November 2009 Archives

Yeah, it was worth the Black Friday wait.

The first song Clark played in LEGO Rock Band on super-easy mode, he sailed at 60% with a three-note streak. Very first time. When set to super-easy, you don't have to hit the fret buttons at all - you just have to strum as the notes fall. You also can't fail out and dump the song. Now, Clark has watched us play Rock Band pretty much his entire life, so him being able to actually play along is a big deal. In the past, we would set him up on drums... but then we wouldn't plug them in. Now, he can play, and he knows he's playing.

He's still too young to feel the music and get that pleasant faux-musician connection, but it's something I'm working on with him. We've been talking about "feeling the beat." I put him on bass since that's generally fewer notes than lead guitar. Plus, he might start picking out a musical pattern as the bass lines tend to repeat. I'm also getting him to read the heads-up display, so he knows what the audience meter is telling him.

After each song, he wants to know if he did better than me or Rhonda. So I'm teaching him to reach percentages. I'm focusing on the tens column so he can understand a 1 to 10 ranking.

Since LEGO Rock Band has all those silly visuals - particularly in the cute boss battle sections - Clark does have a tendency to get distracted by the backgrounds. But he still manages some good numbers.

Tonight I noticed he tends to upstrum after each downstrum. Not because he's showing off but because he's flipping the strum bar like a light switch every time. That's how he manages high note percentages but frankly awful note streaks. Something else to work on.

One feature that I really like is how cleverly LEGO Rock Band reflects and distorts regular Rock Band. All of the Rock Band character avatars have been recreated in minifig form. The menus, the icons, and the design are all LEGO-fied versions of the original. There's plenty of unlockable customization options, which is a great ongoing conversation starter. In addition to making your own band members, you can create your own roadies and employees... and then those characters show up in the venue backgrounds and cutscenes.

Sure, it's not "the most important video game yet made", but it's good stuff. I need to see what (if any) of my DLC did not carry over, because this may just be my preferred Rock Band for a while.

Clark was pawing through our game collection over the holiday weekend and decided he wanted to play some Speed Racer on Wii. Now, this is a pretty lousy game. Only a couple tracks, ugly graphics, odd controls, no cutscenes, not much payoff for fans of the movie (much less the animated series). It also gets stupid-hard about halfway through. Probably the very definition of rushed movie tie-in game.

So I found some cheat codes to help Clark stay in the race. Here's his replay from somewhere inside the second tournament, the Onuris track (the Egyptian one... takes you right up a sphinx's ass.) I enabled infinite boost and infinite health.

We did some Pain, multiplayer bowling mode. These clips are only notable because they show Clark completely nailing me as I make my approach. The way Pain bowling works is that other players get to throw interference objects at you as you launch. In this first clip Clark chops me out of the air with a phone booth.

On this run I get walloped by an exploding box an then caught up with Clark's giant airborne Cheerios. Then he drops a manhole on me. And not a single pin was knocked down.

Clark was really irritated with me pausing the game to edit these movies together.

"Heart" by Laurent Clermont (via Cartoon Brew)
How do people make things like this.

BBC asks: What happened to Second Life? (Joystiq)
It's not that I have anything against Second Life. I just happen to enjoy schadenfreude.

Power Girl Lectures Women for Complaining About Her Costume (Comics Alliance via Ragnell)
When I read this issue, I really did not read any subtext into it. I just figured PG had in fact run into plenty of in-universe criticism about her costume.

Diner Dash now available on PSN (PlayStation Blog)
I'm only linking to this because the first paragraph is hilariously honest... and the still of the re-designed-for-3D Flo is absolutely hideous.

For TV's Cha-Ka, 'Land of the Lost' spurs monkey-boy memories (LA Times)
A few months old but new to me: an interview with the guy who played Cha-Ka on the singularly awful TV show Land of the Lost.

Will Phillips: Patriot (Peter David)
I'll stand up for anybody who sits down for the Pledge of Allegiance. What an unnecessarily creepy, brainwashy, bizarrely American institution. No reason for it.

For about six hours, I was the only person I knew on Facebook and Twitter. Because I was running around checking out Black Friday junk from midnight to 6am this morning.

My prime goal was to get into Old Navy and score a free copy of LEGO Rock Band (with $20 purchase). The store was set to open at 3:00am, but I got there around 12:30 and queued up.

I was #25 or so. An hour after I got there, the line was around 70 people. By the time the store opened, it had to be 150 plus. Not that anybody had much of a chance at getting the free LEGO Rock Band. Old Navy had a sign up that laid out the very limited supply: 11 copies of the Wii version, 8 for 360 and 7 for PS3. That's barely even worth advertising.

Once the supply chain info got out, I figured my chances were pretty slim. Even the best odds I could give myself were 50/50. As we approached the opening bell, amazingly my place in line actually increased thanks to people just showing up and joining friends and family already in place. So I was entirely reliant on people being honest and not grabbing a copy for each member of the family (which was supposedly not allowed), and I had to have only six people in front of me the PS3 version.

In the picture above, dead center is a gaggle of Mennonites who showed up around 1:30am to hand out free coffee and hot chocolate. And little religious tracts. "Read the front and back, it will make a lot of sense," they said. Right. Nice marketing strategy. My line-neighbors reported the hot cocoa had a weird aftertaste.

40 minutes later, some college guys went around trying to sell coffee and doughnuts for $1. One of their number hung out the side of a van waving a big American flag. They were informed that the Mennonites had already been through.

In the end, I squeaked through on the LEGO Rock Band deal. The people in front of me wanted the Wii version, but had to settle on PS3 or 360 as the Wii copies all vanished before the employees got to us. Their plan was to do a Walmart exchange and get the Wii version... so they took 360 and left the last PS3 copy for me. A Black Friday kindness miracle.

It was cold and rainy for nearly three hours on an uncovered sidewalk, but it wasn't too onerous an exchange for free LEGO Rock Band. And $21 worth of Old Navy shirts for Rhonda.

After finishing Old Navy, I hopped over to Toys R Us... the word among the line-sitters was that TRU was a disaster scene. I wanted to see that.

TRU opened at midnight and all accounts had the kind of line that encircles the entire parking lot. By the time I got there at 3:30am, the line was gone, but the inside was packed. I had some coupons and gift cards to use, so I turned an $85 cart into just under $60. Picked up Marvel Superhero Squad (Wii) as another Christmas gift for Clark, as well as some marked-down impulse buys for his stocking.

Since I was buying a video game, I had to wait in the RZone line, which took an hour. The clerk, upon noticing that nothing I picked up was specific to any early morning Black Friday deal, asked why I had bothered to come out during the madness. My answer was that I was enjoying it.

And I was.

Earlier in the day, my sister half-jokingly asked if I would go to Target to get her one of those Metallic Blue DSi Mario bundles. At the time, I wasn't planning on it, but since I was leaving TRU after 4:40am and Target was opening at 5:00am... what the hell.

