It gone...

Despite Matt R.'s desperate and shameless begging, I have decided to sell my Wii. Alright thats a lie, I've already sold it. I had actually been contemplating it for months, but had no reason to get rid of it until now. The holiday season is hitting its peak and with a massive imbalance of quality ps3/xb360 vs wii titles hitting shelves, I've found myself disenchanted with Nintendo's flagship console. I did what I had to do, and now the little white box is gone. Its a shame really, because there were still a few good titles I was looking forward to. Other-Matt still has his, so I'm assuming he'll still be rambling about it.

What did I do with the money? Gears of War 2 of course, which I'm thinking about writing a review for. Its a great game, but there are a few things that bug me about the multiplayer tweaks. I'm going to dwell on it for a day or two and perhaps one will pop up.
I also picked up Sega's Valkyria Chronicles which has some interesting art style and is full of innovative TRPG goodness. Also, the music is composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto (FF Tactics, FFXII, Ogre Battle, Odin Sphere, Grim Grimoire, I could go on forever) which these days is pretty much an immediate sell for me.

The rest of the goods I'm saving for the time being. I'm considering a few titles, namely Little Big Planet, Far Cry 2, and CoD: World at War.

Those games will have to wait a few weeks as between school, work, and trying to find time to play the games I'm working through currently I've barely got time to eat much less add to my collection.

Look for a GeoW II review sometime later this week after I get some more time with the multiplayer modes.

Third Parties learning to kick ass on the Wii.

Big deal you say right? Well the big deal is 1. Its Nintendo and all you hear from PS3/360 fanboys is the lack of 3rd party games. 2. These are some of the bloodiest games to come out on any console, not just for the Wii.(please show me bloodier I am interested) 3. One of those Third parties happens to be an old friend trying to dig out from a world of awful arcade style games that never happened to live up to expectations.

MadWorld


The only thing that could bring this all home for me is more zombie killing.
Goodmorning Capcom.

Dead Rising Chop Till you Drop


I am going to have absolutely no money this year.


Oh yeah! I said i wasn't going to focus on video games didn't I.

Holiday 08 What will I be getting?

The gaming season is pretty much in full swing by now with heavy hitting titles dropping just about every tuesday. What am I looking forward to playing?

Dead Space
Truth is, I've already played it and finished it, but that was mostly while passing it back and forth with a couple of friends. I'm looking forward to privately re-crapping my pants in the comfort of my very dark, very cold room, that is after I plow through a couple of other big titles

Fallout 3
Over the summer I finally hit 1250 gamer points for Oblivion on xbox live and with that I banished the game from my presence forever. It seems that Bethesda took note and decided they'd start ruining my life again, starting this upcoming tuesday.

Far Cry 2
Seriously huge game world and an incredible map editor.

Gears of War 2
Chainsaws

Little Big Planet
I've always not so secretly wanted to be a game designer, but I don't have the programming know-how to make it happen. This game gives a little taste, plus its adorable. C'mon, just look at it.

Animal Crossing: City Folk
I'm not so sure I'm going to be getting this one, as I'm not exactly in love with my Nintendo products anymore, but Animal Crossing is addictive as hell and I'm excited to see how this one turns out.

Valkyria Chronicles
Looks like a pretty solid tactical RPG with some slick visual design. Not a buy-on-sight, but definitely something to watch

Fable II
Another game that I've already played a decent amount, but not in the comfort of my own home. From what I can tell its pretty solid, but not sure I'm going to lay down the goods to purchase it for a while.

TGS: I didn't talk about it?

So TGS this year was not very impressive. No heart-attack moments or really anything beyond the expected. Most of what was shown was basically new trailers and gameplay for old games. Some of which had already been released. Yeap. Anyway, some other cool stuff happened like Bioshock PS3 was released and included this:



BUT WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN???! Thus starts at least another year of wild speculations as to the plot of this game.

TGS---I'll probably talk about it.

Matt R. down there busted in my house the other day with a baseball bat and threatened to take out one of my kneecaps if I didn't start writing on here more often. I lied to him and said I would, and then we played some cricket.

Anyway, despite almost all of that being a total embellishment I'll be considerably more active later this week when TGS starts (Thursday)

I won't be there, seeing as its happening on the other side of the planet, but I'll be ravenously pouring though the web for any good info and let all zero of you know what I think.

Dear Science

The new TV on the Radio album listens like how I imagine diamond plated underpants feel. Go buy it. GO!

The fun car is dieing. (And the Pony car is beating a dead horse)

Alright, I'm the first to admit that I enjoy the automobile oddity. Really the cars I prefer are the random blips on the radar that come and go too quickly for most to notice. Not to say there that there are no interesting new cars, but it seems now a days that all the interesting cars are the super cars that nearly no one can afford(either the sticker price or the pump price). What I want to see more of is the sort of mid eighties to mid nineties randomness that brought about the Fiero, SHO, Super Coupe, Turbo Gran Prix, Grand National, Omni GLH, Spirit RT so on and so forth with any other cars I cant remember. Around this time America was just coming back from fuel crunches and the big three were realizing that fun cars could make a come back, and come back they did.

Fast forward to today and look at the line up of domestics. Few of my criteria are good engine (does not have to be original but it helps), original look or at least differentiation from the lower model, and finally let me really emphasize this so that my criteria are clear MANUAL TRANSMISSION!!exclamation point! Really what is it about the American Motorists that makes the manual transmission the black sheep. As it stands right now there are two types of American cars that have real mens transmissions eco-box 4 cylinders, and RWD v-8's. There might be an American car in the middle of this catagory but I sure cant think of it.

Massive tangent: Alright technology is all well and good and I enjoy the new toy as much as the next guy, but car reviewers really need to get their old bald heads out their tail pipes (see what I did there). Not every car today needs bluetooth, a Nav system , 800 redundant stereo and A/C controls, and soft rubber and leather everywhere. Seriously where did this idea come from, I am completely content with my radio being my radio my A/C being my A/C and my phone making my phone calls. In actuality the Navigation System is a terrible idea as we are creating a generation of idiots who cant follow a map let alone know how to use a compass (easiest thing ever), and before I get a bunch of comments about how not every car has those features I know(but then again we don't have any readers(prove me wrong) so its not a worry), but the auto industry is moving in a direction that I believe is only going to end in useless used cars full of broken electronic gizmos in the next decade.

SO back to the main point, there are not enough cars that offer performance on a price point, the only useful car (meaning not a roadster) I can think of that is reasonably within the bounds of my meter is the Cobalt SS. Thats it. The SRT4 is dead (don't even mention the Caliber) SVT might as well be dead(or is), and all of the interesting pet projects that made the 80's and 90's great have gone the way of the dodo. I mean really look at the cars from the 80's and 90's and look at what is coming out today, and I'm sure there are other sport's cars that i am not remembering too, then look at what is out now. As far as I'm concerned there is only one American car that could fit into fun cheap performance (congratulations Chevy you've done something right).

Alright, this will be an amazing feat if i can close this all up tangibly into one tidy package. Do I really think the "Fun Car" is dead. No. Do I think the fun car will make a come back. Yes. Is that come back going to happen in the next decade. Maybe. The problem being that "The Big Three" are trying REALLLY hard (extra L is free folks) to shift public perception that the build quality is up to that of your Toyota's and Honda's. Truth is its been there for a couple of years now but no one is buying it (literally and figuratively). The proof is in the pudding and when it comes down to it Ford and Chevy have ramped up their game and are offering the big warranty's and the production value is right there if not better on some cars than the comparable overseas production. So the one thing that American auto makers need is the one thing they could be seriously lacking soon: Time.