Friday, January 30, 2009

The Months of the Year Tier

In the tradition of ranking things so people do not have to think for themselves:

THE MONTHS TIER LIST

Top Tier
June
May

High Tier
July
September
August
December

Mid Tier
October
April
March
November

Low Tier
February

Bottom Tier
January

Labels: , ,

Monday, January 26, 2009

A BLACK DAY

The new Reese's Chocolate Bar, apparently limited edition, is out.

It is great. Huge, and with right kind of soft chocolate that creates the all-so desirable Reese's cup taste. Highly recommended before they disappear...without a trace!

************************************************************************************

As you may have heard, The Dark Knight was not nominated for the Best Picture academy award, and Chris Nolan was not nominated Best Director. Frankly, I find this hilarious.

Now, I don't hate the movie (actually, I haven't seen it yet), nor have anything against the director, the writers, the actors, or any of the crew involved with its production. That's not the point. The point is: anything that makes nerds on the Internet outraged is inherently funny to me, so I actively support whatever measures screw with them.

Generally, nerds ignore the Oscars, because think they are stupid and pointless and don't actually reward quality films (they'd be right most of the time). But the time for scoffing at the awards ended when a Batman movie suddenly became critically acclaimed and a box office dynamo. When The Dark Knight became a contender, the nerds decided they needed to push it as much as possible; finally, one of "their" movies could be a winner, and thus them by association!

That's really all it is: geeks want to see their worthless lives validated by having an adaptation of a nerdy property win it big. It has nothing to do with film quality. Its all about them and their narrow minded obsessions.

So they decided to began to campaign. Up to the final nominee announcements, it really was up in the air whether or not the film would be nominated. It has that nerd factor against it, but on the other hand lots of people liked it, it made lots of money (its funny they keep bringing that up, because nominating movies because they made a lot of money is usually an argument for why the nominations suck), and one of its stars died which is so sad. I threw it in as a possible wild card, but wasn't really expecting it.

Then came the announcement, and while Ledger got a supporting actor nod (which he is guaranteed to win because he is dead and oh is it sad), but nothing else. The nerds RAAAGED. Raged as much rage as rage could rage. The academy suddenly became biased and stupid and THEY WILL REGRET THIS and blah blee blee bloo blah. This really isn't any different from any other Oscar season, but dammit they insulted the nerds DIRECTLY and they can't stand it.

Looking at the nomination list for best picture, only about half the movies really deserved it. While Slumdog Millionaire and Frost/Nixon were obvious and deserved (the former is gonna take it, BTW), Milk, Benjamin Button, and The Reader have been met with mixed critical opinions. Button is sort of a sad case because the one film that its great director has made with a nomination is one of his lowlier ones. And the latter movie was nominated possibly because two of its directors died, possibly. Not exactly an excellent award plate, but its standard procedure at this point.

One thing, though: I don't see many people whining about The Wrestler being left off, despite acclaim. I guess if it starred a man in a bat costume, it'd get more people behind it. Oh well.

**********************************************************

Dear God, the number of people whining "I want a new beat 'em up instead" or "I want them to re release Turtles in Time instead" when talking about the new TMNT fighting game is fucking grating. Do they just acquire one mindset about every franchise and are completely unable to exit it? I like the Turtle beat 'em ups, too, but I like the promise of a new good fighting game even more.

Gawwwwwwwwwd.

Labels: , , ,

Monday, January 19, 2009

Hey there

I caved and purchased Tatsunoko vs Capcom form Play-Asia. I have got the proper hacks to make it work, and have shut off my Wiinternet to prevent updates that could take place between now and when the game comes in the mail. Looking forward to it (well, I'd have to, considering how much I'm paying for it). The last thing I ordered from Play-Asia took 11 work days to get here (I think). Can this order beat the mail system's record?

