In the wake of E3, I have picked up a ton of games for review! I'm working on 750-word articles for most of them, but here's some quick impressions of a random assortment of games I've been playing lately.

Duke Nukem Forever (PS3) - I don't think it's as bad as people say, but I don't often play the kind of shooter games that Duke stands beside in competition. If you just want something where you're shooting stupid AI, this will probably serve you just fine. It is an old-feeling game, but in this case nobody is using that as a retro positive. Like the Green Lantern movie, I think we're seeing reviewers who were just itching to hate something. It's not a great game, but it's not terrible either. 3 out of 5.

I hate to admit this, but I think the game should have been dirtier. It wants you to think it's super-lewd and sexy, but that accounts for maybe 5% of what you see over the course of 10-12 hours in single-player. OK, so you can grab a poopturd and chuck it at a wall. So what? That's just one dumb interaction balanced against the sixty thousand times you hit the Shoot button. There is apparently an interactable glory hole in the strip club scene, but I never saw it (truthfully!) What good is a Jackass-dirty game if you can innocently skip everything that's supposed to define it?

The game pulls up short in nearly every area. But on my scale, 1s and 2s out of 5s are reserved for games that are far worse than this one.

Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters (PS3) - This is actually pretty good. Definitely good for a movie/tv game, where games routinely show up unfinished, unpolished and unbeatable. It's overpriced, that's it's problem. For $40, this is a great game. For $60, it has to stand against stuff like God of War 3 (from which franchise Green Lantern lifts much of its combat-focused gameplay) and it's just not long enough or deep enough.

It is fun, and your playable Hal & Sinestro 2-man co-op team have a great selection of Green Lantern energy weapons from which to choose. This one could have been a LOT worse, so I think it deserves points for exceeding recent standards of the super-hero movie game genre. It seems obvious to me that they could have either A) artificially extended the game's length with more planets and more enemy-bashing, or B) focus on making the combat extra fun and detailed. They chose the latter and it was the right decision. 4 out of 5.

"Rise" is going to be an easy Platinum. This is for sure a great rental for kids+families, at the least. It would be great if they add in some DLC stuff like extra playable Lanterns and new attacks, but I highly doubt that will happen. Even Clark noticed the game was lacking in Lanterns.

DualPen Sports (3DS) - This one surprised me. Yes, it's a collection of sports minigames (now in 3D!) but the presentation is really nice. Namco Bandai seems to have realized that these sorts of games have to go head-to-head with Nintendo's homegrown casual products, so all third parties must bring their A game. Their A minigame.

The gimmick here is that the sports minigames all require two styluses. The game comes with two, which is nice because they could have just assumed you already have one (which you do) and just popped one additional stylus in the box.

Not all of the minigames have a good reason to use two, however. Boxing makes sense, since you have two hands. Parasailing makes sense since you use two hands to steer such a contraption. Things get weird in Archery since you use one stylus solely to raise the bow, which is an action dozens of other archery games have already eliminated. Baseball? I know you use two hands to hold a bat, but you don't need two styluses to simulate that action. In fact, you can't.

But there was nice design work done on this one, which helps it feel like a complete release and not just a crapped-out minigame collection. If you do well in a sport, you will occasionally get score doublers in the form of classic Namco arcade icons, like Pac-Man, Pooka (from Dig-Dug) and Mappy. Mappy!

Mystery Case Files: The Malgrave Incident (Wii) - Another nice surprise. This is a search-and-find picture game embedded inside of Myst-style puzzle-exploration game. There's great voiceover from the creepy jerk leading you around his abandoned island, a compelling mystery to solve, and lots of 3D environments with a painterly look to them to match the search scenes.

It's not as good as the Professor Layton series, but it's definitely in the same ballpark. Puzzle games with adventures grafted on to them.

Anybody complaining that we haven't had any Mystlikes for a while should check this out. It's priced to move at $30, which makes it this year's Endless Ocean. Except better.

Akimi Village (PSN) - This is essentially a Keflings game, made by the same people who made the XBLA Keflings games, but totally not called Keflings because presumably Xbox has some kind of lock on that.

It's quite good. When I played Starcraft, I would often get distracted by building my town / upgrading units and forget about the war. Akimi Village is THAT part of Starcraft, the intricately balanced town-creation system.

