Go for Broak!

Absolutely Nothing

2011-02-03T10:07:00.003-07:00

So how can a person who literally does nothing all day hope to be respected by the rest of humankind? "Nothing" generally consists of occasionally letting the dog out so he can bark at the neighbor's dog -- because to hell with that whiny chihuahua -- and maybe exerting the necessary force to push the "change-channel" button on the channel-changer. That's really what the last four or five years has been for me; just, you know, watching TV. Eating. Sleeping. More or less. That's what I hope will be on my epitaph: "Ate, Slept, Defecated. A Life in Words."

Ah, but with no particular specials skills that rise above the cream of the crop, how does one stay motivated to keep moving? Knowing that you're an inadequate human being certainly doesn't help one's positive outlook on life, and doing "nothing" cannot be properly displayed on a resume without expecting a raise of the eyebrow and maybe a few laughs from a would-be employer. Nothing is something! Can't you see it? It takes one jerk-of-a-person to say, "Hey, I'm blind, but I'm going to climb this 29,000+ foot mountain anyway just because, yeah, you know, no biggie," and another person to say, "I'm alive and I was given the tools necessary to make a difference in the world, but to hell with it, I'm gonna do jack shit. Ooh, look, reruns of Seinfeld!" That...that is tenacity: though the world expects it all from you, "nothing" is on the top of your to-do list. It's supremely difficult! I have first hand experience!

Tom Hanks' fictional character -- who will be unfortunately referenced here -- was once marooned on a island with just a volleyball, a productly-placed Fed-Ex package, and his sanity. He started talking to the volleyball and he didn't open the potentially life-saving package, but despite these two acts of lunacy, his sanity still existed within the confines of his newly-Robinson-Crusoe-christened heart. However, he lost it once he wanted to get back to civilization. See, a lot of what someone does (I'm assuming) alone on a deserted island is absolutely nothing. You do what you need to survive (harpoon the fish, break some coconuts, conduct oral surgery with an ice-skate, etc.) but even then...you end up doing a whole lot of nothing. It breaks a man. Accomplishing something is easy. You just tell yourself, "I'm going to [for lack of a better [and non-repetitious] example] climb a mountain today! Okey-dokey, here I go!" At the end of the day, you feel good about yourself -- you've gotten your exercise, you've gotten your scenic vista, and you've done something that only a chosen few [read: possible thousands] will get the privilege to do.

Doing the exact opposite and still feeling good about yourself? It's rough. It's like grabbing your metaphorical soul and violently rubbing it against a rusted cheese-grater. Tom Hanks' character couldn't mentally handle wasting away doing nothing with his life, so he broke. He went back to civilization to pursue "accomplishments" and "dreams".

What a pussy.

Random Dreams: Part Five

2010-10-29T10:05:00.000-06:00

We were out on the Florida Marlins' baseball field, which, for some reason, was really on the beach. Home plate was the shallowest of the positions on the field, but near-everything else was out in the ocean, with the poor center-fielder being the deepest of all. I was the third base ball boy, and I kept missing every foul that would roll in my direction. Finally, upset by this, one of the umpires decided to start throwing me pop-flies. The crowd -- consisting of a bunch of 300-pound fat people -- shouted in anger when I could not catch a single one of them. Who could blame me? I was technically treading water while trying to catch baseballs.

The inning was over, and I trudged into the dugout, which also happened to be a seafood restaurant. Unfortunately, at that time, the tide came in, along with a bunch of sword fish with saws for noses and sharks with fish hooks for teeth. Course, they started biting us. Clutching high onto a nearby chain-link fence, I looked down at the water below me and saw them ferociously hunting for a shred of savory Florida human leg meat. I could have sworn a morbidly obese woman was grabbed and taken into the depths of the ocean (or baseball field, in this case). The tide eventually subsided, and I sullenly walked into the dugout/restaurant.

However, as with most weird dreams, I was almost crushed by a woman who was not 300-pounds, but closer to a thousand. I could clearly see the glistening ripples in her magnificent fat rolls jiggle as she came rolling towards me. Helpless -- powerless -- I tried my best to run, but this woman was more or less taking up every square inch of the place. Like a steamroller traveling at about three miles an hour, she undulated towards me until finally, my feet moved and I ran the hell out of there.

Another obese woman screamed -- not because I was almost crushed to death, but because the second-baseman was being scooped up whole into the mouth of a great white shark. That's when the phone rang in real life.

Like Running Errands in Animal Crossing

2010-10-28T12:30:00.003-06:00

One of the most satisfying aspects about playing a game in the Fire Emblem series is the ability to watch a terribly weak, low-stat character grow into something of an unstoppable tank. Granted, depending on said character, this could be easier said than done -- some units, by design, weren't entirely meant to be an all-around great warrior. Sometimes you just end up with someone like Meg.

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, being a remake of the very first game in the series, has that character-building, cocaine-like addiction. Chances are, you'll find a character that looks particularly cool, and you'll say, "All right, Barst, I'm going to give you this hand-axe and this regular iron axe, and we're gonna tear through hundreds of enemy soldiers without a sweat." Once or twice, Barst will get struck down by an unlucky critical hit thanks in part to a agile sword-user. You'll curse, soft-reset the game, and remember to not send Barst anywhere near that enemy again. The blue-haired unit you'll have by the end of the game will statistically look much different than single-digit rookie at the beginning. Whether or not the designers feel the same way, Fire Emblem has always been about growth and mostly forward momentum, both systematically and thematically.

If you happened to play the ninth Fire Emblem game, Path of Radiance, first, you'll more than likely won't be able to enjoy the remake on the DS quite as much as you would, say, Radiant Dawn. Shadow Dragon feels extremely bare-bones. Many of the recruitable characters have maybe a few lines of dialogue, and then disappear into the ranks of your army and are never used or seen again. And those passive abilities -- as seen in the better entries of the series -- that are able to make your characters into hulking behemoths of destruction? They're...not here in Shadow Dragon. Supports, too, are non-existent.

Remember that this is a remake of the very-first Fire Emblem; the series has definitely grown and flourished with improvements over the years, despite still having the same basic formula. Still, Shadow Dragon's overall design just doesn't really hold up -- one, a majority of the maps are giant, sprawling landscapes, with maybe a tree or a bridge here and there. While "giant sprawling landscapes" is easily something a publishing company could use as a positive bullet-point, it doesn't work here, since the open areas really leave no room for any intricate strategy. A line of cavaliers could race their way toward your party, and the only real way to deal with them is to form a wall of characters yourself or send one of your over-leveled units out into the front guard. If you send a two-man party out to confront the enemy, chances are they'll swarm one of your characters and stab him or her to death. Since you're fighting on wide-open landscapes, you really don't have much of a choice in regards to character placement.

Every Fire Emblem's main protagonist (or "Lord"), begins the game, much like every other character, as a vulnerable marshmallow. Marth, in this instance, is no different. The problem here doesn't lay with the fact that he'll get handily crushed early on, but instead lays with how he's the only person with any diplomatic skills. See, as a player, you'll want to use Marth. He's one of the better characters in the game! But most of the time, you'll have him running errands by visiting villages and capturing castles -- not fighting enemies and not gaining experience. No other character can visit a village, talk to the locals, and thus grab a few rare items. Here's a general scenario: you'll have your main fighting force on one side of the map; meanwhile, Marth with be on the polar opposite, collecting maybe a red gem and definitely little experience. Next minute, you'll have taken out the enemy general (usually a bulky bastard with a Killer Axe), and Marth will take another three turns to rush from that village to finally conquer and clear the map. The "constantly-pushing-forward" flow found in other Fire Emblem games is somewhat missing here.

Yes, forward momentum -- usually, as the underdog country, this series has your army pushing through hordes of enemies into order to reach a specific spot on a map (such as a castle). The designers sometimes switch the objectives up a bit by creating a different scenario where you're maybe defending your home base (as seen in Path of Radiance) or simply task you with a "defeat-100-enemies-before-all-hell-breaks-loose" objective (in Radiant Dawn). These missions generally stand out; not only do they mix up the tedium for something different, but they also have some sort of meaty gravitas behind them story-wise. When you're not trying to accomplish a different objective, you're conquering waves of troops -- you're moving forward, getting closer to that long-sought goal. Nearly every mission in Shadow Dragon is similar to this as well -- which is fine for the most part -- but there exists a certain amount of tedium here, probably because Marth is quite often playing errand boy. You're not moving forward. Instead, you're traipsing through another day of Animal Crossing.

Intelligent Systems, the minds behind the Fire Emblem series, is now working on a remake of the sequel to Shadow Dragon, and it largely looks the same. Whether or not the game will follow in the footsteps of the blandness set by its predecessor remains to be seen, but hopefully it won't be afraid to mix things up a bit.

Random Dreams: Part Four

2010-01-21T10:31:00.002-07:00

I don't know why, but I've been dreaming a lot lately. I'm guessing it's because I'm getting too much REM sleep, due to the fact that whenever the alarm erupts into a fit of unwanted noise, I just end up hitting the snooze button. Right now, sleeping a little later is something I'm allowed to do! Other times, say, when I have an actual job, I won't be given the pleasure of such weird dreams.

Anyway! This morning I rode through some wet cement on my bike, but it wasn't entirely on purpose. I just didn't see it before I rode through it, that's all! Unfortunately, the Mexican dude there that had just laid the cement dashed over to berate me -- he didn't speak a word of English, though, so he had his young son translate for him. Why this kid wasn't in school was beyond me, but here he was, translating angry words in my general direction. I apologized, and the issue was quickly resolved.

A couple days ago, in reality, I had watched Pineapple Express, a movie you can tell was made just because the producers wanted to make it, which is nice in an industry where money rules the place. Sadly, the film isn't actually any good. Never mind the critique -- the point is, Amber Heard played the protagonist's girlfriend in Pineapple Express, so, of course, she also happened to appear in my dream. Nothing naughty went down, mind you! We just ended up playing a game of tag.

Then her mom showed up and told Amber she had to go home. Sigh.
Bye, Amber. Don't know why you were in a bikini, but I guess that's just how things are 'round here.

Random Dreams: Part Three

2010-01-19T16:20:00.002-07:00

When I awoke this morning, I remember that I had dreamt the ground opening up and spitting giant, flaming boulders upon the surface of the earth. These boulders were the size of buildings; I could gauge the size because these fiery colossi demolished a few when they first began erupting from the earth. Of course, I ran at full speed away from them, and, of course, since I am able to tell the whole story of the dream, I was able to get away.
The strange aspect about the boulders is that they just didn't roll around like normal rocks effected by normal laws of physics, no -- they seemed to be controlled by a will of their own, and if they spotted any person or building in the vicinity of their "eyesight", they rolled in that specific direction. Luckily, I was the protagonist of my own dream. As such, protagonists do not die, much less get crushed by gigantic, flaming boulders.

A little later in the dream, I escaped from downtown and hijacked, of all vehicles, a Hummer. Thing is, I couldn't drive it out of the parking lot, the thing was so big. So, I ended up attempting to climb this steep incline, and thus the Hummer rolled onto its top.

That's when I woke up.

This Isn't About The Hangover, But Here's a Picture of the Movie Anyway to Make This Post More Readable

2010-01-09T12:33:00.004-07:00

I was at Target last night, trying to find a fucking copy of The Hangover, which, by the way, is not a movie worth the effort of scouring an entire valley to find. The great thing (note: sarcasm) about living in a small valley is that many stores don't receive as many shipments as they would, say, in the city -- as such, you've got to put a little more "oomph" into your search than normal. We don't even have any normal movie-rental places. So, you're Indiana Jones, and you're traversing deadly, icy streets and dodging oncoming deer to finally discover a copy of a sacred film where four dudes get in some deep shit in Vegas.

But surprisingly, this worthless block of words isn't about The Hangover, no sir; instead, it's going to be a short analysis of how my mind functions in an otherwise normal situation. Here's the dealio: we're at Target, we've gotten our Sacred Cow of a Movie, and we're standing in line. Pretty normal. To point out that, hey, I'm pretty broke and I really shouldn't be buying anything, let alone a movie I probably am not going to like all that much, I make this comment about how I'm from Aspen and can afford every little item that may come into contact with my well-manicured fingertips. I try to say this with a posh-British accent, hoping to get some sort of reaction.

I get a reaction, but not the one I was expecting.

"Well, aren't you pretty snobby."

This comes from the cashier, who's currently checking out the people in front of us. I turn, looking deep into her eyes, trying to figure out whether she's serious or not. Oh, she's pretty fucking serious, you can tell by the look on her face. My friend, fortunately, says, "Oh, he's not really from Aspen."

No response from Miss Priss.

I'm pretty dumbfounded at this point, because a) who takes anything seriously these days when you've got the fucking Terminator in office and b) I could set fire to a pile of fresh dog shit in the middle of the store and nobody would notice, I'm that inconspicuous. Anything I say is dust in the wind.

Long story short, the cashier has someone take over for her before she can ring us up, she walks away, and we leave.

It's not that great of a story, really, especially not one to write about. Thing is, I wasn't really angry that this person whom I had never met was calling me out on something that actually wasn't true, no -- I felt guilty because my performance wasn't up to snuff. Normally, you can tell when I'm being sarcastic, but here was this person who did not know that some dumb comment I made was actually, truly falsified. I am not from Aspen! I do not have a Bently sitting in my garage! I don't speak in a posh-British accent! I don't need a monocle to see clearly through my left eye!

More than anything, I wanted to apologize to her because I hadn't given her my best. Otherwise, she would have been in hysterics about how funny the entire I-have-no-money-yet-I'm-buying-this-completely-overrated-movie situation was. It's pretty funny! It's not, but still. Why so serious?

P.S. -- I Wuv You, Target! Thank you for relieving me of such undignified greenery!

Gee-tar Siren Song

2010-01-05T13:05:00.013-07:00

What exactly is the appeal of being able to play a guitar, anyway?

You get women. And...that's about it.

As I see it, the guitar not only seems like a tool to create music, but also the male version of a siren call to woo the fairer sex.

Way back when, I tried to play the guitar. I thought it would make me cooler -- that I would be able to enter the annual high school talent show and have all the girls hoot and holler and whistle as I strummed the chords required to play whatever song I scientifically decided would earn me the most, how you say, feminine street cred. Even if I wasn't handsome, even if I had a rotten personality, even if I consistently shot loogies from my mouth whenever I spoke; if I was able to play the guitar, none of that would have mattered. I would be a god. An ugly, disgusting, unlikeable, musical god. But the women would love me.

All right, so maybe that's a little exaggerated. Still, there's no denying that the guitar has some societal power here in the world. You can't say something to that effect of the french horn, for example.

Before I was physically and mentally conscious of myself, my instrument of choice was, of all things, the flute. I had probably chosen it because I was actually able to get some sound out of the damned thing. Thinking back on middle school band class now, it's strange how my classmates' chosen instruments perfectly complimented their categorical personality. All the loud people played the trumpets, the stoners and underachievers banged the drums, the shallow valley girls tooted and squeaked their clarinets, the tall people played the tubas, the didn't-quite-fit-in-a-specific-category people played the trombones, and the frickin' dainty-ass wafers were on the flutes. I was quiet and shy; thus, I played the flute.

I remember a call my band teacher made to my parents before I had made the flute my permanent instrument of choice: he wanted to make sure that it was all right if I, a certified teenage dude, played such a homosexual instrument.

"Why the hell not?" I think was my response at the time. "I can get sound out of it, so I'd like to play it."

Some years later, I quit. I wasn't getting any better, and most of the material we were playing just didn't interest me anymore. I was tired of music -- at least, tired of playing music. So, despite all of that, I decided to pick up the guitar instead, though not because I thought I would enjoy it, but because it would get me somewhere. Playing the guitar meant I was moving up in the world. All I needed to know was the three chords required to play Hey Jude, and my course for success was set. Money would start rolling in by the millions, I would have to hire a couple bodyguards to help stave off the tons upon tons of women from lovingly suffocating me, and best of all, I would be happy just knowing that it took little to no skill to get on that gleaming, shiny pedestal of Gee-tar Awesome.

Okay, so I don't really think like that, but it still stumps me as to why the guitar is such a nationally-lauded instrument. I've boiled it down to a couple reasons:

1) The Rock-Star Lifestyle

Seriously, if you're a rock-star, you're a god. Being able to shred some sort of quick melody, your fingers jumping up and down the frets, is more heroically viable than conducting heart surgery on a dying patient. Add in some head-banging and long hair, and to the guitar-loving world, you can do no wrong. You could insult somebody's mom and get away with it -- that's how loved you are. I guess the rock-star lifestyle isn't what it used to be, though, but that's probably because now anyone can get in on a taste of the action. How, you ask? Well:

2) It's Because of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, Bra!

A lot of musicians have been complaining in the past couple years about the fictional reality that these artificial music games create for the millions upon millions of dorm-room kids who have played them. These musicians claim that pressing buttons on a plastic guitar does not, in any way, compare to actually strumming a bona fide guitar -- instead, these dorm room kids should get out and actually pick up a piece of the real action. While these sentiments are entirely true -- bragging about how you can conquer some Dragonforce riff in Guitar Hero is kind of sad, really, when you think about whether or not you could actually play the song on something not made entirely of plastic -- I think the main problem musicians have with these games is that they give everybody a glimpse of what only a select few musicians could hope to experience. It's like finally joining an exclusive club where you're able to eat genuine crab and lobster all day, gorging in some succulent deliciousness; then you find out that they make fake crab and lobster and sell them at the local supermarket, a place where the Average Joe goes. Oh, and the fake stuff tastes just as good.

3) The Guitar Has Nothing to do with the Mouth

If you've played some sort of instrument that requires a certain amount of lung capacity, then you certainly know about the amount of saliva that accumulates every time you blow into the thing. Spit valves, for example, are kind of nasty. And so is the human mouth, a place where bad breath could run rampant, or where teeth could be the most delicious shade of yellow. Or brown, even! So all the women out there will be delighted to know that the guitar has nothing to do with that orifice. They can rest easy. That's why all of the most "romantic" instruments (I'm thinking Lady and the Tramp here, with the accordion), don't need any wind power to use. The same goes for the guitar, which is the number-one pick for people who want to get women, but don't want to look like a nerd plucking the violin or bash their social lives against the wall solely by playing the accordion.

(I like the accordion, though! It's just, most people don't.)

And that's the success story of the guitar. I can appreciate those small number of people that can actually play it, and play it well, but for everyone else, I don't want to hear you strangling a dead cat. I know you're trying to get ahead in life. Believe me, I've been there. But you just sound...terrible. Put your time instead to becoming a doctor or a veterinarian. Animals need saving, too, and the ladies will love you for it.

Vicinity of Obscenity

2010-01-01T14:07:00.008-07:00

2010 is going to be an interesting year, I can already tell. It began with the usual fireworks show up in Aspen, Colorado, which was pretty usual as far as usual fireworks shows go. There was this guy being hauled from a nearby outhouse into a cop car, which we all assumed was due to some Indecent Exposure; because, dude, it was wickedly cold out and shrinkage is embarrassing and should be lawfully punished if revealed to the public. We all know the effects of shrinkage -- relationship breakups, crying children, and yes, the extreme plummeting of self-esteem. Knowing this country and its laws, the poor bastard in the cop car probably is gonna get five, maybe ten years.

