Back In My Day....

Allow me to put down my phosphate and climb into my rocking chair to vent for a moment. See, back in my day, we had these things called "instruction manuals" that came with our video games. They were neat, with pages and pages of controls, maps, character bios and backstory info. You young assholes don't seem to care about the extra stuff that comes with your games, as evidenced by my copy of Watchdogs coming with absolutely no booklet whatsoever. No map. No redeemable code for something shitty. Nothing, except a flyer for Uplay, which is the value equivalent of snot. Look at my Dark Cloud manual, it's 49 pages long!

I'm 27, but I feel like I'm 50 years old sometimes. Look at this Watchdogs case, some games have cool reversible covers, (like Bioshock Infinite, or Mass Effect), but Watchdogs just gives you a beautiful view of the legal jargon and please don't sue us labels. This is insulting, you see, when I was a kid (I almost fell asleep typing that phrase) your games came with shit. Battletoads had a comic book in addition to it's fat manual, Pokemon games came with discounts to Nintendo power, and Persona 3's standard edition came with an art book and the soundtrack. Do you remember the Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8 cases? They were incredible. Why have we strayed so radically from that?

Earthworm Jim's instruction booklet is 38 pages long, and even has an extra section for notes. I'm done shaking my fist and complaining about rock and roll now, it's time for my Mylanta. 

I Lost A Friend Yesterday

I was sick yesterday, and I went to work anyway. It was tough, I had a slight fever and a disgusting cough. I realized that I shouldn't have gone to work, but it was far too late to leave. One thing gave me the strength I needed to finish my shift despite my illness; the pint of Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler that I was going to pick up on the way home. 

I arrive at my local grocer, sweating from the fever, coughing up clem and swallowing it again. I stumble down the ice cream isle, disoriented, confused, looking desperately for my fellow southern mid-westerner's delicious ice cream. The case is full of all the usual flavors, Chunky Munkey, Cherry Garcia, Americone Dream, but the peach cobbler is nowhere to be found. I search for a good 5 minutes, having a stare-down with an old lady who thought it was her business to find out why I was in the ice cream isle for so long. Nothing. I pull out my cellular telephone, and hit up google. Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler has been discontinued due to poor sales.

This means that my favorite ice cream flavor doesn't exist anymore, and it's your fault. I did my part, I probably had a pint a week of that peach chunkiness, but you didn't. You have ripped from me the last lingering piece of comfort I had, the one treat that airplanes me away from my chaotic life as a father of two kids who have the energy of Cerberus himself. Willie Nelson's ice cream was in my hand when Obama was elected, I was eating his ice cream when the Knicks got Melo, and when Herman Cain said "Uzbekky bekky stan stan". I'll miss you Willie, and your 1200 calories in one sitting adventures.

Steph Convinces Me That Naked And Afraid Is Staged

Naked and Afraid is a Discovery Channel show that I have been wasting a lot of time on lately. One man and one woman, must survive 21 days with nothing, not even their clothes. I thought it was kind of interesting, I even watched it with Oliver a couple times, explaining to him all the different things that can kill you in the jungle. I thought the same would happen when I sat down to watch it with Steph, but as soon as the show began, she picked it apart with her skepticism. Here's some of the best arguments she made, and I think she makes a strong case for Naked and Afraid's inauthenticity.

1. The Bras Are Too Good

One of the first things that the survivors do is fashion clothes for themselves. Their partner is a stranger, and being naked around them is uncomfortable. Steph pointed out in the episode we were watching that the woman's leaf bra was clasped together, which either means she has a bra with metal hooks, or she is a master seamstress able to make hooks that support her tits out of wood.

2. The Editing Is Suspicious

There was a segment of the episode that was missing. After a commercial break, we found our survivors mysteriously residing in a little beach fort, that the show claimed they built in the middle of the night before. The show scrolled some text on the screen, explaining that the crew was unable to record footage of the survivors building the fort due to weather issues. Steph coughed the word "bullshit" rather loudly.

3. Both Survivors Lost Their Cameras

Each survivor receives a little diary camera, to record personal thoughts and to vent their frustrations caused by the other. In an episode, the duo decide to move camp elsewhere, and both lose their cameras in the process. Both do. At this stage of the challenge, they didn't even have clothes or shoes yet, so their possessions were few. 

4. Too Many "Almost Died" Situations

A dude got bitten by a poisonous snake. Another guy came down with a serious fever just 3 days before the end of the challenge. A girl in one of the episodes got so constipated it threatened her health, another lady was chased by an alligator. Contestants on Naked and Afraid get hurt and sick all the time, but none die. Ever. The show is very adamant about telling you exactly how close to death they were though.

