September 2008 Archives

Nintendo of Japan is even more adventurous than Nintendo of America. Meet Slide Adventure: Mag Kid, a wholly new IP, based around a very intriguing DS peripheral. Play-Asia.com had a crazy summer sale where this game - plus the specialized add-on - was only $15.

And now the Colonial Response: a modern version of the NES Zapper, reduced to solid state plastic parts since the Wii Remote already contains more than enough tech to simulate the simplistic light guns of yore. Although the Crossbow Training + Zapper bundle was originally $20 in the fall of 2007, it shot up to $25 after the holidays and has unfairly sat there ever since... except for at Walmart, where it has been normal stock at $20 for months.

CONCEPT: Slide Adventure: Mag Kid has a fantastic peripheral-dependant concept. The ass-end of a laser mouse gets plugged into the GBA slot on your DS, simultaneously providing a way for the DS to track physical motion and raising the entire unit up to a comfortable reading angle.

The entire game takes place from a top-down perspective, following the adventures of refrigerator magnets brought to life. By gliding the DS across a flat surface, you move your magnet character through the floors, desks and countertops of a normal household. Enemy magnets are dispatched by slamming into them, and they can then be absorbed so as to borrow their powers Kirby-style. (In fact, given Nintendo's willingness to float Kirby through bizarre game schemes - see Kirby Pinball, Kirby Tilt-n-Tumble, and Kirby Canvas Curse - I'm surprised they didn't just turn the laser mouse doohickey into a new Kirby game.) 7 points. I'd give it more but the non-compelling character visuals turn this new IP into a dud-on-arrival.

Link's Crossbow Training is a series of tiered shooting gallery challenges, mostly notable for re-using a ton of Twilight Princess graphic assets. Even $25 is a budget price for a Wii game, discounting the tech-less Zapper, and this game does nothing to hide its half-a-game status. It doesn't offer anything new about the Hyrule of Twilight Princess, casting doubt on the need for the Zelda dressing. 5 points.

GAMEPLAY: A great concept, an interesting piece of physicality... but not so great gameplay. The flatness of the world leads to confusing map boundaries and the flatness of the storyline (such as I can glean from context clues in the Japanese cutscenes) is hardly as innovative as the control scheme.

The critical fail is the lack of a true, seamless open world... much of your time in lost in lengthy scenes of the house's occupants unknowingly transporting you around the house. Instead of just sliding from room to room, in effect you have a complicated flowchart of movement, where getting to Dad's desk requires going from the bedroom to the kitchen to the den every single time.

The core idea is grand, but the execution is tedious. The actual motion input is cute and fun, but the game seems determined to slow you down and break your pace. Plenty of minigames and ancillary modes help prop up this score to 6 points.

Compared to light gun legends like the Point Blank series (hey, why isn't that on Wii?!?), Link's Crossbow Training is like a free browser game. Although there is a reasonable variety of level types (pop-up shooting gallery, on-rails shooting, 360-degree rotating shooting, free-roaming shooting), there's no alternate modes or options. It is what it is. You compete for high scores and unlock the levels in a linear progression.

It should be a WiiWare download, quite frankly. I'd play it quite a bit more if I didn't have to rustle up the disk. It's an impulse choice, not a destination game.

Then there's the Zapper itself, which feels like a toy and never seems to properly align. You'll do better without the Zapper casing; just play with your normal Remote + Nunchuk stance. 7 points. That'd likely be a 8 at least if this was an always-available Channel game.

VALUE: $15 is a great price on Mag Kid, an imported, Japan-only game packed with a funky exclusive, collectible peripheral. The original import price had to be in the $60 range. 9 points.

$20 from $25 isn't much, but there's no way I was buying Crossbow Training at $25 after seeing it originally sell for $20. I have principles. The Zapper is largely junk, and the game isn't much more than fodder for parties already burned out on Wii Sports and Wii Play. 5 points.

TIMELINESS: Nintendo likely has no intention of prepping Mag Kid for an American release. So this game will probably become one of those mystical Nintendo legends over here, like Sin & Punishment or Tingle's Rupeeland. Sure, the gameplay is mediocre, but so was Sin & Punishment, and the optical laser tech is very interesting. I imagine the DS homebrew scene would love to reverse engineer some games for it. Slide Adventure: Mag Kid will remain unique for some time. 7 points.

Link's Crossbow Training was barely a value proposition when it launched, Zelda-verse notwithstanding. Shooting gallery games are a dime-a-dozen on Wii, and now that WiiWare happened, you even have your choice for dedicated Channel gaming. Still, the game retains Nintendo's usual polish, even if the final result is a budget release. 5 points.

FINAL: 29 for Mag Kid, 22 for Crossbow Training. The strange and rare overtakes the familiar and simple!

Continuing from Year None Cover Gallery, part 1, here's the rest of the naked covers DC has posted for the second half of the return of Ambush Bug.

Issue 4, October 2008: How can the DC Universe survive a year without Ambush Bug? This question may or may not be answered, cats and dogs may or may not live together, this copy may or may not make any sense and we may or may not take a journey through the world of 52.

From what I've seen of the initial books in this mini, "through the world of 52" will likely be a very loose promise. Not to mention that 52 itself was sort of scattershot and uneven... there will likely be very likely recognizably 52 elements in this book.

Although, as a Bug fan, it doesn't much matter to me.

Issue 5, November 2008: Infinite Omacs are just the start to yet another hilarious romp through the DC Universe with our favorite green bug. All this and the coveted recipe for Ma Hunkel's world-famous meatloaf! Yummers!

Hee hee! Kevin Maguire doing another Justice League International parody cover!

You can see the summaries falling apart by this point. Not even the DC marketing team has any idea what's going on.

Issue 6, December 2008: Our last issue of this stunning, award-winning literary masterpiece takes us deep into the mind of Ambush Bug. The other 21 pages will be just as exciting, we promise.

Dude. Darwyn Cooke Ambush Bug cover. I imagine that will be fully colored by the time it sees print; can't imagine DC doing a b&w Ambush Bug cover. That image just makes me wish somebody along the line had introduced the character into one DC's many animated universes. To date, the closest we've come is a cover Christopher Jones did for a fake issue of Justice League Adventures.

I'd even take the simplified Bat-Mite version of Ambush Bug, where he's just some fool who considers himself Superman's biggest fan... and then shows up to wreak innocent, unintentional havoc with the League.

Aeropodcast #51

Man, if I don't take notes during recording, I forget everything I said and then have nothing to tell you about it. On this week's 'cast...

• I talk about my latest acquisition: an Xbox 360 faceplate.
• I suggest "Sad Gwydion" as a PC-friendly replacement for my Sad Chao series.
• I admit to crying at the end of Speed Racer.
• I rag on Beyond Good & Evil a little. Not much. Not as much as I'd like. But a little.
• And I am forced to select my "favorite movie." It's not a great moment in the history of podcastdom.

Big failure at Toys R Us.

That damned 4% on the TRU Mastercard has done me dirty again. Yesterday, the Toys R Us staff first tried to tell me that de Blob was not yet out. Then they informed me that they did indeed have Buzz Quiz TV, but could not sell it until Tuesday. Both of those games came out last week. I hate them, I hate them, I hate them.

I have a $10 off $100 coupon. I'll be back later in the week. Want to bet I show up on Wednesday and one or both of those games are still not for sale?

About that 360 faceplate...

Let me explain, as it ties together Items 1 and 2 on this little missive.

Saturday was the Geoffrey's birthday event at TRU, and they had little kids craft stations set up throughout the store, timed to open just as naptime starts for all decent children (noon to 3). As luck would have it, one of these tables was dedicated to LEGO Batman: The Videogame. The concept was this: decorate a 360 faceplate with four tiny LEGO Batman stickers (and crayons, if you're nasty), and "as a reward" we were told, you get a LEGO Batman paper-mask-on-a-stick. Clark performed as such. We were surprised that we got to keep the faceplate.

So now I own an Xbox 360 faceplate, which contains the very clear plastic shields that have lit up red on oh so many 360s.

Incidentally, the man operating the station said the faceplate was for Wii.

Cro-Mag Rally? Seriously?

Hey, what's the best way to instantly grenade any iPhone gaming cred? How about a TV commercial showing an iPhone running Cro-Mag Rally, an ugly seven-year-old Mario Kart 64 ripoff? Yep, that'd do it.

Pirates on Blu-ray.

Bought the boxed set. Thus far, Clark has greatly preferred the first one to the second one. The first one has skeletons; the second one does not.

Spending season has begun.

Last week, LEGO Batman. This week, de Blob and Buzz, if they'll have me.

After that, Sam & Max Season One. Two weeks after that, LittleBigPlanet and Rock Band 2. Mid-November, Animal Crossing: City Folk.

I have two weeks remaining vacation to plan. It will be carefully deployed.

We're always surprised at what he remembers.

Every now and then Clark requests a bedtime story "not from a book," which means he wants us to tell him a story. Usually this is a lights-out affair because he's very, very tired... and usually I fall back on a random super-hero origin story. Some time ago, I happened to tell him a truncated version of "For the Man Who Has Everything." We had not spoken of it since, but tonight he asked for the "story with Batman, and Superman's party, and the sleepy flower."