The Target line stretched all the way around the store. I was standing in what is normally the flood plain drainage area. But when Target opened the doors at 5, it was more or less a steady walk from the back all the way inside. Of course, then I had to get to Electronics and line up there to see about the DSi bundles.

While I was waiting for the opportunity to merely ask if they still had any (they did, probably twenty Mario bundles and thirty Brain Age bundles visible by 5:30am), I finally hit upon why I was enjoying this. It felt like being at a convention.

When I go to a gaming con, there's always this pleasant feeling of being around people who like the same stuff I like. Here, stuck among shopping carts and people in pajamas, I was standing along with those doing something I've always enjoyed: shopping. Now, not everybody was enjoying it, I'm sure. But they were all doing it, and that's good enough for me.

I don't like traffic. Or driving much at all, really. I don't like people. I'm not one of those guys who strikes up conversations with strangers. I don't even like talking to waiters. But despite Black Friday being largely composed of traffic and people, I was nursing an energy-drink adrenaline rush all night. I can't believe I never tried Black Friday before.

I's sure the fact that I did it all at night made quite a difference as well. I was in bed by 6:15am. If I was trying to hit three key Black Friday locations during the day, I probably would have hated it. But being out at 4:00am, buying stuff, good prices, beating the night... that's my native element.

I'm not going to lie to you and say this is the greatest fifteen-dollar Wii game in the world. But it is a simple little arcade diversion, sweetened up for Pokemon fans. And with almost $100 in built-up Rock Band WiWare credit, I feel no pain. I liken it to Diablo chiefly for internet-baiting, but it's really more like Gauntlet. Although the angle of collecting various pokemon with randomized attacks and special abilities does strike me as very similar to the weapon drops of Diablo.

Pokemon Rumble lets you save out 640x356 screenshots to the SD card, so in that respect it's already a notch above New Super Mario Bros Wii in my book.

Here's the game in Gauntlet mode. You can swap which guy you're playing at any time, and to any other guy in your collection. Knowing your pokemon types will help, as all the usual fire-beats-grass, flying-beats-bug stuff is in place.

When you catch a rare breed, you get a notification like the "Hardy Gastly" above. That particular gastly has some kind of better stat or rare ability than a normal gastly. The special breeds also look a little different, sort of like collecting Shinies back in regular Pokemon.

After each level, you get this dynamic rundown of the pokemon you have collected.

Another special catch: a Steel Guard Bellsprout. In classically vague language, you can see that steel types do not damage him as much.

One very cool feature in Pokemon Rumble is that you can input codes to unlock new types. Nintendo has already given out codes through email, the Nintendo Channel, Nintendo Power, and the Pokemon Rumble website. Above is a trio of giveaways: venusaur, blastoise and charizard.

The code pokemon arrive in your game with power levels in quadruple digits... but the game will cap them according to your current progress.

Gengar is one of the few types that pretty much look normal inside Rumble's low-poly chibi-design. Rumble also uses all the awful white noise sound effects that Nintendo is still holding on to from the Game Boy originals.

I get it. They look like N64 models. Whatever. They're cute.

Although at the moment Rumble only contains the first 151 pokemon types (generation one), the demo videos and everything else shows breeds from all across the franchise. So at some point, we're going to get some way to open up the remaining three hundred. Probably through $5 "expansion packs."

Mewtwo. Sort of excited to catch that one.

Tomorrow night is the big debut of "Ben 10: Alien Swarm," the new live action Ben 10 movie on Cartoon Network. We've been eagerly anticipating this one for a while here at fourhman.home, thanks to Cartoon Network's relentless teaser advertising.

And it so happens that Nathan Keyes, who stars as Kevin 11 in the movie, was in my office today. So I rustled Clark in to work extra early, so we could meet Nathan before he did his morning news interview.

Nathan is actually from this area, so he was back home for the holidays and agreed to a quick promotional visit. He was very kind to Clark as we chatted about the movie. Clark brought some favorite Ben 10 toys and we got an autograph from Nathan. Here he is in his brooding Kevin 11 guise:

Clark and I hung out on the news set while the interview was live. This was around 7am, so we made it home before the usual time when we set out for the day! A complete celebrity adventure before 8am.

Back at home, the morning news was still on, so Clark got to point at the screen and tell Rhonda about how he was RIGHT THERE.

We are psyched for tomorrow's movie premiere! It's going to be a huge start to the Thanksgiving weekend.

I'm reading the Oz books to Clark. I don't know if we'll get through all fourteen L. Frank Baum originals, but he has been into it so far, so I imagine we'll get pretty deep into the series. We're halfway through book #2, The Land of Oz. We do about two chapters a night.

What's great about the Oz books, compared to the Oz movie, is that the characters are all so deliciously catty with each other. It makes for a fun, multilayered read. There's a lot of one character getting miffed about something and then seeking redress in pseudo-polite tones.

Last night, we reached the bit where the current band of travelers is walking from the Tin Woodman's kingdom in Winkie Country all the way to the Emerald City... and the Woggle-bug decides he is going to make a pun. He is instantly met with group-shaming tactics from everybody else. The Scarecrow entreats the bug to control himself, and the Tin Woodman casually threatens to run him through with an axe. Over a pun!

For every instance where Baum uses a word or phrase that blatantly dates the book (he continually refers to characters as "personages", for example), there are three sentences that seem unbelievably modern. Or, at the least, astonishingly hip compared to what you would expect coming out of 1904.

As we were wrapping up reading Wizard, I mentioned to Clark that there's a movie. He was immediately interested, as it does somewhat annoy him when something cool happens in the book and there is no accompanying picture. (He really wanted to see the Winged Monkeys carry Dorothy and pals back to the Emerald City.) But then I thought I was setting him up for Judy Garland-based disappointment, so I tried to explain how movies based on books are usually not as good as the original story. This proved to be a complicated distinction.

ME: "Well, with a book you get to use your imagination and pretend to see all the amazing things that happen. Movies are also usually pretty short, so they end up having to skip a lot of stuff." Like the Queen of the Field Mice, I'm thinking.

CLARK: "You know what's better than a book?"

ME: "What?"

CLARK: "Pictures."

Chibi Robo Guide 77 The Tao War - Free Rangers Vs Tao (YouTube)
Hey, I guess we never got the New Play Control version of Chibi-Robo in America? That's one I might pick up again. Maybe NOA has been unnecessarily shamed into silence on future New Play Control releases.

All Dogs Go To Heaven: Kenichi Nishi's Tao Passes (GameSetWatch)
I had no idea that Tao the dog (see above) from the well-remembered Chibi-Robo was based on a real dog. And Tao has since passed away.

Fils-Aime: Nintendo Offers 'Full Meal' To iPhone's 'Small Chunks' (Gamasutra)
I do enjoy Reggie Fils-Aime:

"Consumers have only a limited amount of time for entertainment, so we compete with Apple," Fils-Aime said in a televised CNBC interview today. "We compete with your program [on CNBC]; we compete with books and magazines; we compete with everything people do for entertainment. From that standpoint, we're battling it out minute by minute."

