This is obviously cherry-picked material, but I can't stop giggling about it. The sheer ineptitude of the CPU players. The stoic charm to Luigi's non-action. The way he celebrates every win even though he had nothing to do with it.
Of course, true Mario Partiers know that, even though Luigi won every minigame, he lost all his stars to a randomized Chance Time on Turn 20 and Mario won. Again.
This morning MTV revealed a cute closeup of some Green Lantern Corps members, with the challenge to name them all. This is actually harder than you'd think for a comics fan, since the moviefication of the character designs often changes them into near-unrecognizable forms.
This week's Green Lantern #65 is a big help, however, since it specifically lists several B-list alien GLs that will be in the movie, apart from the already highly obvious characters of Abin Sur, Sinestro, Kilowog and Tomar Re.
So, combining the two, here's my calls on the poster roster, (left to right):
Boodikka. This poor girl has been completely abused across her comics appearances. Originally a bruiser built like a tank, she gradually degraded into a typical sexy comics heroine... until finally they tore off her face and made her one of the robotic Alpha Lanterns. This film version seems to be more of a Middle Period Boodikka.
Salaak. Albeit a very alien-insectified version of Salaak. It's the pointy shoulderpads that convinced me this is Sal.
This one stumps me. Iolande, without her hoodie?
Stel. Easy. Big robot.
Then comes the known four: Abin Sur, Captain Hal "Highball" Jordan, Kilowog, Tomar Re... and hop over one for Sinestro.
The one floating behind Tomar and Sinestro... that's got to the movie version of Larvox. One big eye and a bunch of arms. Larvox is usually more of a squashy bean shape (with hair), but this iteration certainly looks more bug-like. (I suppose this guy could be Medphyll - another Lantern with one big eye - but where's the broccoli afro?)
R'amey Holl! Kind of a surprise, since she's very young in comics years (first appearance: 2007!)
And lastly, G'hu. Another new character (2006!), but he's nowhere near as memorable as "sexy butterfly girl." I remembered R'amey. I had to look up G'hu.
The GL issue also tips Bzzd, Hannu, Green Man, Morro, Rot Lop Fan and Voz for cameos. The comic list does not mention G'hu (but mister far-right is verified; they've already solicited a movie action figure of him) and Iolande, which is me grasping at existing characters who fit the look of female-and-purple.
Oh no... don't tell me that's Katma Tui! Or could it be Soranik?!?
I'd also lay easy money on Ch'p (or B'dg) being in the movie, since he (they) tend to show up in every other GL media (Duck Dodgers, First Flight, Brave & Bold) and B'dg already made the Imaginext toy line.
In a press release that was no doubt run through every legal division and top level exec the company has, Sony has admitted that user data was stolen, potentially credit card info during the PSN breach that has resulted in a weeklong (plus) network outage. They're being super-cagey on whether CC numbers were actually stolen, but we took the safe way out and cancelled the associated card.
Because who knows. If everybody's credit cards are already out there, the damage is done, but it would be great if Sony could spell out "yes, your CC is at risk, just as we know your account name/pass, birthday and address was nabbed."
Up until this point, the PSN downtime was just annoying, not critical. It's rare that I play an online match... but I do buy stuff from the Store all the time, and I want my Trophies to sync up. I can live without the Store and Trophies for a stretch, but lingering doubts about credit card numbers need to be addressed immediately.
Yes, we checked to see if the card had been abused. No, it had not.
The personal info that Sony says was definitely stolen is mainly public knowledge stuff, but a good thief could leverage that info into greater mischief. Particularly the PSN name/pass. When the Gawker sites had that password leak a few months back, I learned a lesson and started up different passwords for everything, so the exposure of my PSN pass does not have much of an effect. I've already reset the one other service that used a similar password, and once PSN comes back online I'll turn that password into something new as well.
Dropping the credit card means an expected nuisance of contacting all the places that were attached to that card, so that process sucks. When PSN returns, I think I'll stick with using prepaid points cards... something I did probably about half the time on PS Store purchases in the past.
Yes yes ha ha, Nintendo is fine (although not especially comparable in this case, since the structure of what PSN offers doesn't have much equivalent on the Wii) and Xbox Live is fine. Like I said, the online component for me is mostly buying, friend-spying and stat-recording, not so much the I PLAY A SHOOTIN GAME ONLIEN angle. Predictably, I do not have much interest in folks crowing about how glad they are that they never bought a PS3 (security break-ins can happen anywhere), or how stupid it was for anybody to use CCs or real info on the account logins (using credit cards is how the world works), or how Xbox Live is worth every penny (this break-in still doesn't change that PSN has been free for years, and a Live subscription significantly adds to TCO).
