Where the buffalo loam

30 September 08 | 08:53 | Posted by:

The title of this post has nothing to do with its contents, but dang if the notion of "loam" as a verb (especially one engaged in by the majestic buffalo!) amuses me to no end, possibly because it involves tilling the end of time. Also, because I am a simpleton. Eh, go listen to a podcast if you want to hear me trying to be smart. Smart-ish.

---

Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Releases
I still can't believe how much I enjoyed Iron Man. I think it helped that the usher at the theatre I saw it at had this infection geek-out enthusiasm for the movie and insisted on making certain we stuck around for the Nick Fury cameo. Also, Robert Downey Jr. may be the first-ever actor typecast as his superhero counterpart: a wealthy, handsome, famous substance abuser.

New Game Plus | Weekly Game Releases
Well, it's about five, six weeks until the next awesome games come out (Mirror's Edge and Valkyria Chronicles), which means about a month and a half for savoring the delectable delicacy that is Mega Man 9. I guess the industry will continue releasing stuff until then, but of course we all know it's simply out of a sense of obligation to their shareholders.

category: games, media | forums | eight comments | §

Tony Stark makes you feel

29 September 08 | 22:00 | Posted by:

...sounds like an uncompleted Mad Lib, awaiting your response when asked for an emotion. But the theme songs for the Marvel '60s cartoons were never that lyrically brilliant, catchiness aside. "He's got radioactive blood" really isn't a satisfactory response to the question of whether or not Spiderman is strong. In fact, it sort of casts doubt on the notion.

That was the very smooth introduction to my post about a special screening of Iron Man I attended just a few weeks ago. The Aero Theatre in Santa Monica invited John Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. (in a very fetching sweater from the Freddy Krueger collection) to come do a running commentary for a live screening. Which is cool enough, but it seems someone at Paramount/Marvel never bothered to record an actual commentary for the DVD, meaning I was lucky enough to be among the few who got to hear one. At least until they release a special edition correcting the omission. Someone in the crowd undoubtably recorded the thing, so a torrent must be floating around there somewhere, but for those of you too lazy to find it or are sure the sound quality's crap, here's some highlights just in time for the home video release.

Post continued after link >>

category: film | forums | six comments | §

GameSpite Issue 10.2: Spite club

29 September 08 | 12:46 | Posted by:

The Difficulty of Difficulty
Making hard games is easy. Making good hard games...well, that's something else entirely. And clearly a bit too demanding for many people! This article looks at why it's so dang difficult to find difficult games that manage to be fun as well, mainly by calling out all the cheats and cheaps and shortcuts that developers usually fall back on. (For shame.)

Gradius III: From Legend to Myth
For instance, Gradius III -- at least in the arcade -- was a game that rather infamously failed to be both difficult and enjoyable, because its challenge mainly stemmed from level designers who utterly hated their customers. But hey, sand dragons, or something.

Star Ocean: Till the End of Time
And joining Devil May Cry 3 and Gradius III as a third chapter that almost completely destroyed its respective franchises is Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. Me, I'm bugged by the use of till rather than 'til as an abbreviation of until. Technically correct, sure, but it gives me visions of space farmers breaking up soil. Which admittedly would probably be more satisfying than what Tri-Ace did create.

category: games, gamespite | forums | sixteen comments | §

Sonic and the edge of mirrors

28 September 08 | 19:52 | Posted by: Levi

Recently, a member of the forums going by the handle Fredly81 posited the theory that Mirror's Edge is the new Sonic the Hedgehog. Mirrors Edge is a unique upcoming game in which you are a messenger who free-runs (or performs parkour) across a sterile urban environment. Other than the fact that both games reward you for going as quickly as you can, I don't see a lot of connections between Sonic and Faith, the main character of Mirror's Edge. As part of my glamorous career in game's retail, I was able to play a demo of Mirror's Edge, and to me the experience of playing the game was much more reminiscent of the platforming in recent Tomb Raider games or Uncharted, but portrayed in the first person perspective. The pure visceral thrill you get in the aforementioned games when you can quickly and acrobatically traverse long platforming sections without slowing down or falling is taken to an extreme in Mirror's Edge. The first person perspective heightens the feelings of vertigo and the adrenaline rush of pure speed, and nailing a particularly tricky combination is a satisfying accomplishment.

I am a big believer in the game after having played it, but I am still very nervous about it's reception. When I was waiting to play it, it made me sad to see people play it for 60 seconds, fall three times, and walk away. This is a game that you need to invest in before it "clicks". I was lucky in that there was a guy there to walk me through the mechanics while I was playing, and I was soon scampering around the level like I was the star of a Luc Besson-produced French action movie. If the game can keep things fresh and interesting throughout it's entirety, then I think it has the potential to break out and jumpstart a new franchise, regardless of how confused some consumers might be with a game in first-person that doesn't revolve around guns and shooting people in the face.

As someone who gets almost as much enjoyment from discussing games as playing them, I think the dialogue surrounding the game is going to be very interesting. DICE and EA are taking a risk with this new creation, and while I know I've been aching for something unique and original on a home console, I can but hope that there are a lot of other people like me out there are as well -- people who aren't completely satisfied with sequel after sequel. I don't think I'll have too long to wait until the dialogue gets kick-started, as a Mirror's Edge demo is to arrive sooner or later...sooner rather than later, I suspect. My reasoning: preorder customers get a code to unlock an extra Time Trial mode in the demo; since the game store I manage already has these codes, it stands to reason that the demo should be available soon. One of the tough things about early access to games is there aren't very many people to talk about them with (I know, poor me), and I can't wait until a wide variety of gaming enthusiasts are flooding the internet with their own impressions. Just be sure to post your impressions on Talking Time first, since it's bound to be full of people discussing it.

category: games | forums | six comments | §

Reunion show

28 September 08 | 09:33 | Posted by:

As I mentioned previously, I spent a fair amount of time with Rock Band 2 this past weekend. It was as awesome as I’d expected it to be, and yet...I came away with slightly mixed feelings.

Harmonix pretty much fixed everything that needed fixing: the guitar now has a fair number of challenging songs -- that is to say, not totally boring to play, which is quite different from the Guitar Hero "make it so hard the player cries thinking about it" philosophy of note charts -- drum charts were more varied, Band World Tour was now online, and you can be the same character regardless of the instrument you're using. They've also added new features, like a drum trainer, a constantly-updated challenge mode to keep things interesting, and a no-fail mode for parents/kids/friends who hate plastic instruments. Oh, and 84 new songs to play didn’t hurt, either.

Really, all Rock Band 2 suffers from is a vague "more of the same" feeling I can’t seem to shake. It’s a victim of the ridiculously high bar the series' debut set last year. The presentation and gameplay are still definitely top-notch, but this year’s tweaks were just that: tweaks. I’m certainly glad Harmonix knows better than to mess with perfection, but in some ways it’s a little weird to get a new game and suddenly realize, "Ah, this is exactly what I was playing yesterday." Not being big into sports games, I’ve never really dealt with this whole incremental update thing before. It’s weird for me.