When somebody finally does make a deep, complex iPhone game, only then will Reggie have to worry. Two years in and it still hasn't happened.

5th Cell on Scribblenauts' control scheme, and more insights (Joystiq)
Fact: Scribblenauts' dorked-up controls ruin the game. 5th Cell flubbed another one.

The OS Opportunity (Daring Fireball)
Interesting position from John Gruber that Dell and Sony (and others) should eschew Windows and have a go at making their own operating systems.

New to Me (Mice Age)
If Clark knew that DisneyWorld had Haunted Mansion action figures and we completely missed seeing/buying them, he would likely be quite upset.

Disney XD uses out-of-the-box thinking to promote out-of-this-world TV movie (Jim Hill Media)
Cute marketing story... how Disney used street theater to push SkyRunners at ComicCon.

Clark and I were by the hotel room door, getting ready to go, when Rhonda calls over "What just flew over by the wall?" I figured Clark had popped off a button or something, but it turns out it was a frog.

8:22 AM Oct 16: There is a frog in our hotel room.

8:23 AM Oct 16: Multiple frogs. One alive, two dead.

These little guys must hop into the hotel room while the cleaning service has the doors propped open. Maybe they're diving into the rooms to escape the cell phone towers.

Received a hilarious reply from Paul on this topic: "Don't let your guard down. It only takes one insurgent frog getting through to accomplish the mission."

9:05 AM Oct 16: Today I will be the guy at Animal Kingdom wearing a Katamari shirt.

The awesome one, too. With the flocked puffy Prince+Katamari silhouette on a bright yellow shirt. I wonder if anybody noticed. The other day Clark and I spotted a Sinestro Corps shirt on some dude at Kohl's.

11:51 AM Oct 16: Everyone here as an iPhone.

Seriously. Everybody. Even eight years ago, you didn't notice that many cell phones at DisneyWorld. At least, we didn't back when we didn't own them ourselves. This time, it was hard not to notice the prevalence of iPhones. Specifically iPhones. And really, not so much being used for phone calls... mainly pictures and Facebook and Disney apps. I had one woman ask me if my Facebook app was working (her's wasn't) and I had another guy stop me to show off the Disney dining app he particularly liked. I know I had mine out all the time checking ride wait times and Twitter.

12:43 PM Oct 16: I think Animal Kingdom's crowd absorption structure is based mostly on people getting lost.

Considering the open, circular, sometimes austere layouts of the other three parks, Animal Kingdom is a pretty daring design. But it is really easy to feel lost when all the landmarks are obscured by trees. When you exit the safari, for example, you might be forgiven for not knowing which way leads back to the park. This is probably how they trick people into taking the ride out to Rafiki's Planet Watch.

1:53 PM Oct 16: Tough to be a Bug features complete lack of Hopper audioanimatronic. Wonder how long that's been down.

What the heck, man?! Fix that Hopper!

3:27 PM Oct 16: Animal Kingdom is the worst park with the best theming.

Just not quite fabulous enough, unless you get lucky and the animals are in full effect. Which they won't be because they're all nocturnal. We had an extra ding against DAK because the Boneyard kids playground was closed for rehab.

5:48 PM Oct 16: Eating veg at Tusker House. Tandoori tofu!

I ate a ton of that. Great buffet.

5:49 PM Oct 16: Yesterday we were at Epcot/Morocco, which looks like MGS4. Now we're at Africa AK which looks like RE5.

I don't know if that's a testament to the fantastically researched placemaking efforts of Disney and video gaming, or more of a sad commentary on how easy is it to achieve what dopey Americans will accept as reality.

8:31 PM Oct 16: Wow, was I expecting more from Mission: Space.

Yeah, that one kinda sucked. Didn't somebody die on that ride when it first opened? It was not as intense as advertised. The curse of Horizons continues!

11:11 PM Oct 16: I am sitting outside, enjoying a quiet resort veranda, a cool Florida night, and full 3G coverage.

The iPhone was sniffing out Disney corporate WiFi everywhere. They were all named in initials that indicated the park location. Although they would initially appear unsecured, you could not jump onto them.

12:05 AM Oct 17: Ugh. My weblog entries are full of iPhone-induced typos.

Yeah. The worst is when it auto-corrects to an entirely different word and you space away without realizing it.

11:06 AM Oct 17: @chrisgantz Ha! That was Mexico. I think of that every time I'm here. Looking back, it was probably a leftover tip.

An old chum sent me a DM referencing a famous fourth grade Disney trip where I found $5 on the floor at Epcot (in the queue for what was then the River of Time ride at Mexico.)

11:07 AM Oct 17: Just ran into a pile of multi-show Power Rangers.

I wasn't sure how to define the Ranger experience in 140 characters or less. What I meant by "multi-show" was that they had five different seasons of Rangers represented. SPD, Mystic Whatever, Jungle Fury, etc. I first typed "multi-generational" but thought that sounded like they were old.

Here's the Power Rangers' car, which I believe is a castoff from the Stars and Motorcars parade.

11:08 AM Oct 17: @chrisgantz Also, I'll see if I can find your glasses.

Again with the DMs... this one was about a time in high school when Chris and I happened to both be at DisneyWorld, and we went on all the Tomorrowland rides together. He lost his glasses on Space Mountain.

2:02 PM Oct 17: Honey, I Shrunk America's Interest in this Franchise

I remain shocked that the Honey I Shrunk the Kids Movie Set Adventure playground has still not been re-dressed to a Bug's Life theme. First, that whole end of Hollywood Studios is becoming Pixar World anyway. Second, the notion of "here's how movies get made" is dorky and old.

And third, Honey I Shrunk the Kids really sucks and has long since passed out of relevance. The archway to the playground still has a poster of the Honey syndicated show that starred Peter Scolari.

5:31 PM Oct 17: I am so glad that the movie where Robin Williams wants to be a Lost Boy is gone.

Really. The new pre-show for the animation tour is much nicer. A Cast Member "animator" interacts with an onscreen Disney character. We saw Mushu, but I imagine they have a couple characters in the rotation. It's fun and believable.

Much better than the aging, schmaltzy bit with Robin Williams turned into a Peter Pan reject. Which was, if I recall correctly, produced before he did Hook.

6:11 PM Oct 17: So Star Tours would have us believe that the Rebellion dispatched a third Death Star?

Yeah, I'm calling that out-of-continuity. This attraction deserves (and is getting) a rehab. Star Tours is so old that it debuted back when Star TREK was cool.

11:51 PM Oct 17: What does, like, Steve Ballmer think when he goes to DisneyWorld and sees 1 in 3 people with iPhones?

11:52 PM Oct 17: Does he think, "We'll sell Windows Mobile devices to the other 2 out of 3!"

Although I acknowledge that Disney isn't a great random sample (I would expect the average income of Disney guests to be higher), it is still startling to see that many iPhones around every corner.

