Cannery Row

Blogging Meltdown! Red alert! No seriously, Stan's right, I've been lax in my blogging duties. I'll still stand by the excuse that I'm playing the longest video game I have left (which is nearly done). This weekend I took a trip to Lake Winnipesaukee, and knowing that I wouldn't be using my DS at all, I figured it was time to clear out a book- the second half of this Steinbeck combo, Cannery Row. I grabbed (stole) this book from a communal library we share with a few other families last year because of Of Mice and Men, a book I think some of my classmates had to read back in high school. I gave it a shot, and it really had no effect on me. It's hard to call a book that ends with a man shooting a retarded guy in the back of the head bland, but I knew the ending before reading it and nothing else in the book really did much for me. But I held on to it, figuring at some point I'd give Steinbeck another shot and read Cannery Row. I was having some difficulty figuring out what to call Cannery Row's genre; the best I came up with was "Americana." Wikipedia did slightly better with "regional slice of life." The book is made up of a lot of short stories about the lives of several unique citizens living around Monterrey's sardine fisheries. The characters were a little one dimensional, but memorable nonetheless- Mack, the leader of a group of bums who think they're helping out but usually being a pain in the ass; Dora, head of the local whorehouse; Lee Chong, the wacky Asian stereotype grocery owner; and Doc, the straight-man who has to deal with everyone's shit. Eventually a plot starts to form wherein Mack and his bums try to throw Doc a party, but keep fucking up. It leads to Doc knocking Mack out, in probably my favorite scene of the book. On a second attempt the bums get it right, and all ends well. I can see why Of Mice and Men is considered the classic here- it deals with much more complex issues than Cannery Row and has an ending that must have had an impression on people who hadn't already known. But for me, Cannery Row was a simpler but more enjoyable read.

Mega Man Battle & Chase

Here's a game that never even came out in America. Why the fuck am I bothering with it? Because the dickheads at Capcom decided to throw it in the Mega Man X Collection, even though it has to do with Mega Man and his allies and rivals rather than X and his. Stupid. Know what else is stupid? This game wasn't even available until I unlocked it by beating the first three Mega Man X games. I didn't want to have to beat the first game again - I beat it on the SNES a decade ago! But in order to play (and "log") this piece of shit game, I had to unlock it first, so I just sucked it up and beat Mega Man X again. Fortunately, passwords exist that allowed me to cut out everything but the final fortress. (Unfortunately, the final fortress is like half of the game.) Fortunately, I still know how to play and beat Mega Man X as if by heart. So whatever. It turns out, re-beating the first X game was more rewarding than playing through this kart racer. I mean, honestly, what's the point? Mario Kart is a fantastic series, but that doesn't mean ever franchise in gaming can spin off its characters into an enjoyable kart racer. Some people love Crash Bandicoot's attempt, and others swear by Diddy Kong's, but honestly, this mundane piece of shit was completely unnecessary. No storyline, no new characters, no point. So yeah. I put in my hour. I learned how to dominate the ten or so courses and beat the game. But what did it bring me? Nothing. Nothing but another check mark under the "beaten" column on my hypothetical log of vide games. Look, I'm tired. Bored with all of this. Cranky, if you couldn't tell. It's an absolutely gorgeous day, and I've spent it schlepping through some games I never even really wanted to play. Why? For the sake of some New Years resolution to beat more games than I bought every month. Well, guess what. It ain't happening. Not this month. I had zero self-control (and got a few games as gifts, too) this month, and I shouldn't be punishing myself for it now by playing video games on a day like today. And now today is already nearly over. Fuck it. This is stupid. I'm done for now. And by the looks of things, so is everyone else who used to contribute to this blog. Have a wonderful Memorial Day.

Mega Man X3

I suppose this game was just as good, in terms of fundamental gameplay, as X and X2, if not even better. But I think the series is losing charm for me rather quickly. Again, this isn't a bad game; it's just not the game I fell in love with fifteen years ago. I hate to say, "keep it simple, stupid," because obviously critics have always ripped into sequels that don't add enough to the gameplay. But while I loved collecting hearts, energy subtanks, and enhancements in the first two games, it began to feel chore-like in this one. My guess is because this time around they doubled the number of enhancements and also introduced ride armor power-ups. Ride armor has been featured in both X games so far, but only in one or two levels each time; it's never been an important part of the series before, and I was disappointed to see that more time was devoted to coming up with inventive animals to use as ride armor than was spent coming up with cool robot masters. Crush Crawfish? Volt Catfish? Toxic Seahorse? Come on. On the plus side, this game allows you to finally play as Zero, X's mentor figure, at times. Zero is pretty much a total badass, so the option to play as him was something I welcomed with open arms. Still, this isn't the Mega Man Zero series; it's Mega Man X. I dunno. Something just felt a bit "off" with this game. It could have easily just been my mood while playing it. But for whatever reason, I didn't love this one. Three X games remain, all of them PlayStation games rather than SNES games. Perhaps the system upgrade will lead to a more inspired game. Here's hoping.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

When I first saw ads for this movie, I was not impressed. Combine the title with the PG rating and the whole thing just seemed like a mess to 16-year-old me. However, with time, I've recently come around a little bit to the movie. PG? So what? Weird title? Hey, maybe it was like that on purpose. As light slowly dawned on me, I became more and more interested in this movie. I wondered about the plot, was intrigued about the way it was shot, and was surprised to learn that even though it bombed at the box office it was critically acclaimed. At the end of the day, the movie was extremely unique, if nothing else, and I love a good unique movie. So I bought recently when I saw it in a $5 bargain bin, and boy was I rewarded for it. This is a fantastic movie. It takes place in an alternative 1939 in which technology has led to all sorts of advancements like robotics, jet packs, and a number or other things. Call is steampunk if you want to, but don't let that aspect of the movie turn you away from it; this isn't Will Smith's Wild Wild West. It's actually a very creative movie in a fully imagined world. There's a lot of adventure, a little bit of a love story, and fantastic visuals. I'm not usually big on the artistry behind live-action movies, but I loved how they added a soft glow to everything in this movie, almost fully immersing it in the 1930s in terms of overall look. The final product is a film which, in all honesty, feels a lot like Star Wars or Indiana Jones in terms of tone, plot, and character. I wholeheartedly recommend this long-forgotten and oft-ridiculed movie.

