January 2010 Archives

This is Annie.

She has many annoying habits, but chief among them is the example I shall now relate. Late at night, usually when I am the only one awake and have retired to my Mac to bang out another lame weblog entry, she sits downstairs and yowls. Excessively, loudly. It's not quite as bad as the noise cats make when they are in heat, but it's close.

Part of it is that she thinks whenever she hasn't seen me for more than twenty minutes, that I should be feeding her. Something about me being on a different floor triggers that mode all the time. But at night, this attitude is combined with the feline instinct for dropping off dead things as gifts.

Naturally, there are no dead things in our house (well, only a few), so Annie has to play pretend and use whatever she can find.

Cat toys are a pretty common grab in this situation. Particularly larger ones like this mouse.

She will carry the item to an area where she expects me to walk... like the entry hall, or in our centralized kitchen. Then she yowls over it. Continuously.

Or this plushie banana.

There is something in her tone that always makes me think she is mourning a dead kitten. It seems too charged to be her just going through the motions of leaving a chewed mouse on the back doorstep like some friendly stray.

Then again, this is why I can't plug in an electric cord without feeling like I'm stabbing some surprised guy in the eyes.

This stuffed 20-sided die is rather big, but she'll carry it around and cry for it.

The kicker is that she knows she is irritating me. Whether her end goal is to get me to feed her, or if she genuinely is nuts, she knows the sound will get me to show up and that I will be grumpy.

So when she hears me set foot on the steps, she vanishes. By the time I make the ground floor, she is gone and the proxy corpse is abandoned on the floor. And I mean super-gone. Like, she dives into the basement.

This is the worst one, the little Venom toy. You may recognize this character from about six minutes of Spider-Man 3.

I hate finding Venom alone in a hallway.

So we try not to leave items like this lying around for Annie to use to her advantage.

The 2009 Cheapo Game Shootout ends with the four finalists facing Ultimate Judgment... who will Clark choose as the winner?

Assassin's Creed II? Warioland: Shake It? Burnout Paradise? Uncharted: Drake's Fortune? Last year's winner was Harvey Birdman (Wii), but Academy history is no accurate predictor in this horse race... where box art and the dim memories of a four-year-old reign supreme.

Congratulations to all of this year's entries, except Eco-Creatures and Nerf NStrike, both of which sucked.

JAN152010 - Kyo. syouri (YouTube)
January 15, 2010... four guys in the Philippines get together and play Fatal Frame: the Card Game! Please indulge me here, but it's a really cool feeling to know you created something that people all over the world can enjoy.

Five Questions With Panera Bread iMac Man (Gizmodo)
Dude hauls his entire iMac into Panera for the free WiFi. The best part is that he sounds completely normal in this interview. Like, not a weirdie at all.

Xbox Popped My Stressball (Nintendo World Report)
Seems there's still room in this big ol' world for Microsoft Tech Support horror stories.

Retro XBLA games must be repurchased for the Xbox Game Room (Joystiq)
Speaking of that, I'll cop to enjoying the 360-bashing in this Joystiq comment section.

DC Comics offers Brightest Day promotional rings (CBR)
Huh. The Flash ring looks like a slightly painted version of the ones they handed out two summers ago. And the GL ring looks identical to the ring DC gave out as part of the Blackest Night collection. Odd. Where's the White ring??? And the Legion flight ring???

Scientist: Alien life could already be on Earth (Yahoo News)
I'm fascinated by the notion that, as our communication technology improves, we're becoming less space-noisy.

GTA Episodes from Liberty City Are Coming to PS3 After All (Aeropause)
Yeah, no kidding. Here's hoping that Rockstar's slush fund generated from Microsoft's "exclusive" DLC contract has ended up getting us a seriously awesome Red Dead Redemption.

Brave New (Disney) World (Mice Age)
Kevin Yee outlines the pros and cons to a theoretical RFID system at WDW, which could track your rides/meals/location. Also, the FastPass-killer: using RFID to eliminate the queue entirely. Very, very cool.

We had one, we had two, now the inevitable Part Three.

Metal Gear Solid Touch, iPhone
I had an iPhone for, like, a week when I bought this. It is a strange little shooting gallery game, but wonderfully themed to Metal Gear Solid (specifically #4, Guns of the Patriots). Merely OK, but you'd probably have to be a huge MGS fan to even travel that far. I bet it's down to $1 by now.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $3 on sale. Was it $8 originally? I forget. I'm bad at this.
GAMEPLAY: The pinch gesture for using the sniper score is difficult to pull off. There's a bunch of nice unlockable wallpapers, but you have to play for days to accrue enough in-game points to buy any of them.
PRESENTATION: A solid match with the franchise's look and feel across years of PlayStation games.

World of Goo, Mac
I am a total cad. I picked this up during 2D Boy's big pay-what-you-want sale. I elected to pay a quarter. And you know what? I didn't think it was that great. Certainly not worthy of all the OMG WII DOWNLOAD INCREDIBLE WOOT chatter that it received upon the WiiWare release.

DISCOUNT VALUE: 25 cents! Embarrassing!
GAMEPLAY: Too imprecise for me. I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of a rigid puzzler. Seems like you can very easily get to a point where it is impossible to clear the board, thanks to the overly sensitive gravity and limited pool of goo. Not for me.
PRESENTATION: Great art direction, though.

Bomberman Ultra, PSN
I've never actually owned a Bomberman title, so I figured a PSN sale was good enough reason to bite. Turns out, Bomberman just isn't that much fun.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $5, I think during a PSN half-off sale.
GAMEPLAY: I think the core multiplayer model is flawed. With all the power-ups turned on, the game has no balance to allow trailing players the chance to catch up. We sort of like the floor-painting "zombie" variant (WARNING: NO ACTUAL ZOMBIES) where you have infinite lives, but even that one ends up sucking because only the last ten seconds count.
PRESENTATION: Amateurish menus, screechy sound samples and lots of overdone design. It's easy to tell when a company craps out a DLC game. The only real shining moment is that the game doesn't ruin the XMB menu with audio/images... but that's probably due to the bargain basement dev, not any altruistic respect for my PS3 menu screen.

Assassin's Creed II, PS3
I had no interest in this franchise until the E3 2009 PS3 demo video. That looked pretty cool. So when Amazon put it on a Gold Box deal, I grabbed it.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $40 on Amazon. Not bad for a $60 that just came out.
GAMEPLAY: It's parts of GTA combined with parts of MGS. And even a little Professor Layton. Win win win. Now, it's not as uniformly excellent as those three franchises would lead you to believe, but it is definitely a name to watch. And I sure had a blast playing it. My fourth Platinum Trophy.
PRESENTATION: Some very clever ideas, using a modern sci-fi overlay on a historical setting... all intended to mask and immerse basic video game elements. I can't help but feel that the franchise will lose something special once they finally resolve the plotline and end up in a dull Logan's Run near-future setting.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, PS3
You know, I've often complained about not having enough Wild West games, but there's probably enough of them. I must be a sucker for the genre, since I've liked all of them. Bound in Blood is a sequel/prequel with two playable characters, each with different skills/weapons. Kind of melodramatic, and the voice acting is poorly edited.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $27, a Target red-tag. The game would originally been $60, and I'm sure I saw it down to $40 before this red-tagging.
GAMEPLAY: Not bad at all. Been a while since I did an FPS (I didn't even know it was an FPS when I bought it), and it seemed a tad clumsy. Great environments.
PRESENTATION: Little rough around the edges, but not in a good Old West way (although the overall menu design is). The same character models show up over and over again as different people, sort of like watching a Monty Python movie. AND NO MORE STILL ARTWORK CUTSCENES, PLEASE.