11:55 PM Oct 17: Aw, f it. I'm reading Hush.

We met up with Florida-based pals MaryJane and Henri, who brought some great gifts for Clark. Alongside the heap of awesome action figures was a Batman: Hush trade, which I tore into that night!

OK, this game is way better than you're thinking. I know, I know, the Rabbids are sort of annoying. And two high-profile Rabbid minigame collections are two too many. But Rabbids Go Home is completely different... it's, like, an actual game. One big game. In a row. Not a minigame.

The nicest thing about it is that it knows it's a Wii game. It uses the Remote speaker constantly. It can install a Rabbid Channel (for Mii-esque judging competitions). It saves screenshots to the Message Board (although not to the SD card, boo.) And it has this silly little feature, the viewpoint of a Rabbid stuck in your Remote.

You can shake the crap out of that guy, and he screams via the speaker. It's moderately convincing. Clark thinks it's hilarious. I like how you can see all the inner workings of the Remote. And yes, the buttons do depress.

With the Remote pointing vertically, it's like your little be-thonged Rabbid is standing on the camera.

During actual gameplay, a second player can control the Rabbid-in-Remote by firing him at the screen like a cannonball. It is possible to do this single player, but 2P has a better time of it. 2P's Rabbid can grab on to humans and harass them. It's similar to the co-op mode of Super Mario Galaxy.

So far, this game seems to be primarily about shopping. How can I not enjoy that?

Items surrounded by a sketchy circle are pulled into your cart. People keep comparing it to Katamari (I know I have), but only in the vague notion that you're collecting stupid things.

You also spend a fair amount of time yelling the clothes off of people.

There are three Rabbids - two in the cart and one in the Remote - that can be customized with some simple painting tools.

Here's an obnoxious sponsorship for you. The Rabbid city has a few RESPECT THE POUCH billboards, and once you get to the grocery store level you start seeing little Capri Sun items. There's even a Capri Sun cutscene, which is pretty pathetic.

We're about a fifth of the way through the levels, several of which Clark has skated through more or less on his own. Nintendo Power says the game turns a difficulty corner halfway through and the end of the game is weirdly hard. I guess we'll see what happens.

Funny little game. Glad I picked it up.

Clark doesn't know it, but he's totally getting this for Christmas:

That Playmobil Pyramid playset is going to be insane. He asks about it every time we're at Toys R Us. By now he has a very good grasp on how Christmas works, so I imagine he would be terribly disappointed if it did not show up.

Other brands heading his way include Ben 10, Secret Saturdays, Cars and Spy Gear.

Incidentally, the save system on New Super Mario Bros Wii is even worse than I originally thought. The game only naturally saves after defeating the end-world castle and the mid-world castle. So if you get a Game Over on the mid-world, you lose all of your progress in the world to date. Guess what happened to me last night. Plus, you lose all stored items.

I did not notice this at first because when you play multiplayer, as long as one player has lives, you can still save your progress. If you can stagger player deaths, you can keep Quicksaving and not lose anything... unless ALL players run out of lives on the same board.

So that totally blows. I just don't get the fun here. How is it OK to be unnecessarily forced to re-do sections you have already completed, in the year 2009. If any other game in the world tried this, it would be reviewed into the toilet.

Quicksaving only works to a point, since each Quicksave is deleted when you use it. I mean really, the game can't just auto-save after every bloody level? What's so horrible about that?

Additionally, unless you already have a million lives, you can't repeatedly use Super Guide to get through the frustrating parts. You have to die eight times to trigger to Super Guide, so if you are low on lives and have a bunch of boards to go before the auto-save, you'll probably just die off and watch everything get reset again. Including the levels you Super Guided.

I suck at this game and I won't be playing it again until I can piggyback off of somebody who is good at it. I have too much actual fun to do.

So yeah, I bought New Super Mario Bros Wii. I was not planning on it, because I know this is not my kind of thing, but I was watching for any deals that would knock the price down. I was expecting Toys R Us to show up with another ambush gift card sale, but they did not. They did, however, have a Buy One Get One $20 Off deal, and I deemed that good enough since I was already pretty set on picking up Rabbids Go Home anyway.

There were a couple other tipping points. I like the Super Guide idea, I like the multiplayer angle... and Clark saw a screenshot in Nintendo Power that showed a level with Egyptian pyramids in the background. I cringed internally when I said it, but I described the game for him as "LittleBigPlanet with Mario." Eeyow.

Regardless, it's not my kind of thing. After playing through one-and-a-half worlds (many with Clark as the Blue Toad), I can say for sure that's it's not my thing. I've been through nearly all of the Mario Land series, most of the Mario Bros/World series, Super Paper Mario and New Super Mario DS. I don't need it again. I especially don't need it again in exactly the same 1989 form.

I'm not going to debate the subjective nature of whether one enjoys a 2D old school sidescroller. But I am going to be supremely annoyed at Nintendo for not modernizing that old school framework.

Why does a game with infinite continues bother with counting lives? You get five lives per level. If you lose all of them, you get a Game Over, a screen pops up showing your continue count going up by one, and you get your five lives back. It's a waste of time when we could just stay in the level and keep playing.

Similarly, if I die by falling into a pit, why should I be kicked back to the overworld? How about if, for as long as I have lives, I get to stay inside the level and avoid having to re-load. Let me decide if I want to hop back to the map. Generally, I don't.

In multiplayer, if a player runs out of lives, they do not get to come back until the surviving players beat the board or die themselves. Poor players STILL get to spend most of the time staring at other people play. So much for making the game accessible for new and non gamers.

As a game that is ostensibly based around high scores, where are the online leaderboards? Not that I specifically give a crap about online leaderboards, but it only underlines the fact that there is no friend-interaction of any kind. No friend scoreboard. No sending challenges. No screenshotting. No use of Miis. No uploading plays to YouTube. No posting success stories on your Facebook wall. This is why the phrase "dropped out of a time warp from 1989" is not a compliment.

NSMBW does not support Classic or GameCube controllers, mainly so Miyamoto can force us to shake the Remote a couple times. It would be nice to not have to do that. But it's not as terrible as it could have been. There is one baffling control choice: to pick up an item, you have to hold 1 and shake. Guh-whut? To keep holding the item, you have to keep the 1 button held. Guh-whut again? And you know what, the B button does nothing. Absolutely nothing. We dare not pretend B is sort of like a shoulder button and map a function to it, right?

So that's annoying. Here's some good stuff to wash the rant down:

In multi, hitting A puts you in a safety bubble. So if you're at a spot you know you can't make, but the rest of your party can, you can bubble up and float along while they manage it. Dead players come back inside a bubble (and bubbled players make great warbly sounds in the Remote speaker!) The entire bubble mechanic is great.

If you are entirely out of lives, you can press buttons to play silly sound effects while you wait to come back.

The enemy characters bop to the music. This is far more gameplay-impacting than you might expect.