The Time Machine

It seems a recurring theme with me lately has been late 19th century novellas and my love-hate relationship with them. Death in Venice was much more enjoyable than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Alice in Wonderland twosome lived up to my expectations while Carmilla lived down to them. Venus in Furs was surprisingly fascinating. Robin Hood? Surprisingly boring. Anyway, the good news is that The Time Machine not only falls into the "enjoyable" category, but also might be my favorite "dystopian future" tale of all time. The thing that may surprise you most about it is that it's really got nothing to do with time travel or time machines at all. Yes, a time machine is built, but the protagonist simply takes it some 800,000 years into the future and spends the majority of the story hanging out in that era. I won't give away any spoilers, but let's just say that the future of mankind is a far, far cry from what he had been expecting. H.G. Wells did a great and very creative job detailing the potential dangers of rampant and unbridled capitalism and the widening gap between the upper and working classes - remember, the year was 1895 - without ever actually telling the reader that he was doing so. It was a perfect example of "showing and not telling" and for me it was far more effective than some other lengthier novels that tried to convey similar messages. Oh, and did you know that Wells was the first guy to coin the phrase "time machine?" I guess he was also a pioneer when it came to the idea of time travel, at least as a plot device. Crazy. The extent to which I enjoyed The Time Machine makes me want to check out some of H.G. Wells' other classics like The War of the Worlds and The Invisible Man. And I probably will look into both of those tales. But not yet. Not yet.

Drag Me to Hell

This critically acclaimed horror flick came out last summer and though I always wanted to see it, I never got around to doing so. The movie's PG-13 rating only helped me put it off. So when I found the "unrated" version on DVD a few months ago, I was all over that purchase. Of course, I did not watch it until tonight. And I liked it. It had everything I think a good horror movie should have: a moderately short running time (1:39), a lack of seriousness in its tone (tongue-in-cheek humor abounded), and characters that were easy to empathize with (perhaps too easy; I genuinely felt bad for Allison Lohman's character, all said and done). This movie isn't the contemporary horror-comedy masterpiece that was Cabin Fever, nor is it much like Shaun of the Dead. But it's along those lines. Ditto to 2004's Dawn of the Dead remake. It wasn't a gore-fest like the Saw or Hostel movies, nor was it something that tried to genuinely scare the shit out of the audience. Instead, it tried to provide more laughs than startled gasps and succeeded in doing so. (At least, for me.) I definitely think it's a movie worth seeing once unless you're just not on board with the horror genre at all.

The Fugitive (1993)

This was actually the one movie in my entire backlog that I was least looking forward to watching. Call it a bias against 1993 or something. But man, was I wrong to doubt Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones. In this action classic that was part First Blood, part Shawshank Redemption, and part No Country For Old Men, Ford plays a wrongly-convicted man on the run who is trying not only to elude capture by U.S. Marshal Tommy Lee, but also trying to track down his wife's true killer. Though the plot became a little too random and unrealistic at points (once the man behind the murder plot is revealed, you start to question a few of his actions from earlier in the film), the action was pretty top-notch for 1993. And it wasn't all about the action, either; this movie did a pretty decent job at unraveling a mystery and developing some characters along the way. I can't call it amazing or a must-see, but if you catch it on cable or something, give it a shot. Especially the first half, which is more "man on the run" than "tracking down the true killer." Got it? Good.

A Raisin in the Sun

A bunch of my peers had to read this play in high school, but I never did. To remedy that, I did so in one sitting earlier this afternoon. I liked it. The characters, setting, and dialogue all seemed extremely genuine. What's more, it's regarded as the first American play (1959) to accurately portray a black group of people. I haven't read many plays, so I don't have much to compare the actual writing to, but one thing that did stick out at me was the heavy use of novel-like prose to describe scenes instead of stage directions. It felt more like a screenplay than one made for the stage. And I liked that about it. Three acts made for a very neat story that introduced the characters and conflicts, brought things to a head, and resolved itself politely and unambiguously. It was all that you could ask a play to be.

Mega Man X2

Quick note about the title. Though stylized as "Mega Man X squared," and though it would make more sense as "Mega Man X 2," the title is in fact Mega Man X2, with no space between the franchise name and the serial ordering number. I just felt the need to point that out. Anyway, for a while now, I've been talking up the Mega Man X series while bemoaning the short comings of the classic Mega Man series. Since I've got four more Mega Man X games to get through, I'll use this post simply to contrast the series. Naive gamers would call the X series nothing more than an offshoot and spin-off of the classic one, and purists would have you believe that the classic series is a better one, but I am firmly against both of these schools of Mega Man thought; I recognize the X series for what it is: a vast improvement over its ballyhooed predecessor. Proof of its difference can wait for another post; here, I'll simply discuss why it's better. First and foremost, while Mega Man fell into pitfalls like a sack of bricks, Mega Man X can cling to walls. This ability, available from the beginning of the very first game, makes terrain much easier to navigate and allows both the developer and the gamer to focus on the enemies rather than the environment. Also, hidden throughout the eight levels, X can find enhancements to his armor, blaster, and boots. Crush walls with your newly reinforced head. Do a horizontal dash in midair. Best of all, charge up every single weapon in your arsenal - not just the Mega Buster - for unique new attacks that are useful for navigation, defensive in nature, or extremely powerful. Impressed? I am. It's like that song - anything Mega Man can do, Mega Man X can do better. But there's even more. In the classic series, your life gauge was your life gauge, and you could do nothing to increase it (in Zelda terms, think about "pieces of heart") or replenish it fully in a hurry (think red potions or fairies). Well, guess what Mega Man X introduces? Yeah, both of those thinks. By collecting all eight hearts scattered throughout the game, X can double the size of his original health bar. And by collecting all four "sub tanks," X has four chances to refill his health gauge at moments when he's on the verge of knocking at death's door. And unless you're a hardcore veteran at a specific game in the series, you're going to need all the power-ups and enhancements you can get. Rush (Mega Man's dog) is gone, but so be it. Who needs a dog when you've got Street Fighter moves to unlock? Oh, did I not mention that? Yeah, Mega Man X can fucking dragon punch in this game (if you can find that holy grail of upgrade stations). Yep, no matter how I slice it, I can't see any reason to play the classic Mega Man series instead of the Mega Man X one. Unless you really like plummeting into those floor gaps without any chance of climbing back out.

