Golgo 13 Coffee
Nescafé will be releasing a number of limited edition coffee cans featuring illustrations from the best-selling franchise because one can't be expected to assassinate well unless one is properly caffeinated.
[link via Japan Probe]
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April 2008 Archives
Game Diary: Fresh Off The Boat
Like most socially under-developed geeks, my mood is directly affected by the weather outside. While I don't like to go outside (I hear there are bears?) when the sun shines brightly through my apartment windows it lifts my spirits immensely and gets me motivated. Besides other activities such as painting and website stuff, I've been playing...
Call of Duty 4 - Still slowly progressing through the single player campaign and still being blown away by the production value. I've avoided online multiplayer like the plague, but a friend of mine suggested just shutting off voice chat, which seems to work like a charm!
Rez - Nothing like sitting down early in the morning to play through Rez in beyond mode. I like the fact that they give me a bunch of bonus modes and options to tweak things like my starting form and beam type. I've been messing with the sound and visual filters too, just for a little variety
Grand Theft Auto IV - Like everyone else in the world. It came early Tuesday morning and I played it into the night. I'm essentially a GTA virgin, though I did play a ton of the old top-down GTA 2 back in the day. I'm really enjoying GTAIV, way more than any of the previous titles. It has its flaws - visuals are often hit and miss, voice acting is dubious in parts (why does everyone sound like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog?) and your character controls like some sort of tank. Other than that, the story is fed to you in even enough intervals where you don't get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff you can do in the game, and the cell phone menu system is clever and very well integrated. I'm noticing little moments where Niko rests one foot on the curb while the other is on the street while chatting on the phone, or small details about the city that make it feel alive such as pedestrians getting phone calls themselves and having full conversations. I imagine I'll be discussing it more as I progress.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to try and make my in-game girlfriend not hate me anymore.
Podcast for 04-28-08 | Stupid Fingers
It's Grand Theft Auto week and Chris, Qais and Ross express various levels of excitement at the prospect of hijacking cars and shooting hookers. Love it or hate it, the internet is atwitter with GTA coverage and we shamelessly feed into it in this week's podcast. But this week isn't just about GTA, no! Also discussed is the prospect of awesome crashes with motorcycles in Burnout, whether or not the Guinness Book of Records Gamer Edition is worthwhile, how movie directors can use misdirection to their advantage, and Qais reveals he has a horrifying disability: Stupid fingers.
Subscribe to the feed here to get updated on new podcasts as they are posted! Show notes after the jump.
Painting the Hunter
Thought you guys might enjoy watching a video of me hit by a sudden burst of inspiration today. I've been thinking of something to fill up this canvas I painted over a month ago. The subject? Only one of the creepiest villains in game history: a Combine Hunter from Half Life 2: Episode 2. I wanted to keep it simple and exercise my brushwork skills while capturing the strangely vicious kinetic energy of the things.
Non-moving photo after the jump.
Unparalleled Fanboyism
There are many ways to prove your eternal allegiance -- or freakish obsession as the case may be -- to a particular system or game, the most popular being ink indelibly etched into flesh. Hell, Chris himself sports a triforce tattoo. But one man has taken these declarations one step further, not only carving the object of his obsession into his flesh, but doing so on a fairly large scale. I realize not everyone has the same tolerance for this kind of imagery that I do so I've posted the images under the cut, those with weak-ish stomachs need not click.
Xbox Live Orientation
Surprisingly accurate and actually funny, this video from X-Play should be bundled with each Xbox Live Gold membership sale.
[link via X3F]
Do You Have A LEGO Minifig of YOUR Star Trek Character?
"This was given to me as a gift at the Phoenix Comicon. I'm tempted to call up my friends and say, "Hey, I was just wondering if you have a customized Lego figure of your Star Trek character on your desk?" Then I realize how pathetic that sounds, and I just get drunk." - Wil Wheaton
[link via Wil Wheaton's Flickr]
Direct to DVD Awfulness: War Games 2
I can't even begin to think how someone thought this was a good idea. Online gaming sites run by cleverly nicknamed computer systems with poorly drawn anime avatars made to seek out terrorists who are good at video games? Attractive hackers? If you think this War Games sequel looks like it's direct to DVD, you'd be correct.
All I'm saying is I hope Matthew Broderick has a musical number at the end.
[link via Threat Level]
Your Personal Soundtrack: The Get Up Kids - Overdue
Some music we associate with a certain nostalgic era in our lives, and for the longest time, I thought The Get Up Kids would fall in that category for me. Most music I reminisce about blankly after 5 years is unceremoniously banished from my music collection never to be seen again. But On A Wire, the 2002 record from the aforementioned post-punk group has endured quiet nicely.
"Overdue" with its sincerity and mellow, bittersweet chorus harmonies opens the album with a certain gravity that's hard to deny a place in your heart. Along with the odd video that accompanies it, The Get Up Kids have ridden the angry wave of my fickle memories and come out on the other side almost better than they looked going in.
Listening now, I believe James Mercer must've heard this record quite a few times while writing the calmer cuts on The Shins' albums - even if he'll never admit it to anyone.
Real Life Super Mario Star Won't Grant Invincibility, Is Awesome Anyway
I love it when I can bring video game sound effects into the context of the real world. I own a couple of those gashapon sound drop keychains, and revel in the fact that the Super Mario Bros death noise scares my small dog enough to make her bark nervously and then hide under the bed. Last night, Herr Bizzleteats received a missive from the ether on his Blackberry, which caused it to chirp as if he had gained an extra life. A plushy question mark block sits on my couch, waiting for unsuspecting guests to sit down and accidentally gain a coin when it drops on their lap. Now, with ThinkGeek's help, I can become invincible. Check out this awesome Super Star, which gleefully grants you doot-dee-dootillies whenever you desire. It's plastic, fits on your desk, and looks amazing. It's battery powered too, so you could feasibly take it into any dangerous situation such as walking home by yourself late at night or if you are going to smash a few of your brothers or there's a mushroom uprising.