I imagine we'll have some good multiplayer times with it, but I also imagine I'll be in a bubble for most of it.

From Kalinara at Pretty, Fizzy Paradise:

I don't buy any death that takes place in the middle of a storyline involving alien zombies.

Especially not when someone's just started dating Sinestro's daughter.

True enough!

Pikabellechu is proposed to by her raichu (YouTube)
I, for one, eagerly anticipate the wedding footage. Nice pichu joke at the end.

Medal Detecting (Mice Age)
Kevin Yee ran in all the Disney park marathons this year and has the medals to prove it. Bet you didn't even know Disney holds marathons.

Talking Comics with Tim: Nevin Martell (CBR)
An interview with the guy who just published a book about Bill Watterson. I don't think I was ever fully "there" for Calvin & Hobbes, but Watterson himself is one interesting character study.

Review: New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Joystiq)
Why is Joystiq the only review that calls this game easy?

Though the motion controlled bits are annoying, there's not much in the game I'd describe as difficult, despite what Shiggy said. The inclusion of Super Mario World's mid-level checkpoints for stages that, to be honest, only take about five to ten minutes to finish is a little too forgiving. I know Nintendo wanted to eradicate the frustration of having to go through an entire stage again (all 5-10 minutes of it!) should the player perish, I get that, but it's gone way too far, taking the game from accessible to easy.

This is also the first I've seen a complaint about the stupid shaking motion controls and the lack of classic controller support. I'm going to need to see One Incredible Deal to be encouraged to pick this one up.

Store Update: Birthday and Space Suit Costumes (Media Molecule)
Hey! The free spacesuit costume was originally said to be a special costume reward to people who bought LittleBigPlanet at launch a year ago! Get it? At launch. Now it's available again? Why, for the launch of the GOTY edition two months ago?

Also, it's a sucky costume anyway.

Penalty! Unnecessary Blandness! Redesigning the Worst NFL Helmet Graphics (Fast Company via Daring Fireball)
Great design discussion and a bang-up lead: "The conservative columnist George Will once said football combines the two worst things about America: violence punctuated by committee meetings."

Monty Python Reunion on IFC (Mark Evanier)
30 minutes is just not enough time to see the Pythons dawdle through audience Q&A. Great video; I roared.

DC Bolsters Sales with Ring Promotion (CBR)
All this month, if you buy certain DC Blackest Night tie-ins, you get various Lantern rings as a free pack-in. FREAKING HELL COOL. The books themselves are (probably) all multi-part storylines, so DC is obviously hoping you'll stick around for next month and pick up the next chapter. Let me tell you how Josh and I discovered this deal last week at our local shop:

JOE and JOSH, standing by a pile of DOOM PATROL #4: "Boy, Brett sure over-ordered on Doom Patrol!" "Haw, haw!"

BRETT (the owner): "Did you guys get the Blackest Night tie-in books, and the free rings?"

JOE and JOSH: "What."

BRETT: "You get a Yellow Ring if you buy Doom Patrol #4."

JOE: "Yeah, I'll take that."

JOSH: "Me too."

As promised, I'm going to collect all 90 of my Disney-related Twitter updates. Some of them I'm sure were already drawn out in my weblog entries during the trip, but whatever.

12:04 AM Oct 14: Sure, I can sleep. We're going to DisneyWorld tomorrow, Uncharted2 is great, and I just paid a quarter for World of Goo!

I realize that paying a quarter for the Mac version of World of Goo is pretty horrible. But honestly, there was no chance I was ever going to buy it. Not that it's a bad game, just that I was not especially interested in it. I still have not spent much time with it, but I will say that it probably has some of the best art direction I've ever seen in a moderately annoying puzzle game.

1:00 PM Oct 14: On the Magical Express to our resort. Clark was not scared at all during the flight.

Quite a jump in updates, from midnight to 1 in the afternoon. I'd call that one the Incredible Relief tweet. IE, we made it to Orlando safely and on time.

1:02 PM Oct 14: The bus soundtrack is playing music from nearly defunct Disney rides: One Little Spark, Listen to the Land.

Now the magic begins. Albeit super-old magic. The bus was running an old Epcot soundtrack album, from back when it was formally EPCOT Center. "One Little Spark" still sort of exists, with Eric Idle and Figment doing a different set of lyrics. I think that homespun original version of "Listen to the Land" is completely gone, although the ride is still there.

1:08 PM Oct 14: If the Kitchen Kabaret medley starts, I am singing along!

No, the soundtrack did not make it to the Kabaret medley. My beloved Kabaret vanished in 1994.

2:17 PM Oct 14: Disney's black bean burger is quite good

Look at the size of that burger (far right)!

I mean, wow. The counterperson apologized for not having a larger roll.

2:36 PM Oct 14: You know, I don't think my #uncharted2 sent out any Twitter updates.

I was aware that Naughty Dog had turned off the Chapter Tweeting once all the early reviewers blew through the entire game in one day. But I was expecting that I would see at least the "Joe got five Trophies last night" kind of thing. It all worked out in the end; my Uncharted tweets arrived in force once we got back from the trip.

4:43 PM Oct 14: Number of guys at Haunted Mansion in Danger Mouse t-shirts: 1

It is really awesome to be at your home in the morning, and then standing in line for what will become one of your son's favorite Disney rides by 4:45.

7:42 PM Oct 14: Do you tip table service on the Disney Dining Plan?

I was told that you do. So we did. And that was all we paid for our meals for ten days.

9:22 AM Oct 15: I don't know how to talk to folks from the South. Because I don't know how to talk to anybody.

On one of the bus rides, we were cornered by a loquacious family from Georgia or wherever. I just can't hold up conversations with strangers. I'm not interested. I can't pretend to be interested. I don't want to be interested. I like it up here in the north where we're silent and bitter.

11:07 AM Oct 15: Clark was just picked to talk to Crush at Turtle Talk!

Yup, we talked to a procedurally-generated CG turtle. It was fun.

12:26 PM Oct 15: Just found a god tract hidden inside the Epcot guide. Oh you fundies and your lies.

How sad. You pay your hundred dollars to get into DisneyWorld, and then spend your time hiding religious propaganda inside the guidemaps. That's the sign of a truly successful religion: the ambush tactic. And the popular corollary: the ambush tactic with poorly designed amateur leaflets containing rastery jpgs.

1:37 PM Oct 15: Gag. Kim Possible system is down.

Big temporary disappointment. They made the cast members hang out by the kiosks anyway. Having never before seen Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure in action, I initially thought the covered-up computer stations were part of the show. Like, secret spy stuff. The Kim attraction would be up by the next time we got to Epcot.

2:04 PM Oct 15: Epcot Japan packed with gaming memorabilia. Will buy Metal Gear t-shirt.

But I didn't. I'm used to paying outlandish prices for Disney stuff, but it seemed weird to pay an outlandish price for stuff that could probably be found elsewhere.

Interestingly, the Sonic t-shirts were $2 cheaper than nearly everything else.