Don’t get me wrong; Rock Band 2 is definitely worth every penny. Hell, when we were paying about $2 a song for DLC tracks in the first game, $60 for 85 new songs is definitely a bargain. And yes, all the little tweaks, particularly the new song organization system, are a godsend. I whole-heartedly recommend the game. There’s no doubt in my mind that, like Rock Band last year, I’ll be playing this for a year straight, which has never happened before in my entire gaming career. Just, y’know...don’t expect anything wildly different if you do decide to get it. (And you should.) Baby steps and all that.

category: games | forums | seven comments | §

Double suckered

27 September 08 | 20:46 | Posted by:

The rumors may actually be true: it looks like Nintendo will be releasing a new model of DS by year's end, at least in Japan. It will apparently feature camera and media player functions, which is all well and good. But as I already have a pretty freaking great camera (my girlfriend gave me her old Nikon D70 as a hand-me-down) and I'm up to my eyeballs in iPods, this has no use for me.

But the bigger screen...that's intriguing. But not as much as the possibly apocryphal SD card-based data-swapping with Wii. If Nintendo could somehow combine these two possible elements to create a portable extension to Virtual Console, allowing me to relocate Wii-purchased VC titles and play them in proper resolution on, say, a 320x240 screen...well. I'd really have no choice.

Luckily, Nintendo has no idea how to cater to my tastes anymore, so it looks like my wallet's safe. Whew.

category: games | forums | eleven comments | §

Our industry's War of 1812

27 September 08 | 15:18 | Posted by:

The other day, Activision CEO Robert Kotick said in regard to licensing music for Guitar Hero, that when you look at the value appearing in these music games represents to an artist, maybe the music labels should be paying Activision to appear in the game rather than the other way around. His remark was likely spurred by Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s comments last month about how the music industry needed a bigger slice of the profit the makers of Guitar Hero and Rock Band were making off of “their” music.

Honestly, I think both companies are kind of missing the point. Yes, Guitar Hero is certainly helping drive the sales of various music groups, including Metallica’s newest album. It’s a bit of a catch-22, though; the music industry is profiting because of Guitar Hero and Rock Band’s hard work, but without the music, those products wouldn’t sell in the first place. Can’t these companies see it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement? The aforementioned download of Metallica’s newest album in Guitar Hero 3 is a great example of both mediums working together to sell their respective products, and I’m sure some of the more questionable Rock Band DLC tracks showed up in exchange for the rights to other songs the record labels hold.

I can’t tell if Kotick’s comments were serious, indicating the company feels it’s too big to ignore and their greed has gotten the best of them, or if it was a ploy to publicly say, “Hey, everyone’s winning right now, but if you rock this boat we’re all in, you might not like some of the waves.” Similarly, I don’t know if Warner Music is actually getting screwed by any of this, or if it’s, “Look, these guys are making some serious scratch, so let’s try to get as much of it as possible.” Something tells me, in both cases, greed is a pretty big factor.

Regardless, I am impressed by the fact that this argument can even happen -- that a video game company can push back like this. Remember when games were the little guys compared to film and music? Yeah, me neither.

category: comic, media | forums | two comments | §

Defective Comics

27 September 08 | 09:30 | Posted by:

While I have long considered Marvel and DC Comics to be one beast with two heads [Technically, Bi-Beast is strictly a Marvel thing. -- Parish], DC manages to stand a little taller in my eyes. They treat their creators better with both credit and royalties, and perhaps because of that they are occasionally able to publish some truly stellar work. While Marvel doesn't have a Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns it's easy to imagine they could -- while a more mature book like Neil Gaiman's Sandman seems completely out of their grasp.

So I was sad to read from Comic Book Resources that DC Comics is cancelling its Minx line, a series of original trade paperback sized comics intended to attract a younger female audience. I had a chance to read some of these books earlier this year when I found some preview copies at a convention. It's common in book publishing to send preliminary copies, called galley proofs, to retail stores as a means to promote a book. And I was stunned when I saw these galley proofs of the Minx line because I had never seen or heard of a comic company with this mission before. DC had a line of books that were actually appealing to girls -- although still mostly produced by men -- within a very earnest attempt to play by the book world's rules. What happened?

Sadly, Minx is just the latest in a long tradition of DC imprints that have died before their time. Helix was styled after Vertigo with a sci-fi bent and became home to Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan. Milestone Media was founded by a group of African-American creators and is best known for the superhero book Static. Paradox Press published Road to Perdition which was adapted to a feature film and Pirahnna Press published Kyle Baker's Why I Hate Saturn and the excellent Big Book of... anthologies. All of these lines produced good work and all were cancelled before their time. The shame is that many of these books will never be reprinted, or at least no time soon -- just another drop in an overflowing bucket of disposable media.

It seems spiteful. The cynic in me thinks that all these imprints are just lip service, DC's way of throwing a bone to the poor misanthropes who think comics are more than just a delivery vehicle for male power fantasies. And it seems disingenuous to reach all the way back to the early 1970's when they cancelled Jack Kirby's line of Fourth World books because while they were outselling most of DC's other books they weren't bringing in Fantastic Four numbers. But I think the truth lies somewhere in between -- a genuine disdain for change coupled with astoundingly bad business decisions. How else could you explain why DC is too shortsighted to see the long tail?

category: media | forums | eleven comments | §

Roll Head is the new Chrip-Chrip Shoes

26 September 08 | 23:22 | Posted by:

Did you do it? Did you make the tragic, terrible mistake of buying the dreaded...Roll Head?



Far and wide, I've seen the Internet lamenting the folly of the Roll Head. "It was 200 bolts!" cries many a jilted gamer. "I figured something so expensive had to be good! I thought maybe it would let me play Mega Man 9 as Roll! But...all it does is change Roll's costume in the menu screens to give her a black jacket over her dress." Bitter tears have been spilled over this expensive mystery item in Auto's shop -- a useless, cosmetic piece of nonsense whose acquisition is quite possibly the biggest mistake you could possibly make while playing MM9.

I think it's likely that the Roll Head might even trump the infamous Chrip-Chrip Shoes from Board Game: Top Shop as the single biggest unexpected screw you in the history of games with commerce. (The occasional boneheaded shenanigans of MMO publishers notwithstanding.) For those who didn't play Top Shop -- that is, most of you -- it was, as the title suggests, a board game similar to Monopoly, and earnings could be used to buy goodies in the shop. Most of them had obvious benefits, but one of the pricier items was the mysterious "Chrip-Chrip Shoes." What could they be? Bedeviled with curiosity as we played the game, Jess finally decided to buy them, hoping for some sort of competitive advantage. What he got was...a pair of shoes that made his character emit tiny bird-sounds as he walked around the board. And nothing else. They were Chirp-Chirp shoes, mangled by the translation difficulties that plague a $10 video game. Yes, all that effort wasted on a tragically mistranslated bit of useless footware.

As far as I can tell, everyone who has ever played Top Shop has experienced the horror of discovering the true nature of Chrip-Chrip Shoes for themselves. And I figure the number of people who will heart-wrenchingly discover the truth behind the Roll Head has got to be a few orders of magnitude larger than the paltry handful who have even heard of Top Shop, meaning Capcom has created far more pervasive and widespread suffering. And that is awesome.

