Don't forget, you idiots. Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day. Go find your local comic store and drop by early and pick up some free stuff. Do them a favor and buy something too. This little marketing holiday does nobody any good if your store doesn't increase their business.
For me, the big draw is Green Lantern: Blackest Night #0, which is apparently a key issue in this summer's big GL storyline (that's already started, really). Both DC and Marvel are using this year's FCBD to show off actual current comics events, rather than just reprinting something or rubber-stamping some out-of-continuity all-ages book.
DC's secondary free offering is DC Kids Mega Sampler, which spotlights their line of kids books. Looks like it includes Shazam, Tiny Titans and Batman.
Mr Domino (YouTube) Since I name-checked it earlier this week, here's the open to No One Can Stop Mr. Domino. And you thought Katamari invented weird.
Legendbreakers: Hare-um Scare-um (Ramapith via Cartoon Brew) The lost ending to one of the original Bugs Bunny cartoons has been found! I always thought Hare-um Scare-um ended rather abruptly. Interestingly, the editing seems to be entirely without cause.
The Size of Central City (Absorbascon) Scip has deduced the ridiculous size of Central City. It's, as I say, ridiculous.
I finally got around to buying Monty Python Fluxx since my comic store had a free 7-card expansion pack available with purchase. Which is good, because I have already pulled four cards from the original deck that will never be played. They all either force the players to quote Python or sing Python. Come on now.
I guess that's fine if everybody in the game is some kind of huge Python freak. I could certainly qualify. But odds are I'll never play this with such people, and I probably would prefer they not sing anyway. The cards I yanked are "What is Your Quote," "I Just Want to Sing," "Stop That, No Singing," and "Outrageous Accent." The last one requires you to talk in a funny accent. No thanks. In my opinion, a good game should be about the game, not the players. Good thing Fluxx is so modular that I can remove those four and not affect play.
And yes, that SPOT THE LOONEY image is a delicious pun.
Blackest Night, Speechless Read.
OK, so DC has been teasing for months that various dead characters will show up as Black Lanterns. Martian Manhunter and Earth-2 Superman were already spoiled in toy previews; Aquaman was revealed in a print ad. But issue #0 drops the biggest name of all: Batman?!? Black Lantern Batman??!?!
First of all, although I saw him die in Final Crisis, I haven't really thought of him as dead. Not only was there that bearded Bruce in a prehistoric batcave two pages later, but also because of the excellent Neil Gaiman two-parter with narrator Bruce talking to his mother. I didn't even know - as Blackest Night mentions - that they even buried a body. But I liked the mention that Bruce had previously requested that there would be no funeral. DC Event Marketing must have hated that.
I don't think there's a release date. I don't think we know if this is a retail game or a PSN download. I know we don't know if Katamari Forever on PS3 supports the screenshot feature (PLEASE PLEASE). At this point, all we know is a vague impressions article on Kotaku when the game wasn't even hands-on. Oh, and there are Trophies, but as it is past January 2009 we shouldn't even be bringing that up anymore.
The menu screens - I'm guessing these are menu screens - look to have a pop-up book feel that I already adore.
Especially since that amusement park screen brings us this lovely horror.
Because #26 features this brilliant Norman Rockwell styled pose of the entire team showing up to support Stargirl getting her braces removed.
This particular issue is one of those character piece books with no villains, no fights and you're treated to snapshots of the relationships between members of the immense cast. I love issues like that.
Seems like this week is kind of a wash for real weblog entries. So here's me finding the Katamari Prince in Noby Noby Boy. If you can get him to ride on your back, you get a Trophy.
I had to resist the urge to capitalize the "h" in "him" when referring to the Katamari Prince. Although the reverence seems appropriate.
Red Dead Redemption trailer (Rockstar Games) This game is getting a surprising amount of hype for being a sequel to a short-but-sweet PS2 western that nobody played.
Would you believe I jumped back into Burnout Paradise?
For the Trophies, naturally.
Burnout Paradise took some flak for having a bunch of easy, sillyass Trophies. (From me, mostly.) But it also has some that require online play, which I was lacking. For most of those, the thing to do is start your own online game so you can control the multiplayer challenges. Just as I started playing Friday night, my buddy snapturtle.com showed up, so we plowed through some multiplayer Trophies as we went through a revolving door of online opponents.
Incidentally, isn't it dumb that there's no way for online players to put in requests for challenges? If you're playing against somebody, you just have to sit there dumb and accept whatever game they pull up. You should be able to easily submit challenge requests via the EasyDrive menu. Having to email players (RE: road rage) outside via the XMB is pretty lame.
But the absolute worst challenge problem is the Timed Challenges that are specific to a certain number of players. Generally these require everybody to drive to a particular point on the map, and then once everybody assembles, there's some asinine stunt that you have to pull off. Unfortunately, if any person bails in the middle of the challenge, it self-cancels. So I had a lot of instances where I'd start some stupid eight-player challenge, it would take a dreary five minutes for all eight players to get there... and then one ass would sign off and cancel it.
