May 2009 Archives

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.

I do love the "rear view" cam in top right.

Now that's putting the DSi's twin cameras to use!

Here's the trailer for the original non-DSi version. You can see some better ghost imagery in the video, even if it looks like they just edited out some scenes from "The Exorcist."

Neat, neat, neat. (Thanks Torgodevil for mentioning this! Kotaku covered it earlier this week but somehow I missed it.)

No More Heroes 2 : Desperate Struggle Trailer (YouTube)
I picked up the first No More Heroes when it went on sale. I don't think I'll be able to wait as long for the sequel.

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.

Why I Didn't Like Star Trek (Looney Labs)
Andy Looney with a blistering rage for the new Trek movie. And honestly, it's not all a case of fanboy entitlement... it's Looney punching holes in the film itself.

New details on Korean Katamari Damacy Online (Joystiq)
Whoa, I thought KDO had vanished... turns out the Katamari MMO is still happening. For Korea, anyway.

Steve Martin hits U.S. chart with banjo music (Yahoo News)
This is the return of classy / funny / unique Steve, not family movie cash-grab Steve.

Man pushes would-be suicide off bridge (Yahoo News)
Now that's utilitarianism in action!

Dwayne McDuffie fired from Justice League (Robot 6)
Boo! Mega-boo!

In which I finally talk about some comics you might see on a modern day new arrivals rack. (Progressive Ruin)
Mike Sterling nails Trinity with this description:

Overall, I've... liked the Trinity series, but it's felt a bit like a quart of story poured into a 20 gallon barrel. I'd read an issue and feel like I'd just read the same story the previous week. Or two.

Precisely.

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.

If you don't get all the necessary ship parts within the thirty days, you get this ending:

Think on THAT, why don't you.

After finishing NPC Pikmin it has occurred to me that most of my fond memories of the Pikmin franchise came from Pikmin 2, not Pikmin 1. So if you've never played and are interested in the Wii re-releases, you might want to hold out for NPC Pikmin 2.

And by the way, here's the Smoky Progg and the Goolix, two of the secret enemies "hidden" in the game. If you find them, they're tough to kill but yield a ton of pikmin seeds.

The "70 Years of Marvel" logo is an instant fail.

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.

Additionally, what's up with the revert to the late-90s "M" with the silly "comics" font splashed across it?

I posted them to 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.

"Locked Room Mysteries" is little trickier. I want to do another one of these. I like the idea of theming each puzzle room (Egypt, Ice, Metal Gear, etc), and LBP's expanse of available content supports that to the utmost.

I bought the Monsters pack (anything with actual building materials - not just stickers and costumes) is a MUST GET) and the Rag Doll Kung Fu pack. At this point, it's easier to name the DLC packs I haven't purchased.

Last night I started working on a level that begins with your sackperson adrift at sea, and then a giant fish falls from the top of the screen, swallowing you. Then there's kind of a darkness trick and the level becomes the inside of the fish.

What is this kid ghost hunter crap?

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.

Fruity Pebbles is SHAMELESS.

For decades, Fruity Pebbles advertising has always been Rip Off Current Hot Movie and Vaguely Insert Fred and Barney. The latest TV spot has the Flintstone gang wrestling. Given the usual time lag in producing an animated commercial, am I to believe that this new spot is reffing on Mickey Rourke's "The Wrestler"? Unbelievable.

Even more Watchmen blu-ray options coming my way.

I've been saying for a while that the only Watchmen blu-ray I want is the one that combines the movie (director's cut, please) and the Black Freighter/Under the Hood supplementary movie that came out around the original theatrical release.

Now there's word that there will be a special PS3 blu-ray bundle that combines the director's cut of Watchmen with the two-part mostly-awful "End is Nigh" Watchmen video game. If they can get that with Black Freighter, I'm IN.

End is Nigh has Trophies, so there's always that.

We voted for Kris Allen 15 times.

