Watched most of the Metal Gear 4 bonus disk.
There's about 40 minutes of behind-the-scenes stuff at Kojima Productions, including some subtitled arguments between Hideo Kojima and his weary staff. Then an extensive series of documentaries. But the interesting bit is the full, uncut opening to MGS4... all those bizarre TV shows (mostly live action) that are intended to give the player a unique view on the world that Metal Gear inhabits.
I give. No more talk about Siren.
Last week's news of a blu-ray release for Siren: Blood Curse was apparently for the European market. Even setting aside the common lying tactics that game companies implement when discussing and not discussing upcoming releases, I think I'm giving Siren a pass. It's not going to be re-playable enough to warrant the 8 gig install, and I'm not likely to throw it away once I'm done with it. So if they get around to a disk release for the US, I'll think about it then. Or once I see the Japanese version on sale for import. (Play-Asia currently shows it as backordered, which indicates a lot of US gamers have chosen the disk option.)
Now, PSN Burnout Paradise on the other hand, now there's a game that can eaisly justify an 8 gig install, because that's the kind of game I could see coming back to over and over again. Especially once the thankless task of swapping disks is eliminated.
Warhawk 1.5 coming.
Is ANY game out there tossing out as much free (and paid) content as Warhawk? Sony is really dedicated to keeping Warhawk alive. 1.5 will allow custom soundtracks (via the XMB) and the long awaited training modes... which I'm hoping amount to a kind of single player experience. Oh, and trophies!
Bought my first ZiT.
The ZiT feature in GTA4 is really cool. Hear a song on the radio, dial ZiT, and then receive a text msg with the song/artist name... plus an Amazon link in your email and Rockstar Games Social Club account.
I bought "Arm in Arm (Shy Child Mix)," because it's the song featured in the coolest of the early pre-release trailers. Although I bought it through iTunes, not Amazon. Whoops!
Unlocked Baby Luigi.
Got back into Mario Kart Wii this week, as we had some houseguests who were super into it. Seeing those ? on the character select screen is like acid in my eye, so I started working on the time trial mode to unlock some of them. Got Baby Luigi.
There's still a handful of unlockables remaining, all revolving around beating even more time trials and getting star ranks on the various Grand Prix races.
Now we're into Ben 10.
Clark's current fascination is Ben 10, and we like to encourage these sorts of things. This weekend we bought him one of the Omnitrix wrist toys, which allows him to turn the dial and slam the button just like Ben 10 does in the cartoon. Between his light-up Omnitrix, light-up Batman sword, and light-up Clone Wars lightsaber, we put on quite a backyard show at sundown.
As far as Cartoon Network's original productions go, it's quite good. Most of their action-oriented shows are/were pretty crappy (Megas XLR? Storm Hawks?), but this one deserves its success.
Hey, you know what CN original I miss? Time Squad. I totally have some preliminary card game ideas for that one.
From what I hear about Kojima as a boss is that he's supposedly got sort of odd combination of the zany visionary vibe of Steve Jobs meets the tough regimen of Béla Károlyi.