With all fifteen games analyzed, here's your Top Three:

Burnout Paradise (21)
Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (20)
Warioland: Shake It (19)
Assassin's Creed II (19)

What? Top Four!? Well, this is indeed unforseen. We'll amend the longstanding Top Three rules and slip Assassin's Creed II into the Anoop slot.

Next time, these four stand before the Final Judge of fourhman.com's Best Cheapest Game, 2009 Edition. Who will earn the coveted title?

Just as last year, the judge will be Clark. There is no predicting how this will turn out.

The name is lousy. But then again, what the hell's an "iPod?" How does "pod" pertain to music at all? I half suspect that, as more and more people filter over to buying iPhones (haven't vanilla flavor iPod sales been steadily declining ever since the Touch/iPhone appeared?), that Apple will dump the iPod entirely... thus creating a nice phonetic transition to iPad.

It's a shame that Today's Internet is coated in tacky menstruation jokes as a result. "Canvas" would have been a far cooler name, but one supposes Apple is married to the "i" bit now, for better or for worse.

The overall weirdness about today's presentation was that almost the entire thing was Steve Jobs and company talking about stuff that we would expect it to do anyway. Of course it will play your iTunes music/movies/shows. Of course it has apps. So it seemed like kind of a waste of time to keep belaboring that point. And, really, enough with the feints at the gamer market, Apple. You guys invited Kotaku for the press, that's it. After two years, we're only now barely starting to get iPhone games that you could actually call games... and even those pale in comparison to what you can get on your DS. iPhone games cost, on average, one fucking dollar and that's about what they're worth. Touchscreen Need for Speed? Whatever. Nothing will come of this until somebody figures out the kind of games that are made specifically for the device, not just sideways ports with touch-buttons pasted on to them.

I was waiting for the "one more thing" and it didn't happen. Boo.

The book store thing is okay, but stupidly expensive. $15 for a virtual book - a little more than most new paperbacks? How about $5 or less. Apple's media pricing has been inconsistent (I remember $10 iTunes albums being cheaper than actual CDs, but $2 TV shows and $15 movies are more expensive than buying DVDs), however this seems way off. Let's hope that Ted Kennedy book was a bad example. Essentially, we're paying more for the privilege of not needing shelf space... which any good book geek will tell you that having a glorious library room is part of the fun. I'm also a bit cheesed that paperbacks sell for $6 to $12 and factor in all the hard costs of creating it... while a $15 digital book has none of those costs, so why am I paying more?

I can't think of a more out-of-touch feature to harp on than the ability to read a newspaper. Seriously.

The more-or-less standard def aspect ratio is an odd choice. That letterboxed Star Trek sure looked like crap.

Immediate access to 99% of the iPhone App Store is a great start. This is like when Nintendo introduced the DS with a Game Boy Advance slot. It's also nice that you do not have to re-buy any iPhone apps for use on your iPad. They will just sync on over. Compare that to Microsoft's recent reveal that 360 owners who bought classic arcade games over XBLA will have to buy them again if they want them inside the upcoming Game Room feature.

The MLB.com thing could be huge. Did they mention what that would cost? I fully expect the MLB to sabotage the concept by charging $10/month for it. Still, watching live sports with the ability to pull down instant stats and replays? That's pretty slick.

I'd love to know if that painting program can take a stylus for precision art. I would love to be able to draw directly, as on the Wacom tablets of yore.

I like the idea of the $10 iWork apps. I'd certainly play around with the touch controls, even if I haven't needed any kind of Office anything since my junior year of college (that's a joke that references me not doing any work in my final year.) My old buddy Matt wants a touchable Final Cut app. I think this is another step on Apple's path of going touchscreen on all models, desktop/laptops included. Rather than doing it the Dell way, they're really checking this concept out and making sure people "get" it. The iPhone was step one.

Although getting these into business hands will be a tough sell, there are plenty of opportunities where a salesman with an iPad could stage some serious stuff. Easy slideshow creation, projector attachment, gesture controlling everything... that would be some impressive tech to whip out at a business meeting.

The lack of multitasking apps is a concern. I mean, it hasn't hurt the iPhone any, but with a larger screen people are going to assume they can have different program windows. On the iPhone, I can jump from Safari to Twitter with no problem, and the fact that one app "quits" is never really a problem. So I wouldn't call it a dealbreaker just yet. Part of the iPad's challenge is that people are going to constantly compare it to a "real" laptop and find reasons to call it lacking. I like how the iPhone OS lets everything just work. You don't need to worry with networking or directory paths or save locations. It's a smooth abstraction of the computing process, continuing the curve Apple started with the very first Macintosh. I'm perfectly OK with the iPad taking those lessons into a physically larger arena.

The model differentiation is confusing and a mistake. Did we really need three GB options? I think it's silly to break out the 3G version as being $130 more expensive. Sounds like another AT&T backroom argument. That $15/month 3G data cost is cheap, though, and makes me wonder if AT&T offered that up in return for something else... like more exclusivity months with the iPhone. DRAMATIC PRAIRIE DOG!

The Flash debate amuses. Apple is going to have trouble washing this one away. I get that Flash sort of sucks and is controlled by a diagonal competitor... but, again, with that big screen, people are going to be disappointed when they head to their favorite website and find a plugin error. On the iPhone there is a built-in acceptance because the device is small, and when was the last time a small browser was worth a damn, on your cell phone? I think not. But the iPad is going to confront the Flash issue head-on.

Where's the camera? I expect that to be item number one on the hardware revision list.

But that $500 price (for the low end model) is pretty amazing. Nobody predicted that (except me, about twenty minutes into the pitch). What's especially great about that is that it can only go down. Next year, the enhanced iPad 4G will be $300! (*speculation) At $500, consumers have a choice: spend half that and get a piece of shit Windows netbook, or spend double that and get a fullblown laptop.

I think there genuinely is a middle ground there, because we all know that most people just don't care about all the "potential" you get with a "real" computer. They simply never use it. Networking, upgrading, all that nerdy stuff. Most people don't even pull their SD cards out of their digital cameras, for crying out loud. And, as Apple pointed out, with 70 hojillion people out there who already know the iPad interface, it does seem like we've got a Trojan iPhone in our midst. Many people could be plainly happy with an iPad that is super-easy to install apps, brings in media, allows for web/email/IM, goes direct to Facebook and YouTube... and just happens to be a sexy piece of kit from a sexy company. Look at those posed models, those people are holding Sci-Fi datapads! The only way it could get more futuristic is if the damn thing floated in mid-air.

Just in our house, I know we use our iPhones all the time. The iPad is a bigger, meatier version that, potentially, doesn't cost as much a month.

But we all know better than to buy first-gen hardware, right? I'll be watching 2010 carefully. Rhonda and I technically do not own a current laptop, so a $500 finely honed version of what we saw today would be just the thing.