Mega Man 8

Check it out, it's Mega Man 8! And it's finished! This completion marks the final clean-up of my Mega Man Anniversary Collection. Good riddance. The problem with the compilation was that although the games are fun and although the story evolves and changes between each iteration, the games at their core are almost exactly the same. That isn't to say that the first game can even hold a candle to Mega Man 8, either graphically or gameplay-wise. Still, were it not for the system changes (the series jumped to SNES in 7 and PlayStation in 8), the series would have gotten far too stale, probably back around 3 or 4, for me to keep caring. But I would have had to press on anyway, as that's what logging is all about: finishing what you've started. (And what you have not yet started, of course.) As far as this game itself was concerned, it was in some ways the best Mega Man yet but in some ways the worst. The difficulty actually felt slightly higher than in the past few games. But then, so did the graphical quality. This game allowed the robot masters to taunt me as I fought them, even. Awesome. The biggest pro and con of the game, however, were the cutscenes. No longer was the plot simplified into text blurbs and twenty-second intros. Instead, I was treated to multiple-minute cutscenes that took advantage of the video storage benefits of PlayStation discs. They looked pretty tacky, but only the way anything from 1990s Japan looks tacky. Anime, you know? The biggest problem with these cutscenes was the voice acting. It was horrendous. To dub it in English, they used Japanese people and the result was the typical anime bullshit where everybody sounds high-pitched, frenzied, and excited. It nearly ruined the character of Mega Man, in my eyes, to hear him speak with the voice of an eight-year-old boy. It did ruin the Dr. Light character in my eyes when I heard him speak with the zeal of a bloated old Chinese man on the other end of a take-out phone call. His name is "Light" and his is both a super genius and a force of good in the world, and now forever in my eyes he will mumble, mispronounce his R's as L's, and not emphasize a single word. So yeah. The cutscenes were great conceptually and even in practice, in terms of giving me plot and character development. But they were pulled off with such an embarrassing translation attempt that they'll always be what I remember most about the game - for negative reasons. Whatever. This compilation is done, and next up is the Mega Man X Collection. Hopefully I have a little bit more fun with that one. But we'll see.

The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood

The release of Russell Crowe's Robin Hood movie sparked my interest in clearing this book from my backlog. Allegedly, this 1883 novel is the "definitive" classic Robin Hood tale. I'm calling bullshit - nowhere in the entire book is the all-important Maid Marian featured. For twenty-two long chapters, then, Robin Hood and his band of merry men simply run around making mischief. The book is also written in a very old style of English; characters are constantly using "thee" and "thy" when they speak and adding that mysterious "-eth" suffix to their verbs. By Chapter 6 or so, I was just getting pretty bored reading about Robin Hood and strangers getting into quarterstaff fights and "thwacking" each other's heads and ribs with their cudgels. In addition to the absence of Maid Marian - the only thing keeping Robin Hood from seeming like a total homosexual in most renditions of the tale - there's no Prince John arc either. Instead, it's just the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire getting all flustered by Robin and his band of "sevenscore gay and merry men." (Sausagefest? You betcha.) Another thing that bothered me about the book was its deceptive length. My particular copy comes in at just 140 pages, but the pages are so large and the font so small that, normalized, I think the book was really something like 400 pages. Not exceptionally long, by any means, but much longer than the novella I thought I was in for. Wikipedia even has the length of the first edition of the book at over 900 pages. So, yeah - it ain't your average 140-pager. But it's done now. I can't really recommend the book to anyone; it wasn't terrible, but the episodic nature of it got very stale and didn't really lead anywhere. Stick with the movie. Specifically, the one with the cartoon fox.

The Wizard and Glass: Dark Tower 4

Well looky here, I have finished the Dark Tower 4. I now only have three books left to find out, Does Roland reach the Dark Tower with his ka-tet?!? This book was entirely a flashback, but an enjoyable one at that! We find out what drove Roland to become the heartless stonefaced gunslinger we all know and love. Speaking of love, we find out about Roland's lady love Susan. We also find out about Roland's first ka-tet the enjoyable Cuthbert with his bird skull and the ever wise Alain. There were a lot of good characters in this book, and I really liked learning about Roland's tortured past and the wizard's glass.

On a side note, LOST definitely is the Dark Tower. It's just ka.

The Naked Gun

Here's one that took a while for me to get through. I actually started this movie back at my college apartment, or in other words, at least a week ago. I got through about ten minutes before falling asleep. The same thing happened on multiple other nights before I finally finished the film this morning. It was an extremely silly movie, much like I expected it to be. After all, it's made by the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team (the guys behind such films as Airplane!, Hot Shots!, and BASEketball) and stars Leslie Nielsen. I think Airplane! was a funnier movie at the end of the day, but that doesn't mean I didn't get a good share of laughs from the absurdity throughout this movie. Worth noting was O.J. Simpson's charismatic performance as Detective Nordberg. It was a minor role, but Simpson played it beautifully. I had no idea the guy was so charismatic and able to maintain celebrity status ten or fifteen years after his playing career ended. No wonder the jury found it hard to convict him of murder. Shame that things turned out the way they did. Anyway, I did enjoy the movie enough to consider watching its two sequels and the brief TV series that spawned it, Police Squad. But I didn't love it to the point where I'd be racing off to see any of these.

Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters

First of all, I have to hand it to us. Ten posts in one day? Unreal. My six provided a backbone, Marissa's three threw in some much-needed support in the clutch, and Webber's one gave us that extra little push into the realm of double digits. Round of applause, guys. Round of applause. Okay. Good. So anyway, this was the penultimate game in the much-discussed Mega Man Anniversary Collection and it was nearly identical to the other arcade game in the offering, Mega Man: The Power Battle. This time around, I allowed (forced) my girlfriend to join me for some co-op fun. We decimated the eighteen robot monsters from previous Mega Man games without breaking a sweat. Throughout our struggles, she played as "Duo," some giant robot with a big fist for a gun blaster. She seemed like she had a lot of fun making noises with her mouth as she smashed and pummeled the opposition. Of course, she also seemed pretty bored. And I can't blame her; Mega Man games just ain't that fun in 2010. Thankfully, I have just one left before I can put the compilation disc back on the shelf for good. Of course, then comes the Mega Man X Collection. But that's a whole other beast for an entirely separate weekend.

