February 2007 Archives

You wanna talk obtuse, Chulip is right up there at the top. Like other "undefinable" games, Chulip has been branded as a "kissing game," which is just about as accurate as back when we all referred to Animal Crossing as a "communication game." Yeah, you kiss, but Chulip is really an old fashioned click-here-try-this-find-items-give-items kind of adventure game. And you thought nobody made those anymore!

The first thing you have to realize is that the game hates you. The first few hours are so steep that the manual includes a spoiler-laden walkthrough! I avoided that and had absolutely no idea what to do, other than die a lot. It's a good thing that the game is interesting as all hell, because it actively seeks to keep you from enjoying it (at least, until you suss out what's going on.)

The kissing process has thus far been a very arcadey experience. You follow around somebody who is pissed until you see a split second when he or she is happy... and then you lip-strike. What makes things fun is that everybody has set patterns of where they are at certain times of the day. So you have to learn when they appear, watch the in-game clock, and then tail them in hopes of getting in a good smooch.

Successful kisses increase your life meter, which means you can go after bigger game, so to speak. Plus they pay you(!) And once your heart is strong enough - read: life meter long enough - then you can declare your love for Rhonda (I named her Rhonda) at the town's romantic hotspot, Lovers' Tree.

So far (I'm fairly early on), the chief reason for kissing has been to make money, because cash seems to be the grease that keeps the adventure moving. For example, I need to buy a magnifier from the pawn shop right now, and it costs over 800z. My kiss pay has ranged anywhere from 60z to 300z, so it's difficult to predict how long it could take to get there. Not to mention that you have to pay for train tickets to other parts of the map, and you have to keep re-buying your "name card" (100z) to give to townspeople in order to extract clues from them.

About all the dying. You start the game with a measly 4 hearts, but you look at all the weird-cute characters and the Love Conquers All plot and you think you're okay. Not so. Approach a pissed-off person? Dead. Walk around late at night and get shot by the cop? Dead. Pull poop out of a garbage can? Dead. Climb the jungle gym over at the playground?

Dead. Can't say they didn't warn you though. I love that the notice was posted by the "Local Jr. High Teachers."

It's just awful that the game would actively punish you for exploring. Particularly on the poop-in-a-trash-can thing, because you all but have to root through trash to find stuff to sell for money. A random search for items could kill you.

And killing you because you rode a kiddie slide? That's just mean.

Add to that a very old school saving system that only allows you to save when you find a bathroom, and you have the potential for a lot of forced do-overs. Can't say I'm a fan of that concept.

Once you get some kisses in, your life is upped, so the poop isn't as deadly as it used to be. But still, it's a crappy way to break in a new player.

I'm enjoying it. This alternative niche junk is precisely why I've been a PS2 fan.

Bought a PS2 today.

Yes, a PS2.

I've been fighting this for a while now. And although I consider buying a PS2 in 2007 a pretty stupid thing to do, I felt kinda backed into a corner. It was a well-considered decision, I can assure you.

My PS2 was dying. This was my second PS2, which I bought just before they introduced the slimline edition (fuck!) It stopped playing DVD movies several months back... it would start clicking and eventually freeze up. Note that the PS2 has always been our primary DVD player, so what little DVD-watching we did do was now shut down.

Throughout this period of slow decay, I managed to play through Bully and Guitar Hero, so it hadn't really affected my game time. But then Chulip came along and started clicking all over the damn place. This was the sign to take action.

Obviously, EB gives you less for a busted PS2 than for a working one. I learned this the hard way when I finally traded in my Launch Day PS2 just last year. You can't fool them; they boot it up while you're standing there, the clever punks. So the clock was ticking: decide what to do before it craps out completely.

The decision, of course, being: pick up a PS2 on the cheap... or go all out and get a PS3, available everywhere to anyone with money, like a hooker with her own limo. Here was how it laid out...

CON PS3 - Even with the kind of pile of trade-ins that only I could assemble, I'm probably not going to get more than $100 or so out of EB towards a PS3. So we're still talking $400 to $500 outlay. And that's before adding in anything extra, like, say, a PS2-to-PS3 memory card adapter so I can play Chulip, goddammit. $500 is well above our comfortable level of spending, especially since we're saving for a new house.

CON PS3 - The PS3 is ugly. And big. And doesn't have anything that I'm dying to play at the moment. Oh sure, there will be some fresh consideration once MGS and GTA show up... but that's this fall at the earliest. And who knows, maybe by then they'll drop the price, offer a sweet bundle, redesign the monster's hideous case, or lop off the damn blu-ray and sell it for $300. Right now, the PS3 library looks exactly like the 360's launch library: barely-different shooters and the same old sports shite. Nothing compelling at all.

PRO PS3 - I feel intensely stupid buying a PS2, and will likely feel even stupider if I end up scrambling for a PS3 in eight months when GTA4 comes out.

CON PS3 - I'm still pretty annoyed at Sony's attitude during this whole deal. The insulting quotes, the cocky dismissals, the bungled launch. They're third place and they deserve it right now. Why should I vindicate them with an additional $600?