5. The Raft Looks Like It Was Assembled By The Crew

If you survive the 21 days, then your last task is to build a raft that will carry the both of you to the ending point. Most teams spend their entire 3 weeks building their rafts, but even then, you would expect a certain quality for a boat made with found jungle materials. Steph was quick to point out that one of the men had built a raft with benched seating, and a rudder so finely sanded, it must have been finished with a machine. 

Will any of this stop me from enjoying Naked and Afraid? Of course not, if you demand authenticity from your television, then you live in the wrong century my friend, it's just nice to have such a skeptical partner to watch this nonsense with. It's a major turn-on.

Infinity Wars

I love card games, and Infinity Wars is the Steam card game that I cannot stay away from. It's dubious, feeling like Magic: The Gathering initially, then changing into something completely different, and feeling too simple at first as well before morphing into a game requiring steep strategy. In addition to becoming extremely addicting once you start developing some skill, Infinity Wars also has a unique card library. Themed sets are released frequently, giving you a deck hodge-podged with jump-kicking kangaroos, medieval dwarves and modern M16 wielding military soldiers. There's even packs of Star Trek cards to make your deck even more confusing.

You have a base with 100 health, an attack zone in which you put creatures that will attack your opponent's base, and a defense zone where you put creatures to defend against the creatures in your opponent's attack zone. It seems simple, with only three things to keep track of, but Infinity Wars is unique because of the radically different strategies that can win for you. Overwhelming with millions of tiny monsters isn't anything new, or brute force with big guys, but there's a bluffing mechanic too, or win by healing. Setting up walls and then attacking the base directly with potshots is how I've been playing lately, until I got my Captain Kirk card, now all of my units double in strength when he is on the field. 

Infinity Wars will never match the complexity of Magic, or the deep trickery of Yugi-oh, but it's really fun, and most importantly, new. In a landscape littered with ripoffs and poor revivals of obsolete card games, Infinty Wars is a unique card battler that has some much needed depth. Play it.

Please Make Another Pokemon TCG Video Game!

Just like any other Japanese franchise that finds fiscal success, Pokemon has a ton of shitty spinoff games. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Coliseum, Ranger, Rumble, and of course Hey You Pikachu! are all giant piles of fresh baked shit. Nintendo seemed to excel at getting us pokemaniacs excited about a new game direction, only to leave us feeling like broke frustrated Cubans under a brutal dictatorship. Bleak as GameFreak's spinoffs have been, they got one right. Just one. The Pokemon Trading Card Game for the Gameboy Color.

Just like your regulars old red and blue, the Gameboy Pokemon TCG has you building a deck that you take around to the 8 card gyms, to earn badges and battle the elite four. The card game itself is very challenging in this medium, and I always found it way more fun than playing it for real. This was also a great way to pound the rules of the game into our young brains, something desperately needed at a time when all real life duels dissolved into arguments about cheating. The Gameboy color version of our favorite card game was really well-executed, putting an emphasis on type strategy instead of stacking your deck with legendaries. Nine times out of ten the deck with the Starmies and Seakings would beat the deck with the Mewtwos and Mews. Balance and strategy make this the best card video game of the 90's, and I can't think of any other franchise that could be legitimately argued into that distinction. 

Do yourself a favor and find the ROM for this game. If I post a link to a ROM site, I would probably get a very angry email, so find it on your own with the power of google. If you love card games and are sick of Magic The Gathering, then learn a little about our roots and seek out this retro-treasure. And if anyone reading this has any info whatsoever on a new version, or plans for one, please let me know. My search has dug up nothing.

Japan Has Owl Cafes!

My son loves owls, and Japan has once again proved itself to be the mythical fantasyland that caters to every single human interest. Are you into animated rape porn? Tokyo has an entire district of shops just for you. Want some poisonous sushi? Dozens of restaurants serve that crazy deadly puffer fish. You can get some sleep in a nap store, buy used panties in vending machines, or be a contestant on a game show that physically harms your family members whenever you get a question wrong. Japan has absolutely everything, and now, for people like my son who can't stop talking about owls, they have owl cafes.

Here's how it works. While you wait in line, you are served with soup and a coke. You pay your ten bucks and then walk around the cafe for a set amount of time, petting owls and letting them stand on your head while you take pictures. Cafe owls are not afraid of humans, and all desperately want to you to pet them. The only rules? Turn the flash on your camera off you asshole and no blaming the staff when the owl shits all over your arm. Apparently, that happens frequently. 

I love this idea, and I admire Japan's commitment to supplying what people demand, regardless of it's weirdness. However, I will admit that I am slightly biased here. An owl cafe in Japan? I think that is an awesome idea. But if I saw an owl cafe in Chicago? I'd probably walk past it muttering something about hipsters and their ironic bullshit. 

