FORT90

Time for an update…

Christmas Time Is Here

- So on Saturday afternoon, MK & I stopped by Dave & Raina‘s to watch some holiday specials, which has become a yearly tradition. Couldn’t stay long, but did manage to catch the Venture Brothers Christmas special, Mickey’s Christmas Carol, which is still my personal fave for the holiday season (I even got to bore everyone with my useless Scrooge McDuck factoids), and the Peanuts Christmas Special, which MK hadn’t seen since she was like five. Its pretty amazing how well it holds up today, and its message is more relevant than ever, though also ironic given that Urban Outfitters sells a whole slew of Charlie Brown related crap, like a replica of the tree, which is horribly depressing (talk about missing the fucking point… btw, I can’t wait for Bill Watterson to finally die so we can finally get a ton of useless crap with Calvin and Hobbes stamped on them).

- Afterwards, I went into Manhattan to meet up with Joe and June for dinner (while MK went back to my place to nurse a stomachache). Over dinner, Joe & I went over my on-stage role in the big upcoming Magma Fest. I don’t want to give too many details away, but all I will say is that its gonna fucking rock. Though I will mention that I’m especially happy that A) I will not have to wear contact lenses for my role(s), something which I was not at all looking forward to, and B) I’ll even get to incorporate some pro-wraslin’ style theatrics. I might even get to use my special moves (which as you might recall, Katie once passed info on).

- Soon we joined up with MK, right in front of what used to be the $3 theater near Time Square, which is now a playhouse, and that’s where we saw… Evil Dead: The Musical.

I gotta admit, I rolled my eyes when I first heard about it, simply thinking it was yet another lame ass attempt to cash in on pop culture. But the chance to go came up, I figured, what the hell. And I’m super glad I went (well, I’m especially thankful of Joe since that was his Christmas present to MK and I… thanks again!!!), because the show was fucking phenomenal! Everything: the acting, the music, the sets, was simply top-notch. I often forget how amazing theatre can be (though I will admit that a part of the reason why I was warming up to seeing the show as from watching Slings & Arrows over the past couple of weeks). And the entire experience was made even more enjoyable because we all sat in the “Splatter Zone”; normally tickets to the show cost $70, but the cheap seats are up front… because that’s where you might get hit with all the blood that flows during the show. It was very GWAR like, and much like that show, I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to be up close to the action.

The play itself is an amalgam of the first two movies primarily, with a few elements from the third movie. And sprinkled about are jokes aimed at the source material, as well as Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell. I guess it goes without saying, though more so than any other medium, actors can either make or break a play, but once again, the cast was simply superb. Especially the guy playing Ash, and yeah, he had a very respectable, Campbell-esque chin, but I also really liked the girl playing his kid sister, since I have a thing for cute awkward, goony chicks; at one point she gets shot, but whatever special effects didn’t work, so she simply took a large handful of blood and just threw it at this kid in the front row right next to her. Good thinking!

Zelda Update

Okay, so I put in few more hours into Twilight Princess, about five total. And yes, the game has gotten better, but I will say… and this sounds like sour grapes I know, but… its no longer the “OMG, THIS IS SO F’N RAD!!!”- a minute experience that I’ve come to expect every Zelda game to be (which to be honest, was first destroyed with Wind Waker, hence why I had such lofty expectations for this new one). So in that sense, the game has already been kinda ruined for me. The fact that it took me about five hours just to get to the first temple is pretty annoying. At least I’m not the only one who feels the same way.

And to be honest, given the poor pacing of the beginning of the game, I most certainly am not looking forward to finding five heart pieces instead of four like the past. I’ve always been the first one to defend certain Nintendo games for having a collect-a-thon mentality (Yoshi’s Island being perhaps the biggest example), but in this instance… I’ll just have to wait and see. Same with the combat: I just recall it being so much more fun in Wind Waker, and thus far, I don’t know, something just hasn’t clicked. I mentioned this to Stephen Totilo last night, with whom I had drinks with, including how perhaps its Link’s size that has something to do with it, since it seemed a lot more fun to be just this little kid jumping around, as well perhaps a bit more effortless to boot, and he pointed out that you know longer have this massive size difference between Link and his enemies which does have an effect on things. But hey, it’s still early… I just hope that there’s a hook shot, and it works just like it did before (easily the best part of the Wink Waker was circling some bad guy and using it to rip off pieces of armor, then picking him apart with the sword). Again, maybe its just much better on the Wii.