Wii Play Motion (Wii) - Definitely better than the original Wii Play. Unfortunately, it is still a simplistically-presented minigame collection. I thought Nintendo had learned so much about making minigames palatable when last year's Wii Party came out... none of that expertise went into Motion, as far as finding ways to make minigames part of a larger, grander scheme. You now have two bundle choices for getting a new MotionPlus controller: Motion and FlingSmash. FlingSmash is probably better, because at least you have some structure to it.

Although, one item to note: there's a game in Motion called Spooky Search, where you have to point the Remote around your room to locate unseen ghosts (and then drag them onto the TV.) This is 100% the kind of thing Nintendo was showing off at E3 for the Wii U. Play some Spooky Search, then imagine playing it with a touchscreen that can show ghosts actually in your room, all around you.

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean (PS3) - Not as good as LEGO Harry Potter. This one has a bizarre emphasis on making characters walk across thin balance board-type objects... and the perspective issues that have haunted the LEGO series since day one have not gone away during the transition to HD.

And I may be crazy, but I think the co-op splitscreen is flakier in Pirates than it was in Potter. Feels like it is too willing to fracture the screen even when you're still close together. A zoom-out would have done just fine in most cases.

Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D (3DS) - Very pretty. Ton of tutorial levels, which is weird. Like, the first level of the game, 1-1, teaches you how to walk. You don't shoot anything until 1-3. You're still getting tutorial suggestions from the Unseen Narrator into world 3.

I have not done much more than learn to shoot, so I can't form a opinion on it just yet. I have a feeling that this one is what it is. This was an unlockable sidegame in the last two Resident Evil games, and now we're expected to pay $40 for it on 3DS... but, you know, it's portable and has multiplayer and all that.

I'll tell you one thing: I could give a flying fuck about whether or not I can delete my save file. Christ, the things people have to get all entitled about.

One more thing: the Resident Evil Revelations demo that rides along on Mercenaries? Complete pants. It lasts all of two minutes.

Oh yeah, I was at Disneyland. posted by Joe 06.28.11 11:22PM

How could I spend a week in Los Angeles and not find a way to go to Disneyland?

This was my first time in Anaheim, at the park that Walt built with his own two hands. Not only do I owe the Haygoods for hosting me during E3 2011, but I also owe them for ferrying me to Disneyland for a day. My first E3 and my first day at Disneyland in one week... that was two dreams come true.

I was there when the park opened, and I spent the first hour in a constant state of giggles and/or tears. I was there. I decided I would eschew Fastpassing and go into total discovery mode. I was mainly interested in seeing the rides we don't have in Orlando, and checking out the differences between Disneyland and Magic Kingdom.

I wanted to skip Fastpass because I did not want to have to report back to Ride X at a certain time. But I also knew I wasn't going to burn hours standing in one line, because there's only so much to look at when you're stuck winding around the base of the Matterhorn.

I hit Fantasyland first, and did Mr. Toad's Wild Ride straight away. I believe the last time I was on that was in 1991, so it was fantastic to see it again. It's sort of odd how that ride has survived in Anaheim all these years, when the much larger MK turned Toad Hall into a fancy Pooh attraction a decade ago. Toad is also still part of another Anaheim classic, the Storybook Land boat ride. the picture above shows an unusual moment: the Wild Ride with all the lights on during a full stop. A child lost her hat somewhere in Londontown and the Cast Members put the entire attraction into park so they could go find it.

Since it was early in the day, I was able to see most of Fantasyland in an hour or two: Pinocchio (which I did in Paris, but is absent from Orlando), the slightly revised Small World (I LOVE the new Mary Blair-styled Disney characters! No reason to hate them at all), and Storybook Land (which is also found in Paris but not Orlando).

I did notice right away how cramped everything is, and how the park ends up with a lot of weird branches and dead ends. Tomorrowland in particular is a navigational mess (the massive queue for the revamped Star Tours did not help).

I also made sure to do Roger Rabbit's CarToon Spin, being an old Roger Rabbit fan and that ride being another CA-exclusive. It struck me as almost the same ride as Mr. Toad, which is another reason to be shocked ol' Toady has kept his claim.