It was cold out. He should have known better.

Once Aspen became boring (which was pretty quickly), we went back home and decided to scream obscenities at the local deer crossing the road. These deer...they think they can just walk out in front of an oncoming vehicle and hope to get away with it! I mean, it's almost like those pedestrians who decide to take their sweet everloving time crossing the road when I'm obviously in a hurry -- you can tell by the loud revving of the engine and the easily-visible vein in my forehead. So, just like these pedestrians, these deer get the old obscenities treatment.

Thing is, this isn't any old obscenities treatment. No, ours is special.

FECKIN A.

That's what it is. Not exactly your standard "Fuckin' A", no. "Feckin A" is a verb and a noun all at once. It's technically not quite an obscenity, yet it sounds close enough to be mistaken as one.

How did it originate, you ask? You didn't ask? Well, Feckin A, I'm gonna tell you anyway.

His name was Kurt. He worked at the local pizza joint. He was in my journalism class back in high school, and as his editor, I told him that his article needed a complete overhaul. Kurt didn't take too kindly to that. A year later, once I had graduated, Kurt and I reminisced about that specific journalism class, and Kurt, in all his brilliance, coined the phrase "Feckin A".

It appears to be two words, but actually only consists of a single word. Really, you kind of pronounce it, "F-eh-kin-uh". Pretend you're a stoner. Pretend you've just gone to the dentist and just gotten your entire mouth numbed up. Now say "Fuckin' A".

Yeah. That's it. You've got it. It's absolute genius.

I salute you, Kurt.

Oh yeah, that's right -- 2010. I have a feeling it's going to be a good year.

Resident Evil: The Remake

2009-12-06T16:25:00.005-07:00

Resident Evil, initially, was all about the scares. When mentioning the game, every publication seems to talk about the infamous "dogs jumping through the window" scene -- which is all well and good because the monster-closet scares are what helped to make the game so popular. After you've beaten the game, though, you essentially know what's going to happen in each room, and those frights no longer exist. Instead, those dogs become minor annoyances; hindrances to your progression.

Yet, people still love the old-style Resident Evil, even as we have already entered this age of fantastical boulder-punching. Running through static-camera rooms is still as fun as it was way back in 1996, or even, say, in 2002 when the game was remade for the Gamecube.

And that's because, despite what people will tell you, Resident Evil always has been a strategy game.

Maybe that sounds absurd. Maybe it doesn't! In any case, trying to get from Point A to Point B with a limited inventory and little ammo, knowing what items to leave and what to pick up, and avoiding certain monster-filled hallways because you didn't waste said precious ammo on those couple zombies gives your brain a specific workout that most action games can't even come close to. Granted, the brain power required to manage an inventory is much, much smaller than figuring out a difficult math problem, but there definitely is a level of strategy in Resident Evil that you don't get out of many games nowadays, much less recent entries in the series.

I've played the remake a couple times now, and it still hasn't gotten old. Maybe this is because, much like the Metroid series, the game rewards you for getting through the mansion (and later, the laboratory) as quickly as possible. If you beat the game under three hours, the game gives you a rocket launcher, which -- again, much like Metroid's reward of bikini Samus -- is somewhat superficial. But there's something incredibly satisfying about beating a game under a certain amount of time, and the rocket launcher allows you to do this even faster.

I can't write about the game without mentioning how it looks. With all the topics of conversation about graphical fidelity on high-definition TV sets today, it's still pretty amazing that the remake still looks unbelievable. The character models aren't anything fancy in comparison to many of the current games, but they still are detailed and well-animated. No, what shines here are all the environments -- everything, from the mansion to the surrounding forest to the dank laboratory, looks amazingly realistic and gorgeous. Wind blows through the grass and trees on the path leading up to the old cabin on the edge of the woods. Water shimmers in the moonlight of the old swimming pool, even showing your character's reflection in the small ripples. Much of this game is about atmosphere, and Resident Evil really sucks you in to the whole experience.

And as much as I love Resident Evil 4, it doesn't really capture that Resident Evil "feel". Then again, I don't think it ever was trying to, but I certainly do miss the fact that we probably won't ever get another game where you know that slowly opening that next door might just spell your ultimate demise. I certainly didn't feel terrified in Resident Evil 5, and the light-gun games of the Chronicles series don't provide any of that inventory-management of yesteryear, so I guess I should just appreciate the experience that those games provide.

Still, nothing beats the feeling you get knowing that you made it to the end, conserved all your magnum bullets, and then shot the crap out of Tyrant, watching him explode into a million tiny pieces. He certainly had it coming.

What Would Kratos Do (WWKD)? Part 4

2009-11-04T08:38:00.006-07:00

The gods were gunning for him, and by "him", I mean the friend of a friend.

He had taken it upon himself to follow in the immortal steps of Kratos and punish the gods himself, inescapable brutality and all. To curse such a delicious drink was a crime against humanity. The gods needed to pay.

And not in dollars, my friend.

In blood.

However, the beings upon Mount Olympus were very much aware of his intentions and were tracking his every move. Kratos, the once-powerful warrior and God of War, had tried and failed this dangerous mission before, sent to the depths of Hades for all eternity to burn for his disobedience -- but apparently, Ol' Whitey had mustered enough mental power to send a motivational message to Mankind. Now, humanity's fate was in its own hands.

The friend of a friend was struggling through thickets in the misty forest, slowly making his way toward Mount Olympus, broadsword strapped to his back. No jet or airplane could penetrate the forcefield around the mystical mountain, unfortunately; no, the only epic way was on foot, and as such, an adventure could occur so as people could write stories about it. (It would be boring if someone could just fly up to their destination, in other words.) Also, he had a broadsword on his back. Either this meant he was deadly serious about his intentions, or he was compensating for something.

Slowly, very slowly, the friend of a friend was delving deeper into the forest -- so deep, in fact, that he equipped his massive, phallic weapon and began to hack away at all the vegetation and greenery that dared to stand in his way. Pine needles SWOOSHED! Vines went WAHPPAH! Canadian maple leaves went HUZZAH and were soon shredded to pieces.

"What kind of sorcery is this," he wondered, "where all the greenery in the world gathers in droves to impede my progress?"

He didn't have much time to ponder after that, for the pine needles and vines and Canadian maple leaves were upon him again, this time in a swarm that was thicker and fuller and even more deadly. A shrill scream escaped from the poor man's mouth as he tried to combat the furious vegetation, hacking and slashing as quickly as he could. But the maple leaves blinded him, and the pine needles pierced his skin, and the vines were wrapping themselves around both his body and his gigantic, pulsating broadsword. With his last breath, the friend of a friend was only able to manage one final phrase:

"What would Kratos do?"

He then promptly laid down and died.

What Would Kratos Do (WWKD)? Part 3

2009-10-30T22:24:00.003-06:00

"WHAT WOULD KRATOS DO?"

Those were the words that had emerged from the mouth of the friend of my friend while he was stricken with the horrible Stone of the Kidneys disease. Thoughts of Kratos had burst into his head, and thus, the pestilence was eradicated from his body. That's all it took; for the legendary Kratos had slaughtered hundreds upon thousands of harpies, minotaurs, and hydras -- how could something so weak as a couple of stones formed by swallowing the delicious beverage of soda compare to these foul beasts of yore?

They couldn't. And now people were becoming healthy, imbued with an extraordinary strength brought on by the thoughts of Kratos.

"W-what shall we do now?" worried the gods. Kratos had defied them before, and now that he had taken the side of the humans, it seemed as if there was nothing to do to counter mankind's sudden wellness.

"We're powerless!" they wailed.

"We're doomed!" they cried.

"This Mountain Dew: Code Red stuff turns my stools into bright red lozenges of fecal matter!" yelped a lowly god who had, out of sheer curiosity, tasted said delicious human beverage.

Suddenly, Zeus emerged, lightning bolt in hand. His face was calm, though tiny beads of sweat were evident upon his forehead.

"Fear not!" he uttered. "I have an answer to our dilemma..."

Wide eyed, the gods all at once realized their folly. They knew what he spoke of.

"Falbi..." they whispered in unison.
Falbi was different from Kratos in the sense that he ran a chicken-flying mini-game on the cliffs of Lake Hylia; he had never, I am told, torn the wings from a harpy or stabbed a minotaur in the throat. No, Falbi was just a simple, flamboyant, extremely well-dressed man who managed a successful business that may or may not have given customers the chance to earn a piece of heart or an orange 100-rupee prize.

So why did the gods fear him? Why did they utter his name with such reverence?

It was Falbi's enchanting, melodic voice!

That voice ("Hiiiiii!") had the ability to waft through the heavens and mend any complex argument that people might have against the gods. Mankind could be angry at the beings on Mount Olympus for causing a gigantic tornado to pick up and toss all their cows, easily mincing the poor animals into hamburger stew -- but with one word from Falbi, these once-furious people would just shrug and say, "Yeah, maybe all that hamburger would have clogged my arteries. Thanks Falbi!"

Hades, Falbi could even convince a grown man to grab a chicken, hang on for dear life, and jump from a cliff into the shivering waters of the lake below. Chickens don't actually fly, mind you. And they don't support a human's body weight. But such was the power of Falbi!

What Would Kratos Do (WWKD)? Part 2

2009-10-27T13:11:00.016-06:00

"And so it was..."

No, no it wasn't. Not exactly.

This friend of a friend of mine would not give in to the pain so easily. His insides on fire, he thought that he would just succumb to the torture, that the easiest way out of this excruciating dilemma would be to simply lay down and die.

"No, you're right, Kratos," he muttered. "This can't be the way it ends...no one should die this way. I'm not going to die this way."

Arms shaking, legs quaking, kidney stones rumbling, he vaulted from his hospital bed, shouted to the gods above, "WHAT WOULD KRATOS DO?", and emerged from that villainous room unscathed. The doctors and nurses couldn't explain what had just occurred before their very eyes; a mere boy -- nay! A MAN! -- had just survived the worst of curses that those blasphemous beings from Mount Olympus could have conjured up from the depths of Hades and placed upon the finest beverages of mankind.

How had he done it? Was it some sort of witchcraft? Some kind of Harry Potter voodoo?

"Nay, doctors and nurses! Be not startled! For Kratos, enemy of the gods and friend to Man, came to me in a feverish dream and told me not to worry. He gave me the strength to survive, and will, too, soon give strength to those stricken by these wicked kidney stones! Hurrah!"

"Hurrah!" the medical staff echoed. The entire hospital erupted into a melodious harmony of cheers. Up on Mount Olympus, the gods heard these sounds of joy and happiness, and their bushy brows furrowed.

"What is going on?" they pondered, readjusting their La-Z-Boy recliners to get a better view of what was happening down below. "Didn't we make these 'sodas' undrinkable? Aren't humans stricken with the horrible Stones of the Kidney? Why are these shouts down yonder so joyous?"

The friend of a friend of mine heard the gods' query and let out a bloodthirsty scream.

And the beings upon Mount Olympus recoiled in terror, for they knew that this could only mean one thing:

The gods were going down.

Edit: a video appears!

What Would Kratos Do (WWKD)? Part 1

2009-10-27T12:01:00.008-06:00

A friend of a friend of mine was in the hospital some time ago for a problem that might have been related to drinking too much soda, but let's just say it was caused by the gods on Mount Olympus. These ferocious gods had been angry for the longest time! For they had created the fine beverage of water, and blessed the entire world with its presence. One day, however, the gods realized that there may have been too much water for all the world's beings, so they cursed the oceans by contaminating them with the most deadliest of devilry: salt. Oh, were the humans pissed!

"Curse you!" they shouted to the gods, who were relaxed on their La-Z-Boy recliners up on Mount Olympus. "We must drink from these oceans, and now you have contaminated them? Curse you!"

So these humans created a beverage of their own, one that would rival water and put it out of commission in supermarkets across the world. The beverage was called "soda". And most of the world's inhabitants shrieked with joy and frolicked among the flowers and bunnies and fireflies, Diet Dr. Pepper's in hand. This was the beginning of World Peace.

That is, until one fateful day, the gods caught wind of these "Diet Dr. Peppers" and these "Mountain Dew: Code Reds" and decided that they must put a curse on these as well, for humans should not be able to make a beverage as delicious as something the gods could concoct.

"Have some kidney stones, pitiful humans!" they shouted with a chuckle. "Consume too much of your delicious drink and may you have the best of times trying to urinate! Har har!"

And so it was.

Edit: And in consideration for the blind, a narrated version:

A Non-Winner

2009-09-23T00:35:00.006-06:00

Note: I wrote this for a 1up contest that asked users to explain what they liked best about the game, No More Heroes. I didn't win! But even so, the contest got me writing again, something that I haven't done in a long time. This is good! So, here I am, hopefully about to consistently write here for the months to come. About what, I don't know! Get excited, though, whoever might read this!

If nothing else, No More Heroes has unwavering pizazz, a flashy word that can only exist in the English language if italicized and preceded by an out-of-place adjective. And that maniacal pizazz is usually what people mention first when they talk about the game: the blood, the beam sabers, the wrestling moves, the ridiculous characters, the story -- No More Heroes is essentially a Tarantino flick in game-form without most of the film homages that anybody who isn't a film geek will give a shit about (Wilhelm scream? Who the fuck cares? Okay, I care a little...). Sanctimonious pizazz is good and all, but it only goes so far in the argument of style versus substance.

No, what's best about No More Heroes is how amazingly self-aware it is. Right from the start, it plays as a videogame and then remains a videogame throughout the course of Travis' blood-soaked journey. No matter what the situation, whether you're slicing through spleens or shooting aliens Galaga-style in that out-of-nowhere minigame, No More Heroes revels in its self-consciousness and fourth-wall humor. A couple noteworthy examples of some fourth-wall-breakers: Travis mentions the person "holding the remote out there" in the introductory cutscene, Sylvia's less-than-optimistic phonecalls play through the Wii remote's speaker (welcoming you to the "Garden of Madness"), and without giving too much away, a certain character speeds up their dialogue just to avoid a nastier ESRB rating. Really, when you boil it right down, No More Heroes is a game for people who like games, much like Tarantino movies are generally for people who like movies.

While we're being honest here, yes, No More Heroes is a little uneven, and yes, the overworld may or may not have been intended to be a satire on open-world games, but goddamn it -- if No More Heroes didn't have all the right pieces in exactly the right place, then it more than makes up for it in sheer love of the medium. And in an industry where remembering your roots is slowly becoming the hip, cool thing to do, No More Heroes is undeniably a game worthy of a place on the hip, cool pedestal of unrelentless pizazz.

The Seafood Burrito

2009-05-08T21:26:00.002-06:00

There's something terrifyingly uncomfortable about seeing a bunch of white people in a Mexican restaurant, you know? Most of what makes the Mexican restaurant experience is the atmosphere, with the music, the adobe architecture, and most importantly, the authentic Mexican people rounding out the whole package. When you can't even hear the mustachioed guy in the speakers singing about his long-lost love because a large group of obese, middle-aged white people keeping cackling and chewing away at their food, something is wrong with the world.

Our waiter called us "amigos". I don't know why he did. He didn't look like he wanted to be there working, so I doubt serving us food made us welcoming and friendly to him. Still, if I had any friends, I would probably call them "amigos" with an affected accent, but the only friend I have is a pet cat named Amigo. I just renamed her that. I hope she's okay with it.

I had a seafood burrito, though.

The Grandfather Paradox

2009-01-25T10:05:00.002-07:00

I once met my future self in the auditorium of my old high school, a high school that wasn't old at the time because there was still asbestos in the walls and the authorities hadn't yet realized that it was slowly killing us all. Two of my female classmates and I were rehearsing for an upcoming play -- and for the sake of privacy, let's name these girls "Judy" and, the other, oh, I don't know, "Megan O'Flannegan" (how's that for specificity?). After we were finished for the day, Megan, who I may or may not have been unhealthily obsessed with at the time, came up to me looking for some sort of consolation for a problem that had been pestering her:

"You know, sometimes I just can't stand Judy."

"Really?" I inquired with an incredibly handsome smirk. "Why not? She seems fine to me."

"Well," said Megan, who had had more theater and acting experience than Judy and I combined, "she started giving me pointers today about what I could do better. It's like she thinks she knows more about acting than I do."

"That's ridiculous. She probably was just...insecure about her own abilities, so she criticized yours."

That's probably what I should have said. As a complete jackass who then viewed the world as an axe murderer who was out to get me at every whim, I thought that Megan's complaints were childish and immature. She was probably talking to me just for the sake of talking to me, seeing as I was an attractive and lovable guy who was absolutely impossible to resist (but apparently not too impossible, as we will soon see).

Instead, I replied, "Know what, Megan? Just deal with it."

Megan looked at me with disgust.

"'Know what'?" she mocked. "You're an asshole." She stormed off.

Looking back on it, she was wrong about me; I was a jackass, not an asshole. Either way, I had pissed off a girl who I had liked above all other girls in a high school appropriately deemed "The Hot Girl Academy," which only accepted the hottest of the hotties. Oh, and I attended it, too, for some reason. Don't ask how or why. It just pays to know people, that's all.

In any case, I stood alone in that auditorium, feeling both dejected and rejected. But this story isn't about how I had lost the girl of my dreams -- it's about how I lost the girl of my dreams to science. For at that moment, a bright light appeared on stage, and from that bright light appeared...me. I hadn't aged a day.

"Howdy, there, old self," he said.

My jaw dropped. "What the hell? Who...what are you?"

He smiled. "Isn't it obvious? I'm from the future, delivered unto the heavens from my very own homemade time machine, here to correct the sins of my past. I'm you."

"Really, huh?" I accepted this strange twist of fate rather quickly. "You look good."

"Thanks. Eat your vegetables. Drink your milk. Yadda yadda." My future self cleared his throat. "Anyway, delightfully pleasant conversation is not why I'm here, I'm sorry to say. I'm here to correct the si--"

"...'sins of my past'. Yeah, I got it." I was incredulous. "What sins? I haven't committed any sins, uh, per se..."

Now my future self looked incredulous. "You don't consider that a sin, what you just did? You let the goddamn girl of your dreams slip away like that, and you don't consider that a sin?"

"Well, now that you mention it..."

"You're damn right it's a sin! Just because you're all angsty now does not give you the right to bash your future's hopes and dreams against a friggin' brick wall!"

I scoffed. "I haven't bashed anything! You -- I mean 'I' -- built a time machine! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"No, it's definitely a colossal human achievement; I will admit that. But I slaved hours and hours to build it, and in the process, denied the hundreds upon thousands of gorgeous women knocking at my doorstep just to get here. To get to this one moment."

"Are you serious?" I asked, again incredulous. "Out of all the events in history, out of all the tragedies you could have averted, out of all the wrongs you could have righted, you chose this moment in time...just to tell me to stop being such a jackass?"

"Well, basically."

I stared in amazement. "You know, now that I think about it, I do recall something I learned from the HGA's science class about time travel, something I wouldn't have ever thought about had you not shown up. Or did you forget about that seemingly crucial piece of information, too, even while making your time machine?"

"Like what?"