Arrested Development Season 2

Not to be shown up by Stanvick's apparently insatiable appetite for logging I decided that I would finish up the last couple of episodes in this season and get it posted. I have watched this season two episodes at a time between working long hours and training for a half marathon with Sweeney unlike the last season that I spent long hours on and marathoned in a day or two.

This season slowed down in plot from the first season but what it lacked in a moving plot it really gained in hilarity. The repetitive jokes really seemed to hit a stride for me in the episode "Good Grief" where a series or scenes end in characters walking off with their heads low while the Charlie Brown Christmas music plays in the background. In the background of one if these scenes is a dog sleeping on top of dog house. I laughed at this one scene for a solid five minutes. It is this attention to detail and subtle humor that makes this season better than the first. Not only does Buster refer to his balls as his "Charlie Browns" but later in the season penises are referred to as "Linuses." At this point I care very little about what happens in the third season I just want to see what king of humor they throw at me next. Like a good Douglas Adams novel I say "Boo plot, yay humor!"

Mega Man 7

Oh man, I am all kinds of beating these games today. Mega Man 7, the first and only game in the series on Super Nintendo, was one I had been looking forward to playing. After all, I love Mega Man X and this game came out after that one did. How bad could it be? Fortunately, it was better and easier to play - just more modern feeling, really - than the six predecessors in the series. Sadly, though, it still had nothing on Mega Man X. In that game, you can charge your special shots, break blocks with your helmet, sprint, cling to walls, and just do more in general than you can in the Mega Man series, which seems to limit you to moving, jumping, and shooting. Oh well. One game remains in the series (not counting Mega Man 9 or 10, two games that came out recently that, frankly, I've got zero interest in right now). The game I speak of, 8, was originally on the PlayStation, placing its release somewhere in the late '90s and isolating it, both chronologically and graphically, from the rest of the series. So anything could happen with that one. One thing's for sure, though: it will be beaten, and beaten soon. I'm out for blood, dear blog readers. And there will be blood.

Mega Man 6

Whew. Maybe it was the good night's sleep, but I really enjoyed Mega Man 6. Gone are the days of shitty 8-bit graphics for the series. I mean, the graphics here are still 8-bit, but look much better. Each level had a beautifully drawn out background and you could really feel the difference between the stages as you played through them. (The first Mega Man tried to create thematic differences by merely switching up the color palate.) I'm actually really enjoying my journey through the muck and mire of my backlog that is the Mega Man Anniversary Collection. The games are taking me about two hours a pop. I'm not using walkthroughs, either. Just easy mode and a guide that tells me the optimal order to progress through the eight robot masters in each world. I think my favorite improvement to the series this time around was Mega Man's dog, Rush, finally becoming an integrated piece in Mega Man's suit. The robo-assistant has been around since the third game to do things like fling you upwards or provide you with a hoverboard, but this game does away with Rush as a separate entity and lets you smash weak points in structures and use a jet pack instead. Way cool. Sorry, Rush, but I'd much rather have the awesome self-contained abilities than a robot dog. I mean, just check out this game's cover art and try to argue with me! Just two Mega Man games remain (plus another super quick arcade game) and depending on how much I want to do with my day, I could definitely see myself calling this entire compilation finished by tonight. Amazing.

The Waste Lands

I'm still not quite sure how to go about writing about books because I don't want to ruin it for people. I'm slowly chugging along with the Dark Tower Series, and The Wastelands has been my favorite so far. It kept me glued to the book almost the entire time. Everything from the reintroduction of a character from the first book to Lud and Gasher to Blaine the Mono and the never-ending riddles, I really enjoyed the book! So far, I'm likening the Dark Tower series to a better LOST. Watching the LOST episode last night, I realized that everything will not tie together like I have been hoping for years. Questions from the first season will not be brought up in the final season. The writers truly don't have a plan. The Dark Tower on the other hand I can see coming together as a really beautiful series. So much of each characters history is based on the past which we are continually learning about, and everything does seem to connect (because it's ka!) So there you go LOST, maybe you should have taken a page out of Stephen King's book taken 20 years to write the show and come out with a solid piece of awesomeness.

Iron Man

I'm sorry. I'm a terrible blogger. I watch things, and then I just let them sit there unblogged. Steve has been yelling at me so I will blog now! I need to pull my weight (yea I'm talking to you Webber). Anywho! My friend at school works at a movie theater and can get me and whoever into movies for free, but I live with people (cough Steve) who feel the need to buy movies not see them in the movie theater so I didn't take her up on this offer much. I really wanted to see Iron Man 2 though so I dragged fellow back-bloggers Steve and Keith with me. To prep for the movie, I watched one of my Christmas gifts of Iron Man.

Boy do I love this movie! Many of you may not know, but my favorite movies are pretty horrible. I love Transformers, and this movie is right up there with it. It has witty banter and awesome actions scenes. I'm not sure what more you could really want. I enjoyed this movie for the second time just as much as the first, and I'm jealous about all the cool "real" technological stuff in his basement. Also, his cars. Man, advertising works on my like a charm because I'm about ready to go and buy myself and Audi because of all the not so discrete advertising in this movie.

Side not: I'm happy to report, I enjoyed Iron Man 2 as well! It wasn't the disaster called Transformers 2. "Congratulations, you have created an element"It was absurd, almost on a GI Joe level, but that's just how I like 'em!

Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?

This game was part of some super fun birthday presents from Steve. I have an awkward fascination for this show and tend to watch it when I find it on tv, so it was a fitting gift. The premise of the video game is simple. Make your way to the "head of the class" (if we're going for another school based trivia game) by answering questions with the help of your sometimes stereotypical fifth grade friends. By stereotypical I mean, you can probably guess which race the gym or math categories went to. However, these cookie fifth graders changed their favorite subjects all the time! Flaky bitches. I defeated homeroom winning myself a million fake dollars and all without the help of my fifth grade friends which got me a coveted xbox achievement so I can slowly get a not embarrassing gamer points total. All the questions are multiple choice or true or false except for the last question which you type in an answer, which makes for a lot of confusion when picking exactly what to type. There are also some fun multiplayer sections. I got thoroughly destroyed by Steve multiple times on a game where you are racing up a ladder trying to get to the top first. There are some fun gimmicks where you can freeze the person, but my biggest trouble was there are all these language questions in French and Spanish, but I have only taken German. Needless to say I'm failing that category. There is also a multiplayer part where you race to answer first and whoever gets to a million or doesn't get three strikes wins.