Hey Team, Shut The Fuck Up

Why is it that every time I make a decision in Dragon Age 2 one of my party members has to chime in with their personal take on the move I just made? In Mass Effect, Shep was rarely questioned, and if a party member disagreed, it was understood that there was no reversing the choice. Shep was commander, completely in charge, and it was wonderful. However, in Kirkwall, my FemHawke has to constantly deal with background noise from the melancholy divas in her party. Your mages chastise you for agreeing with any templars about any topic. Aveline doesn't like it when you make a little coin on the side through illegal means, regardless of how harmless, and you will hear about it. Often. If you try to play with honesty and virtue to appease your mages and Aveline, then Varric will sound in with his disapproval. You can't win.

In Mass Effect, I put pistols to police officers' heads on the daily, and my team knew to shut the fuck up about it. What these simpletons in Dragon Age need to realize is that just because I say something, doesn't necessarily mean that its true. Yes, Anders, I did just tell the Chantry priest that I think all mages should be imprisoned forever, but thats a lie to further our goals. We operate in a dangerous city overrun with corruption and thieves, and I feel no moral guilt for lying to bad people in order to make some cash or complete a mission. I'm not murdering elven babies here, I'm having discussions with strangers on the streets of Kirkwall, and lying to some of them so that they will give me what I want. I just wish my party would shut the fuck up while I work my grift, and here's a concept; if these issues are too controversial for you to sit quietly through, feel free to pack your shit and go. 

Sorry! I Was On Vacation

I've been down the shore all week with the kids, so sorry for the 7 day abandonment. However, just because I was in New Jersey, (a state that spends all of it's money making Italians happy) doesn't mean that I wasn't doing nerd stuff too. I'll be posting about the new stuff I'm becoming addicted to like Infinity Wars, Hearthstone, and Stickman Soccer. I've been replaying Dragon Age 2, Dark Souls and of course, my big Final Fantasy project. 

I found an awesome Simpsons pinball machine at the arcade near our hotel, which I proceeded to set the 5th highest score on. Oliver seemed much more interested in the slot machines.

Star Trek: The Review Of The Game About The Movie

I could never write a review of anything Star Trek objectively. The Enterprise and it's crew are too important to me, in addition to watching every series and every movie multiple times, I've spent countless hours sitting in silence just thinking about Trek. So when Star Trek for the 360 loads up, and I see how funny the graphics look, I don't really care. I'm standing on the bridge, yelling at Bones and asking Chekov questions that I already know the answer to so that he feels included. When I get in my first shootout, and I receive word that I have to put my laser cannon away and only stun my enemies, it doesn't really phase me, because the Spock/Kirk banter is making me giggle too much. The game keeps throwing problems at me, problems that I would hate other games for, but I barely noticed, because I'm playing in a universe I adore. I didn't notice for the first couple hours at least.

The problems turned out to be never-ending. So, the graphics are laughable sometimes, and having to only stun enemies for entire levels is infuriating. I grit my teeth and try to drown out the negative. "Look, it's Commodore Daniels! What a cameo!", I'll scream in my head as the game introduces it's joke of a stealth system. I tried so hard to appreciate the detail they put into the Enterprise while the satanic narrator explains to me that I have to scan everything in every room Metroid Prime style. This game really sucks, and not just because of it's mediocre copycatting of numerous other (superior) games, but because I think it sucks. If a guy like me, who would happily watch the pile of boring poop that was the tv show Boston Legal just because Shatner is in it hates your Star Trek game, then you've really accomplished something dreadful. I will finish it though, probably twice. It is a Trek game after all. 

Promo Cards Are Still Awesome

Oliver eats healthy most of the time, not because I'm a great dad who cares deeply about what my son puts into his body, but because McDonald's still makes Pokemon promo cards. A 3 year old wanting a happy meal is the perfect excuse to keep my collection forever growing, always expanding.

It's Pikachu this time, and now he joins my other two McD promo foils, evidence of the previous times I exploited my children. More to come!

A Stupid Name For A Ship

I was reading the amazing Dan Dare this morning, and noticed that the spaceship he was stationed at was called the HMS Achilles. I didn't think much of it at first, I was much more interested in Dan generously giving aliens idealistic asskickings, but as I closed the comic, it popped into my head, why the fuck would anyone name a major ship the Achilles? Achilles, as we all know, is a metaphor for a specific weakness. Confident that this was just a little joke confined to comic books, I spent minimal effort in checking if anyone would ever actually be stupid enough to name their ship after a name that means weakness, and guess what? The ship actually existed, its real, its British, and it sank. Wow.

Can anyone tell me why "spreads" is in quotations? Gross.

Dan Dare also famously flies his badass spaceship, the Anastasia, named after the young Russian princess who was brutally murdered along with her entire family in a political coup, only to be revived a century later in a campy Disney movie. What is it with Brits and horrible ship names?