"Well," I announced, "there's this little thing called the 'Grandfather Paradox'..."

My future self's eyes became headlights.

"Oh, shit..." Realization had hit him in the face, apparently. I continued.

"You remember, now, don't you? You know, the theory that states that if a person were to go back in time and kill his or her grandfather, then the grandchild, AKA the killer, would have never been conceived at all? Come on, man! Have you never seen Back to the Future? ...Well, obviously you have because I have..."

"No, I see where you're going with this."

"Right. This means that by coming back here to warn me about a dumb verbal mistake I had made with Megan, it will seemingly convert one 'bleak' future path to another future path filled with a lifetime of happiness with her, right? But you wouldn't even be here had that happened. What I'm saying is, nothing will come of your time-traveling actions. You being here means I'm still going to go down a lonely, yet extremely technological-savvy road no matter what you do!"

Defeated, my future self admitted, "You know what? You're absolutely right. Huh. Well, that sucks. No use crying over spilt milk, right?"

"Er...not exactly."

It looked like my future self was physically trying to hold back the tears. He probably was about to say something profound, but all he could muster was, "See you later...asshole."

"Jackass."

And with that, he disappeared into the light and, contrary to his farewell, was never to be seen again. Well, except a few months later when I checked my face in the reflection of the time machine I was building.

Dragon Quest IV: The Only Game I Actually Enjoyed Last Year

2009-01-23T15:23:00.006-07:00

Yes. It's true. Well, sorta.

Dragon Quest IV, in terms of pacing and set-up, is really the exact opposite of Mother 3, a game that it obviously inspired. Whereas the former's beginning is mind-numbingly slow in order to delve into the respective character backgrounds, the latter begins with tragic events, an Indiana Jones-type excavation for a magical egg, and a fun little romp as a monkey. Honestly, it took me about ten grueling hours to get past Dragon Quest IV's opening chapters, but once the game explores the story of the actual hero, the rollercoaster ride takes off without a hitch.

Mother 3...personally, not so much.

No other game last year had me coming back, night after night, making me crave to see the story through to the end. Yes, there had been Advance Wars: Days of Ruin and Valkyria Chronicles, but Dragon Quest exerted another type of pull...and I can't quite put my finger on it. I will say, however, that the Dragon Quest series has always had a perfect formula: fight difficult monsters, defeat them, obtain gold, buy better armor and weapons, and then kill so-called difficult monsters in one hit.

Repeat.

It sounds somewhat dull on paper, but in practice, the grind can be very addicting. Becoming stronger and "being the very best" has always been a good videogame incentive, and Dragon Quest is probably the master of this tactic. Once I got sucked in, I couldn't put the game down. And that's why I'm giving it 2008 GAME OF THE YEAR! That is, if I cared about GAME OF THE YEAR, but I don't.

This has somewhat opened my eyes a bit to the whole ridiculous Dragon Quest versus Final Fantasy debate -- and I have to say, despite being a Final Fantasy fan since I played X a couple years ago, Dragon Quest has nearly always bested its competition in each and every installment. The slime-slaying series relies more on telling a simple, down-to-earth story rather than delving into melodrama, and as I get older, all the tales revolving around attractive and stylish teenagers in Final Fantasy have become a bit silly. That melodrama silliness has become more and more evident over the years (and especially evident in the recent Final Fantasy IV remake). But don't mistake Dragon Quest's usually light-fared stories as entirely simple, throw-away adventures -- there's certainly depth there. You just have to look for it.

Probably the best, almost-seemingly scripted event in Dragon Quest IV had to be my battle with the Psaro the Manslayer, a multiple-formed, nearly never-ending bastard who made me scrimp and save my magic and dig into the recesses of my inventory just to beat him; in other words, he was the ideal final boss. During his fourth form, Psaro wiped out my ultimate party of Kiryl, Maya, and Alena, and the main character was the only one left standing. I knew within the next turn I was going to lose, and sure enough, the final boss took out the main character as well -- but something strange (and like I said, scripted) happened.

I had an item that, if whoever has it equipped is knocked out, revives all the other members who are out cold, too. So, as it were, Kiryl, Maya, and Alena all returned from the dead, ready to do battle with the bastard that killed them a few minutes before, while the main character lay lifeless on the ground.

He had become a tragic hero, really, like something out of a film or novel. The aspect that amazed me about the whole incident is that it wasn't the developers' intention to happen -- it was something that just occurred naturally during the moments when I was actually playing the game. Later on, I had Kiryl revive the main character, and my party went on to pummel the final boss into submission.

But to have a dramatic event happen randomly like that...that's quite something.

Random Dreams: Part Two

2009-01-21T14:42:00.000-07:00

I swear to you, right now, that I am not on drugs. I swear!

There's this dream I've had, one that is quite famous among my friends because I've told it so many times, and it honestly doesn't get any less weird each time I tell it. I have strange dreams -- I can't help it. Speaking of which, many philosophical-minded people seem to analyze dreams and how they pertain to a person's hidden demons or subconscious feelings.

I don't really buy in to that school of thought. That's not really how my mind works: logically, I'm probably insane.

Anyway, the dream begins during one of my science classes in high school. The teacher is an older woman with shoulder-length gray hair, and it should be noted that she and I never really saw eye-to-eye. She's lecturing to the class as always, when she suddenly turns around and says,

"Hold on: I'm going to get the experiment from out of the back room."

Okay, so no big deal, right? Wrong.

After about ten minutes or so, she doesn't emerge from the room, so the class calls upon me to find out what the hell is taking so long. I get up, open the door, and there she is, sitting on a white bucket with her pants down, a determined look on her face.

Now, in the dream, I somehow get a close-up shot of what she's, uh, producing in the bucket, and it turns out to be this:

A vein-y, white sausage. That was her experiment for the class. My god.

If you try to approach this from an analytical perspective, I don't even know where you would begin. I'm sure you could get into the sexual implications or something like that, but that's a topic that doesn't seem too appealing right now. Or ever.

As it stands, the vision of the sausage is something that will haunt me forever.

Hmm.

An Ode to Dr. Salvador

2009-01-20T15:39:00.008-07:00

Resident Evil 4 is good. Real good. The Wii version is even better.

Sure, I'd played the shoot-'em-up to death on the Gamecube before (and even bought it the day it was released -- man, I was hyped!), and then I even went out and bought the PS2 version to play the additional "Seperate Ways" segment. Buying the same game twice in unusual for me, but Resident Evil 4 is always worth the extra cash. My love doesn't end there: I think I might have even wrote an ode to the chainsaw man (named Dr. Salvador, apparently) back in high school, praising his fashion sense (the potato sack is a nice touch) and lovely manner in which he proceeded to remove Leon's head from his body. I still have nightmares.

But the Wii version...man, it's really, really good. I haven't played much of the main game because I've been spending most of my time with the Mercenaries mode, which is still as hectic and addicting as it was when I first played it on the 'Cube. The aiming definitely makes the whole shooting system much easier and accurate, and the remote probably (at the risk of sounding like marketing PR) makes the Resident Evil 4 experience that much more immersive.

This is the third time I've bought the game, though, making it the only game I've bought more than twice. It was on sale at Wal-mart and I couldn't resist. My brother finished the final boss over the weekend, and now I'm back into the Resident Evil mania. Why the hell is it still so addicting a few years later when most games lose their shine within the first couple weeks of release? Was it due to the constant revisions? Probably. When a game is in development stew for so long, it had better be a damn near-masterpiece -- and Resident Evil 4 is definitely that.

And the dialogue?

"Rain or shine, you're goin' down!"

Still so bad, yet still so good.

Super Mario Galaxy

2009-01-18T12:15:00.001-07:00

I've kinda been down on the Wii for awhile now -- and that's probably because every time I walk into a Wal-mart or a Target and look at their game selection, I'm bombarded with tons of licensed crap. The Wii became more of a disappointment when my sword-wielding and gun-toting ideas for the remote were shot down and Nintendo started releasing anything and everything that absolutely did not interest me. To add to this, the games that have been released (Super Mario Galaxy, Smash Brothers, Metroid Prime 3) all haven't been as good as their predecessors; or at least, I believed that until I began to replay Super Mario Galaxy last night.

Maybe I was down on the game because Tim Rogers was down on the game. I think his one main complaint was the fact that every character in Mario Galaxy blatantly tells you what to do and how to do it (for example, when you're swimming and already know how to swim, a penguin glides up to you and squawks, "Press A to swim." No kidding!). But the game is good and amazingly creative. I just can't believe it took me so long to realize it.

You've probably heard all the praise and criticisms from the press, so I'm not going to bore you with mine here (too late!). The only real complaint from the wonderful message-board flunkies that I have to disagree with is about the game's lack of challenge -- seriously, the later levels are hard. Sure, they're not "lose-all-your-lives-forcing-you-to-continue" hard, but I guarantee that everyone who played Mario Galaxy through to its completion will have died many times on, say, "Luigi's Purple Coins". When you begin to curse at a game, you know it either has to be difficult or frustrating (and yes, the later levels are a mix of both).

Still, the game is one of the best I've played, and it actually lifts my spirits in regards to the Wii's future lineup. Here's hoping this, this, and this all live up to expectations...

Random Dreams: Part One

2009-01-17T09:05:00.009-07:00

While I have it fresh in my mind, I'm going to tell you about a dream I had this morning:

It began as Uncharted 2 -- I was first dragged down a waterfall into an Italian city, where I was then assaulted by a chef with a meat cleaver. When I grabbed the weapon from him and slashed at his throat, nothing happened....like slicing through air. The chef growled, knocked me out, and I was captured. Next thing I knew, I was handcuffed, running around the city, wondering how and why I had broken free of the chef's culinary clutches. Then, I broke the steel prison around my wrists and decided to attend my dad's birthday party, which was conveniently going on in the vicinity at the time.

I sat down at a table next to my brother, and then a waiter showed up.

"What would you like to order?" he asked.

My brother and I looked around, but we couldn't find our menus. The waiter sighed with exhaustion and sat on a nearby chair, covering his face with his hands.

"It's been a long day..."

Out of nowhere, my aunt appeared in a black dress and looked strikingly similar to Sally Field (she actually does look like Sally Field in real life). She made a comment that subtly dissed my mom's weight, and then she trotted away. I got angry.

The dream falls into this horrific scenario where this party is transported into a basement/cellar combo with dim lights, but with a significant amount of people having a good time. I get up to get a drink, and that's when I encounter the moose.

It's instantly recognizable, but the red eyes and white fur are a little jarring. The moose turns to me and snorts -- the thing only has one antler jutting out the side of its nostril!

I run. I don't know why exactly, but I feel it's my job to protect the kids at the party, and that white beast potentially has some sort of hellish wrath up its sleeve that I don't want anyone to experience. When I get back to the room, everyone has cleared out except this one family: some parents and their two kids. The father tells me to get the hell out of there; the moose is coming! I don't want to leave the people, but I take his advice anyway. I hear the family's shrieks and screams as I run for my life.

One of the adjacent rooms is an old western saloon, and on a table, I pick up two fully-loaded revolvers. They feel good in my hands (even in the dream): heavy and firm. Around the next corner is Woody Harrelson, playing his character from No Country for Old Men, and next to him is his prostitute girlfriend. I draw my gun and Woody does the same. We both fire. The smoke clears. I see Woody collapsed on the floor.

His girlfriend also draws her gun, but I tell her, "No, you can't do that. It's against the rules." I point to Woody.

"He already shot."

She tries to fire anyway, but all she gets are clicks from the hammer hitting an empty cylinder.

And of course, with any strange dream, it concludes with a hot make-out session between me and a girl I knew from high school, who now smokes so much pot that she makes the guys from Half-Baked look normal (and if I made out with her now, I probably would contract some horrible, unknown, druggy disease. No offense, of course.).

And no, as a matter of fact, I am not on any drugs myself! Hooray for plain-ol' insanity!

Wave Race: Blue Storm -- Sleeping Away the Winter

2009-01-14T12:24:00.000-07:00

After reading this article over on Gamespite.net about a week ago, I've kinda been in a Wave Race: Blue Storm feeding-frenzy, and with good reason, too. One, the article touches upon why the game was so good yet universally panned by critics (something I never really understood), and two, it's freaking cold here and I need some virtual beaches and waves to drool over while I wait out the winter. So, into hibernation I go. Unfortunately, it's not so easy to do, you know, with responsibilities and such.

Usually, I'd write a long-winded article about my experience with Wave Race (and you'd sigh and drift in and out of boredom-induced sleep), but that article on Gamespite is so well-written and says much more than I could ever say in that amount of words that I just have to claim defeat and direct you over to Gamespite again. But in case you care about what I think, I guess I'll tell you.

Wave Race is fun. It wasn't very well-received and is supremely underrated. I remember a bet two EGM editors had years ago that basically involved an intense showdown between Wave Race and Splashdown, another jet-ski game that had been released a little while after Nintendo's offering. The bet concluded that Splashdown was leagues better based on the magazine's scores, and Wave Race was officially declared the loser.

I cried a little that night. But who said life was fair?

When you get right down to it, Wave Race: Blue Storm is a game you pick up, finish the championship mode on a certain difficulty, and then turn off. The controls are a little touchy yet incredibly deep, but the game itself is pretty light on content. That doesn't make it bad, though -- and while I isolate myself in a cave for the next three or four months until the sun comes back out again, the game is a perfect substitute for some [occasionally] excellent weather to remind me that, yes, heat does exist in the world. It's just a matter of where you live, I guess.

Let me plug that article again. Yeah, that should do it. Funny how these things pretty much write themselves...now, back to hibernation.

Pokemon Diamond: Revisiting Childhood, or, "A Review No One Will Read"

2009-01-11T12:39:00.003-07:00

I might be too old for this shit.

Actually, I really shouldn't call this game "shit" unless it's "the shit," because that's exactly what it is -- the shit.

Pokemon Diamond is an excellent game, one that refines the formula, adds new features and creatures, and most of all, hearkens back to a time when all I had to worry about was how the hell I was gonna beat Giovanni with my one-monster army, Charizard. The only problem is knowing when to play it and when to shove it away in your closet so no one else knows that you are a fully-grown adult male who still enjoys raising and battling (but not parading them around in a beauty contest -- my god!) cute little animal-things who happen to have the worst puns for names. To play Pokemon is to be a kid again, but only mentally.

Whether or not they would ever admit to saying this, my friends have reminisced about how good those old Pokemon titles on the Game Boy used to be. Nevermind the TV show, which consisted of the exact same plot line over the course of what seemed like ten seasons, and nevermind anything else associated with the Pocket Monster craze, like the trading cards or even those terrible Stadium games. The only products to survive the test of time and are still playable today are the handheld main-line Pokemon games -- they stick to the same ol' formula, but it's a formula that works.

Actually, I should revise that statement: a couple years ago, I decided to forgo my vow to never play a Pokemon game again (for fear of becoming a social outcast -- but now that I think about it, it was too late anyway), and play the Ruby version to see what I'd been missing. In all honesty, I hadn't been missing much. The battle system seemed slow and clunky, and the seemingly new emphasis on taking your Pokemon to a beauty show just seemed so...stupid. I mean, c'mon! Really now? I'd much rather be beating the crap out of random Psyducks than feed berries to my team of Psyduck-killers just to level up their "Cute" category! And the new Pokemon designs seemed uninspired compared to the original roster...

Okay, whoa. I realize I'm sounding like everyone else on the Internet, so I'm gonna stop now. Like, right now.

Whew.

Anyway, the Ruby version didn't do much for me, so I guess I should say that that game is the only handheld title in the series that, uh, kinda sucks. To each his own, I guess.

With that bad taste in my mouth, I was hesitant to pick up Diamond when it hit stores. The great aspect about the DS, though, is that nearly every piece of software released for the system, aside from, you know, the Imaginz Babies or Puppies or Crocodiles or What Shit Would You Like to Pretend to Raise Now? series, is generally really, really good. That in mind, I bought Diamond under the pretense that I was, uh, really purchasing it for my cousin's brother's nephew and not-at-all for me, and...loved every minute of the game, from start to finish. Part of that love was knowing I didn't give a shit about beauty contests, and the game was okay with me for not giving a shit.

There's a certain moment in the game that gets me all riled up and exciting whenever I think about it; that moment would have to be when you first encounter Dialga, the time-devouring quadrupedal monster-thing (as shown on the box above), at the summit of Mt. Name Doesn't Really Matter 'Cause I Can't Remember It Right Now. See, I'd like to think my mind works cinematically, wherein most of my memories of past events don't happen in a first-person view, but instead are set in a movie-like, third-person scene, all included with pans and close-ups. And whenever I imagine climbing that mountain in a raging blizzard only to finally meet a frightening beast at the top -- and then engage in a fierce battle, concluding in an epic "please-oh-please-catch-it" Poke-ball toss -- it gets my mind reeling with cinematic possibilities. Honestly, the scene is one of the most memorable set-pieces in any game I've played in the last several years.

Yes, I am a nerd. Perhaps not as big as Quentin Tarantino, but a nerd nevertheless.

I might have mentioned it before in past blog posts, but I recall that one of the game developers mentioned that the best part of Pokemon is the first moment you receive your bike. You've been walking most of the game (at an extremely slow pace, mind you), and the feeling you get once you begin pedaling across city-scapes and landscapes, it just...conjures up memories of your childhood. To some extent, the statement is true. As a kid, you really want nothing more than to grow up, to enjoy certain liberties and responsibilities not granted to you when you're young. You can't drink, you can't drive a car, you can't, uh, legally buy porn -- really, the adult lifestyle seems like a unimaginable dream filled with endless possibilities. Pokemon, even if it's actually fictional, gives you just a taste of adulthood: you're out on your own, slowly growing and maturing, becoming "the very best, like no one ever was". It represents independence. It represents freedom.

Okay, sure, that's a little hyperbolic, but playing through Diamond washed all the cynicism from my system, and for a split second, I felt I could go anywhere and do anything. Of course, that's true to real life, too, but it's just a matter of balls.

In reality, my sense courage and fearlessness happens to be castrated.

In Pokemon, I was the very best, like no one ever was.

The World Ends With You: A Strange Beast, or, "A Review No One Will Read"

2009-01-09T16:05:00.009-07:00

Someone on the Wonderful World of the Internet recently pointed out that playing The World Ends With You could be likened to attacking your DS with a cheese grater.

I don't think that's too far from the truth.

Strangely enough, the game is rather enjoyable, even though my DS touchscreen has been shredded to plastic shards and now Neku gives me the finger whenever I blow into the microphone. Don't ask me why! Blame that damn emo disease he's contracted!

In all actuality, The World Ends With You is kind of a mess. I mean, you've got endless amounts of dialogue, two screens to watch and manage, a terribly cluttered inventory system that doesn't make me appreciate the inclusion of a touch screen, and when you get right down to it, gameplay that only consists of running around a gray city looking for the next cutscene to appear. Thinking about all these problems forces me to wonder why the hell I ever finished the game! It's a strange beast -- I'll give you that much.

Most people probably hold the game in such regard because it's something made by Square-Enix that doesn't have the words "Final" or "Fantasy" in the title. While the character designs reek of hipster zipper-fetishists, at least they stray a little from the Tetsuya Nomura random character generator and seem like genuine people with real insecurities. Sure, they wear clothing that would be impossible to pull off in reality, but hey, thank god for suspension of disbelief!

