April 2009 Archives

I have a perfect storm of Toys R Us sales and coupons that expire this Thursday. I have $5 off $25, a $10 off $50, and there's a buy-one-Wii-game, get-$20-off-a-second-Wii-game (only on games $30 or more). That works out to roughly two $50 Wii games for $65.

But ExciteBots is only $40 ($50 if you get the bundle with the Wii Wheel, which I totally do not need or want.) So now I'm at two games for $55, assuming I can find another $50 Wii title. Unfortunately, I already picked up NPC Pikmin (PERFECT for a deal like this), Deadly Creatures and Madworld some time ago. And Klonoa isn't out for another week. I guess maybe I could go for NPC Mario Tennis (only $30... which gets me two Wii games for $35, which is crazy awesome) but I really wasn't that enthused about the original GameCube Mario Tennis in the first place.

It's a shame there's no Trophies on Wii games, because then I'd get stupid Tennis no question. As it stands, the best bonus feature I'd get from Tennis is the coins for Club Nintendo.

But anyway, about ExciteBots.

It's been getting really good reviews! Even though I'm a big Nintendo guy, I wasn't following this one for a couple reasons. First, it's a racing game and once you have your generational Mario Kart, everything else in that category is second place. Secondly, I never played ExciteTruck and so I don't have any prebuilt interest in an ostensible sequel.

And finally - but most importantly - I am not big on the whole sideways Remote control thing. Tried it in Kart and hated it. It reminded me of riding along when my dad was driving my aunt's giant boat Oldsmobile back when I was a kid, and Dad would complain that the Olds floated instead of drove. He couldn't "feel the road." That's what the motion controls do to me in Kart... I can't feel the road.

But everybody seems to like ExciteBots. Looks like it has a bunch of silly bonus modes, including one where you try to build poker hands while driving. And I like the dopey animal robot cars vibe.

Which brings up a beef. Kotaku's super-positive review couches everything in "But You Must Embrace Your Inner Kid" language.

Yes, Excitebots is awesome, but only if you let yourself go. Let the game take you on a ridiculous, primary-colored ride that grabs hold of the beetle and robot obsessed little kid within.

Because everything else is Excite Truck fed through a Saturday morning cartoon, filtered with gum drops.

Your ability to enjoy Excitebots: Trick Racing really comes down to whether or not you can tap into a child-like sense of adrenaline-fueled glee.

That reveals Kotaku's impressions of their visiting audience, doesn't it? They might as well preface it with "Hey Gears of War fans, don't piss on this game just yet!"

Guys, this is a Nintendo game on the Nintendo Wii. We generally don't have a problem with gumdrops and rainbows. That is not a threat to us.

There is no way you're going to presell those cliche "hardcore" gamers on ANY Wii game, much less one where you scoot a bionic ladybug around Sweet Candy Canyon throwing pies at floating clown faces.

Pandering to the vocal minority aside, it's cool to hear good reviews coming ExciteBots' way. Nintendo definitely needs high-caliber product - it's already May! - to pick up steam heading into E3... where they better have some big announcements ready to go.

At least to the point where I scream and yell about why Game X hasn't appeared on the Wii Virtual Console, or why Sony America doesn't have more PS1 games on the Store.

The only notable exception I can think of was Pokemon Snap, an N64 game that took, I guess, a year to show up on the Wii. I wanted that one and I bought it right away. And I played through it again, all the way to the end. I don't think I captured pictures of absolutely every pokemon available in the game this time through, but I came damn close, and I enjoyed being able to export favorite snaps to the Wii Message Board.

But Pokemon Snap remains largely unique to this day. Whereas so many other games from the same era have been remade, reimagined or outright replaced.

I think it is particularly the N64/PS1 era that bothers me more than any other. I was there for both systems and, looking back, there was some horrifically ugly shit going on. You can't fault them then, but today? Can't play it. It was the first round of 3D and much of it stands today as grainy, blurry, dark garbage.

Yes, I have plenty of favorites. Conker's Bad Fur Day. Resident Evil 2. PaRappa. Deception 2. Starfox 64. Tomb Raider 2. And while some of those do still reign unmatched (seriously, who has topped No One Can Stop Mr. Domino?), there's no way I'm going back and playing Resident Evil 2 after doing 4 and 5. Already have done, sir, please sign me up for whatever is new.

But find a way to pep up an old favorite, and I'm interested again. I'm excited for the Wii version of the PS1 Klonoa game, and the enhanced PSN version of Marvel vs Capcom 2.

I know I'm veering dangerously close to self-identifying as a graphics snob. And while visual fidelity is a huge part of it, there's also plenty of other modern improvements that I now rely on for the complete experience. Better controls, unlockables, supplemental modes, not to mention new-gen bits like trophies and DLC.

I mean, I buy DS games and there's nothing high-def about that. GTA: Chinatown Wars looks like a slightly upgraded version of the PS1 original... but it also has huge stats tracking, a killer touchscreen PDA interface, online multiplayer, f-bombs in every cutscene, and quick mission replay.

It just drives me crazy to visit PlayStation.Blog and see a bunch of chimps wailing and whining about a perceived lack of $6 PS1 games. (OH NOES EUROPE GOT A PSX GAME WE DIDN"TTT!!!!!) Or N-fans bitching that there's not enough N64 games on the VC. I gather it's not because these gamers are cheap, but because everybody has a closet favorite they want to play again. And I guess I can understand that, but that's not going to be the driving force of my gaming existence.

There's just not enough hours in the day for me to get chuffed about playing through Crash Bandicoot 3 again, whether it's only $6 or not.

My interest in gaming nostalgia chiefly extends only as far as where a new game can leverage that feeling against me... as in Super Smash Bros Brawl (or just about anything Nintendo releases, really.)

It's the recession, man.

Our department was downsized by one this week, to no one's rejoicing. Over my years in the same job, I've seen at least four nearby positions get eliminated. And even though people get axed, their former responsibilities do not. So now I get to help figure out how the remainder of my group is going to absorb the duties of yet another eliminated position. In this case, the person was not outright terminated, but relocated to another department... which is probably only a shadow of a silver lining.

Do more, with less. It's the new black.

Pirates now so totally cheap.

After WizKids vanished, it became pretty obvious that the long-running Pirates of the Cursed Sea line was not going to get a life raft from an interested third party. A few weeks ago I noticed boosters from the Disney Pirates movie tie-in set marked down to $2 at Target. These were originally $4 packs, so that's not bad at all.