First time ever that we participated in American Idol, even though we've certainly watched various seasons off and on. Not that I hated Adam Lambert, just was vaguely irritated by his overall Broadway fakeness.

inFamous: buy or no buy?.

The demo didn't blow me away. I actually thought it was too difficult. Any demo where I die about a hundred times leaves a bad impression.

I'll say this, at no point did it feel like a super-hero game. Whatever indefinable something makes the super-hero genre super-hero, inFamous doesn't transmit it. InFamous is about a "super-hero" as, say, Warhawk. Just because you give a GTA guy powers doesn't make it automatically a super-hero game.

The demo did look a lot better than those preview movies they dropped a couple weeks ago. I was a little worried about that. Plus, it's from the Sly Cooper guys, and I still have fond thoughts for them (despite their insane insistence of making the Sly Cooper games less and less about Sly Cooper.)

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.

Inside South Korea's 'ghost' airport (BBC)
Korea built a 400 million dollar airport only a few years ago that is now virtually abandoned.

Results from Game Design Challenge: Change Mario's Career! (Game Career Guide via Gay Gamer)
Some readers envision games sprung from a Mario who never picked up a plunger. Because the Marioverse is SO balanced on him being a plumber. What?

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.

I can 100% that every time. Something about that particular song connects with me.

This one, however, is a complete bitch. I've never finished it.

Luckily, if Rhythm Heaven sees you're a hopeless screw-up, it will push you along... so you can't get stuck on one level forever and never unlock the next one.

So I may just have the game faux-advance me to get back up to where I was before Clark purged. He also changed my save's title to "Grandma" which I guess is an insult.

I swear, DC will do anything to land the next trendily malformed plastic toy line. Look at these "Blammoids" that are scheduled to land from DC Direct this August.

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.

First you had the Pocket Heroes, which I always thought were ugly.

I'm not even going to bring up all those boring PVC figure sets they pumped out.

Then DC jumped on to the Minimate craze, which was not an exclusive line but easily the best non-standard figs they ever licensed. Modular, posable, and compatible with LEGO.

THOSE I buy.

Just last year (I think), DC Direct debuted the Uniformz line, which sort of look like the kiddie DC Super Friends series without cool accessories.

And now we're up to Blammoids, another attempt at striking collector gold.

That is the most awful angle to photograph Blammoid Firestorm.

Worst "toy" idea yet. Worse than those impotent Mighty Muggs. Positively reeks of pre-fabricated assumed hipness.

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.

This one is me playing a dodgeball match against three CPU opponents, all set to Easy. You score points for cracking people with the blue dodgeball. There's a Trophy for deflecting a dodgeball attack back on to somebody else, so you'll see a lot of me blocking in random hopes of getting the ball to bounce back. Didn't happen.

I still can't quite master the dopey motion control slam attacks. I wish the motion control was optional, and you could trigger the attack with an L1 modifier button press as well.

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.

Why had I never heard of these guys?

Every time I watch Mighty Boosh, I am astonished that I had never heard of them before. Thanks, Adult Swim!

I know I say this every time an [as] show catches my fancy (see also: Xavier, Superjail, Fat Guy Stuck in Internet), but I am so in for a US boxed set. And no, I never buy these boxed sets.

Rag Doll Kung Fu is so worth free.

It's like a low rent Smash Bros. Although the visual of the action figure/marionettes gallumphing around the screen is pretty amusing. Sony made the game free for a week as some kind of promotion with Sprint.

As a throwback to the 1970s Kung Fu craze, it is actually handled moderately well... IE, the game isn't packed with racist caricatures, just movie stereotypes (and not all Asian cliches either.) There's a crazy old sensei guy, but at least he doesn't have an insulting accent for a voice. The lead Bruce Lee styled character is pretty badass. Yeah, the game filters the common Asian = Kung Fu trope, but at the same time, Bruce Lee was completely awesome doing this stuff and should be everyone's role model.

We podcasted from Home.

It was crazy, man. I hope it comes off well, considering you listeners won't be able to see our PlayStation Home antics. I did take pictures though. And nothing says Home like a room full of soulless avatars looping through dance animations.