Overall, pretty fun game! Probably better than the tv show. Thankfully Jeff Foxworthy still makes fun of you throughout the game though.

Mega Man 5

I lied. Mega Man 4 did not end up being the last game of the night for me. Instead, that distinction belongs to Mega Man 5, which is for all intents and purposes the same game. Once again, you fight eight bosses before needing to fight through Dr. Wiley's fortress. This time some bird thing follows you around for the second half of the game, but there's really nothing else new to speak of. Actually, a couple of pretty cool things happened in this game. One level involved flipped gravitational fields, allowing (forcing) you to spend half the time on the ceiling. That was actually an innovative change. Another level featured some kind of watercraft that you had to ride on for the latter half of the stage. That, too, was new and unique. In general, too, the graphics seem to be improving little by little each game. It's nothing I can specifically point out and say, "this game looks a lot better than the previous games," but Mega Man 5 sure looks a whole lot better than Mega Man 2. As for the original Mega Man, the change between that one and the second one was so drastic that the two almost seem to be on different systems. So I guess I lied again; the point at which the NES Mega Man games became better, graphically speaking, was the transition between the first two games. It happened, alright. It just came early. Whatever. Just four of the ten games on this compilation remain. This isn't just doable. It's looking probable. For real, though, it's time for me to hit the hay. I'll beat the sixth game in the morning - and by morning I mean noon - and I'm so ready for the SNES and PS system jumps that the final two games will practically beat themselves. Yes, this is going to happen. It needs to happen. I will make it happen.

Mega Man 4

I wasn't lying when I said I was going to beat Mega Man 4 today. I didn't think I'd be able to beat it tonight, though. I also wasn't lying when I said that the next three games, all on the NES, wouldn't offer me jack squat in terms of new gameplay. Sure, this game introduces the charged mega blaster shot (hold down the "shoot" button to charge a shot - wow!), but everything else about it felt identical to games 2 and 3. Like, everything. Want to see for yourself? Here's the level selection screen from Mega Man 2. Here's the same screen from Mega Man 3. And here's the same screen again from Mega Man 4. I mean, am I even playing different games here? The bottom line with this game is that it's just another one of many in a long, long line of identical and uninspired installments. Whatever. Two more games and I'm out of the NES woods. I can't wait. Can I do it by tonight? I can probably do it by tonight. For now, though? It's bed time. Good night.

Mega Man 3

I'm done with school. Probably for good. With a full-time job starting in July, I've got less than two months left before I'm working until I hit some ripe old age and retire. That's a depressing thought. The world is my oyster for these next few weeks, however, and because of this I need to log as many fucking video games as I possibly can. Will I look back on the way I spent my time with eventual disdain? You betcha. But I set a goal, goddammit - a goal to beat all my video games before dying in my bed many years from now. And with a full-time job looming in the not-so-distant future, I really need to start hacking away at my seventy-something games. That is why I have decided to beat the entire Mega Man Anniversary Collection as soon as possible. There are eight full games in the compilation and two arcade ports, making ten total items to log. That's a lot. Add in my Mega Man X compilation and suddenly one franchise is responsible for like a fifth of all unbeaten games I own. As you can surmise, the exorcism of these demons from my backlog is the heart and soul of my quest. So yeah. This makes for the second game I beat tonight. I'm looking to beat two more tomorrow. No joke. All said and done, this disc needs to be finished - finished! - by next Wednesday. And then on top of that another dozen games or so need beating before the month of May is done. It's going to be a long day. I suppose I should quit blathering, though, and say something about Mega Man 3. So here it is. Mega Man 3 was pretty boring. There was nothing about Mega Man 3 that made me say, "This is better than Mega Man 2." (And really, there was nothing about 2 that blew me away more than the original, contrary to the public opinion.) Sadly, I've got five more Mega Man games to beat and the next three are all NES originals. I predict absolutely nothing revolutionary or cool about any of them. Then, for Mega Man 7, the series switches over to the SNES and wraps up on PlayStation with Mega Man 8. Even if the gameplay remains virtually unchanged, at least the graphical upgrades will give me something to look forward to. But these next three games are destined to suck. I just know it. I know that I will hate playing them and I know I'll be ten times as frustrated as entertained. Alas, such is the gauntlet one must traverse through when attempting to rid one's backlog of seventy-something games. So, without further bemoaning, onward I press!

Mega Man: The Power Battle

Man, I need to beat a lot of games this month if I'm going to maintain my goal of making progress every month. Like, a whole lot. Thankfully, this one took about twenty minutes to beat. It's an arcade game ported into the Mega Man Anniversary Collection I own. Essentially, the point of the game is that Dr. Wily has resurrected 18 of his best robot masters and is attempting some new scheme for world domination. I swear, between that guy's failures and Dr. Robotnik's, you'd think mad robot engineers would just quit the shenanigans already and try something new. Anyway, the game is divided into three... stories, I guess. One contains bosses from Mega Man and Mega Man 2, another has bosses from 3, 4, 5, and 6, and the third and final story has bosses from 7 alone. Not the most even split, but whatever. Because this is a ported arcade game, you get unlimited continues (as arcades definitely want your unlimited money) and I only needed about half a dozen to vanquish all 18 bosses. Quick and simple. And also pointless. Oh well. That's what you get when you buy a 10-game compilation disc.

Little Nuggets of Wisdom

I received this book yesterday as a tongue-in-cheek graduation gift. Fortunately, just a few nights ago, I learned who Chuy Bravo was. Up late on the day before graduation but without any DVDs to watch, games to play, or books to read, I turned on the TV to do some channel-surfing. I settled on E!'s The Soup and when it ended, on came a show called Chelsea Lately that I'd never heard of. It was okay. The author of this very book - a Mexican little person - was host Chelsea Handler's assistant. Though I never heard her call him "Little Nugget" in the ten minutes I saw before giving up on the show and drifting off to sleep, it has been made clear in this book that that is indeed Bravo's chief moniker. So there you go. Now, as far as this book itself goes, it made for an enjoyable albeit totally silly read. The premise is that Bravo is offering life lessons and advice on all sorts of topics from dating to fashion to music. Each of these "nuggets" is merely a sentence or three in length and takes up an entire page. It made the 180-page book a very quick read. One page, for instance, merely says, "Never underestimate the power of bacon." I enjoyed the book, however, and although it was short, it's clear that plenty of thought was put into each little nugget of wisdom to make them as humorous as possible. I'm still a little unclear on who actually wrote the book, though. Was it Bravo, who never spoke in the ten minutes I saw of his TV show, and who allegedly can only speak Spanish, and not even very well? Or, was it this "Tom Brunelle" guy mentioned briefly in the bottom lefthand corner of the cover and nowhere else at all? Whoever it was, I enjoyed the sense of humor. But probably not enough to make me go out of my way to watch Chelsea Lately again.