So I dug out my twenty year old copy of Superman Annual #11 and read him the Alan Moore original.

Scipio of The Absorbascon recently wrote another post with elements of his well-thought-out and clearly delineated comparisons of DC and Marvel. As companies, as characters, as storytellers... Scip has this down and it is fascinating. Plus, it's an excuse for me to run some great George Perez art.

Scipio has been banging this drum for a while now, but here's his latest:

As I've mentioned before, Marvel's heroic roots are in the paranoid pessimism of the 1950s/60s (the Silver Age), whereas DC's heroic roots are in the cockeyed optimism of the 1930s/40s (the Golden Age).

This fact colors everything each company does. There are literally thousands of examples, but I'll recap just one from this season's biggest crossovers. In the DCU, zillions of heroes fight a seemingly hopeless fight against Evil (or the Depression, or the Axis; it's all the same) but never give up. Meanwhile, in the Marvel World, disguised aliens infiltrate our world and turn heroes against one another. It's a nearly perfect example of one of the essential paradigmatic differences between DC and Marvel: DC heroes are in conflict with villains, while Marvel heroes are in conflict with one another.

He is just. So. Right.

What is especially brilliant about it is that he has found a way to hold the discussion without attacking either side. There's no fanboy extremism here. It is entirely logical and acceptable to imagine preferring either side of the equation.

Paranoid Pessimism vs. Cockeyed Optimism. That twist of phrase instantly summons of images of gangly, harried Peter Parker, set against the squinting, oblivious Clark Kent. It makes me proud to be a comics fan.

There Will Be Brawl (therewillbebrawl.com)
An adult, dark, clumsily edited (but worth your time) mini-movie at the driving forces behind Smash Bros. The guy playing Wario is great. I also like how the movie gets right to finding reasons to write out the characters who appeared in Melee but were left out of Brawl.

Sarah Palin as Real-Life Disney Movie (collegehumor.com)
Special bonus TWO-embed movie post! Just a few weeks after Matt Damon compares Sarah Palin's random ascendancy to a crappy Disney movie, Collegehumor.com delivers a stunningly accurate trailer.

A Reality Check On Change (Newsweek via Mark Evanier)
Turns out Obama DOES have his name on major legislation, Ms. Palin. Almost as many bills as McCain, despite McCain's longer career in politics.

Read-a-long with Nintendo Power #234 (Aeropause)
I added some minor graphics to my Nintendo Power article format. I've been meaning to get to that for some time now - as it helps the post more legible - but I'm lazy.

THERE IS ONLY ONE GAME OF 2006 (UK Resistance)
An old article, but a great read. It's a loving look at Animal Crossing: Wild World and does a great job of showing off what's so awesome about AC. Which a lot of reviews do not do. I love the proposed motto: "Simple, but you'd be fucked without it."

PETA wants Ben & Jerry's to use human breast milk (Daily Press)
Oh quiet down PETA-haters, they're just trying to make a point.

Hero for the indie masses, Everyday Shooter puts an arty, musical spin on the moldy Asteroids concept. Sony marked it down to $5 during last year's Thanksgiving PSN sale.

Ambitious by almost any definition, The Orange Box offers five games on one disk... Team Fortress 2, Portal, Half-Life 2, and two HL2 expansion episodes. By all accounts, not a stinker in the bunch - although this PS3 edition has become famous for being buggy and abandoned by the publisher. For a game this fully-featured and well-received, it's a little surprising to see it busted down to a Lair price level of $15.

CONCEPT: I think I already described Everyday Shooter's concept. Arthouse Asteroids. It's a dual-stick shooter, meaning you use one to move and one to shoot, Robotron-style. But instead of the usual boring sci-fi theming, Everyday Shooter goes abstract, with blocky, pop art enemy types and level goals. Each board looks entirely different, so one single screenshot does not do the game justice.

But the true star of the game is the acoustic guitar soundtrack, designed to compose itself as you play.5 points.

I have to narrow the focus for Orange Box, because I only played Portal and I will probably only ever play Portal. I guess it's nice to have this waiting in the sidelines should a PS3 drought hit, but even then I'll probably just play MGS4 again.

So, Portal. Portal is proof that the first-person perspective game has atrophied to comatose levels over the past fifteen years. We can do more than just rehash Doom in WWII settings. On paper, Portal sounds like a puzzle game, but it is so well-rooted in the first-person experience that it becomes much more than what you would expect. This isn't just shifting the camera to "inside the puzzle" or rendering a puzzle game in three dimensions like Lode Runner 3D.

Portal plays with your perspective. Once you build the complete portal-creation device, allowing you to walk instantly between doorways you create, you've been handed a mind-bending set of tools to solve each level's problem. Add to that the concept of preserved momentum, and you have a methodology unique in gaming.

Not to mention the convincing environments (sterile lab setting gives way to razor's edge survival), the passive-aggressive guard robots, and the dramatis personae of GLaDOS herself. Brilliant stuff, 9 points.

GAMEPLAY: There's not much to say about the controls, given the limited structure. The level-specific combos and enemy patterns are clever enough to take a couple rounds to dope them out. However, you're (initially) stuck doing the levels in a linear order so if you're balls on one of them, you're out of luck. I felt like I was doing that first round far more times than I wanted to, and I wasn't good enough - or interested in becoming good enough - to see all the game has to offer.

Seems to take a ton of playthroughs to accrue enough points to work up the unlockable ladder, and the game just isn't that compelling in the final analysis. Somebody needs to figure out a way to have this game be playable while the damn PS3 is doing one of those interminable system/game updates, because that's about the only situation that would bring me back to playing it on a regular basis... as a loading screen for something more fun. 4 points.

Portal's strength - the first-person perspective - is also its greatness weakness. You're subject to the usual failings of the FPS. Lousy peripheral vision and camera reaction time, the disconnect in reality that becomes obvious as you adjust to timing your jumps, and general looseness of the console control scheme... not really Portal's fault, per se, but when you're that impressed with everything else, the limitations of the genre become even more glaring.

Portal also takes a little too long to get rolling. But when it does, it's as unique and clever as everyone has been saying. 8 points.

VALUE: $10 is definitely right out for Everyday Shooter, and I wouldn't spend the $5 on it today. Last year, as the PS3 was lurching along in fits and starts, Everyday Shooter could command some attention, but not any longer. Still, there's a pile of replay value, for those of you who would feel so inclined. 4 points.

$15 for Orange Box is pretty amazing. They sell Portal alone for $20! Of course, the troubled PS3 version of Orange Box may never see a proper bug fix update, which means the rest of the package may be stuck with a fair number of issues. So you have to count that against it, even if you do as I did and play naught but Portal. 7 points.

TIMELINESS: One year later, Everyday Shooter just doesn't retain that wow factor. Shmups are everywhere on the various console download networks, and many have received far more care than Everyday Shooter. It was the "It" game for a very brief period. 3 points.

Portal, however, still stands unmatched. You'd think we would have a glut of small-scale first-person puzzle adventures by now, except that being as smart as Portal is not easy. 8 points.

FINAL: Everyday Shooter tallies 16 points, but critical darling Portal scores 32 for the win.

You knew. You and I both knew that nobody was going to do a bloody thing to make LEGO Batman better than LEGO Indiana Jones or LEGO Star Wars. We all knew this.

But it was so nice to hope.

LEGO Batman still has the co-op issues that have plagued the series since 2005. We gave them a pass back then because, hey, it's the first game and nobody expected a goddamn LEGO game to be any good. Much less a LEGO Star Wars game. And then we gave LEGO Star Wars II a pass because, hey, it's really just the same engine and it's really late in the generation and this is the trilogy that we all wanted in the first place.

Now here we sit. Suffering through three-year-old design flaws because we fucking love Batman. Or, more specifically, Killer Moth.

Already, in just four levels, we've watched helplessly as Player Two gets "turned off" because Player One walked too far ahead. Or Player One gets pinned behind something because Player Two has camera control. Or Player One gets stuck in an infinite fall because he keeps respawning directly on top of a inclined plane over a bottomless pit. It's so unclean.

But if you can possibly set that aside, LEGO Batman is just as good as LEGO Star Wars II. Good puzzles, good platforming, good unlockables, cute-as-hell characters. Obviously I'm more into this because it's right up my flagpole, being DC Comics.

Clark and I took today off to go get the game. We arrived at the mall an hour before it actually opened, because I'm too terrible to actually know when that happens. So we watched some seniors do some line dancing and then went to a nearby park.

When we got back to GameStop, I overheard some distraught customers complaining about the preorder bonus. You were supposed to get your pick of one of four LEGO keychains... Batman, Robin, Joker or Catwoman. But this branch received nothing but a pile of Robins. So I had to prep Clark a little on this, as he knew about the choice and was set on getting Batman. Weeks ago he did select Robin as his second choice, but when you're three a "second choice" is so far out of reach as to be entirely mythical.

The manager apologized to everybody; she was pissed too. Although honestly, you can go buy a real Batman LEGO set any day of the week. So not getting a Joker mini-fig keychain really isn't a big deal. For $20 or under you can probably have your pick of the LEGO Batman cast, plus some doofy vehicle or playset to build.