Anyway, I only have about three more Trophies to collect before I get the Platinum! Between Burnout and Buzz, I may have two Platinums before too long.
Aeropause.com was totally down.
From about Tuesday to Friday, I think. The hosting service grenaded, so the guys spent Friday night shifting everything to a new location. I'm glad I'm not involved in that end, because I break into back sweats whenever something happens here at fourhman.com.
Aeropause being down also put our staff email into flux for the week, so I missed out on some timely communication with my writer buddies... and as Rhonda and I were deep in the mid-state at a wedding this weekend, I missed Joe Haygood's efforts to whip up a podcast on Saturday.
I don't know if this is one of those Church Warehouse Etc items, and that churches all across the nation have these... or if this was a custom job for this one church we happened to be near.
At the front of the compound, we noticed this sign:
It's been a long time coming, but finally fourhman.com is ready to announce the triumphant winner to the Most Exciting Internet Poll of 2008: the Best Cheapest Game!
You've seen the contenders... fourteen games competed in head-to-head faceoffs to make a top seven. And out of those seven, only three made it to this level, where one game will stand as both Best and Cheapest. The three finalists are No More Heroes (Wii), Orange Box (PS3) and Harvey Birdman (Wii). WHO WILL WIN.
As they say, the judges' decisions are final... and the judge for this event is Clark!
Red Dead Redemption Debut Trailer (YouTube) Getting majorly into this. Looks like we might actually get a game that lives up to the phrase "GTA in the Old West."
"Titanic" stars donate to final survivor (Yahoo News) This article should be titled "Considering their combined net worth, Cameron, Winslet and DiCaprio donate almost nothing to final Titanic survivor."
There Is No Star Trek Canon (Post Modern Barney) Part one in a series of articles skewering the concept of canon, specifically in relation to Star Trek fans. Looks to be positively brilliant based on this line alone: the author wonders why, as Kirk and Bones are sharing a tender moment in Star Trek II, Kirk doesn't turn to Bones and ask "Remember that time we met Abraham Lincoln in space?"
I don't know if this has been publicly released yet (mainly because I can't find similar on a Google search), but I found this picture in the May 2009 issue of KidScreen. KidScreen is kind of an industry mag, covering children's TV programming and marketing, so maybe this image hasn't leaked very far. Anyway, here it is... the cast of the upcoming live action Ben 10 Alien Force movie:
This image is part of an article about new shows across all the kid cable stations, particularly the sudden raft of non-animated fare.
I'm also rather intrigued by this pic, also from Cartoon Network, from a new live action Scooby-Doo series:
My input about the new car: "Does it have aux-in?"
We bought a 2009 Honda CR-V this weekend, finally retiring Rhonda's 1998 Ford Contour to the trade-in scrap heap. That poor Contour was always kind of cursed... it was t-boned by a drunk driver while it was parked, and for years carried a Check Engine light that nobody could identify or alter.
And yeah, the radio does have aux-in standard, as I suppose most cars do these days. You just need a regular 3.5mm male-to-male cable to go from the iPod to the stereo. They sell these at Target for 15 whole dollars, but I have half a dozen of them in the basement for whatever reason. The one I settled on for permanent stashing in the CR-V is a nice white six inch number that we got when we bought some Speed Racer LCD games (the game came with the audio cable to facilitate multiplayer between a pair of Speed Racer game units!) And I have a longer one on standby should we want to let Clark watch a movie from his new backseat.
You have to have the iPod cranked though... my usual conservative 1/3 to 1/2 volume won't cut it.
Red Dead Redemption can't help but be great.
Judging from the amount of hype Red Dead Redemption has been distributing lately, Rockstar seems fairly all-focused on making RDR the new GTA. I have liked every single bit I've seen on this one. Top of my list, for sure.
Of course, the main reason for the sudden onslaught of press releases and trailers is to kick this month's Wild West game, Damnation, in the balls. But there you go. I imagine Rockstar feels gamers are only liable to buy one Western game this year, and they want to be sure it's their's.
And you know what that means: posting indistinct gameplay videos!
In this first clip, Clark, Rhonda and I were having a friendly fish tossing match. I'm in the police shirt (green player 1), Clark is the blue ninja guy (blue player 2), and Rhonda is the female (yellow player 3). The idea in this mode is to heave the green fish into the basket located upper right.
Clark kinda floors me when he slam dunks the fish like that.
I'm obviously a pretty big homer for DC, but I am so tired of these random ass collector toy lines. They just always seem like such a blatant call to bleed the comics fanboy out of even more cash. And I usually adore things like this, so you know something's up if even I'm not presold.
Remember how hard I was saying this game is? Now how hard do you think it is to stare at a blank save file screen?