After the podcast finished, I hung out in Home for another hour or so trying to play the minigame based on Siren. For whatever reason, Siren World only lets five people play the game at a time, so you actually have to wait in line to play the stupid game. How does this make any sense?

Loving "There Will Be Brawl".

They're up to episode 4 of the Smash Brawl-inspired dark drama. If you want some character teasing, #2 shows Chief of Police Link (with Ike and Marth as his lieutenant thugs!) and introduces the Pokemon Trainer as a naif mob runner... #3 has Zero Suit Samus and Mario getting high off some very recognizable pills... and #4 has Team Starfox as Russian (?) immigrant toughs! Among others, of course. Great stuff. I hope they string them all together into one big movie when the series is completed.

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:

KidScreen doesn't have much to say about either picture in terms of start dates and show details. Both are part of the network's plan to produce more original live action shows. Which is kind of a shame, but it has been inevitable for some time now. Eventually the pendulum will swing back and CN will show cartoons again, but right now the ad dollars for striking the next High School Musical are too hot to ignore. And both Ben 10 and Scooby-Doo are known properties that have gone live action before with reasonable success.

Needless to say, we're pretty jazzed about the Ben 10 movie. I printed the photo out for Clark and he has been carrying it around the house. It was even on our fridge briefly.

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?"

Marvelous thoughts (Written World)
Great look at correlations between Lancelot of the Round Table and Wolverine of the X-Men.

Ore. babies switched at birth meet 56 years later (Yahoo News)
Witness the coining of a new word: "swister," referring to female babies who were switched at birth.

Excitebots Sells, Uh, 13,000 Copies (Kotaku)
In 10 days at the end of April, sure... but still a poor showing. Typical Nintendo conundrum: release big name game, get lambasted for relying on name franchises... release small name game, nobody buys it. And gamers wonder why Nintendo gets all prickly when the "hardcore" arguments start coming up.

So you get a gold Trophy for playing 50 single-player Buzz games. 50 is kind of a lot to ask. Here's how I'm doing it:

Yes, thanks to the wonders of bluetooth, not only do I not have to watch Buzz to play it, I don't even have to be on the same floor! I just wait for the red button to light up, and then I ring in with my answer. This is one time I'm glad that Buzz doesn't keep player stats, because the 15 blind matches I played would have totally boned my win/loss correct/wrong record.

It seems obvious that the most difficult Trophy in Buzz will be the one you receive for winning online "Sofa vs Sofa" multiplayer games. I think you have to win 50 for that one. There's no way to cheat that system by playing blind while doing something else.

I did snag my first Platinum this week: Burnout Paradise, as predicted. That's the only Platinum I ever see anybody win. Interestingly, Burnout's online Trophies don't seem to count towards the Platinum. I am still missing the "complete ten online timed challenges" Trophy, but my Platinum rang in anyway. That's kind of a nice toss towards the "I Don't Care For Online" crowd.

Here's my current Trophy count:

Shame Sony doesn't have their web-based community 2.0 bullshit act together. I should be embedding a live feed of my Trophies, not an edited JPG screenshot.

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!

So there you have it. There will be no further arguments entertained. The Best Cheapest Game of 2007-2008 is Harvey Birdman for Wii. See you next year, Best Cheapies!

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:

And, of course, a couple dozen yards down the road, this one:

See? Churches aren't all bad!

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.

Clark's first sleepover was a grand success.

Due to that wedding I just mentioned, Clark got to spend Saturday night at his grandparents... this was his first ever sleepover without Mommy or Daddy around. I remember both me and my sister having sleepover panics where we were supposed to stay over and then demanded to go home for whatever reason, but Clark was a champ. My folks reported that he had a major melancholy moment late Saturday when the enormity of it all weighed most heavily upon him. They were watching Lion King when they noticed he was repeatedly hopping up for tissues, and sort of silently sobbing to himself. Nevertheless, he got ready for bed all by himself, no doubt summoning as stoic a mindset as possible.