Clark was still disappointed, so I offered to take him to Toys R Us to do just that: buy an actual Batman LEGO set. Unbelievably he said "No. Let's go straight home, daddy."

We fired it up and burned through a couple of levels before naptime. It's blatantly too complicated for him to truly play, but he walks around and jumps/punches well enough. I have to coach him through the tricky bits, like when you're expected to grapple to a higher platform and creep along a tightrope. He likes the batarangs, but is confused by the game's method for deploying them. (You can't throw them at nothing, you have to select a target.)

He hates the idea of Batman changing costumes, the little purist. You're supposed to swap Bats into a bomb suit or a heat-resistant suit or whatever at certain points. All of these look a little different than the stock black-and-gray batsuit, and Clark just wants Batman to stay looking like Batman. In the first level, you need the bomb suit to clear away some debris. After much complaining, I borrowed his Batman and placed the bombs... and I had to immediately switch Batman back to the normal costume before handing him the controller. Later on I was doing a level by myself and I had Batman in the sonic suit, and Clark walked in and accusingly asked "Why him blue?"

Clark excelled at the first driving level, which is a top-down demolition derby through the streets of Gotham. He enjoyed driving the Batmobile so much that he was frustrated when the next level was back to Batman and Robin.

The main event is after Clark goes to bed, when Rhonda and I can play for reals. We completed both LEGO Star Wars games to 100%, and I have every expectation to be just as awesome in LEGO Batman. Maybe awesomer.

Well, a few things. But overall we enjoyed it. It's a very strange film in that it retains the visual language of a cartoon, with all the motion lines and montage sequences. I've never seen a movie more determined to show off eye candy in every scene. I imagine it seems more daring (or daunting) to someone who doesn't play video games eight days a week. It was rather misunderstood by the press; look at these pull quotes I found on the Yahoo Movies page.

"...like being force-fed a Costco-size bag of your favorite candy. " C, Ty Burr, Boston Globe "...a manufactured widget, a packaged commodity that capitalizes on an anthropomorphized cartoon of Capitalist Evil in order to sell itself and its ancillary products." C-, Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun-Times

"You'll want fall asleep whenever long-winded evil businessman Royalton (Roger Allam) shows up, and eventually not even another tricked out CGI car will rouse you from your slumber." B-, Geoff Berkshire, Chicago Tribune

"Go, Speed Racer, go! Go find a story more worthy of your mind-blowing visuals!" C+, Matt Stevens, E! Online

"Young boys are the only suitable audience..." C, Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

"A Saturday morning live-action cartoon with stellar visual effects but rudimentary story and characters." C, Kirk Honeycut, Hollywood Reporter

"This adventurously awful film is awful in many ways at once." D-, Kyle Smith, New York Post

"...winds up smothering the fun in self-conscious grandiosity." C-, A.O. Scott, New York Times

"What impresses with its 'wow!' factor early on becomes repetitive and headache-inducing later in the proceedings." C, James Berardinelli, ReelViews

"...if this action extravaganza represents the future of movies, it's going to be a sad, dead and awful future." C, Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

"This one is a kiddie show all the way..." B-, William Arnold, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"For a movie about velocity, the excitement factor is low and the races feel like a drag."C, Claudia Puig, USA Today

Yikes. I wonder what most of those grumps were expecting. I mean, this is Speed Racer. Speed Racer has been awful for forty years. I wouldn't have walked in looking for intense character development or a deep narrative arc. At least, not in any Speed Racer film true to the source material.

I'm not even a big Speed Racer fan, but I was able to appreciate the callouts to the original. The late-60s background characters (always dressed in berets and super tight shirts), the inclusion of so much of what made the show ridiculous (Chim-Chim, Snake Oiler, a car built to throw beehives), and the near-constant usage of the Speed Racer theme music. And it was interesting to see how the movie tries to make sense of the World of Speed Racer without sacrificing anything. Like, the guy's name is "Speed Racer" and that's not considered stupid. There's no easy saves there, like declaring "Speed" a nickname, or any kids at school making fun of him for it.

The history lesson showing how auto racing got to this F-Zero-esque point actually makes you think it could have happened that way with the right technology. Certainly early turn-of-the-century drivers were controlling very dangerous machines... what if modern racing maintained the same relative danger level? The key invention would be that bubbly gel stuff that automatically rescues drivers from death... once something like that shows up, all bets are off in terms of track design and vehicle enhancements.

Sure, I would have eliminated a couple of the more painful Spritle and Chim-Chim bits... and maybe a touch more racing scenes. But the clever use of flashbacks and flashforwards plus the overall visual appeal more than makes up for it. I will say that I have no need for a sequel, though. I'm happy with the story as told and see little reason to return.

Bit of a screwup on retail copy box though. The sticker on the front promises a digital copy for either Windows or Mac, even has system requirements for iTunes and everything. But then on the inside, the digital copy code sheet outright declares it will not work on Apple Computers or iPods. What kind of company makes digital downloads that do not work with friggin' iPods? Companies with their heads in the sand, for one. Companies who have been paid off by Microsoft, for another. I registered a complaint on the Warner Bros website and I expect to hear back absolutely nothing.

Clark has already seen it twice within a 24 hour period, and we'll probably watch it tomorrow as well. Bonus, now we are poised to scoop up any leftover Speed Racer toys on the cheap. Good fun.

The Facebook Notes/RSS thing bugs me.

Facebook has an easy way to import RSS weblog feeds so they show up on your Wall, but when you click them, they look like shit. The first 200 words synopsis shows up as an unformatted wall of text, making it look like you're using Facebook for your own Unabomber Manifesto. Anybody on Facebook who does not know about fourhman.com probably thinks I'm a buffoon who can't type straight. Are my Facebook pals smart enough to see the "view original" link and see the entry as intended?

There are some genuine RSS Facebook plugins, but the NEW Facebook seems to be second-tiering all of those fancy-ass apps.

There's some good things about Wii Fit.

I was fairly hard on Wii Fit, but there's good reason: it's lame and it's not compelling. It's Wii Play with a Balance Board and it should have been a lot more. Nevertheless, I have been doing the balance/weight test about every other day, and a couple minigames here and there. I do so want to unlock things, even in Wii Fit.

Here's something fun: If your weight spikes, the game asks you provide a reason. Like "I had a late dinner." Then, when you look over your graphed progress, it remembers that reason and pops it onscreen if you review that day you were classified fat.

My mower fall apart.

We must have bought a complete lemon for a mower. It's a self-propelled, electric start walk-behind Troy-Bilt, and it has been nothing but trouble. The rear plastic door fell off, the belt that self-propels has slipped and been chewed to pieces three times, and now the bracket that holds the carburetor to the rest of the engine has snapped in two. Just fell off as I was mowing. This is why I don't go outside.

Eco-Creatures is terrible.

Eco-Creatures - a DS RTS, $15 at TRU - continues to suck. Confusing, opaque controls. Poorly explained methods for assembling and upgrading troops. And your onscreen lead avatar dies all the time. It is comical.

I have bought so many bad cheap games lately, that I'm actually considering trading some of them in to GameStop... just to get them out of my house.

Still trying to net a sealed, complete, smoke-free Rule of Rose.

For a year now, this has been one of very few games that I would allow to break my rule of No More PS2 Games. It's a rare game, so the eBay auctions tend to go high.

Over 50 days since Fatal Frame 4 came out in Japan.
We're still soldering on without any word of a US release for Fatal Frame 4 on Wii, and any hopes for a Halloween tie-in release seem to have completely evaporated. Why the silence? It's not like Nintendo has a blockbuster-a-minute fall lineup, and it's not like the Japanese release met with bad reviews and the game needed retooling.

If FF4 was just in the localization process, you'd expect Nintendo would still be talking about it every now and then. Especially in light of the E3 2008 backlash and the first-party drought coming this fall. Nintendo is expected to make some announcements prior to TGS, and they do like to surprise, so maybe we'll hear better news in early October.

Dropped by Best Buy tonight to preorder LittleBigPlanet and pick up some new blu-ray releases. The Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy and also maybe probably Speed Racer. They had neither in stock. I cannot even imagine how something like that can happen, not having adequate supplies to last out the week, but I appreciate how tall the ceiling is in there so I'll let Best Buy slide.

I did place the LittleBigPlanet preorder, which actually gets you an empty game case. I'm not sure if all/most of Best Buy's preorders run like that. Does this mean that on October 21st, they'll hand me a naked disk and manual... or am I going to get another case, a normally boxed LittleBigPlanet? Regardless, I now have my Nariko costume code, and assuming Best Buy doesn't pull a Toys R Us and screw this up, I'll be right there for LBP's exclusive first-week-only free downloads. I already love this game.

And because it makes no financial sense to walk into Best Buy and only spend $5 on an empty game case, I impulse-shopped the Official Rock Band Drum Kit Silencers. Now, this is a bit of a stretch for me, because I generally dislike this sort of aftermarket garbage, even if it is officially licensed. But those drums on my Day One kit are loud, and it really does bug me after a while. So I jumped. I mean, if I booger up my drum kit, I can always buy the new one when it comes out.