3:37 PM Oct 15: Did some damage to the free Coke of Many Lands exhibit.

Oh yes we did. And all that free liquid did some damage to us later.

4:40 PM Oct 15: Look, somebody has to be the last guy to buy ponchos before it stops raining.

Yeah, I was paying for $8 ponchos just as the big half-hour rainstorm was ending.

8:40 PM Oct 15: Our hotel room exists in a bizarre ATT limbo where it goes from E to 3G to Searching. Constantly.

That was a huge drag. You could go outside and snap into a 3G connection almost immediately, but inside the room it was a nightmare. Must be all that lead paint.

I finished my first run through Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time last night, clocking about twenty hours. But that's me chasing down just about every imaginable bafmodad; the core plot events are probably considerably shorter.

I had some strange goings-on at the end, which I will try to detail. Something didn't seem quite right. Perhaps it should be said that I'm about to dive into some endgame spoilers... but come on, like you need me to tell you that the good guys won.

OK, so as I said, I'm pretty vigilant about finding all the hidden collectibles. R&CF2 has four categories of hidden treasures: Zoni, Constructo Mods, Gold Bolts and RYNO 5 blueprints. Once you beat the Gold Tournament over on the Agorian Battleplex, you get a treasure tracker for your map, so finding all of the collectibles is not difficult (except for a couple complicated moons where the map feature is not especially helpful.)

Plot-wise, I stopped myself on the Nefarious Space Station, right before what I anticipated to be a mid-boss or a major boss fight (and I was right... it was the big Dr. Nefarious showdown sequence, as I would discover later.) Neatly avoiding the time-sensitive pressure of the situation, I bailed out to go collect missing items.

By this time I had already assembled the RYNO 5. So I found all the Constructo Mods and Zoni. The Zoni collection was particularly noteworthy, because the game kept promising a "special surprise" once you do that. The surprise is, I think, the ability to challenge Lord Vorselon again (he's an early boss fight) and actually kill him. Once you find all 40 Zoni, though, how you do that is not immediately clear. The game says you need to confront him on his own turf, so I searched through the early galaxies for his ship. No dice. Than I thought maybe the game was reffing the first R&CF game - or maybe even the downloadable PSN game - and maybe I would have to go back to one of those games to fight Vorselon. Was Vorselon even in either of those?

Whatever, I gave up on the Vorselon hunt and tracked down a few more Gold Bolts. But then I noticed that my Bolt count was about six shy of completion... and the map was showing no more available Bolts to find. I reasoned that a new area would open up after I finished this bit at the Space Station. So that's what I did.

And yeah, it was a big epic boss fight with the Doc (who, by the way, is probably the only R&C villain that I don't actively dislike). Followed nigh-immediately by another boss fight back at the Great Clock. Followed by credits.

Hey, what? But I'm not done, right? What about those leftover Bolts?

As soon as the credits stopped, Lord Vorselon appeared on screen ranting about whatever. So the "surprise" seems not to activate until you beat the game.

But then you get the weird choice that has plagued every R&C game I can recall. You're asked if you want to "go back in time" to just before you defeated Nefarious and continue to collect items and go after Vorselon. Or you can start over with a new Challenge Mode save file, retaining all your bolts, money, weapons, etc.

Why the choice? Why can't I just go back into the game AFTER having bested the two big boss fights? What possible gameworld paradox exists that would demand the game rewind time?

And anyway, the choice is poorly explained. Is going back in time my only chance to beat Vorselon? If I don't start a Challenge Mode save now, do I have to finish the boss sequence again to re-offer the option?

I opted to go back in time. Both to find Vorselon and to see about those missing Gold Bolts. I had a sneaking suspicion that Trophies were at stake.

I found Vorselon's ship, now readily marked on the map. I also noted that the Great Clock was suddenly a warpable location (previously it was available only during the interim Clank-focused levels) and all my remaining Bolts were there. I killed Vorselon (Trophy!), then flew to the Clock.

Where it made me do the second half of the boss fight again! Like, not the Nefarious part, the part after that. Then credits rolled again! With no chance to go find those Bolts! That stupid choice screen popped up for a bare second before I was dropped back at the Clock... but without Ratchet. Just Clank. Clank standing at the Great Clock entrance, with a big time portal nearby that said I could "go back in time" AGAIN to fight Doc Nefarious. What? I thought I was already back in time!

That was entirely confusing. I was nervous about saving because the general presentational clumsiness made me not trust my actual position. Was I before the boss fight, or not? But, happily noting that those Gold Bolts were showing on my Great Clock map, I went after those.

Several of the Bolts are tied to all-new Pneumonic challenges, extremely advanced iterations of the time-based multi-Clank puzzles. They were bafflingly hard, but I eventually figured them all out and swept through the last of the Gold Bolts.

By this time I noticed that Challenge Mode was now available on the pause menu! Jesus. So, after being satisfied that I had collected everything and earned all the Trophies I thought I was owed, I started a Challenge Mode save. Which, of course, starts the game over but keeps all your accumulated wealth and collectibles. I think the only bit of advancement that I did not complete during this initial play was that I do not have absolutely every single weapon upgraded to level 5. My freeze glove is at 4 and the sniper rifle is at 3.

So I guess it all turned out OK.

Incidentally, I should point out that you win the Insomniac Museum Moon upon completion of the game. So that's not really such a GameStop Preorder exclusive, now is it? To make matters worse, if you got the Moon through GameStop code AND you beat the game, the stupid Moon shows up at TWO locations on your map.

All told, this puts me at 80% Trophy completion. I need to complete a Challenge Mode playthrough and complete the game on hard. Not sure how those two events conflate... I guess that means beat the game again, twice? I also need to get the Trophy for getting a 10,000+ score on the stupid retro minigame "My Blaster Runs Hot." Which is Robotron. My high score on it is only in the 4000s, so I hope that playing it two-player will get that score up where it needs to be.

Because if a goddamn Robotron clone keeps me from getting a Platinum Trophy on this game, I am going to be so pissed.

We went to the local Apple Store on Sunday to buy a Magic Mouse.

They were out of stock. I was pretty bummed since I have grown an intense dislike for the Mighty Mouse, with that uncleanable tiny trackball. I have read that the Magic Mouse might have occasional pixel-accuracy tracking issues, but I'll take that over not being able to scroll down every other week.

Apple sells the Magic Mouse for $70, which is an annoyingly large amount of money. How can the new mouse cost roughly half the price of an iPhone? I should probably be looking into third party products, but the curse of Apple hardware is that nothing ever seems to work as well as Apple hardware. Even when the trackball gets gunked up.

Here's what I found on Amazon:

Oh yeah, that's brilliant. $120! How did those ripoff artists end up with the default view when you search for a Magic Mouse? If you click the "new at $69" link, you get a regularly priced option, with free shipping. The $120 guy wants another $13 to ship.

What's up with the jackanape trying to sell a used Magic Mouse for $88?