It's my fault, really. I left the DS games in an easily accessible area, and he and I had been playing Rhythm Heaven a few days earlier. Rhonda reports that he asked to use the DSi - which was also handily available - but she told him he had to use the Lite since I wasn't around. So apparently the clever devil just swapped game cards so he could play Rhythm Heaven.
Or else he just grabbed one of "daddy's games" at random. In which case I should be bloody grateful he didn't snatch my Pokemon Pearl card.
Anyway, he must have clicked through the screens and unintentionally cleared out my save. RHYTHM HEAVEN IS SO HARD. It was terrifically depressing to realize I had lost all my progress.
This is one of my favorite levels, Freeze Frame. This is one I didn't mind having to do again. (The first two minutes are tutorial; the actual game starts after that.) Freeze Frame is one of the few boards I can score perfect with little stress.
Red Dwarf Back To Earth Part 1 (YouTube) Part 1 of the big brand new Red Dwarf movie... the same user has the rest of it on YouTube as well. Wonder how long that will last. Better watch it fast, smegheads!
Media Molecule's Photostream (flickr) Oooooo... what a great source for huge ass high-res pics of Sackperson DLC!
When You Hear "Exclusive," Guess What It Means (Kotaku) How can you write an entire article about how the word "exclusive" has been completely diluted when it comes to video game releases, and not mention how Microsoft invented the "timed exclusive" with the first Splinter Cell? This whole situation is their damn fault.
Cartoon Network is about to debut Othersiders, which is being pitched as a reality show about a team of kids investigating ghost sightings. Like it's not bad enough that we have "pro" ghost hunters who traffic in supernatural bullshit, now we have to have kids doing it? Kids who have even less of an understanding of the scientific and natural phenomena that cause people to believe in ghosts?
Just when you think Brave and the Bold can't go any further...
...this week's episode begins with Robin out-and-out blinding a dude.
And it was all done within a flashback pastiche of the 1960s Batman series, which is sort of a recurring theme in BB&B. In fact, there's probably substantial argument to be made in considering BB&B as direct continuity to the Adam West show. Just updated with less cheesy dialogue and mixed up with the greater portion of the DCU.
Clark recognized the nods to the TV show right away... the Shakespeare bust, the batpoles, the construction sign that masks the Batcave exit, even Bruce and Dick in their layabout togs. He was grinning the entire time.
I posted themto Aeropause, and now I'm hanging them up here as well. A week or two ago I recorded walkthroughs for both of my LBP levels, complete with audio commentary and talking Sackboy. Both of my levels have scarcely any plays, which is frustrating. As has been discussed previously, the only way to get people to play your level is to talk it up on forums and whatnot... or to engage in community-baiting garbage like "Trophy Giveaway" or "PS3 vs 360" or "Free Captain America Costume." So I resorted to the next best thing... flogging my levels on YouTube and the websites for which I write.
There's good news coming though... a future update will make levels sharable via the web. I'm assuming players need to be logged in to their PSN accounts, but then if you click a LBP link, it will queue up the level for the next time you boot up the game. And that means fourhman.com will have a permanent sidebar of direct links to my LBP levels.
That's my first level, "Defeat the Ice Beast." It's a Clark favorite.
Because it doesn't include anybody from the Fantastic Four.
You know, the First Family of Marvel Comics? The team that put Marvel on the map in 1961 after two decades of schizophrenic corporate identity and a fad-following me-too attitude? The team that MADE Stan Lee and Jack Kirby? The team that MADE Marvel? The breakout success story that, without which, we would have no Marvel Comics today.
I get that you have limited space and you can only get so many floating heads in there. But, seriously, Thor? Thor? Since when has Thor been anything but a b-teamer? Geez, why not Daredevil as well. Or Hawkeye.
That logo needs a fresh injection of the pride of Yancy Street, Mrs. Grimm's favorite son, the ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing.
I finished NPC Pikmin with like five days left out of the thirty you are allotted.
That gets you the "happy" end.
I had forgotten about this cute teaser for the sequel... lots of pikmin onions in new random colors. Of course, the sequel really doesn't follow up on this.
Ico & Yorda Sacks Coming To LittleBigPlanet? (Kotaku) Now that's a tease! Seems like an exercise in fanboy wish fulfillment to score Ico costumes and levels for LBP, but rumors are again swirling of an Ico sequel, so anything's possible.
Catch-Catch Up-Up! E3 Is Coming!! (Sexy Videogameland) Leigh rounds up some E3 rumors... the biggie is whether or not Sony will wake up and debut a cheaper PS3.
A while back Japan had a very creepy/interesting cell phone game called Real: Another Edition, a Fatal Frame spin-off that used your cell phone camera to locate ghosts all around you in the real world. Last year a Swedish developer come up with a similar game concept... and now it's headed to the DSi.
So if you're bored of spreading Luminol around your hotel room, now you can scan for ghostly clip art!
Seriously, I'm really hyped over this one and I hope it comes out a lot cooler than what the mocked up screenshot above indicates.