As I cut the death plastic open, I received my first shock. These things STINK. It's an outstandingly foul oily plastic scent. Like you made a Creepy-Crawlie out of mostly gasoline. However, they do look and feel quite nice.

You can tell this is a photo I stole from somebody else, because those logos are not properly fucking centered.

But I'm ahead of my story with that pic... because my second shock was that the back of each of the silencers was covered in adhesive. I guess I don't know what I was expecting... maybe some kind of insert that only covered the gray area? But giant stinky sticker was not really on my radar.

Then the third shock: these official, standard-size, universal rubber drum pads do not fit the kit. I sat there trying to position the red pad so that it curved nicely along the inner ridge of the black border, but no matter how I tried to align it, it lurched off the other side.

So I did what impulse shopping hates, I checked the internet.

Found this review from Rockbandmods.net. "You should notice that the pads are not designed to sit inside the black rings, instead they should fit nicely inside the notch around the black ring of each drum pad." Well, they don't. But this bit further on worried me even more:

"The sound dampening qualities seem to be on par with the Drum Mutes Mod, which is quite good. However on my EL set, much like the Vic Firth mutes, the responsiveness went down the tube when these were applied. I was missing notes left and right on songs I can FC blind folded and was able to only manage to scrape together a four star run at best."

So... what? You'll miss notes with these things? Um, how about not. The reviewer then goes on to give the product a four out of five. Whoa whoa whoa. How can something that wrecks the game get a solid B recommendation? It's great that your drum kit is quieter now, but whuh-oh, you now play for shit?

Turns out, there's EL sets and QM sets, referring to the serial numbers. I have an EL set, and the pads work better on the QMs, because the QMs are newer models that Harmonix tweaked the sensitivity to make the drums more responsive. I suppose the 4/5 is more for the QMs.

So I thought about it for a bit. And I decided to try to install them anyway. Despite the semi-permanent adhesive, despite the potential for killing my drumming score. Like I said, I can always buy the new Rock Band 2 kit. Plus, I almost never get to play the drums... because when Clark's around for Rock Band, he usually wants the drums... and when he's asleep, they're too damn loud.

In the process, I sort of figured out why the pads seem to be larger than the black drum border. Because they end up affixing themselves on a curve, starting in the center of the pad and then lifting up to cover the rim. You can see the slight curvature in the picture above. It still doesn't "fit nicely inside the notch around the black ring of each drum pad" however. It covers it.

And then I had to test it. I started with some easy songs, like "Gimme Shelter," and scored higher than my previous record. I did a couple medium songs and experienced no issues there either. And since my drumming skills pretty much top out at medium, I called the experiment a success.

I suppose I learned a lot tonight.

Mostly I learned that Best Buy didn't stock enough copies of blue-ray Speed Racer.

Damon Condemns Palin (YouTube)
I know, I know. But forget that this is a dopey movie star talking and just listen to what he says. It's what I hope a lot of us are saying.

The Towers live on ... in movies & television, that is (Jim Hill Media)
A small collection of pre-9/11 film and TV imagery of the World Trade Center.

I get why this would make people sad, but I also feel that the larger view is that Bad Shit Happens And Time Forgets. We no longer feel much of anything about the Battle of Gettysburg (in fact, there's a national holiday of celebration in there), and a hell of a lot more people died there... and that event was far more impactful on American history than 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine, the Challenger Disaster and whatever else has happened in the past decades. Shit, when was the last time the nation truly mourned in unison on December 7th? ...Probably the last time the anniversary of the Day That Will Live In Infamy ended in a nice, divisible-by-ten number... which just proves how cloying and opportunistic we get about these things.

Microsoft announcement: No more Seinfeld ads! (Valleywag)
So after approximately what, one week? of running those Bill Gates / Jerry Seinfeld commercials (which said nothing and were not funny), Microsoft is running away from them? Does anybody else flare up, be awful, and then explode as fast or as impressively as Microsoft?

Exclusive Shards Of Alara Spoiler Cards! (Gay Gamer.net)
Preview cards from an upcoming Magic expansion. Not that I've played Magic in the last ten years, but two of those cards - Skeletonize (stupid name!) and Goblin Assault - are really, really cool and right up my token-loving alley.

No, YOU pick it up. (It's Lovely! I'll Take It!)
I can't believe I haven't been linking to this weblog more, because it is always great. It's actual awful photos from stupid people's online real estate listings, roundly mocked with snarky commentary. Put it in your weekly travels.

Fox, Foxworthy set to get animated (Variety)
An animated comedy about a NASCAR family starring Jeff Foxworthy. Hasn't that whole fictional blue-collar redneck amusements fad died off yet?

Something that does not amuse me: Talk Like a Pirate Day (Twitter)
It took my idiot friends less than three minutes to comment on this (within Facebook) with stupid fucking pirate talk. I don't even know half the people I've friended.

By the way, the new Twitter single-status Tweet page layout sucks.

I don't know.

It's heavier and larger than expected.

The hardware is certainly interesting, but the software is not especially compelling. I mean, I guess I'll play it. You'd think it would do more to encourage regular bootups, in a fashion similar to Brain Age or Animal Crossing. Or maybe Brain Age and Wii Fit are identical and it's just the exercise that's breaking it for me.

When we first fired it up, Clark and I each made character accounts. It classified Clark as pretty severely underweight, so I doubt it has any idea what to do with the ten-and-under set. My guess is that Nintendo had to tune it towards one end of the scale, and they chose to make it more accurate for people who might actually care about their weight.

On my initial weigh-in, my BMI ranked right at the top of "normal," so I am clearly a problem. There's probably an alert flashing on Miyamoto's computer right now. Let's check his Twitter...

Dammit!

OK, so then you do an introductory balance test. Balancing seems to be the main way the game judges you. It is kinda neat to see how your Center of Balance sways even when you think you're standing still, but not every day neat. It compares your balance to your weight and your age and then declares your Wii Fit Age, which my initial scan put me at 48. The next day I had it at 31, and the day after that it was 36. So who knows.

I don't know how BMI is calculated, but it seems to me it probably involves more than a person's weight, age, and how well they stand on one foot.

Yep, the game rudely animates your Mii towards fat or towards skinny depending on your actual weight/BMI, but these deformations are not seen anywhere but on the select menus. Your newly "realistic" body shapes will not appear in the minigames or in any other Wii games. Wii Fit doesn't ruin your Mii Channel, is what I'm saying.

Clark's balance charts are always hilarious, because there's no way he's standing still for that long. Even when he tries, it's all over the place.

I have unlocked half of the minigames. Once you get a feel for how minute your movements must be, things seem to fall into place. The soccer ball game that was famously failed onstage at one of Nintendo's E3 presentations is not that bad. I scored in the triple digits almost right away. The Ski Jump is easy. Ski Slalom is harder, mainly because your leaning needs to be super precise to make the turns without oversteering. The human Monkey Ball game is pretty fiendish, as is the tightrope walking game.

That's the "balance" games; the other minigames are classified as "aerobic." I'm writing off Hula Hoop because I've never been able to do that anyway. The baby version of DDR is OK, once you realize that you're really doing step exercises and not really doing anything fun like DDR.

I like the Basic Run quite a bit, where you just put the Remote in your pocket and jog in place at a speed set by a partner "guide" jogger Mii. Although I'm most likely laboring under the delusion that I will unlock lots of other running paths through that cute little Mii park area Nintendo has created. I have the initial short run, the long run, and a 15-min run... I hope there's a ton more to find. There's a bit where you run through a pack of wild Mii dogs and if you run ahead of your guide and follow a dog, the dog leads you into different areas. I want a lot of that.

The yoga and exercise portions seem like a huge bust. It is so time-consuming. You have to select the move you want, then click past all this talky-talky from the onscreen instructor. You do your reps and then the instructor tosses some more inspirational bullshit at you, you see your ranking (?)... and then it's back to the menu screen. How about being able to link a dozen moves together into one seamless routine? What a missed opportunity! That's like, the way humans exercise and Wii Fit does not deliver.

All in all, it's pretty bare bones. I was expecting more. It's probably no prediction at all to suggest that Nintendo should ready a Wii Fit 2, allow two-player Balance Board activities and the ability to customize workouts.

You can no longer say that DC isn't trying to get kids into comic shops. Look at this artwork from some kind of crazy upcoming DCU Elementary series. I say series, but there's no details as far as I can see. Is it a Johnny DC ongoing, the Best Elseworlds Ever, a Final Crisis tie-in... could be proofs for a proposed animated series. THAT I WOULD TOTALLY WATCH.

The DC characters as kids! At school! Heroes and villains! Clayface as schoolyard bully in a baseball cap!

These designs are much more appealing than the DC Super Friends book, which is cute and all, but hamstrung in its connection to a long-missing toy line.

I love pouty Bats! He's the snarky one, I bet.

CLAYFACE AS SCHOOLYARD BULLY IN BASEBALL CAP.

Cookie & Cream... the unexpected DS sequel to a truly underrated early PS2 release. Found in the Please Shoplift Me section of Best Buy for a paltry $10.

Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law... the unexpected point-and-click game straight from Adult Swim, brought to Wii via the tried-and-true Pheonix Wright engine. Now $20.