Like I said, though: The World Ends With You is a strange beast. Whenever I think about it, I remember everything that was done poorly or absolutely wrong, but once I begin playing, I seemingly forget about all those imperfections and enjoy myself. The reason behind this is most likely the battle system -- it seems terribly complex at first, but it really only boils down to mashing the d-pad in different directions and "cheese-grating" the hell out of the bottom screen. Don't get me wrong, though; it's fun. It's enjoyable. It's downright chaotic!

When you emerge from battle victorious, however, the game begins to slip a little. The pins you win from defeating monsters generally are earned in droves, and attempting to reorganize your inventory is both frustrating and a hassle, combined into one furious, hemorrhaging pain-in-the-ass . Trying to find the right clothes to wear in a specific part of the city also became a little grating, and by the first third of the game, I ended up simply wearing the apparel that had the highest HP-granting abilities.

The story was something I actually became invested in, despite the endless talking-head moments -- the main character, Neku, as many people have voiced already, is immediately the unlikable, angsty teenager that riddles most games these days, but yes, he does grow and evolve into an actual person. His buddies are okay, too, I guess.

Even now, as I write this, I know I dislike the game for everything it does poorly -- and I really don't want to keep writing about it because of this feeling. The World Ends With You really isn't that great of a game, as it tries to be deeper and more symbolic than the sum of its parts, and I stand by the opinion that most people shower it with praise because the game is a new, original product that surprisingly emerged from the loins of the Final Fantasy-producing monster, Square-Enix. But you know, if I turn it on again, right at this moment, I'll probably end up playing into the wee hours of the morning. And I'm not quite sure why I'll keep playing, but I will.

A strange beast.

Lost Time

2009-01-08T13:30:00.012-07:00

I sometimes wonder if putting my time into these videogames are worth the overall outcome. Really, the only positive and "reputable" aspect about this expensive hobby is that it can improve hand-eye coordination and a person's overall intelligence.

But that's about it.

A person can easily invest over one hundred hours into a game -- that's a serious amount of time, time that could be spent doing more productive things. You could be getting exercise, learning a new language, or hanging out with a bunch of friends. One hundred hours? My god, that's a good chunk of life right there, my friend. What have you accomplished in that time? Your entire party is at level 99? Wow, that's quite an American accomplishment, if I do say so myself. Congratulations.

Recently, I read this article on Gamasutra, and I mostly agree with all the author's points. The thing is, yes, you definitely are gearing up for a near-impossible challenge, and by gearing up, you probably will get better at the game. But that's all it is, though: a game. Like the author of that article, I've become really good at a lot of these games, but in the end, I really have nothing to bring to the table of "reality". I've spent a majority of my time in front of the TV playing Soul Calibur and Smash Brothers and yes, even Mega Man 9 -- yet I can't repair a car if it breaks down and I can't cook an excellent meal. Those are fairly good skills to have. I don't have them.

The only reason I'm still here, writing about these silly things is because I believe that this new medium has the potential to become something great, like parts of film and literature -- right now, though, playing these games does not make me feel like I'm growing and improving. In fact, while I play Mega Man 9, I may be, in fact, becoming better at the game, but in real life, I'm still just a so-called "Man-child", someone who is mentally immature and probably will be until I begin to invest more time into "reality". As it is now, I've reached the point of no return; I've spent so much time playing games that there's got to be a way to put that time into something useful in the real world, right?

Professional Smash Brothers player? Yeah, real fulfilling.

The article also points out that there are two types of mindsets: the first mentality believes that when you die in a videogame, that's it -- you give up and go home. The second views that loss as a personal growth, and even though you had lost, the next time you play, you will rise up to the challenge and overcome it. The latter mindset doesn't believe in "wasted time".

Taking this into account, I booted up Persona 4, a game in a series that often doles out cheap, sudden deaths if the player isn't paying attention or makes a tiny mistake. In previous play-throughs, a had put over an hour's worth of time into one of the dungeons, and before I knew it, I ran into an enemy, which randomly "critical-ed" my main character. I was killed in an instant.

This had happened before in Persona 3. I was used to these types of deaths. But this time, after recalling the Gamasutra article and thinking about the hour I had lost and nothing to show for it, I blew up. I usually never get angry over anything, but when that monster randomly (and "random" is the key word here) stole that real-life hour away from me, I couldn't handle it anymore.

Was it worth it? Specifically, I had payed $40 on something that was indeed enjoyable, but ultimately made me feel cheated, worthless, and angry. That's not good, is it? That's not "personal growth," right? When you die in Mega Man or in some action game, yes, you have to restart -- but you've really only invested about fifteen-or-so minutes of your time. In Persona, an excessive amount of time that you've given in real life to develop your fictional characters is lost due to some random element that the player has no control over. It reeks.

So here I am, writing about a hobby that may or may not be a waste of time. Videogames have been a big part of my life, and sadly, nothing else in the world really gets me as excited as when a new Zelda or Dragon Quest comes out. There's something drastically wrong with that. Now that I think about it, though, what's the difference between reading a book and playing a videogame? Nothing much, really. You still put in a good share of time into each activity, and at the end of each, you really have nothing to show for it...well, except a topic for conversation.

Here's hoping that something in this medium shows me that this wasn't a waste of a good twenty years. Otherwise, there's no crying over spilt milk...a lot of spilt milk.

Supporting the Unsuccessful

2009-01-07T23:11:00.006-07:00

You know, I was just thinking as I watched my brother mash the hell out of the X button during a session of Resident Evil 4 on the PLAYSTATION 3 REVOLUTIONARY HOME ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM THAT ALSO SOMETIMES RUNS PLAYSTATION 2 GAMES DEPENDING UPON YOUR HARDWARE that my favorite videogame console purchases have often become obsolete in terms of commercial success. Really, the only exception would be the NINTENDO REVOLUTIONARY ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM back in 1989, but that was probably because no one had ever heard of a Master System, and even if you had, no one wanted to play one when you had Mario jumping around in Supremely Awesome Fun Land.

Take a look at my history:

1994: I was given a Sega Genesis packed in with the game Columns (which actually happens to be a pretty good game, but a poor substitute for Sonic). I loved the system. However, Genesis was not as popular as the SNES and apparently tanked in Japan.

1999: A year after Zelda was released, my parents got my brothers and I a Nintendo 64, which, as most of us know and have beaten the dead horse to a pulp by now, was not as successful as the Playstation. I loved the N64 anyway. Crash Bandicoot, while admittedly filled with 'tude, was not appealing.

2001: After seeing screenshots and videos for Super Smash Brothers Melee, I went out and bought one of the first shipments of Gamecubes. Yes, all of them. Okay, just a single Cube. And surprisingly, no matter how bad a reputation that little black cube gets and has gotten (goddamn it!), I still play it more than any system I've ever owned. Gamecubes, though, did not sell as well as the competition.

So now, I own a PLAYSTATION 3. It's not getting very good press and isn't selling as well as it should. How about that? And yet, despite my sarcasm above about how revolutionary it is, I prefer it to the Wii and Xbox 360, just like I've preferred the least commercially successful consoles more than their counterparts in years past. I can't really say why. Maybe it's a subconscious thing, where I have to support the underdog -- almost exactly like people who only listen to Indie music even though it sucks (sorry, Ben Meckley (search engines are great, aren't they?), but yes, it does suck. Well, most of it. But those morning rides to Wildernet while listening to the same mix over and over again became torturous after the third or fourth time. Heck, any music would, I guess.).

Just thought I should put that information out there. I'm hoping I just have good taste and the masses who make certain products popular, uh, don't.

Eulogy for an Unknown

2008-12-08T11:34:00.005-07:00

A friend of mine was killed in a car accident about two weeks ago. Well, I really shouldn't call him a friend because he was more of an acquaintance than anything. We had gone to middle school together for a couple years, and then when high school rolled around, he vanished from my quaint little teenage world. Whether he had dropped out or just transferred to another school is beyond me -- the point is, I knew him, and by educational means, he was connected to me.

Then, after I had graduated and began attending the nearby community college, this acquaintance of mine reappeared. I got a call one morning from my dad saying, "Your mom was in a car accident; she's okay, don't worry. She just bumped her head is all." Dad and I drove to the hospital, where Mom was recovering from a slight bruise to the head, but you could tell she was shaken up from the event. I really don't think she drives as casually as she did since then.

My mom was dropping my brothers off at school when out of the blue, this car careened into her, completely totaling the back end of our three-year old Toyota RAV4. Apparently, the guy driving his car hadn't bothered to scrape the ice off the windshield and was leaning his head out the window so he could see. Obviously, he didn't spot my mom's car in his general direction. Nobody was seriously injured, but once I found out who the driver was, I did a double take and vomited all over the floor.

Okay, so not really. My realization was relatively clean.

Yeah, it was him. The guy from school. It's rather strange having someone vanish from your world and then quickly reemerge to preform some surprising act that will forever leave an impact. Sure, it had more of an impact on my mom than anything, but it affected me, too...little though it may be.

Months later, I saw him at a popular local pizza joint. He didn't recognize me, nor did he know he had crashed into our family car. I thought I had wanted to beat the living shit out of him, but I didn't. Really, the first instinct that came to mind was to ask him, hey, man, are you stupid? Who the hell drives with an iced-over windshield? Let that shit thaw out, yo! I'd give him the run-down, he'd say he was sorry, it won't ever happen again, and we'd go our separate ways.

That didn't happen.

Instead, I avoided all eye-contact, finished my pizza, and left the restaurant a few minutes later. I didn't hear from or about him until a phone call two weeks ago. It was my dad.

"Hey, do you know a [such-and-such]?" he asked.

"Yeah. Why? That's the guy I went to school with. The guy who hit mom."

"I thought so. Well, there's a thing in the paper about him. It says he was killed in a car accident."

Huh. Really now. You don't say.

My acquaintance was twenty years old. Like some goddamned magician, he did a disappearing act two times in my life, and twice did he reappear to shock the hell out of me. He spoke a little English when I knew him, though mostly Spanish to his actual friends. He was in some of my classes; I probably lent him some pencils and paper and him the same to me. We might have even played some Four Square. And now, because I didn't give him the rundown at that pizza place or give him a fucking black eye, he's dead. Dead and gone.

I've thought about this for a while. I don't blame myself, or try not to, at least. He was speeding and wasn't wearing a seatbelt. Same old story. But you know, I could have stopped this from happening. I mean, it would have made a hell of a story in the local paper: "Kid Starts Fight With Other Kid He Knew From Middle School -- Victim of Black Eye Learns Lesson." I probably would have been banned from that pizza place and done some jail time, maybe, but it would have been worth the goddamn effort to save his life.

And lately, the food at that pizza joint hasn't tasted all that great, either. Yes, it would have been a fucking noble sacrifice.

The noblest fucking sacrifice the world ever saw.

Rest in peace, guy. Thanks for letting me borrow those pencils in middle school. I never really thanked you for that.

Yeah? Well Fuck You, Too, Blanka, You Slimy-Barrel-Rolling-Piece-of-Shit-Asshole-Sonuvabitch-Dillweed

2008-11-29T22:02:00.008-07:00

That's right. I'm looking at you, you cute, costume-wearing Street Fighter IV Blanka.

If you're anything at all like your HD Remix counterpart, I'm gonna fucking tear you limb from limb and wear your hat as a...hat. See you in February, motherfucker.

Sincerely,
Your Friend,
Ken Masters

Pricking Needles

2008-11-26T23:34:00.001-07:00

After I declared that the word "videogame" should be replaced with "Mother 3" in the English language, I just might want to retract my statement. Not that the game isn't absolutely brilliant, mind you -- it's just, I still haven't finished it because the last remainder of the quest isn't pulling anymore, but pushing. Honestly, I don't really care about pulling needles across the Mother 3 world; I've done this kind of quest in hundreds of other RPGs and I don't really want to do it again. And the undersea, hold-your-breath section? Don't even get me started.

It's just strange that a game that began so well and so near-literary just tapers off into a fetch quest. Sure, one could pose the argument that this actually is being satirical about the whole "going to find the eight crystals scattered about the globe" template that so many games follow, but how about developing this part of the quest in a different manner? Maybe it's more difficult than it sounds.

So, I still haven't completed it, but I hope to finish within the next ten years...and I hear that the ending is strange, funny, and heartrending. Huh.

Wait! Don't Go! You Clicked My Name Out of Pure Curiosity on Some Website, Didn't You, You Poor Bastard

2008-11-21T21:54:00.010-07:00

You really shouldn't go around doing that. Most of the time, you'll see some unusual or interesting comment left by some random person on a message board, and you'll think, "Well, this guy's comment was pretty damn weird, so I'll just see what he's going on about at his personal website!"

And when you get there, you realize, "Oh god, what have I done? This blog of his is complete shit and absolutely incompetent compared to real, professional writing."

Believe me, I sympathize with you. Let me be the first to tell you that this blog, too, is complete shit, and I have given up updating it because -- *gasp* *big surprise* -- nobody reads it. Which, as you can see by the title, is kind of a strange, double-edged-sword-kind-of-gimmick.

Honestly, I'm just trying my best not to blend in with the crowd, that pulsating mass of "personal feelings" and "political stances" and "absolute shit" that is the Internet...again, which is a double-edged sword because everyone probably is trying to distance themselves from it, too. It's like that time when I wanted to be original, so I dyed my hair blue, carved the alphabet into my chest with a knife, and ran around singing that wondrous 80's classic, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World".

Problem was, everyone at my high school was doing the exact same thing.

Can't win 'em all.

Oh, and I'm sorry I called you a bastard. It just...slips out sometimes.

The "Mother 3" Mother 3

2008-10-21T10:37:00.001-06:00

Once you play Mother 3, you may not need to play another videogame again. Instead, you'll probably want to read a lot of literature, smash your TV, and wish capitalism never existed -- or, at least, these are the feelings the game evokes in me after about ten hours of play time. Many people across the Wonderful World of the Internet have already posted their feelings on the new Mother 3 English patch, and I certainly don't want to add to the cesspool of opinions (though I'm certain some opinions are more thoughtful and well-written than others). So I'll try to make this addition to the cesspool short.The term "videogame" is dirty. Nintendo has been trying to distance themselves from the word since the launch of the DS and Wii, and Sony and Microsoft now would like their customers to call their wonder machines "Home Entertainment Systems". I unabashedly agree. "Videogame" conjures up images of juvenile delinquency and inadequate social skills and yellow orbs eating ghosts; this most likely will never change. However, since Mother 3 was brought out into the world, surprisingly not kicking and screaming but docile and sophisticated, I honestly would be comfortable to use "videogame" in a conversation with a normal human being. This is the direction videogames should go. Enough of the war-reenactments, the guns with knives, the Scarface wannabes -- they were fun when we were thirteen, but now we've grown up. We're mad as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore.

Mother 3 reads like a book, plays like a movie, floats like a butterfly, and stings like a bee. It never falters, never shrinks, and has balls. From the moment the game begins to the ten-hour mark, Mother 3 knows exactly where it's going and how it's going to get there. It's absolute perfection.

So, as of this moment, I propose that the term "videogame" be abolished and replaced with "Mother 3". We'll be better off for it.

No More Heroes: A World of Murderers, or, "A Review No One Will Read"

2008-10-16T13:34:00.000-06:00

No More Heroes is a Wii game I bought because the Wii didn't have any games. When I take a glance at the case sitting on the shelf, I think of all the incredibly polished NEXT GEN GRAPHICS and REALISTIC PHYSICS ENGINES on other systems and in other software, I almost have to sigh with relief that thank God I don't have to deal with that videogame marketing shit in this game. What does the back of the box say, anyway? Here, let me read you some of the bullet-points:

1) "Slash your way to the top with your trusty beam katana."

Okay, that's true. You do hack bad guys. You also have a lightsaber. The marketing team at Ubisoft was pretty trustworthy on this one.

2) "Complete side jobs for extra cash to customize your character and weapons."

This, while knowing why undergoing side jobs should be listed as a positive bulletpoint is a joke in itself, is also true. So far, you special marketing team you, are not completely bullshitting me.

3) "Bring the pain with an arsenal of over-the-top combat moves."

Yes. Okay. But enough of that.

Like I said before, No More Heroes was a game I bought because the Wii didn't have any games. Metroid Prime 3 was dead and gone, a mere shell of what the original had been, and you can only play Wii Sports for so long before it becomes something akin to actual work. As a skinny kid pretending to be a fat kid for the sake of this blog entry, I'd like to say that, yes, Wii Sports was my weight-loss savior, but now that all the women flock to me like my old-fat-self to a Krispy Kreme donut, I really don't want to mimic swinging a tennis racket anymore. I'd also like to point out the state of our nation when people actually get tired by pretending to play a sport in front of a television set -- and doctors, for christsake, are forced to give a "scientific" name to a "disease" caused by this "exercise".

But since I'm not a fat kid anymore (or never really was -- it's your call), I guess I can sympathize.

Anyway, when the first trailer for No More Heroes was posted online, I watched it with little curiosity. The game at the time was dubbed just Heroes. The trailer starred a dude with a lightsaber named "Travis Touchdown" and another dude with a cigar and long silver hair named "Helter Skelter". Personally, I was rooting for the silver-haired dude because I was a fan of Final Fantasy, and even though I'm not gay, I would totally go for a dude that looked like a chick. Travis Touchdown looked like a Johnny Knoxville clone, and Jackass isn't all that appealing to a not-gay dude who could totally go for dudes that look like chicks.

In the end, the trailer was poorly voice-acted and honestly looked like it was destined for the bargain bin within a week after release. Plus, my effeminate-looking-cigar-smoking dude lost the duel! Not cool!

A couple months later, a second trailer was released at the Tokyo Game Show (and this would also become the game's opening). This, however, immediately made a fan of me -- even before the game was released! I mean, here you have this satirical videogame about a guy who doesn't have any money, decides to become a serial killer to earn a living, and gradually make his way to the top of the serial killer food-chain. How could that not be appealing to anyone who plays videogames? Most games have a main objective: destroy anything that moves. See that goomba walking toward you on screen? Stomp it to bloody bits. How about those ghosts? Eat the shit out of them. And those falling bricks that threaten screen-closing demise? Line those suckers up for ultimate decimation.

Maybe the Tetris reference should be rendered moot, but my point here is that anyone who has ever picked up a videogame has probably killed something in that virtual world. That's okay -- I'm not saying this should be taken negatively; just mull it over for awhile. Destroying stuff has always been fun, like smashing an expertly-built sand castle. What's wrong with taking out a bunch of Nazi scum in Call of Duty? Nothing. But that's because it isn't real.

Silvia, your assassin boss, contacts you during your first real mission. You've already slashed about a hundred guys into fountains of blood and cash and exaggerated vocals, and now, your controller begins to vibrate. It's Silvia. You put the controller to your ear, like a cell phone. Your boss really has nothing but frenchly-accented gibberish to say, but you think it's cool anyway that the developers had the incentive to make the Wii remote into something of a phone. The only reason you are impressed by this, though, is because you've played many a videogame before.