PRO PS3 - Well, there's always the cool new features: the WiFi, the online stuff, the wireless controllers, the hard drive, the media center... I mean, yeah, I would enjoy that. And I'd have to get a game, probably one of those barely-different shooters, sadly.

CON PS3 - You know what though? I have plenty of PS2 games to play... both new games (I just added the Ghost Rider game to my get-it-when-it's-cheap list) and our old favorites. With a new PS2, I don't have to worry about any backwards compatibility issues, or about the PS3 making my old stuff look lousy, as I've heard some people complain. And, I have a Wii.

So, the Two won out over the Three. Fourhman.home now possesses a slimline PS2. The silver one. We have our DVD player back, I can play Chulip and Guitar Hero no problem, we didn't dump a ton of cash (used two gift cards!), and I still plan on trading in the dying model (and some games) to recoup even more of the cost.

As seems to be the standard as of late, I did some more rewiring of our entertainment center. When I first got a PS2, I was super-proud of the optical audio and s-video cables. Now I don't care so much, so the slimline is chuffing along on good old fashioned RCA. Someday, when I get a kickass new TV, I'll do a full upgrade and move to component or whatever is better when that happens.

I also realized that I don't know where my Multitap got to.

Ironically, this slimline edition - that comes with an ethernet port built-in - simply would not attach itself to my network. I devoted a couple hours to figuring it out and then gave up in disgust. The 4.0 "wizard" that came with it is just as terrible as the 1.0 version from when PlayStation debuted online play. Heavy on nerdspeak, awful menu navigation, an unusable soft keyboard, and a complete lack of progress meters of any kind. I let it sit on the Test Connection screen for twenty minutes, and it never displayed any hint of whether it was actually doing anything or not. It never even timed out.

I haven't done any online PS2 stuff in quite some time, and quite frankly, I'm probably not likely to do so ever again. It sucked. But it bugs the hell out of me that I couldn't get it to work.

You watch, Mike will call me tomorrow and want to play World Championship Poker again.

We played the crap out of Mario Tennis on the N64. It was always a reliably fun evening. So I was pretty psyched for the sequel.

And then I was pretty disappointed. Because it's not a sequel. At least, not in the respect of offering anything new. It's the same game, except kicked in the junk a couple times. This is the kind of forgettable fare that hurts Nintendo's "the sequels are worth it" image and unleashes the anti-fanboys.

What went wrong? Those flashy new power shots, for starters. I'm sure they were intended to "Mario-ify" the experience in the same way that Mario Kart does racing games, but they just assassinated the game of tennis, wrecking the sport's flow with repetitive, over-long animations. And since these cartoonish plays always return any shot, no matter how far across the court, you can forget about your strategy and settle in for some painful endurance volleys. The best feature about the power shots is that you can turn them off. And we did.

Then there's the mini-games (and bonus court environments), which run from unplayable to maddening. Half of these games take place on fields so colorful that you can't see the ball. And the other half require the kind of tennis skill that the core game won't let you develop if power shots are turned on. If you've ever played multiplayer on that Paint The Wall game, well, you probably only played it once. It will kill your friends and then it will kill you.

Ok, sure, it looks great. Having new character choices is always a Good Sequel Thing (Wiggler!) To give the game proper due, there's not much you need to do to make a great tennis game, if that's all you plan to accomplish. Mario Tennis was a great tennis game. Mario Power Tennis was also a great tennis game, once you sidestepped the lousy add-ons. Just one that you largely didn't need if you still had the N64 version around.

Memory Score: "Yours."

This is the one that debuted the microphone games. That's why I got it.

The notion of voice-controlled games pushed me past my Party Ennui, and it was cute enough for a couple go-rounds. It was also nice to see the series step outside of the collect-coins-buy-stars paradigm and offer up some different goals on certain boards. Honestly, why *did* we have to have six boards with the exact same structure in the previous games?

Nevertheless, the interest level for Mario Party is on life-support these days. The games simply suck up too much time, and there's too much waiting around for your turn. We officially skipped on Mario Party 7 after this one. And Mario Party 8 is going to need to show some serious rationale before I'll pick it up on the Wii.

I've been argued with on this topic, but I remain steadfast in my opinion that this franchise needs to go online... not so you can play strangers and watch them disconnect once you're ahead, but so you can play against friends and take your turns simultaneously. Apply some of the community elements that online games have enjoyed for years - custom avatars, rankings, team variants - and you've got the Mario Universe game that can finally get the Nintendo brand online.

Memory Score: The game show thing is a good idea... perfect for a Wii appearance.

How bizarre that Resident Evil's grand resurrection - a game some say was the high point for this entire generation - was on the Nintendo Friggin' GameCube?

There's just no reason why this played out the way it did. My theory is that we all live inside the mindscape of a disillusioned Nintendo fan in the real world who wished so hard for the PS2's Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube that he created a pocket reality.

After such a convoluted development history, the even bigger shock was that the game was damn good. In that pre 01/05 world, Resident Evil was a bloody joke, most commonly known for overextending itself into ports and a truly awful online version. Core Game Number Four (No Subtitle) turned it all around.