Although I suppose I might feel differently if I were the one buying the damn things myself. Thanks for sparing me the pain, suckers.

In other news, I had a dang good interview with the producer of Valkyria Chronicles the other day and it is now online for your enjoyment.

category: games | forums | 20 comments | §

Talking about fanservice (the non-Gainax kind)

26 September 08 | 15:33 | Posted by: Kat

Another dose of fan service unleaded hit store shelves here in Japan yesterday. No doubt Super Robot Taisen Z will sell a couple hundred thousand copies, elicit squeals of joy from fans of implausibly huge robots (including myself), and bring out the grumbling about fanservice. Yeah, nothing brings out the rants about rampant fanservice in games quite like Super Robot Taisen. Unless, of course, you're talking about Super Smash Brothers.

Fanservice seems to have gotten a bit of a bad rap in gaming circles. The epiphet "pure fanservice" brings with it the automatic assumption that there's nothing to the game but pandering. Fans walk in, check their brains at the door, and happily settle into what amounts to gaming comfort food. Substance is optional, or so say the critics. But maybe there's a little more to the "fanservice" experience then that. Fans can smell when a game with a lot of style but no substance tries to play that card. It's what happens when latter day Simpsons episodes trot out Arty Ziff or Frank Grimes Jr. for the umpteenth time. Fans roll their eyes and move on because there really is nothing to see there.

Super Smash Brothers succeeds because it managed to graft a phenomenal tribute to Nintendo onto a highly entertaining party game. But even taking into consideration how stupidly entertaining Smash Brothers tends to be in large groups, it would have faded into obscurity if not for the incredible love and attention to detail given to every last stage, character and encylopedia entry.

It's that attention to detail that drives successful fanservice and torpedoes others. For every SRW that brings a loving eye for detail to every frame of animation, we get a game like Namco x Capcom that not only whiffs on the gameplay, but completely omits more than a few beloved characters. Playing it, you can't help but get the feeling that it was thrown together not because the designer particularly cared, but because people would buy it.

But when a designer's interests align with the fans, and that fan service becomes a true labor of love, then you know that you're in for something special. It's what separates the Mega Man 9s of the world from the Gradius ReBirths. When you get a look at those Mega Man 9 press kits, or you hear about SRW producer Takanobu Terada gleefully inserting his childhood favorite Space Emperor God Sigma into Z's series lineup, you realize that those games aren't for you anymore. You're just along for the ride as the design team takes ownership of their favorite property and lavishes on it all the attention it deserves.

That really is pure fanservice for you. We should be so lucky to play games crafted with that much heart.

category: games | forums | seven comments | §

Pure hype

26 September 08 | 09:10 | Posted by:

I spent the weekend visiting friends in Southern California, and as usual, we ended up playing a lot of games. Highlights included Castle Crashers, Rock Band 2 (much more on this later, I’m sure), and a game called Pure. Haven’t heard of that last one? Neither had I. To bring you up to speed, Pure is an ATV racing game developed by Disney Interactive. It’s also totally awesome. (If you’re planning to stop reading now, please, let me assure you I don’t intend to gush about a racing game.)

To set the record straight, I’m not a big racing fan. I rarely buy racing games outside of Mario Kart and can really only get into arcade racers -- which Pure definitely is. Even then, they almost always fall into the "rental" category for me. With that being said, in my limited experience with both, Pure is every bit as good as Motorstorm is. So why hadn’t I heard of Pure, but knew all about Motorstorm? Marketing, of course.



Call me naïve, but I like to think a great game’s quality will shine through, and magically by word of mouth, it will be a sleeper hit. Just look at how BioShock went from "a potentially cool FPS" to "not to be missed, regardless of genre". Even Atlus games like Persona 3 or Etrian Odyssey developed their own cult followings. Maybe the problem is two-fold, and the genre is to blame, too? Are we just more predisposed to look for "hidden gems" within certain types of games, but not others?

Either way, Pure’s performance this year compared to the next Motorstorm’s should make for an interesting experiment -- create two (nearly) identical product, market the hell out of one franchise and say nothing about the other, and see what the public perception on the two ends up being. I’m skeptical of developers like Jonathan Blow shooting their mouths off before their game even comes out, but now I’m seeing that’s just another form of increasing public awareness. As much as I hate the hype train, it seems to be a necessary evil. Meanwhile, here I am, sitting down to jot out a quick post about the power of marketing, and now I’m seriously wondering what else I’ve been missing. Maybe I should watch those "Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it" posts more closely.

category: games | forums | six comments | §

Hide the woman and children (but mostly the children)

25 September 08 | 21:22 | Posted by:

Sure, the ECNIRP-mobile was charming in an "only in San Francisco" kind of way, but it seems not all the passenger vehicles in these here parts are quite so innocuous. I passed the car below the other day as I was walking to the convenience store and had to do a double-take to confirm that it was, indeed, emblazoned with a bumper sticker of Pedobear eerily on the lookout for childflesh upon which to prey.


Alarming! I just wish I'd been alert enough to write down the address where I saw this car. I'd love to check it against the sex offender database.

category: blog | forums | 18 comments | §

You, the master of porting

25 September 08 | 10:46 | Posted by: Nicola Nomali

Resident Evil 2 was one of the most popular games of its time, and like millions of other gamers, I played it! Unlike most of them, though, I only went about five minutes before I was ready to hang it up. The aimless progression and clunky controls, along with the fact that I was completely new to survival horror, quickly convinced me that I was better off sticking to safer territory like Final Fantasy Tactics.

After that, I wrote off the series as one of those things I found interesting but would never be able to fully appreciate, like giant novelty Hamburgers, or curling. It eventually bucked that status with Resident Evil 4 and its accessible, streamlined gameplay, but now, while I'm as stoked as anyone else for RE5, I feel a niggling urge to go back and account for the origins of the series. My only impediment has been...well, they still don't look like a very good time.

Some hold out hope to see the old games completely remade in the image of RE4, but even I can see that would detract too much from their original atmosphere. A good middle ground might be the addition of motion controls for things like aiming weapons, which defined Wii Edition as the best version of RE4 -- and, indeed, are now planned to augment a port of 2002's remake of RE1. Unfortunately, we might not get a chance to test out the theory: Resident Evil Zero, also ported to the Wii earlier this year, never made it out of Japan, and RE1 could easily follow suit.

There's some cause for optimism, though. Regarding passing on localizing the RE0 port, Capcom's Christian Svensson specifically cited the fact that the game simply wasn't very well-liked in the first place; essentially, it's damaged goods. The RE1 remake, on the other hand, sold well over a million copies and was praised almost unanimously. Rereleasing a six-year-old GameCube game might reflect poorly on the Wii, but RE4 all but proved that the addition of motion alone can justify a port of an aging title. I do hope it comes out here, just on the chance I could have a renowned game in a format I could finally tolerate.