No More Heroes was made for people like you and me, people who watched all the Star Wars movies and can quote Han Solo's script word for word; people who get excited when a new Sin and Punishment is announced; people who, when the Wii was first revealed, daydreamed during dull math lectures about pretending to be a Jedi and swinging that goddamn controller around like a lightsaber.

What do you do with a lightsaber, exactly?

Kill stuff, that's what.

We're a nation of murderers. That last sentence isn't a cut on who we are as people -- it's just simple fact. Destruction is in our nature, and by God, do we like to slash the everloving shit out of salary-men, baseball players, wannabe-superheroes, katana-wielding minors, bad girls, and most importantly, magicians. Slash left: Travis twirls his fluorescent blade and massacres a dude into a fountain of blood (bastard!). Slash down: Travis leaps into the air and slices another dude in two (my spleen!). Slash right: you get the picture.

It's like lightsaber porn, really. At the beginning of the game, we're so jazzed up by the action on screen and the motions the game demands of us, but by the end, we've killed so many guys and defeated so many bosses that becoming number one doesn't seem so glamorous anymore. Travis, too, seems more and more disgusted by the people he meets (and eventually kills) -- a trait which makes him surprisingly human.

In the end, Travis kills his father. Er, he doesn't kill his father! His sister kills his father, but then his sister, who actually is only a half-sister, reveals that the person she just killed wasn't Travis' father at all -- but she did kill his real father a few years back.

This is good, isn't it? A mish-mash of convoluted plot-lines that really don't matter in a game where all you want to do is massacre the shit out of assassins and Pizza-Butt CEO's. Or maybe, near the end, the game has affected you in such a way that you end up caring for these characters.

Or maybe not.

P.S. -- The music is awesome, bro! Let's see how far we can take this thing!

Eyes

2008-10-16T12:35:00.002-06:00

With blood pouring down my face, I picked up the dead man's cell phone and called it in.

"It's done. You can let her go now."

"Not quite," the voice said. "You've still one more assignment."

Silence on my end.

Finally, I mustered, "Isn't there another way?"

The voice didn't reply.

Frustrated, I conceded defeat and hung up. I closed my eyes, wishing the throbbing pain in my head would fade, that the blood would stop seeping into my eyes. My sight was important. Without it, I had nothing to rely on.

How many had died for her? Ten? Twelve? Fifteen? It wasn't a staggering number, but killing anyone ripped chunks from a man's soul, to the point where that person became inhuman, a monster. Once you kill, the soul was essentially a goner, and so, too, the man with it.

Searching the ground for my sword, my head became increasingly heavy, and I collapsed to the ground. There, sticking from the corpse -- there it was. Shining blue steel, my third arm. The organization who had taken her had given it and vague instructions to me:

"Use this sword, and only this sword, to conduct your business. Then she will be set free."

That was it. I had wondered why they hadn't equipped me with a gun or some other more efficient weapon, but I found out soon enough.

It's the eyes. The eyes give it away.

When you stab a man through the heart, all the while listening to his hopeless gasps for breath, you witness a quick flash in the eyes. Brief, almost too brief. In that moment, you get to know a man better than you ever could -- you see his hopes, dreams, memories, everything, vanish into thin air. They're yours now. Absorption. However, because everything that once belonged to that man has changed ownership, you begin to lose the essence of what you call "yourself". It's unpleasant to say the least. I'm hardly me anymore.

That's why the organization equipped me with a sword instead of some other weapon -- all of this murder is beginning to kill me from within. But finally, I have only one more target to defeat. One more target.

Still lying there, blood pulsing from the head wound, I unstuck the gleaming steel from the man's corpse and brought the blade to my throat. It would only be a matter of time before they found me, and then, only then, would they let her go. Sweet release from this awful assignment.

I hope she knows what I've done for her.

The Bikes of Burnout Paradise

2008-10-08T11:30:00.003-06:00

Some time ago, the developers of Burnout Paradise added bikes to their exploding cars game.

This may have been the best thing that had ever happened to anything, anywhere.

Much like F-Zero GX on the Gamecube, I like to occasionally take one of the speedier bikes out on the open road and just space out for about an hour. Seriously -- I just hold down the R2 button for a full sixty minutes, staring blankly at the screen until something in real life jerks me back out of the cycling-induced coma. This isn't the first time this phenomenon has happened: F-Zero GX, too, had me cruising the free-run-never-ending time trial in Captain Falcon's or Rainbow Phoenix's rides until several blood vessels popped in my head and I was rushed to the emergency room. The doctors told me to slow down.

Ha, right. Now, both fortunately and unfortunately, popping blood vessels has become a tradition. The doctors stopped complaining once I became a regular bill-paying customer, though.

Thing is, I'm not sure whether driving these blistering-fast vehicles, be they the futuristic-hovering variety or two-wheeled insanity, is fun. Honestly, I'm not really sure what fun is anymore. If it includes an injection of adrenaline, then yes, I will have another dose -- otherwise, talking to random NPC's in those fancy RPG's isn't all that enjoyable to me. Nor should it be to anyone! Want to talk to the crotchety, cane-wielding old man in the next Final Fantasy game? Why don't you just walk into some real-life woods where the sounds of "Dueling Banjos" incessantly waft through the trees and synchronized shotguns chime in the distance? I'm sure you'll find an interesting old man in there to talk to. Heck, if you're lucky, he might even be a cannibal! Hooray for that!

Anyway, the Burnout bikes are a fantastic double-edged sword: on one hand, you have these amazingly fast modes of transportation for getting you from one place to another, rocketing off jumps all the way. But on the other hand, the cars themselves feel slow in comparison. I almost don't want to go back to four-wheels...

INFECTIOUS

2008-10-06T10:18:00.001-06:00

OH MY GOD. Listen to that.

Let's Tap: The sensation that's sweeping the nation!

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (1): Surprise Cameo!, or, "A Review No One Will Read"

2008-10-03T13:08:00.001-06:00

Note: This article also was ripped straight from the devilishly artistic pages of IGN, and it doesn't exactly say anything about the actual game. But, since I'm strapped for things to post on a blog that nobody reads, I guess this will fit nicely into the plethora of articles that do the same as this one.

I loves me some Johnny Depp.

And I don't mean this in, uh, that way. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Apparently, Nintendo does too. I mean, if Depp didn't make a surprise cameo in Phantom Hourglass, how would the game continue?

It wouldn't. You wouldn't have a boat, and you'd be stuck on that island for eternity. Depp's girlfriend on the high seas (who just so happens to just dress like a pirate, yet strangely knows how to captain a ship and shoot torpedoes, just by standing at the bow) might pick you up since she seems to have a thing for little boys in green tunics anyway, but that's beside the point.

Link, although fiercely determined and courageous, wouldn't get anywhere in his games if it weren't for someone else's assistance. Take a look at the series: besides the first three, every single Zelda pits Link against these perils -- yet, even though he's equipped with a sword and a mean face, he'd get nowhere.

In Ocarina of Time, poor crying Link-on-a-bed needed a fairy.

In Majora's Mask, he needed help from a crazy mask salesman.

In His Awakening, Link received assistance from an imaginary monochrome-yet-really-red-haired girl and her mushroom-sniffing father.

In Twilight Princess, Link was transformed into a wolf and needed help from a floating cat-thing.

Need, need, need, need, need.

And now, Link needs help from Johnny Depp to save his spunky pirate girlfriend from the clutches of an evil boat.

Who's the real hero, huh? Certainly not Link. And since Phantom Hourglass was such a great game, one that hearkened back to my nostalgia of A Him to the Past, I think we all owe Jack Sparrow a round of applause.

Without him, we'd be stuck on that island forever, forced to repeatedly cut the weeds in that one guy's garden and find that we ONLY get hearts instead of rupees, which we need for that way-expensive ring-thingy at the shop that looks like you'll get a bargain for at the treasure place, but you'll really just get gypped out of a great deal.

Thanks, Johnny. We appreciate your support.

Shadow of the Colossus -- Revisited and (OH PLEASE SAY IT AIN'T SO!) Reviewed!

2008-10-01T20:57:00.004-06:00

Note: This "review" was posted on that wonderful Shakespearean website, IGN, a few years back. It's not very good -- even by IGN standards! -- seeing how I received a "thumbs down" from some jerk on the internet. Oh well. Can't win 'em all!

Well, after a year of holding down the R1 button, desperately trying to cling to the grassy-hair stuff on the back of a giant colossus, I decided enough was enough.

My right index finger was getting cramped. I needed to beat this foul beast of a game and I needed to beat it NOW.

So I did. And it was extremely frustrating.

But at the same time, I was totally in awe of what I was experiencing.

There aren't many "Holy Crap" moments in video games anymore. The last game I played with these moments was Twilight Princess -- I'm hoping that riding an over-sized top while fighting a giant floating skeletor-head made other people shout "Holy Crap, this is fricking awesome" at their television sets while waving their controllers in their air and weeping with pure joy.

But that might be just me.

Shadow of the Colossus doesn't have giant skeletor-heads. Instead, it has a huge flying worm that makes you turn to your brother and scream directly into his ear, "Holy [expletive], this is [expletive] epic!"

I kid you not. Shooting the bulbs on the worm's belly, riding neck-and-neck with its arms, making a death-defying leap onto its climbable appendages, rushing headlong through grassy-hair, and then shoving your sword into the poor worm's convenient weak points -- aw, man, I did not want that battle to end.

No other game, I thought, made me feel so much like a badass. I felt that Shadow of the Colossus wasn't just a game -- it was an experience.

But, after I massacred a couple other colossi, those feelings did a complete 360.

And that was when I met the final boss.

* * *

Some games make you want to throw your controller at the wall, and then run and cry into your pillow, cursing the world for all its misery.

When those fricking balls of electricity began to plummet in my direction, I could feel the frustration-factor start to sink in.

I was shot. I was shot again. I was knocked down. I could not get up.

"Get the [expletive] up, you dirty son of a [expletive]!"

Why the hell wouldn't the game let me get up?

Oh, because this is an experience, and not a game?

In a game, when I get shot with electricity, I get knocked down, and then have the ability to immediately get back up.

However, since Shadow of the Colossus is an experience that walks the fine line between reality and fiction, I have to wait ten seconds while frantically rotating my joystick, all the while screaming at the TV for the down-and-out character on screen to get to his virtual feet.

And then I get shot again. And again. And again.

And then I got mad.

Anyway, I beat the game. Great twisty ending, yadda yadda yadda, you've heard it all before.

But while the credits were rolling, I reflected on what had made this game so different from anything else I had ever experienced.

And then it hit me:

I have not been more scared in a videogame than when I swam out into a calm lake, all alone, anticipating the cold icy fangs of death to form beneath the dark surface and consume me, all the while a faint wind howled along the walls of the valley.

It evoked a Jaws-instilled fear that has never released me from its ever-tightening grip, even in the most shallow of swimming pools.

And for that, I -- someone who has the coldest of hearts, numbest of souls, and the personality of a brick -- commend Shadow of the Colossus for making me feel something.

"In Bruges" Review!

2008-09-30T14:47:00.013-06:00

I wish I had an idea about how many blogs are updated daily, each one probably concerning some piece of media or world event (Jesus, people, enough with the Sarah Palin crap already!) -- most are probably not very well-written (perhaps...like this blog?) and occasionally unintelligible. For example: "ilkiek teh new batmn movie heath leger man i wish taht guy didnt die he was soooooo00 good totlly shold win a oscar for taht role and i like teh mvoei vary much liek wen tehjoker was in the truck an btaman used teh rope t flip teh truck o man ti was sooooooo cool!!!"

Uh-huh.

Personally -- and I don't know about you, dear non-existent reader -- but I don't really want to read what random people on the internet think about films or movies or Sarah Palin. It doesn't really benefit me in the long run, know what I mean? I could scrounge through millions of posts and maybe, just maybe, absorb only a couple of useful morsels of tasty information. What's new, right? In this case, it's somewhat ironic that you, dear non-existent reader, are reading (or perhaps skimming over the rubbish) about what I think about what other people think about...things. Absolute lunacy, I know. But, since you're here and still reading (I mean, come on -- still?!), let me fill you in on my opinion of the film, In Bruges (starring COLIN FARREL(!), BRENDAN GLEESON(!!), and RALPH FIENNES(!!!) no less!):

I just watched this film last night. It was good. Go see it.

It May Sound Weird, But...

2008-09-29T12:15:00.002-06:00

I haven't been able to finish anything in a long ti

Remember the Days

2008-09-27T13:20:00.006-06:00

With the release of Mega Man 9 upon us and Jeremy Parish's excellent piece about how everything wrong is right again, I changed my ways of thinking. Metal Gear Solid 4 was forgotten, Soul Calibur IV tossed aside, even Final Fantasy IV DS was put on hold for a week. I regressed from 4's to 3's instead. Digging out my old NES system, I plugged in a controller, hooked up the AV cables and AC adapter, and began the only Mega Man game I've ever played. (Editor's note: this has since changed.)

When I was about five or six, my dad took me to a pawn shop so I could pick out a game from behind the counter. Of course, while Super Mario Brothers 3 looked awfully tempting, I had played the heck out of it already and wanted something new -- which is why Mega Man 3, with its bright purple cover and a white guy who looked like Gary Coleman in a blue spandex suit shooting a nasty-looking robot, looked so appealing. I'm glad, all these years later, that made this choice...if only for the white Gary Coleman. Maybe the resemblance is just me.

So, yes: Mega Man 3 is the only game in the series I've played (excluding a brief stint with Mega Man X on a friend's SNES emulator). Magazine publications, gaming websites, and internet forums all tell me that the second is the best, like a gift granted to the masses from heaven above, but I've played the third for so long, it's hard to believe otherwise. And frankly, I don't really care to argue about the best -- I just want to shoot up some robot masters. Especially Shadow Man. What a bastard!

Shadow Man and I have a long, sad, frustrating history together; it's a history fraught random jumping and constant sliding and throwing ninja stars that are almost seemingly impossible to avoid. I'd try shooting Hard Man's Flying Punch Thing, but that was impossibly slow and completely bounces off Shadow Man when it makes contact. And...that's about it, though: my only tactic was to either shoot him with the Mega Buster or attack him with a useless robot power-up (because Hard Man was the only boss I could beat at the time without dying). Years later after I bought the game, however, I discovered that you can beat this Shadow Man sonuvabitch with the worst power-up in the game: Top-Spin.

What kind of crazy game design is this anyway? It's like finally realizing that final boss Ganon in Twilight Princess bizarrely has a soft spot for the fishing rod. Huh.

With Mega Man 9 now released unto the masses, the third game feels like old news -- well, that might be because it is -- but that doesn't mean it's any less proficient at what it does well than it did twenty years ago. Most power-ups still pack a punch, your robot dog is just as useful (somewhat), and the additional slide feels like it was implemented perfectly into stages that required, uh, sliding. It's just that...Mega Man 9, a game I'm becoming more and more attached to, was made with hindsight and experience, clearly and precisely combining everything that made the series good into one package. While still one of my favorite NES games, Mega Man 3 was made hot off the tails of a supposed masterpiece, and had a difficult time attempting to surpass near-perfection.

What I'm trying to say is that despite having an 8-bit sheen, the early Mega Man games hold up incredibly well -- and like I said, I think I'd rather be playing this series than Metal Gear Solid 4 or Soul Calibur 4. Why? Well, instead of preaching to its audience about PMC's and the horrors of pantless monkeys who smoke and drink, or shoving players' eyeballs into a pair of virtual heaving bosoms, this series was made with fun in mind, to give anyone who played it a challenging yet enjoyable experience from their first battle with Snake Man to the final showdown with Dr. Wily.

Fun is key here: forget cinematic experiences and screw involving storylines.

They're not exactly fun.

But Mega Man is. And that's what's most important.

Double Dragon II: Spin-Kicking Down the Rabbit Hole, or, "A Review No One Will Read"

2008-09-24T22:06:00.010-06:00

This is why I'm here, isn't it? The reason for this blog, the reason I constantly write essays about videogames despite the fact that nobody reads them, the reason I find a lot of entertainment nowadays to be completely devoid of a soul -- it's all because of Double Dragon II.

Well, for the most part.

Occasionally, I reach into the drawer where my NES is kept, pull out the system and cartridge, and start whaling away on bad guys. These bad guys, they just never learn, do they? I'm just a never-ending spin-kicking machine of doom and blood and death, and they constantly walk straight into the hurricane of legs. Just like real life. Seriously, people. Get some glasses or contacts or something.

Reno, Nevada used to be my home town, see? The Biggest Little City in the World was the place that taught me to never trust strangers with candy, lest you wanted to be taken away somewhere you didn't want to be -- and it also was the place where strangers with candy learned never to trust little kids who learned how to spin-kick strangers with candy in the face. Again, I'd like to reiterate that "hurricane of legs" image.

There's this little violence in videogames debate going on right now. Well, as of this moment, let me tell you that the politicians and prissy soccer moms were right: I, a GoforBroak writer, spun-kick a stranger with candy so hard in the face, he ended up dead (more than dead, actually. The cops had to pry my tennis shoe from the guy's brain cavity) because of an NES game. To make a long, legal story short, Double Dragon II: The Revenge was my terrible, wicked, and violent teacher, and I was the best goddamn student it ever had. Whenever I saw a bunch of red-haired guys cartwheeling toward me like a couple of idiots, I readied my mental simultaneous A + B button press and kicked the hell out of them. Whenever dudes with bandannas began to back up slowly, as if they were about to throw something in my general direction, I mentally pressed up or down, dodged that shit, and totally kicked the hell out of them. Whenever Arnold Shwarzenegger showed up (he's in the game, by the way, and nicely orange) and attempted to lay down some sort of crazy foreign policy, I absolutely positively kicked the hell out of his Austrian ass.

(Except sometimes he would do that head-bash move. I could never get around that one.)

In reality, though, and not in some vague spin-kicking fantasy of mine, I love Double Dragon II. It's still a game I can go back to time and time again and still have a good time -- in fact, playing it is almost like riding a bike, really. Depending on the direction your character is facing on screen, pressing A or B would either punch or kick. Facing right: A would punch, B would kick. Facing left: the opposite (and correct me if I'm wrong on this, dear nonexistent reader, as I'm not completely positive. So much for the "riding a bike" analogy.). Pressing both buttons at once would execute a jump and pressing them again while in the air: the dreaded spin-kick.

When the game first came out, I could never beat it with the default three lives. It was pretty much all over once I made it to that stage with the dripping fireballs and blinking wall-eyes -- for my dad, the gear room (complete with jumping needles, rotating gears, and spikes on the floor) was his downfall. I remember him getting especially angry whenever he reached that level, and when he'd inevitably lose, my mom would semi-console him in a sarcastic voice,

"Now, now, it's only a game."

Yes, we knew it was only a game, but for the two of us, both of our respective levels represented a laughing malevolent villain standing in the way, mocking our pathetic attempts to reach the final stage. My dad probably saw this cackling persona in the jumping needles. For me, I saw the villain in those blinking eyes...and he wasn't laughing. Just simply standing there, grinning, as if he was privileged to know some pivotal information I didn't have access to.