Seinfeld: Season 7

Alright. It's time to take a break from writing my senior thesis in order to write a Back-Blogged post. I was really brief and terse with my Season 6 recap. So brief, in fact, that I forgot to point out the only two things I wanted to - that it had a clip show (blech!) and that apparently it took all the way until Season 6 to learn that Kramer's first name was Cosmo. I guess having known that his name was Cosmo all along, I never noticed that he was never referred to as anything other than "Kramer" until Season 6. How about that? Anyway, that was Season 6. This is Season 7. And Season 7, sadly, just wasn't as good as Seasons 5 and 6. It's hard to put a finger on why that was the case. I guess there wasn't a lack of memorable episodes; this season brought with it the Soup Nazi, George's unhappy engagement, and Kramer and Newman's trek to Michigan in a mail truck to return thousands bottles and cans for ten cents. Maybe what did this season in was an excess of forgettable episodes. Some of the situations just got a little too silly. Seinfeld has always been the "show about nothing," but the nothingness has slowly been drifting from the mundane to the improbable little by little. Oh well. Now, I'm still looking forward to the final two seasons, but rumor has it that the quality of the series is all downhill from here. If it is, no big deal. The series is so iconic that no matter how bad Seasons 8 and 9 are (Larry David split after Season 7 - that can't be a good thing), I'll never regret having seen them all. Afterward, just one complete television series will remain backlogged: The Wire. I'll get there, sure enough. But let's not jump the gun here. First, I need to watch the last two seasons of Seinfeld. And before I can do that, I need to finish this thesis. Now, back to MS Word!

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

When this game came out to great critical acclaim some seven years ago, I was a skeptic. After all, I'd dabbled with the series way back in the day on my dad's first laptop computer and remembered it as nothing special. Recently though, when trying to come up with a comprehensive "best video games of the decade" list, I was reminded once again of the general public's love affair with this game. I gave it a purchase - I'm terrible at keeping my backlog from growing, I know - and beat it earlier tonight. Consider me thoroughly impressed. The game took me nine hours to beat with no walkthrough whatsoever and I disliked maybe a total of fifteen minutes of it. The reason? The combat system. Vanquishing enemies is not really the main point of Sands of Time, but palace guards and sand monsters will try to thwart your progress now and again all the same. What's annoying about the way combat works is that Sands of Time is one of those games where the baddies can block every attack you make; you need to wait for them to wind up and take a swing first, exposing themselves to attacks. Fortunately, you too can block all attacks just by holding down the guard button. Due to this, every battle is a trial of patience more than technique. In the latter half of the game, I managed to find peace with this, but early on I was very frustrated at points with the boring and annoying fights I needed to endure. I suppose I see why some combat was necessary in an adventure game, but honestly the game would have been just as fun (if not more fun) without it. But enough about the bad - and really, that's all there is that's bad - let's talk about what makes this game so great. Namely, the puzzle and platforming elements of the game. The Prince can swing and leap from poles and beams like a gibbon, can wall jump as well as Mario, feels as comfortable as Lara Croft when dangling from ledges, and can run along vertical walls as if he was (virtual) Tony Hawk on a skateboard. In general, merely getting from Point A to Point B is an absolute thrill. And that's really what the game consists of. It's very linear; there's almost nothing "optional" to find save for some health and sand power-ups (we'll get to the "sand" concept soon enough) and there are no sidequests or secret rooms. Instead, the Prince must simply traverse an enormous palace armed only with his extreme athleticism, a sword, and the "Dagger of Time." The Dagger of Time is pretty special, because it is the only device that can be used to recollect the Sands of Time after something goes awry early on in the game. The Prince can then use the sand to turn back time. This comes in especially handy when fucking up high-flying stunts and falling great lengths to your death; just press L1 and, poof, time will run backwards as you careen back upwards toward the pole you fell from. People familiar with Braid will find the "rewind" dynamic almost identical to that game's. Now, you can't just be reckless; you only have a certain number of sand orbs and to refill them you'll need to find a white glowing light or kill some enemies. Sand also allows you to do special attacks, but again, it's tough to give a shit about the combat in this game. Anyway, Prince of Persia isn't just a few easy fights amid a gigantic jungle gym (though that's actually a pretty apt description of what I've covered so far); perhaps best of all the elements of the game were the puzzles. For the most part, these weren't real "thinking" puzzles. They were timing puzzles. Can you pull a switch, monkey your way across the room with blazing speed, dodge the spinning blades, avoid the pitfalls, and make it through the door before it closes? Yeah, probably, but only because the Prince is ridiculously agile, mobile, and strong. I meant it when I said that nothing in this game aside from battles - not one puzzle or obstacle course - was something I didn't like. It was a very pleasant surprise and lived up to all the hype and then some. I'm a skeptic no more; on the contrary, I'm looking forward to buying (ugh!) and beating (yeah!) the other two (soon to be three) games in the Sands of Time series. But not yet. Not yet.

2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa

Once every four years, EA Sports gets to release two soccer games in the same year on account of the World Cup. Because of that, this is the third soccer video game I've played in as many months. This game is feels very much the same as FIFA 2010 to the point where it almost seems like it would have been better as downloadable content. Considering the fact that FIFA 2010 has the world teams as well as all the important league teams to choose from, there is no reason to justify buying this one over FIFA 2010. Still, I definitely had more fun playing the road to the world cup in this game than I did playing as Chelsea on a road to the English Premiere League Championship.