And if not, well, I'll still have the vicarious route.

category: games | forums | ten comments | §

The case for Wario Land 4: the music

24 September 08 | 22:00 | Posted by:

We missed our regularly-scheduled Retronauts podcast last week, but for a good reason: I was holding out until we could get Dragon Quest maniac and all-around rad guy Alex "Toaster Thief" Fraioli on the show. And we did! Although he is muted and fuzzy as he was on the phone from Japan. The result, though, is a fine example of the show...just in time for it to mutate radically for the next showing. Gracious, lordy, etc.

As noted in the show, this really is a shockingly good week for fans of all things old. Besides the obvious choices (Mega Man 9, Kirby Super Star Ultra) you have the less-hyped (Duke Nukem 3D, Vectorman, something else on Virtual Console that I'm forgetting) as well. And then there's word of 7th Dragon, an old-school RPG created by three masters of the form (Reiko Kodama, Kazuya Niinou and Yuzo Koshiro). Joy and bliss, my friends. The only black mark is Wario Land Shake It!, and even that isn't bad -- just a bit short of its potential, and tragically overshadowed by a much older game for a much less powerful system.

But just what makes Wario Land 4 better than its glossy successor? Several things, which I intend to lay out over the next few days (if I can be bothered to shoot for consistency, of course). But let's start with the most obvious element, the music.

Wario Land Shake It!'s music is, in a word, really bad. Well, as music it's not terrible; some of it is pretty catchy, in fact. But as music for a Wario game, it's not so good. Especially after WL4's tunes, which were created by a group of people who really and truly love music. They later went on to make the WarioWare titles (all of which have mind-blowing music) and the Rhythm Heaven series (which has music so good it's the entire point of the games). WL4 gave them their first shot at showing off their genius; as happened with a lot of early GBA titles, they went kind of crazy with the newfound power of the hardware and crammed a ton of (for the time) high-quality sound elements into their creation. The result was trippy, unconventional tunes like "Palm Tree Paradise" (sampled briefly here), a cheerfully lilting ballad with an extended instrumental bridge and a sense of relentless happiness that made a fantastic counterpoint to the hero's sullen, disgusting personality.



But even that could be subverted through the gameplay: when Wario suffered status effects in WL4, the music became distorted -- "wobbly" would be a good description -- and was interrupted by bizarre sound effects. "Palm Tree Paradise" was no exception! I wondered when I first heard the vocal theme if it would suffer from distortion effects, and was incredibly happy when it did.

Furthermore, you could collect CDs throughout WL4 that would allow you to unlock options in a hidden sound room -- which, unlike most games' "sound rooms," wasn't simply a jukebox. It was literally a sound room, a chamber in which you could play random samplings of bizarre and inexplicable audio samples accompanied by equally strange Game Boy Camera-style animations. WL4 constantly teetered at the brink between genius and insanity, and the game's music absolutely embodied that fever-dream sensibility. It's an edge that's been sanded smooth in Shake It!, literally; psychedelia has been replaced with smooth jazz. Of all its myriad disappointments, this was the one that perhaps struck me most.

But at least we have Rhythm Heaven Gold.

category: games | forums | sixteen comments | §

I.. Am... Ruuude!

24 September 08 | 15:01 | Posted by: Levi VsRobot

 

Man, why I even got to describe a thing?  Achewood is a webcomic that has been on the internet since 2001, and primarily focuses on the relationship between two cats, Ray and Roast Beef.  There are many other supporting characters, including a naive young otter, lying robots, and a serial murderer, but Ray and Roast Beef are the main characters.  The comic itself separates itself from the overabundance of crappy webcomics through its intense originality and the scope of its universe.  The characters in the webcomic maintain blogs, write zines, novels, and cookbooks, and run an in-universe forum.  The comic's humor does turn some people off by ignoring standard concepts (like punchlines) and by crossing the line into complete surreality more than a few times.

The comic has seen its share of long-running storylines which have become legendary among fans.  There's a menu bar on the comic's main page where you can jump to the start of sequential comics such as "The Volvo of Dispair" or "Magical Realism", but one of the most popular and talked about storylines in the comic's history is "The Great Outdoor Fight", which is now collected in a hardbound volume by Dark House books.  In the Achewood universe, The Great Outdoor Fight is an annual event where 3000 people get together to fight it out over three days until only one remains.  Ray learns his absent father won the GOF (as it's frequently referred to in the strip) under a psuedonym and decides that as "BOC" (blood-of-champion) it's his duty to enter the fight, despite being not at all fit for that kind of thing.  His friend Roast Beef, a longtime fan and expert in GOF lore, tags along with him to check out the fight and mastermind Ray's strategy.

 

Of course, all of the strips in the storyline are available to read for free on the internet, so why would you want to buy something that takes something from the internet era and repurposes in an obsolete format like this was the 1990s or something?  For a fan like me, it's because I want to support the comic, because I want to have something physical to hold from one of the touchstones of my life, and because of the extra content.  The Great Outdoor Fight collection includes a "deleted scene" and tons of contextual backstory. Onstad wrote short biographies for all the notable previous winners of the Great Outdoor Fight, includes a glossary of GOF slang, and the requisite recipes.

Even if you don't grab the book, I highly encourage everyone to check out the website and read the story line there.  I apologize in advance for the hours you'll then lose catching up on the seven years of strips archived within.

category: media | forums | three comments | §

I heart platypunks

24 September 08 | 08:28 | Posted by: Nicola Nomali

So, Mega Man 9 is out! That's nice. Parish will tell you exactly how nice it is, in fact, if you give him half a chance. Sadly, I don't have access to an online-capable console at the moment, so I can't take part in this joyous event. Fortunately, I still have Dragon Quest IV to sustain me.

Believe it or not, this is the first proper Dragon Quest game I've played! The series' reputation for willfully archaic design had always given me enough pause to pass it over before, but DQIV is the one installment I've never seen receive anything but adoration. So I took the plunge on the DS version, and sure enough, I wasn't misled. The chapter-based structure is as gripping as promised, and the DS version in particular has smoothed out any stodgy interface issues that could have kept me from enjoying the original.

The reason I said this is my first "proper" DQ excursion is that I did indulge in one of the brand's off-beat spin-offs, Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime, last year; a decision I will never, ever regret. And since I've done this all backwards, one thing I'm loving about DQIV is retroactively spotting all the sights, sounds, and creatures Rocket Slime lifted from the main series. Really, the fact that I found these little guys infinitely endearing even when I had no nostalgia for them -- and, indeed, no prior exposure at all -- only speaks to the strength of Toriyama's talent as a designer. To that end, if none other, I can easily understand the series' lasting popularity.

category: games | forums | twelve comments | §

Welcome to the world of yesterday

23 September 08 | 23:59 | Posted by:

Today, I conquered the front page of 1UP with new old stuff: namely, Wario Land: Shake It! and Gradius ReBirth. And that one Mega-something game that people keep talking about, the Krion Conquest rip-off.



Anyway, I figure all the gushing I've done about Mega Man 9 is karmically balanced by these two pieces, both of which are fairly positive but mitigated with a noticeable tinge of disappointment. I've already seen some angry responses to the Wario Land review, but I am a mere messenger here. I can definitely respect anyone who is willing to embrace the game, because it is wrapped up and presented in an opulent, gorgeous visual style that truly deserves to be seen in motion. But, on the other hand, I just can't give it an unqualified endorsement, because it's a console title whose level designs and mechanics represent a step down from a seven-year-old portable game. That's seriously backward.