But up until that moment, he was having a great time... and of course the good times continued when he woke up (extra early) and had more fun with Grandma and Grandpa. He drew me a picture of Blue Beetle and picked flowers for Mommy.

Welcome to our town! Here's where we stand on this divisive political issue!

By the way, the wedding was held in one of those towns that, as soon as you get off the Interstate, gives you one of those hand-painted billboards that declares abortion a sin.

Yes, this makes more sense over there.

This week, Media Molecule announced that a Judge Dredd pack is coming to LittleBigPlanet. And everywhere that is not England went "Huh?"

The Judge is a far bigger pop culture deal in England than in the US, and as Media Molecule is a British company, the deal makes a lot more sense in that light. But what's cool about this from a business perspective is that it shows LittleBigPlanet is open to IP from outside the gaming industry. For example, it would have been cool to get an official Wolverine pack timed with the big movie release. Or Watchmen... instead, Sony wasted the marketing team on some skimpy Watchmen content in Home. Same with Star Trek.

I'm sure we all have long lists of the kind of stuff we would love to see in LittleBigPlanet, whether it shows up as full levels or just costumes and stickers.

Little Daft Punk (YouTube)
Love the band. Love the game.

Stake Chair Makes My Delicate Parts Quiver in Terror (Gizmodo)
Greatest stool design ever.

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.

How an Intern Stole NASA's Moon Rocks (Gizmodo)
Smacks of fraud, but a great read nonetheless.

the 30 most influential asian americans under 30 (Angry Asian Man)
AAM is spending the month of May profiling young, influential Asian Americans.

iGameNight (Tauz Blaug)
Josh with the two-month-late recap of a famous Game Night. This is the one that Josh couldn't attend, so we iChatted him in for seven hours. So his weblog entry consists entirely of hilarious screenshots of his iChat POV of the event.

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.

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.

It also happens to be Geoff Johns' final issue as writer after quite a few years, so it delivers as a nice sendoff vibe.

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:

THE KING OF ALL COASTER!

The Kotaku comment thread brings us this curious query that I can't decide if it is sarcastic or stupid.

I guess I have to go with stupid since Kotaku Law states that all sarcastic comments, when challenged on authenticity, must be followed up with "I WAS BEING SARCASTIC, DURRRR."

Anyway, here's a few more screens of something I will purchase regardless of reviews.

BEAR COW!

I have self-edited my Monty Python Fluxx deck.

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.

Microwaves are supposed to be easy.

I stand morally opposed to anything that complicates a microwave cooking sequence. I don't rotate, and I don't cook in two shifts after removing plastic. And I certainly don't adjust my cooking times according to my unit's wattage. How the hell do you even know what the wattage is? This is my new thing to complain about when I'm cooking.

No, I can't believe I bought Excitebots either.

I thought about it, and I did it. Saved $15 off a $40 game (and Josh got Boom Blox for $20 thanks to the TRU twofer deal.) I went in fully aware that the game stupidly locks you into those awful Remote motion controls. It's fun, it's cute, it has plenty of modes and unlockables, even the online play works fine (the poker races are fantastic!)... but it is yet another Wii game that makes my arms hurt. This is where motion controls get the big fail. It is of some concern that Nintendo hasn't yet cleaned this up. Video games should not cause pain.

This was before Gollum learned how to get out of a sack.

Fan mini-movie "The Hunt of Gollum" was released to the internet today. It was definitely well done, considering it was made entirely by fans and painstakingly fashioned to look and sound like Peter Jackson's films... but I'm not sure it's a part of the Lord of the Rings story that bears much repeating. Aragorn catches Gollum and then loses him. And in between Aragorn spends fifteen minutes talking to a lumpy sack. I do like the forboding prequelness of it all, and they definitely captured the flavor of Tolkien's dialogue style when they weren't outright quoting his phrases.

Posted a second LittleBigPlanet level.