This week, Target fielded even better deals. The World's Edge mega-packs (two boosters plus one oversized mega-ship) were stickered at $3. I think those used to be $7. And the boxed sets for "Rise of the Fiends" and "Fire and Steel" were down to $4 each... and those initially sold for $10. That's a lot of little plastic pirate ships for not a lot of money!

That King Tut story was really good.

I suppose on some level, having a new King Tut villain appear in a Batman book is a callback to the 1960s TV show, but with that show almost entirely out of circulation, I suspect most people are not getting the joke. Not that this three-parter in recent issues of Batman Confidential was funny.

But it was really good; I'm glad I impulse shopped it last week. When a deadly King Tut character shows up killing people and posing riddles (like the Sphinx, right?), Batman has to get the Riddler's help. And Riddler is in top form here, as an unappreciated genius working side-by-side with Batman to regain his stolen schtick.

The art is great as well... comics legend Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez's beautiful pencils given an uncharacteristically light touch thanks to inks by Kevin Nowlan.

The PS3 camera has the same resolution as the PS2 camera.

What? Really? I saw this mentioned on a LittleBigPlanet fansite this week, in an article with tips about getting your images into the game (since the import-image-from-HD feature seems to have died on the vine.) Apparently both the PS2 EyeToy and the PS3 PlayStation Eye shoot to 640x480. And the EyeToy has at least one mark up on the PSEye because it has a better focus knob!

That's as may be, but my anecdotal evidence says that the PS3 camera stuff looks way better than those old PS2 EyeToy games. But I guess that's more of the PS3 being better than the PS2, than the PSEye being better than the EyeToy.

I finally saw the Wonder Woman blu-ray... and then I didn't buy it!

Since Target refuses to stock the new Wonder Woman DTV on blu-ray (and Venture Bros Season 3, incidentally), I had to go to Best Buy to find it. $30, and there's a Best Buy exclusive item along for the ride: a Wonder Woman figure in the current Infinite Heroes style but with a custom head sculpted to look like WW in the movie. I still haven't quite worked out why I didn't buy it. I guess I'm figuring on Best Buy discounting these since no one but me wants them... and they had plenty of them. They even had blu-ray versions that lacked the fig, hilariously also priced at $30.

And Venture 3? In stock on blu for $43. Best Buy has stupid blu-ray sales every other week, so I'll have to haunt their flyers until I happen upon a fresh sale announcement.

Intellivision TV Commercial: BurgerTime (YouTube)
Straight from a time when everybody thought they had to verbally list all the myriad and unequal gaming platforms at the end.

Twelve Brands That Will Disappear By End Of 2010 (Huffington Post)
Couple car names in there, naturally, but also Old Navy, Borders and Crocs.

A Return to Flash Mountain (Mice Age)
For a decade, Disneyland has had screeners making sure that bare breasts etc are deleted from the Splash Mountain photo queue. Those screeners were just laid off.

Play As The Joker In Arkham Asylum PS3 (Kotaku)
Could perhaps maybe be PS3 exclusive DLC. Have I mentioned how bad I want this game to be good?

DODGE Logo (Antistress.ro)
The Dodge Ram logo looks like the female reproductive system.

Full Maps for Super Mario Advance 4's e-Reader Stages (GameSetWatch)
GSW points out that somebody somewhere has re-created all of the rare eReader Super Mario Bros 3 levels! The eReader is now a lost piece of video gamery. It deserves the level of fandom currently being wasted on overloved categories like Bionic Commando, Beyond Good & Evil and Sonic.

OK, time to look ahead to what games are coming my way this year. I'm getting all of this from IGN's release schedule, so any errors you can thumb right back to them. I'm avoiding formal inclusion of TBA 2009 games, although there are definitely some titles in there that I want to check out (Dead Rising 2, LEGO Harry Potter, Uncharted 2, No More Heroes 2, Bob Ross, Dr. Reiner Knizia's Brainbenders, and the video game version of the Zombies board game.)

May 5: Klonoa (Wii) - So good to see that name again. Seems like this revamp has really shaped up too.

May 26: Damnation (PS3) - The capsule description "a western" is enough to presell me. This game has been carrying a lot of whatever talk about it being vertical. Don't really care. I just want another good western game.

May 26: inFamous (PS3) - Problem here. I doubt I'll be getting both Damnation and inFamous in the same week. Superhero GTA is a very compelling concept, but the early videos I saw looked rough. The demo for this one arrives shortly before; hopefully Damnation will pony up a demo as well so I can make my final decision. Between those two and Klonoa, I am hot for a long action adventure game right now, so much so that I'm still replaying levels in RE5.

June 16: Let's Tap (Wii) - This game is so stupid that I can't not get it. Also, it's only $30.

June 16: Ghostbusters (PS3) - Sort of interested. I guess. This kind of 80s-idolatry annoys me because nobody could have given two shits about Ghostbusters a year ago at this time. But now all of a sudden it's the world's most beloved film property.

June 23: Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3) - And here's why I won't get Ghostbusters.

June 23: Little King's Story (Wii) - Been following this one for a long time. Actually at the point where I don't really care anymore. I'll definitely remain curious and hit the initial reviews though.

July 26: Wii Sports Resort (Wii) - I hold no illusions that there will be anything worth playing in Wii Sports Resort, but I want the hardware and I'm not about to buy a crappy EA Sports game to get it. I'll buy a crappy Nintendo game, because my fucking Mii is in it.

Q3: Fat Princess (PS3) - Like Bonsai Barber, I expect to buy this on concept alone.

Q3: Marvel Super-Hero Squad (PS3) - WTF? Screens please.

Q3: A Boy and His Blob (Wii) - Moderately excited by this. Not intensely, but moderately.

Q3: Red Dead Redemption (PS3) - Another western. Two western games! 2009 is the official Year of the Western! I was a big fan of the PS2's Red Dead Revolver, so I'm looking forward to this one.

Q3: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS) - God, that is the stupidest title ever. My big concern with this one is that it will not have enough Disney in it. I'm a little concerned with how Square Enix is morphing the franchise to cater to the Final Fantasy nerds instead of the Disney nerds.

Q3: Cursed Mountain (Wii) or Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (Wii) - Also known as "Joe's Not Getting Fatal Frame 4 So Now What."

Q3: Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time (PS3) - Hard to imagine that this will not be solid.

Sept 9: Beatles Rock Band (PS3) - Three-way vocals! Songs I know! Complete yes. My fingers are still crossed for some kind of cross-compatibility with Rock Band.