I think there's also a temptation among people like us (that is, myself, and anyone who is prone to read this site) to give Wario Land a better score just because it's so pretty. But that is fatal in its irony: we are the same people who snarl in irritation when people write off games like this because they're not in 3D. Graphics whores, we call 'em. But graphic whoredom works in both directions, and I kind of feel that giving Wario a free pass just because it's so lovely would be terribly irresponsible for those of us who have ever fumed to see good old-fashioned games dismissed for their lack of polygons.

Wario Land's failings are a real letdown, because I was absolutely in love with the game after finishing the first world. I compared it to Yoshi's Island DS in my review for a reason, though: about halfway through, you realize it imitates a great game from a few years back a little too closely and doesn't add anything worthwhile to the mix. So, if you've just reached the second world and are thinking, "Man, Parish, you idiot, you blew it again!" do me a favor and finish the game. There's a reason reviewers are supposed to complete their assignments before writing anything, and this game is a fine example. My feelings after an hour were very different from my feelings a few hours later. An hour into the game, I had the better part of a sweeping editorial chastising those who shriek with shrill complaints that Nintendo has abandoned its loyal fans planned out in my head; a few hours later, I was the one shrieking. Alas!

There's a certain poetry in Wario Land being released in such close proximity to Mega Man 9. The former has a vivid, modern look yet suffers a stultifying lack of creativity; the latter looks dated and primitive but is bursting with clever design and fresh new takes on an old standard. They are like yin and yang, except less likely to be co-opted as a logo by a surf company. Anyway, that's where my score is coming from. But hey, if you still like it once you've finished, congratulations: you're not yet a cynical husk of a human, and I envy you.

category: games | forums | 17 comments | §

From now until December...sort of.

23 September 08 | 18:59 | Posted by: Kat

Oh great, is it already the end of September? I guess it's about time to get serious, huh? Not only is there plenty to write, but I have to start spending at least an hour a day studying for the level three Japanese Language Proficiency Test. The same one that I said I would pass last year.

Yeah, three isn't all that high on the totem pole (one level above the lowest, if you have to know), but the gulf between levels three and two is a wide one, and I'm not quite ready to traverse it. No, not even in the name of being able to understand whatever Kou is talking about in Gundam 0083 (at a guess: "I'm not strong enough yet!")

But even so, I really kind of want to pick up my certificate this time round. It might be hard to believe, but it's actually harder to keep Japanese in your head when you're not living in Japan. And I'm planning on heading back to America in February. So this is it. Now that I'm done relaxing in Nikko, I've got to put everything aside and...

...nevermind. See you all in Monsteropolis!

category: games | forums | one comment | §

I'll show them I can pull the biggest bonus of all

23 September 08 | 09:31 | Posted by:

I, uh, meant to post this the other night, but stupidly forgot to set the entry live. Whoops! Anyway, it's taken much longer than I intended or expected, but I've finally finished the text for the bonus mini-zines. Sorry these are running so late; I made a terrible mistake in choosing to fill its back half with fiction. Do you know how long it's been since I've written fiction? Like, forever. I got off to a painfully rusty start and spent forever building up a good head of steam. But the short story -- 4,000 words counts as short, right? -- is done, and now I just need to print and paste it on the pages. Meanwhile, my button-maker seems to have vanished off the face of the earth. I find this turn of events distressing.

---

New Game Plus | Weekly Game Releases
Can you guess what the game of the week is? I recommend fighting temptation and not playing through the whole of Mega Man 9 in one sitting -- savor it. After all, game like this only happens once every 20 years or so. I'm still bummed I blew through Mega Man 3 the day I got it, 'cause nothing else ever quite stacked up. P.S., this was the tamest Splash Woman fanart I could find. Oh, Internet.

Add to Queue | Weekly DVD Releases
To say I'm looking forward to the Blu-Ray release of The Godfather would be an understatement! OK, not really. It would be a perfectly accurate and fair assessment of the situation. I mean, fantastic movies, quality format, Marlon Brandon wheezing in uncompressed digital audio. Should be great! But I haven't been losing any sleep over it or anything.

category: games, media | forums | four comments | §

Robots must be fought

22 September 08 | 21:48 | Posted by: Levi VsRobot

Hello, Spiteful Ones. It used to be that you only saw my byline if you accidentally clicked on the link to my DVD column that shows up here on GameSpite every week. After a year of writing "Add to Queue", GameSpite's Blu-ray and DVD new release round-up, I've been promoted to the big leagues! Yes, my snarky, self-satisfied and most of all spiteful writing about film will now be on the front page as well. I might even be allowed to write about a wider scope of topics as well! In the unlikely event you haven't been clicking refresh on the blog every week waiting for my new column to be posted or hanging on every word I've posted to my Twitter feed, I thought it might be smart to write a quick introduction.

My "internet name" is VsRobot, but you can call me Levi. I've worked on the retail end of the entertainment industry for nearly a decade, and I've run bookstores, video stores, and currently manage a store devoted to video gaming . I grew up on a healthy diet of bad '80s cartoons, Star Wars, and Nintendo games, and I look forward to filling your eye-holes with a wide range of nerdy content. Please look forward to it.

category: gamespite | forums | eleven comments | §

GameSpite Issue 10.1: Writin' and spitin'

22 September 08 | 11:22 | Posted by:

You know, there's a common misperception about our little site here among certain corners of the Internet -- namely, the sort of slow-witted corner that doesn't have much going on in the way of reading comprehension. That gross misinterpretation of the site shakes its fist at the way the writing here is so hateful toward games, because look! It's called "game spite"! It must be full of contempt by people who don't even like the medium, right?

Well, no. Actually, the majority of the articles published here are full of effusive love for the medium and the specific titles called out. But hey, those portions of the Internet aren't known for getting facts straight or welcoming corrections, so I figure why fight it? Thus Issue 10 is official The Spite Issue, full of venom and criticism for games.

---

Mega Man 9
Of course, into every life a little exception must fall, and we begin this issue of vituperation with a tiny parcel of love for Capcom's freshly-released return to Mega Man's roots. My advice would be to come back to this article once you start feeling heartburn from the acidity of the rest.

The Games of Nippon Ichi
The spite begins in earnest, though, with Bob Mackey's calling out of the emperor's lack of clothing. Nippon Ichi's games are darlings among a certain set of gamers, but the fact is that the company has been riding the good grace's of Atlus' fortuitous work with Disgaea for years now. And that just ain't right.

Suikoden IV
Then Kirin continues his journey through the Suikoden series by looking at the worst game ever to bear the name. I suppose it's possible that the card game or Suikogaiden graphical adventures were worse, but those had the decency not to pass themselves off as full chapters of the series. Not Suikoden IV, though!

category: games, gamespite | forums | 24 comments | §

"George Fights the Grimlaks" set report #1

22 September 08 | 01:11 | Posted by:

I think I've come to a conclusion. Or rather, I think I've become more justified in in a certain theory than I was previously. The theory is this: It is really, really hard to make good movies because it's already hard enough to make them proficient.