The risks paid off. Some of the series' staple elements were scuttled, but no one mourned them. They made some pundit hay with the notion of "No Zombies In This One!" but come on; the Ganados are fucking zombies in every aspect that counts.

This game proved that you can turn around a dying franchise, giving hope to all the Bandicoots, Tomb Raiders, Spyros and Sonics of the world. You just have to aim for blisteringly awesome and end up topping it.

Because gamers are now sweating a new RE game like never before. You can count it once again among the Modern Greats like Metal Gear Solid and Legend of Zelda.

Memory Score: "What're ye selling?"

Next time: dust off your pistol, your beam cannon, and your bongos!

The new Sonic game comes out this week.

Pause for deafening silence.

The new Sonic Wii game comes out this week.

Oh, really?

Doing a Wii exclusive is Sega's last chance to make people care about Sonic again. Everybody hated the supposedly "reinvented" Sonic The Hedgehog game from last fall, where Sonic makes out with Lacey Chabert while his growing army of clones plays the game for him. I hated Sonic Heroes because the point of each level is to not run. So jumping onto the Wii's coat-tails and driving Sonic like a car with the remote is Do Or Die time.

And judging from the box art, "Sonic and the Secret Rings" is the game where Sonic finally has that fatal heart attack.

I'm debating picking it up. On the con side, Sonic has sucked donkey balls for over five years. On the pro side... this just may be that "back to basics" title that we've been waiting for. Just with a crappy, Berenstein Bears-esque title.

Yech. You'll recall this game was initially branded as Sonic Wildfire, which was cooler in a cheesily Sonic way. Some sort of copyright threat pulled "Wildfire," (was it that '80s cartoon with the horse?) leaving Sega with the spare dregs of remaining subtitles. Rush, Drift, Rivals, Heroes, Adventure, Blast, Advance... all used and discarded.

It's the "and the" that really hurts it. I'm thinking even plain "Sonic Rings" would have been an improvement. At least that would have sort of fit with the usual template for Sonic game titles. Sonic + Some Punchy Word. But they're probably saving that for the breakfast cereal.

What's with the Arabian Nights theme? Oh, I know... it's public domain and completely free to mis-appropriate in any way you like, God of War style. If you want to do gorgeous levels in a theme, go right ahead. But don't try to sell me on some half-assed pigslop that Sonic has to defend ancient Persia from a malevolent genie, jesus. I just want to be impressed when beautiful scenery goes whizzing past at a billion miles an hour. I realize that Sega is just trying to rise above the cliched forest world / city world / pinball world / water world / air world trope... but Arabian Nights is just about the randomest thing they could have chosen. From what I gather, the dev team didn't have much time to get a Wii exclusive together this close to launch, so this quick-cooked weirdness is what we get.

(And yes, I still consider February "close to launch." I'm already officially sick of the Wii hate crowd burning down buildings because of an alleged game drought; and on the weeks where the new VC games suck; and because of the still-unstated online game strategy; and freaking out over the push-back of Mario, Metroid and Smash Brawl. Sick. Of. It. Our Day One Wiis only slipped out of the 3-month warranty period yesterday for fuck's sake.

I don't care what system you own, if you need to have AAA titles drop every goddamn Monday, plus a stone cold release list of killer apps for the next three years, you're a complete misanthrope.

At least we seem to be done with all the sob stories from jackasses who chucked their remotes through a table lamp.)

So there it is. A new Sonic game. I'll let you know if I cave and pick it up.

It occurs about six minutes into the game. After avoiding helping your father unpack from moving to Long Life Town, you have to go meet the neighbors. Two of them are out gossiping just over your hovel's fence, Michelle and the town doctor.

This game is going to be super-great, I can tell already.

Agreed. Space isn't so bad. If you can make it past the Space Dinosaur, you've got Leopold there for some p-dom on the Baby Grand.

Also, "p-dom" is hip for "public domain." Stay in school, kids.

Although as cool as Space Elton was, Pokey's internal monologue takes the reader to simpler times, when happy ducks were known to "went quack."

I think we should all feel grateful that the author didn't just phone in a page about a Queen here.

It's tough to predict which way things will go in space. One planetoid you're listening to ragtime and the next you've got the Little Prince trying to kill you.

I like to imagine that, at this point, Pokey is still passed out and hallucinating about ducks, so Gumby is on his knees shaking him by the shoulders and shouting "DO YOU REMEMBER THE BOY, POKEY? THINK ABOUT THE BOY! COME BACK TO ME, DAMMIT!"

Follow along here... Gumby is lonely (Pokey obviously doesn't make it), so he wants to take a bath, which he decides quietly to himself. This third person omniscient narrator just gets creepier and creepier.

And I'd like to lodge an abuse complaint on behalf of the letters S and T. According to what I've learned from watching Wheel of Fortune, they're, like, the two most common consonants in the world. And they get lumped into one page about bathroom fixtures?