Q4: LEGO Rock Band (PS3) - Tough one. I fully expect full cross-compatibility with my existing Rock Band tracks, as this is Harmonix we're talking about here, but I need to see what this one is bringing to the table... gameplay as well as track list. So far, the track list doesn't seem to have kids songs on it, which is just about the dumbest missed opportunity I've ever heard. Also sounds like it's going to have minigame type stuff. So be on the lookout for Guitar Hero KidzBop Minigamez coming early 2010. Activision, ready your photocopiers!

Q4: Scribblenauts (DS) - Hope it comes out as cool as it sounds, but I have trouble believing it.

Here's the real flame fodder: the games I'm NOT interested in. On the PS3 side... Bionic Commando shows up next month, a long-ignored NES IP that will prove why it has been long-ignored in this new take. October brings us Brutal Legend. Don't even care. God of War III shows in Q4, yawn. Betcha he kills lots of minotaurs and shit in this one! And despite being listed for Q4, Beyond Good & Evil 2 is almost guaranteed a delay to 2010, come on.

My big skip on the DS... I'm keeping a skeptical eye on Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks Working Title, because I was not keen on Phantom Hourglass.

No-nos on Wii: Punch-Out, no. Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball... nothanks.jpg to played-out internet gag games, sorry. Not interested in Boom Blox Bash Party. I'm turning against EA Sports Active, mainly because one day I woke up and realized I would probably have more fun doing Disney DDR, even though that doesn't use the Balance Board. In June we get The Conduit. No one will buy it. There's a WiiWare game coming called Eduardo the Samurai Toaster, which is one of those Adult Swim Let's Name It Random For Ironic Hipster Laffs things. Whatever.

I'm sure E3 will destroy this list backwards and forwards, but it's fun to pretend at the moment. Where the hell's that DSi make-your-own-WarioWare game?

It really is. I don't understand why The Internet Decided that Resident Evil can't and shouldn't do multiplayer, but it does and it is fine.

There's two issues here, the gameplay angle and the DLC angle.

Everybody wanted to say that RE5 just would not work in online multiplayer. I have never understood this issue, even before I played RE5. #4 had Mercenaries mode, which everybody liked, and it seems like a no-brainer to just take that mode online. Drop some human opponents (or teammates) into Mercenaries and you're done. That's exactly what RE5 did. Versus Mode is Online Mercenaries Mode. Call it Mercus Mode if you like.

The main issue seems to be that in RE4 and 5, you have to stop walking to shoot. So? How does that ruin online play? Of course, all players must stop to shoot, so it's not like some characters have a physical advantage by being able to run and shoot simultaneously. You're running around, you stop and line up a shot, you swivel around to make sure a zombie is not approaching your back (if so, you shoot him), and then you drop your gun and run some more. How is that completely unacceptable gameplay?

Resident Evil is not run-and-gun. But plenty of games are, so if you'd rather, go play those. But that's no call to declare RE5 Vs a total failure and an abomination on an otherwise peaceful planet. Especially since all Capcom did is take an existing popular sidemode and not fuck it up.

One amusing sidebar to this is that the people who complain the most about RE5's stop-and-shoot conceit are the same people who consider themselves very concerned with games being exceptionally realistic. Like it's so real to be able to jump wildly into an arena and snap off perfect headshots while running at top speed. If anything, RE5 Vs is more realistic because it requires you to stop running like an idiot and line up your shot.

Now, the DLC issue. Versus mode costs $5, and the size of the PS3 download was 350k. k. Not meg, k. That's less that the 1000k that each and every LittleBigPlanet DLC shows up under, and I'm convinced that the LBP stuff is actually delivered via mandatory patch, not as actual DLC. RE5 Vs is 3.5 times the size of the download code required to export the Rock Band 1 on-disk songs to the HD for use in RB2.

So I don't quite believe Capcom's stance that the $5 Vs mode is genuinely a DLC item. Of course, I don't expect Vs mode to be a completely discrete application; I would anticipate that it used plenty of resources from the disk. But 350k seems awfully tiny to handle the matchmaking, the menu structure, any voice samples unique to Vs mode, and whatever hooks integrate Vs mode back into the main game's menus.

It also seems unlikely that 350k worth of code was not tested and ready to go two months ago in time to be pressed onto the disk. But what do I know about that.

Perhaps the bigger question is whether Vs mode is worth an additional $5. Or conversely, is Resident Evil 5 WITHOUT Vs mode worth $60.

There are plenty of examples of $60 games that managed to include single-player and multi-player modes, and there are also plenty of examples of $60 games that did not offer both and were perfectly fine. So I don't think that's a fair metric.

For me, RE5 was not as good as RE4. RE5 is shorter and has a far worse story and characters. But RE5 has a friendly mission replay option, more unlockables, and the benefit of HD graphics. Kind of a wash, actually. I went through RE4 twice because it was so much fun, but I find myself enjoying the "chapter select" feature of RE5 more because I can re-play favorite levels and specifically hunt down level-based unlockables or trophies. RE5 also lets you keep your money and treasures even if you bail out and avoid finishing the level, so it is an easy way to collect dough to level-up your weapons, without forcing you into a situation where you have to fight through a hairy part just to keep your money.

I guess what I'm saying is that I'm happy with RE5 sans Vs at $60. Given how infrequently I am likely to play Vs mode anyway, it's not something I would miss had I not picked it up. The package doesn't seem like it has a big glaring online multiplayer hole in it. Sure, it would have been nicer to get everything for $60, but I'm just not invested enough to care about this.

Obviously this will only get better in the long term, as RE5 drops in price at retail and makes that extra $5 easier to swallow. Although in reality, guys, it wasn't that long ago that we were regularly paying $60 for Sega Genesis games, (wasn't Street Fighter II Tournament like $80?) so let's not pretend that the $60+$DLC is the end of civilization.

Here is a maze, as defined by PEZ.

Should you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to explain to someone what a maze is, now you know that it is simply the act of drawing a line from a given start to a specified finish without crossing any lines.

What is up with the Cars pricing?

Follow along here: Toys R Us sells single Cars cars (you know, Lightning McQueen toys) for $3.59 or so. Then they sell an exclusive five-pack for $20. That's $4 a car. The five-pack doesn't even contain exclusive paint jobs. And there's two five-packs, one of which counts tinyass Luigi and Guido as two of the five! Bullshit! Luigi and Guido together don't contain half as much metallized plastic as any other car in the line.

Target recently knocked down their Cars singles to $2.99. But they still sell the two-packs for over $8! And, again, those are (usually) the exact same cars. I can get Tex Dinoco for $3 and Dinoco Lightning for $3... or I can get them both in the two-pack for $8. What is going on here?