This thing is pretty neat. Now if only they did a whole series of classic powerups (no stupid New Super Mario Bros blue shell ridiculousness please) I could further blur the line between fantasy and reality.
[link via BBG | ThinkGeek Product Page]
Game Diary: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
It's been a strange week, filled with job interviews and exhaustion, leaving me little time to play as much as I wanted. Though it has allowed me to think a bit about my play habits. As of late, I've been a sort of ADD gamer, bouncing from one title to the next. After all the progress I made in Rock Band I've had a craving to explore a lot of other games that I haven't given much time to. I've also secretly been anticipating GTAIV. Don't tell anyone! What I did play this week was awesome, however.
Lost Cities - If you haven't at the very least downloaded the demo of this awesome XBLA game, you owe it to yourself to try. It's perfect for picking up and playing a quick game (each game takes maybe 20 minutes total to complete) but you'll soon find yourself saying "just one more game and then I'll take the dog for a walk". When your dog starts peeing on your rug in front of you out of spite is when you know you're a bit addicted.
Devil May Cry 4 - Ridiculous, overwhelmingly Japanese, violent and wonderful. I don't care what anyone else says, I like the over the top action cut scenes, even if the characters do crazy tricks that I have no hope of ever attempting in-game. There's a certain visceral satisfaction from being able to juggle an enemy in the air, constantly grappling them back up to you and slamming them down again.
Call of Duty 4 - I've avoided this game for no other reason than I dislike the stigma attached to people who play only online shooters. I don't like online first person shooter deathmatches because I am horrible at them. Also I have tender, virgin eardrums that catch on fire whenever a cuss passes through them. The single player campaign in CoD4, however, is stunning. It has an exciting pace and does well to make you feel like you are actually there. The story is a bit generic, but it's so well presented I am willing to forgive it.
This weekend I'll probably be delving further into CoD4, what are you playing this weekend?
Review: Lost Cities (XBLA)
I'm admittedly a huge fan of ultra-nerdy board and card games. We try to have a board game night at least once a month which really ends up just being an excuse to get together, drink a bunch and throw salted cashews at each other when things aren't going our way. This group play seems an awkward fit for the Xbox Live Arcade (mainly due to the lack of cashews, salted or otherwise), but in this reviewer's opinion the majority of XBLA games in this genre are gems. Uno, Catan and Carcassonne are some of the best games available, period, for the XBLA, while games like Word Puzzle and Sotrilo Solitaire flop. This week we see the newest in the board/card game genre, Lost Cities.
At first glance this game is super complicated, but like with any good game in this genre you spend the first couple rounds incredibly confused until all the pieces fall into place and it clicks. This process, at least for me, is pretty darn satisfying. It took only two rounds of demo play before I purchased Lost Cities, and I've spent all afternoon with it since. It is a fairly unique yet instantly familiar game, straight from the first menu which displays random semi-literary looking characters. I like the grey-haired bespectacled professor the best, who incredulously lifts his eyebrows and grimaces as you scroll through the different options. I heard him in my mind saying things like "huzzah! achievements!" or "what what leaderboards pish posh!"
Metroid SR388 fan trailer makes me pee a little
You can always tell when a game is a labor of love. The amount of detail and quality is noticeable, and when a skilled fan is set to the task, they can take a classic game and turn it even classic-er. Check out this video of a fan game loosely based on Metroid II (originally for the spinach-green screened GameBoy). It skillfully captures what is so captivating about the Metroid series: its isolation. Exploring the murky, eerie underwater depths of an absolutely alien planet while strange ambient music bloops and beeps is an immensely satisfying experience.
Hopefully the creator, Destructoid Community member Von Richter, has the chance to release this game just long enough for me to play it before Nintendo's lawyers sic their pikachus on him.
[link via DTOID]
Awesome Frog Mario Tee
Brand new at NerdyShirts today is this classy Frog Mario shirt, which has at least four good things going for it:
- Frog Mario is arguably the best Super Mario power-up of all time
- The design is printed all the way across the shirt, making it look more unique than your typical shitty Hot Topic game tee
- It's a lovely shade of periwinkle
- Did I mention Frog Mario is awesome?
Grab em now before they go out of stock. Which they probably will.
[link via NerdyShirts]
The Day Has Come: Optimus Maximum Keyboard in Stock
One of the shining pillars of vaporware has finally broken out of mythological territory and stepped into the path of unsuspecting consumers. The OLED-powered marvel that is the Optimus Keyboard is ready for your hard earned $1,589.99, surely a price point meant to help stimulate the economy. We've discussed the merits of the fabled keyboard in the past, including its ability to display custom keyboard configurations for programs like Photoshop.
While I am dubious about the usefulness of such a thing (if you are spending one and a half thousand dollars on a keyboard it is most likely that you don't look at your keys anyway, as apparently you are really really into computer keyboards), it's certainly a shiny, expensive piece of early adopter-focused hardware that will wow any nerd whom you deem worthy to enter your hovel.
[link via ThinkGeek.com
]
Slim NES in an NES cart
Apparently not only does this NES cart NES mod jam an entire console into one game, it also adds a few Marios.