Next time: Pokey wakes up in time to join The Amazing Race! <-- SPOILER

I've been awfully controlled with my Virtual Console purchases, mainly because I think the pricing is just a little bit off. $8 for Genesis games is the one that really gets me, although most of the NES games wouldn't be worth $5 even if the Wii gave you a free blueberry mega-muffin with each purchase.

I'm pretty much only buying games that I don't already own in one form or the other. Which actually isn't a major limiting factor since I never had an NES, SNES or TG-16. Toe Jam & Earl is my only VC purchase that directly insults the Sega Genesis I have sitting in a box somewhere. Oh, and I guess me buying Super Mario Bros duplicates the SMB DX I have on Game Boy, but that's not quite the same thing. And anyway, it's Super Mario Bros.

Last week I cashed in the last of my Shop Channel credit for Kirby's Adventure, which I was astonished to learn was released in 1993. Again, I missed out on this period of consoles, so it never even occurred to me that somebody was still making NES games two years after the SNES came out. Especially good ones.

Kirby's Adventure is definitely worth the five bananas, especially when compared to the launch-day-NES dreck that's all over the Virtual Console. KA is suitably challenging, packed with sidebar games, and just seems way too big to be "just" an NES game. It's biggest failing is the crappy use of color (as in, there's barely any), which makes it look like an overgrown Game Boy game. (Which, incidentally, is where he debuted... Kirby's Dream Land on Game Boy, which, incidentally, I own. Back in those days, you bought anything with decent box art, without fretting about sequels or "New IP" or replay value. Hell, I have Mr. Chin's Gourmet Paradise, for crying out loud.) Kirby makes up for looking decidedly awful with a ton of great little sprite animations.

What really makes the game is the fun sense of exploration as you inhale bad guys to see which of the ugly goobers will give you their powers. You can suck up the bosses as well, which didn't even occur to me until I did it accidentally. And having the ability to float-fly at all times is a really interesting design choice... the game does a good job of making you regularly changeup your play style between the floating and the usual run-jumping.

A pleasant surprise, and the first VC game to which I've invested any serious time.

We received our first real blast of winter today, resulting in everyone staying home.

We saw it coming; last night we banked on this and treated Clark to a later-than-usual bedtime. We watched the first half of Star Wars.

He did move at all - completely glued to the movie - until the scene where Luke whines to Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru about having to postpone his application to the academy. That scene marks the point where it stops being about the "robots." He liked watching them.

After that, he was up and down, sometimes watching the movie and other times running around the room. We turned it off right as they free Leia from her torture cell.

During Darth Vader's first scene, in the very beginning of the movie, Rhonda and I both did the silly Vader-heavy-breathing sound effect, which he thought was hilarious. Quite a bit later, during the part where Vader realizes that Obi-Wan is somewhere on the Death Star, Clark did the breathing all on his own. I'm sure that's going to be a turnkey moment when he's sixteen and looking back trying to figure where it all went so wrong.

And then this morning - as I was showing Rhon Nintendo's latest unexpected weirdass Wii upgrade, the Everybody Votes Channel - Clark takes the remote, holds it like an NES controller and announces that he wants to play "Mar-o."

No shit. He kept urgently saying "Mar-o, Mar-o," until we understood. Now, I showed him Super Mario Bros a couple weekends ago, but we had not played it since. And yet it stuck in his little head.

All he can do is hit the Jump button, by the way. But I guess that is fun enough. I boot it up and Mario stands on that first 1-1 screen, jumping until time runs out.

Oh, and about that Everybody Votes Channel: Huh? I think that dark launch was met with a collective note of confusion. I mean, NOBODY had any idea this was coming, and then bammo there's your Wii glowing blue telling you about it. In the age of internet rumor and instant dissemination, Nintendo still can sneak up and toss a bonus at you. I like that Nintendo still enjoys surprises like this. I've certainly been impressed by Sony (although not lately), but I don't think I've ever been surprised by them. Nintendo, on the other hand, surprises everybody whenever they can. Fun.

Not that Everybody Votes Channel is the most incredible thing ever. It's just this odd little polling station where you drop your Mii onto your answer... which Nintendo then counts and reports back later with the final tally. It's dopey stuff like "Dog vs. Cat" and "I'd rather live in the 18th / 22nd Century."

I wonder if the next Wii revision will come with EVC and the other free downloadable Channels built in?

You can also submit suggestions for upcoming votes...

Let the grassroots effort begin here.

As weak as the Everybody Votes Channel is, you've got to hand it to Nintendo for not just sitting back and letting the Wii stagnate. Since launch, we've had the staggered release of the Forecast Channel, the News Channel, the Votes Channel... and the final version of the Internet Channel is due in another month or so. And all free of charge.

Of course, one hopes that we'll get some unannounced Channels with more substance to them. How about a Brain Age Channel, where you get various puzzles sent to you each day? Or a Pokemon Channel that lets you battle and win cool items in your Pearl/Diamond DS games? A Stats Channel that tracks your gameplay and gives awards sort of like/exactly like the Xbox's Achievements system?

And how about that freaking Demo Channel, huh, huh? Being able to tell Nintendo's marketing division that I prefer cats to dogs* is great**, but I want them to live up to their early promise of downloading new game demos.