Clark and the Pikmin.

Clark was interested in Pikmin, but the actual game is a little too stressful and difficult for him... but then I unlocked Challenge Mode, which dumps you in an environment with the only goal being to grow as many pikmin as you can in the time limit. On the opener board, there's no huge baddies and few obstacles, so basically you're just chucking pikmin at the flower pellets so they drag them back to the onions and grow more guys. This is entry-level pikmin, and it is just Clark's speed.

So far, his high score on that board is 52... and that's entirely on his own. He was only scoring in the 30s until he mastered the level's only really tricky bit: the thieving pillbug guy who steals your candy pellets. Clark learned how to handle that enemy after a few tries and now he rightfully makes that priority one when tackling the challenge. The biggest learning curve for him has been pointing at the screen, but lately he really seems to have mastered that as well.

Surprise! It's the Kingdom Come Superman!

There's a boxed set of DC Crisis figures at Toys R Us where you get Captain Atom, Captain Marvel, Superman, Lex Luthor in battlesuit, and FOUR lame-o Luthor troopers. The box bothers to list all four troopers thusly: TROOPER TROOPER TROOPER TROOPER. Retails for $50 which is crazy. That's $6 a figure, and that's assuming you think the troopers are worth the regular price.

But I took a closer look at the box this week and noticed something I never anticipated: it's the Kingdom Come Superman. Gray temples, black-and-red "mourning" insignia. Woof. Suddenly I was re-weighing my opinion on the $50. I'm still not buying it, but if I ever see TRU mark that one down to a price considerably under a new Wii game, I'll bite.

ABBA SingStar $10 at Target.

I'm still a little unclear if ABBA SingStar actually requires the original SingStar game or not; the box cover says "SingStar microphones required" but that could just be Sony being dicky about telling you that USB mics are required.

But only $10! For awesome songs, original ABBA videos, and PlayStation Eye support! If it does work on its own (IE, not just a SingStar expansion set), I may get it even though I really would rather have that ABBA hits library in Rock Band. I wonder if there's trophies for it.

Um, they, like, did more Red Dwarf episodes.

Apparently the BBC ran three new Red Dwarf episodes this weekend in a mini-marathon. It shows how far removed I am from Red Dwarf fandom these days that I had no idea they were back in production. And apparently it did rather well.

I guess Silent Hill will have to be the new Fatal Frame.

I wrote about the new Silent Hill Wii game for Aeropause, and I'm pretty impressed by the way the game is shaping up. It's got the Wii Remote-as-flashlight deal, uses the Remote speaker, and addresses one of Silent Hill's famous shortcomings - crappy combat - by not having combat at all. Sure, I'm getting all this from a magazine preview, but it still sounds hot. Fingers crossed. With Fatal Frame 4 unlikely to see a US release, I'm going to have to look to other quarters for my horror gaming. Jeez, I may even have to re-think about importing Siren: Blood Curse.

A great game idea that nobody knows about.

A downloadable DSi game where you design your own WarioWare levels? WHY IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT THIS.

Rhythm Heaven is super-hard.

I wasn't expecting THAT.

I'm no shambles at rhythm games, and I am regularly getting my ass handed to me by Rhythm Heaven. These minigames are downright brutal. But cute. Cutal.

Super Friends pulls out two all-star cartoon pencillers.

I thought the art in the latest issue of DC Super Friends looked better than usual. And it's because the art was handled by two funny animal comic masters, Mike Kazaleh and Scott Shaw! In a completely suitable twist, this issue sidelines the League so that the Legion of Super-Pets can save the day.

And it's a new take on the Super Pets. Silver-age standbys Krypto, Streaky and Beppo are joined by Ace the Bathound, Topo the octopus, a Kanga from Paradise Island, and Ch'p from the Green Lantern Corps! I hate to give away the ending, but classic DC funnybook character The Terrific Whatzit shows up for the final gag.

Jim Noir - 'My Patch' (YouTube)
One of my favorite songs from LittleBigPlanet. I'm fairly amazed to learn that much of LBP's soundtrack was not composed specifically for the game. This song is from 2005... the "Dancing Drums" track is Indian pop from 1975! Don't even pretend to me that LBP is not one of the greatest video games of the last five years.

Nintendo's Made in Ore, User-Generated Content (GameSetWatch)
Incredibly great idea! Coming to Japan as DSiWare, a game that lets you construct your own WarioWare boards! Want want want.

NYU Student Conducts Most Adorable Robot Experiment Ever (Gizmodo)
I watched the video and damn near cried. I could almost hear the little robot thanking people for their help.

Obama says U.S. high-speed rail "overdue" (Yahoo News)
Hey yeah, why don't we have that already?

Notes On Production Notes: "We Think It's Really Great, But We Have A Couple Of Changes" (Isn't Life Terrible)
Some choice quotes from a book on nonsensical memos from TV execs.

How To Address The $5 RE5 Vs. Mode Issue (Sexy Videogameland)
I got some major guffaws over this IM conversation poking fun at the righteous indignation about the $5 add-on to Resident Evil 5. I just got the add-on (through my nefarious sources) so I'll be sure to let you all know what I think of this hideous smash-and-grab on our wallets.

It's been a while since I jumped into FusionFall (I still have not activated my free subscription code) but this week I polished off the big finale for the free content. I think I tracked down every mission available for non-subscribers, and it was definitely a sizable list. I have already put hours into FusionFall with no complaint (and a ton of the missions I did were optional, if you're worried about FusionFall taking up too much time). The free content takes you up to level 4 (I think you can currently level up to 32 or so), and covers a dystopian Cartoon Network future where the characters are working to send you back to the past. The free section "ends" with you being invited to travel back in time to fix things, where you'll interact with a different group of CN characters.

So there's some spoilers coming up, but nothing so incredible you'd be pissed by knowing it ahead of sequence... and the game telegraphs the time travel thing right from the start anyway.

There's me taking down evil Fusion Eduardo. He's the last boss you fight under the free section.

I was very excited by Mandark's mission. As part of the time travel setup, not only do you have to talk to Samurai Jack (noted time traveller), but you also have to find the head of Larry 3000! Larry is from one of CN's forgotten originals, Time Squad! I can't wait to see if FusionFall mines anything from Mike, Lu & Og! Just kidding, I hated Mike, Lu & Og.

Part of what got me back into FusionFall this week (apart from a nagging desire to make some time for it) was this limited time virtual giveaway: a Zak Saturday bobblehead mask. It's hideous.