When Joe Haygood and I discussed the difference between a Live outage and a PSN outage on the latest Aeropodcast (before today's data theft admission), I posited that the Xbox community was far more inflamed during the famous Christmas server crunch because A) they're more focused on multiplayer online and B) they're paying for it.
Today things are a bit different, since Sony's security failure now means a bit more than me having to wait to buy the new Fleetwood Mac song pack for Rock Band. There's no way Sony can't address this at E3.
I would not be at all surprised to see Sony use this event as leverage for turning PSN into a pay service.
Undeniably it's now an official black eye for Sony. If they could have assured that all data was safe and the downtime was, as rumors suggested, to stop a DOS attack or to stop unauthorized Rebug units from getting free games, they could have come out of this one okay. Now some questionable security was exposed and actual everyday users have to scramble to re-establish protection.
I love Sony, but it would be nice to see the company learn some humility this generation.
Rhonda has a subscription to a cosmetics thing called Birchbox where you get makeup product samples every month in a cute little box. To encourage a little Earth Day recycling, the site asked members to send in pictures of how they re-use the Birchbox box.
Scroll down on the Birchbox blog and you'll see this:
"Most Aw-Inducing" indeed!
Clark in action, pestering Annie.
About Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter on Wii. I don't know what I expect from this franchise, but it never fails to disappoint. The gimmick is that you draw in portions of the game as you go, which is a great concept. But, like the DS original, the Wii installment shows up with critical flaws right out of the gate.
I picked it up super-cheap, like $7 cheap, at Toys R Us months ago, and it has been sitting in the unopened pile since then. Finally busted it out this past weekend, when we were not annoying the cat.
The game's biggest issue: drawing in mid-air with the Wii Remote pretty much sucks. It's useless for kids, and even adults will need a supremely steady hand and nerves of steel to create anything cool. I wish the game had included a downloadable drawing app for a DS as an option. It is a billion times easier to draw on a DS. Again, so few games have fielded a Wii-DS connection, even though so many so many so many people own both machines.
Of course, even if you do draw something, you're still mostly only filling in pre-assigned templates for life hearts, floating platforms, butterflies, etc.
One cool enhancement, certain parts of the level require "live" drawing interaction. A lot like Kirby Canvas Curse.
Then there's the loading! Holy crap, this game likes to load.
It's such a great idea. They just can't pull it off.
Here's something else I've had in the office for years and wanted to document before I dumpument.
I am in no way trying to minimize the seriousness of prostate cancer, or to demean the efforts to promote awareness and early detection. But the looks on the faces of "football" "great" Tony Romo and his dad are pretty priceless.
Check out the latest additions to the DC Super Friends Imaginext lineup... two new Green Lantern-themed sets, plus another shot at some still-rare figures! My jaw dropped when I saw these at Target this weekend.
Planet Oa! Sure, it's a repaint of a playset from the Imaginext space line, but Great Rao that's still convincingly awesome. Unlike the space set original, Oa comes with a light up Lantern (which packs a powerful bulb) and three GLs. Hal, Kilowog and B'dg. I keep calling him Ch'p, but I appreciate how even the kiddie toy sets are based in current continuity where Ch'p is dead and B'dg is the Lantern of H'lven. Here's the text from the back of the Oa box:
Imagine... a world of action and excitement where you decide what happens next! This time, it's a trip to Planet OA with super hero Green Lantern, Kilowog and B'DG. Whatever world you travel to, it's a whole new adventure every time you play!
I want to go to Ysmault! I want to go to Ysmault!
B'dg is actually a non-posable accessory, but he is pre-arranged with his Power Ring at the ready. So how do you think parents are telling their kids how to pronounce B'dg?
Oa does not appear to be a Target exclusive, but this is...
It's another repaint of something from the space police robot Imaginext series. A giant killer robot, presumably created with the ring. Or not. Oa sells for $25; the robot goes for $20.
If you've been searching in vain for that Flash / Hawkman two-pack, start looking for this instead:
Target-exclusive $12 "Special Packs" that suddenly make Flash / Hawkman not so rare anymore. I have seen the original two-pack exactly twice (including the time we bought ours), so this new pack should be a boon to folks looking to add to their League. I guess this officially makes Killer Croc the rarest figure.
Clark put together a nice hero scene. Two-Face is in there because we flipped his coin and it came up 'good.'
Here's a closer look at one of the interior sections of Oa.