I had to laugh when I saw this over on the boardgamegeek.com page for Fatal Frame: the Card Game:

Yes, thanks to the merciless truths of mathematics, Fatal Frame: the Card Game is currently showing a numerical rating of 6.66.

Which, of course, is the game's most sought-after die roll... three sixes will defeat any Boss Ghost and secure a victory. (Actually had somebody email me about that just the other week! Yes, rolling a 6-6-6 wins the game, even if you also roll a 6 on the Boss Die. The camera attack does the damage before you check for a match on the Boss's roll.)

Why, did you think 6-6-6 meant something else?

Continuing the competition from here, witness the second (of three) list of Cheapo Game Shootoutists!

Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 Duo, DS
Yes yes, the witch-touching game. Settle down. $20 for an imported Japanese DS game is pretty sweet, especially when it's a game as notorious as Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 Duo. Turns out, the game is pretty boring. I'm not sure knowing how to read Japanese would help.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $20, normal import price was $48
GAMEPLAY: Lots of clicking across maps and through conversations. Eventually you get to touch a witch, which involves some simple animations of slightly risque artwork.
PRESENTATION: The anime art is solid. Came with a heat-sensitive trading card.

Warioland: Shake It!, Wii
Everybody glorying in the 2D old school style of New Super Mario Bros Wii should go back and pick up this forgotten gem. It doesn't have multiplayer and it doesn't have the pre-fabricated nostalgia cannon, but it has about ten times the charm.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $35, which was an Amazon Gold Box deal (normally $50)
GAMEPLAY: This is like New Super Mario Bros Wii with non-sucky motion controls. Also: has personality.
PRESENTATION: The hand-drawn animation oozes style, attention and care. It's a shame that nobody really likes Wario games.

Burnout Paradise, PS3
I don't like car games. But I'll make an exception for the Burnout series. Paradise is noteworthy for handing out a ton of free DLC upgrades, as well as for a steady stream of pay DLC. The multiplayer was the first time I can recall a game deciding to make online play easy.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $30, a Target red-tag marked down from $60
GAMEPLAY: So many options and modes, all cleverly tucked across a gigantic map. This was my first Platinum Trophy, and at the time I didn't think I could do it.
PRESENTATION: Great design and menu work. Initially, the game's menus carried a strong We Ripped This From Apple motif. Later on they opted for an in-game web browser, which kind of sucked.

Wii Music, Wii
Nintendo's big Holiday Flop of 2008. I read a few respected webloggers who swore by it, so when Amazon knocked it down to $20, I jumped just for the experience. Unfortunately, it's a boring muddle of a non-game... but prettied up with some seriously clever Nintendo charm.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $20, another Amazon Gold Box deal. Amazon usually sells Wii Music for $30, but the game is still $50 retail! Jesus!
GAMEPLAY: It's not a game. It's work. The musical jam options are difficult to understand (the tutorials are murder!), but when you do finally make your own song - sort of - it is pretty cool.
PRESENTATION: I think this is the Miis' shining moment. It is great to make music videos and album covers with your Miis.

Savage Moon, PSN
A tower defense game that, when viewed from above, looks like swarms of bugs marching through poo. There's a science fiction pretentiousness pervading the game that makes the entire thing unappealing.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $5, during a half-off sale
GAMEPLAY: Pretty complicated for a tower defense game, which is cool. I like having full control over a 3D camera, but the tradeoff is that you'll often get screwed by the cam being in the wrong place or angle.
PRESENTATION: Purposefully ugly.

Wario and Burnout climb to the top! Only one more set to go, and then we take the top three to the final showdown!

Tony came over to visit.

He's new to Animal Crossing, so we had much to discuss. AC text chat doesn't wrap, and the character limit is worse than Twitter.

Naturally, you have to visit each town's Nook-n-Go.

Through a weird coincidence, as Tony and I were "playing," I noticed that Stephen had put out an Animal Crossing all-call on his Twitter. So I messaged him and he joined the "fun."

We decided we would play Halo.

What is even odder about this impromptu evening is that all three of us recently started playing the 2008 game. Tony just received it. Stephen found it super-cheap somewhere. And I, of course, am struggling to make peace with a full restart.

Tony and I caught the K.K. show. Nintendo WFC died shortly after this.

Here I am tickling Tony with dandelion fluff.

Then we went to see Blathers.

Now that we've hung, we can send each other in-game letters and items. Which is pretty key. Today Stephen sent me an apple (thus completing my fruit collection), and I sent him an axe since his Nook has yet to get them in stock.

My house is about to get upgrade #4 (basement?) I think, if I'm diligent, I should easily be able to clear 100,000 bells a week in fruit sales. I haven't bothered to do much decorating, except to show off all the Nintendo WiFi items. I really miss how Wild World allowed for multiple rooms and, thus, several different interior design showcases. There is so much this franchise could be doing, but I highly doubt we'll see another installment in this generation.

Lasagna Cat 10/26/2007 (YouTube)
I'm not too proud to embed an old Lasagna Cat during a week when I'm hard up for a good new YouTube video.

What Went Wrong (Mark Evanier)
Long speculative piece about what likely happened during the Jay/Conan Tonight Show War of 2010. You can tell he's put a lot of passion into it because he f-bombs at the end.

For my part, I'm more irritated by the rounds of Me Toos out there coating the internet in Team Coco talk. Where were you guys during the last half a year of Conan dying in the ratings? And now you want to be on a team? You all sound like the worst team members I can imagine: fair weather friends who are easily inflamed.

Walt Disney Imagineering is very serious when it comes to play testing(Jim Hill Media)
I love that the Kim Possible World Showcase Adventure attraction was originally longer.

Robert Zemeckis finds Beatles for 'Yellow Submarine' (Heat Vision)
Meet your mo-cap Beatles.

UP wins Golden Globe (Cartoon Brew)
More Beatlemania. Here, Cartoon Brew has a minor freakout over Paul McCartney's scripted animation comment at the Golden Globes.

The Cute Way To Offend Delicate Sensibilities (John K.)
Great screengrabs of a bloody Daffy Duck take.

NZ army to remove Bible citations from armaments (Yahoo News)
Typical. American company has been hiding religious code on their gun parts for decades. Be ready for the Fundie reverse-outcry over New Zealand's complaint: running the gamut of "It's been there for years with no complaint" to "It's just numbers, it's not a big deal." Nice surprise ending: This company is willingly ceasing the practice.

Report: Samurai Pizza Cats, Speed Racer once considered for Tatsunoko vs. Capcom (Joystiq)
That's a bullshit reason for not including Speed Racer, they didn't know what to do with his car. Speed Racer is far and away the most popular Tatsunoko character, worldwide.

Bus-riding cat Casper killed in hit & run (Yahoo News)
Quite frankly, this was inevitable. Rather than being awed by the "bus riding cat" story when it hit a few months ago, maybe somebody should have kept the cat indoors.

LEGO Collectable minifigures coming June 2010 (Brothers Brick)
Why did it take this long for modern civilization to come up with blind-boxed exclusive LEGO minifigs? I'd buy these but I'd probably only end up with six of the medieval archer guy, whom I already have in multiple quantities from the bandit Castle sets of the late '80s.