Also, note that the bastards screwed up my character name. I requested "Stockholm Dred," because you need a first and last name for your avatar... and the CN mods or whoever needs to approve all user names before they go live so people don't sign up as SpongeBob PenisPants. But there is an unfortunate 8-character limit on the names that is not mentioned anywhere. So "Stockholm" became "Stockhol"... which actually sounds dirty. Dumbasses.

One of the missions takes you an abandoned comic shop that has some scanned-in low-res manga and production artwork stationed outside.

And check out poor MEGAS! He's been overtaken by the fuse.

You have to do some simple platforming to get up in MEGAS's face.

And look, there's Larry 3000's head! Shows you how dystopian this dystopian future is. Larry 3000 doesn't even get to talk; he's dead.

Here's the big finish setpiece, where the CN stars who have helped you through the free content zone send you off to a magical world where you pay $6/month (or less) to keep playing.

There's the finished time machine, with Larry 3000's noggin unceremoniously placed on top! Poor guy. Still no lines.

The splash screen politely suggests you start paying now; then you'll get to interact with Dexter, Mojo Jojo and freakin' Ben 10. There's a nice out though... even if you choose not to pay, you can still exit back into the gameworld to clean up leftover missions or just to screw around.

Good fun. As soon as I feel confident that I'll have the time to make the most of my paid subscription voucher, I'm in.

We took Clark to see Monsters vs. Aliens on Monday largely because we happened to have three free passes that were about to expire. As we learned when we went to see Bolt, Clark doesn't yet have the fortitude to sit in a theater for two hours. He can sit through a movie at home, of course, but that's quite a different animal.

We had a rocky start right at the box office. Remember, we had three free passes (two good for up to $8; one good for $12) and we went to a noon matinee. Rhonda hands over the three passes and the poor lost ticket clerk totalled it up and said "That will be $20.75." At that price with discount passes, I'd expect a free advance blu-ray.

We opted NOT to see the 3D version. You can blame me for that one. As I was trying to explain 3D technology to Clark, I put him totally off his lunch. First, he wasn't sure he wanted to wear special glasses the entire time (would it look OK without? I doubt it, right?) and then I scared him by saying that "things would come out of the screen" at him. I did not make 3D sound cool.

Clark was telling his daycare teachers about the movie. When asked about his favorite part, he described the car commercial that ran before the feature presentation, the one where CG hamsters are all over the city in stationary cage wheels. So that probably says a lot about MvA right there.

I'm sure the 3D version would have been better, if only for the novelty. As it was, this was a very pedestrian movie, with the usual cast of cliche characters and the odd stupid screenplay error (like when the characters get separated by a giant steel door that they can't open... but they can still talk through the door to each other, at normal volume).

Given how obvious this one's story was, here's some quick guaran-damn-teed story beats for the sequel. Which, if I may predict, will be called Monsters Vs. something else, thus creating a "Monsters Vs." franchise.

- There will be a girl blob. She will be pink.

- Dr. Cockroach will turn back into a human, but then choose to return to his cockroach form in a moment of clarity.

- Ginormica will be able to control her size at will.

- Galaxor will return. He will not be as bad as previously thought.

- A human character from the first movie (The President? General Monger?) will be revealed or turned into a monster.

- Ginormica will meet up with Glenn, the Amazing Colossal Man, for teh love.

- Other C-list movie monsters will be added to the team.

- The characters will travel to an entire community of monsters where humans are kept locked up. Perhaps a colony of Insectosauri?

- After the girl blob is revealed, the big surprise for the end credits will be little purple baby blobs.

- A female Missing Link will be discovered, thus ending Link's swinging single days.

- The big villain(s) will be a vampire and a Frankenstein monster. "Monsters vs. MONSTERS" guh-what!

If you did not notice, all of these characters are functionally identical, which is why all of their plot points are identical.

We'll never know, but at least we know that Easter (or Bunny Day, or Egg Day, or whatever the heck they call it) is actually a for-real questing holiday.

One nice thing about this... the egg hunt reset for each player. So all three of us had a decent shot at the fun of digging up eggs. I managed a complete set of Egg furniture, since I was the only one of us who cared to collect them all.

Zipper reminds me of those rabbits from Silent Hill.

You guys recall how pissed I was when Nook dumped Nookington's in favor of a wimpy Nook-n-Go, just based on our desire for better hours. Well, Nookington's is back, thanks to another hasty exit poll.

Here's a happy me back with the monster Nookington's.

Of course, leave it to Blathers to work in a jab at Nook's expense.

Rhonda ran into Wisp again, but this time she opted not to help him out. And she kept his lamp! His rewards suck anyway.

And there's somebody I haven't thought about in a while: Pippy. Clark ran into that nasty ugly rabbit up in the city zone. Stay out of our town, Pippy!

No, Blanca. You do not want a mirror.

We do the worst things to her.

And there's the latest coolpants item: the DSi sofa! It doesn't turn on, but it does look pretty cool. Like the Pikmin Hat rare item that appeared a few weeks ago, the DSi sofa can be ordered from Nook's catalog once you touch it... so these rare items will thankfully not stay rare. (Thankfully if you missed the distribution period, anyway.)

Guitar Hero, as a brand, is at war with itself.

You've seen the TV ads for Guitar Hero: Metallica, eh? The four guys whom I assume are actual Metallicas explode the Risky Business house that framed all the spots for Guitar Hero: World Tour. Where various B- and C-list celebs did sad Tom Cruise impersonations to "Old Time Rock and Roll."

Which wasn't even in GH:WT until last February, incidentally.

Now, putting aside how 1980s movie cliches make Guitar Hero look painfully out of touch anyway, what does this new Metallica commercial add to the franchise? It mocks the previous ad campaign. In fact, it pretty much shits all over the previous ad campaign.

Is that good brand management? So now, after half a year of doling out Bob Seger as if he was relevant, now we grenade Seger to show gamers who is really cool. Metallica, apparently. See, when you attack previous commercials like that, you generally attack the ads of your competition, not your own.

Watch those synced DS carts!

Something to be on the lookout for those of you who picked up non-shiny DSi's this week. Any game that connected itself to your old DS (usually for online activation) will want to re-connect once you pop it inside your DSi. Both GTA: Chinatown Wars and the Pokemon Pearl/Diamond games do this. With GTA, it was no problem to re-attach the game to the new DSi and re-upload my stats... but going online with Pokemon Pearl and the DSi expected to wipe out my in-game friend code list.

LittleBigPlanet gets King Tut, my three dollars.

One of the DLC packs for April is an Egyptian theme kit with two costumes and ten stickers. Clark still considers King Tut a favorite, so we'll be on this one right away.