I discovered his dark secret a little while later:

In order to beat the game, I had to kill Jimmy.

***

See, three lives weren't enough to pass that godforsaken fire-dripping stage. Every time I would take a leap of faith, hoping I wouldn't get "thwacked!" by a slice of Hell itself, and immediately be shot down, falling to my demise. It wasn't entirely all that great of an experience, and I was a little frustrated, to be honest. But one day, while messing around with one of the two-player modes, I found out, that, when Billy beats the crap out of his brother Jimmy, Billy gets an extra life.

Oh, this was absolutely delicious. Not on a malicious level, mind you, but on a "Oh My God, I Finally Can Beat the Game" level. Also: "Deliciously Malicious" might make a earth-shatteringly great slogan for Lucky Charms. Trust me on this -- after taking five years of business classes and struggling though countless marketing meetings, I am more than ready to set the commercial world on fire. Get ready, people. LUCKY CHARMS ARE BECOMING DELICIOUSLY MALICIOUS!

Tangent, tangent.

So yes, armed to the teeth with seven lives -- count 'em: seven -- I challenged Double Dragon II once more...and still had my ass handed to me. The final boss, a long-haired, back-flipping, pirouette-spinning, occasionally invisible bastard, became my arch-nemesis after attempting to defeat him for I-don't-know how many times. I reflected back to Jimmy: his heroic sacrifice was all for naught. My videogame brother, a helpless, lifeless, pixelated corpse...all because of me.

I cried a little that night.

But you know, as they say in the Wonderful World of Cliches, practice makes perfect, and today, I can beat the game with the default three lives. Hot diggity!

And now the street brawler genre is pretty much dead. Aside from, what, God Hand and Final Fight: Streetwise (both games the press didn't seem to appreciate all that much), one of my favorite pastimes has vanished and I'm left here standing, a twitch in my agile legs. What happened? Doesn't anyone like to kick the crap out of bad guys anymore? I guess now this act is done with a bunch of ultra-violent firearms and not with a intensely-muscly pair of real arms. Pining for the good 'ol days won't get you anywhere, though.

***

Here, I now stand alone, my legs twitching, itching, ready. Yet I cannot move.

"Go for broak," says the misspelled spray-painted wall during the prologue to Stage 2.

I blink. "Uh, what? What was that?"

"Go for broak!" the voice says again, this time a little louder.

"Huh? You're not making any sense. Volume does not beget comprehension, ya know."

Finally, it shrieks, "GO FOR BROAK! JUST MAKE THAT FUCKING LEAP OF BALLSY, COURAGEOUS FAITH AND GO...FOR...BROAK!"

So I did. And now I'm endlessly spin-kicking down the rabbit hole, a goddamn hurricane of legs, fleshy helicopter blades in the wind. This is life, and I'm living it.

The Rebirth of Frequent Death

2008-09-22T16:57:00.005-06:00

Much like the THOUSANDS of other people who are probably going to write about their playthroughs of the recently released Mega Man 9, I felt I should do the same. You know the gist: "When in Rome", "Go with the flow", and all that other bull. Nothing new is going to be said here, and you're gonna like it that way.
That said, Mega Man 9 is hard. Like bone-crunchingly difficult. Like, as I write this, it's as if I can hear the millions upon billions of players moaning in agony over the delicately-placed spikes in Splashwoman's stage or Concrete Man's third elephant battle. That's okay, though. Not many games these days attempt to strain every single ounce of hand-eye coordination from their audience, and because of this, I commend Mega Man 9 for its brutality.

Funny, though, that a game created solely to reboot a struggling series -- I'd like to call it the Rebirth of Everything That Once was Good in this World -- has death awaiting you around every goddamn spiky corner. Despite this, the levels here are some of the most well-designed I've seen in a game since I played Bionic Commando Rearmed's demo over and over again. Even though I perished many-a-time, I always knew it was my fault and my fault alone. Let's see here: you've got sneaky enemies who grab the hell out of you and slam you head-first into pointy razors of exploding death, and a simple leap down into another stage's quadrant might lead to more spikes. There are spikes on the ceiling, spikes on the floor, spikes on the goddamn everything.

Spike fetishists will be in heaven.

When nerds all over the internet aren't talking about the difficulty, they'll probably be salivating over the 8-bit music -- yes, the little bleeps and boops that represent actual instruments are back from the dead, and they sound better than a cheeseburger sounds right about now. See, I'm kinda wicked hungry, and I could definitely go for a burger. However, I won't stoop to such a level and ruin my cheeseburger-free diet because I have Mega Man 9, and its music will satisfy my ravenous appetite. These tunes make me feel like I'm climbing a craggy mountain, wind blowing needles of snow and ice into my skin, and Death himself is staring me in the face with an upturned finger, beckoning. But, something buried within the depths of the music keeps the fire within alive, and I continue onward to the Robot Master awaiting my arrival at the summit.

How's that for hyperbole?

No, there's something more than nostalgia in old videogame music, and it's present here in Mega Man 9. A goal at the end of this hellish tunnel of spikes and scissor beasts and mechanical octopi sits patiently in a locked room, trident in hand, and the music is your guiding light, urging you forward.

It's a shame Splash Woman wants nothing more than to stab you in the face.

That's okay with me, though. Bring on more sharp, spiky death!

Then the Rain Came Down

2008-09-19T10:03:00.007-06:00

His name was Roald. He was a penguin.

Every now and then, he would send me a couch through the mail, or maybe an awesome striped T-shirt, or maybe even a riveting NES game. I'd see him whenever I was walking from the beach to cash in on some shells, and we'd talk and have a few laughs. His house, which I'd enter unannounced sometimes, was like a McDonald's ball pit -- a child's dream come true. Occasionally, I would take the time to compose a rockin' letter to him, dictating how he was so cool and that I loved his house and Clu Clu Land was kinda boring, but thanks for sending it to me anyway! He'd respond by saying that he had no idea what I was talking about, that my grammar and spelling were atrocious, and he couldn't understand a word I said. But he was grateful for the letter! That much he was sure of.

Yes, Roald the Penguin and I were friends to the bitter end, even if he mistook my careful and meticulous letter-writing skills for pure rubbish. He'd cluck, "Hey, man, let's be buddies forever, deal?" I'd nod, hell yes, man, let's.

And then he moved away.

Through my TV speakers, the piano was playing the bitter sweet rain song, intensifying my sense of sheer sadness when I discovered Roald's house had completely vanished from my town of Aniville. All that was left was a patch of bare earth. I felt...empty inside. Not even furiously mashing the big green A button to twirl my umbrella made me feel better. My best friend, a nerdy penguin with amazing fashion sense, was gone, leaving no evidence as to why he'd commit such a heinous crime against our friendship of trust.

So I confided in Fang the Wolf about my emptiness, that with Roald gone, a massive void in my heart had appeared from nowhere, devouring all that I deemed happy in life. I rhetorically asked Fang, "Who am I going to talk to when times are bad? Who is going to send me tasteful items of furniture and incredible pieces of retro software? To whom am I going to give shells I found on the beach in hope that they would continue to send me said tasteful items of furniture and incredible pieces of retro software?

"No one," I said. "That's who."

Fang told me to shut the hell up and walked back into his house.

I got a letter from Roald in the mail later that day. He explained that he simply wanted to move on and see the world, that Aniville wasn't hip enough for him, dude, and that he hoped that this wouldn't leave a stain on the great white sheet of our everlasting friendship. Through teary eyes, I managed to murmur,

"No, Roald the Penguin, you'll be my best bud forever. I wish you only the best."

As the piano continued to play the rain song, I twirled my umbrella for the last time, spoke with my Gyroid, and never returned to the town of Aniville again.

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin: Bagpipes and Electric Guitars, or, "A Review No One Will Read"

2008-09-17T12:15:00.008-06:00

So...it turns out my original "review" of Advance Wars: Dual Strike I posted a while ago has turned up on some sort of blog-search engine called "boxxet". Or something. If anything, this aforementioned blasphemous site may or may not completely shatter my dreams (and supreme mission) of having no one -- absolutely no one -- ever read this blog...hence the subtitle, "A Blog That No One Will Read or Care About". By having someone actually read what I write means more work for me and an additional name change to "A Blog That Only A Couple People Read, But Ultimately No One Cares About."

Hmm...that honestly has a nice ring to it! Nope! Nevermind I said that!

In any case, in honor of the first DS Advance Wars installment, I guess I'll write about the second, Days of Ruin (but only because this "boxxet" site seems to love handheld strategy games. Or something.). Also, Will Wright apparently loves this series and since he's a dude who makes games that I don't necessarily play, it seems that the right thing to do would be to talk about Advance Wars. Which is okay. I like this series, too, Mr. Wright (and do you have any job openings in your company, by the way? Just to let you know, kissing ass is something I do very well! Watch: Says the author of GoforBroak, "Spore is a gift from heaven above, delivered from God Himself, unto the poor peoples of the earth; and it was good! Really good!" Mr. Wright, I even will give you permission to use that quote on the back of the box! Sure it may sound a little sacrilegious (or maybe not at all -- it's your call), but I'm sure this Spore game will sell millions because of it! Honest! I am not kidding! Also, I guess I should mention that I'm not too much of a psycho! Emphasis on the "too much"! Okay? OKAY?!)

Ahem. Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. Yes.

I happen to feel that the first installment on the DS was a little too arcade-y (note: I hate throwing that word around) and somewhat made the whole experience a little uneven because of it. For example, the CO powers pretty much broke the game -- get Colin and Hachi on a team, or something, and it was essentially game over. The inclusion of all the other sorts of modes (such as the Tanks mini-game) also seems to reinforce my arcade-y argument about Duel Strike. But that's okay! I loved every minute of that game and still do! Also, Jake's music was bitchin'!

But that's besides the point.

See, when Days of Ruin first was released, I was excited. Maybe even a little beyond excited. Finally, it seemed as if Intelligent Systems (the game's developer) was taking this series crazy-serious and ironing out everything that made Dual Strike a little wonky. The characters were all new and dark, the war-torn world was more realistic and dark, and the graphics were completely redone (and dark). Did I mention the game was dark? The masses love dark!

Anyway, the game itself is a hell of a lot more balanced. Those funky CO powers aren't constantly used (since you pretty much could have been wiped out in one turn when somebody engaged their power in Dual Strike), and some of the more questionable units (like the stealth fighter) have been removed. Most of the characters more or less resemble the old ones in battlefield abilities (especially Gage and his sniper traits) -- this isn't a bad thing, since the character system in the previous games worked so well. And speaking of Gage, his theme may rock even harder than Jake's! Bagpipes? With electric guitars? Yes, please!

I don't really want to talk about the plot, since people talk about plots in videogames way too much. Go read a book or something. Anna Karenina comes to mind for some reason. Don't ask me why. But the actual campaign mode here is really well done, if not almost completely identical to the campaign modes in previous games. You know how it goes: complete one mission, move onto the next, until you finally reach the Final Bad Guy (in this case, by the way, he isn't in wheel chair. So you don't have to feel bad about shooting him. Or blowing him up. Spoilers!).

That's about it, if you, the nonexistent viewer of this blog still persist in reading. Days of Ruin probably is my favorite in the series, even if it's a lightweight content-wise in comparison to other Advance Wars games. The content that's here, though, is so well-crafted and finely-honed that I simply cannot complain -- and neither should anyone else. Do you really need to play that Tanks mini-game again? Uh, no.

P.S. -- And here's to you, Boxxet! Way to ruin everything! This will probably cause me days of ruin, I might add! Hyuk-hyuk!

The World-Saving Idea (Part 2)

2008-09-17T11:33:00.004-06:00

Essentially, the film details the extraordinary life of a dude with a porta-potty time machine. He orders it from Ebay and uses it to correct his numerous past mistakes that ultimately led up to a broken relationship with his girlfriend. After traveling through time and attempting to mend the relationship along with his broken heart, everything he does just seems to make the situation worse. Finally, he gives up. In the end, the viewer finds out that the porta-potty was actually just a porta-potty, and the protagonist was an idiot to believe in time-travel in the first place.

This idea was supposed to save the world.

It didn't.

Surprise, surprise.

The World-Saving Idea

2008-09-16T14:33:00.004-06:00

My film teacher in college once famously told me never to begin a movie-in-the-making with the protagonist hitting a buzzing alarm clock -- he said that most film connoisseurs will immediately frown upon this opening and shun it like rancid gravy.

Funny he should say this, I thought at the time.

While we were still in high school, my friends and I took a class called "Media Empowerment" and one of the requirements was to create a short film that was entertaining but ultimately conveyed some sort of message to its audience. When you get right down to it, brainstorming was a bitch. None of the people in my group had something they wanted to say (well, important to say anyways) and neither did I -- nothing in the world affected me in such a manner as to inspire me to get up on a soapbox and shout at the top of my lungs. I could talk about the "illegal immigrant" issue, but that was a horse that had been beaten to something beyond death; the Iraq War, well, that was even more unoriginal than talking about Mexicans who cross borders.

Smartass that I was, I presented the idea that I was too apathetic to care about any world issue, and maybe I should create a film based on the theme of apathy and how it was effecting the U.S. population. The problem with this was that I, in fact, was apathetic and didn't really want to make a movie in the first place.

Ah. Well. That doesn't exactly cut it, now does it?

Why should you care, dear nonexistent reader of this blog that nobody reads? Well, my friends came up with a brilliant movie idea that might possibly save the world today. Hunger would be quenched, poverty would vanish, and I would cease to be apathetic if the idea was spread.

Yes, it was that good.

However, the film began with a guy hitting his goddamn alarm clock.

To be continued!

Jesus, Get On With It Already!

2008-09-14T10:39:00.001-06:00

Dragon Quest bores me. To tears, even! But as the years go by, I keep coming back for more -- it's probably the wholesomeness of the entire experience and the fact that the Dragon Quest series has always had "growing up" and "maturation" themes scattered throughout its imaginary worlds. Despite the fact that many, if not all, of the games have been candy-coated and display Akira Toriyama art, they still have an underlying sense of depth. You can learn stuff from these games. They can change you.

Or, at least, I get that impression.

At the end of the day, I've only played the first and eighth game in the entire Dragon Quest series -- the others haven't been major sellers here in the U.S., and as such, never really caught my attention until a few years ago. They're HUGE in Japan (like the equivalent of a Halo or Grand Theft Auto here); because of this, I feel I should give them my respect. And with the release of the localized fourth Dragon Quest right around the corner on the DS, I also felt I should take a look at one of the previous entries.

It just-so-happened to be Dragon Quest VII.

Here, right now, as I write this blog that nobody will end up reading, I'm going to give this game a subtitle: "Dragon Quest VII: Jesus, Get On With It Already!" Seriously, I watched a couple Youtube walkthrough videos, and YOU DON'T ACTUALLY FIGHT ANYTHING UNTIL MORE THAN AN HOUR INTO THE ADVENTURE. That's insane! Ludicrous! And inexplicably genius! In comparison to the latest eighth entry, in which you and a fat guy slice through a group of slimes within the first couple minutes, Dragon Quest VII is like an old man in a wheel-chair trying to roll his way from LA to San Fransisco. Through snow. And the old man doesn't have any arms.

Maybe I was bored. Maybe I'm still just trying to respect a series that is held in such high regards esteem. Either way, watching someone else play Dragon Quest VII was enthralling. Don't ask me why. The guy playing it even took the time to speak to everyone he saw -- and then talked to them again when he knew that the person he was going to talk to was going to say the exact same thing they said the previous time he talked to them.

And then he talked to them again! ENTHRALLING!

At the very least, Dragon Quest VII was living up to its God-given subtitle...not that I'm God or anything.

Gears of War: Stupid Brilliance, or, "A Review No One Will Read"

2008-09-12T09:29:00.001-06:00

"Sucks to be them."

Really now, does it? The two other hulky man-beasts on my team, stuck down in the sewer, a place probably devoid of any monster encounters whatsoever -- does it really suck to be them?

The answer doesn't matter. What does matter is that this scene in the Gears of War is the second-most cringe-worthy out of any conversation between stereotypical gun-toting muscle-freaks I've ever seen. See, they're on a mission. A mission to save humanity from alien-yet-strangely-human-like creatures who have bad complexions and also are on steroids. They're going below ground. Like, under the ground. And they're gonna blow the shit out of these aliens. And they eventually do...with a speeding train armed with a bomb. Boom. Just like that.

No, Gears of War isn't literature -- it barely meets the criteria to become comic-book worthy material. Instead, the game relies on its mechanics (the "pop n' stop" gunplay) to ultimately become one of the best shooters on the market and something I want to come back to time and time again, regardless of lines like, "We want your ammo on our location!" (On a side note, you'd think that with a massive budget, these game makers would actually get some real talent on the script, but...I guess not. It's not like your playing this game to stimulate any intellectual thinking, now, are you?)

Unlike other games this generation, Gears of War is a place I can go back to time after time and still have fun -- I think Resident Evil 4 and F-Zero GX were other such games where I could just jump into a firefight or a race or escape from a giant statue of a midget (I commend the designer who came up with that idea) and still enjoy myself, no matter what. Maybe it just all comes down to the fact that I might have ADD and that I can't enjoy something unless it delivers "fun" in quick, intense bursts. "Slow" and "meticulous" are words that have not entered my vocabulary until the moment I just used them in this last sentence -- this might also mean that "college" (a word that also just was inducted into my vocabulary hall-of-fame) might be out of the question. Such is my dilemma.

This rollercoaster of a game begins in a jail, where Marcus Fenix is saved by his friend, Dom. In this scene, we not only are able to vaguely see our protagonist without a shirt on (just how inhumanly muscly is he?), but we also get the privilege to hear the word "shit" used just for hell of it. Dom and Marcus fight through swarms of aliens, narrowly escape a giant underground bug that appears out of nowhere to devour our heroes, and fly away on a helicopter.

Here, Marcus has an IMPORTANT CONVERSATION with a helmet-clad soldier named Carmine:

"Hey," says Carmine to Marcus, "are you the Marcus Fenix? The one that fought at Aspho Fields?"

Marcus looks grumpy. "Yeah."

In the most horribly voice acted line in the game, Carmine responds, "Wow, cool!"

And what does Marcus think of this praise? Does he thinks it's cool?

"Not really."

You, the person reading this blog, who actually isn't reading it because no one reads this anyway; you who theoretically dropped out of high school to pursue an acting career and now only star in Kentucky Fried Chicken(TM) commercials; you who once asked the waiter in an Apple Bee's restaurant whether or not it felt better to walk through glass with shoes or go barefoot, and if so, does that come with onion rings -- you, you magnificent bastard, you could have written better dialogue. Start living the good life, son, because you'll make it as a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer in this here Videogames Industry in no time.

I want to tear my hair out whenever I watch this scene. I want to club baby seals and steal candy from 7-Elevens whenever I watch this scene. I want to smash my hand with a hammer, I want to beat myself over the head with a spiked club...I even want to *gasp* go read Anna Karenina instead of watching this shit. (Note to non-existent reader: I used "shit" instead of "crap" or "trash" because, like Gears of War, the more profanity I use, the better everything gets. So shit. Also: shit.)

But the majority of the time, I skip this scene -- in fact, I skip most of the scenes, because frankly, they're awkward, poorly written, and not very well-shot.