*Where's my Nintencats??!?!
** No, it's not.

I'm riding really close to the end of Twilight Princess. I doubt I'll have it mopped up in time to dedicate my energies to Chulip this weekend, but it will be close. I did the Zant fight a few days ago - which was awesome, by the way - and I'm fairly certain that there isn't much left, storyline-wise.

But I already know what will happen. There will be a big battle, I will win, and credits will roll. Nintendo will graciously thank me for playing. I will be expected to turn off my Wii.

Except that I will want to go back and fish. Or find some heart pieces. Or delve deeper into that Cave of Trials. Which I can't do unless I go back to the last save point before the big finale.

I know I've railed about this before - specifically about Kingdom Hearts - but why can't games like this let you go back into the game world after beating the end guy? I absolutely hate games that let you spend 60+ hours screwing around a completely free environment, exploring the map to your heart's content... and then shut you out once Satan has been expunged. How about letting us enjoy the afterglow?

Resident Evil 4 was linear. Once you left the forest, you did not get to wander back into the forest just to shoot up more not-zombie zombies. I can understand why a closed-environment game like that would roll credits and turn off. That's why RE4 has those kickass bonus games and compounded money stash - for replay value. And being linear helped RE4 maintain a cohesive plot... unlike Twilight Princess, where the urgency of Hyrule's fate is only as pressing as your willingness to stop fishing.

And let's be honest here: Twilight Princess's plot is not anything to write home about. Unless you happen to be one of the game's writers, who probably did write the whole thing in one single letter to home. "Dear Mom. I'm thinking of having Link save the princess and occasionally turn into a wolf."

It's not like there's any expectation that the assassination of Ganondorf is going to eradicate every single roaming moblin, buzzard and spider the world over. Why? Hyrule could reasonably be expected to be just as dangerous post-Ganondorf. Hell, nobody in town ever gave a flying fuck about the castle being enveloped in a magical barrier anyway... so why should they care if tektites and helmasaurs still wander around the water temple?

What I'm getting at is that you should still be allowed to run around smacking baddies and exploring, even after Ganondorf is made as dead as he ever is. The thimble-sized plot should not preclude that. (As I've found with previous Zelda games, it's not the A-story that keeps me playing... it's the fun sidebar tales found in each dungeon area. Most of which are only tangentially related to the whole Evil Sorceror Enslaving Hyrule crap.)

Look at the GTA games. Perfect example. You can avoid the storyline as much as you want. Or you can finish the story and walk right back out your door. Why does it work? Because in GTA, the stakes are not high. San Andreas will not explode if CJ fails the final gang war. The watershed moments are relatively minor. CJ moves to another town. CJ wins a street race. CJ learns to trust again. This lets you weave your own version of events by effortlessly combining the core missions and the extra missions.

Nintendo even got this right with Paper Mario 2, to my great surprise. After beating what's-her-face, you end up right back at port, where you can continue to tackle sidequests. How tough would it be to give LoZ the same freedom? Instead, if you want to play more, you're invited to reload your last save point and pretend that you never stuck the knife into Ganon.

So what I'm doing now is getting all the heart pieces and gold bugs BEFORE the final fight. I only have about four of each to go. The one heart piece that has been killing me is that stupid one at the end of the spinny disk canyon challenge over by one of the fields. That bit makes me want to scream.

Final note: is there anything in the world uglier than the Twilight Princess open screen? A brown, PS1-era castle and a bloomed-out Link-on-a-horse. It looks like an alpha shot of Ico. I would love it if finishing the game unlocked a Second Quest where everything was changed to look like Wind Waker.

Back in December, I won an online contest for a copy of Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol. We're fair-to-moderate fans of the Karaoke Revolution franchise, although the general lack of features and too-small songlists kinda put us off the trail since KR2.

I won the uber-version that comes with the USB microphone ($55 MSRP)... and the bonus t-shirt is pretty sweet too.

What I did not expect was that KR is finally producing games that feel like full, genuine releases. The first game just trots out the songs, a few unlockables, and a handful of player characters. Even more egregious, the second game was virtually identical, aside from a new song list.

The American Idol edition has a Springfield flaming tire pile of unlockable content, mostly circling around clothing sets for the greatly increased choice of character models... but also heavy in short videos from various years of American Idol itself.

But the coolest/most bizarre addition is the EyeToy support (which other Kakaoke Rev games have done, but this is my first experience with it). Visually, it's hilarious to see live footage of your living room pumped into the digital recreations of the now-famous American Idol sets. But beyond that, KRPAI (hah) lets you make a 3D model of your head that you plop on top of a customizable body.

Predictably, the results are monstrous. But in a good way.

It's good enough that Clark instantly recognized Virtual Daddy, but still weirdly creepy. You need bright, saturating lighting, or else your face will end up tattooed with odd shadows and colors. Amps the fun quotient up into the stratosphere, tell you that. There's sort-of-me, pumping my fist and running through a set list of Taylor Hicks motion capture. Hilarious.