You know who I won't miss? Will Wright.

Sorry, but I won't. I loved SimCity but OD'ed on the original Sims sometime after I got tired of having to micromanage daylong toilet trips. And at no point was I excited about Spore (Bill Harris suggests Will wasn't either!)

But I applaud his move to exit formal game design and just kinda do what he wants, if only because we should all be so lucky to spend our time doing just that.

Getting caught up with classic Jonah Hex.

At my local comic shop's excellent late night sale last week, I picked up the Showcase edition of Jonah Hex. This edition reprints a pile of early Hex stories from the early 1970s in unfortunate black-and-white, and they are all so good. They may all still be in continuity, too. I haven't really noticed anything in direct opposition to the current Jonah Hex series. Has any misguided writer given Jonah Hex super-powers as a way to explain his uncanny marksmanship and unearthly speed at drawing a pistol? Wikipedia happily doesn't say.

I also bought the Ambush Bug Showcase edition, which covers nearly his complete collection of books... from the first appearance in 1982 all the way through 1992's Nothing Special. The character changes drastically over those ten years, making this Showcase a very interesting consecutive read. Wikipedia says Ambush Bug will be in the upcoming DC Universe Online Game, which would be hot.

Here's something I forgot about the first Pikmin:

It's hard as balls.

Really. The level timer, the overall pressure of the 30-day clock, the fact that the stupid pikmin will walk right beside enemies (and die) despite there being a safe path just a few feet away... Pikmin can be one nasty challenge.

Why does Nintendo hate Fatal Frame?

Tecmo says Fatal Frame 4 is not coming to Europe or America, and they say Nintendo is the one shutting the door. Nintendo published the game in Japan last summer... and I know I was among the fans assuming that we'd get it around Halloween, because, you know, we sort of have that scary holiday for things like this. We never did. Nintendo Power talked it up a couple of times, but always stopped short of mentioning a ship date. Some mag in Europe thought they had a scoop and ran a print ad heralding the game's arrival. They were wrong.

Is Fatal Frame too mature for Nintendo? Is the subject matter too disturbing? The Wii has had horror games, albeit it more in the action mode than as true horror (RE4, among others.) Other horror games are forthcoming (like Cursed Mountain), but who knows what kind of experience they will deliver. The Fatal Frame franchise almost always deals with dead children, torture rituals, and deep psychological trauma. (I have studiously avoided spoilers on Fatal Frame 4, but it's a fair bet that #4 will run true to form.) Has Nintendo blinked on this one, simply because it would carry their name on the cover?

Will the publishing revert back to Tecmo at some point? They'd probably love to publish it themselves. Can Nintendo sit on this game forever? Are they holding on to it for late 2009 and haven't even discussed plans with Tecmo? That would be just like them.

Now the most important question: Is there a Fatal Frame 5 in the works and will it give Nintendo the middle finger and shift to PS3?

I know I've embedded this before, but it is still great... plus there is exciting news on the Shitbuster front!

So that's the original, right? I know that a dozen different people have uploaded it to YouTube in lame attempts to claim it as their own, but I'm still surprised that overall it doesn't have a million billion viral views.

But anyway, there's a new reimagining of the concept. This new video is almost a complete copy of the script from the original.

And there's already a sequel. WITH A SURPRISE TWIST AT THE END!

There's a definite garage charm to the original Shitbuster, but I'm excited to see how this new edition plays out.

ADDENDUM: It's getting to be a Jump the Shark moment. Here's Episode Three...

Wat ya doin' snoooping in my window?!? (YouTube)
In celebration of Fatal Frame 4 never making it out of Japan, here's a great clip from my favorite, Fatal Frame 2... with commentary audio from the guys playing the game. If you've never played a Frame, you don't know what you're missing. And yeah, I totally screamed at this scene too.

Thai Boy With Autism Rescued by Spider-Man (Wired)
Great story about a young boy who climbed out to a third floor ledge at his Bangkok school, and it took a firefighter in a Spider-Man costume to get him to come back in.

ECCC: DC NATION (CBR)
Another con, another DC panel. This one marks the first time I've heard of Wednesday Comics, a six-part Jonah Hex epic, the Tiny Sixers, and a veritable shitstorm of Blackest Night tie-in miniseries.

Goodnight, George... a Ghost Story (2719 Hyperion)
A terrific talk about George, a ghost who haunts behind-the-scenes at DisneyWorld's Pirates of the Caribbean.

From Flash To Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars Cash (Kotaku)
Finally, I get to participate in one of those play-web-games-to-enhance-your-real-game things! Coming soon to the Rockstar Social Club, online flash games that make money for GTA: Chinatown Wars.

The new Warner Bros. studio mural (Cartoon Brew)
Just beautiful. They tore down an old giant animation mural on the Warner lot some time ago, and cartoon fans whined until we heard a new one was going up in its place. The old one had Scooby-Doo, 1990s animated Batman, Bugs Bunny and Fred Flintstone in a stupid Mount Rushmore gag. The new one has B&B animated Batman, Bugs & Daffy, other DC characters from the current crop of PG-13 direct-to-video movies, and the gone-but-apparently-not-forgotten Teen Titans! And villains that only show up at night under special lighting! Makes we want to go to L.A.

You've all seen Nintendo pres Satoru Iwata playing WarioWare: Snapped...

...now here's me doing the same.

WarioWare: Snapped! runs for $5 from the DSiWare Store... although anybody buying it now is likely cashing in their free $10 store credit for it.

And yeah, it's a $5 game. The best bit is the silly You'-re-An-Idiot movie that follows each gaming session. Interestingly, that movie is actually your reward for beating all the WarioWare challenges. If you muff one of the minigames, you get a big red X instead of the funny video!

Clark and I were playing it last night and it's a little flaky in how it recognizes your movements... but it's a neat proof-of-concept at a minimal price. And like I said, the stupid movie feature is worth the expense.

We found these at that crappy Ollie's store I mentioned yesterday: Pounce Lickittys. This is just crazy. It's a cat lollipop that you stick to the floor (or wall or wherever). It's a cat lollipop that you stick to the floor.

The official Pounce Lickittys product page says these are only available at PetSmart... but like I said before about Ollie's, they'll sell anything that comes to them via a tractor-trailer and a worried phone call from some warehouse inventory manager. Ollie's knows not of your corporate exclusivity deals. Ollie's marked them for around 70 cents apiece, which is still a little high in my opinion.

So the deal is, your cat licks at the treat all day. It works. Well, it works with some cats. We had a 50% success rate.