And here's what's next, Catwoman (finally!), an oversized Clayface, and some kind of new Batcave.
Don't worry, Sonic fans: THIS is the magazine cover you've been waiting for! Finally, a return to greatness, just like you sort of remember from when you were twelve and decided that Sonic's games would be better than anything else until the end of time because you owned a Sega Genesis. Or had a neighbor that owned a Sega Genesis.
HERE IT IS:
Oh crap. Well, it's still pretty good, and you can see some of that classic Sonic vibe.
But the next magazine cover is going to INCREDIBLY AWESOME. You won't even believe it! All your favorites, retro throwback gameplay, aces level design, plenty of speed... this next one is the one you've been waiting for!
Given where we live, having a flood in the basement was probably just a matter of time. It just sucks that it was so preventable. This was not a panic, full-on dams-have-broke weather event. This was one bad day and one technical malfunction.
The sump pump floater must have been stuck and failed to trigger. We had that one day of bad rain (on an Easter egg hunt day, no less), we were out running around most of the day, and came home to half an inch of water over most of the basement floor. Including, yes, the part we remodeled a year ago.
One day! Three weeks ago, we had, like, four straight days of rain and the pump was A-OK!
Now, we've been moderately prepared for this ever since we moved in. 95% of everything in the basement is up. Up on skids, up on raised shelving. And the water level wasn't high enough to cross the bottom 2x4s of the interior walls and get into the insulation. So my comics, toys and most anything of any import are all fine. At least, fine discounting for the humidity problem we now have to work on. It could have been worse.
I'm kicking myself because, most storms, I'm down checking on the stupid thing regularly. A stuck bobber has always struck me as a fairly likely possibility. This day, I didn't. After we got home, I did not immediately run downstairs and visually inspect the sump pump. We actually hung out for a while - enjoying the new Green Lantern Imaginext toys we discovered, more on that later - until I heard the pump kick on... and not kick off. Then I dashed downstairs and stumbled into the supremely disconcerting cliche of watching a cardboard shoebox float by an interior door. #seriously
I blame awesome new Green Lantern toys.
This was Saturday night. So we had to spring into action to clear stuff out, sweep water over to the now-perfectly-okay sump pump. Sunday morning, we ran out and bought a man-sized wet/dry vac (we already own a small, sort of useless one) and set to work sucking the water out of the soggy carpet. Even though some of the carpet was not hit, we figure we're going to have to rip it all up anyway. The new flooring will not be carpet.
So I feel pretty well beat by this. My beautiful basement cave is a mess of boxes with a squishy floor. My precious books and equipment are all under a Humidity Watch. And the screwed-up basement has the cats all stressed, which potentially means incorrect assumptions about the proper place to urinate.
A story from the Hollywood Reporter yesterday claims that Michael Clarke Duncan is "is in negotiations" to voice Kilowog in the big new Green Lantern movie. And Geoffrey Rush signed on as Tomar Re two weeks ago.
For a movie that comes out in two months.
I guess I don't know how voice acting and post-production works for major special effects-laden summer blockbusters. But like, shouldn't the voice acting be completely done by now, in the bag, already matched to the digital performances of the CG characters? And we're still in negotiations for voice talent?
Maybe it doesn't take much to loop in the voice work. Still, it seems like a disheartening announcement that they're only figuring this stuff out now.
Look, I get that the original box art for Tomb Raider: Underworld was more like Tomb Raider: Underwear. It was an artistic choice that wasn't pandering to the male gaming demographic at all. But when you take that torsical shot and place it inside that triple window, I think it becomes what we in the industry call EXTRA STUPID. Now it looks like a cropping error that went to press.
It's Amazon's Deal of the Day for $30. Kinda tempted, because that's, like, $10 per game.
And I think we're OK.
I miss Cartoon Network. That's about it. We haven't seen many episodes of Young Justice because CN is weird about getting those shows into their website and iPad app. I'm kind of annoyed that I'm going to de facto miss the debut of CN's new DC Universe block of shows, but it's hardly the kind of thing that could justify the cost of getting back into cable.
Between Netflix, the CN/Adult Swim player apps, and our usual roundup of DVDs/blu-rays, we seem to have made it. Netflix on Apple TV has become our new life pattern.
Clark tore through the entire run of Avatar. He and I are going through Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood at the moment, although Netflix only has the first two home video sets on Instant Streaming. I anticipate picking up a blu-ray set of Brotherhood some time after the final collection is released (set 4 of 5 just came out this month). Might try Naruto with him after we run out of Netflix Fullmetal, or maybe lap back around to DBZ.