I brought the gear over to Tony's last night - game + memory card + USB mic + USB headset (for duets!) + EyeToy - and we brought the sexy back. We had a room full of people, most of whom actually performed. You know, I don't actually DO karaoke in the traditional bar/company party sense... but place it inside a video game metaphor and I'm there.

Just to give you an idea of how ridiculous the face thing looks, here's me and Tony celebrating a victory in a heated duets competition.

Tony's character is illegibly dark because of the lighting and the intense YouTube compression. Mine is passable at best. Still, you could do worse things with your EyeToy.

I know you're thinking that is the worst thing in the world, but it's not. For reasons unknown, Paula Abdul did not grant permission for her voice and likeness for the game. So you get Randy... Simon... and Laura. I'll bet there was some deep corporate meetings at Konami about whether or not to go through with this project with only 2/3rds of the judges signed on.

So big thanks to GameSetWatch for their contest! Very cool and very free.

February 2007 marks five years of fourhman.com archives. I was weblogging for a few years before 2002, but that was when I first installed Movable Type and made the leap to a professional amateur website. And as all Americans know from last September 11th, the fifth anniversary is the most important anniversary ever and everything should immediately stop and everyone must pay attention to whatever happened five years ago. Fourth anniversary? Piffle. Sixth? I can't even pronounce "sixth." But the fifth, well mister, you just sit your ass down and pay attention to how true heroes live.

So I thought I'd take a few to lay out some of the stuff I'd like to do within fourhman.com's next five years.

When's the next re-design? Am I due? This red-and-khaki look debuted in October '05, which is like thirty in web years. I've done seven complete re-designs in over a decade, some of which can still be found at archive.org. Overall, I like this look, but I've never been happy with how sparse things get once you scroll down any given archive page. So I can easily see some tweaking is in order. Which brings us to the first actionable item...

Switch to entry-based archives. Most weblogs I follow are archived by having each entry living on its own page (or, for the more ambitious bloggers, by day). Back when I started this, I was posting stuff maybe once a week, so a monthly archival solution seemed fine. Five years later, I have all these really heavy archive pages that scroll on endlessly and do not inspire efficient or attractive browsing. This changeup would allow for...

The return of comments. I had comments enabled on my game review pages until I started getting outbreaks of spam in them. For several months, I had to go in and hand-remove hundreds of fake, potentially viral comments... and that killed that idea. The best way around the problem centers around me finally paying for Movable Type instead of using the free-license version. Then I can handle a registration-based commenting system (like Blogger) that puts an end to random robot-generated spambombs.

If I switch to entry-based archive pages, I could easily add a space for visitor comments after every posting. At the moment, any interactivity is limited to that ShoutBox on the main page. I'd like to get back to a more open forum. Not that I expect more than a Comments (0) on any given entry, but I know it's something that I often take advantage of on the weblogs that I visit most, so I want to be able to offer that here.

Fold in the game reviews. Five years ago, my game reviews were theoretically the stars of the show. Now, they're just this waning sidebar feature. Half the time, I end up doing more-or-less reviews inside the main body of the weblog itself, so the formal game reviews do little more than add in stolen screenshots and an Amazon.com link.

What I plan on doing is making the "reviews" just part of the core weblog, which would be another beneficiary of moving to entry-based archiving. This also neatly removes any faux pressure to write a new one.

Quick-commented links out. One thing I struggle with is the preponderance of gigantic, overlong weblog postings. I'd like to be able to just throw up a link out to something stupid and/or amazing and just have a couple lines of snide commentary for you. Something really short, you know? My current design doesn't let me write short entries, because then the whole layout gets botched and looks like ass. So I want to zone off a small area where I can link to something, include a brief writeup, and have done with it. I'm thinking a lot of links out to current events news, stupid videos, game rumors... the kind of stuff I would love to post but do not necessarily have a lot to say on the matter.

I know I overwrite at times, and I know that nobody reads that kind of thing. Nothing is more daunting for a reader than to come across this lengthy, meandering page with no images and no self-editing. A quick-links section would let me post more interesting stuff and say less about it.

A Wii version? I've already set up wii.fourhman.com to point to the lo-fi version I output for cell phones, but that's just a temporary fix. Depending on how my other ideas go, I may set up a third template that's specifically engineered for the Wii browser (and yeah, I would like to re-do that mobile template as well). Of course, it would be presumptuous to bother with this until the final version of the Wii's Internet Channel is released.

Like many things on my site, having a Wii version would be largely for my benefit. We use the Internet Channel often enough out of sheer convenience that I can see the benefits of doing a fourhman.com with a slightly altered layout.

In the short term, I may begin by re-working my MT template code and investigating the more advanced archiving stuff. Beyond that, I really need to buy the Big Boys' version of Movable Type and see what other improvements that can offer.

I loved the Deception series back on the PS1. Brilliant stuff. The series consisted of three PS1 games released over a relatively short span of time, so as the PS2 era plodded to a natural denuemont, I was increasingly surprised that the franchise seemed to be dead.

After a five year absence, Deception returned in 2005, reinvented in name - if not in gameplay - as Trapt. Silly name. Probably would have been okay with it if it had been "Trapt" from the start, but "Deception" is soooo much cooler. I'm positive we can blame marketing for that one.