It took some typical cat waffling, but once Zoe (in black) realized that her Lickitty smelled good, she went to town on it. Annie (in gray) sniffed at it, but must have sensed the low-class Ollie's tinge and proceeded to ignore it.

Zoe ended up licking down both Lickittys. It took her about a day. Even by the time I thought this was funny enough to take a picture, she had demolished both of them by half.

Each Lickitty comes with a plastic snap-on cover in case you want to pack it away. Or in case you really want to screw with your cat.

Annie is just insufferable.

Did not jump on this week's Amazon Gold Box Wiideals.

Rabbids TV Party for $30. Ready 2 Rumble Revolution for $30. Mario Galaxy for $40 (what a savings!). We Cheer for $20. Perhaps the best one was the Animal Crossing/Wii Speak bundle for $50. Shame it's been almost half a year and still no other games do a damn thing with Wii Speak.

Amazon also ran Wii Music for $30, which is close. If Wii Music had been $30 from jump street, I probably would have bit way back when. But $30 now, after all the continued non-selling and anti-hyping, I'm shaky on that. I think $15 is my new price point for Wii Music; $20 if I'm generous.

LittleBigPlanet t-shirt at Kohl's sale for $10!

Normal price: $18. I don't know if the sale is still going on, but if you're near a Kohl's check it out. All their pop culturey hipster doofus shirts are down to $10. So if you need an ugly Guitar Hero World Tour shirt, or one with Sesame Street characters overlaid with hip urban lingo, they're your lads.

Nice DC toy score.

We had some time to kill before hitting the Toys R Us Nickelodeon Easter Egg Hunt, so we stopped by the Ollie's next door. I'm sure you don't have them, but Ollie's is one of those stores that peddles overstock merchandise, expired foodstuffs, and anything that may have been water damaged or fell off the back of a semi. And it is always 1000 degrees in there. I hate going there, but damned if I don't always find something I want.

This visit, we found a bunch of the DC Crisis action figures for $2 each. This is a very bizarre line that I can't imagine is doing well at retail... there's no accessories or playsets, the chosen figs are all total fan-service, and they're not very eye-catching. But at $2, we grabbed one of each they had. Batman, Wildcat, Power Girl, Guy Gardner, Reverse Flash, Star Sapphire, the Question... we even got the stupid Qwardian Weaponer because I felt terrible buying the rest and leaving him there. These guys sell for $5 at Target and $7 right next door at Toys R Us.

Sure, I have a DSi already.

We got it un-reserved at Toys R Us, no stress at all. Already posted impressions at Aeropause.com, and since the DSi is more or less just another DS with a downloadable store and some amusingly cheesy picture/music toys, it's not much to talk about. Either you really dig the potential for DL games or you don't.

The funny bit was that Clark has been telling everyone for weeks that Daddy is getting a new black DS and he was getting the old white DS. Until he found out that the black DS has a camera. Now he wants the DSi. I told him we can share.

The Artscow.com print-a-card deck deal is back on!

And it's a couple cents cheaper. The new coupon code is PLAYCARD377 and it gets you a 54-design deck for $5.77 and free shipping.

So I'm pretty much going to order more TaleSpin cards.

You know what's really good? Pikmin.

Great freaking game. This fancy-dancy New Play Control Pikmin for Wii does not do the graphics any favors, but at $30 you're getting a fantastic GameCube game slightly spiffed with Remote-based controls.

The game does show its age right off the top, with almost no CG intro and a ton of N64-level text screens. But as soon as that's over and that brilliant music starts up, and you're plucking pikmin out of the ground forcing them to carry junk around... well, it is good to be back on that Distant Planet.

My purchase of this game is a direct vote for Pikmin 3.

They Might Be Giants - Asheville (YouTube)
This is one of my favorite videos from the Venue Songs set.

A Story You Won't Believe (Mark Evanier)
I hope Mark Evanier realizes how awesome his life is. In this anecdote, he drops lines like "my old pal, Billy Barty" and "my office roommate at the time was Tex Avery" and for a year he parked his car by boxes full of Spike Jones' personal notes while dating Spike's niece.

The Source (DC Comics)
DC has started their own weblog... which is one of those forward-facing corporate weblogs that will have lots of exclusive announcements and genial patter but will still retain the untouchable marketroidness that keeps things from getting too real (like PlayStation.Blog, actually).

Flash Rebirth (Absorbascon)
Scipio discusses the return of Barry Allen. My favorite quote:

Geoff Johns is the anti-Grant Morrison; with Johns work you don't know what's going on until it's over, when all is revealed and it makes sense, whereas with Morrison's you think you know what's going on until it's over, when it's revealed that it didn't make any sense at all.

Or maybe it's this one:

Most great characters have an essential irony. Bruce Wayne, the gazillionaire who fights muggers in alleys. Superman, the passive office schlub who can shove planets around. Wonder Woman, the ass-kicking warrior of peace and sisterhood. Hal Jordan, with a ring that can do whatever you imagine on the hand of a rock-headed moron.

OH, DC COMICS IN THE 1940S - WHATEVER SHALL WE DO WITH YOU? (Comics Should Be Good)
An unbelievably acceptable story-and-comments about some racist imagery in an old 1940s Batman comic. Like, nobody freaks out at all, but everybody agrees it's terrible. Compare this to the last time you read video gamers talking about Resident Evil 5.

Toon Zone News Interviews the Brave and Bold James Tucker! (Toon Zone)
Great interview with James Tucker, producer of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. I love reading about the stupid things that mess with development on a show like this... where you want to use Wonder Woman but somebody higher up in charge of rights distribution says no because she's promised to some other contract at the moment.

I mean, I like finished it and everything about a week ago. I have one infinite ammo weapon (the starter popgun, naturally) but I'm pretty close to being able to afford one or two of the other infinite-ized weapons. I'm looking forward to banging through the first few levels on the next difficulty without having to conserve ammo.

RE5 also lets you replay any level at any time, so that's cool. I get the feeling that Capcom intended for us to play and re-play RE5 over and over again, and that's why it's so short and fluffy ("only you can save the world, Chris!"). I'd much rather have a thirty hour game with one huge-ass story to follow, than a ten hour story that you play through three times. But that's just me.

Anyway, here's some other quick thoughts on the games I've been into lately.

I've already recently talked about Bonsai Barber (Wii), so I'll spare you that one. It's still cute. It's nothing super-huge-gotta-buy-it, but what it does it does well. Tonight we noticed a little thundercloud floating over the patrons, dropping rain that made their hair grow, screwing up the cut! Adorable. It is what it is.