Last year's Cheapo Game Shootout went on for far too long. So this year I'm doing it in three, four posts tops. There was math last year, and that was icky.

Here's the ground rules. In order to be eligible, the game must have been purchased at a discount from the original MSRP. I'm not including temporary deals, like when Toys R Us offers Buy Two Get One Free. I'm also disqualifying the Old Navy Black Friday deal for a free LEGO Rock Band, because that was a special event. And anyway, getting a brand new release for free is so great that including it in this competition would have thrown off the entire curve.

Entrants will be assessed according to Discount Value, Gameplay, and Presentation, and issued a final number for each category on a ten point scale. There are fifteen names in the running this year. Here's the first five.

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga, PS3
We were really into LEGO Batman, and Clark missed out on the two older LEGO Star Wars by virtue of not existing at the time. So when I saw that the PS3 compilation was bumped down to $20, I bought it rather than locating the two PS2 originals that have been on my shelf for five years.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $20, compared to an original price of, I believe, $40.
GAMEPLAY: As remembered. Same classic issues on co-op. Nice idea to combine both games (thus making characters playable in either trilogy). Lack of PS3 Trophies is pretty hard to swallow.
PRESENTATION: I'm still not tired of LEGO dude visuals, perhaps unbelievably so. Not as good looking as current LEGO games, since this is just a slightly smartened PS2 game.

Speed Racer: The Videogame, Wii
It's been well-established that we're huge suckers for that Speed Racer movie. So how bad could the Wii game be, right? Pretty bad.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $20, compared to $50. Good sale, but clearly was not ever worth that original price.
GAMEPLAY: Very messy. There's very few tracks, the usual Wii-cursing motion controls, and an almost complete lack of understanding of how to do a kart racer even though Mario Kart Wii is, like, the world's oldest video game.
PRESENTATION: There's actual voice actors from the movie, which is nice. Some good game-specific art of the characters. Box art is lame.

Nerf NStrike, Wii
You've seen this one... the game that comes with a Nerf gun that holsters the Wii Remote. Well, it sucks. It looks like ass. The interface sucks. You wouldn't think people could screw up a shooting gallery game, but these guys did.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $40, was originally $60
GAMEPLAY: There's a bunch of modes that really suck, and everything goes on for way too long.
PRESENTATION: Ugly. Storyline rips off Last Starfighter, despite federal mandate banning such.

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, PS3
I was initially not that interested in this title, being more or less burned out on the Tomb Raider concept. The demo was OK. Then the stars aligned and they patched in PS3 Trophies, plus Target put it on clearance. Two very good reasons to get this game.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $30, red-tagged at Target from $60
GAMEPLAY: Pretty darn amazing, although I could do without the super-linear path. Great character animation, but the plot takes a stupid turn at the end.
PRESENTATION: Looks great, nice menus. Loses a point for the off-the-rack font choice in the logo.

Eco-Creatures, DS
I had hoped this would be a cool RTS, but it was nigh-unplayable. I forget exactly why it sucked, but it was so bad I actually traded it in for $2. I can't even be bothered to recall the game's subtitle.

DISCOUNT VALUE: $20, was originally $30
GAMEPLAY: Knowing how I react to frustration in gaming, I must have run into some level that was impossible even after a million tries.
PRESENTATION: Nothing special. Sort of cute.

So far, Uncharted has a sizable lead... but there are ten more challengers to consider! Just as last year, the top three points-getters will head to the judge's table for the final decision.

It happened! They finished the Fatal Frame IV translation patch! Now sufficiently motivated Fatal Frame fans outside of Japan can finally enjoy this 2008 sequel sequel sequel.

I know I went over this before, but I'm on mission to clog Google bots with the Good News. To play the game, you first need to own the game. As in, an official imported edition. There's no torrenting or thievery here. Then you need to copy a heap of files over to an SD card and pop the whole schmear into your Wii. The bootable app on the SD card will run a couple times and prepare the game for you... and then it bypasses the region lock, starts the game, and serves up English subtitles as you play. Incredible.

It remains sort of bizarre that Nintendo took a pass on localizing Fatal Frame 4 for a western release. It's a known T/M-rated franchise (not THAT known, to be sure, but there is a good cult following). It was co-developed by gaming rockstar Suda51's group, Grasshopper Manufacture, the team that also brought us No More Heroes and Killer 7. Nintendo published it themselves in Japan, so they had to have some faith in the title. It went on to be the best selling entry in the Fatal Frame franchise in Japan. And, had it arrived sometime in late '08 / early '09, it could have been leveraged by Nintendo as a super-M second-party title, perhaps serving as a counterpoint to those months where Nintendo delivered nothing but Wii Music, Animal Crossing, and some GameCube rehashes. Furthermore, if Nintendo had permitted Tecmo to publish it outright in the States, it could have been pitched as a third-party mature contender.

Word is, Nintendo wanted more polish for the regional releases, and Tecmo/Grasshopper wanted more cash. In a complicated backroom game of global chicken, only Fatal Frame fans came up the loser.

Until now, anyway.

Here's some of my first ghost captures. They scream out of the Wii Remote when you snag them.

That's the Fatal Frame version of a nurse. The first bit of the game takes place in an abandoned sanitarium.

This early ghost has an attack where she dives off-camera and then comes up after you.

Yes, Fatal Frame, we get that you like to field the ghosts of dead children.

This happens a lot... you turn a corner and suddenly the sensors start freaking out and you see a frozen ghost somewhere in the room. This guy appeared outside the window. You only have a few seconds to capture these non-combative types.

Here's a nice closeup of a ghost in mid-attack.

So far, Fatal Frame 4: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse is damn near functionally identical to 2005's PS2 exclusive Fatal Frame 3: The Tormented. I don't see much of a Suda51 flair at all, which I recall was sort of a concern back when it was announced that Grasshopper was handling the game's development. Same save points. Same Camera with film and filaments and lenses and crystals. Same awkward album-saving structure. Same young-girls-in-miniskirts-exploring-abandoned-locales kind of vibe. The cutscenes are as good as ever, keeping in the series' dark, realistic CG.

Being on Wii brings a couple stupid motion controls to the table. If a ghost latches on to you during a fight, you have to shake it off. And occasionally when you go to pick up an object, a spirit hand will appear and make a grab for you... and, again, you have to shake.

The Wii Remote-as-flashlight controls are nowhere near as smooth as in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. For whatever reason, the Remote only controls up and down, so you have to use it in combination with the Nunchuk analog stick to point around the room. It's not onerous by any means, it's just not as good as what Silent Hill did a year later.

Speaking of Silent Hill, here's a possible tip of the hat to Fatal Frame, found early in Shattered Memories:

Between Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, Animal Crossing and the upcoming No More Heroes 2, my Wii is getting quite a workout this month.

I finished Silent Hill: Shattered Memories this weekend. Which, if you've been following along, means it did not take very long. The length of seven hours is very disappointing, but happily it was a great seven hours. I guess I'm expected to play it again and rack up a different ending.