My one final complaint: I still wish the game looked like Wind Waker (it was originally supposed to be). But it looks fine as is, even though the graphics are kinda inconsistent; some of it is drop dead gorgeous, while other parts are rather “eh”. I hate to compare it to Shadow of the Colossus, but… I can’t help myself.

But like I said, I’m finally at a dungeon, which is what the game is truly all about, so I’m hoping for some good things. I only got to poke around for a few minutes, but I was already have fifty times more fun than previously.

As For Other Game Related “Stuff”

- Oh, so Mike was there last night as well, so we all just sat around and talked about various things, including games of course. Apparently Mike really likes shmups! I had no idea. Speaking off, and back to Stephen real quick, he recently interviewed Kenta Cho.

- Meanwhile, I’ve just been so busy that I just haven’t had much time to poke around for any good game related “stuff”, but ShaperMC sent me this over the weekend. Its a Japanese commercial for Fushigi no Dungeon Fuurai no Shiren DS, or simply Shiren DS. The funny thing is the email was titled “GREAT SEGA AD” which I initially thought said “GREAT SEGA CD AD” which still would have made sense since it does feel like an old Mega Drive/Mega CD spot from the good old days.

For anyone wanting more info on the game, here’s a thread from SelectButton that might answer questions.

- A couple of things I forgot to pass along from before, courtesy of GSW: first, a music vid from Lumines 2. And second, this one’s more for John… you know about the Firefly MMO that’s in the works, right?

- Back to Q Entertainment real quick, aside from Twilight Princess, the other game I’ve been spending a lot of time with is their Gunpey revamp, the DS version of course. And I gotta say… I have to echo Shaper’s words from a whiles back by saying “I just don’t get it.” Kind of a bummer since its based upon the very last game from Gunpei Yokoi (you know, the guy who created the Game Boy, as well as the NES, as well as Metroid and Kid Icarus). A lot of folks have complained about the DS version specifically, over the art and music, and while I admit the PSP version is far sexier and stylish, I personally don’t mind the DS’s window dressing. Its just the game it self is so damn boring, and kinda broken. Its no Meteos, that’s for damn sure.

Going back to last night yet again, Stephen mentioned that he knows a guy who played it for months before realizing that you could used the stylus! He was just using the buttons, which I didn’t even think you could do.

- Heading back to GSW, and sticking with the PSP… I still want one, a PSP that is, as stupid as it sounds. I know that the hardware sucks (and soon to be obsolete as well), and that most of its best games are available over on the PS2 (meanwhile, on a somewhat related note, its been rumored that Katamari Damacy is heading to the Xbox 360′s Live Arcade, and I would personally love to see the PSP Katamari game make the jump since it was the shitty interface that killed it for most folks). But I still want one, just to fuck around with it (though once again, ask me again once I’m finally playing Lumines on the PS2). And Simon’s recent UMD/8-track analogy has gotten me even more interested, especially since he also brought attention to a Beck UMD that includes music vids from Guero, perhaps my fave album from all of 2005, and I don’t think there’s a DVD equivalent. And I would kill to see Epro nice and clear, and not just on YouTube.

And then just today, Simon passed along world of a UMD release of The Book of Cool. Hmmm….

Time For Bits of Random

… Speaking of YouTube, I also forgot to mention that all last week, both MK and Katie have been obsessing over YouTube vids featuring cutsey animals all week. MK recently pinpointed a couple of vids featuring baby pandas (which proved popular enough to get cross-posted at the Beat of all places).

Whereas Katie has continued her obsession over red pandas, as well as regular pandas (but fighting each other), then onto bunnies. Then there’s this one featuring a dog which I guess is kinda cute, but more cruel and unusual in my opinion.

As for myself, baby pandas (which proved popular enough to get cross-posted at the Beat of all places).

Whereas Katie has continued her obsession over red pandas, as well as regular pandas (but fighting each other), then onto bunnies. Then there’s this one featuring a dog which I guess is kinda cute, but more cruel and unusual in my opinion.

As for myself, my only real contribution to the pile is this cartoon featuring a farting pig, which thankfully MK agrees is pretty much the best fucking thing ever; I watched it literally 30 times in a row Friday afternoon, with PLENTY of repeat viewings over this past weekend, plus MK & I spent the entire weekend doing the pigs arm movements and farty noises.

Also on Friday, Adam passed along a patent filed back in 1984 for a toy gun that can change shape into a robot, better known as Megatron. Just like Adam sez: “Pages and pages of schematics of old trigger-crotch himself, done up in the most pathetic hobby-shop rendering imaginable.”

