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.
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.
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:
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Target's in-store advertising has almost always been top-notch. They clearly employ genuine graphic artists and creative marketers. (Wonder why Walmart suddenly made a play for a nicer design 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 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.
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.
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!
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...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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:
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?
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.
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.
Another fun podcast.
I think the Professor Layton DLC is done.
Six to go.
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 
Target signs up Domo-Kun as Halloween mascot.
Finally found Wii Fit.
The Facebook Notes/RSS thing bugs me.
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 
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.
Big failure at Toys R Us.