I can't believe there's still a Disney Afternoon remnant out there! Gadget's Go-Coaster, which, from what I saw, has absolutely no vestigial Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers elements aside from the name. Things are just plain weird in Anaheim.

Since they just bulldozed the Mickey's Toontown part in Orlando, it was cool to get another look at Donald's boat house and the other Toontown props.

Did the Nemo ride, portions of which have been recycled for a not-at-all-structurally-similar ride at Living Seas in Epcot. I guess I'm glad the old 20,000 Leagues subs were given a new purpose instead of being entirely removed like in Orlando, but the whole process of getting in and out of them, plus the general clunkiness of having to look out a tiny porthole and potentially seeing the entire ride out of sync with the audio had to have given Anaheim execs severe pause.

I was surprised to see the original Tiki Room still operating, since we've had the Under New Management show forever in Florida (although a recent Iago robot explosion seems to have finally put the kibosh on the unpopular revamp). I remember the Tiki Room being a favorite of my grandmother's, so sitting in an room identical to where I would have sat beside her when I was five, hearing the same audio and seeing the same talking birds... that was powerful. She's gone now, but in the Tiki Room I was with her again.

Funny how the frilly rides I hated as a surly teen - the Tiki Room, Small World - have become must-do touchstones for me.

I spent some time at California Adventure, another weird amalgam of all-new stuff and familiar rides cherry-picked from my beloved WDW. Got to do Tower of Terror, which was cool since during our last Florida visit Clark was too little, so we skipped it.

And hey, DCA has a completely working Tough to Be a Bug show! The last two times we were in Orlando, the Animal Kingdom version enjoyed a busted Hopper (like, the awesome audioanimatronic never rises from the hiding place, so you just hear disembodied audio when he interrupts Flik's show), plus all the "let the little grubs leave first" bits were in working order! Has Florida Hopper worked at all in the last five years, or have we just been extremely unlucky?

The new Little Mermaid ride just opened, and the line was not a problem at all (especially when compared to the also-new Star Tours over in Disneyland). The scenes are all great... the way they have robot Ariel's hair move like an animated underwater mass is just plain startling. Not a lot of visible technology at work though. Not in the way the Pooh ride uses fancy LEDs and bouncing cars. The animatronics are no doubt near-sentient under the skin (and I noticed some digital screens being used to animate Sebastian's eyes), but to all outward appearances it's a dark ride in the classic style: guests in cars riding through endlessly looping set pieces.

I thought DCA was another weirdly assembled park (although again there were interfering forces; a good portion of the middle of DCA is in barricades for the construction of Cars Land). I guess the years of having the easy-to-walk roughly-circular layouts of Magic Kingdom and Epcot have spoiled me. Even Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios strike me as easily loopable circuits; the massive footprint of Walt's Orlando purchase has everything to do with the Florida four being friendly and symmetrical.

So now I have been to three of the world's Disney resorts: Orlando, Anaheim and Paris. Shall I make it a lifetime goal to visit all of them?

Random stuff from the beach house posted by Joe 06.26.11 11:25PM

We have just returned from an excellent week in Cape May, on vacation with my sister and her family. We stayed at a rental house that, aside from your own underwear, had everything we needed. Most importantly, WiFi, but I'm not here to talk about that just now... I'm here because I had fun examining the provided books, games and movies.

I'm guessing that if you own a nice vacation rental property, you furnish it with media that looks good on the shelf, might entertain guests should they so choose, and was probably bought on a great discount. Don't misunderstand, there was genuine great stuff here - Clark and I enjoyed several games of the Harry Potter edition of Clue - but the mix of books, DVDs, and VHS tapes (!) was pretty unique.

Finally, a VHS edition of "Bedazzled"! And we actually had two copies of "The Idiot's Guide to the Gulf War." Most of the unboxed VHS was kids stuff... Wiggles, classic Disney, etc.

I cleared out some space on those shelves to the left because I needed space for the PS3, Wii and Apple TV.

A fascinating find: both the novel and the animated version of "The Prisoner of Zenda." You could maybe do a comparison study.

And what's a beach house without one random volume of shojo manga?