The difficulty in this game is much more balanced than in Pro Evolution Soccer 2010. Now, playing on normal is pretty challenging when you are the United States and you must face the likes of Argentina and Brazil. In PES, playing on normal resulted in winning games 8-0, whereas playing on hard resulted in losing 1-0. Those games were never fun. In this game, as we advanced in the tournament [from friendly matches to group-play matches to the sweet 16 (not sure what it's called in soccer) matches], the difficulty became gradually harder. As the USA, we were able to trounce teams like Guatemala, but were in nail-biters with Argentina, France, and Portugal.

These nail-biters are worth talking about as they were the last three games of our tournament. Let me start by saying that Tim and I (playing together) swore that we would only play the world cup once. If we lost, we were done for the next four years. This oath we took makes our performance so much more memorable. In the quarterfinals, we won against France 3-2 with a clutch header in the 85th minute. In the semifinals, we won against Portugal 3-2 with a clutch goal in the 120th minute (the last possible minute we could have scored in before penalty kicks - we did not know how to do penalty kicks and as such, would have lost horribly). And finally, in the World Cup game, the United States avenged a loss and reigned supreme over Argentina (the only team we failed to beat in group play) in the 90th minute with the most beautiful goal you'll ever see. With a final score of 2-1, the United States was finally able to establish itself as the greatest soccer country in the world. God bless America.

This game is awesome, but get FIFA 2010 if you want more replay value.

Resident Evil 2

My review of the first Resident Evil game basically complained about the insane level of difficulty required to beat it- even with the easier character, the easiest setting, and strictly following a shortest-route walkthrough, the game was tough. I ended the review mentioning that I have seen the sequel, Resident Evil 2, on some top all-time games lists and hoped for the best. Well, my prayers have been answered- RE2 was awesome. The game has a similar setting- a huge mansion-like police station followed by an underground Umbrella Corporation lab, compared with the original's huge mansion-like, um, mansion followed by an underground Umbrella Corporation lab. You also get to play as a few different characters, and of course I opted for Leon Kennedy- the badass everyman from Resident Evil 4. The biggest improvement here, however, are the enemies themselves. In the first installment, most zombies took plenty of shots to kill and would frequently come back to life. This made exploration a pain- most of the time I tried to run through rooms and avoid wasting my precious ammo, because what was the point? In Resident Evil 2, the zombies you kill stay dead (for the most part) and thus you can take all the time you want to explore, figure out puzzles, and plan your next move. Big improvement. This made the game easier, certainly, but much more fun overall. I never even had to turn to a walkthrough! Some of the old missteps are still here- the graphics are terrible (this was a straight port of a PS1 game), the plot and voice-overs are cheesy, and the bad camera is still just as bad. But that didn't matter much to me, I had a blast. Resident Evil 2 lived up to the hype of being one of the high points of the series, and has me excited to finish the rest of them- only RE3, Zero (the prequel), and Code: Veronica remain, and I'm sure I'll get to all of them eventually.

Prince of Persia (1989)

Here's a throwback. I didn't know that this 1989 computer game was an unlockable secret in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Fortunately, the game takes less than an hour to beat. No, really - if you spend more than an hour playing it, the evil vizier will kill the kidnapped princess. Can you traverse the twelve levels in time to stop him from doing so? With a walkthrough in hand, I sure could. Ultimately, it was nothing fun or memorable. I'm sure the game was a decent one for 1989, but by today's standards it just felt like a struggle not to fuck up when it came to timing jumps. Actually, I take that back; Metroid came out in 1986 and Super Mario Bros. 3 did in 1988, so the bar for great 8-bit platformers had already been set. So even for 1989, it wasn't so great. Oh well. The good news is that Sands of Time is pretty kick-ass so far. I have no idea why they bothered to extend the Prince of Persia franchise by making it, but I'm glad they did so. Expect a post on that game to come soon.

Darksiders

All I knew about Darksiders before purchasing it was that it was a) well-reviewed and b) essentially a mature, post-apocalyptic Zelda-clone. If that doesn't make you want to put down what you're doing now and start playing it, then I don't know what will. Darksiders sees you not as a prepubescent elf-boy, but as War, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. It seems the battle between Heaven and Hell has started prematurely and War's been summoned to get to the bottom of things. If the plot seems kind of cliche, I'd have to agree with you. The truth is, Darksiders feels like a very unoriginal game. A few people who watched me play bits and pieces all came to the conclusion that it's God of War meets Legend of Zelda. The comparisons seem apt. But is that really a bad thing? I haven't even played God of War, yet I've heard great things about the combat system, which is supposedly what Darksiders is imitating here. And who doesn't love the dungeon exploration and zany items of the Zelda series? Also of note were the World of Warcraft inspired character and environment designs, Gears of War and MLB 98 levels of steroids, and even the gun from Portal. And guess what, they all come together excellently. The game was about 18 hours long, and at no point got boring. If you've played a little too much of the previously mentioned games, then you might get bummed out by the lack originality. But if you're looking for a game to hold you over before the next Zelda game comes out, then Darksiders might be just what you're looking for.