CONCEPT: The original Cookie & Cream was built around two-player co-op, with each rabbit stuck on half of the screen. Rabbit A (Cream) would have to hit a button or pull a switch so Rabbit B (Cookie) could progress, and vice versa. The DS version adapts much of that overlooked classic into a single-player experience, with one person expected to control both rabbits. The second rabbit's play is greatly reduced, limited to single-screen mini-games that pop up whenever the first rabbit hits a stopping point.

It's an idea that is flawed from the start. One person controlling both rabbits. Come on. 3 points.

Just as C&C is a dumbed down version of the original, so is Harvey Birdman dumbed down from its progenitor, Japan's long-lived Gyakuten Saiban series, known in the US as Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Birdman retains the basic style - listen to testimony, then refute specific sentences with case evidence - but requires far less zigging and zagging across the map to collect evidence.

The true appeal is the humor and characters of the Harvey Birdman TV series. Just as in the show, the game plays with some classic and not-so-classic Hanna Barbera cartoon characters... Secret Squirrel, Inch-High Private Eye and Magilla Gorilla are among the guest stars. With a ton of all-new animation made expressly for this game, it's like getting another couple episodes of the series, with the added benefit of you being able to control the action, Choose Your Own Adventure style.

The interface is clever and the inventory screens trigger bonus funny sound bites... so I'll give 7 points in this category.

GAMEPLAY: Cookie & Cream takes all the terrible parts of the first game and makes them worse... like the punishing level time limits, and the idea that your rabbit takes damage when it isn't moving. Hello? I stopped moving because I'm controlling the other rabbit.

There should have been a solid game here. PS2 C&C is very solid, but something went dreadfully wrong during the port to DS. They probably would have been better off being the first DS game to require two DSs to play, so we could have a true experience akin to the original, just with no split screen and stylus control.

2 points for sucking. The music isn't as good as the PS2 version either.

Harvey Birdman, although sporting the proven Phoenix Wright gameplay, also suffers for it. Because the show is often absurd and full of non-sequiturs, so is the game. If you had trouble figuring out the proper evidence to present back in Phoenix Wright, you'll have even more here. Sometimes, the proper action just does not make any sense, or it is so obtuse that you'll never figure it out on your own. Even more damning, often you'll think you have the right evidence, but you still have to present it against the correct sentence in the witness's testimony. One sentence off and you're handed a failure. The game demands trial and error, and that is never fun.

There's five cases, all for-fans funny, but each is short... and with the required trip to GameFAQs.com for the answers, it will get even shorter. Harvey Birdman was initially promoted by Capcom as having some of their Street Fighter characters in it, but it's not what you think. There's no Street Fighter-based case, just some brief unlockable movies featuring Harvey and the Street Fighters cast. The means to unlock them is obscure at best, meaning it's entirely likely you'll play through the entire game and never even know you missed them.

6 points... can be frustrating, best not taken too seriously.

VALUE: I've never seen a MSRP-marked Cookie & Cream, so I'll have to assume $10 is a markdown from the DS standard of $25 to $30. That's a great deal, but the game stinks so hard that the score will have to be adjusted to 3 points.

Harvey Birdman debuted at $40, so $20 is pretty good. Just about right. I've seen the PSP/PS2 ports for even less, around $15 or lower. I'm still not convinced $20 is a good price, however, since this will only be played through once. 5 points.

TIMELINESS: There is very little compelling about Cookie & Cream DS, unless you're interested in seeing one of your favorite PS2 titles crucified at the altar of high nonsense. OK, there's WiFi play... but good luck finding anyone else in the world to play with. 2 points.

Harvey Birdman is a complicated thing. For a real point-and-click lawyer sim, any of the Ace Attorney series does it better... but there is very, very little of the Adult Swim brand on the gaming racks. So if you're after that cachet, you have this one, plus some mediocre efforts featuring Aqua Teen and Family Guy. For true fans only. 4 points.

FINAL: 10 for Cookie & Cream, a new low for this competition. 22 for Birdman, and the winner should be obvious.

He'll take the case!

Target signs up Domo-Kun as Halloween mascot.

Somebody at Target is really, really smart.

Target's in-store advertising has almost always been top-notch. They clearly employ genuine graphic artists and creative marketers... and that makes all the difference in where we decide where we shop, because we're fucking design snobs. (Wonder why Walmart suddenly made a play for a nicer look?) This year's Halloween theming features Domo-Kun, which, depending on your Internet Age, you may recognize as that thing chasing the kitten because you masturbated. In reality, Domo-Kun debuted as the mascot for Japanese TV station NHK ten years ago in a series of stop-motion shorts.

Domo-Kun was supposed to show up on Nickelodeon by now; I don't know if that deal feel through, is still in process, or actually happened and nobody noticed. Either way, Target's Domo-Kun theming is really nice, and it contains no Nick plugs that I saw.

Finally found Wii Fit.

We happened to get to Target early Saturday morning... and one was behind the glass. One. Also some actual Wiis. We snapped it up, although I can tell you now that I'm not going to be exercising every day in place of doing stuff that's genuinely fun. I'm sure I'll have more to say about Wii Fit later in the week after vetting it out.

Suffice to say, Clark really likes the Ski Jump game.

What happened to the DC Super Friends toy line?

I think it's been over a year since the first wave of DC Super Friends toys showed up on shelves. By last Christmas we had about the entire line, and I had already seen sneak peeks of the second wave (Cyborg! Hawkman!)... and ToyFare 2008 revealed a third wave (Robin! Joker!).

So where the hell are they?

Did the line die? The only bit of wave two I've spotted is from the vehicle playsets... the Batwing and the Aquaman Sub, neither of which we particularly want.

What happened to Pirates?

Speaking of stuff that's MIA... I haven't seen a Pirates release in quite some time. And the official WizKids site is (and has always been) junk, with no current info. A recent Previews listed a new boxed set... maybe that's what this game is morphing into, something slightly less collectible-booster-pack and more game-in-a-box.

Secret Six, Marvel Apes, Rogues' Revenge great stuff... from the other week.

I haven't picked up last week's comics yet, but here's my top reads from the week before. Rogues' Revenge is a three-issue Final Crisis tie-in following the Flash villains as they snub their nose at asshat Libra and seek vengeance on the little shit who got them blamed for Bart's death. In their original 1960s form, the Rogues were pure cheese, but everything done with them in the past decade has been aces.

Secret Six... the return of the villain team born in Infinite Crisis, written by Gail Simone. Great stuff. These are fun, smart characters. Looking back, it's sort of hard to believe that Shadowpact (also from Infinite Crisis) was awarded an ongoing series before Secret Six. And in Shadowpact's untimely demise, I'm more than happy to replace them on my card with the Six.

Marvel Apes. Hard to believe this is any good, since the cover is positively atrocious, and it has that whiff of desperation of Marvel casting about for something to replace their way overcooked Zombies franchise. But the first issue of Apes was a hoot. The artwork reminds me a lot of one of my favorites, John Severin, and the story unexpectedly goes from silly to serious right away.

I joined Facebook.

Simple story: I received an invite and figured why not. I mean, I have a MySpace page and that is far, far worse than Facebook. Like, Walmart-to-Target worse.

Of course, having my own website sort of precludes me actually needing either. In MySpace's case, I was reserving my good name, so that was largely why I showed up there. But I do like how Facebook is much classier and modern looking.

iPhone / iPod Touch as portable gaming device?

Boy, Apple has a loooong way to go before that comes to pass. We often like to think of Nintendo and Apple as spiritual cousins, but this reminds us that they have no such relationship. It's a big market - as the relative success of the PSP shows - but Nintendo remains king of the mountain. It is interesting to see Steve Jobs take a stab at this, since the Mac itself has been a gaming desert for 15 years.

Arkham Asylum game shows up out of nowhere.

When Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3, 360) was first announced a month ago, I think people were like "Great, another shitty Batman game." But the first round of screens look crazy good. Could we finally get the Batman game that has been promised and not delivered so many times now? Arkham Asylum looks comics-accurate, dark and adult. Not that I feel that's the ONLY WAY Batman should be presented, but it's definitely something I would enjoy.

That's what great about Batman. He is somehow unbelievably adaptable to other presentations and alterations, and he is consistently successful in that. Very few fictional characters can say that. Superman has almost never been substantially reinvented. Spider-Man flopped with his 2099/Unlimited runs. But Batman wins with the Animated Series, The Batman, Adam West Batman, Tim Burton Batman, Christian Bale Batman, LEGO Batman... and I'm looking forward to the upcoming animated Brave and the Bold Batman series as well. Not a lot of failure on the Bat-record. Some crappy gaming adaptations and those stinker Joel Shumacher movies, but that's about it.

And I'm not even a huge Bat-guy.

The Bastard Fairies-We're All Going To Hell (Official Video) (YouTube)
See you there.

WHAT THE FUCK IS UP AMERICA??? (Something Awful)
Levi Johnston (the future Mr. Bristol) introduces himself to the world. I bet this is pretty spot-on.