But who to blame for the fact that Trapt is little more than an expansion pack for the PS1 versions? They did absolutely nothing to bring this wonderful series into the next generation. Same artificial limitations on trap inventory. Same no-effort movies and death-scene-cutaways. Same ugly castle interiors. After so long of a wait, Trapt just barely manages to avoid insulting existing fans.

It's still ridiculously fun, in a PS1-nostalgia kind of way. Can you ever get tired of launching jerks into spiked platforms? And since it has been a good long time since I enjoyed a Deception game, I can almost give it a pass for looking and acting like a PS2 launch title. But it remains a letdown. It seems clear that Trapt did not spend much time in development, and was probably just done on weekends while the same team was doing their real work on the Fatal Frame games.

Memory Score: Where are the TMD?

After two games that, apart from general theming, had nothing to do with each other, this third installment unexpectedly managed to tie the entire series together. I won't say it answered all the questions, but it did provide enough connections to keep the fanbase nicely roused.

With the camera-as-weapon dynamic pretty much perfected in Crimson Butterfly, The Tormented concentrated on multiple playable characters with differentiated abilities (a departure from the previous games, unless you count the brief sections of FF2 where you control Mayu). The other big change was the idea that the game proper was something to be encountered only in a dreamworld... which explained why Tormented could crossover with the other two. This led to a more traditional video gamey design that almost makes the game feel like it is divided into "levels," since main character Rei wakes up at key intervals, earning a (usually) restful break in her modern-day home.

I consider Crimson Butterfly the best of the trilogy, but Tormented is still a great play. I know that nobody truly believes it when a reviewer says that Game X actually frightened him or her... but with these games, you'd better believe it.

This is video gaming's premiere horror franchise, and one of the PS2's defining moments. (1 and 2 were later ported to Xbox, but Tormented remains a PS2 exclusive.)

Memory Score: sleep, priestess, lie in peace...

Scroll up and you'll see that I went after just every piece of MGS2 released in the US. But I managed to miss the debut of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater... largely because it came out in the shadow of San Andreas. I wagered that Konami would do a collector's edition re-release sometime later - as they had with Sons of Liberty - so I held out for that. I was right.

Subsistence - which is a reference to Snake Eater's weirdo gameplay addition of eating local flora and fauna for health-ups - was a helluva deal. Snake Eater + online play + minigames + extras + a compiled "movie" of Snake Eater's cutscenes. I even sprung for the mega-ultra-supreme edition with a bonus DVD with a short MGS retrospective documentary. All for less than the original price of Snake Eater by itself!

Although the storyline is far below the Twin Peaksian standard of Sons of Liberty, MGS3 is still a sequel/prequel worthy of the name. Kojima just owns this, and I have no reason not to adore every scrap of rumor surrounding MGS4. The online aspect of Subsistence was short-lived; a collector's edition game simply isn't going to generate the buzz of a full online multiplayer game. I spent more time playing the MSX-emulated versions of the original Metal Gear games.

And I loved loved loved the movie disc. Yeah, it's not exactly a gripping four hours (boy, could it have used some editing!), but every storyline-driven game ought to include something like this.

Memory Score: oh, but the "field surgery" part was pretty crappy

Next time: Sora escapes from the GBA, the peripheral game that made us all forget DDR, and an overlooked horror title that's DOA.

Back to the intense Olympic-level competition of the annual Nintendo Power Awards.

Best Platformer: Drill Dozer, Kirby Squeak Squad, New Super Mario Bros., Super Princess Peach, Super Monkey Ball, Yoshi's Island
Mario will win this one, and I have to admit I had to carefully consider my vote here.

Because I voted for Drill Dozer again. Yeah, part of it that I just like seeing the underdogs win, but also I think that Drill Dozer comes to the table with more newness than New Super Mario Bros.

I really like both of those games, so I wouldn't mind a Mario win here.

Best Shooter/Action Game: Mega Man ZX, Metal Slug, Metroid Prime Hunters, Rayman, Red Steel, Starfox Command
First of all, what's Raving Rabbids doing in this one? There was nothing else to nominate that might actually fit the category? You might as well throw Chibi-Robo in there.

I went with Starfox Command largely because it's the only game on the list that I own. Ironically, the best part of the game for me was the 2D strategy portions, rather than the shooter parts. Somebody needs to flesh out a full game of that.

Best Sports/Racing Game: Excite Truck, Madden Wii, Madden GameCube, Sonic Riders, Tony Hawk Who Cares, Wii Sports
Oh come on. There is no doubt what's going to win this award. All of last fall's good press, all the YouTube videos, all the positive word-of-mouth that Sony or Microsoft would kill to have... it all centers around one game: Wii Effin' Sports. Everything else on that list is a joke in comparison. Wii Sports all the way.

Best Alternative Game: Brain Age, Cooking Mama, Elebits, EBA, Odama, Trauma Center
Now here's a toughie, because I own every single game up for this award. Nintendo should give ME an award just for being awesome. Maybe I'll make one. Hold on a tick.