Locked Room Mysteries went live last night, and of course has been played by almost no one. I just don't get how you're supposed to get lucky enough to attract more than a spare handful of plays. Meanwhile bullshit levels that do nothing but litter your profile with stickers so you can paste up your own Iron Man costume rank in the tens of thousands.

Clark was high-fiving the Empire.

My comic shop's Free Comic Book Day again featured cosplayers from the 501st. When we first arrived, there was only two stormtroopers but within an hour we had TIE pilots, biker scouts and a Tusken raider. Although Clark was still nervous, this year he high fived them all (but no pictures). Even the Tusken, clearly the most alien of the bunch. One of the troopers let Clark hold his blaster. Best almost-in-character quote from one of the stormtroopers: when he overheard a dad asking his young son if these were bad guys, the trooper quipped "Bad guys? We're the police!"

So who wants to co-watch WALL-E!

I installed Disney BD-Live on the PS3 this week, meaning we now have access to the most exciting way to watch movies since the eyeball was invented. Sure. I took a Bolt trivia quiz against one other person and lost! Thanks, BD-Live!

BD-Live - which is what, barely a year old? - already reeks of corporate nonsense. It seems apparent that as every film studio rushes to implement their HD 2.0 junk, they're all going to go in different directions and create mass confusion for consumers. Imagine if different web browsers accessed different internets (like they sort of did back when the internet was America Online versus Everybody Else), and that's what BD-Live feels like to me.

On the Disney version, I had to make a Disney BD-Live account and select a Disney avatar (Pluto! Donald! The cat from Bolt!) Which of course will not pair with the Iron Man blu-ray, which also crowed about having BD-Live. I have no intention of installing custom BD-Live apps from each studio all over my PS3.

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.

"Mysterious Cities of Gold" Complete Series: Adventure! That's the Life for Me (Toon Zone)
I can't believe there's a DVD boxed set of the complete Mysterious Cities of Gold, which ran on Nick during the last era I seriously watched Nick. I further can't believe that the bonus materials reunite the original voice cast to recreate original show scripts.

Batman: Arkham Asylum Officially Delayed (Kotaku)
Whether the delay is due to the devs wanting more time on the game, or so the game can sidestep an oddly crowded release week, it sounds like a fine idea to me.

A phone, a flashlight, and a fistful of flee (Brainy Gamer)
Hey, somebody else besides me is cautiously optimistic about Silent Hill: Shattered Memories on Wii!

Look at this fucking hipster
Yep, that's the website all right. Captioned photographs of awful people looking awful.

I live in a world where swear words just aren't that big a deal. Do I keep it clean for Clark in real life, sure. But the vast majority of websites I visit - and I don't mean just iconoclast angry webloggers - drop blue without much hesitation. And not just for shock, but for emphasis. (And let's be clear, I'm championing curse words, not slurs or racial insults.) There are times when a "dirty" word is simply the best way to communicate your thought. Take back control of language from the prudes and Sunday School teachers. Swear it up.

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.

Clark already gets a couple of these on a regular basis, but I'm sure we'll get this one anyway. The book Clark really has his eye on is the free issue of Disney/Pixar Cars. We're under instruction to pick one up for a pal in daycare as well.

Lit snobs, go on alert, because Free Comic Book Day isn't just about mass-marketed adolescent heroic fantasy. There are plenty of indie books up for grabs. If you're not into the capes-and-tights set, maybe there's some other genre on offer. I hear manga is still sort of hot.

Looking at the huge list of free books, this one surprised me... a reprint of the first issue of the original, fully awesome Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Pre-animated series. Pre-Archie comics line. Pre-awful movies. Pre-Power Rangers crossover series. Pre-impossible NES game. Pre-toy line with extreme sports attitude and Barbie-style career outfits. Pre-not awful CG movie. This is the seminal TMNT, from back when it was a parody of Frank Miller's Ronin. And not a parody of itself.

So that's pretty cool. If you don't already have a copy (they reprinted it about a dozen times in the early nineties; I have a fourth printing myself), that book is worth the trip to Free Comic Book Day all by itself.