Patrick Duffy And The Crab Discuss Losing Their Virginity! (YouTube)
Seriously, what are these advertising.

Kashiwa Mystery Cafe (Cabel Sasser)
You will be surprised and delighted by how this Japanese business operates.

What are the obstacles to education reform in the Harry Potter universe? (Greg Sanders)
Thoughtful dissertation on the problem with lumping all the "bad" kids into Slytherin House, and why this practice is not likely to change. Follow the money!

Graphic Novel: Batman Arkham Asylum "A Serious House On Serious Earth" (Gay Gamer)
This made me laugh: the first version of this post made it sound like the Arkham Asylum graphic novel was based on the recent Arkham Asylum Game Of The Year. When, you know, the GN came out, like, twenty years ago. In fact, even though the author changed a sentence and defended his article in the comments thread, I'm still not convinced he didn't actually think that.

Uncharted 2: The little things (The Brainy Gamer)
BG did a great series of articles about what makes Uncharted 2 so great, including this knockout list of little details that will make this the GOTY. Edging out my Batman. But I'm OK with that.

Analysis: Is It Time For The PlayStation 3 To Shine? (GamaSutra)
Great article about Sony's position this generation, spotlighting sales figures and the console war. On the topic of why the 360 could not truly capitalize on Sony's big fumbles: "In many respects, Sony was saved by the success of the Wii." Also makes the point - and you have to be extremely brave to say this in the face of gaming enthusiast media - that most people are not buying systems based on online FPS games. Brilliant.

Yes, I realize the "protest" was likely a publicity gimmick. (Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin)
Bizarro story from Mike's comic shop: he had two guys come in near-simultaneously asking for Felix the Cat comics. And it gets more unbelievable than that.

What Caused the Sidekick Fail? (Hiptop3.com)
Sounds like another amazing success story for Microsoft. Although honestly, I suspect we would be appalled if we knew how crappily most companies operate... under assumption and luck.

Latin to lose its domain over Internet addresses (Yahoo News)
That's sort of a confusing headline. What it means is that other alphabets will be able to get their own domain names.

Free LEGO Rock Band With Your Performance Fleece (Kotaku)
Wait, what? Old Navy is giving away LEGO Rock Band for free if you spend $20 on Black Friday? Well, yeah, I can do that. My only question is what they mean by "opening at 3am Friday". Is that Thursday night or Friday night? In TV-world, we solved this dilemma by dubbing the overnight hours "xm". So, 3xm Friday would definitely be early Friday morning (Thursday night).

Here's what happening in our Wii world...

I'm pretty sour on the new Boy and His Blob. It's far more low-impact than I was expecting. All the talk about it being BEAUTIFUL 2D doesn't wash. And the menu controls are ill-thought out. I'm glad it sells a little cheaper than your regular Wii game (at $40), but it comes off like it could have been a WiiWare release.

And I am really, substantially, disappointed over how the levels are structured. First of all, it's kind of a cheap-out to build the game with dozens of tiny levels selectable via various hub worlds. I know plenty of games still do this, but we can all do better. Rescue of Princess Blobette on Game Boy was a big cohesive world where you had to use your beans to get through a moderately epic adventure. (I still have my hand-drawn maps for that game!) This new Wii version feels choppy and small.

But the main problem is that each level forces you into a different set of jellybeans. This level lets you have a ladder, this one doesn't. Boy, is that irritating.

Have not picked up Little King's Story or Klonoa since we returned. I'm unfortunately on the outs with Little King's at the moment. I intensely dislike the lack of in-game assistance, which makes it difficult to remember what you wanted to do and how to do it. For example, if you take the wrong types of people into a dangerous zone, they all die. Probably followed by your death. Which means you have lost an entire day to the screwup and maybe another day as you rebuild.

Klonoa, however, is a joy. I know I sound like an ass for lauding Klonoa - a linear platformer - after months of berating Mario Galaxy for being a linear platformer. I think the difference is that Galaxy was such a step away from the path traversed by Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine... while Klonoa has, across two console releases, never aspired to anything more than a linear platformer. Galaxy disappointed me where I expected better. The new Klonoa delivers solid returns on an unassuming history. And at $30, anybody who enjoys linear platformers ought to be chomping it down.

Blissfully, Klonoa supports normal controllers. It feels so good to use that Wavebird again.

The free download of Doc Louis's Punch-Out arrived while we were on vacation. I damn near missed the email. As expected, it's essentially a demo for regular Punch-Out. But it does seem to be self-aware that it is a Club Nintendo reward:

Although I doubt I'll ever see Punch-Out cheap enough for me to consider picking it up, I am impressed by the character animations of Doc Louis. There are some subtle head turns and body poses that seem effortlessly natural. I imagine the entire full game is like that.

That won't change the fact that it's yet another game that will kill your arms in half an hour. I'm not sure if Doc Louis supports the NES-style controls, as I had the Nunchuk plugged in every time I played it.

Have not sauntered around to investigating much of Wii Fit Plus. I like that it unlocks all the stuff that I never bothered to unlock in the first Wii Fit. And I like having Miis of the cats. (I wish these 2.0 Miis would be integrated into the actual Mii Channel!) We did a couple of the minigames, and here I am a few days later and I can't even recall which ones. I haven't tried the custom workouts mode, which will be the big decider.

The surprise this week was that we fired up Mario Party 6. Like, a GameCube game. According to my save file, the last time we played MP6 was late 2005. We skipped 7 and 8, so 6 is our newest Mario Party... and I thought Clark was ready for it. He really enjoyed it, and thankfully Mario Party 6 does a good job of keeping things straight forward. There's no way Clark would fully understand the mini-mega system of Mario Party 4, or the clunky item dispersal of Mario Party 5. 6 stands as a fine effort in cleaning things up.

I remain hopeful for a Mario Party 9 with online play, assuming it supports voice chat and I can get other people I know to buy it. How about a WiiWare version? Most of the Mario Parties came with bizarro bonus modes that could be easily forgotten to strip down an edition for a downloadable release. And no, I don't want the N64 originals on the VC. I want a new edition. Preferably one that allows for simultaneous moves from all online players.

Kind of still planning on finding Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Which is slated to arrive just in time for Hall%D%D%D%D Christmas.

I received a couple of weird emails from YouTube last week.

Your video First US Pokemon TV Commercial Ever! has become popular on YouTube, and you're eligible to apply for the YouTube Partnership Program, which allows you to make money from playbacks of your video. Once you're approved ... we'll start placing ads next to your video and pay you a share of the revenue as long as you meet the program requirements. We look forward to adding your video to the YouTube Partnership Program. Thanks and good luck! - The YouTube Team

So they want me to fill out a form so they can run ads on my videos, then I get a cut. Fine, fine. But once you go to the form pages, you are levied warning after warning about copyright law. If you sign up for the service and submit Video X (a Pokemon TV ad, in this case), and then if YouTube determines that Video X violates copyright, it will be deleted. Like this:

Currently standing at over 88,000 plays. And that's not even my most-viewed upload.