Got back into Rock Band 2 (PS3) tonight, thanks to the new release of "Don't Stop Believing" and the SpongeBob pack. The SpongeBob songs were actually more challenging on medium that I expected. Don't assume these are dialed down in difficulty to appease children.

The next Rock Band should be entirely downloadable. No more disk to insert.

GTA: Chinatown Wars (DS) is way harder than GTAIV. And unfortunately, I think it's mainly due to the nature of the smallscreen DS beast. I keep dying in missions because it's just plain harder to watch your life meter... since it's on a different screen.

But I tell you, I will be supremely pissed if the interface enhancements in GTA:CW do not make their way to the next console GTA game. The in-game PDA tracks everything, giving you an easy map to find stuff that you would otherwise never locate again. Like, you can map a path to the nearest Stunt Jump. Rockstar was really smart about keeping this GTA from dragging, since it's portable and in theory you can only play for a brief time. With the GPS, mission select, and Trip Skip, you can jump in and out of any mission right away. Smart stuff, and I hope Huang's PDA makes it to my TV someday.

This is a stunning piece of DS work, with a lot of fresh ideas for the GTA franchise, but in no way is it more fun than GTAIV.

I started building another LittleBigPlanet (PS3) level, this one based on the notion of locked room mysteries. I'm making a series rooms that shut you in, and then you have to puzzle your way out.

Last week I found some cool Namco homage levels that do a bang-up job with including the original arcade music (and even the modern remixes of the old tunes). User nano_rino has made them for Dig-Dug, Space Invaders and Xevious. Rather than just play the music (which was really impressive six months ago, but dead boring now), these levels work the music into a simple platformer, all in the game's theme. The Dig-Dug board has you digging through dirt while dodging pixel-perfect recreations of the Pooka and Fygar sprites. Great work.

I posted a comment begging for a Mappy level. nano_rino appears to be Japanese (well duh, name another country that cares about Xevious!), but "Mappy" is a universal language.

Madworld (Wii) is happening. It makes my arms hurt. Although in this case the waggle is actually responsive, so the motion controls do not seem as onerous as in Deadly Creatures (which was great anyway, I feel I have to say). I hear this game is short too, sadly. The boss fights are hellaciously difficult compared to the rest of the level.

I got to the second-to-last boss in LIT (Wii), and it is complete bullshit. You're in the gym and the gym teacher is throwing kickballs at you. You instantly die when you get touched by a ball. Even if the ball hits the floor and rolls over to your ankle.

I think there is a very strict sequence to follow to kill the gym teacher, and I can't even describe to you how painful it is. It is horrible. The slightest wrong move wrecks everything, forcing you to restart even if you managed to avoid the killer kickballs.

I played Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii) long enough in the past week to get my Nookington's rebuilt and score the cool rare April Fool's holiday item. I have not been back in Rule of Rose (PS2) for a while now, because I am still stuck at the ceiling mermaid girl boss.

And finally, I have another game to review for Aeropause, Lux-Pain for DS. It is really, really awful. And not even in the charmingly awful way that allows me to enjoy a lot of other bad games. This is just one messed-up confusing title. As I'm playing it, I often feel like I'm playing an imported Japanese game, even though everything is in English with voice acting and text and everything. I have no idea how I'm going to write a review for it, because I am so bewildered by it. I may just lorem ipsum the entire review and see if anyone notices.

I had no idea that Bonsai Barber was coming, but as soon as I read about it this week, I knew I would be buying it sight unseen. I actually avoided reviews of it for a couple days, for fear I'd hear the game was bad. I wanted this one even if it was awful.

In Bonsai Barber you give haircuts to vegetables. Fin.

Now, I'm not stupid. I know this is a Flash game. I know this is little more than a browser-casual game, tailored ever so slightly for the Wii. But one look at a screenshot with a grumpy-looking potato getting buzzed by clippers, and I knew I would enjoy this.

Couple good things here. First of all, the Remote controls work quite well. I'd rather you could switch tools without having to invoke the tool menu, but the scissors, squirt bottle, dye brushes, etc all perform as expected and you genuinely feel like you have tight control over what you're cutting. The "hair" - leaves and twigs - is very well done. Separate branches move individually, as they should. There's a pleasant fractal effect that makes the outlier twigs and leaves seem very natural.

The game goes for kind of an Animal Crossing angle by having the game run according to a daily appointment schedule. You have five (out of twelve) plants show up in your barber shop every day. Once you give them all cuts, whether they're good or bad, you're done for the day, aside from the practice potted plant that you can abuse to your heart's content.

You can take pictures at any time during the cut and save them to the Wii Message Board. When satisfied customers go on vacation, they will send postcards to your Wii Message Board (although I have not seen that in action just yet.)

There's lots of unlockables... most of which are Trophy-esque rewards for "your first five star haircut" and the like. Tonight I got one for taking a bunch of pictures.

Clark's preferred haircut technique is to mostly ignore their hairstyle request via random trimming with the scissors, then he paints their leaves in colors he likes, then he cuts off all the hair entirely and takes a picture. It's like the four-year-old version of Saw in there.

And unless I miss my guess, this is a Nintendo-owned property (developed by Zoonami which is led by a guy of GoldenEye fame, yawn)... so perhaps these adorable flora could be sidelined into future Nintendo jam nostalgia fests. Let's get these guys into the next Smash Bros!

Look at this ridiculousness from IGN's review:

Yeah, you pretty much just do the cutting thing over and over again, and it's probably not really worth the $10... BUT DAMN THIS IS AN 8.0 GAME, IMPRESSIVE!

I know that it is difficult to review $10 downloadable games using the same 1-10 scale as $60 retail games. For example, they gave Mario Kart Wii an 8.5... and there is no way that Mario Kart is a middling half-point better than Bonsai Barber. The price totally has to enter into it as a valid part of the assessment. If not directly, then indirectly as a consequence of the physical size of the game.

Hey, maybe the gestalt entity known as IGN honestly believes Bonsai Barber is almost as good as Mario Kart Wii... but I don't think you can make comments akin to "not worth the money" and "completely repetitious" and still rank a game 8 out of 10. And if so, there better be some compelling reasons to do so. There needs to be some serious pluses to overcome minuses that huge.

At any rate, when confined to the realm of downloadable games in the $10 range, I think Bonsai Barber is pretty damn good. So far, I like it right up there with other such offerings. I like it more than The Last Guy or My Pokemon Ranch, but not as much as Flower or PixelJunk Monsters. For me, I don't mind the repetitiousness because the smart real-time design paces out the potential to get bored.