I mean, I know there's tens of thousands of people who professionally light, operate cameras, dress sets, blow stuff up, etc., but seriously -- getting movies to even make coherent sense is enough to convince you that last take was okay and that the script is fine as it is.

So yeah, 11-hour shooting session last night ending at 5am. 'Course, I didn't have anything else to do. At least I wasn't in makeup the whole time like the Grimlaks.

category: film | forums | five comments | §

Zinging a different Zune

21 September 08 | 19:57 | Posted by:

I bought a Zune because it came in brown. That's what it boils down to. Plus, I was averse to getting an iPod because of the iTunes interface it forces you to use, but it turns out the Zune's isn't any better. If anything, its software is frustrating in entirely new and exciting ways -- at least with an iPod you stand a better chance at finding accessories.

But the gap between the portable music players has grown a tiny bit smaller. While Steve Jobs was getting his black turtleneck pressed in preparation for the recent "Let's Rock" press conference, Microsoft feebly attempted to give them the end run-around by announcing a new 120 GB Zune along with some updated firmware features. I was so excited by this that it took me over a week to calm down enough to give it a try...and another four days to write about it. And what did I find?

The Zune has games! I had completely forgotten about this after it was announced at this year's Game Developers Conference, but there it is, tucked right in with the new Zune player firmware update. Included are Hexic (sponsored by Lips!) and Texas Hold 'Em. To be upfront, I have zero interest in poker; the very sight of playing cards makes my eyes glaze over. So the only insight I can offer about Texas Hold 'Em is that it plays by holding the Zune vertically, which is much more comfortable to play than Hexic's horizontally-orientated screen. As for Hexic, you may not have played it, but if you own an Xbox 360 you already own a copy. The hex-based puzzle game is a good fit for a music device. Match groups of three or more colors by rotating pieces around a fixed point. Earn more points by linking colors in a sunflower pattern and you get a star shaped piece that will rotate more pieces. The gameplay gets more complex from there, but it was too difficult for me to advance further. There is no game over, though, and you're free to pick up where you left off. I liked that it lets you go at your own pace, but there's no motivation to finish or even get better at it.

There doesn't seem to be any plan in place to sell more games on Zune's marketplace. I did find one more game on Microsoft's XNA creator's club website, a port of an XNA demo called Alien Game. It's free, like most of XNA's development tools, and it installs to a Zune using a beta version of XNA Game Studio 3.0. Alien Game is a simple Space Invaders clone. It's colorful and controls well using the Zune's D-pad. Unfortunately, it doesn't let you browse music easily and I was only able to play one song at a time. The tradeoff for free games is you can only play stuff that people are putting together in their spare time. I like that, and it was the reason I joined the creator's club in the first place, but I can see how people might be turned off by the selection. The Game Studio beta also promises that current Windows and 360 user-created games can be easily ported for Zune. I happen to be collaborating on such a game, and I anticipate trying it on the small screen.

category: games | forums | six comments | §

Joys of discovery

21 September 08 | 07:44 | Posted by: Kat

I have Commando: Steel Disaster to thank for one of the best impulse purchases that I've made in a long time. And hey, if Parish is right, it may indirectly be the best thing that game has ever done. Mission complete?

Anyway, it was a mixture of Commando's obvious comparison to Metal Slug, the praise that I had heard for the new DS iteration of SNK's series at the last Tokyo Game Show and Kishi's comment about the game's badly resized sprites that had me thinking about Metal Slug 7 when I spotted it at a Book-Off a couple weeks ago. I ended up picking it up despite the rumblings I had heard on TTT because I realized that I really wasn't all that familiar with Metal Slug. I had played and enjoyed it a couple times in the arcades, but I had kind of missed out on the franchise's heyday. The things you miss when you can't drop $650 on a Neo-Geo. (Yeah, I know it was around on the PS2 and GBA too, but....)

But suffering from SRPG fatigue as I was, the time seemed ripe to rescue the Peregrine Falcons from that pile of discount DS games and do the series justice. Imagine my surprise when I was hooked after the first five minutes. Turns out that I really like over-the-top animation, lots of explosions, and Eri. Who knew? I count myself a Contra fan, but Metal Slug separates itself in a way that I also appreciate about Gunstar Heroes -- you don't die or take damage unless the enemy actually takes a swipe at you. I've said before that one thing that I look for in games, especially action games, is a feeling of power. And when you're ripping through dozens of enemy soldiers at a time with nothing but a dagger, you've got that feeling. You've got it a lot.

Oh, and those gigantic bosses are pretty damned cool too.

Yeah, I can see that Metal Slug 7 has some sprite issues, and that SNK could have really made better use of the touchscreen. I'm also disappointed that there's no co-op play, and that SNK's only real solution for adding replay value to the core seven missions was to introduce a Contra 4-style mission mode. But hey, I like Metal Slug 7 in the same way that I like Gundam SEED. They both served as my gateway into two great franchises. And now that I've finished Metal Slug 7, the real fun can begin. The best part about discovering a great old franchise on your own terms is the realization that there's more than what you've seen to be discovered and enjoyed. It won't be long before I pick up a PSP, and I've still got a whole Metal Slug anniversary collection to play.

Consider my appetite whetted.

category: games | forums | six comments | §

And now: naked girls climbing a hill

20 September 08 | 19:22 | Posted by:

So, I'm listening to Led Zeppelin for the first time tonight. Well, not really the first time, but it might as well be -- like I said, the last time I owned anything by the band was a very long time ago and involved tape cassettes and those flimsy, lightweight headphones with the fluffy foam pads that leaked as much sound to everyone nearby as was actually directed into the intended listener's ear canal. Now I have the pleasure of some very nice high-end open-soundstage Sennheisers and digital audio. Yeah, fine, so digital isn't as good as a virgin vinyl pressing played on a top-dollar turntable, but given that I don't own either I'm content to settle for high-bitrate AAC files. Certainly there's no comparison to those old cassettes. I'm hearing nuances and depth in the music that are pretty much only describable as "frickin' awesome." I randomly started with Houses of the Holy, and the first two songs alone ("The Song Remains the Same" and "The Rain Song") were easily worth the price of the box set.

Happily, the Zeppelin box I picked up is a mid-'90s release, which means it sounds good. I'm not sure precisely when the music industry began mastering CDs for force and loudness instead of dynamism and subtlety, but the current trend of completely destroying the integrity of music during the engineering process is a major reason I'm reluctant to buy any CD published this decade. Apparently Metallica's new album is the latest victim of this nonsense -- not that I give a fat crap about Metallica, but it's pretty depressing to see that even a band with such a huge name and, one would assume based on their reputation, such anal-retentive involvement in the recording process is powerless to keep their label from turning their work into a homogenous wall of sound.