[link via Kotaku]
Podcast for 04-21-08 | The Mythological Secret Level
This week Chris is joined by Mack and Ross to talk about those playground perpetuated secret levels we all remember from childhood, the Iron Man/Hulk movie crossover, the Mortal Kombat vs. DC crossover, and our frothing demand for GTAIV. These and other geeky discussions can be yours this week, for the low, low price of zero dollars! Will these geeks ever get over the childhood trauma of finding out there's no cow level? Find out by downloading this podcast!
Subscribe to our feed to get these updates automatically! Show notes after the jump.
continue reading "Podcast for 04-21-08 | The Mythological Secret Level"
Your Personal Soundtrack - Vampire Weekend: Oxford Comma
Being into indie rock is dangerous territory. You're often called elitist even though everyone knows you just have better taste than everyone else. I read Pitchfork often, and while I don't always (or usually at all) agree with their album reviews, I decided to give Vampire Weekend a chance. Pitchfork has been nutso about this band, who fuse indie rock sensabilities with an African influence. It's almost classic high life music and instantly addictive. I've had this song stuck in my head all day and put "who gives a fuck about an Oxford Comma" as my IM status message.
Of course everyone IMs me all like "I actually like serial commas". It's a good thing I have such great music taste so I can enlighten you guys. *sticks nose up and swishes ascot authoritatively*
Frank Miller: Sucking Other People's Legacies Dry
Perhaps there are others amongst you, dear readers, who felt the familiar, icy grip of The Fear when, upon watching Sin City you saw Frank Miller's name listed as a "director". Perhaps, like me, you may have shuddered at the thought of the horror that would be wrought by giving this man such a lofty title and, perhaps, you too felt ill when it was announced that he would be "directing" the film adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit.
It is unsurprising that Miller would choose The Spirit for his first solo project; after all he has a history of gallantly and self- righteously attaching himself to comics's old guard, like a vampire, riding their accomplishments and championing their causes as if they were his own and I'm sure it's been difficult now that Jack Kirby is gone.
The Spirit, then, is a gift from the gods. Here is an opportunity to take the work of one of the medium's greatest contributors and, due to the average movie-goers ignorance, shamelessly co-opt it. Congratulations Mr. Miller, they may never name an award after you, laud you for expanding the breath of what comics could accomplish, or stand in awe of your storytelling abilities, but fuck 'em right? Judging from these posters it is better to have made Sin Spirit instead. That's a legacy you can be proud of.
Presenting the new Weekly Geek
Consider this post a sort of new Weekly Geek "manifesto". Except less sinister-sounding.
The Weekly Geek has been around in many forms since its inception in 2002(ish). First we were a radio show on a small desert town's college station. It was just Grant and I back then, and we would rock every Wednesday morning with three hours of music, geeky or otherwise hilarious news, video game reviews and pseudo-internet-celebrity phone interviews. We even did a comedy sketch or two.
During the three years The Weekly Geek ran in Ellensburg, we put on a couple big video game tournaments, covered two E3s and gave away thousands of dollars worth of games to on-air callers. We started uploading the non-music bits of the show to the radio station's website around 2004, before we even knew what podcasting was. You had to walk uphill both ways to download a podcast those days, and that's the way we liked it.
In 2005 we launched the first official Weekly Geek blog and attached our audio file to an RSS feed. Ever since then we've tried to bring you a steady stream of great articles and content, unique to the geek community. We've even started our own little community here, which has been one of the coolest things I have ever personally been involved in.
You may noticed the place has changed a little bit... hopefully this design will serve you better than the last disorganized mess we forced you to look at. There's revamped commenter options, a better tag system and archives and direct links to download the most recent podcasts on the right hand bar. These certainly are exciting times.
Game Diary: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
It's been a busy past few days as I have been working on a (not so super secret) project. What games I've played tended to lean more on the pick-up-and-play side, though I've tried to make time for some...
Devil May Cry 4 - I missed this game when it was first released, and ended up borrowing it from Qais this week. I haven't played through any of the original games, though I enjoy the fast-paced action of the series. What I find consistently laughable, though, is the strange juxtaposition of great graphics and presentation with poor menus in Capcom games. They seem to be obsessed with horrible typefaces, Photoshop glow filters, confusing UIs and cheesy sound effects. And damn there's a ton of cut scenes in this game. Don't get me wrong, they're pretty spectacular and all but we'll see if playing for 5 minutes and then watching a 10 minute cut scene starts to grate.
Puzzle Quest - Building up my main character in the 30s has been painfully slow, though I really enjoy just poking around the map and getting into random battles. Level grinding never really felt like work with Puzzle Quest. I feel a little guilty sometimes for skipping through all the dialog, so I started actually reading the quest text which to my surprise is actually top notch.
Rock Band - Still working on expert drums, at this point it's just practice , practice, practice. My back hurts.
I think this weekend I'm going to be giving most of my attention to Devil May Cry 4 or Mass Effect while I'm not working on that other thing. You know, the thing.
What are you playing this weekend?
Full Rock Band Albums finally announced, dated
We've been speculating for a while about when the first full albums will be released for Rock Band, sources said Nirvana Nevermind and The Who's Who's Next were slated to be the first (to much excitement!), but today it was announced that full albums are coming April 22nd, with Judas Priest's Screaming For Vengeance, followed in May by The Cars (that's just what I needed!) and in June by The Pixies' Dolittle.
While I am incredibly excited to be able to play these albums, I'm saddened that we are apparently only getting one per month. In addition, I'd like to see a better way to make a playlist in the game proper, such as being able to select an album and play it all the way through without shupp shupp shupp-ing through the entire giant playlist every time we want to rock out to Judas Priest.