The frequency and assortment of new anime on Netflix is astounding. I've been watching High School Panic, Queen's Blade and plan to start Initial D soon.
I was pretty excited to discover a few episodes of Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors in there (although it's complete dreck), and they recently added five seasons worth of the stop-motion Wind in the Willows series, which is crazy great.
In the non-animated world, I've been through The IT Crowd, most of The Kids in the Hall, Dexter,
Although my current infatuation is Trailer Park Boys, a faux-reality series from Canada. I've made it halfway through the seven year run... in about a week.
As far as movies, I've watched Swamp Thing, Popeye, The Host, Dragon Wars, The Dark Crystal, Ponyo, The Princess and the Frog, The Warriors, Yojimbo, King of Kong, Time Bandits and Hellboy.
And then there's the "documentary" Paul Really Is Dead, which gave me the creeps.
Oh... and Mystery Team, which gives me an excuse to embed this Derrick Comedy clip:
I mentioned that I picked up last fall's Batman: Brave and the Bold for DS at the princely sum of five whole dollars. Since Clark and I enjoyed the Wii version, I figured the DS edition would be an easy, moderately enjoyable grab. How bad can a DS game be for $5?
Pretty bad, if you're shopping for DS discounts at Five Below. But this B:B&B game is rather startlingly featured-packed and polished for what is essentially a licensed platformer. Thank you, WayForward.
The core game has five stories comprised of multiple levels and boss fights, each focusing on a different Batman team-up. In each story you can swap between Batman and his partner on the fly; Batman himself supports plenty of weapon upgrades that are bought with points collected while playing. Sounds normal, but the game deserves a callout for being exceedingly well done. The sprite animation is fantastic and detailed, and the levels show off a variety of landscapes and boss fights.
Even better, you can turn on the Bat-Mite Boost, which removes Batman's life bar and seals off some of each level's pitfalls. This is a boon for Clark, who is then free to explore the level and toy with gadgets without worrying about constantly falling, dying and starting over. For a preschooler, it is a great introduction to the visual language of the traditional side-scrolling 2D platformer without the frustration of hitting a skill wall.
There are hidden collectibles in the levels... hologrammatic eggs that display various DC characters. Before you start each level, a screen tells you how many you have left to find. And eventually, you can buy a bat-gadget that helps direct you towards where each one is hiding. Brilliant. Plus, once you find one... it's found. You can bail out of the level without fear of losing what you collected. New Super Mario Bros, this ain't.
The only downside to the levels is that there doesn't seem to be any way to save your progress inside the story. Which is a very unfriendly thorn in an otherwise very happy game. However, the levels are not all that long. Especially with the Bat-Mite Boost activated, so this has yet to bother us. Except that it bugs me philosophically.
Speaking of Bat-Mite, the B&B game does something that few DS games do - despite years of opportunity amongst Nintendo developers. It can connect to the Wii version. Once you've started playing a level on the Wii, you can tell the Wii to connect to the DS game, and then the DS player appears on TV as Bat-Mite himself. Effectively, the Wii version becomes a three player game at that point, although Bat-Mite needs to be re-connected at every level change. By tracing on the DS touchscreen, Bat-Mite can fly anywhere on the TV, dropping health-ups, energy-ups, ten ton weights, or bombs.
Very much like the Tingle Tuner waaaaaaay back in Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Just wireless and third-party!
For $5, this is almost like a DLC pack for the Wii game. And it's a great DS game in its own right.
This is one of those toys that's more fun to assemble than to actually play with. The "wood" is flimsy foam that feels like it will not hold up well. I wonder if the company had to submit "KID WOOD" to all the credit card companies so they wouldn't flag user accounts when KID WOOD starts showing up on balances.
They didn't set up kidwood.com, though. So have at it!
This just happened on Kotaku, under a story with the headline The Rainbow Colored Will Accessory The World Never Got.
You know, 'cause they meant "Wii accessory."
As somebody who does a fair amount of writing, this bugs me as well. But, as somebody who does a fair amount of writing, I know that mistakes are inevitable. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that this particular typo was the result of being composed on a mobile device with an aggressive auto-correct.
Still, proofreading works.
I think what bothers me the most - assuming Kotaku doesn't let this headline error stand all bloody day... come on, this is just bad SEO as well! - is the fanboy zombies who have to jump in and defend Kotaku. This is not something to defend. It's a mistake that needs to be corrected. No big deal. This does not require some kind of Kotaku Honor Guard to sweep in and say it's OK to screw up the title of the best selling video game system around.