Surprisingly, I like Gears of War, though. I've played it through all the difficulty levels and found all the dog-tags, and right now, I wouldn't mind playing it again. It's just...when people argue over whether or not videogames can be taken seriously, as in, on the level of other forms of popular media, I just think back to Marcus Fenix and his conversation with Dom.

"Sucks to be them."

Oh well. Back to Anna Karenina, I guess.

You Have Been Warned

2008-09-11T18:55:00.003-06:00

Since this is a blog that no one will read or care about and its only purpose is to allow me to spew out my nerdy tendencies on paper, let me say to anyone who might actually read this:

"I'm sorry."

To people who may know me personally, I'm even more sorry. If you even glance at what I have written, you probably will immediately vomit and curse at your computer screen and throw a temper tantrum right where you stand (which, by the way, would be incredibly hilarious on film). Yes, I am a nerd, and as a nerd, I have to indulge in nerdy tendencies and write about nerdy things. So...I'd like to reiterate by apologizing profusely. Preferably out my nose. If that even makes sense.

To everyone else: I can't apologize because you don't exist. It's not conceivably possible for someone other than someone I know to be reading this in the first place -- however, if you do exist, well then, more power to ya.

Thanks, and Go for Broak!

Bionic Commando Rearmed!

2008-09-10T15:35:00.004-06:00

The most fun I ever had with my Playstation 3 wasn't with a big-budget $60 game or even a cheap download from the Playstation Network -- nay, dare I say -- it was the free Bionic Commando Rearmed demo. Seriously, I think I'd be fine selling my PS3 library and end up spending my entire day swinging around on my bionic arm, shooting Nazi bad guys with a shotgun. I don't even need to buy the whole game because the first level will suffice for eternity. Really!

It's just...so satisfying, you know? Don't ask me why. Maybe it all boils down to Jeremy Parish's everything wrong is right again, where what was once good (and forever will be good) is recognized by the games industry to be freaking awesome again. I mean, really: what was wrong with the early Mega Men, the Castlevanias, the Marios, and all that other 2-D software? Nothing. In fact, I'd argue that there is limitless and untapped potential in the second dimension -- and while the third dimension has this reputation as being "mature" and "where games need to go" in order to progress, I'd say that there's been very little progress at all in the last few years.

To be honest, thinking about playing Metal Gear Solid 4 again makes me a little queasy. Thinking about playing Soul Calibur 4 again has me a little turned on.

Thinking about playing Bionic Commando Rearmed, well...I could think about that all day.

That Feeling of Desperation -- The Survival Horror RPG

2008-09-07T16:31:00.004-06:00

The labyrinth is dark, and in the center of my current room sits a large pulsating fireball. In actuality, the fireball is a T-rex creature, armed to the teeth with massive Fangs that are seemingly ready to rip chunks from my party members' faces. Yet, the F.O.E. calls, beckons to me: take up this near-impossible challenge, succeed above all odds, and you and your guild will ultimately feel like a bunch of badasses -- but deep down I know that facing this pulsating doom in the center of the room certainly means quick, painful destruction. I'd have to turn my game off. I don't want to stop playing.

I can't stop playing.

Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard can be likened to Resident Evil in the fact that both games are oh-my-god scary. Like, crap-your-pants scary. Like, please-oh-please-F.O.E-don't-follow-me-into-that-corner-or-I-don't-know-what-I'll-do scary. Sometimes, I even cry a little. But that's okay. It's fine to have a good cry every now and then when your party members are obliterated by mutant elk.

Like Resident Evil, Etrian Odyssey II leaves you stranded in an unfamiliar place with nothing but a few spells, weapons, and medicine. You have a map. It's blank. You have to fill it out as you go along; otherwise, you just might take a wrong corner into something you don't want to take a wrong corner into. T-rexes and mutant elk, for example.

But you're literally surviving -- the game is about making it as far as you can into a labyrinth that supposedly leads to the sky or something. It's your job as explorers to find out what lies beyond and perhaps even knock a few heads along the way. Or even get your head knocked in a few times. Or many times. Or too many to count!

Especially by mutant elk.

Edit: More recently, I was killed by a pumpkin, too. GODDAMN!

Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Nostalgia, or, "A Review No One Will Read"

2008-09-03T11:04:00.006-06:00

A genuine redneck whom I went to school with was actually the one to instruct me in the basics of psychology and the fundamentals of memory -- actually, I guess it all essentially boils down to pure nostalgia -- without my even realizing it. Can you imagine? A redneck! This guy wasn't just an ordinary redneck -- he also happened to be getting married, he spit his chewing tobacco on the school carpets quite frequently, and he ended up becoming a good friend and a pretty nice guy. Who knows what he's doing now, but I wish him the best.

Anyway, during a dull computer class, this genuine redneck allowed me to look through his collection of CD's; I could pick one out and give it a listen. So, being the nerd that I am, I chose one of the Grand Theft Auto soundtracks (Flash FM or something), and began grooving away to Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean". Honestly, it was a great CD and one that I'll always correspond with boring computer classes with headphones on my ears and my fingers clicking away on keys. Not that that's a bad thing.

One day, my redneck buddy asked me something peculiar as we were flipping through his CD's:

"Do songs ever take you back to better times?"

Whoa. Hold on there, Jimbo. Not only was this guy getting into emotional territory here, but he was also a genuine redneck, and genuine rednecks shouldn't ask these types of questions. I went along with it, though, and answered as wisely as I could.

"Well, yeah, I guess."

"Really?" he wondered, honestly surprised. "I mean, like, say you were on this road trip."

"Uh-huh."

"And you were listenin' to this song."

"Uh-huh."

"And then later on in the future, you hear the song again, and then it brings you back to old times, when you were on the trip."

"Right. I kinda know what you're getting at." I shot him a suspicious look. "What about it?"

He pointed to a CD in his collection. "Well, this album here always brings me back to this road trip I had, and it was a helluva lot of fun. I just wish I could do it again, know what I mean?" And with that, he returned to busily staring into space and not working on his computer.

At the time, I simply shrugged it off. I mean, really! His statement didn't seem that profound, and obviously, coming from the mouth of a redneck (albeit a good-natured redneck), I didn't pay it much thought.

That was my freshmen year of high school. Now, I'm beginning to think, as I get older, that that goddamn redneck was onto something.

***

The first game I received with my original Game Boy Advance was Golden Sun, a role-playing adventure set in a fictional world of sorcery and puzzles and feminine-looking dudes (well, at least Alex looks kind of like a chick). In 2001, it was incredibly fun and I thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread -- nowadays, however, sliced bread isn't quite as revolutionary as it once was, and it definitely pales in comparison to (OMG!) hoagie rolls. Explore Golden Sun again in modern times, and you'll notice that it plays it pretty safe as far as RPG's are concerned.

But The Lost Age, while also going strictly by-the-book, luckily slipped into my "good-times memory" category created by my redneck friend. Let me explain.

Family road trip to Southern California. 2003. The Lost Age was nearing completion after a couple months of hardy adventuring, and I was foaming at the mouth. I had to see this baby all the way to its dramatic conclusion. While the weather in reality was beautiful and sunny and gorgeous, I was virtually fighting my way through an apocalyptic frozen wasteland as Felix, the (mostly) silent protagonist. The edges of the world were deteriorating into an ominous darkness (or something), and my traveling companions and I had precious little time to save it from impending doom.

Climbing to the top of the Mars Lighthouse, we encountered the Wise One, the mysterious floating eyeball Isaac and Garet had met in the first game -- and despite the fact that he was in no position to confront my party (because I was convinced my leveled-up characters were gods themselves), the Wise One sicked a freaking three-headed dragon on us. My fifteen year-old head whirled in amazement: I was not only fighting a dragon of massive proportions, but a dragon with three heads? Ho lordy!

At the time of this battle, in reality, I was sitting on my great-aunt's couch with headphones on my ears and sleep in my eyes. We had had a long day of swimming and laying out in the sun -- and since I grew up in the mountains where we had no access to a beach, I firmly believed (and I'm still convinced) then that there was no place I'd rather be. There's just something about the combination of sun and sand and water that gets me every time.

Meanwhile, I was still fighting my way through a three-headed dragon, Felix unleashing the epic "Megiddo" nearly every turn. As one of the heads was dismembered, a sickening thought occurred to me, previously thanks to Kraden's warning about the beast's true identity: what if, just what if, this dragon I'm currently doing a bang-up job slaying here, also happens to be Felix's parents and Isaac's dad who had disappeared long ago in a massive glowing boulder-rolling accident?

I thought for a moment.

No, there's no way. The dragon only had a single head at this point, so really, there was no turning back. With one final stroke of my blade and another discharge of "Megiddo", the dragon collapsed to the ground, slowly morphing into three *unconscious* bodies. My worst fifteen year-old fears confirmed.

***

As I reflect back, both the setting of the game and the vacation I was taking were such stark contrasts to each other that I'm still, for some reason, able to vividly remember each and every exciting/relaxing moment. I was in two places I wanted to be at the time -- me, on the beach, listening to the ocean waves crash on the shore, and me, sacrificing a three-headed dragon in order to save the world. The Lost Age, not really known for its originality, is a game that will stick with me for a long time, simply for this reason alone:

"I just wish I could do it again, know what I mean?"

Thanks, ya redneck bastard. I probably wouldn't have thought of it without you. Well, maybe.

Soul Calibur IV: I Don't Like a Good Porno, or, "A Review No One Will Read"

2008-09-01T12:01:00.003-06:00

Prior to my semi-decade with the Gamecube, I had never heard of Soul Calibur -- I had unfortunately dabbled in too much Mortal Kombat and eventually ended up crying one night when Liu Kang (or whatever his name is) turned into a dragon and ate the upper half of my babe, Sonya Blade. It scared the crap out of me. I was also eight years old.

That's probably when I stopped playing fighting games. When my dad rented Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 a couple years later, I fooled around a couple minutes with Smoke (the dude who, uh, blows smoke), and then shunned the game like the plague. Even in my later years, no matter how flashy the fatalities or baby-alities or whatever other fluff they have now, I would not touch a Mortal Kombat, much less a fighting game.

Flash forward to late August of 2003. Soul Calibur II is just released, and my anticipation in getting to the store is overflowing. Why the sudden change?

Well, because of Link, of course. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have touched it.

It turned out to be one of the best games I've ever played, and with chippy Talim under my control, no opponent was safe from her whirling tonfas of doom. Not even the best player, armed with Mitsurugi's deadly (and cheap) Damascus sword could destroy me. And even after five years or so, picking up a Gamecube controller is second-nature, like riding a bike.

Soul Calibur IV...feels like I just fell off and skinned my knees. It's a nasty boo-boo, too. Emphasis on the boob-oo.

In actuality, everything that made Soul Calibur II great is back here in full force. The graphics are fantastic and smooth, the character move-lists are updated and feel more balanced, and there are modes I can give a damn about this time (as in, no cheesy RTS stuff). It's a Soul Calibur fan's wet dream...literally.

Which is why I can't stand it.

See, I am a dude, and as a dude, I just-so-happen to appreciate boobs. Boobs, it can be said, make the world go round (unless, of course, these breasts happen to be saggy and/or misshapen), and without boobs, our lives, as we know it, would shatter like a gigantic rock through paper-thin glass.

When boobs take center stage in my favorite fighting game, however, I have a tendency to step back, wave my hands in the air, and yell,

"MY GOD, I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!"

Boobs aren't new to the Soul Calibur universe, judging by this and this, but the fighting engine was the true star of Soul Calibur II a couple years ago, and it was a helluva lot of fun. Now, with advances in technology and, um, implants, the fourth installment in my favorite fighting series seems like little more than soft-core porn.

Let's conduct a little experiment here, shall we? I'm going to have a look at some pictures, and you're going to tell me the first thing (or things) you lay your delicate eyes on. Ready? Go.

CLICK!

CLICK!!

CLICK!!!

Stop. This experiment is done. It may have been to much for you, you bratty pubescent boy, but you have survived the trials and lived to see the light of day. Sure, you may have horrible, recurring nightmares of titanic hot-air balloons blocking your windpipe, but all odds point in your favor.

What can I say? Maybe I could avoid any female encounters (hey, just like in real life!) and just play as The Apprentice instead of jiggly Taki or Ivy or Setsuka or Cassandra or Sophitia or Tira or...you get the point. At least Talim is safe from any heaving breasts or cat-girl fetishes, right?

RIGHT?

...NO!!!!!

"Punching Monkeys"

2008-09-01T11:05:00.000-06:00

Punching Monkeys.

Punching Monkeys.

Punching Monkeys.

...Just, say it with me. That's all I ask. Please. I'm on my hands and knees here. For you. Only for you. Otherwise, I'd be standing. Makes sense, right?

When you left, I didn't know what to do. You were gone, leaving no trace, no evidence -- no nothing -- of where you were going or why you had left. I was scared out of my wits, like a child left alone overnight in a run-down dollar-store. Sure, I had the keys to the kingdom and all the toys at my disposal, but no matter how hard I tried, I still felt empty inside.

Huh. "Tried." "Inside." ...Almost like "Punching Monkeys." Funny that.

Arrg! Okay, okay! I get the picture! You don't have to slap me. I know what I did, and I blame you. When Sparkles was attacked...by that...thing...

Oh. Oh GOD! I don't even want to think about it! It was you! This was why you left! It was the guilt, you son of a bitch! When you took her out for a walk, the...the organ grinder...his...pet...

PunChing MonKeys

pUnching MOnkEys

PoNching mUnkeYS

...No, no, I'm okay. Really! I'm fine! It was just a headache -- it'll pass! ReAlLy!

So, then. Where do we, uh, go from here, hmm? You've got a car and I've got my what's left of my dignity -- we could just hit the road and never look back. What do you say?

...We can't? What do you mean, we can't? If anything, I should be calling the shots, not you! You're...you're nothing but a filthy dog killer! ...Or, at least, the assistant to one! You should be the one behind bars, not me!

...oh...sorry...about that little...outburst...

It's just, when I saw that...thing...staring at me with its beady eyes and snarling face, I just...I get a little tense. My hand...it curls into a ball...and I lose...control...over my head...and I just have to...

PUNCHING MONKEYS!

PunChinG MonkEYs!

PunSHing MNKEYS!

Pnshg Mks!

Advance Wars: Dual Strike: Steroids, or "A Review No One Will Read"

2008-08-31T13:58:00.005-06:00

Seriously, though. How LARGE can a blue-haired man become before he explodes into a pile of human mush? Based on the amount of steroids he seems to be taking, I bet he can hit 70-plus home runs and not even break a sweat.

But damn, is he ever fun to play with.

Wait, nix that last part.

Advance Wars: Dual Strike is a dream come true -- I mean, what other game allows me to be able to play as teenage hipsters who can dress EXTREMELY well and can also save the world without any military training, whatsoever?

(Well, Final Fantasy VIII comes to mind, but that's another story.)

The DS sequel tops the GBA installments by adding more characters, more maps, more story-lines involving guns and wheelchairs, and more muscle on Max.

Are there any flaws? Well, Jake's music is too damn catchy, and when you face Colin and Sasha in a doubles match, they will never ever use their dual-strike power. And whenever Colin uses his regular power, his stats improve so much that he can sometimes (and more often than not) take out the mighty Kanbei. I thought Colin was supposed to be inexperienced?

Eh, maybe Kanbei is getting too old.

The game is faster paced than its predecessors as well. For example, have you actually ever gone back to the original Advance Wars and captured a city?

IT TAKES TOO FREAKING LONG!

There's a little lag in which the little soldier character animation stomps on the city and just sits there for a split-second, as if he's waiting for you to congratulate him on his virtual achievement.

The infantry units in AW2 seem to have gotten a little more recognition by the designers and have sped the hell up so as not to irritate me anymore.

And guess what? AW:DS' soldiers know they are appreciated and can capture a city without any hesitation. Heck, I can even have an infantry unit get blown up by an enemy Megatank on purpose, and a little text icon appears on screen that says, "Thank you, sir, may I have another?"

And it's because of this text bubble that I'm in the mood to give out a perfect score, just for the heck of it (even if I don't give scores, period).

Twilight Princess (2): The Gift of Hindsight, or "A Review No One Will Read"

2008-08-31T12:34:00.010-06:00

It's been close to two years now since The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was released on the Gamecube -- I, of course, being the son-of-a-bitch-bastard-purist that I am decided to go with a regular controller than play with the waggle-fest Wii-remote. (This may or may not have been a mistake now that I've played some of the Wii version; it controls pretty well and is a little more fun, but since I'm so used to the inverted Gamecube game, I spend most of the time accidentally running right into walls, expecting an open doorway to be there. Maybe my brain is just weak. Eh.)

When the game was first announced, I nearly crapped my pants, and for what seemed like ten long years, I waited with feverish anticipation. In hindsight, it seems rather hilarious -- imagine, an sixteen-year old kid, delusions of his own masculinity, star player on his high-school football team, giddy with excitement for a game named Twilight Princess. Doesn't exactly make you feel like a man. Neither does playing football, for that matter.

As a son-of-a-bitch-bastard-purist, passing up the Wii version (which arrived in stores first) in favor of the Gamecube version was the most difficult thing I've done (kind of sad, really). Yes, I took sneaky peeks before I got the game at whether or not Ganondorf was coming back (he was) and whether or not there would be any ice levels (I'm a sucker for snow and the obligatory snow-game-music [see: Metroid Prime], and yes, there were).

But most of all, I wanted to know whether Link would drown in a horrible flooding apocalypse, dying a tragic and heroic death trying to save the world.

I mean, because if that happened, I'd be convinced that my favorite video game series of all time would reach literary new heights.

It didn't.

Instead, it went in a different direction.

Hindsight is key here. When I first plugged in the game, I pretty much knew what I was going to get: same swordplay, same dungeon-crawling, same exploration. Really, this isn't a bad thing -- the swordplay was excellent, the dungeons were extremely clever (albeit easy), and with a massive world to uncover, the feeling of exploration was never better. The game was polished and refined beyond anything else on the market.

Each installment in the Zelda series, however, tries to do something unique, thus justifying its reason for existing at all. Of course, any game series main objective is to make money, but Zelda always has seemed to have larger aspirations than simply being a money-maker.

Which is why Twilight Princess seems foreign to me.

The game goes deeper than just a retread. Really, it desires solely to be an homage to the entire series, Ocarina of Time specifically. As such, Twilight Princess never does anything new or innovative or has any annoying talking hats (oh, wouldn't that have been GODLY!) -- and worse, it's completely conscious of both its actions and existence.

Believe me, despite what your inner nerd denies, this game has its problems. I had to literally pry the rose-tinted glasses off my face in order to see it, but this game is freaking tedious. I mean, the only reason I really endured those stupid bug quests was to get on to the better parts. It's like eating a bowl of Lucky Charms, where eating the okay-tasting cardboard-like oat-things first will only lead to the sweet savory taste of the marshmallows.

Twilight Princess gets better in its final acts, where it confirms the player's suspicions all along -- that this is the game you've been playing all these years, just in a different flavor and without all the talking hats (oh, how I WISH! Ezlo in 3D! My GOD. I'm drooling buckets.). Ganondorf is behind all of the events in the game, and Link saves the world. Again.