UPDATE: N'Gai has a great rundown in the form of a FAQ over at Level Up which answers a few questions.
[link via MTV]
Young Me/Now Me
I've always envied people who had the tenacity to complete photo journaling projects. Whether taking a picture of yourself every day for a year, or documenting a family history, photo projects are fascinating studies in human mortality. Linked from Boing Boing today, I found YOUNGME - NOWME on a site called Color Wars, where people take old childhood photos and recreate them with their newer, older bodies. I especially enjoy the ones who put a lot of effort in getting the clothing/setting correct, such as this chap who finally was able to live his dream of having the world's greatest mustache.
I'm tempted to do a few of my own.
[link via Boing Boing]
Music Review: Portishead - Third
Probably the most depressing break-up in the 90s occurred when Portishead fell off the face of the earth. In their prime they were robbed from us. Beth Gibbons went off to work in the garden, Geoff Barrow reallocated his production talents, and Adrian Utley wept softly into his beer in the dark corner of a pub.
Then, as if a divine musical presence summoned them from their inactive decade, they return to us with Third. Lazily named, but meticulously scripted, this album is the materialization of thousands of hushed rumors spread since Gibbons appeared to sing "Wandering Star" with her band mates at a small club in Bristol back in February 2007.
They didn't have anything to prove, but Portishead delivers a bone-chilling paramount to their existing catalog.
Club Nintendo Makes Us Weep
Why, Nintendo? Why can't you bring your illustrious club to the States? All we get when we register our games is a few measly wallpapers, but in Japan they can get points to trade in for stuff like this special limited edition Super Famicom classic controller for the Wii. Curse you, Japan!
[link via Nintendo Wii Fanboy]
Podcast for 04-14-08 | Animal Crossing Flashbacks
Who knew what kind of effect Animal Crossing could have on a man? In this week's podcast, Qais recounts his harrowing tale of Tom Nook-related horror, joined by Chris and Ross who laugh in delight at his misery. Nintendo's E3 debut of a new DS is discussed, as well as Bad Company's weapon conspiracy, indie games relying on old school art, video game retail stores that look like Borg ship interiors (and how awesome that would be), and Motley Crue is made fun of for being old. Your questions are also answered within as the mailbag is opened and not mocked in the slightest.
Download the podcast here and subscribe to the feed! Show notes after the jump.
continue reading "Podcast for 04-14-08 | Animal Crossing Flashbacks"
Dubious Parenting - Kid breaks vacuum to get out of chores, mom sells Xbox
Mike linked me to this article today on Gizmodo about a single mother who's 13 year old kid wouldn't do his chores. The story goes that the kid wouldn't quit playing Xbox and do the list of chores that his mother had typed out for him. After repeated requests, he deviously broke the vacuum in order to get out of vacuuming. She even found out he was surfing porn sites on his computer! So she retaliated by hacking his MySpace profile and selling his Xbox and games. Good parenting or horrible parenting? Gizmodo seems to think that this is an appropriate response, but I have to disagree. I don't know the specifics of this family's relationship with each other, and I don't claim to be an authority on parenting, but I think this was probably one of the worst things she could have done to raise this kid, and let me tell you why.
While I do think that we need less 13 year old Halo players spouting ignorance over Xbox Live, let me discuss this from the kid's perspective. All kids are biologically pre-programmed to rebel. At around age 13 they are supposed to start showing signs of rebellious behavior. It's called being a teenager. There are myriad ways to deal with teenagers, but more often than not extreme forms of punishment only serve to push them further and further away. I had a very similar experience as a kid, as I am sure a lot of you have. I think this kid is going to hate his mom even more for her actions, which I would imagine is not the desired effect.
I was a lazy kid. Hell, I'm a lazy adult. I never liked doing chores, and I would usually put them off in favor of video games. Even more I despised the parental notion that going outside and doing things under that burning ball of fire we call the Sun was somehow more life-enriching than, say, experiencing the brilliance of Final Fantasy. We were always on different planes of thought. I'd request something like a new Game Boy game for my birthday and I'd get a pair of rollerblades. I'd ask for a comic book subscription for Christmas and get a telescope.
I'd get a list of chores, do them and then go back to playing games. My parents, however, weren't satisfied with that. They'd always leave one thing off of the list, such as taking out the trash. Of course, since it wasn't on the list, I wouldn't take out the trash. And then they'd get pissed off and take something away, such as computer or video game privileges. They'd even rush into my room after getting off of work and yank the cart right out of my SNES while I was playing it. It was a completely mind-boggling discipline process to me. In my opinion they weren't teaching me any sort of valuable lesson, just flailing because they didn't know what else to do. That's not good parenting, that's just retaliation. These kinds of experiences actually caused me to disassociate myself from my parents. I just recently got back in touch with my father after about 7 years of silence. While extreme, I am sure the mother mentioned in this article doesn't want anything near that.
I understand that kids are a bit different these days. They tend to be more independent, more uppity, and more prone to backtalk. What I think would have worked better is regulation of said child's game time, rather than getting rid of the thing altogether. Kids may be pre-programmed to rebel against you as a parent, but you can do things to help hold back the tide. Compromise is one of those things.
And as for the porn sites the kid was surfing? How about you teach the kid about sex in a frank and honest manner instead of keeping it taboo and mysterious? Now he's just going to be more careful in the future about hiding his porn. 13 year olds are obsessed with sex. Teach him how to deal with it instead of making him think it's a shameful, horrible thing. Put your computer in the family room so that someone is always monitoring what he's seeing, and talk to him. He is an intelligent future adult who deserves your respect no matter what vitriol his mouth is spewing. He's meant to do that. It's up to you to deal with it in a manner that results in a well-adjusted individual.