However, there's no way I could ever get a different ending, because guaranteed I'll play the game in exactly the same way. Shattered Memories contains intermittent sequences where a psychiatrist asks you to complete various puzzles and questionnaires that will assess your personal ethics and provide the game hints of your past history. It then subtly tailors the gameworld to echo what you have revealed. For example, at one point you're asked to self-identify with high school archetypes like "jock," "slacker" or "slut." Following that, you're told to create your dream high school class schedule among such options as theater, gym and science. If you say you were a jock and you put a gym class in your day, the game will give the onscreen character a jock outfit during the high school level.

It doesn't TELL you that it did that. It just does it.

And no, I did not get the jock outfit. Which is why I can never play in any way other than the way I already played it. Because I simply can't be dishonest to the game.

What is more impressive is how the game catalogs you when you're not being directly interviewed by the therapist. It watches how you respond to the in-game characters (like, if they call you for help... do you always go back and help them? I did.) It watches what objects in the environment you pay attention to (like, do you stop to check out the sexy pictures in the bar? I, uh, did.) What door did you walk through when you were given a choice of two, one decorated with girly flowers and the other with sexy lips? When you're following behind one of the female characters, do you zoom the camera in on her ass? I didn't. Honestly. Didn't even occur to me, because during the scenes where you have an opportunity to stare at her ass, she's talking to you. So I was listening to the conversation.

All of that ripples throughout the game, changing how the doctor talks to you, changing what certain characters wear, changing what they send you in text messages, etc.

From what I have read, the game will even figure out if you're screwing with it and giving contradictory answers. The classic example here is if you tell the doctor that you like to help people, but then refuse to assist the various people in trouble that you meet in the game. Eventually, the doc will call you out on this behavior.

And at the very end, you get a full analysis synopsis. Here's mine, direct from the doctor's report. I'd call it about 85% accurate!

A bit of a dreamer here. Seems driven by "positive" ideals - wants to help, befriend, nurture and otherwise enhance the lives of others, whether they want this or not... Quite interested in reflection and "self-improvement" - sees life as a "journey."

Resorts to a lot of tired growth and floral metaphors. Seems averse to conflict. Likes to be referred to as a "romantic." Likes to rely on intuition. Therapy "felt" like the right thing to do.

Seems to value "commitment." Certainly willing to forgo the joys of freedom for the shackles of a relationship. Might be more worried about their partner cheating than any general moral compunction - certainly no prude. Quoted some quite amusing fantasies during session.

Very conscientious. Says they are always aware of "obligations." Others might criticize for being too "thorough" or "detail-oriented" (not my phrase!)

Claims to treat body well. Not necessarily a "clean living" type, but knows what is good for self. Thinks this has some importance.

Likes to insist on tidiness and having "everything in its place." Seems to take pride in being nice to others. I suggested patient would make a useful and reliable roommate. Patient smiled.

Patient in a few words: "clean and tidy."

So... summing up. Am sure patient will be back - lots of uncovered ground. Don't believe we've seen everything yet. Might be worth going back to the start and re-examining with benefit of what we know now. Think patient will agree?

I imagine that last paragraph is a nudge to go collect all the hidden items (I only missed a few.) On the second playthrough you can trigger a special mode where you are supposed to find hidden UFOs during the game.

About the ending. I cried. For sure. The ending I received just hit me with a genuine cathartic blast. There's a twist at the finale that I won't spoil, because I'm glad it was not spoiled for me.

The only really dopey thing about the game was the faux-combat, where you have to shake the damn Remote+Nunchuk to escape from all the blind flesh monsters coming after you. Thankfully, those scenes are not the game's norm - they're almost like intermissions during the main storyline - so it's not like you're constantly running from zombies and whipping yourself in the face with the Nunchuk cable. No, most of the game is a chilling, creepy, atmospheric descent into madness and memory. Really nothing like the original PS1 Silent Hill at all. In a very good way.

Just sucks that they could only keep up that awesome for seven hours.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS Cartoon Intro (YouTube)
We bought the 9-episode DVD for $5 at Target, and Clark has been really into it all week. Here's the open that succinctly recaps how these six kids were dropped into D&D land. Sort of. You know, it looks like a bad double date. Hank and Sheila look like an item, but her little brother Bobby is a parent-enforced tagalong. Diana probably agreed to be Eric's date just as a favor to the other couple. But then why did they bring Presto?

I don't know if I'm strong enough to tell Clark that these kids never make it home.

Postmortem: The Creation Of Little King's Story (GameSetWatch)
The director of Little King's Story reveals what was cut from the game.

THEN WHY ARE THERE STILL APES? (Skepticblog via Mike Sterling)
Nice recap of some common creationist garbage, and how to deflate it.

Geoff Johns Discusses Brightest Day (IGN)
Johns says "Brightest Day is me looking at what we did on 52 and trying to make it better." Notice he didn't namecheck Countdown or Trinity. #eyeroll

Avatar, The Animated Film That Wasn't (Cartoon Brew)
So when does CGI count as special effects and when does it count as animation? The Oscars will have some fun times trying to define all of this in the future. For the time being, it's another reason to hate that Avatar movie.

Funeral For A Stilt-Man (Again with the Comics)
Great image of a pile of z-grade Marvel villains attending Stilt-Man's viewing.

Marvel offers retailers a 'rare' variant, in exchange for unsold DC comics (CBR)
Wow. What kind of bullshit is this. Marvel is trying to get retailers to mangle unsold DC inventory, luring them with "rare" Deadpool books? Absolutely terrible.

Now This Is A Professor Layton Figure (Kotaku)
Will import.

Repeating Calendar for 2010 (Time and Date.com)
Dust off 1993 and 1999!

Kotaku has an article about Namco-themed costumes showing up as DLC in the Japanese PS3 version of Tales of Vesperia. Klonoa, Tekken, Mr. Driller... even Eternal Sonata and Family Baseball characters can be spotted in the gallery screens.

So, could this be Goro?

You know, like from Mappy?

It's the right color scheme, however certainly not as obvious a costume as what the screens show for other characters (like Mr. Driller back there.) But that left leg sure does remind me of Goro's striped tail.

Give me an announcement that this PS3 game/DLC is coming to America, and I'll swear an oath to buy it.

Out of all the old school video game companies that have tried to create a character family to rival Nintendo's, Namco has got to be the pluckiest. Sega has had some success (with crap games, unfortunately), Konami had a mascot kart racer once upon a time, and Sony has just got into the game this generation with LittleBigPlanet and Home... but only Namco has been at it long enough that you can genuinely say they've made a success story out of it. Well, and Capcom's storied Street Fighter series.

For example of a company trying and failing, Data East recently released their own retro arcade Classics Collection of twenty or so games. Please name me three classic Data East games. And I'll start you with Bad Dudes for free.

Man, I would love to see a big influx of Namco characters in the next Smash Brothers. Mappy, Katamari, iDOLM@STER, Soulcalibur, Pac-Man... that would be some crazy shit.

9:05 AM Oct 22: Clark has declared this vacation too short.

Rhonda snapped this as Clark and I were on our second lap through Blizzard Beach's lazy river.

12:14 PM Oct 22: You always spend more time at the water park than you anticipated.

Partially because your kid is having a great time, but also because you forget how much walking is required to get around. You have to scale a mountain to get to any tube rides, and hope you don't forget your stop in the lazy river... or it's a painful shoeless walk back.