But anyway, some games I am looking forward to this year:

Street Fighter IV - Of course.
Rhythm Heaven - Yes, uh-huh.
Mario & Luigi 3 - I didn't play the second one, but the premise of this one is so outlandish I have to try it.
Prototype - Just saw a video for this. It looks incredible.
Punch-Out!! - I gotta have it. Even though we know next-to-nothing about it, I have confidence that the guys behind Mario Strikers will know how to make it right.
TMNT Fighting Game - I mean, they got some of the Brawl developers behind this! I'm always receptive to promising fighting games, and with the pedigree on this, I am excited. Plus, some of the ideas they had on display so far were pretty good. See illegal scans here, thief.

Labels:

Thursday, January 08, 2009

Errup

Here's a post.

I have listened to, over the last week or so:

Clouds Taste Metallic
The Soft Bulletin
Mellow Gold
Mutations
Who's Next

I feel so cool, getting so much new music recently. It's a grand old time.

Do you want me to comment on Hearst/UGO buying 1UP.com, killing EGM, and sacking a lot of the staff? Fine then.

It's sad to see a lot of great writers get let go. I've been unjustly hard on 1UP in the past out of some dumb bias shit, but they really are one of the few sites with some integrity left, and an actual desire to be interesting rather than pander to the nerdishness of the majority of gamers. The sit will still be around, with some of the staff still around, so it isn't dead yet. Even so, the large number of talented people who lost their jobs is an incredibly sad affair, and I wish them all the best.

Do I believe that the new owners will corporately destroy the soul of the site? No, not until I see it happen. UGO may be another haven for fanboys, but I'm not going to jump to conclusions.

Labels: , ,

Thursday, January 01, 2009

2008: GRRRRR

Well, you waited long enough. So here you go, the 10 things that were not so good in 2008. PREPARE FOR ANGRY.

Resident Evil 5 Controversy

All it took was one column...one column making the observation of "Hey, this game has a snow-white asshole going around gunning down poor black people. Think about it"...to send the nerds of the Internet into a uncontrollable explosion of rage and casual racism. Albeit, the same column's claim that "obviously no black people worked on this game" is a bit duh, because it's Japanese (which is really the explanation for the whole thing, as they Japanese still don't really 'get it'), but it doesn't excuse the pure, unbridled stupidity on display from many people in reaction. It only went to prove two of my own observations: that gamers can't take any criticism of their hobby, and that most nerds are kind of racist.
Later on, we get extra fun from this subject, with the game's developers unintentionally including a horrible AIDs metaphor, and the inclusion of an African sidekick, who as Yahtzee points out actually looks less black and more 'dipped in tea'.
The game? Oh yeah, it'll probably be good.

AICN

I've been avoiding this site for a while now, but I was unfortunately exposed to quite a few bits of it in 2008, and ohhh boy they were doozies. We began with that horrific man-mountain Harry Knowles getting an exclusive review of Cloverfield, giving us the expected hyperbolic statements of quality we expect from him. The movie itself, as we found out, was exceedingly mediocre to passable. In the summer, Harry followed up by blowing a gasket about the rumors of Will Smith playing Captain America (which would be kind of cool), and was relieved when it was confirmed that it was not the case, as if nuclear holocaust had been averted (more proof of my stated belief above).
Of course, those are the main two I say, and I made sure never to look back ever again after that. I'm sure if you took a few more peaks, you'd find lesser or equal stupidity on the part of Knowles and his nerdy men.

Videogame Websites

No, not all of them. I just needed something general to describe my two main targets: Kotaku and IGN.
Kotaku should be a good tool for getting all your game news in one place, but to find it you have to wade through a ton of personal crap, including that aggravating loser whose only purpose is to be 'the guy who lives in Japan', which I'm sure is the wet dream of the site's readership. Speaking of the readership, shit like this, this, this, and this are even worse when you read some of the comments. I mean, it's just really horrible.
IGN is quickly becoming the AICN of the videogame world (even more than Kotaku), and I'm getting that vibe strictly from the Nintendo half, where every week is Matt C. has a fanboy spasm and still thinks we believe he has 'insider info' about a new Kid Icarus which has apparently been scheduled to be revealed at every trade show for the past 500 years or so. The site's review for Super Smash Bros. Brawl annoyed me with just a few lines whining about third party character inclusions (the dumb character selection complaining may be as bad as any hysterical tantrums thrown by hardcore tourney players not getting the exact game they wanted). They also whined about the original enemies in the Adventure mode, too, but to be fair, so did the cast of the 1Up Show. The 9.9 handjob for MGS4 a few months later was only the icing on the stupid cake that is IGN.