What do you guys think? Is this bad parenting or good parenting? Follow up question! Did any of you experience something similar with your own parents, and do you think it was positive or negative for your personal growth?
[link via Gizmodo]
Game Diary: Time Flows Like a River, and History Repeats...
Have you ever had a weekend where you just popped back and forth between a handful of games in your collection? That's what this past weekend was like for me. I had this immense craving to go back to a simpler time and hear some of that sweet delicious SNES music once again. I spent my time this weekend with not only retro gaming, but some more recent titles I'd put down long ago.
Secret of Mana - One of my all-time favorite games still holds up to this day. Putting the cart in and turning it on, I realized I still had my original save file from back when I was a kid. There it was: Frodo level 99. I started a new game, however, so Jinny and I could play through together. This game was really magical to me. One of the first games I can remember fully absorbing, just soaking up all of the detailed art, experiencing the music in eardrum-shattering stereo sound. I'd explore every single corner looking for lost weapon orb chests, grinding levels in order to get the best spells. Multiplayer is near-perfect in Secret of Mana, I'd say bested only by Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Really looking forward to playing more and feeling wave after wave of nostalgia. That's what it's allllllll about.
Tales of Symphonia - I picked up the Gamecube version of this off Goozex a few months ago and never really sat down to try it. I love the combat and gameplay elements, but the story (at least in the beginning) is the same trite anime crap as a million other horrible RPGs before it. I sincerely hope that aspect improves because I'm the weird kind of geek who gets really annoyed at anime-style writing.
Rock Band - Back on the horse? After finishing the drum solo tour on hard, I decided to attempt it on expert and absolutely ripped through it. I have about 15 more songs left and have been really enjoying the feeling of accomplishment from my increase in skills. We rocked band world tour as well, grinding through the venues on expert and unlocked the million fan achievement. We were at a total of about 980,000 fans and only needed a small bump to push us over the edge and ended up getting 250,000 fans in one 4 song setlist. I guess gold-starring songs really helps when you're looking to gain fans.
Beautiful Katamari - I was in the mood to roll some stuff up, so I decided to visit the King of All Cosmos for the first time since last year. I don't really prefer this version, actually. While I love being able to unlock achievements and such, I feel that the gameplay is too unfocused and lacks the charm of the original PS2 Katamari Damacy. I attempted a few online matches, which have one of the worst lobby systems I've seen. The other guy just kept walking around instead of starting the match, throwing cookies at me and putzing around. I'm all for the concept of play, but sometimes I want to get down to business. Katamari-related business.
World of Warcraft - My undead priest is now almost level 20 and I'm really excited to be playing a healer again. This time around I know my strengths and limitations and I am having a ton more fun jumping around Azeroth like some spastic bunny rabbit.
For the rest of the week I have a feeling it's going to be ADD gamer time, with me bouncing back and forth between titles. I'm also going to attempt hacking my PSP. Wish me luck!
What They Play provides unbiased parental advice on games
It's difficult these days for parents to figure out how to deal with their kids being exposed to what they may deem inappropriate content. Our pop culture has become less preoccupied with self-censorship, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Things that parents might not find appropriate for children exist in the world, and eventually said children are going to become adults and get exposed to this content. While your six year old shouldn't necessarily be watching Sopranos and shooting hookers in Grand Theft Auto, eventually that world is going to reveal itself and you can guarantee they will be asking questions.
What They Play is a website for parents in order to help them better understand the games that their kids want to play. Instead of providing a giant list of "bad" games for parents to keep their kids away from, What They Play accepts the fact that kids are already playing these games, either at a friends house or their creepy uncle's apartment. The site provides level-headed, well-researched analysis of games. Not necessarily qualitative reviews, but an overview of what you are going to see and experience in the game. Their article on Grand Theft Auto IV is a great example. Not only do they provide a run down of all the "controversial" things you can do in the game, they acknowledge features such as the Rockstar Social Club, the tie-in with Amazon for music downloads, and an overview of what the limited edition contains.
It is classically difficult for older generations to keep up with younger ones. Trends change, technology advances and often the easiest thing to do is throw your hands in the air and resort to quick judgment and censorship. We've seen it with comic books, rock and roll, and I am sure in the middle ages there was some sort of sheep-based trend that parents just didn't understand.
Keeping things taboo just increases curiosity in a kids mind. It's up to the parents of the world to decide how to effectively deal with seemingly negative influences, and it's nice to see a website that chooses an intelligent, unbiased approach instead of the typical knee-jerk alarmism we've come to expect. I'd really love to see this site become the de facto location for parents-in-the-know to get the information they need to effectively raise their children in this new media future.
A New Low Has Been Reached: Hot Chicks With Cheat Codes
Love them or hate them, the Puritans at least had a goal. Several of them, in fact. Redeeming the Church Triumphant from the besodden hands of the Papacy and Powers Temporal, saving the souls of the faithful, guiding them toward an outward perfection suited for their inner Godliness, moving the educational and aesthetic commonweal toward the everlasting love of Jesus Christ, and burning an assload of witches. At least you knew where they stood on any given subject.
Good was good, bad was bad, and in case of confusion, steer toward hatred. They were anything but not apathetic. Sure, they were vicious bastards who'd slit your throat and throw you in the oubliette if you so much as talked out of place, but what's the harm with that? I can think of few people that need a good bit of 17th Century Puritanical asskicking more the absolute titchuckers at Spike TV.