Pokémon Gold

Laugh all you want, but it really felt nice to finally cast this game aside. I first started playing it around what must have been ten years ago when the Pokémon craze was at its apex. I remember getting to Goldenrod City and catching a Sudowoodo (some kind of rock-based tree) before giving up on the second generation altogether. Then, last summer I started playing the game again and once again got to the same point and quit for a while. But a week or so ago, I picked Pokémon Gold up and decided not to put it away until it was beaten. And now it is. The elite four and the champion Lance himself were vanquished just moments ago and all I really used to get the job done was a Level 50 "Feraligatr" (my starter Pokémon, a giant, roided-out alligator) and occasionally a Level 45 "Amphobos" (some kind of electric sheep/kangaroo thing). The other four Pokémon on my final roster were all below Level 30. Ridiculous. Now, I consider this game beaten because the credits rolled after I beat the "Elite Four" and Lance; technically, I could now go on and collect all eight badges from Kanto, the world from the original Pokémon games (Red and Blue). But I mean, what's the point? I beat the shit out of that world when I was in fifth grade. Why go back now? What would that prove? Actually, the biggest turning point for me in Pokémon Gold came when I realized it was a downright waste of time to try to become a Pokémon master and "catch 'em all." Early on in any Pokémon game, every time you see a new Pokémon you feel the urge to add it to your collection. And where does that leave you, just a third into the game? Chock-full of shitty, useless Pokémon. My breaking point came when I reached a dungeon wherein there was a very rare Pokémon that was only encountered in one out of every twenty battles, and also only during the morning. Oh, and its only move allowed it to escape from battle, so any attempt to catch it needed a miracle to succeed. I must have spent at least two hours last August waking up to my alarm, turning on the game, struggling for a while, and ending up late to work. Stupid. Pointless. Fuck "catching 'em all;" my motto, upon taking up the game again a few weeks ago, was "gotta kill 'em all." With a new purpose in my Poké-life - just destroy everything and never use a Pokéball again - I stampeded through the final five gyms and all other dungeons the game threw at me. I may not have ended up a "Pokémon master," but at least I reign supreme as the champion. Pokémon Gold has plenty of shortcomings. Battle messages are abundant and unfold at a snail's pace, lengthening the game substantially. The whole experience was similar to an RPG for beginners, which I suppose more or less is what the game was. My biggest gripe with the Pokémon series in general is the amount of slowdown that occurs throughout the game. Healing your Pokémon? Here's a five-second animation and ditty. Picking up an item? Wait five seconds for three lines of text to congratulate you. My second-biggest gripe is that Pokémon can only know four moves at once. I'm calling bullshit on that. In the anime series, Pikachu has like twenty goddamn moves in his arsenal. Why can't my water Pokémon know more than one move in addition to the mandatory-for-traveling "surf," "whirlpool," and "waterfall?" My third-biggest gripe? The "boxes" system on Bill's PC. When I swap my Pokémon in and out of my lineup, I shouldn't need to screw around with boxes first. Why can't I just dump every Pokémon I'm not using into the same easily-accessible location? I have plenty more gripes, but now I just sound bitter. So I'll stop. Beating Pokémon Gold was actually a pretty big accomplishment for me as the game was one of the oldest in my backlog. The big question now is, "what to do about Silver?" Pokémon Silver is quite literally the same game as Pokémon Gold. The only differences include a few Pokémon that are exclusive to one or the other. So part of me considers both games one and the same, and thus, both done. Of course, another part of me is calling bullshit on that part of me. I suppose someday I'll return to Pokémon Silver and try some kind of themed playthrough or specific challenge. But not yet. Not yet.

The Trumpeter of Krakow

This Newbery winner was pretty much like every other Newbery winner I've bitched about on this blog: short and simple, but still no fun to read. Coming in at 200 pages or so, this 1928 book (yeah, the Newbery was around in 1928 - weird, huh?) is about a Polish family from the 15th century. Or maybe it was about a boy. Or maybe they were all Ukrainian. And maybe it was the 13th century. My mom must have bought this book for me some ten or twelve years ago. And I can't blame her. I was a pretty nerdy kid at the time and thought medieval times were totally cool. But even back then, when I was both a kid and into the subject matter, I still found the book pretty boring. Oh well. The important thing is that yet another Newbery winner has been conquered; soon, my backlog will be free of books aimed at twelve-year-olds. What a day that will be.

X-Files: Season 2

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Candide

The bad news is that I have once again neglected to read longer books already in my backlog in order to acquire and read a short classic. The good news is that I really enjoyed this one. To understand what makes Voltaire's 1759 satire so great, you must first take a crash course in the prevailing doctrine of philosophy in Europe at the time: optimism. Basically, in Voltaire's day, the "great minds" of Europe, in an attempt to explain all of the evil and sadness in the world, simply said that everything happens for the best and that we are living in the best of all possible worlds. For example, if an earthquake killed thousands of people, the optimists would find the silver lining and point out that masons would now grow rich rebuilding the city, the bodies of the victims would now provide great nutrients for the soil, and heirs of the victims would inherit estates of their own. The general gist of the period was, "put your own sufferings aside and realize that in the bigger picture they are a necessary means to a greater good." Such optimistic and selfless ideologies may seem positive at first glance, but Voltaire saw them for what they really were: indifference to tragedy and an unwillingness to try to prevent or assuage it. When everyone walks around with a "shit happens; so what?" mentality, suffering goes largely ignored and unnoticed. So Voltaire, a great satirist, took up his pen and got to work writing Candide, the story of a man who endures and witnesses unspeakable tragedy and suffering. Governments and religious parties alike are targeted numerous times by Voltaire as he exposes some of their various inhumane practices with the most indifferent and "optimistic" of tones. The result is a giant mockery of pretty much everything that 18th century Europe had to offer - including the traditional "romantic adventure" genre for storytelling. I was pleasantly surprised by how well a book from 250 years ago held up today. The dark humor seemed ageless and I was able to find in Voltaire's writing shades of both his own contemporaries, like Jonathan Swift, but also 20th century satirists such as Vonnegut and Heller. The whole thing made for an extremely fast-paced and adventure-packed read that was intentionally over-the-top in its epic scope and yet still brief enough to finish in two hours. While you could extract many typical one line morals from different points in the story - "be careful what you wish for;" "money can't buy happiness;" "a fool and his money are soon pardoned" - the overwhelming message seems to be unique to Voltaire's era: "this is not the best of all possible worlds and not everything happens for the best." Simple (and obvious), sure, but still extremely controversial in its own time. This novella is for the pessimist and realist in everyone. I totally recommend it.

April 2010 Recap

First, let me breathe a sigh of relief. Whew. I almost didn't do it. I nearly couldn't live up to my New Years resolutions this month. But I did. I finished more books, games, and DVDs than I purchased, and I maintained my pace of two completions for every purchase. But the results weren't pretty. In March, I lamented that I wasn't very good at stopping myself from new acquisitions. Yet in April, I bought five games, six movies, and seven books. Yikes! Fortunately, my completion numbers were, respectively, seven, ten, and nine. I made a net gain (loss?) of two items in each category. But I could have made so much more! The month of May will be an interesting one. I will be done with all of my finals and papers by the end of the week and will essentially have three weeks of free time to round out the month. However, my birthday also occurs in May and acquisitions will be inevitable. Oh, and I'm already six purchases deep. Oops.

But enough about me. Let's look at the group. We certainly had an impressive April, setting a new monthly record with 50 total loggings. This broke January's record of 48. Incredible. The four newer members of the blog (who are neither Sweeney nor myself) continue to impress me with their dedication. Some more than others, sure, but everyone is still contributing. Here's hoping we can stay strong and make the summer one full of logging. You know, in addition to enjoying the weather. Obviously.