Console Post of the Week: Microsoft's Shame (Dubious Quality)
Bill Harris pulls out all the disgusting facts about Microsoft knowing that the 360 was junk, prone to self-destruct... and shipped it anyway. I'll repeat Wombat from CheapAssGamer: Microsoft does not deserve to have fans.

A Little About Canadian Culture and Unique Achievements (John K Stuff)
John K. has been doing some great posts about Canadian culture, something most Americans probably think doesn't exist. Of course, it's it filtered through John K.'s everything-I-like-is-incredible and everything-else-is-bullshit, but that's why we like him, isn't it?

Infinite Crisis: The Graphic Audio (4th Letter via Written World)
A review of the books-on-tape version of Infinite Crisis... with plenty of sound samples that must be heard.

Cabin Man (Rolling Stone via Mark Evanier)
An unusually warm profile of Chris Elliott. Seriously, I think we're married now.

The $6 Pain expansion pack dropped today, so I picked it up along with one of the terrible new $1 characters. Somehow, I racked up a crazy score without doing much of anything except holding on. I doubt this is genuinely difficult, but since the game just came out today, there may be some merit to it. My average score is around 50,000 to 300,000, so this is good for me.

Part of the Pain addition today was a free update that added Trophy support. This download was obscenely long, and the Trophies are all ridiculously awful.

This Amusement Park level seems like more fun than the stock Downtown level, although it's only been one night and Pain is a short-term play at best. The expansion also adds a weekly Pain Labs mode that will regularly appear with new, minimally designed levels... sort of like the daily user-created level in Smash Bros.

Altogether, if you're paying regular price, Pain now goes for $16 (assuming Sony doesn't have a cheaper bundle pack going) plus $1 each for however many extra bonus characters you want to collect. There's ten or so of those by now, but there's no need to buy all of them. Unfortunately, some of the Trophies are tied to specific bonus characters, so that's a pretty dirty play.

LEGO Batman is coming and I am reasonably excited. Although I no longer hold out hope that Travellers' Tales took a moment to improve the bullshit camera problems after playing the demo for LEGO Indiana Jones, the complete bat-fan service is a clarion call of more than enough strength. Clayface! Mad Hatter! Killer Moth! It's nice to see a deeper-than-expected exploration of the Batman cast. It's probably too much for an original 1950s-flavor Terrible Trio... even though those guys are tailor made for LEGO mini-figs, being just dudes in suits with animal-mask heads.

Early rumors suggested Superman would be an unlockable, playable character. So naturally this leads one to slavering over a potential sequel, LEGO DC Universe. It seems particularly possible thanks to DC's continuing effort to make the phrase "DC Universe" a real thing. It's been common comics parlance for quite some time, but I think the phrase has only recently crossed over into other media. There's two DC games coming out soon that use DCU in the title, DC Universe Online and Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. So come on, it could happen.

The key gameplay element to the LEGO ____ games is that you have a ton of characters divided into several sub-groups, with each sub-group acting as a "key" to a specific obstacle or element in the environment. LEGO Star Wars had doors that would open only for R2. Or only Bounty Hunters could chuck those magnetic grenades onto the silver objects. In LEGO Indiana Jones, you have the Shoveler, the Mechanic, etc. All the games utilized kid or other short characters (Yoda, ewoks) to get into special half-size doors.

DC is a natural for this system, thanks to what Scipio Garling lovingly calls the Dynastic Centerpiece model. This theory seeks to identify how DC establishes one main character in the center of a family of other characters... essentally providing many different permutations of the main archetype while satisfying various storytelling tropes like "Junior Counterpart," "Black Sheep," "Civilian Companion," and "Animal Companion." This would give a LEGO DC Universe an instant selection of sub-groups to turn into playable characters.

The Green Lantern Corps. I wish the GLC was popular enough to warrent an entire LEGO Green Lantern game; I'm still reeling from the fact that they got an entire expansion to themselves in the DC Vs TCG a few years back. There are thousands to choose from... definitely need to include Hal, John, Guy and Kyle... but also Kilowog, Salaak, Tomar Re, Soranik Natu and Stel. And Sinestro.

The Lanterns all need to be able to do that cutesy hover thing that we've seen since the first LEGO Star Wars. They also get a distance attack, no big deal. But not a fast laser, as the Genosians of Star Wars (or indeed, anybody else in LEGO Star Wars with a blaster), but a sort-of-slow green beam of light that shoves into enemies. And I'd make it so the beam is actually headed by a random silly LEGO piece... so it looks like the GLs are constantly making LEGO bikes and trees and jet engines and junk.

And since these games are always focused on co-op, Lanterns should be able to transport other characters across gaps in big green bubbles.

The Speedsters. We have plenty of Flash family to include... Wally, Barry, Jay, Bart (in his Impulse costume, dammit!), Max Mercury, John Fox, Jesse Quick, Zoom. I would not be above stealing a move from Ben 10: Protector of Earth for these guys. In Ben 10, there's a superfast character called XLR8, and in the game you mimic his speed with the ability to trace a path onscreen while XLR8 rears back... and then he runs along that path in a split-second, smashing up any baddie that happened to be in the way. Use that for all speedsters; it's one of the few times I've felt like a game gave a good stab at recreating the feel of super speed.

Something else Ben 10 does... XLR8 is used when you have to open a door with a pressure panel and then get through the door before it closes. So yeah, sounds like a great use for the Flashes. I'd also put in treadmills that require speedsters to run in place, to generate energy or whatever the level needs to proceed.

The Marvel Family. I'd include Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel (one in her normal white costume and again in her bad girl Countdown costume) and probably CM3. My idea is that these guys can call down the lightning (for splash damage) and transform back and forth to their human forms. I'd make the humans all kid-sized, which I guess is only appropriate for Billy and maybe Mary depending on what continuity you're reading, so that these guys operate as the LEGO shorties for getting into the tiny doors.

The Superman Family. Superman, Supergirl (plenty of those!), Superboy, Power Girl, Steel. I imagine these guys will hover, have a heat vision attack, and be super-strong. Let's give them the ability to smash certain steel-colored structures throughout the game. And how about an X-ray vision thing: some giant flat walls will have some kind of identifier on them, and when you look through the wall, you'll see a clue or another room you can somehow reach, or whatever.

Oooh, how about LEGO Kryptonite? Glowing green LEGO bricks that the Superman family cannot get near without taking damage.

The Aquaman Family. Aquaman, Dolphin, Tempest, Mera, Black Manta etc. Able to swim, of course. Anywhere with a river or beach or underground sewer could hide secrets or necessary elements once Aquaman swims down to explore it.

The Wonder Woman Family. The trouble here is, there's only two Magic Lassos, the original truth-forcing one held by Wonder Woman and a kind of gimpier one wielded by Wonder Girl (Cassie). I don't even know what Donna Troy's powers are these days. If we stick to discussing merely the two with lassos, that would be very useful... as seen with Indy's whip in LEGO Indiana Jones.

The Hawks. They fly/hover. Duh. I guess like a Superman without the extra powers.

This is a good example of a pretty generic archetype that could also be used for other characters. I'd apply this one to Black Adam, for example.

The Metal Men. These guys are total fanboy bait. Although they always make a big deal about having densities and secondary powers somehow related to their associated metal, the main thing seems to be that they can re-mold their bodies into various shapes. So I'd have them appear sort of like shiny rubber, with stretchy, ranged punches and such. And they have to turn themselves into special keys to get through certain locked doors.

This type would also be useful for Metamorpho and Plastic Man.

Ranged attackers. Green Arrow. Red Arrow. The Question. Deadshot. Jonah Hex. Captain Cold. Adam Strange. Anybody with a projectile weapon. With some different art for the projectile, this family could be expanded to include those with energy or magic powers. Black Canary, Zatanna, Fire, Ice, Dr. Fate, Black Lightning, Firestorm.

Given a greatly simplified role for Batman (IE, no "batsuits"), I guess he ends up here, tossing batarangs,

Brawlers. With so many specialized powers, we can't forget the straight ol' fistfighter. Wildcat, Lobo, Blue Devil, Damage, Captain Atom, Vixen, Booster Gold, Hourman, Vandal Savage, Doomsday, Robin, Spoiler, Ultra-Humanite. These guys are pretty much window dressing in LEGO DCU, as everybody can punch. Unless they're given the ability to dole out increased damage.

Geniuses. DC's big brains, or otherwise non-superpowered characters. Mr. Terrific, Catwoman, Doc Magnus, Blue Beetle, Max Lord, Lex Luthor (non-exosuit version). These guys have to show up to hack computers and other technical gear that is blocking the level.

Teleporters. Usable in situations where the way is irrevocably blocked. We can use ghosty characters here, like Shadow Thief or Gentleman Ghost. Shapeshifters like Martian Manhunter and Beast Boy. Straight-up 'porters like Ambush Bug. Even the Atom could be cleverly stowed in this category.

Say, anyway to include the animal characters? Krypto? Detective Chimp?

But the big fun is finding the crossover characters who can fill multiple archetypes. Batman gets to be both a ranged attacked and a Genius. Booster Gold and Dr. Fate can also fly. Catwoman gets a whip that operates like Wonder Woman's lasso.