If, in case you are doing the reasonable thing when faced with modern reality and your head is currently encased in a bucket of rapidly solidifying Plaster of Paris, you haven't heard of Spike TV, perhaps you've heard of it's predecessor, The Nashville Network. The "The" is capitalized because it was founded and perpetuated for twenty years by people who called it "TNN", instead of "NN", which logically it should have been. Then again, we are dealing with the utter fuckwits who would watch something called "The Nashville Network" in the first place. People so neanderthalic that the sheer concept of images moving around on a lighted box constituted entertainment, doubly so when said moving images were SINGING AND YODELING, just like the folks on the radio tube!
The fact that "The" in "The Nashville Network" was capitalized is a sticking point, because it led to a cultural dynamic that still haunts us to this day. While The NN never took a political stance officially, it was pretty much de facto Republican, and, along with the Pat Robertson owned Family Channel, built the fundamental anti-rational force of the 1990s, the Christian Coalition. These piddling little factories of nincumpoopery created the atmosphere that led to the fullscale official amnesia of the Bush administration, fed by the belief that nothing between Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan actually happened. When pressed, TNN would revert back to "IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC!" just like Robertson would retort "IT'S ALL ABOUT JESUS!", proving that country music fans are not only dogmatic and conservative to the Nth degree, but piranha like in their refusal to admit anything might actually be open to debate.
Then, of course, Viacom put a bead out on TNN, and it was assassinated with one bullet to the forehead like a Yucatan drug lord on a parade float. It was swiftly transmutated into "Spike TV", the idea being a snarky male response to the female Lifetime Network, which is similarly insipid in nearly every context. Whereas Lifetime produces overblown soap operatics by the bushel, Spike doesn't actually produce anything at all, and sticks to the truism that men actively enjoying being able to recite every line from every rerun science fiction and cop drama they can get their greedy, Cheetos-besmirched fingers on.
Spike TV, just so you understand, is a rerun dump. That is all it is, that is all it ever has been. in case Viacom has a movie or television show elsewhere, they advertise it ad nauseum on Spike, since the theory is that anybody who would conceivably want to watch Spike is at least sentient enough to have another, better, network on the Memory button, just itching for a reason to turn elsewhere. In fact, Viacom has taken this into account, and it's a somewhat twistedly brilliant example of Corporate Symbiosis in all it's evil, mutant glory.
As an irrelevant side note emphasizing their patronizing attitude toward the hand that feeds them was the notoriously silly "Video Game Awards", hosted by noted albino marionette, David Spade. I'll give you pause to snicker to yourself at that idea. HINT: They gave an award to "Best Power Up".
In response to this theory, Spike has actually found ways to start disregarding commercials altogether. To this end, they've come up with the "commercial show", which is a mini-show that runs IN THE COMMERCIALS, with advertisements in little sprawling banners under both shows. Where it used to be that you only put up with the commercials so you could watch the show, with the grim reality setting in that with seven million other options available to you on Comcast alone, advertisement and entertainment are now fused at the spine like some sort of freakish, hateful Siamese twin garden gnome that attacks you while stabbing your grandmother with a rusty railroad spike.
The rusty railroad spike, of course, is what the network is named after, y'see.
AH, BUT WHAT IS HE RANTING ABOUT, you ask. And rightfully so.
Weekly Geek (Greek?) HQ recently received a not so thinly veiled attempt by the Spike TV treants to get us to pawn off to you their latest awful idea, a Commercial Show called "Hot Chicks with Cheat Codes".
Hold it. Scan up. Read that again. Then read it out loud. Then read it in a silly voice.
"Hot Chicks with Cheat Codes".
The morons reign victorious. We're doomed. Humanity only has a good few years left, it's been a great run, but all things need to come to a timely end. Yoko has joined the band. Better cash your Economic Stimulus checks ASAP, because it's the last hurrah before the concentration camps.
There is a saying in advertising circles, "No publicity is bad publicity". Therefore, we at the Weekly Geek will not be giving this foreskin wrinkle the time of day by linking you to it. That would be giving them exactly what they want. Oh, no. We have a much worse idea. I will be illustrating it for you with MS Paint.
The effect, to be frank, is exactly what we saw.
Braindead models stroking controllers like dildos, "bitchin'" pseudo-rock music, playovers of Halo greenscreened behind them.
Yes, we get it. You have absolute, utter disdain for your desired audience. And we can't blame you. If they're falling for this, we hate them too. The British equivalent of Spike TV, "Nuts TV" (yes, you read that just as correctly), has a show called "Fit and Fearless". Scantily clad models are locked in haunted houses with cameras, the idea being that presumably young British men enjoy a bizarre combination of sado-masochism and 19th century Blavatsky Spiritism.
Brilliant media commentator Charlie Brooker has written his piece about Nuts TV, and I boldly stride forth in his jowly shadow by saying that the point behind "Hot Chicks with Cheat Codes" is equally terrifying: presumably you're supposed to be masturbating while watching it, but doing so means you're totally, undeniably insane. "Fit and Fearless" is the next logical step, followed by "Bikini'd and Bound", which is essentially just softcore dungeon play with a streaming banner underneath inviting us to purchase Axe bodyspray. After that it's just a long, languid close up of a bleeding corpse, although doubtlessly, Spike will ace that up a bit with some tips on how to avoid the police read by wacky, sarcastic jerks deserving of a good unwrapped SlimJim being rammed down their tanned, impossibly intolerable little snouts.
I leave this blahdy-blah with this final thought: according to Wikipedia. Spike TV's average viewer age is 42. Mayhap they should reconsider their concepts just a bit. "Hot Chicks and Tax Tips", 'Hot Chicks and Mortgages", "Hot Chicks and A Solid Plan for Building That Patio You've Always Been Talking About" may be a little bit less insulting.
