Booyor’s BLOGgh!

Usually I get frustrated with Yahoo movie lists, like the top high school musicals (which weren’t, well, musical (unless the Johnny B. Good solo counts in Back to the Future)).

But I dig There and Back Again (nice Baggins reference).

There was KFC at school today for dinner. (I was staying late to finish up a faculty meeting presentation.)(All set to the Transformers movie theme song and the Breakfast Club.)

As I was walking back to the library with a plate of biscuits, mashed potatoes, gravy, cole slaw, and a chunk of crispy chicken, a bug landed on my paper plate. I accidentally smeared the bug on the plate. It’s then when I realized a sad truth.

I shouldn’t be grossed out. It was probably the healthiest thing on my plate.

I recall Brian’s RPG wiki- a predecessor to Kraka’s Holocam, obviously.  It was a pretty cool idea, and one I’d like to work on at some point.  But I’d never thought about using a wiki to plan my campaigns. Now that’s something I’m going to have to work with, given that my standard campaign includes excessively elaborate timelines and backstory that have little to no effect on the players, except for my wife, who gets to hear as much as I think I can get away with telling her without spoiling the story or boring her. however, since my general weakness as a GM is forgetting little details about things, this has some great potential.

Obsidian Portal looks promising- I’ve got a couple of campaign ideas I’ve been pondering, and this could be a great tool to organize those ideas.

1. A control feature that doesn’t feel wild and make your guy spaz and start looking at either the sky or the ground while you’re running.
2. Some variety other than clone bugs so it doesn’t feel like I’m Arnold Schwarzennegger from the movie Predator vs. the Mimic movies.
3. A voice block feature in-game. I.E. I was playing a hard fought and serious game of Headquarters, where my teammates and I were protecting the base in Call of Duty 4, and as I’m walking slowly hugging the wall, out of nowhere I hear Gloria Estefan singing “1, 2, 3, 4 come on baby sing it to me, 5, 6, 7 times” louder than anything I’ve ever heard in a long time. That would suck to play Conduit and hear Madonna or something else start playing over the server.
4. Multiple multi-player modes online that are easy to connect to unlike Mario Strikers, where just when you think you’re connected, you get an error message and the system locks up.

PS3 games I’m looking forward to:
1. Resistance 2
2. FF13
3. FEAR: Project Origin
4. Resident Evil 5
5. Facebreaker Infinity
6. Playstation Home

Wii games I’m looking forward to:
1. The Conduit
2. Mario Death
3. Mario Kart vs. Rock N’ Roll Racing
4. Bright Lights Freakout Revolution
5. LEGO: Sociopath edition

XBox 360 games I’m looking foward to:
1. No more Halo.
2. Gears of War 2

Catastrophic disappointment of the year:
1. Force Unleashed being stripped down to an uber version of the Episode III video game instead of the next great Star Wars classic in both single-player and multi-player since the original Jedi Knight.
I can understand the reasons behind not putting it on computer, but putting it on PS2 and PSP is strange, especially if your reasons for not releasing it on the PC are graphically-based.
This means that all LucasArts fans(including myself) have to look forward to more LEGO Star Wars and LEGO Indiana Jones for a long time. Man…it’s like they each had a massive lobotomy done and woke up one day saying, “You know what, we had games like X-Wing, Rebel Assault, and Jedi Knight, but you know what, our fans are spoiled with all the good games we’re putting out, so lets take it down a notch shall we?”

On the Sports front, Team USA plays Turkey on Thursday at 8 AM EST, yes that’s right 8 AM as in MORNING(Arizona residents, this translates as “friggin’ early”), and Team USA is just coming from a 60 something point victory over Team Canada this past Friday.

Remember when Activision merged with Vivendi? Well, they announced today that they will NOT be publishing Ghostbusters.

Game’s not canceled, just has no publisher.
Very strange that we were just talking about being excited about the game, oh, like, hours ago.

Have I told you my undying devotion to Bratz: Girls Really Rock! ?

[whispered] Let’s see if it works again.

You know what this world needs more of? Scorpion versus Superman:

Or maybe not.
This is what happens when two abused intellectual properties check in to the TMNT Clinic for Overused Trademarks.

I know that Superman is weak against magic (although are every one of a ninja’s kicks magical? (I just pictured cycle kicks to “Some Enchanted Evening”, Clark being across a crowded room)).

But does that make Batman a poor aim with the Bat-arang versus Sub-Zero?

Knocking someone through multiple walls of a building does look cool, though. Not cool enough to pine for a game, though.

In the category of Things Better Left Alone, Tony Almeida will be back on Season 7 of 24:

First, if you want to sign up for a two-year contract before August 17 with Comcast (do we even have that option here?), they’ll give you a Wii.
My thought: how come there’s a shortage of Wii? How did Comcast net this?

Who will be the next villain in Dark Knight? A cop-helping Riddler?

Also, a librarian need:

A nonfiction title that will rock a junior higher’s mind.
Recommendations, please! This is my weak area in booktalks.

