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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