1:36 PM Oct 22: Kids meals at Blizzard Beach come with sand bucket and shovel, which almost makes up for the $2 towel rental.

Although the bucket is depressingly free of logos. Might as well have been picked up at the dollar store.

This was another one of those days where we had to dash to an early supper reservation. This time over to DHS for Mama Melrose, which is lovingly tucked behind the small Muppet section. As I said before, that's the only downside of the (free) dining plan: you're constantly rushing to the next meal.

3:24 PM Oct 22: There is a picture of JD frickin Roth at Hollywood Studios Mama Melrose restaurant.

If there's any greater indicator that a section of the park hasn't been rehabbed in a while, I'd like to hear it. J.D. Roth.

3:25 PM Oct 22: Also, "four cheese flatbread" is Italian restaurant code for "pizza."

Any restaurant with J.D. Roth pictures at the front does not deserve to be so fancy on the menu.

Spotted this at one of the Star Wars toy kiosks at DHS:

5:30 PM Oct 22: A new low in Star Wars alien names: Whorm Loathsom.

GEORGE LUCAS: STOP LETTING YOUR GRANDKIDS NAME THE ANCILLARY CHARACTERS.

ESPECIALLY THE ONE WITH A THESAURUS.

7:23 PM Oct 22: Back at Epcot for a fireworks finale.

One of those nights where Illuminations is late. In retrospect, we should have grabbed the ferry from DHS to Epcot, since we planned on going to World Showcase anyway. This is the part of the trip where I finally opted not to buy a $25 Metal Gear Solid t-shirt.

Although entering Epcot through the normal entrance did give me and Clark another shot at that 3D skeleton assembly game in the base of Spaceship Earth.

8:22 PM Oct 22: They sell lightup screaming R2s here. So every now and then you hear an R2 scream.

Sort of breaks the illusion that you're walking through a miniature train garden in Germany. Not that Germany doesn't have R2-D2.

9:58 PM Oct 22: Man, if that new Pokemon pedometer was out yet, this trip would have levelled me up for sure.

Just formally announced this week! Bet our impending trip to Seoul will net me some sweet Pokemon gains.

Kind of a weird spot for our final fireworks show... over in front of American Adventure by the band area. Too many trees, so nobody ever hangs out there.

12:32 AM Oct 23: Pretty nice arcade at the hotel. Lots of PS2 and GameCube ports.

Mario Kart GP (didn't work). Guitar Hero Arcade. Nice big room.

12:39 AM Oct 23: This may be the first day of the trip where I didn't redline the iPhone battery.

12:46 AM Oct 23: Oh good christ Trine is out. Now what will the PS Blog fanboys scream about every week.

Tried to demo. Didn't care for it. Just happy to have these things finally show up for sale, because it is so annoying to see assclowns bitch and moan every week for Product X.

12:47 AM Oct 23: Tonight the 3G blanket is unexpectedly filtering through the hotel room walls.

Now for the sucky day at Disney, the day where you have to leave. We had an evening flight, so we could squeeze in one more park visit. We chose Animal Kingdom since we had skipped the Lion King show on our first day there.

8:42 AM Oct 23: There are tags on the door. That's Disney's polite way of saying it's time to go.

Sadness.

10:01 AM Oct 23: On our way to Animal Kingdom for a last park blast.

10:55 AM Oct 23: Yes, we're wearing PA clothes in FL heat.

Take at look at this Kilimanjaro safari love connection:

11:49 AM Oct 23: Having a hotel leftovers lunch in Animal Kingdom, parked on a table on the Camp Minnie-Mickey pathway.

Camp Minnie-Mickey is almost completely gone now. The bear-eating-rowboat sign no longer uses the name (it's a Lion King show time board now). I think our guidemaps still used it. It was always a dumb idea, a fill-in land for the newborn DAK until Asia was finished. As far as I can recall, for the last ten years it has been nothing but character appearances and the Lion King show anyway. They need to put something substantial over there, because it is a long walk for just the aging Lion King show.

2:03 PM Oct 23: Heading to the airport. Our luggage is apparantly already there.

I remain sort of nervous about that whole process. On the way out to DAK, we checked all of our luggage in with Guest Services, and then they shipped it off to Orlando International Airport probably while we were waiting in line for Lion King. It worked like a charm, though. Have to trust the mouse on that score.

2:04 PM Oct 23: @StephenJMunn Giggle! Can't wait to defend myself further.

Stephen was laughing about my phoned in voice message for the Aeropodcast, which I recorded while at Animal Kingdom a week earlier. It had a pretty good Microsoft slam in it.

2:23 PM Oct 23: The bus to the airport is strikingly quiet. I doubt that everyone is paying strict attention to the prerecorded Disney Cruise pitch.

Tired, tired people.

2:35 PM Oct 23: Guy on bus has arm tattoo of the Utz girl.

Having an Utz girl tattoo is a fairly obvious indicator that one is from south central Pennsylvania.

We enjoyed the burgeoning theme park storefront war at the airport. Disney has this one big store at the front, then another smaller one in the back. Universal has a small store (with a big Spider-Man on it; now a Disney-owned character... keep building that brand, Universal!), Cape Canaveral has a small store, Sea World has a small store.

And there was an automated vending machine that sold iPods.

10:20 PM Oct 23: Welcome home. Here's that cat fecal you missed.

12:40 PM Oct 24: We took 641 photos on the Disney trip.

A lot of them sort of suck, though, since I used the iPhone for a lot of them. The iPhone doesn't exactly stop motion so well.

5:05 PM Oct 24: Had a Chick-o-Stick today for the first time in a long time.

Which was part of the free candy haul from Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party! Not sure what's in a Chick-o-Stick.

And that's the end of our Disney 2009 trip, as told live through Twitter.

Man, am I happy this was verified.

We've all known about Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver having a Pokewalker device for quite some time, but there was always this little hesitation that the accessory would make it out of Japan. Today's press release from Nintendo makes it official. We're getting it. I'm getting it.

From the description, it sounds like a nice upgrade over the Pokemon Pikachu GS pedometer from ten years ago. You can transfer any one of your guys into the device. Walking generates Watts, again, which are used to both catch wild pokemon or to find items. Whatever dude you have in the 'walker gains experience, WHICH IS KICKASS.

There's also some kind of "unlock new routes" thing, which, along with being able to catch wild pokemon, makes it sound like there is some sort of built-in game aspect to the Pokewalker itself. Awesome. I'm walking everywhere now.

And when I get home from work each day, I'm sticking it in Clark's pocket.

I wonder if HeartGold/SoulSilver has announced any preorder bonuses. These games usually come with something silly. But maybe the Pokewalker is silly enough.

I hope Nintendo cleaned up the DS interface a bit since Pokemon Diamond/Pearl, because it was pretty weirdly inconsistent in that generation.

Virtual Porthole - Disney Cruise Line (YouTube via Jim Hill Media)
OK, I totally want to go on a Disney Cruise now.

Cube-Based Chess Set Adds Modern Confusion To Timeless Difficulty (Gizmodo)
A great headline summarizes a terrible product.

Wiiwaa: Playing With Plush Puppets On Wii (GameSetWatch)
Why, sure I'll get this. This is hilarious.

