorrow, March 2nd, 2006, Clark turns one year old.

At least, according to US East Coast time.

You see, since he was born in Korea, his March 2nd, 2005, happened fourteen hours before "ours" did. So, in actual chronological fact, his birthday is now.

What I find most interesting about all this is that for the rest of his life, assuming he lives somewhere in the EST zone, he will always actually be fourteen hours older than we think he is.

More fun birthday bits from the Land of Morning Calm (and I hope I have this right, please correct me if I have it mixed up). In Korea, a child's first birthday is traditionally a Very Big Deal, with attached ceremony and massive family gathering. We'll be mimicking some of that this weekend, actually. But beyond that, there isn't much birthdaying going on, at least, not in the Western sense of Chuck E. Cheese's and Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Although birthdays are tracked for official purposes, instead of an annual individual celebration, the whole country just considers themselves one year older at the start of each new year. It's a very blatant display of the standard Asian culture philosophy of valuing the group over the individual!

Also, Koreans count their ages according to the start of the year, not the end as Americans do. They think of themselves as being born at age one. So in Korean terms, Clark is actually turning two, because he is beginning his second year of life.

Which, as I said, really began today.

Lizzie (from the town of Fantasy) gives us this I-Just-Ran-Into-Tammy-Fay face. It actually looked better on Blanca than it does flat, which is the opposite of the ways things usually work

What I like about this one, Link332 of Hyrule (naturally), is the purple background. Unfortunately, the face mask only covers the front half of Blanca's head, so a face like this results in a purple circle over white ears and head. I think Blanca's entire body ought to shift colors to whatever you choose as your "background" color. Perhaps sampled from the color found in the topmost leftmost pixel.

Milk or Cheese, is that you? I'll have to ask vladimir of zozo.

Now that's what I'm talking about! Tommy of soulcity presents the hedgehog for the 2000s: Shadow! When I met this Blanca, she was totally in my face, beat out a few phat licks, capped some asses, and then hauled a major grind on her way to Hot Topic.

Xiokun of Ashbire. Who cares about the Blanca head, I dig this person's naming sensibilities. Xiokun of Ashbire. That is the most coolest set of names I've ever heard in Animal Crossing. Xiokun of Ashbire.

A pleasant face by Sumomo of Tanuky. I would have lost the cheeks, but otherwise a fine craft.

Just so you know, this is the face I send out on nearly every Blanca I create. Line tool, fill tool, two colors. Not much to boast about. I'm still entering "fourhman.com" as the tagalong text, so if you've happened across this site after meeting one of my Blanca Street Teamers, please let me know.

And finally, Animal Crossing has its own problems with "Hot Coffee..."