Maybe I find this hilarious because my own movies are so strategically organized, but these were all right beside each other on the shelf. From right to left... a no-budget Hans Christian Anderson cartoon, a pair of Harry Potter movies, the only blu-ray in the place: an unopened copy of Up, and an Italian porno from the 1970s. Yes, I looked that last one up. I suspect it is only a porn in the prude American sense, where any movie with full frontal nudity and brief jokey sex scenes in considered pornographic.

How about the complete Indiana Jones saga? First three only available on VHS, just as Spielberg and Lucas intended.

And winning the prize for seriously unappealing character designs: Kurt Warner's Good Sports Gang. "Inspirational and life-affirming." Hey, if VeggieTales can do it, why not Kurt Warner?

If only they would have let the Internet make the Green Lantern movie, then it would have been perfect. | Joe, 06.23.11
It is probably not worth very much to have me, as a big Green Lantern fan for decades, tell you that the Green Lantern movie is really good. Or maybe it is, because you might expect I'm coming at it from a pickyshit fan angle. We even had to see it in 3D and enjoyed it. It seems to me there are several vectors out there sabotaging this movie. You've got the hardline Marvel fans out to thumbs-down anything coming from DC. Nothing unusual about that. Not that most movie-goers have any clue about which char acts are Marvel and which are DC, but the endless partisan venom does hurt GL inside the fan community that Warners is banking on coming to see over and over again. There's super-hero genre fatigue. We have already had Thor and X-Men: First Class rise and fall... and the marketing for Green Lantern is so continuous and so perversive it almost makes you sick of it before ever hitting a theater. Thor had 7-11 cups and X-Men had nothing. GL is everywhere. [more]

E3 2011 - Day 3 | Joe, 06.19.11

One interesting experiment attempted during E3 paid off: I used the iPad as my chief work device. I made a deal with myself that I would do brief write-ups on each booth I had booked with appointments, for my office, plus I did a couple articles for Aeropause. And I made it happen even though the entire experience of getting up early and riding in to LACC and stalking the convention floors was all fairly exhausting. [more]

E3 2011 - Day 2 | Joe, 06.16.11

This was my busiest day at E3. I booked myself for booth appointments every hour on the hour. It's a bit of a risk, because some companies may want to keep you around for a while so you see absolutely everything. Plus there's a fair walk between the two main exhibit halls, which could lead to unpleasant sprints if your appointments are tight and alternate from one hall to the next. I actually did really well, which is great considering I did not pay attention to the two halls problem AT ALL when booking. I went from Atari to THQ to Halfbrick to Natsume to Disney to Majesco to Bethesda on Day 2. Throughout E3, I was not late for a single appointment. [more]

E3 2011 - Day 1 | Joe, 06.14.11

At some point after Nintendo had moved through the Zelda anniversary bit and the 3DS bit (which included a WONDERFUL backdrop-encompassing custom animation featuring all five upcoming 3DS games) and into the big Wii U reveal, I think I leaned over and asked Haygood, "So is the controller the entire system?" And he said something like, "Doesn't look like it, there's another piece to it right there." And he pointed to the Wii-looking box visible in the stock photo onscreen. Then I felt sort of stupid because, duh, yeah, there it is. [more]

E3 2011 - Day 0 | Joe, 06.13.11

After spending Sunday night before cutting some embarrassing Yoostar videos with Joe Haygood, not to mention a stab at Kinect Joyride (and yeah, let's not ever mention Kinect Joyride), the old E3 pro Mr. Haygood started Monday by taking fellow writer Roberto Olano and myself downtown for the first official activity of E3: the media check-in. These two are both LA locals, so I got to be the tourist and gawp at the extreme changes in scenery you get out that way. Where I'm from, you have two types of terrain: trees and shopping malls. In LA, there will be this huge desert mountain, then some urban sprawl, then a residential zone with those crazy tall cliche trees. Then another unused mountain that you can't believe hasn't been bulldozed and turned into Disneyland North. At the LA Convention Center, the check-in area was just shy of abandoned on Monday morning. Then we parked in the media hospitality room and watched the Microsoft press conference stream, since none of us managed to get an invite to the 360 Kinect show. [more]

Full archives available at fourhman.com.