Important Announcement for Kingdom Hearts Players (Fantasy Flight Games)
The Kingdom Hearts CCG is officially dead. Which I hope means the booster packs will make it to Target's $1 box. One weird thing about this is that the production costs on this one could not have been that astronomical, since the game design and artwork was done in Japan years ago. FFG was mainly translating, printing and running tournaments. If I remember correctly, this means about half of Japan's Kingdom Hearts expansion sets saw an English release. Note that FFG is offering free promo cards from the final set for the cost of a SASE.

A Pair of Dirty F*!@# Rats (Mighty Optical Illusions)
Great scrap sculpture that turns into two rats in love.

Tunnels beneath Vegas a refuge for homeless people (Yahoo News)
This is definitely a Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction story.

Mark Hamill talks about game voice acting, Batman role (Joystiq)
This can't be correct. Mark Hamill has never been asked to reprise his Luke Skywalker role as a voice actor? Never?

Plug In: Student-Designed Campaign For Informing Parents On Video Games (GameSetWatch)
This display includes a beautiful gaming-icon poster. Somebody get this design into Threadless.

Art Clokey 1921-2010 (Cartoon Brew)
The creator of Gumby died this morning. I'm glad he got to see his works experience a genuine revival in the late '80s, and I gather he was working on a second revival in recent years.

A great many things were lost when my Wii's onboard memory exploded, but perhaps the greatest loss was the disappearance of 100+ hours of Animal Crossing: City Folk. Thanks again, Nintendo, for inventing visible save files that can't be copied to an SD card.

I sort of had no intention of restarting the game. I mean, there's just so much that we accomplished in AC:CF that was now gone. Finding all the fossils, opening up Brewster's gyroid storage, participating in holiday/seasonal events, receiving Nintendo's WiFi collectables, upgrading the houses, finding golden/silver tools, designing our own patterns, getting access to Crazy Redd's. I really didn't have the stomach to face that game knowing all of that had been undone.

But then Tony got the game and sent me his Friend Code, unbidden. So what the hell. Be brave.

Since this is my second shot at this game, I'm far looser in my classically rigid rules for playing Animal Crossing. The above map is actually my second town on this reboot, since I didn't like the layout of the first town the game generated. The first map had all the houses in ghastly locations, plus it had a terrible thin peninsula along one edge that would have been a right bitch to canvas for fossils and whatnot every day.

I took the northernmost house for easy access to New Adamsvil's civic centers. Makes me realize how lucky we were on our original map, where all our houses were in a neat little line at the top of the screen.

Yes, Tortimer, this is deja vu. A painful, terrible deja vu.

The exercise-obsessed personality type makes for some hilarious conversations.

I cracked through the Nook tasks as soon as I could, because you need to finish that in order to turn on the WiFi. There is a cow in town whom I hate, because her house sits right on top of a bridge.

This new town has a slick boot-shaped island that I plan to populate with coconut trees.

For my guy, I did the DS import again. All this does is give you a decent starting catalog. No extra money or anything.

This game really does have some of the best creative localization ever. Even just in terms of sheer weight, it's impressive.

Had to dash over to Shampoodle to get the Mii head. I can't imagine playing the game without it now. Of course, this means none of the hats work. NICE.

Clark restarted his character as well, and chose the house on the left that is currently surrounded by animal homes. Then he found this cool gyroid room over at the HRA.

I have enlisted the help of my cousins to get me the secret Nintendo furniture items that I had and then lost. Even though we exchanged Friend Codes, I don't think you can send items via in-game mail until you physically visit each other's towns... so we have to set up an Animal Crossing visitation. If I could get somebody to hand me all the fossils, bugs, fish and paintings... plus about a million bells in cash, well then I'd feel like I had not lost much on this reboot.

We actually were going to skip Target and head home, but the whims of a four-year-old's bladder encouraged us to stop anyway.

And we walked out with a discounted Plastic Man figure, the new $10 Pokemon Rumble TCG set, and... a solo-packed Two-Face figure for the Batman Imaginext line.

Is there nobody out there reporting on new action figures that aren't A) bullshit McFarlane figures or B) extravagantly sexy Clayburn Moore sculpts? Seems like all the old toy collector fansites I used to visit are gone. And Toyfare has really sucked lately, getting thinner and less relevant every issue. (At least they ditched that horrible "We Just Heard Of The Onion So Let's Do That" section.)

Who is out there to alert me when new figures show up in this line?

According to the packaging, it's a Target Exclusive. I don't know if Two-Face himself is a Target Exclusive, or if merely this cheap $4 mini-pack version is what's "exclusive." These figures were loafing on pegs at the end of the aisle, a couple rows over from where the rest of the Imaginext toys live. This Target had individual cards for Batman, Joker, Mr. Freeze, Penguin and Two-Face, but only one of each. The figures come with a bare minimum of accessories, which explains the price tag. Normally these guys come with more plastic and retail for around $7. I wonder if these cheapies were intended as temporary packaging for stocking stuffers?

Rhonda spotted them as Clark and I were mooning over the $5 Plastic Man deal. She gets full credit!

The existing figures came with accessories that you've already seen (Batman with two red batarangs and a staff; Mr. Freeze with his rubberized freeze gun; Penguin with two penguins) except for Joker. He gets a repainted version of the grabber claw that originally shipped with the Superman/Krypto set. Two-Face - a 100% new sculpt - comes with a cartoonified two-headed coin and coin launcher.

I have trouble believing that a figure this hot would not end up in some larger playset somewhere. So I would expect a Two-Face Two-Tone Submarine Moon Rocket vehicle, or some other typically incongruous toy creation. They can't have gone to the trouble to fabricate this guy and then abandon him to a $4 endcap warmer.

The Batman Imaginext line is now up to five villains. Note that Riddler looks sort of crappy. That's because he is a repaint of a generic Imaginext figure (dig that perfectly oval head) and not a new character-specific sculpt like the other guys. Riddler came with a no-frills green car, packed as a Toys R Us Exclusive. Makes me think I should investigate Walmart and see if they landed an exclusive villain as well. Bane? Catwoman?

Then there's this:

I don't know what's more fascinating, that they're STILL making Justice League Unlimited figures long after the show exited production... or that they dipped into the Super Friends vault and added Apache Chief, Samurai and Black Vulcan to the line.

I think this photo makes me look pretty tough. Tough enough to surround myself with people unimpressed by New Super Mario Bros Wii. Even while sitting on my t-shirt and wearing Paper Mario flannel pants.

On a related note, my buddy Mike lasted about thirty seconds with A Boy and His Blob before declaring the control scheme unmanageable. He has a way of cutting right to the bone, that one. He has also famously come out against Kingdom Hearts, Super Mario Galaxy and Killer 7. And he probably doesn't even remember being annoyed by that last one. My biggest claim to fame with Mike is that I got him to play Animal Crossing seriously for a couple months.

Let's get back to Nintendo Power's curious list of 2009 awards.

Take a peek at the Strategy Game noms. Has anybody ever heard of ANY of these games, outside of Little King's Story (which is really only famous for nobody playing it)? Is there a valid reason why we can't nominate New Play Control Pikmin?

Major boo to the Fire Emblem game screwing up the longstanding tradition of subtitling DS game with a D. S. abbreviation. Come on guys. You got so close.