Martian Manhunter gets, like, every ability. In fact, I'd set up Free Play (where you can switch between six to ten characters at will) with the idea that you're playing as a body-swapping J'Onn J'Onnz. Or Deadman, come to think of it.

Six to go.

That's some serious pokeccomplishment. There's not much left to do, and once I get these last few, I will have officially completed my ultimate goal. This is not unlike finishing the catalog in Animal Crossing, except this is actually doable.

More success on the GTS. Even today, gang, you throw up a Turtwig, Chimchar or Piplup, and you are almost guaranteed to get what you want. I traded thusly for an Ekans, Pineco, Gligar, Tauros, Smeargle and, hilariously, a Lugia.

So what's left? Gliscar, which should be an easy evolution. Lickilicky, Forretress, same story.

Last night I went looking in Sapphire for an old Combusken to Pal Park over. Couldn't find it. I knew I had one somewhere, because I remember bringing it over from Ruby. Then I remembered; I left it in the daycare a long time ago, hoping to breed a couple Torchics. Although back then, I didn't know much about pairing pokemon, so I dropped a male Combusken in with a female Torkoal. The resultant egg was a baby Torkoal. Yawn.

The big one - and I did not see this coming - was the Sunflora. You get a Sunflora after using a Sun Stone on a Sunkern, and I did not have a Sun Stone.

Sun Stones can be found in the underground, and are occasionally held by wild Solrocks. You can guess what the word "occasionally" means in the Pokemon world: never. I scrounged up a bunch of empty-handed Solrocks before I gave up on that idea.

The underground was also a strikeout. I guess if I did another few hours of dedicated underground digging, I may turn one up. Remember, I have Pearl... I think Sun Stones are rarer in Pearl.

Apparently you can get a Sunflora out of Pokemon Colosseum for GameCube, which I do own. But forget that. Those game sucked.

And you get a Sun Stone in Sapphire (at the Space Center) but I checked and I must have already used that particular Sun Stone. Most likely to evolve out a Bellossom.

Clark is still pacing in his Ruby game... is it worth me taking over his Ruby just to advance the story up to the point at which I could find a Sun Stone? Not hardly.

So I IMed my sister one night, to see if she had one. She helped me out before, and she is not at all concerned with catching 'em all. Here's the conversation.

Her: OK, I'll check.
Her: One moment.
...
Her: I have 4.
Me: !!!!!!!!
Me: How in fuck?
Her: But I think I'll need all four..... ;)
Me: Sun Stone.
Her: yes
Me: !@!@^&!!?!
Her: A peculiar stone that makes certain species of Pokemon evolve. It is as red as the sun.
Me: Yes, yes, I need it to make Sunkern evolve into Sunflora.
Me: Did you dig them all in the underground?
Her: Probably.

So she graciously gave me one of her four Sun Stones (and a Weedle) so I can get that awful, junky Sunflora. What a game.

TIME	BADGES	POKEDEX SEEN
MONEY	SCORE	POKEDEX OWN

Most likely, I would have picked up No More Heroes for full price about a week after it launched, but the idiot Toys R Us clerk laughed at my inquiry and said they would probably never get it in stock. When they did start selling it (about two weeks later, asshat), I was already deep into something else so I gave NMH a pass. Happy times ensued several months afterward when I found it languishing on a Target endcap for $30. It's brother disks are probably still there today.

Ben 10: Protector of Earth was released on Wii in October 2007, but Clark didn't get into the show until July 2008. So there you go. A cheapie title on PS2 ($30), the Wii version was initially ten dollars more... due to adding in the code that demands you sit within four feet on the TV screen, I guess. But time has a way of evening things out: now both versions can easily be found for merely $20.

CONCEPT: 10 points for No More Heroes. It's an M-rated, otaku-baiting, retro-loving, swear-packed, Tarantino-inspired monster of a game, as Travis Touchdown works his way up the ranks of the world's deadliest assassins. It redeems everything that was awful about Killer 7 while maintaining Suda 51's characteristically unique style and vision. There are precious few game designers out there who actively seek to give the big middle finger to the boring, cash-in-focused marketplace, and Suda 51 is top of the heap.

Not as much love for Ben 10. As a licensed property, the odds are already stacked against it. Happily, it is very true to the source material, with all the original voice actors and a nice assortment of characters and environments lifted straight from the cartoon. There's nothing new here, but nothing completely screwed up either. 6 points.

GAMEPLAY: No More Heroes combat is fun and clever. The gameworld allows for many ways to expand and customize your character. The Wii Remote usage is brilliant, proving that there's more that can be done with the thing other than mapping "attack" to "flail wildly." That said, things do get repetitious and you will be begging to advance the plot because that's where the real fun is, not so much in the doing and re-doing of sidebar missions just to level up Travis.

The biggest drawback is the empty, confusing-to-navigate open world and the crappy glued-to-the-street motorcycle. Oh, and the subpar graphics that are supposedly hidden by the game's art direction, only not really. 8 points.

Ben 10 kinda does a Metroid thing where your big awesome powers are all grenaded at the start and you have to earn them back. The various alien forms all act as keys to various level-locks... another Metroidy touch. You need Cannonbolt to launch up ramps, for example, and some early levels include ramps even though you haven't yet "found" Cannonbolt. So there is a fair stab at providing replay value through smart level design. Still, most of the time you're just destroying the A and B buttons for attack combos.

The Wii Remote motion controls are pretty much optional, so they do not actively get in the way. It is very cool to activate your Omnitrix by smacking your wrist, although it can hurt after a while.

It's reasonably fun, reasonably interesting. It's saddled by a few tech issues, but nothing that truly kills the overall gameplay. Minus a point for suggesting that the Alamo was somehow involved in the Civil War. 6 points.

VALUE: No More Heroes went from $50 to $30; Ben 10 went from $40 to $20. So the price advantage here is negligible. I'll give NMH 7 points and Ben 10 6 points only because the former is a heckuva lot longer and more varied than the latter. So the value factor feels slightly better with No More Heroes.

TIMELINESS: A key category in this match-up, because Ben 10 was already a little off even when brand new... a competent yet predictable co-op brawler based on a TV show that only had a few more new episodes to run? Now that Ben 10 has been retired and the characters aged and reworked as Ben 10: Alien Force, the older Ben 10 merch just has no place. 4 points.

Meanwhile, No More Heroes remains a key M-rated, hardcore, high-quality experience on Wii. One of very, very few such titles. And the relative paucity of the visuals means that it doesn't really matter what the current graphical standards are, because No More Heroes looked like ass from the start. You'll be able to buy it whenever and enjoy it, sort of like all the true classics on the Virtual Console. NMH is going to remain in a lot of gamer's personal Top Ten Wii lists for a long time. 8 points.

FINAL: 33 for No More Heroes, an all-time high in this competition. Ben 10 had its work cut out for it, and there's no shame in scoring 22 points, but it's not enough to tangle with Travis Touchdown.

See you in the next round, Travis. You'll never make it. Why don't you just give up now and spare us the disappointment? Do you need a bathroom break? Did you take care of those nasty blackheads? But don't listen to me, Travis. Trust in yourself. Take it all the way to the top. Head for the garden of madness!

Another fun podcast.

After doing a couple of these, I think I'm starting to get my sea legs. I feel a bit more comfortable with mssrs Haygood and Munn now, so it has become easier to jump in with a perhaps-unpopular opinion or funny bit. Or an unfunny opinion bit. In this episode:

- I mention the Mappy in my living room, but you guys already knew that.
- When we talk about the 360 price drops, I call the Arcade model junk, and then I call the 60GB model junk.
- I completely forget which version(s) of The Simpsons Game I played, since it was such a horrid experience.
- Katamari comes up several times, and I lament.
- "I'm taking Metal Gear pictures with my feet, people."

I think the Professor Layton DLC is done.

I went in to download the online bonus puzzles after quite a long absence and the newest puzzle was dated around mid-August. So that ends that, until Nintendo decides to release the sequel in America.

As previously reported, the "Wi-Fi" puzzles were in fact actually already on the cartridge, and going online merely unlocked them one by one over time. At least this was free.

Ben 10 live action movie could have used a larger effects budget.

Not. Enough. CG. Aliens.

You only get to see four of his forms, and none of them are around for very long. It's a shame, because what you do see is quite good.

Overall, it's a mess of a movie. Clark wasn't sure what to make of it. When he first saw the live action actor kid wearing the Omnitrix, he asked "Why's that kid wearing Ben 10's watch?" So this is the first time something Clark likes has been diluted and ruined during the transfer to another media!

Rainforest Cafe mascots slashed, survivors recast as superheroes.

Rainforest Cafe used to roll about a dozen cartoon mascots, which, let's be frank, was waaaay too many. Plus, they all seemed to be designed at different times by different artists, so they didn't exactly look like a cohesive cartoon family. (The line weights and eyeball shapes and such differed greatly from character to character.)

But they didn't deserve to be made into lame-ass superheroes. About half of the crew was purged (no more Iggy Iguana!) and the leftovers all given highly unlikely rainforest-conserving super powers. Nile the Crocodile can predict the future and show it to others, for example.

There's exactly one use for Nile's power: showing bratty litterbug kids the dystopian future that awaits if they don't learn to fucking recycle.