Weekly Geek T-Shirt is now available for purchase!
This is the moment we've all been waiting for...wherein the true power of the Schwartz was revealed to be...MOICHandising! Head over to The Weekly Geek's store, nab one of these shirts, and get a sneak peek at the new site design. The price is definitely reasonable at $18.95 (before tax and shipping) and you cannot refute the awesomeness of the unique design. It's at the bottom of the shirt! THAT'S CRAZY.
Speaking of which, I wonder if I will have to buy my own. Hmm...
Many thanks to Sebastian over at SplitReason for helping us get this store up and running!
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Snake Whacking Season Begins
Unlike the rest of the Geeks (Greeks?), I live to the south of Seattle, in Olympia, Washington, which is a lovely little slice of heaven somewhere between Tolkien's Shire and the Green Greens arena in Smash Brothers. It's basically a town interspersed by enormous sections of forested hills, running straight up against Puget Sound. I really do like it here, and not simply because I'm not forced to drive on 75 degree angle streets. Sure, there's lots of foul smelling hippies, there's only one 24 hour grocery store, and renting movies from a foreign land is impossible without the help of Netflix.
Still, there's something most foul that lurks just a few yards away from my Sensory Deprivation Chamber, and that is a garter snake hibernaculum. What's a hibernaculum, you ask? OH DEARIE ME. From Wikipedia:
"In zoology, a hibernaculum is the location chosen by an animal for hibernation. Commonly this may be a hibernating mammal or insect."
Of course, this is Wikipedia, so it's also got "In music, Hibernaculum is a single by Mike Oldfield from his The Songs of Distant Earth album, and the name of an album by the band Earth." Thankfully, Wikipedia has a policy where they try to discourage trivia sections. Hopefully that also applies to everything I'm not immediately interested in.
Garter snakes, in case you were not aware, are not hatched from eggs like other snakes. They are born live. Female garter snakes secrete a pheromone that attracts male garter snakes for miles, gathering in one little hole by the hundreds around the one female. One of these female garter snakes (and presumably her many female offspring) has chosen the vacant forest lot behind my apartment as her mating space, not to mention the hundreds of females she also has pumped out over the years. I don't know (or even care) how long garter snakes live. I don't want to.
I need to preface this by saying that I actually like creepy crawly things, generally. I like rats, after a roommate bred them and I learned they were actually fairly clean and intelligent. I like spiders, especially after I allowed one that lived in my window to live and I watched it make it's lovely web every morning. I even have an emperor scorpion encased in orange lucite on my coffee table, which I consider to be one of my favorite objects.
But if there's one thing I hate, more than anything else on the planet, it's snakes.
Sweet Christ do I hate snakes. I hate everything about them, I hate everything they do, I hate their activities and, most importantly, I hate the way they writhe about. I hate their cold, unblinking eyes. I hate their glassy, alien, evil scales. I hate that they manufacture neurotoxin like it's going out of style.
I. Hate. Snakes.
I once dated a girl (zomg, I know, rite?) that was equally terrified of snakes. It was probably the only thing we had in common. She took it the next step and hated anything that reminded her of snakes, included pussycats, which admittedly have that cold predatorial streak to them, when they're not being ADORABLE. So, clearly, I'm not THAT bad. I'm not phobic of snakes, I just hate them. I feel no compunction whatsoever fulfilling the Biblical mandate to crush their heads beneath the heel of my foot. I swerve to hit one on the road.
Anyway, with spring comes snakes, by the hundred. I always jump when I see one, every single time. I think that maybe it's an ancestral Jungian imperative. Somewhere in my genetics, snakes were a serious problem. Ancient Sexcabs were flung into a daily life-or-death struggle with these demonic creatures, and I am doomed to repeat their struggle even into the modern world and the Pacific Northwest, where our snakes are actually fairly innocuous.
I not only wish that all snakes were eradicated, but that we set up some sort of Department of Herpetological Homeland Security, where all governmental bureaus have a single clearinghouse from which to attack the ever increasing snake menace. I, personally, am for the death penalty for any being caught being a snake without legal authority to do so. Of course, I might be a little old fashioned in these things, so a snake Abu Ghraib and a snake Gauntanamo is also acceptable. The snakes need to be humiliated, first. They need to be photographed in sexually humiliating poses and forced to recant their snaky ways at gunpoint. These snake prisons will have very tiny bars on the windows, so the snakes can look out and see the world that they are no longer allowed to be participants in, to remind them that their kind cannot be tolerated in this modern day and age. Imagine little orange snake prison uniforms. Little snake shivs and little snake gay rape scenes. Little snake prison law degrees and little snake dining halls and little snake murders in little snake laundry rooms. Little snake Aryan Brotherhoods.
Yes, a prison for snakes is what we need, because they've been snakes once, they will be snakes again, and they will continuing being snakes as long as they're allowed that freedom. We have the children to think about, first and foremost. He have to keep these recidivist serpents off the streets and out of the playgrounds.
Chrono Trigger's Surprising Plot Twist
I don't remember Chrono Trigger's plot being so profane, but if it's on Wikipedia I'll just have to accept that my memory must be faulty.
Jinny snapped this screenshot today, as Chrono Trigger is Wikipedia's article of the day. Five minutes later it was gone. Gotta love Wiki vandals.
John Cleese interested in writing Obama's speeches
John Cleese is a name well known to any geek worth his salt, having spent years delivering his strange, occasionally perplexing brand of humor to a coterie of strange, occasionally perplexing people whose nature it is to latch onto anything that seems to speak to them. But the man isn't all madcap British humor, he's a multifaceted character, involving himself in musical theater, philanthropy, and politics.