Right, so now "Over the Hills and Far Away" is playing, and I'm trying to imagine what it would sound like with a completely flat histogram like that. The notion kind of makes me want to throw up a little bit! Instead, it looks like this:



See, music industry? That is what music looks like! Yeah, I get it. You're selling to kids who use those terrible earbuds that Apple packs in with iPods, and you're trying to get radio air time on stations where the music is forced to compete with commercials that are tweaked to play 10 dB louder than the songs themselves, so you're up against rough odds and subtlety doesn't always cut it. But could you maybe compromise a little? Maybe you could offer non-horrible editions of albums for those who actually want to enjoy what they're listening to, kind of like how anime used to come in different VHS editions who people who thought it was less important to have English language audio than it was to avoid vocal performances by whoever happened to be sitting around the studio, actors or not. You can sell them to us in secret! No one has to know. Please, just stop turning interesting music into a deadening wall of sound.

Edit: Actually, after reading Ian Shepherd's musings on this topic, it looks like the issues with Metallica's new album are the fault of the band itself. So maybe the secret is to listen to music mastered by people who haven't gone deaf from 25 years of standing in front of speaker stacks capable of filling a coliseum.

category: media | forums | 26 comments | §

Good times bad times

19 September 08 | 23:16 | Posted by:

I took home a copy of Mega Man 9 and a debug Xbox 360 last night so I could savor the game over a long weekend...and when I booted it up this afternoon, I saw the Red Ring of Death. I think this confirms the theory that the RROD only appears at the absolute moment you least want it to.

But it all worked out, because I ended up returning to the office to grab a replacement system and found that UPS had made a delivery while I was away: the complete Led Zeppelin studio recordings box set. I'm trying not to spend money at the moment, but Amazon had this set as its random super-cheap item of the day and I figured there is no way I will ever again find the band's complete works for $6 an album. Even if I disregard the existence of In Through the Out Door and Presence (like any sentient being should), that's still only eight bucks per. And best of all, it's strictly studio, which means no interminable drum solos. There are no down sides, really.



I was sort of surprised to realize when I ordered the set that I don't actually have a single Zeppelin tune in my 60GB music library. Not a one! Then I remembered that my brother and I owned the band's old "best of" box set, back in the days when box sets were new and awesome...and music came on cassettes. (It's been a while, see, because I'm old.) I guess once we phased out our tape collection, I never quite got around to replacing the box set with individual albums. But hey, it's been 15 years. I suppose it's time.

I really do miss box sets, though. Back in the days before music was a commodity to be swapped for free on the Internet, those sets were dense treasure boxes full of music by bands I sometimes didn't really even know -- an opportunity to discover something new and amazing through total immersion. But they were pricey enough that they had to be enjoyed sparingly. I realize this makes me sound like a stupid old fart, but I really think the ease of filing sharing does a disservice to music appreciation. It has nothing to do with legal or moral issues, though; what I'm talking about is the sense of commitment that investing in an album or compilation was for me when I in high school. Music was relatively expensive in those days, so I had to pick and choose my selections carefully. Sometimes I didn't really get my money's worth -- but when I did, when I bought an album unheard based on an intriguing title or artwork or a desire to learn more about a given band and discovered something unexpectedly phenomenal, that music stuck with me forever.

Someone, please tell me that this sense of risk and reward still exists in the realm of music appreciation, or I will be forced to recognize what a fossilized old fart I am and be sad.

category: games, media | forums | 23 comments | §

Never judge a Big Daddy by its cover

19 September 08 | 17:11 | Posted by:

Having been a proud Xbox 360 owner for only a couple months now, I’ve been trying to juggle the recent flood of great downloadable games (both on 360 and the PS3) while simultaneously trying to clear out that backlog. Luckily there’s a big lull for me in September before the big holiday games hit -- except Rock Band 2, arguably the biggest release this year...but since all my Rock Band peripherals are PS3 I have another month to wait -- so I decided to take the opportunity to tackle the game I’ve been wanting to play the most: BioShock.

I still have quite a bit of the game left, but so far I’ve been most impressed with the game’s aesthetics and presentation. I deliberately avoided reading too much about the game before its release knowing I wouldn't be able to play it for a long time; all I really knew was that it's quite good regardless of whether or not you like first-person shooters, that it's set in a city under the sea, and that there's something involving huge robots that protect little girls. Imagine my surprise, then, to find that Rapture is a dystopia absolutely drenched in 1950’s art deco. Even more surprising is how creepy the game has been so far; I hadn’t expected BioShock to focus quite this much on, well, mood.

Post continued after link >>

category: games | forums | nine comments | §

Apple and the art of compromise

18 September 08 | 21:24 | Posted by:

Wherein "art" equals "compromise."

My new iPod nano showed up today and, as expected, it's quite a rad little machine. It's tiny and lightweight, has a huge (well, relatively huge) screen and has enough capacity that I can actually put all the music I really want to listen to on it in a go. That's good! It's also a garish shade of metallic orange. That's good, too, in a tacky sort of way.

But it also has some issues, all which stem from Apple's continuing mission to disregard its own well-established user interface rules in favor of neat-o features. For starters: turning the device sideways causes it to switch into "cover flow" mode, which lets you thumb through album covers. It's very slick-looking, but it's also completely useless, because it prevents you from adjusting the music's volume. So, unless the iPod is in an upright position, trying to change the volume will cause you to jump to another album. Great! And then there's the pervasive album-shuffle flaw they introduced with the iPhone/iPod Touch, wherein it's becoming increasingly difficult to shuffle music by album. The new nano lets you set the system to shuffle by album, keeping music together...but when you actually do shuffle, either with the menu or the silly new "shake to shuffle" accelerometer gimmick, it ignores your preferences and mixes songs without regard to album connections. Every time I mix music, I have to go in and reset that preference manually.

These are, of course, minor issues. But that's the problem! Apple used to be good at getting the little things right. Sometimes it was all they did right. Yeah, maybe the hardware was overpriced and the operating system was a crashy piece of crap, but at least when everything worked it always worked exactly what you wanted. There was profound consistency within Apple's design so that everything worked reliably and uniformly. It was great. Now they're all successful and popular and have grown lazy and complacent and fail at their former specialties. Shameful.

So, uh, I guess the solution is that everyone needs to buy Zunes for a few years to knock Apple down a peg so they have to try harder. Like Avis!

Anyway, enough crankiness. The last big batch of games I'm trying to offload is up on eBay now. Very exciting! I'm really looking forward to being done with this grand sell-off process. The folks at the post office, I think, are getting tired of seeing my face.

category: media | forums | 22 comments | §

More like Shadows of the... Force Unleashed... Empire

18 September 08 | 15:14 | Posted by: Kat

If Darth Vader were here, he would say that the circle is now complete. Except that LucasArts isn't the master of anything these days, unless you count mediocrity as a skill. Star Wars: The Force Unleashed almost had me believing things would be different this time, but the first reviews are coming in, and so far they've been, to put it kindly, mixed.

Sort of reminds me of that other multimedia project that was meant to bridge the gap between the films.

Yet another reasonably cool idea that was ultimately flawed in its execution.

Sure, LucasArts was in a very different place when Shadows of the Empire came around, but it also gave us a bit of a glimpse into the future of the company and the franchise. At that time, every LucasArts Star Wars games was seen as a can't-miss classic, and even dreck like Rebel Assault got accolades from the industry.