Dr. Mario RX, Pokemon Ranch updated?

Happened to browse the ol' Shop Channel and noticed some happy Updated! tags on the screens for Dr. Mario Online RX and My Pokemon Ranch. I grabbed both updates in minimum time, but nowhere does it say exactly what these patches performed.

I remember the big Starfox64 update actually making the game worse, but I can't find any info on these two. Probably just backend tech crap, I guess.

I don't use my Sidekick nearly as much as I used to; I think I'm weaning myself for an iPhone. I mean, it is four years old. That's crazy. In cell phone tech terms, my Sidekick shouldn't even power up... not without a hamster and treadmill anyway.

I still use it for IM and occasional web browsing, and of course whenever I need to snap an emergency low-res photograph. LIKE THESE:

These are so freaking adorable, but I've only ever seen them for sale at a grocery store. Guh-whut?

This is what my workday was like ten years ago, as evidenced by this old memo I found while cleaning out my desk. "Hey, I wonder where Matt is, it's time for lu.... oh."

Yeah, that's what I think of when I think of making a cool foam sculpture.

Larry "Bud" Melman can never be dead, not as long as these $1 VHS tapes are still in circulation.

Wow, I'm pretty bummed that this Pokemon Oven wasn't in stock, because I'd sure like to get my Gym Badge for Auschwitz City.

This is why I need to get an iPhone, because at a higher resolution, you would probably be able to read the "Shawn sucks cock" message written in the road dust on this truck.

This is from some horrible game show. The contestants are supposed to correctly choose all the female superheroes from this list.

Elixir?

When: smokers are confined to outside the building. When: company security policy demands that all external doors remain closed at all times. When: employees need an access keytab to open all external doors. When: smokers start getting paranoid that their smoke breaks are being tracked by management. When: all rocks and doorstops have been forcibly removed from the premises so that employees can't block doors open.

Then: smokers start jamming doors open with their own company cell phones.

These monkeys are just enjoying the hell out of life.

Total Eclipse of the Heart (YouTube)
Hurra Torpedo performing "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler. Uh-huh.

Minorities Get Little Respect On The Big Screen (NPR via Angry Asian Man)
Brief editorial about the all-white - and often aggressively anti-minority - nature of Hollywood 2008:

We had Mike Meyers entertaining himself by flogging Hindu and Indian stereotypes. And the lovely Jennifer Hudson playing a 21st century Hattie McDaniel to the Sex and the City gals. Excuse me, Jennifer's the one with the Oscar. Shouldn't they be fetching Jennifer's coffee?

McCain Campaign Bashes Gamers, Reminds Me Of High School Bullies (gaygamer.net)
McCain campaign wheels out the old D&D-losers-in-parents-basement thing against Obama supporters. Classy.

Why it's so hard to swat a fly (Yahoo News)
Because they can see you fucking coming.

Tom & Jerry the Movie VIDEO review (thatguywiththeglasses.com via Cartoon Brew)
The guy tries too hard, but about half of it is REALLY funny.

Kermit Bale (LiveJournal via Pretty Fizzy Paradise)
An unbelievable collection of identical photographs of Christian Bale and Kermit the Frog.

Why Disasters Are Getting Worse (Yahoo News)
A non-partisan, competely sensical look at why natural disasters seem to be getting worse... it's not just George Bush, it's not just climate change, it's a little of both plus the idea that we just simply have more human shit in the path of storms these days.

The other day I had a hungry memory that needed feeding. I needed to see one of those old Wendy's tables.

Back in the pre-Clark, pre-vegetarian, pre-Rhonda, pre-college days, we would go to Wendy's quite a lot. It was often enough that those damn tables left their mark on my mind. They were designed to look like ads from a turn-of-the-century newspaper, since Wendy's was ostensibly the home of "olde fashioned hamburgers."

I was never quite sure if the ads were actual, or well-designed bullshit. Here's one of the tabletops:

Unfortunately neither of my favorite ads are present on this photo from the Lorence's Kitchen weblog. The two I always fondly recall are:

- A drawing of a dandy, dapper fellow's head: "HAIR SINGING. You can save your hair if it is falling out by having it singed."

- A drawing of a ringmaster / hypnotist, deformed in that classic editorial cartoon style: "KEEP YOUR EYE ON ME AND NOTICE MY CHANGE." I forget the rest.

So either Wendy's had multiple patterns for these things (perhaps over several years of careful Wendy's brand management) or my sister and I always headed for the table with the hair-singer. "Our" table also had this ad, which is happily preserved on flickr:

CORNS.

This isn't the kind of collectible I'd voraciously buy at any cost, but when you remember something that stupid for over twenty years, you owe it to yourself to make sure other people know about it.

Sony's detestable Lair seems to be heading into this as an underdog, positioned against one of juggernaut Nintendo's Blue Ocean non-games... the Wii edition of Big Brain Academy. But don't count Lair out yet, as it was a mere $15 clearance compared to BBA's relatively beefy sale price of $30 (both courtesy Target).

CONCEPT: Lair sounds like a winner on paper. Epic medieval battles with hundreds and hundreds of soldiers and ballista, with you riding herd over the whole scene atop a giant dragon. Shame it arrived several years too late to truly ride Lord of the Rings hype. Plus, it comes from Factor 5, a team with some serious experience in action-flight games... the Rogue Squadron series. 7 points.

Big Brain Academy, a first-party DS hit following in the shadows of Nintendo's own Brain Age series, was an early Wii release... with an emphasis on family multiplayer and Wii features integration (Miis, Remote tricks, sending challenges to Wii Friends). Several play modes frame a collection of brain teaser-themed minigames. 5 points.

GAMEPLAY: Lair is unplayable. And it's unamusingly cheesy.

The problems started with a forced SIXAXIS motion control scheme (thanks, Sony!), and a highly delayed analog patch didn't even fix it. It's like Factor 5 forgot everything they ever knew about flying in three dimensions. Dragons will arc unexpectedly away from cliff walls a half mile away. The graphics are inconsistent and glitchy. The story is a joke, poorly told.

1 point, and only because I like the mid-air combat where your dragon can beat the piss out of another.

If you try Big Brain Academy single-player, you would be forgiven for thinking the thing has about six minigames total. And although most of them are indeed fun, it gets incredibly repetitive. Despite that, I do like the individual test mode, which ends in the game "weighing" your brain, assigning you a crazy grade like "BAB+" and suggesting a career path.

Some of the most interesting minigames - the example I always point to is one where you have to listen to something via the Remote speaker and then find that onscreen - are frustratingly not available to play in single-player! And yet, even with the added games, multiplayer still feels like the same games over and over again. I'M COUNTING RED BALLS AGAIN, JOY. It also has that classic Mario Party problem where some of the multiplayer modes just take too long to play. 5 points. Pretty uneven stuff.

VALUE: $15 from $60 is far cooler than $30 from $50, mathematically. But by the same token, $15 is still too much to spend on a game like Lair. 8 points for Lair and 4 points for BBA. For what you get out of BBA, $50 is crazy.

TIMELINESS: There is no reason to ever play Lair. Sure, it's the only dragon-based flying action high-def game out there, but anything it does is done better somewhere else. Warhawk, for one. 1 point.

Big Brain Academy has decent replay value, mainly because it's one of those anyone-can-play titles you can trot out when all the non-gamers show up. But it's not going to create hours of fun these days and about a dozen other minigame games eat its lunch. 5 points.

FINAL: Whoa, did you see that!? 17 for Lair and 19 for Big Brain! Future combatants take note... this is what you risk by not having a good enough sale price! BBA just almost lost to Lair, for crissake.

Big Brain Academy moves on to round two, nearly beaten but unbowed!

Over the long weekend I started a second playthrough on MGS4, on the easiest difficulty, mainly to take photos. I'm a genius as well, because I put the second controller (the camera controller) on the floor, wedged against my left foot. Then whenever I want to take a picture, I smack the R1 button with my right foot. It's great.

The easy difficulty is STUPID easy, by the way. Enemies will either not see you at all (what is this, Splinter Cell?) or, should you step out directly in front of them, they will wait a full 20 seconds before attempting to shoot at you. Which is frivolous anyway, since bullets do almost no damage on easy.

I'm going for a no-kill game, something I damn near accomplished on the medium difficulty anyway. There's a few other endgame honors I want to go for, like the one you get for sitting in a box for an hour. There's some kind of doll collecting thing that I may have already screwed up since I'm in Act 2/South America and only have one doll.

And I will definitely be checking out the boss Beauty camera mode.

There will be spoilers in here, so look away if you'd rather.

This first photo is directly after that crazy Beauty & Beast Corps cutscene where they show up and massacre about thirty dudes for no reason.

I thought this was a pretty fancy death scene.

This is when Akiba loses control of his bowels during the frog firefight, and stinks out the rest of the squad.

Nope, not kidding.

Pretty common Snake activity.

Another near-death experience. He's fine, folks.

I tried to barrel past Jon and knocked him over.

Piles of sleeping South American PMC troopers.

I love this bit. You have to pick you way through a building that has fallen over. It has a lovely Alice in Wonderland vibe.