In the end, I guess I just wanted Twilight Princess to rise to literary greatness, instead remaining a mere video game. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Being a video game ain't half bad.

POST SCRIPT: I don't agree with the entirety of this review, but the author does make some good arguments about the subtleties of the game in general. Argh, but it makes my inner fanboy cry.

Twilight Princess (1): Logic, or "A Review No One Will Read"

2008-08-31T12:19:00.012-06:00

Note: This was written a couple months after Twilight Princess was released to the public, and is not written with any hindsight. So, uh, this is not the entire truth about how I feel about the game -- but it doesn't matter because no one is reading this anyway.

Twilight Princess confounds me.

Yes, it's a brilliant game, and yes, it's right up there on my all time favorites list. You've heard this all before in countless reviews, about the fantastic graphics and wonderful gameplay and the forty-hour-plus quest. However, some complain about the Wiimote controls and the lack of originality.

To that, I say, "Screw you."

Twilight Princess has a much larger flaw: It is the only game in the series that obeys the rules of logic. Let me explain.

For instance, in all Zelda games, the protagonist, Link, travels around in a virtual playground, whether it be on foot or on hooves, searching for items that will help him progress further into the main quest. Over the course of the game, Link receives bows, hammers, magical capes, several tunics, etc., until eventually he reaches the final boss.

My question is, Where the hell does he keep all this stuff?

(Well, I can suspend my disbelief for this question. I'm having too much fun with the game to really care.)

But here is where Twilight Princess' biggest flaw comes into play, and where I begin to actually care about the game's logic:

If you're a completionist and likes to open every single treasure chest, this game really isn't for you. Say, for example, you're in a dungeon and you solve a puzzle, and suddenly there's a treasure chest that happens to appear right next to you. Obviously, you shriek with joy like a little girl and decide to see what lays inside.

Oh joy! It's an orange rupee! How lucky!

Wait, not so lucky. Your wallet is full. Better put it back!

Here is Twilight Princess' main flaw -- the game allows Link to carry an obviously heavy ball-and-chain weapon and some fifty-ton iron boots in virtual space...but it doesn't let you have enough room in your freaking wallet for another hundred rupees.

Therein lies my frustration. Thank god for the rupee-draining tunic that everyone complains about, so I can ACTUALLY pick up my hard-earned cash.

Great game, though. Especially when you can beat the final boss with a flick of a fishing rod.

Logical? Your call.

Halo 3: Heroism, or "A Review That No One Will Read"

2008-08-25T14:44:00.006-06:00

As a typical American teenager who finds shooting English-speaking alien species more fun than completing a homework assignment, I fired up the game on a bright sunny day in late September, desperately hoping to discover the meaning of life behind the colorful graphics and booming soundtrack.

Believe me, I take my games seriously. When I pay sixty bucks for something that might or might not be related to my inevitable blindness, I damn well better have my "meaning of life" questions answered and my feet rubbed at the same time.

Instead, I found that I might or might not have a thing for holographic naked purple women. Not exactly life-changing material.

I've always argued that popular pieces of media, whether it be a controversial novel or movie, always have some sort of depth behind them; otherwise, they wouldn't be well-known among the population. I'm not talking about gameplay depth here -- more, I'm referring to what exactly Halo 3 says, and why the hell I cried at the end of the game in the first place.

Halo, it can be argued, is a lifeless (yet enjoyable) shooting simulation that has the player become a faceless superhuman in green armor that fights the thousands of grunting, similar-looking aliens in the galaxy. But that's beside the point. There's something about this concept that's so appealing to American audiences and not-so-appealing to the Japanese.

Do you want to be a hero? Sure you do. Who doesn't? If you got the chance to save a woman and her child from a burning building, you probably do it. When asked why you did it, you'd most likely state that it was the morally right thing to do, and that you just acted on instinct.

Good. The papers love that sort of thing, and you love it because you get your fifteen minutes of fame and are deemed a "hero". Eventually, the world turns, time passes, and the events are forgotten. You aren't a hero anymore, and you won't ever get that feeling of elation ever again (unless you constantly look for women in burning buildings...perv).

This is Halo 3: a hero simulator. Yes, you fight aliens and shoot stuff and it's tons of fun, but more importantly, you feel like a hero. You're living a virtual American dream.

That's what so saddening -- in essence, you aren't doing anything. You're sitting in front of a television screen, twiddling your thumbs, constantly cursing yourself for dying for the fortieth time, and not accomplishing anything.

When Master Chief states at the end of Halo 3, "Wake me...when you need me," he's directly speaking to the player; he's saying, "Whenever you feel like a jerkwad and don't want to do your history homework or don't want to go to work, I'm here for you...so you can feel like a hero. Just like you don't in real life."

And then it ends. As quickly as it began, our hunger kicks in and we want another Halo, and another and another. Microsoft will continue to spew them out, and we will continue to drool over our hero simulations.

And that's why I cried. Not because I'd never see the Chief again or because the [arguably] greatest shooter series ever was ending, but because I knew sitting in front of my TV wasn't doing anything. Thank goodness for Master Chief, a TRUE hero and also the creation of people who most likely aren't heroes, for informing me of this unpleasant information.

Oh well. It was good while it lasted.

Sometimes, You've Just Got to Nerd It Up

2008-08-25T14:24:00.004-06:00

Obviously, this blog is written by a person who...blah, blah, blah.

Know what? You can finish that sentence however you want. It makes no difference to me. In any case, about a year ago, I started writing "reviews" on IGN about games I had finished, and I had hoped that people would read them. Sometimes, you've just got to nerd it up -- and that's what I'm going to do here. Unfortunately, no one read them, just like I had hoped. Or not hoped. Or whatever.

I'm sure blogspot (or whatever the hell it's called) is filled with video game reviews from people who -- I don't know -- just want to mimic the big boys. They want to share their thoughts on a game because they'd like to feel that people give a damn about what they say.

I, fortunately, know that people don't give a damn about what I say.

But I'd like to believe, son!

So, I'd like to share some reviews I wrote on IGN. Some are good, others are stupid, and the more recent ones I may or may not write in the future will hopefully change your life.

That's right. I said it. CHANGE YOUR LIFE. For the better, hopefully.

Oh, and if I know you personally (as in, a close friend of mine), just let me say this: "OH GOD PLEASE STOP READING I'M NOT AS BIG A NERD AS YOU THINK I AM!"

That is all.

Goddamn Biker Pigs!

2008-08-25T13:05:00.008-06:00

Biker Pigs from Hell are dangerous. And mean. And not very nice.

Demonic beings such as they are, they can tempt anyone into joining their gang -- because to become a Biker Pig from Hell means that you evolve from a nobody into a somebody. You could be wandering the streets one day, diving into dumpsters for food and shelter, and the next, on a badass motorcycle, tearing through asphalt like a hot knife through butter (and/or other easily cut-through objects of easily cut-through constitution). I loved the Biker Pigs and always wanted to be one.

That is, until a Biker Pig stole my hamburger.

See, a hamburger technically does not consist of actual ham, per se. The meat is made from cows and not pigs. Anyone with a background in hamburger science would know such things and would not be angered by the fact that a person would eat one (unless you were Hindu, but that's a different story).

I was eating my hamburger, and...actually, I don't even want to continue the story.

THE END

So...Enough of That

2008-08-25T11:14:00.005-06:00

Yeah...Wildernet.com. I kinda sorta used to work for this EXCELLENT OUTDOORS WEBSITE and then kinda sorta got fired/quit. The only positive thing I can say about the whole experience is that I was able to work with some good friends and pretty much worked whenever I wanted. But...it's not like you, the reader, care. At the end of the day, though, I decided to start writing on this thing again just for the heck of it and maybe improve some of my writing skills. Just like everyone else. Hooray for originality.

Since nobody in their right mind will want to read this, and because I'm desperately clinging to the hope that people will, I'm going to pretend that I actually have readers who give a damn. Thanks in advance, I guess.

In an attempt to be funny, I'll probably try to inject humor into my writing, but most likely, it won't be funny at all -- it will only try to be funny. So, if you find humor that tries to be funny more amusing than humor that is actually funny, then by all means, keep reading.

Who am I kidding, though?

No one will read this anyway.

There was this video I saw on Youtube about a man trying to eat a fish while an omnipresent voice continuously shouted questions at him, and every time the man tried to take a bite of the fish, it was pulled away by some fishing line tied to its tail (or something). When I searched for it, I couldn't find it, so I'm guessing this means that I'll only find it when I don't want to find it. The video may or may not be a metaphor for my life so far.

Ah...here it is: What's Your Problem?

About this blog's title: on a building before the second level of the video game Double Dragon II, it has the phrase "Go for broak" plastered on the side. My dad and I always used to play the hell out of this game, and he'd always repeat this phrase before the start of the level. Anyway, you have to jump this chasm between two buildings at the beginning of stage 2, and awaiting you at the bottom are two bad guys. Now, more than likely you're going to make the leap of faith and spin-kick the crap out of these sorry-sons-of-bitches -- but sometimes, you're not so lucky. These enemies, they sometimes have this little backup animation before they jump-kick they crap out of your face and send you plummeting to your doom.

This, of course, will undoubtedly cause furious anger to boil up inside.

But, that's the point of the "Go for broak" -- take the leap of faith and wager it all -- and in all probability, you'll come up smiling and smelling of roses. Sometimes, you'll get a kick to the face. Such is life.

I've tried to live by this "Go for broak" and nothing has really come of it so far -- then again, I haven't tried that hard in the first place. Maybe this blog will help me find some answers. Maybe it won't.

But, hey, thanks for reading...if you did indeed read this. This is for you:

Just like in Kindergarten!

Contrary to Popular Belief, Spinach Does NOT Build Your Muscles

2007-08-28T09:30:00.003-06:00

But Wildernet.com does. By searching the website for easily accessible information regarding outdoor recreational opportunities, you'll be able to slowly build those tiny muscles in your index finger (and, if you're kind of unusual, building your middle finger instead, though lord knows who uses that finger to click on links). Once you've got your recreational info stored in that large brain of yours and have got a hiking trail in mind, you'll be able to get out there in the wilderness and walk to your heart's content. Can't you feel those muscles becoming larger and larger? And you didn't even have to consume any of that nasty spinach!

Just don't overdo it too much, or you'll have Volkswagen Buses for legs...

And that, as they say, is a lame blog post. Why don't you click on over to Wildernet.com to help redeem this author's dignity, and kill two birds with one stone by additionally building those all-important finger muscles? You'll thank me later when you have to tie your shoes or press the buttons on your car's CD-player or something.

Only at Wildernet.com.

Changed Again!

2007-08-22T15:02:00.002-06:00

Er, how about wildernets.blogspot.com instead? Makes more sense...

And whoever took the singular domain name needs to have a little talk with me...

In Light of Recent Events...

2007-08-22T11:17:00.002-06:00

It has been decided, thanks to the speech impediment of bald-headed cartoon character, Elmer Fudd (see the previous post), that the old URL name of this blog (which was way too long to remember) shall be changed to rildernet.blogspot.com (which is still kind of way too long to remember). Senor Fudd, bless his heart, must have had some Chinese in him, because, despite the fact that he could not pronounce his "R's," could not pronounce his "W's" on command, either.

Such is life. In remembrance of Fudd, "Wildernet.com" will become "Rildernet.com" instead. Of course, the actual Wildernet.com, the one you all know and love to be the best outdoor recreational website on the net, will remain the same, and please visit it to your heart's content. And now you know the rest of the story.

Wait, was that Chinese comment a little racist at all? I desperately hope not.

Of course, the only open-minded and non-racist website on the net is also Wildernet.com, which can only be found at Wildernet.com.

Or how about a bite of some Wildernet.com? Mmm...tasty!

Wascally Wildernet.com

2007-08-22T10:22:00.002-06:00

Oh, you silly Elmer Fudd, you. You and your hilarious speech impediment have made a huge mark on this author's humble soul -- I know that it must be hard for you to get a job in today's voice acting industry, and your self-confidence must be at an all-time low since you never could catch that wabbit, even after, what, fifty years?

Oh well. Too bad, so sad.

Wait, what am I saying? Elmer, I actually have a splendid idea. Why don't you selflessly help promote an excellent website I work for, Wildernet.com? Surely you've heard of it, haven't you? Yes? Of course you have. It's only the best outdoor website on the world-wide-web, known for its community options and boatload of recreational information -- all available to you, the user!

All right, Elmer, repeat this nifty catch-phrase after me: "Only at Wildernet.com." Go ahead, try it.

No, not "Onwee at Wildernet.com." It's pronounced "Own-lee". You know, with a "l". Like in "lollipop". All right, how about this: just say "Wildernet.com" for me, m'kay? You can speak your "W's" like any other normal person, right?

I'll take your nodding for a yes. All right, go ahead.

Wait a sec. Did you just say "Rildernet.com"? Like, with a freaking "r"?

That's it! You're fired! Yeah, that's right! And don't look back!

So, that's it, I guess. A lame blog post dedicated to a fake conversation with a fictional cartoon character. How original. Then again, you'll only find these sort of shenanigans at the best outdoor recreational website in the world, Rildernet.com...gah, I mean, Wildernet.com.

Saggy Eyelids Hurt Small Children

2007-08-22T09:15:00.003-06:00

Believe me, getting only four hours of sleep is not good for the soul. Right now, I'm humming Corey Hart's "I Wear My Sunglasses at Night" because, well, that's pretty much exactly what I'm doing: wearing sunglasses inside.

Ugh. What a terrible way to start this blog.

Actually, strike that! Do you know that Wildernet.com is the best way to perk up those sleepy eyelids and help you make your way through the day? It's absolutely true!

Almost the exact opposite of how Tolstoy's War and Peace is a cure for insomnia, Wildernet.com, with its numerous community options and a plethora of recreational information, has the ability to make even the most tired of people wake up and shout, "Hot dang, it's good to be alive!" It's like the anti-cure for insomnia. Yes, you read those italicized words correctly. Anti-cure. Impressed yet?

Just trust me on this one. Simply check out your favorite campground or trail's profile on the website, take one good whiff, and SHABOOM!

It's a miracle! You're awake and ready to take on the day! Much like I am right now!

Simple as that. So throw out that coffee and energy drink, splash some water on your face, take off those sunglasses, and visit Wildernet.com, the only source for a true wake-up call!

Please Remove Thine Coke-Bottle Glasses, Nerd, Because Wildernet.com is About to Rock Your Face Off

2007-08-21T09:28:00.002-06:00

We here at Wildernet.com surprisingly do not condone nerdy and/or geeky behavior -- in fact, we embrace it. While living in our mother's basement, playing World of Warcraft(TM), and munching on Doritos(TM) is our idea of an excellent time, getting out there in the great outdoors is also one of our favorite pastimes as well.

But where to begin? Surely one who knows everything about how to level up their dwarf-lord knows nothing about trails and campgrounds, right?

Wrong.

Wildernet.com, a friendly and helpful community website, is a nerd's best friend (besides his trusty Dungeons and Dragons book). Simply by visiting the site, he'll be able to find the locations of individual recreational areas all across the continental United States, and maybe he'll even find a mountain in the good ol' USA that bears an eerie resemblance to that of Mount Doom from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series (although we all know the true Mount Doom lies in New Zealand). But no matter how much information a nerd's large brain can devour, reading about recreational locations can never compare to the actual experience.

So get out there, and pretend you're an elf on an epic quest to slay the dangerous dragon that everyone's been talking about on your favorite forum. And once that's been done, you can boast about it to all your online friends, who will then swoon and faint with pure giddiness and delight.

Gain your well-deserved nerdy respect -- only at Wildernet.com.

Bigfoot Sighted at Wildernet.com

2007-08-21T09:00:00.002-06:00

Okay, so not really. However, the author of this blog went on a weekend backpacking trip, and upon climbing a ridge, spotted the elusive beast of yore. When called to, the creature wouldn't respond and would quickly disappear behind the other side of the ridge -- the creepy aspect about this was that the thing continued to get closer and closer. Twilight began to enclose the little valley this author was camping in, so unimaginable fears involving Bigfeet and Yetis tearing people apart and eating their gizzards skyrocketed to terrible new heights.

So...this author decided to get the heck out of there.

This isn't the first time this has happened to backpackers who camp in the mountains -- only at Wildernet.com will you possibly find stories about strange occurrences told by people who experienced these instances firsthand. Maybe these tales will concern the Loch Ness monster ransacking a group of elderly picnickers, or maybe they're about a giant man-eating crab that terrorizes a specific campsite in upstate New York -- you never know until you read the trip reports at Wildernet.com.

Get out there and learn something new. Heck, you might even discover some piece of information about Bigfoot that you never thought possible.

Go ahead and solve the mysteries at Wildernet.com, the only place where large aquatic beasts of legend terrorize elderly picnickers!

Wildernet.com -- the ONLY Cure for Bad Mosquito Bites!

2007-08-17T09:16:00.002-06:00

All right, so the best outdoors website on the net doesn't exactly cure those terrible itches of pain, but it can help to prevent them. How so, you ask? Why, by looking through the information on Wildernet.com, you'll be able to discover the many outdoor recreational activities available to you all across the continental United States, and maybe, if you're lucky, read an informative trip report about the mosquito population from people who have first-handedly experienced a painful bite.

For example, if a campsite you wish to visit in the near future has all the peaceful tranquilities that any human being could possibly desire but has a bad infestation of mosquitoes, chances are you'll hear about it on Wildernet.com -- "reviews"of these recreational places, otherwise known as trip reports, will be able to forewarn you about the mosquitoes, thus preventing the bites in the first place.

Of course, you could be the one to forewarn other people about the mosquito population in a certain recreational area (and also become a hero in your own right), but then again, those nasty blood-suckers would probably have gotten to you already.

Do what's right. Be a hero. Help save other people from those terrible itches of pain.

Only at Wildernet.com.

Outdoor Awesomeness Has Finally Been Accomplished!

2007-08-16T10:02:00.002-06:00

At first, I thought the mountain had conquered me. I was down and out, bleeding, broken arms and legs and all, and I was ready to give up all hope of continued life in this world. Screaming for help came to mind, but all I could muster, however, was one measly "Ouch." The sun was disappearing behind the clouds, and a nasty rainstorm was thundering in the distance. To add to the signs of impending doom, even the deer, normally known for their calm and vegetarian natures, were creeping up on me, sharp fangs bared.

This was the end.

Finally, when all hope was lost, sunlight erupted from the sky, and an all-knowing voice boomed, "You, who suffer so much from your injuries, who decided to solo hike on a mighty mountain, and who has both broken arms and legs -- you must visit Wildernet.com. It will only lead you to safety and a fun, lively outdoor recreation community in the future."

"What?" I inquired. "How can that be? There has never been an outdoor recreation site that has offered those sort of community options."

The voice answered, "Visit the site, and you will see..."

And as soon as that phrase was uttered, the sun disappeared once again. That beautiful light in the sky may have been gone, but there suddenly was a inspirational fire burning within the depths of my heart.

I knew right then that I was going to live.

ONLY THANKS TO WILDERNET.COM!