Things We Learned This Week

Wii Speak happened; nobody noticed.

As near as I can tell, Nintendo released the Wii Speak Channel download to complete silence on Saturday. I didn't see anything on Kotaku or Joystiq, Nintendo World Report didn't Report it until Sunday. And the Aeropause coverage came from yours truly.

The gaming enthusiast media reports on the stupidest shit in the name of pageviews. I'm a little surprised to see this go completely ignored.

Batman will be fine.

Just so you know, if you think DC is genuinely and forever going to kill Bruce Wayne, you are completely stupid.

I bring this up because mainstream media sources are already jumping on this story, like somebody really died.

Eye of Judgment has the worst music ever.

It's so terrible. I had forgotten how bad it was, and then I fired EoJ back up this week to chase down some Trophies. Although the game does not support custom soundtracks (WTF), you can crank the music all the way down. Atrocious.

Wario was in my Gold Box.

I tracked the Amazon.com Gold Box deals last Thursday, because it was Wii game day. Have you seen this? It's intensely stupid. They throw up one deal every hour or so, but offer up clues so you can guess what the next deal will be. Like "No need to worry about avalanches" meant that We Ski was the next bargain. Hoo boy.

"Mario prefers it stirred, not shaken" referred to Warioland: Shake It, and that's the one I pounced on. $35, which wasn't as good as I had hoped. I missed Trauma Center 2 selling at $10! And even though I opted for Super Saver shipping, I had Warioland in two days. Whoo! Turns out, it's a really good game too.

In the end, I think I just wanted to participate in one of those crazy Gold Box deals.

Free stuff on PSN.

Free LittleBigPlanet costume, which is now to be expected. And another free song for Rock Band, which is always welcome. They're up to five of those now, I think.

But the big free news is a free "episode" of Qore. So I got that. And, aside from enjoying some nice HD footage, it's junk. Not worth paying for at all. There's a grand total of three stories, most of which unpleasantly remind me of all those poor video game TV shows that G4 used to run... IE, some doofy reporter stands three feet away from some doofy developer, tossing out softball questions like "So, tell us about the graphics" and ending with a cheesy "And you can check out Game X when it EXPLODES on your PS3 early next year!"

If there was some serious work into Qore, some nonstandard broadcasting, maybe I'd consider paying for it. But this dreck should be free, perhaps looping in the corner of the Store. Hey Sony, have you heard of a little thing called The Nintendo Channel...

So that's where Grandpa is!

One of the ongoing threads in season one of Ben 10: Alien Force is the whereabouts of Grandpa. Well, in this week's new episode, the gang finally finds him... and it was a cool reveal. Some other danglers from previous episodes showed up too, which was slick.

And why does Cartoon Network offer no promotion of Batman: The Brave and the Bold? They don't even repeat it. Meanwhile, that crappy Star Wars show gets commercials every five minutes.

When did Caillou switch to Flash?

We're watching Caillou on Sprout, so we're probably way behind, but lately they've been running what I assume are newish episodes, and they are all done in Flash. And really bad Flash to boot.

Um, check the sorting department.

I was all excited to net the Pirates Savage Shores super-rare booster last week... and then I did it again. Out of four Savage Shores boxes, I've gotten the super-rare set twice. Am I incredibly lucky, or is everything a dirty lie?

I also have to note that all four boxes have yielded the same rares. A Wraith crew member and some golden dragon. I'm really tired of finding those guys in the box.

Wii partied like it was early 2008.

We did a little Kart and Smash Bros this weekend, because I wanted to see the current Kart tournament and I do keep getting Smash pics and levels from friends here and there.

But it underlined for me just how more awesome Nintendo was eight months ago. The first party lineup since the summer - Wii Fit, Animal Crossing and Wii Music - just does not measure up. In all fairness, few release schedules could compare to the double-threat of Smash/Kart, but rehashing AC and living off Wii ___ doesn't cut it.

The problem is especially apparent after playing Smash again. That is such a huge game, a gamer's game, a casual game, a nostalgia trip, deep with unlockables... and now we're supposed to get excited about an almost completely fan-service-free Wii Music?