There. Feel free to take that for your forum sig.

Anyway, this was obviously a difficult choice. Let's follow my thought process.

• Odama is right out. Neat idea, but poorly implemented and ugly as hell.
• Brain Age. Ok, Ok, it's of the proof-of-concept "New Game" model, along the lines of Wii Sports... but not exactly the kind of thing that I would like to see drive a new world of video gaming. It's flash cards, dude.
• Cooking Mama: super-cute, a small diversion, but lacking any real meat (see what I did there.)
• Trauma Center, the Wii version... the remote controls are cool, but I miss the tactile aspect found in the DS original. I did appreciate that it was easier, however. But the low-end presentation has to count against it (no voice work! still graphic cutscenes!) So it's a No, dog.
• Elebits. It's silly, it's intriguing, it's a good use of FPS controls without an FPS game. But not as fun as I'd hoped. Could have had a better showing with some mini-games in backup.

So what's that leave us with? That's right.

Best Multiplayer: Children of Mana, Madden, Metroid Hunters, Super Monkey Whosis, Tetris DS, Wii Sports
I initially wanted to support Tetris in this one, because it would be great to see the grand old babooshka return to prominence. Then I remembered how the online play was sorta crappy and featureless. So chalk this one up to Wii Sports again.

Best New Character: Agents from EBA, Chibi-Robo, Dr. Weaver from Trauma Center, Jill from Drill Dozer, Midna from Twilight Princess, Rocket from Rocket Slime
At first I thought how cool it was that Nintendo offered up a category to honor new IPs, and then I saw freaking Twilight Princess on the list. So right away you know dopey Midna is going to win. Seriously? People think that little plot device is interesting?

I, however, cast my ballot for Cheebo. He's instantly cool to look at, exceptionally marketable, and at the center of a very intriguing universe.

Best Story/Writing: Chibi-Robo, Contact, FFV, Twilight Princess, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Trauma Center
Hey, I wonder if Twilight Princess will win, despite having the same spare story as every other recent Zelda game. Zelda's strength is in gameplay and epic scale, not in any kind of deep, meaningful plot. When TP wins, we'll have to endure Nintendo Power's inappropriately gushing hype-ograph.

Count my vote for Chibi-Robo. I would have chosen Trauma Center, except that the read-only format saps all the life out of the globe-spanning medical outbreak melodrama.

Best WiFi Functionality: Castlevania, Clubhouse Games, Mario vs Donkey Kong 2, Metroid Hunters, Tetris DS, Tony Hawk DS
Metroid will win this one, although Castlevania may sweep in for the upset simply due to it being a newer game.

I voted for Clubhouse Games because it's the one game on the list that comes closest to delivering the online experience that we've been begging Nintendo to implement.

Best Overall Wii Control: Elebits, Madden, Super Monkey Again, Super Swing Golf, Trauma Center, Wii Sports
Can you believe NP didn't self-nominate Twilight Princess for this one? I'll predict that Wii Sports walks away with this one.

Ever the iconoclast, I voted for Trauma Center. Most of the Wii stuff out now revolve around big sweeping motions. Trauma Center requires precision control with short, sure movements. So it's quite a change from the current perception of Wii games.

While we're talking about Trauma Center (no doubt for the last time), I want to point out that I was really disappointed with the game's lack of realism. I think this series needs to leap into photorealistic graphics. You should see organs packed into the human body, not just glassy 3D models floating in the ether. I want skin being cut away to reveal the layers of fat underneath, not just a thin slice and DVE dissolve presto-chango. (And you should definitely be allowed to screw up and cut open the wrong section, with malpractice-causing results.) I'm not saying it should go gross and gory, just that it could greatly improve itself if the look matched the content. It's surgery, not a damn puzzle game. On the DS, you had the excuse of N64-level capabilities. The Wii should have turned this into a realistic doctor sim. This could have been a breakout launch title, but it instead was a DS-port also-ran.

The other month when EGM did their predictible PS3 vs. Wii shootout article, one of the idiot reviewers claimed that Trauma Center made him queasy. Are you fucking kidding me?

Best DS Functionality: Brain Age, Contact, Cooking Mama, Electroplankton, EBA, Lost Magic
The problem with nominating a game like Electroplankton is that absolutely no one played it. So if it wins, you know the fix is in. I'm going to guess that Brain Age will win, even though it doesn't deserve it since it can't understand the spoken word "blue." I voted for EBA, again.

Overall Game of the Year
This is the one where they list 30 games and you pick your favorite three. Odama did not make the list. My first two choices were really easy and highly telegraphed if your short term memory has been following my voting choices. EBA and Chibi-Robo.

My third pick was a toss-up. I probably would have picked Elebits... if it was on the list, WTF. New SMB, Wii Sports, Trauma Center, Brain Age, Drill Dozer and Starfox Command would have all been solid choices. And of course, Twilight Princess. But I went with Tetris DS, because, gimpy multiplayer aside, it brought a full-featured finish to a very dusty classic, with plenty of extras and retro fan service.

So there you are. Get ready for the Twilight Princess blowout issue in two months.