I'm not going to offer any defense for me uploading a Pokemon commercial to YouTube. I'm not going to wail about how it doesn't hurt anybody, how I'm not making money from it, how it's free advertising for Pokemon... these are all the usual lame defenses you hear from people uploading far more egregious violations than mine. I agree that copyright owners have the right to control how their media is used. If Nintendo / Pokemon Company / 4Kids / Creatures Inc or whoever owns this ad complained to YouTube and YouTube told me to take it down, I'd do so.

But I'm not stupid enough to try to make a few dollars on it and thus willingly submit it to YouTube's All-Seeing Copyright Eye.

I uploaded that ad because I thought Pokemon fans would enjoy seeing one of the brand's first appearances in the US. Before the fad, before the game, before anybody know anything about it. I don't necessarily want it to be removed from YouTube so that fans no longer have the opportunity to see it.

It happened to Don Brockway over at Isn't Life Terrible as well. And likely thousands of other uploaders.

The copyright warnings guard against music, TV, movies... even replays of video games. So a large portion of my uploaded videos would be suspect. LittleBigPlanet level tours, Pokemon Pearl boss battles, Chulip clips. Those are all me pointing a camera at the screen. But what about the Sony-approved PSN uploads of Pain, Noby Noby Boy, Rag Doll Kung Fu and PixelJunk Monsters? I would guess that if I tried to monetize those, Sony would block the claim. I wouldn't have to take those videos down, but I would not be allowed to scrap coins from them. I wonder the ruling would be on my video of Clark playing Fat Princess, or me playing Mario Kart, where the majority of the footage is not from the game?

Which is fine. I'm not complaining about this. I'm not looking to get rich over stupid YouTube videos. I just find it odd that YouTube's system is smart enough to count video plays and trigger monetization emails to uploaders, but not smart enough to pre-analyze those videos and catch copyright concerns ahead of time.

Last week I picked up my final preorder of the year... Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time.

I wish the entire game was done in that caricatured style!

I'm only a few levels in, but I am happy to see one major new addition... an arena-style spaceflight section. In addition to shooting down waves of enemy ships, you can also land on nearby planetoids for mini-levels (which are platforming sections wrapped around a small planet, shades of I forget which early R&C game. And, well, Mario Galaxy.)

Not that I expect Crack in Time to break the series' streak of not evolving past #2, but this is a good sign.

I'm definitely not thrilled to see stupid old Captain Qwark once again thrusted into the spotlight as if he is part of the game's title. The bumbling egocentric superhero is one of my personal worst cliche characters ever, and I am damn sick and tired of R&C trotting him out as the Idiot MacGuffin that moves the plot along.

Finished Uncharted 2 a couple days ago. Definitely one of the best games around right now. But I wouldn't give it a perfect score based solely on the dopey mega-duplicated enemies. Seriously. One of the first levels has you infiltrating a museum and all dozen guards are identical. And they all walk right beside each other. How can a game with such lush environments cheap out on bottom-feeding enemies? Like you can't have the game randomly sprinkle the models with hats and jackets and clipboards and junk?

Other than that, the game's huge advantage is the constant spectacle. Lots of adventure games have you slog through a boring cave for an hour than you hit a giant setpiece event. Uncharted 2 is like one setpiece after another. It is amazing stuff to see in action. Still not sure I'd rank it above Batman as Game of the Year, but I have a lot of latent comics bias that will likely keep Batman on top.

I'll be going back to re-play favorite Uncharted 2 chapters and search out more hidden treasures. Maybe some multiplayer, although that's not typically my thing. I like how it automatically saves replays of every single multiplayer match.

We did a little Beatles Rock Band over the weekend. We're only four photographs away from having the entire set unlocked, which I'm sure will rain Trophies like an avalanche. Also did some Regular Rock Band. I don't know how I missed them, but I found some regular songs in the World Tour mode that I have never attempted. And not the usual crappy metal shit that I avoid. Like, I've never played "We Got The Beat." So, crappy 80's shit. Still, those are stars I've never collected. We'll no doubt pick up LEGO Rock Band, but I'm waiting to leverage a holiday-shopping Toys R Us coupon. No rush on that one.

Last night I struggled through another round of Critter Crunch levels. That one gets downright mean into the third act.

Before Halloween I read that you could "visit the Zombie Deadquarters" in Home and get a free zombie costume for your avatar. I'll take anything free, so I wasted a couple hours trying to find the Deadquarters. Turns out, "visit" means "buy." The Deadquarters is a $5 Home Personal Space that, once purchased, grants free zombie costume bits to anyone who steps inside it. Spectacular bait-and-switch, that.

And you know, I haven't found Afrika yet. Seems too niche to find it at TRU, and I forgot to look for it during the last time I was in GameStop.

As if the ad wasn't skeevy enough by not listing a business name or contact info...

...you're asked to text your info to the phone number.

And then they will text you back with the make and model of the unmarked van in the CVS parking lot where they handle the dancer interviews.

The real gaming world, that is. I think I'll return to more-regular weblogging shortly, with the ever-popular Week in Links to return this Friday. With old links from before we went to DisneyWorld.

But now, some gaming stuff. I think I will spend most of this week talking about this fall's big purchases and the unfinished danglers still hanging out from the summer.

First, the DS!

On the trip, I only played a little Layton 2 and some Henry Hatsworth. I'm probably only a third of the way through the Layton puzzles. I do enjoy the entire Layton vibe. Me as the Prof and Clark as Luke would have been a dynamite Halloween costume this year, if I gave a crap about such things.

I'm trying not to use any hint coins. Which usually stinks because Layton 2 is not as generous with the free hints as Layton 1. In the first game, if you failed a puzzle you would get a tiny tiny hint about it on the way out. Now, the INCORRECT screen usually only gives you a wholly unhelpful "Think about the clues you were given and try it again." What's next, hand-washing tips?

Henry Hatsworth is an odd duck. It's a very mediocre platformer on the top screen, where you jump around and bop enemies. The enemies you kill fall down to the bottom screen, becoming blocks in a Panel de Pon-style matching game. As the blocks rise to the top, the baddies threaten to return to the top screen and overwhelm your platforming hero. While you're dealing with the blocks, the platforming action pauses so it's not like you have to manage both screens at once.

The best bit is the silly Dickensian cast, plussed up with steampunk mecha, in competition for the game's treasure: a golden suit. In lieu of full voice work, the character conversations are audioed with hilarious cliche British sound samples. When Hatsworth talks, his captions are accompanied by a ridiculous melange of randomized blowhardy bluster. You really do have to hear it to appreciate the craftsmanship.

Go about five minutes in for a full conversation between Hatsworth and the kid. This audio cracks me up.

Seems like a cute title, and I very much like the idea of combining platforming and puzzling.

I have not yet started Kingdom Hearts Mathematical Algorithm. I'm all set for it, just haven't yet found the time.