Best Strategy Game: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, Knights in the Nightmare, Little King's Story, Phantom Brave: We Meet Again, Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume
Voter pick: Little King's Story
Editor pick: Little King's Story
My pick: Little King's Story

The Best Shooter category will revert to a brand popularity contest, with The Conduit left out in the cold. I'll say that the public will go with Resident Evil, although House of the Dead will be close. I just don't think enough people that give a crap about Call of Duty give those craps on the Wii. NP will go with Dead Space and be insufferable about it.

Best Shooter: Call of Duty Modern Warfare Reflex, Conduit, Dead Space Extraction, House of the Dead: Overkill, Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles
Voter pick: Resident Evil: Darkside Chronicles
Editor pick: Dead Space Extraction
My pick: House of the Dead: Overkill

Here's how you know sports games are dead on Wii, because that second dorky Sonic & Mario Olympics game is classified as one. Also Wii Sports Resort. I guess a category for Best Minigames Game would be too massive for NP to delineate.

I will not be far off in declaring a confused public waffling between Punch-Out (which is a very small game that people say is a very big one, just to sound like Old Nintendo Pros) and Wii Sports Resort, which is about half garbage.

Best Sports Game: Madden NFL 10, Mario Sonic Olympic Bullshit 2: White Version, NHL 2K10, Punch-Out, Tiger Woods 10, Wii Sports Resort
Voter pick: Punch-Out
Editor pick: Punch-Out
My pick: Wii Sports Resort

Let's pause to note that there is no Best Driving Game category. No love for Excitebots. They might as well have pitched that one into Best Sports.

I said previously that I like NP's distinction between Adventure and Action, and now you can see why. All the "Action" games are superfast. And, with the notable exception of Sonic and the Black Knight, they're all actually good games. I have trouble imagining the voters going with Madworld (I'm going to deny a fanboy love affair with Sonic on this one), but it's probably the most-played game on the list.

Best Action Game: Contra ReBirth, Gradius ReBirth, Madworld, Muramasa, Sonic and the Black Knight
Voter pick: Madworld
Editor pick: Muramasa: The Demon Blade
My pick: Madworld

Has there ever been a Best Platformer year that a Mario game didn't win? Didn't crush? New Super Mario Bros Wii will demolish this category. It really doesn't have any competition.

Best Platformer: Boy and His Blob, Henry Hatsworth, Klonoa, Lost Winds 2, NSMBW, NyxQuest
Voter pick: New Super Mario Bros Wii
Editor pick: New Super Mario Bros Wii
My pick: Klonoa

The Best Puzzle list shows off a diversity of puzzle concepts... because I probably would not lump Boom Blox, Scribblenauts, Peggle and Layton in one bucket. Interesting faceoff here. Scribblenauts will sweep, although Layton and Might & Magic will have a strong following. Naturally, I must point out that Scribblenauts does not deserve it, but maybe this sort of adulation will get us a Scribblenauts 2 that does.

Nice job Peggle for keeping up the DS subtitle convention, even if it sounds dirty.

Best Puzzle Game: Art Style Precipice, Boom Blox Bash Party, Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, Peggle: Dual Shot, Layton 2, Scribblenauts
Voter pick: Scribblenauts
Editor pick: Scribblenauts
My pick: Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box

Best New Character is offered as proof that new IP does indeed come to Nintendo systems. As usual, it's a weird mish-mash of titles. Henry Hatsworth has no chance. Jack of Madworld is a probable. Lexine of Dead Space Extraction has no chance. Little King has no chance. Morgan LeFlay of Tales of Monkey Island is an iffy maybe. Xion of Kingdom Hearts DS has a tiny shot. Weird category. Funny that Maxwell from Scribblenauts did not make the cut.

I'm torn, because Henry Hatsworth has really funny voicework, and the backstory is better than you'd expect. Jack sounds like Spike from Cowboy Bebop, though, and that makes him supercool.

Best New Character: Hatsworth, Jack, Lexine, Little King, Morgan, Xion
Voter pick: Jack (Madworld)
Editor pick: Morgan LeFlay (Tales of Monkey Island)
My pick: Jack (Madworld)

Best Multiplayer is offered as proof that multiplayer does indeed come to Nintendo systems. Again, we can expect another award for New Super Mario Bros Wii, even if the multiplayer amounts to everyone I know simultaneously dying over and over again. That game is meant for pros, even though Nintendo spent a million dollars telling us it was made for everybody... which meant the pros spent months whining about how the Super Guide would ruin the game, and then it turns out the Super Guide pretty much sucks and is really hard to invoke anyway. Pros, go enjoy that game. It's exactly what you wanted.

Christ, I'm surprised they didn't nominate Yellow Toad for Best New Character.

Another mention of the Conduit here, which is getting hilarious.

Best Multiplayer: Call of Duty Reflex, Conduit, Guitar Hero 5, NSMBW, Phantasy Stay 0, Wii Sports Resort
Voter pick: New Super Mario Bros Wii
Editor pick: New Super Mario Bros Wii
My pick: Wii Sports Resort

Finally, we have Best Story/Writing. Another neat mashup of titles, but I think we can safely slot this as a notch for Bowser's Inside Story. You might see some activity from the Kingdom Hearts and Silent Hill contingents, but I doubt they can unseat one of the best DS games of the year.

Best Story/Writing: Dead Space Extraction, Dragon Quest V, House of the Dead, Kingdom Hearts DS, Mario & Luigi, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
Voter pick: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
Editor pick: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
My pick: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story

On both public and editorial votes, I foresee easy four wins for New Super Mario Bros Wii (taking every category in which it is nominated). Spirit Tracks will get four voter wins, but will not see as much action from the NP editors thanks to several other important DS games wrangling the niche categories. The winners will be announced in the March issue.

Calling - Official Trailer (YouTube)
This trailer just showed up on the Nintendo Channel. Calling looks very much like Fatal Frame, or The Ring, or most modern atmospheric Japanese horror. I love the logo at the end, which turns the letters into connection bars.

Darkstar Survey (Satellite News)
Apparently most of the MST3K crew did some work for a Myst-like sci-fi game?! It's been in progress for almost ten years, and the CG unfortunately looks like it. Still, I could see checking it out just for the pure novelty of seeing Joel and Frank and Trace hamming it up again.

Still got game (Brainy Gamer)
Michael Abbot shows off the year's best DS games, noting that the DS tends to be overlooked in all the GOTY hullabaloo. I actually felt the opposite about the DS in 2009, feeling like most of the games I picked up were beset by critical, compellokilling failures.

for_a_dollar (Twitter)
Yes, there is a Twitter robot devoted to automatically replying "I'd buy that for a dollar" to every update that uses the word "Robocop."

Dickerdoodle Winners! (Penny Arcade)
This year's Dickerdoodle winner is the best yet.

Makoto Shibata On Quantum Theory (GameSetWatch)
Interview with Makoto Shibata, who directed Fatal Frame. Sort of sad how the article talks about the FF games in the past tense.

He wears a smile. (Ragnell)
A little reminder of one of the greatest TV series of our time: Twin Peaks. Ragnell tweeted while she watched the entire two-season run (plus movie) and I enjoyed the trip.