But Dash Rendar was the first ding to LucasArt's previously sterling reputation; twelve years later, we have Bounty Hunter, Empires at War, Obi-Wan, Force Commander and pretty much every one of the prequel film tie-in games vying for a spot atop the totem pole of terrible (or mediocre). Not Rebellion though! Don't ever disrespect Rebellion. And Republic Commando was pretty good too. The rest, though....

Now, to some extent, we're back to where we've been with Force Unleashed, and we're further than ever from years like 1995 -- the year that LucasArts released The Dig, Full Throttle, Dark Forces and TIE Fighter: Collector's CD-Rom (and Rebel Assault 2, but let's forget about that one, shall we?). These days, the Star Wars games are afforded about as much respect as Star Trek games (read: not a lot), and now LucasArts seems primed to give up internal development entirely.

But, if I may co-opt another Star Wars quote, it might not be over yet. There is another. Help us, Bioware. You are our only hope.

category: games | forums | 27 comments | §

Birthday Beatdown

18 September 08 | 09:28 | Posted by:

My brother’s birthday was a couple days ago. I haven’t picked up a present for him yet, but that’s ok as I won't to see him for another week anyway. Generally, I’m expected -- and love! -- to get him a video game for the occasion. Being the foremost expert on the medium in the family, I generally like to get him hidden gems he wouldn’t have played otherwise; in the past, he’s had me to thank for things like Beyond Good and Evil, Drill Dozer, and Trauma Center: Under the Knife.

One of my biggest "complaints" about the industry these days is the flood of good games; I realize how ridiculous it sounds to complain about too much of a good thing, but trying to keep up with all the big releases in a given year these days can quickly suck away all the free time I’d otherwise have -- nevermind even trying to put a dent in the niche titles I know I’m missing out on. Nothing throws this fact into relief more than trying to pick out a videogame for someone else. The options are staggering, even considering I’ll avoid what he’d likely be able to pick up on his own and what he’d quickly lose interest in. (Sorry, Zack and Wiki. Maybe next time.)

This year’s challenge came with a twist: he’d used most of his birthday money to purchase an Xbox 360. Great! Having recently purchased one myself, I was pretty versed on the games he should be playing catch-up with. I figured he’d get Halo 3 and Gears of War on his own (and, having spoken with him yesterday, I was right), but the more I thought about it, the less obvious the answer was. Do I get him The Orange Box, so we can play together? How about Call of Duty 4, which I’m terrible at, but seems like something he’d like? And what about downloadable games? We could play Castle Crashers together, or he could try Braid or Rez HD or Bionic Commando: Rearmed. See what I mean? It’s great to have options, but that certainly doesn’t make my task any easier. If only I could pinpoint the reason I thought the 360 was worth owning....

...ah, yes. Well, that was an easier choice than I thought it would be.

category: games | forums | six comments | §

White-knuckle journey blackened my eye and cut my lip

17 September 08 | 21:46 | Posted by:

I've blogged a few times about the band Marillion and the fact that -- even though the world regards them as irrelevant dinosaurs! -- they've long been at the cutting edge of the Internet so far as the music business is concerned. They realized years ago that they have a small but loyal and technologically savvy fanbase that could be rallied through the web, and have parlayed that reality into wriggling their way out of suffocating studio contracts in order to record the music they want to create, funded by thousands of fans who pay for their albums a year or more in advance. In return, the fans get deluxe limited edition releases and, more importantly, good albums created without A&R men breathing down their necks for a hit single. Whether or not you like it is beside the point; we (the fans) do, and it's great that the band has been able to innovate and survive.



Anyway, they've gone the next mile for their upcoming album Happiness is the Road. In addition to doing the usual presale thing (including a fancy, alternate, two-disc version for us loyalists), they've also done something that eludes almost every other band in the world and recognized the existence of file-sharing. Rather than pretending that torrents of Happiness won't appear online within minutes of its arrival in the hands of reviewers, they decided to beat the seeders to the punch and uploaded their own specially-prepared torrent of the album last week. Rather than scream and kick and curse and posture and threaten lawsuits, they've accepted reality and bowed to the scalawags of the Internet.

This made a lot of people very angry and has widely been regarded as a bad idea -- but in fact, it was sort of brilliant. Their torrent isn't top-quality, and it includes files encouraging listeners to buy a legit copy (Radiohead-style, for whatever you think it's worth), and by pushing it out in advance of the album they ensure that their version will propagate across P2P networks as thoroughly as the eventual high-quality rips. A lot of fans feel slighted by the fact that the band appears to be giving special privileges to people who steal their work rather than support it in advance. I can understand their irritation, though; what baffles me are the people who are complaining that their first exposure to the music will be a low-quality rip...because apparently it's difficult to refrain from downloading and listening to crappy versions of music, or something. Self-control, man, who wants to be bothered with that?

category: media | forums | eleven comments | §

Stay out of the Kitchen (Nightmares)

17 September 08 | 16:51 | Posted by:

It could simply be I haven't had TV for a number of years and anything that shows up on hulu is just that much more appealing, but I've found myself oddly drawn to Kitchen Nightmares on Fox.

Allow me to sum up every single episode on the show: Local restaurant's in the red. They request, EBA-style (or Ouendan-style, if you prefer) the services of international cooking superstar Gordon Ramsay. He shows up, orders a meal, and tells them how awful it all is. Owner/manager/chef takes umbrage, they get in a shouting matching with Ramsay. This is a bad idea. Ramsay is really good at shouting. He yells at them for a while, and they sulk off.

Then comes everyone's favorite: the unsanitary kitchen sequence! Ramsay rummages through the fridge and kitchen and uncovers all the mold and rotten meat and flies. There are even cooks throwing chicken wings they found on the ground into the fryer. Look at what goes on inside the kitchens of America, unsuspecting consumer! Restaurants like the ones you go to each day! There are probably rat droppings in your turkey club right this second!

So, they clean the kitchen, Ramsay comes up with a new menu, they futz with the decor, and they relaunch. The the crowds are huge, things get chaotic, at least one staff member storms out, but then they turn things around and everyone learns an important lesson about humility/hygiene/teamwork/leadership/frugality/hard work/using fresh produce. Ramsay finally stops swearing at people to tell them how much they've improved, and the whole staff rhapsodizes about how Gordon's the coolest dude ever. Dee Snider showed up one time too.

I can't quite articulate why I find the whole thing compelling. There's a few insights into good restaurant practices (keep the menu small to focus on quality and to lessen the strain on the fridge and kitchen, find a signature dish that fills a niche in your community) and even one or two cooking tips, though far less than the BBC version of the show apparently. Really though, I think the actual reason is because in the back of my mind I think owning a restaurant would be pretty cool. Everybody thinks this. This is why every single sports player opens up a bar and grill when they go pro and have more money than they know what to do with. But even though I imagine myself owning my own place, I unconsciously yearn for a loud British guy to yell at me about how hard it is and that I shouldn't try. But wait, maybe if I have enough passion, I could succeed too! You're right, Gordon, I should live my dream of opening my own okonomiyaki place!

:(

category: media | forums |