Prop 8

And even with the election hyping a new direction in the course of American politics, a largely pro-democrat state also happens to take away the rights of many of its citizens for no reason other than bigotry. When CALIFORNIA decides it doesn't like gay people more than Massachusetts, a state that is well-known almost exclusively for witch burnings, you know there's a problem.

Franchise Revivals

Both Indiana Jones and the X-Files tried to make a comeback in 2008, both decrepit, dancing for quarters from the audience; it was sad. At least the former has a reasonable enough explanation for its failure: George Lucas can ruin anything within in his general vicinity. But the new X-Files movie? It seems that the creative staff decided that the best possible way to bring it back was to eschew the conspiracy storyline (which was a good idea) and instead make about some gay lovers making a transsexual Frankenstein monster and the Priest who helps track them down with his molestation-based telepathy (not a good idea). Maybe they were infected with George Lucas?
On a lesser scale, but still in the same vein: it really is disheartening to hear about the diminishing returns of the Futurama movies. It was a brilliant series, and Bender's Big Score was decent fun...so what the hell happened? There have been a few logical ideas of why the movies dipped, it's still so very very sad. I can only hope for a miracle to save Wild Green Yonder from the same fate.

Twilight

I first encountered the Twilight books back in August, and was so disgusted by the premise of Breaking Dawn that I instantly grew to loathe everything related to it and ridicule it whenever possible. Then I found out about the movie. Then my mom started reading the books. It's been a nonstop torrent of this fan fiction-level vampire melodrama since then.

Canadian Politics

First, the Conservatives spend the first half of the year introducing many many bad laws. Then in the fall, suddenly there's an election! Everything was destined to stay the same, because the Liberals spent their time as opposition picking their noses and being scared by their own shadows (but at the same time, most of the country won't give majority power to a friend of Bush). Some amusing things happened, but overall it was standard.
Then came the Coalition incident, and now it was time for massive spin-doctoring as I've never seen up here. The fact that the people BOUGHT a lot of the bullshit fed to them reveals that the Canadian populace doesn't know their own political system as well as I thought. Hey, we can be idiots, too!

Awesome People Dying

George Carlin? Dead. Bo Diddley? Dead. Isaac Hayes? Dead. Stan Winston? Dead. Steve Gerber? Deceased. David Foster Wallace? Pushing daisies. Sho'Nuff? Oh, you better believe he's dead.

Seriously, that is awful. So many good people, artists and entertainers, no longer able to give us stuff. It is inevitable, but it still stings.

Slurpees

This may have only been in the latter months of 2008, but the closest 7-11 to me (the one I can walk to) has been going through a terrible period where there Pepsi slurpees tasted dreadful, and then they took the only viable option, Dr. Pepper, away. It wasn't until a few weeks ago that the Pepsi slurpees became decent again, but Dr. Pepper is still on hiatus. How am I going to continue killing myself with sugar when shit like this happens?

Republicans

Holy, did the voter crowds become downright INSANE in the latter days before the election. Apparently, the protected-from-witches Republican VP did indeed energize the base...unfortunately, the base was an angry, paranoid mob. And I don't know whether to feel sorry or despise John McCain, who would try to rise above his eventual pool of support and then pander to it. This whole thing was very sad and infuriating, but I'll leave the real details for the big boy blogs, if you decide to seek them out.

I mean, I spent most of this list making fun of game nerds.

Labels: , , , , , ,