And yeah, I see enough typos across multiple authors on Kotaku that I would hope there's an editorial decree to work a little harder at cleaning up spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. I know my day job fights that fight with workers all the time, and I certainly personally try to do my best and maintain an awareness of what I'm writing whether I'm writing for my office, for Aeropause.com, for fourhman.com, for Chicago Tribune.com, for wherever.
I like the team at Kotaku and I think they do a great job at writing genuinely interesting things about gaming (shame about the new site design!) But all those typos create a slapdash quality that does not do the site any favors, particularly when you consider just how massive and influential Kotaku has become.
EDIT: The headline was corrected in under two hours, judging from article timestamps.
Last weekend I picked up some gaming / movie bargains, first at soon-to-be-defunct Ultimate Electronics, then at GameStop.
Our local Ultimate went in where our local Circuit City used to be. We were in there exactly once since Ultimate opened, and I thought the prices were crappy. There is a Borders right beside it (cursed!) and it felt like Ultimate had used Borders' awful media pricing standards as a guide. Ultimate has been in freefall for several weeks, but I had heard reports that the OUT OF BUSINESS pricing was still in orbit. So I didn't bother visiting until I heard that blu-rays were marked down 60%.
I picked up the blu-ray/DVD/digital copy combo pack of Scott Pilgrim for whether 60% off of $27 is. Also the blu-ray for Ben 10: Alien Storm for around $9, and Tim and Eric Season 1 DVD for around $7. As it turns out, I only purchased items based on male first names.
Scott Pilgrim was pretty good. Sometimes the spectacle was distracting from the deadpan slacker dialogue, but it all fits. There were a couple of easy aw-shucks-racist jokes that I would have edited out (Really? We're going to insult the Chinese girl by calling her Kung Pao Chicken? How is that OK in an otherwise smart script?)
We had not seen Ben 10: Alien Swarm since it first ran, and that was back on lousy cable (no Cartoon Network HD around here), so it was good to watch that one in sharp high def.
And Tim and Eric S1 has a gold medal winner for Most Awful Box Art On Purpose, making it well worth the $7. I love those guys.
I also picked up Start the Party for PS3 at Ultimate. Not that great a deal: $20. The game was originally $40 last fall but usually sells for $30 these days since PlayStation Move flopped. Played a bunch of times with Clark, and it is EyeToy Future, but with an incredibly terrible title. "Start the Party." Oy.
Just like with EyePet, the way the game maps to the Move controller onscreen is great. Sony went for accuracy with their Fall 2010 Casual Landgrab, for all the good it did them.
GameStop had some kind of sale goin' on, and the email ad I received showed both Batman: Brave and Bold (DS) and Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe (PS3) for $10 each. Sure, I'll take that offer. I've been carrying around a $5 coupon for Batman: B&B since the matching toys were in Happy Meals... and GameStop totally accepted it, making the game supremely cheap. Haven't played it yet, but this is the one where you can hook the DS game up to the Wii version to add a Bat-Mite player, so that sounds pretty cool.
Mortal Kombat vs DCU is a pretty tough sell after DC Universe Online and Marvel vs Capcom 3, but Kombat came out in 2008 so I suppose it gets a pass for being lame. Although it was pretty lame in 2008. At least, half of it.
I'm, as expected, rather terrible at it. I can't do special moves at all, and forget the vaunted finishing moves. I will say that I like how the Story Mode goes from cutscene to battle to cutscene rather fluidly. MvC3 doesn't even try to have a story. And given the choice, I'd rather play a fighting game like this one (or Soul Calibur) where you get to move around, as opposed to the flat surface of the Capcom games. Although MvC3 is still more fun to play than MKvDC for sure.
You know, MvC3 was imaginary when Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe came out in '08, did anybody even make the obvious correlation? I remember following MKvDC fairly well - since I was interested in the DC half - and I do not recall anybody pointing out how this was at least partially an homage to Marvel vs Capcom.
Yeah, they still call 'em Friend Codes.
5455-9370-5811
The nice thing is that with the 3DS, Nintendo finally has a One Code policy. The 3DS device Friend Code will handle access for all 3DS online games and features. No more code-per-game thing, which was crazy to begin with (and, as I've pointed out several times, wasn't even strictly necessary... some Wii games with online features have been perfectly able to link up with other Wii Friends without the need to input extra special codes.)
"Friend Code" may not be as sexy a term as the Xbox's "Gamer Tag," but then again they went with the decidedly nerdy word "Achievements" so I guess it all evens out.
BONUS: Here's me explaining the 3DS on the telly.
That was last Friday, just before 3DS launch weekend.