And we are now on Day 9 of Wii Fit
Height: 6′9″ (although someone asked at work if I got taller…better posture?)
BMI: 28.35
Wii Age: Yesterday’s was 36. I wanted to work out more this morning before work (BOXING!), so I did the shorter body test.
Enthusiasm:

5 Mocking Bowsers…Happily Mocking

And now, for those not interested in Wii Fit:
Americans eat 3 pounds of peanut butter each year.

I guess it’s pronounced as a homophone of “cool”, but I pronounce it more Tolkien/Jacques-esque.

New search engine in a long line of would-be Google killers. Are their results best?

Here’s for “booyor”.

Which one’s my top hit? What about second-most relevant?

At least their font color rocks Google.

Based on IGN’s E3 review (which, Devin, I sympathize with your E3 apathy) I think there’s a FPS void:

Check out the awesome runners-up.

The first part, for my mom:
We’re watching Lois and Clark Season 3 “We have something to talk about”. Lois is doing jumping jacks on a fitness pad and a terrorist has rigged up a bomb to blow up if she stops. The terrorist radios in taunts. Then Clark is at a mafia party where a bomb can sense his dense structure and will blow if he moves.

My thoughts? An early version of Wii Fit complete with Balance Test.

On to The Two:
My brother and I just finished Army of Two. Great graphics where you can see your masked sociopath headbutt crunch a suicidal bomber. And you’re controlling the character the whole time.

Lots of customization. I added a longer stock to the sniper rifle and more ammo to my .44. My brother, on the other hand, paid to have his AK-47 gold plated.

The best part of the game is the Aggro meter, where it measures who is the baddest and grabs the attention of the baddies the most. Our strategy? I fire randomly, laying down true suppressive fire, while my brother sneaks around and wreaks havoc. And there’s no hit points. Instead, your screen will get hazy and then go red and then go white as you slowly die. But your partner can drag you to safety for field medicine. The injured can still fire while being dragged.

Lots of fun. But here are the negatives:

1. Very short storyline. 6 missions, but they go by very quickly. This is not Metal Gear Solid.
2. Not too much replay value. Yet. We immediately started a new campaign to try out new weapons (a chaingun for me, a platinum grenade launcher for my brother) but it’s real tough to be accurate and accuracy is key or you’ll be hearing a lot of, “Tyce! I’m hit! [expletive][expletive] save me!” This is the game to set aside and then come back to for just all-around psycho firepower.
3. On top of short missions, the storyline is weak. There’s a huge conspiracy but it’s already solved in the instruction manual. I guess they forgot I actually read the manual. No joke, from the manual. “Every mission that Dalton organizes you get ambushed. Isn’t this suspicious?” I expected more pathos from antisocial mercenaries.

The game’s fun and there are some cool new takes on the shooter concept. Aside from the short, ridiculous storyline, it was worth it. We did go for secondary objectives, which add storyline and money. “I found this briefcase. Not only is a villain here, but this is info on his training camp.” I appreciate that. The back-to-back two guys surrounded by fifty villains firefight option is cool. We did not do the gun swapping, nor did we really utilize the “we just blew up a town, air guitar!” feature (press ‘X’ next to your partner). Nor did we use the, “Tyce, let’s co-op snipe!” mode. (Yeah, they say that in the game.)

But we did snipe together independently. You know how Metal Gear and Rainbow Six made popular the shaky scope with heavy breathing?

Now imagine heavy breathing after running in heavy armor with a metal mask on your face. Those are some interesting sounds. My brother describes it best.
“Most awkward prank phone call ever.”

Comic Con is running amok in San Diego right now, so it’s a big week for geek news- good news for anyone hoping for some info on Tron 2, or waiting for a Farscape comic book.  Okay, I’m actually excited about one of those.

Joss Whedon and the Doctor Horrible crew did have a pretty big presence at the Con- according to Felicia Day’s Twitter page 2000 people showed up to watch the screening, and they had to add more rooms. There was also a Doctor Horrible panel, covered by io9- along with half the internet, but io9’s summary is just the first I found a link to. Some big news was announced there. First, if you want to pretend you’re Doctor Horrible controlling a van, feel free to bring this website up on your iPhone. The site was designed by a friend of Nathan Fillion’s. Next, some expected news: there will be more Doctor Horrible. No word on the whens or hows or wherefores- or even if wherefore is a word anyone uses these days- but it’ll happen. Also, they talked about the DVD, and some of the extras they’re going to include:

Jed announces the Hammer DVD. He says they’ll do some new things: “Commentary the Musical.” He says if you haven’t heard of this, you’ll find out. They’re also going to have a contest. They’ll take video submissions for the Evil League of Evil. 3 minutes, like you’re applying to be on Survivor. 10 best on DVD. We’ll do that after soundtrack and t-shirts.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to that. Booyor, you have a video camera, right?

Aside from Doctor Horrible, someone interviewed Joss Whedon about his various comic book spin-offs, and there’s at least one that I think is going to draw a lot of attention: The Shepherd’s Tale. Yes, they are finally going to tell us about Book’s past. I can’t wait.

Plenty of other news out there too for the finding- Comic Con is definitely making up for my general lack of excitement at the news from E3 last week.