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I’ve been playing the Cube version of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the past hour, and its seriously the most aggravating, and depressing, video game-playing experience I’ve had in a VERY LONG time. I’ve barely started the god damn game and I’m already stuck. Again, for an hour now I’ve been trying to catch a fish and its just not happening.

For those who don’t know, before you can do anything, you have to catch a fish for some stupid cat which is supposed then allow you to buy some item or whatever so you can finally leave the village and get a sword and actually get on with the damn game. Yeah, its just as retarded and gay as it sounds.

First off, I appreciate the game designers trying to create some mood or some shit by having you perform dumb little tasks before starting off on your grand journey, but come on, this is fucking ridiculous. I bought a goddamn Zelda game to fight bad guys and to explore dungeons, among other things. Not to spend, once more, literally AN ENTIRE HOUR trying to catch a damn fish. It wouldn’t be so bad if fishing was something you did later on in the game, like a side mission or a mini-game, but to force you to do it right from the beginning is just plain insane. Again, when you do dumb little tasks around your homebase before setting off, its to hone skills that will be used later on. So am I to assume that fishing is going to be a major component of the entire game?! But the thing is, I actually like fishing in video games! The heart of the problem is the method itself makes no fucking sense on any level.

You start off by casting your line into the water with a button. Fine. But then once its in the water, you really can’t do anything. In virtually every single fishing game out there, what you do is draw the hook back towards you since the movement is what attracts the fish and entices them to bite. Not in this game. Literally all you do is throw the hook into the water and wait for the fish to just come to it. And trust me, I’ve tried every damn button on the controller to move the line, and none of them do shit. The only other action is to bring the hook back, by hitting back on the C stick.

Though making things much worse, and COMPLETELY nonsensical, is the fact how the hook after its cast will fall below the line of sight, so you have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on. You might see fish sorta swimming around, but there’s no way to tell if its approaching the hook or not. Then again, its not like you can do anything about it.

But the worst part is when you finally get a catch. Because no real instructions were given on how to properly reel your line back in, you’re just stuck there without a clue to do. Again, you’re supposed to hit down on the C stick, but either I’m doing it too fast or too slow because virtually every fish has been lost. Considering it takes like five minutes of just standing there and doing nothing to finally get a bite, this is fucking AGGRAVATING.

Oh, so get this: I finally caught a fish, so what happened? Nothing. According to online resources (the fact that I had to consult one for a Zelda game so early on pisses me off on so many levels), I have to catch a second fish, which is the one that the cat will take for himself (why the fuck doesn’t he just take the first one?). So after what seemed like forever, I managed to get a second fish. Guess what again? NOTHING. Apparently the cat wasn’t there, so the action he was supposed to do couldn’t happen. FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This shit is so bad that I am seriously fighting the urge to either chuck my GameCube out the window or just give up on video games in general. I’m gonna give it another shot, and if I can’t get shit to happen in the next thirty minutes, then I’m giving the game to the first person who asks for it.

EDIT: Okay, so after almost another hour of me trying, I finally managed to catch another fucking fish very late last night. And poor MK had to sit and watch me get all pissed off the whole time, as well as assure me that there was no reason to get so angry at a video game, but she also gets super annoyed by such retardedness in video games, so she could at least sympathize.

I realized by myself that if I ever so slightly touched the C stick, I could kinda move the hook around, but there’s zero degree of finesse involved, due in part to the size and shape of the C stick (now I understand why everyone hates it so much), so instead of delicately moving the line around, it’s mostly just awkward, sudden movements. Plus I still couldn’t see what was going on. And there was like a solid twenty minutes where I would get a bite every one or two minutes, but once more, since I had no idea what the best way to reel the fish in, they always got away. The key I would discover was to VERY SLOWLY tug at the line, but whenever I finally got a bite, I would get so excited since something’s actually happening (and I so desperately wanted to get it over with) that I would hit the stick just teeny-weenie bit too much and fuck things up.

But anyway, I got another goddamn fish, which the dumbshit cat grabbed, which meant I could finally buy… a slingshot. But then I didn’t have enough money! Which meant wasting another ten minutes running through the grass looking for loose change or throwing fruit against the wall to see if any rupees are inside. At this point it past four in the morning and I seriously wanted to just shoot myself. Eventually I got enough fucking rupees to buy the fucking slingshot, which again I was supposed to get, but in the end it was just to impress a bunch of kids and do some dumb little target practice game, and it seemed to have nothing to do with getting my sword. What bullshit.

My enthusiasm to play this game has been severely diminished. I know that thing are going to get better (well, it god damn better), but I’m already so annoyed that I kinda don’t care anymore.

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