Friday, September 28, 2007

More Premiere Madness

Let's see, we watched Bionic Woman and Smallville last night.

Bionic Woman was OK. The whole combat training thing was kind of silly, as was Jamie's pinging between abject horror at her new condition and sex with her boyfriend, the guy who put her in this position. Katie Sackhoff was ok, but I'm not thrilled with how they're doing her hair and make-up. I know, odd things to get bugged with. Overall, I think the show has promise, and next week's pull-ups in a sports bra shots will certainly get me watching. They do need to ditch the sister though as she's annoying and you can see the various plots regarding her coming from a mile away.

Smallville was it's usual stupid self. I like that they made Bizarro's face all fucked up at times, and seeing Clark soak up sunlight to give a solar powered beatdown was great, but seriously, stopping the onrushing torrent of water with heat vision? Timmy, I saved you from drowning just so that you could get burned to death with steam instead! You're welcome! I also don't understand why Bizarro can be impaled on a girder, but not killed. Either he's invulerable, like Clark, or he's the opposite and he's not. This halfway bullshit is dumb. Absorbing kryptonite is a nice touch however there's a finite supply of kryptonite and an infinite amount of sunlight, so simply from a war of attrition, Clark is going to win out. Lana's showing up in China was flat out asinine. Seriously, why China? And why wear a blonde wig in China if you're trying to hide? Dumb, dumb, dumb. Hopefully next week we'll see more Supergirl because this show desperately needs to show more hot women to keep my interest.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour '08 Review up

My review for Tiger Woods PGA Tour '08 for the DS is up and freely available. This is what a review for a good golf game looks like. Stay tuned for my review of the same title on the Wii to see what a review for a bad golf game looks like.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

2 Weeks Gone

Two weeks since my last post? Good Lord! We need better help around here. I swear, this place is going to Hell in a handbasket. Hell I tell ya!

Hi. How are you? Really? That's too bad. I'm sure it'll clear up soon.

Lots to talk about today, so let's get down to it.

First of all, my super cool new humor column "Mr. Binky's Random Stuff" has premiered at GameShark and boy howdy, if the initial reviews are any indication, this thing is a real hit with those I'm friends with. As for the general population, I have no idea, but I can only assume they have the same sense of humor as those I hang out with and, as a result, like it as well. It's probably too far fetched to assume that the general populace pities me as much as my friends do and will also read the column out of some sense of loyalty, but I'll take that too. At any rate, please head on over there and read it, and then go to like 10 other computers and visit it from them as well. Me? I've already done enough. I wrote the damn thing. Sheesh. Some people.

These next few weeks are shaping up to be musical extravaganzas the likes of which haven't been seen since, oh, I don't know. I don't really keep track of such things. The new Iron and Wine cd dropped on Tuesday and it's damn spiffy. That's right, damn spiffy. He has a band this time, which allows him to do a lot more creative arrangements. It's all good stuff and I highly recommend it. Tuesday the 2nd of October sees a new Bruce Springsteen album, E Street Band in tow, which is always a good thing. 10/2 also kicks off their tour which, unfortunately, does not stop in Atlanta. Not sure why my favorite bands aren't all making it down here, looking at you Bruce and Pearl Jam, but I'm starting to get offended. Thankfully, one of my most favoritest bands in the entire universe, nay Multiverse, Jimmy Eat World, not only has a new album dropping on 10/16, but they're also coming to Center Stage not 10 days later. Me and my Rock Buddy Chip are going to go and we're going to rock the fuck out. Chip is my Rock Buddy because a) he knows more about rock than most mortals should and b) he records musicians at concerts and stuff and has his own record label. For the record, Rock Buddy Chip is an excellent name for a rock band.

Stella has finally gotten her Metroid Prime 3 groove back, Stella being me in this horribly worded analogy, and I am enjoying it immensely. The amount of polish and creativity that went into this game's design is amazing. Developers that bemoan the lack of raw power in the Wii should look at this game and then go back to their desks, ashamed at their lack of creativity, because you can still pull off some amazing shit with that little box. Me, I'd rather have something simple and stylish like Super Paper Mario over something graphically realistic like Rainbow Six Vegas any day, but that's just me. I'm the type of guy who will spend 20 minutes on how great Puzzle Quest is. You're the type of guy eatin a tv dinner. Dammit, LL Cool J, I told you not to come in here and interrupt me!

I finally gave up on Brunswick Pro Bowling for the Wii and am about to give up on real bowling as well. No, not really, it's just that the bloom has come off of my new ball's rose. Or something. Now it's just the hard work involved in working through my various swing issues and staying positive. Truth be told, I'm just in it for the Frosty's.

The soccer season has started and your Orange Tigers are not performing to the level I would have hoped. Thankfully, the kids on the team don't get upset, or care really, that the other team can score on them at will. Whoops. Hear that? The other team just scored again. The team consists of those who want to play and score, those that just want to kick the ball and then return to the sidelines for Cheez-Its (my son is firmly in that category) and those that don't want to be there at all. Unfortunately, the kids in the first category represent only like 25% of the team. I'm hoping to bring around those that enjoy a good kicking to the side of those that know why they're on the field in the first place, but we'll see. I tried one game as super enthusiastic and one as kind of exasperated and the kids didn't care either way, so I'm just going to stick with super enthusiastic because it's more fun that way. Much harder, but more fun. Hopefully we'll turn into something resembling a team at some point. I'm also hoping to play the Purple Team at some point, because we fucking own them in scrimmage. That's right Purple Team, I'm calling you out.