It seems that John Cleese has offered his services as a speech writer to presidential incumbent Barack Obama should he receive the Democratic nomination. Cleese believes that his services to Obama would be crucial in helping him ascend the White House stairs, and to be perfectly honest I couldn't agree more. We all know Cleese to be a fantastic writer and I'm sure that if he does end up writing speeches for Obama that they will be inspiring and wonderful, but beyond all that, he's got geek cred in spades.
It's a sad fact that many people don't intimately familiarize themselves with the policies and backgrounds of presidential candidates before voting, choosing instead to place their mark next whichever candidate their favored news organization or friends are backing. But this fact is where John Cleese comes into play for Obama. Many will note his involvement in Obama's campaign and continue analyzing the intricacies of policy and political competition in order to make their decision, but others, those that vote without any real research or insight, may decide to vote for Obama simply because he's associated with John Cleese.
"A vote for Obama is a vote for John Cleese? Sign me up!"
While that isn't exactly the way I'd like to see Obama (or any candidate for that matter) make it to the oval office, at this point, in order to avoid a self-admitted games censorship advocate from making a serious run at the office, I'm more than happy to accept the assistance of people who are happy to let others do the thinking for them. And really, if someones going to be doing the thinking for you, John Cleese isn't a bad guy for the job.
[Via Daily Mail]
Game Diary: Sock Mod
Apparently all I needed to do in order to complete Run To The Hills on hard was attach some socks to my drums with rubber bands. Who knew?
All day yesterday and all morning today I was thinking of how to get the proper stickings for this song. It's got this galloping beat that is really fast, and hard to nail precisely on the pads. Even in the shower I was drumming with my fingers on the tiles, trying to get the rhythm down. Frustrated and sore, I took a break and looked on a couple Rock Band forums for tips. Many mentioned something called the "sock mod", which involves wrapping the drum head in a tube sock and rubber bands. It increases the tension of the sensor and improves gameplay. Turns out I wasn't bad at drum rolls, the drums were bad at interpreting my drum rolls. I finished Run To The Hills with ease and finished drums on hard. I love seeing that achievement pop up "3 for 90g". So nice of Harmonix to give you credit for all difficulties below the one you have just completed.
I feel so very accomplished now. The rest of my day was spent playing...
Ikaruga - I don't recall the Gamecube version of this game having so much engrish in it, but Treasure found a way to poorly translate even more text, including all the Xbox-specific text, such as saving the game. Hilarious. It's a good thing that Ikaruga is fucking brilliant. In HD the game looks absolutely incredible. Textures and polygons are smooth, there's little to no slowdown when a lot of stuff is happening on screen, and man. The music. Oh, the music is so very epic. I completed the first and second stages, unlocking the third. I obtained the achievements for completing both of those levels and decided to grab the dot eater one as well. Dot Eater is accomplished by not firing for a whole level. In Ikaruga, each enemy appearing on screen is precisely choreographed. They come in and exit at the same time, every time. It's entirely possible to memorize the patterns and get a perfect game. In the XBLA version, you have the new option to save replay videos and attach them to your leaderboard score. This is pretty awesome, as you can go to the top of the leaderboard and download a gameplay video of whoever is currently best in the world. You can then study the videos and improve your own performance. For obsessive types like me, this is a godsend.
Tomorrow? More Ikaruga and possibly back into Mass Effect or Burnout Paradise, now that one of my main goals for Rock Band has been accomplished. Huzzah!
Really Saving The World
You know what I think would be great? If gamers stopped being so damn selfish, collectively removed themselves from their couches for once, and used all that energy they spend playing games for the betterment of mankind. Wait, no, I don't think that, the Red Cross thinks that, or at least that's the implication given by their latest ad. The reason I don't think that? Gamers are are spending time, money, and effort to make the world a better place to live, and we're doing it with the thing we most love, games.
Now I'll be the first to admit that I can get a little reactionary when it seems like someone that isn't "hip to the lingo" is using games as a scapegoat or device in their advertising to drive people to action. And this ad by the Lebanese Red Cross is really clever, well designed, and is ultimately advocating something that I am behind 100%, but lumping gamers into the mix to make their point because it's convenient causes exactly what they're trying to avoid to occur; it's a divisive message and is going to make those of us sensitive to this kind of thing less likely to lend aid to their cause.
Thankfully, those of us that are now unwilling to lend aid to the Red Cross are likely still involved in any number of the multitude of charitable organizations run by and for gamers and the rest of the world. There are organizations such as Child's Play which donates games, books and toys to sick children across the world, Folding@Home which can be run in the background on a PC or a PS3 and distributes computer processing across the globe in order to better understand the evolution of viruses, or Gifts From Gamers which sends consoles, games, DVDs, CDs, books and magazines to soldiers currently stationed on the front lines. That last one is interesting considering the International Red Cross' roots are in assisting soldiers during war time. Seems the Lebanese Red Cross is a little late in their appeal, we've been on point helping those that need it for years now, especially soldiers.
Again I'd like to state that I don't disagree with the Red Cross' underlying message, we should be saving the world for real. The world is a horrible place full of violence, illness, tragedy, and horror, and we as human beings have a responsibility to put an end to that. The thing is though, we are, and we have been for a long time without any other unifying factors in place except that we all enjoy gaming and we aren't the shallow, thoughtless gang that we're often painted as. Take a look at gamers as a whole and you'll find an incredibly diverse group of people, a group that has put aside any differences it might have in order to help those in need. How many other charitable organizations can you think of whose members ignore the boundarie