Finally, glorious new TV has started! Wahey! I haven't watched all of the premieres, but here's my rundown so far, complete with spoilers:

Back To You - Great seeing Kelsey Grammar on TV as someone other than Frasier Crane. Hate the whole kid sub-plot. The show is funny, but if they keep doing stuff with the kid, I'll drop it.
How I Met Your Mother - Leg-wait for it-endary
Chuck - Like it, but they need someone who actually knows about computers to take a shot at the script. Computers don't smash into a bazillion pieces when they drop from a 4 foot height, and hard drives certainly take a lot more to kill them. The woman is cute, so that's good and Jayne from Firefly is in it, so double yay.
Heroes - Like it. I'm interested to see what the Hispanic woman's power is. Peter's memory loss could be hokey, but I'll give it a shot. I thought he'd be the one killing the elder circle people. Guess not.
Bones - Good, but not as good as I expected. Zach's return made his departure so much about nothing. This show always takes a few episodes to hit it's stride, so I'm not worried. I'm not pleased with Hodgin's lack of the manfro as it takes a very special dude to pull off that much curly hair, but oh well.
Reaper - So far, the best new show this season. Funny, well written, clever with great acting and fantastic writing, this one's a keeper. I know Kevin Smith directed it, but it sounded like he wrote it too, so if they can keep up that level of humor all season long, I'll be thrilled.

We still haven't watched Bionic Woman or Dirty, Sexy Money yet and Smallville starts tonight, so I'll chime in on them later. I expect Bionic Woman to be great, because there's a lot of hot chicks in it, Dirty, Sexy Money to be good because Peter Krause is in it and Smallville to suck because it's Smallville and all of the competent writers left years ago. Supergirl looks hot enough to melt steel though, so I'll stick around. Pushing Daisies, Friday Night Lights, and the Cackowski-Schnell Show of the Year, Supernatural all start next week. It's a good time to be watching tv.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Goings-Ons

Is that right? Is it going-ons or goings-ons? At any rate, these are the things that are ongoing. There has been much and many. Many much moosen.

On the gaming front, I finished BioShock over the weekend and boy howdy, did I enjoy that game. The ending was disappointing, both in the execution and the fact that it ended, but that's a small quibble in what was otherwise, the most enjoyable gaming experience I've had in a while. I also managed to get 960 points on one run, and given that the other 40 are for completing the game on Hard, 960 is all I'm gonna get. I watched the alternate ending on Youtube and was even less impressed, so I'm going to be happy with my 960 points and my angelic ending and move on.

Now that BioShock is in the can, I've started playing Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. I haven't been playing as much as I'd like to, given that I'm working on reviewing Tiger Woods '08 and Brunswick Bowling for the Wii, but what I've seen so far I'm enjoying immensely. In fact, my lack of Metroid time makes me feel kind of bad, because I asked for it back from a coworker so that I could play, and I've barely touched it. Hodge, if you're reading this, I'm sorry.

Both Tiger Woods and Brunswick Bowling are interesting animals in that some aspects of the controls are either frustrating or unintuitive but if you fight through them, you can have some fun. I know this is a fact with Tiger Woods, as the aforementioned Hodge chose to return Tiger Woods to me rather than continue futzing with the putting. There are other issues with both games other than the controls, but both are niche sports games for the Wii that have aspects of their controls that could make the casual game loving, Wii-centric audience completely pass over them. Coincidence? I think not. Actually, I totally do. For the record, I think that Brunswick is a little more fun than Tiger Woods, but that's probably because I've played Tiger Woods for so long that there's not much new about it any more.

Speaking of bowling, I bought a new ball, and took another lesson, thereby ratcheting up the dollar to suck ratio. Actually, it would appear that there are some improvements, as Wednesday I bowled a 185, close to 20 points better than my previous high score. Granted, this was during practice, and not a "league" game, but it points to improvement nonetheless. My new ball is a Raw Hammer Anger, from the fine folks at Hammer. This ball is the shit. For one, it's lighter, so I can throw it with a little more power. Second, the asymmetric core, along with the reactive coverstock means that I can get a nice hook without having to really crank it. This is good, because my new stroke isn't of the cranking kind. Please, no masturbation jokes. Ok, ok, just one. Go ahead. Ha! That's pretty funny.

Anyways, I also got the ball drilled a little differently with what's called a fingertip grip. Basically you have these inserts in the finger holes that allow you to insert your fingers only up to like the first knuckle. The idea is that you get a better release because you can let the ball roll off your fingers and give the ball a little spin. At least, I think that's the idea. I really have no idea. My bowling instructor, who happens to be the pro shop guy, told me to buy this ball with this grip and I did like the good little student (sheep) that I am. Unfortunately this is causing all sorts of problems with my spare ball, which means I may need to get another one and retire Pinslayer out to pasture. I'm hoping there's a retirement hall for old bowling balls, where they can just roll around all day knocking down pins.

Soccer starts on Friday with our first practice, provided the 70% chance of rain currently predicted doesn't come to fruition. Personally, I'm somewhat interested in seeing how the kids, and I, react to having practice rained out, but then having a game on Saturday. It'd be the very definition of bedlam.

Finally, football season started and the Redskins are 1 and 0. Woo-hoo! I should savor these moments, as there's no guarantee the winning will outnumber the losing for very long. For now though, we won our season opener and have a reeling Eagles team to contend with next week, on Monday night no less. It'll either go very, very well, or very, very badly. I'm hoping for the former but am prepared for the latter. Such is the life of a Redskins fan.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Boogie review up

One of these days I'll actually post something other than notices of published reviews. That day isn't today though, and tomorrow ain't looking good either. In the mean time, enjoy my review of Boogie.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Alien Syndrome review up

My review of Alien Syndrome is up. Forget about all of the other Alien Syndrome reviews you've read. This is the definitive one.