You find a line, I'll find a pole, we'll go fishin' in a crocodile hole...

So I lost internet access yet again and this time it was for quite a while. Turns out the cable running into the house was dying, but that's been replaced and everything is as it should be. However, I'm thinking that I'm not going to be balls-out-blogging right away and it's because of Grand Theft Auto IV.

But I can live with that. Speaking of, here's an excellent video review from Garnett Lee, Crispin Boyer and Greg Ford of 1UP/EGM:


Then there's GameTrailers' far more clinical, but very informative review:


Also of interest are Kotaku's various articles on GTA IV which sum up various little threads of interest. Something that I can't find anywhere, however, is the game's final soundtrack listing. I've seen various things from Queen, The Smashing Pumpkins, Black Sabbath to VHS or Beta appearing in the game, but until I've got the manual in my hands, I'm not entirely convinced. (And I will be entirely livid if it turns out that Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl is in the game)

So, what else have I been up to? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! I watched the first movie, watched the first two seasons of the '80s cartoon series, read a good deal of comic books and am now starting on the totally bodacious TV series from 2003. What can I say? I love bein' a turtle.

To me, TMNT is only bad when it goes sci-fi. Example: the Fugitoid/Triceraton saga from the comics and new TV show. The Turtles belong in New York, dammit! We don't need no stinkin' aliens and laser beams messin' things up. But then that's kind of hypocritical, isn't it? I can buy that there are four mutant turtles and a rat who know ninjitsu, but the idea of an invading army of Triceratops from space pisses me of. But whatever...


Leonardo leads / Donatello does machines
Raphael is cool, but rude / Michelangelo is a party dude
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Turtles in a half-shell / Turtle power!

You always left me satisfied...

Compilation of Michael Scott's "That's what she said" from the Office:


Missing, however, is Stanley's "That's what she said" joke from the pretzel day episode.

New Kids in the Hall sketches

Found these on digg and Funny Or Die:




And now, an old favorite: Sausages:

There is a light that never goes out...

Good news, everyone! The first confirmed Rock Band album is Judas Priest's Screaming for Vengeance. Nice. While I'm not going to buy the whole album, Rock Band does need some old school metal and You've Got Another Thing Coming is something I'll probably purchase. [Edit: so really the good news is that they're finally starting to do albums, not that Judas Priest is the first to have one available]

Other good news from the news article: the Pixies' Doolittle is also confirmed for a future album. Hell yes, Monkey Gone to Heaven and Here Comes Your Man? Sold!

Oh! But it gets better! Also confirmed is the Cars' eponymous album. I will definitely buy that. Just look at that Wikipedia entry, it's chock full of hits!

How much would you pay for this great deal? $29.99? $59.99? Wait! There's more! Also included is Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time! Whoo-hoo! Too bad Goonies 'R' Good Enough isn't listed, but what can you do as a closet Cyndi Lauper fan?

Man, I don't think I've ever used so many exclamation points. Well, I can't help it. This news thoroughly rocks my heart.

Here we are
Hanging onto strains of greed and blues
Break the chain, then we break down
Oh, it's not real if you don't feel it
Unspoken expectations
Ideals you used to play with
They've finally taken shape for us

What's good enough for you
Is good enough for me
It's good enough
It's good enough for me
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Nintend'oh!

Via digg: Nintendo Wii Virtual Console games just ROMS and HTML files?

I think it's kind of funny that they where able to play these on SNES9x. I don't blame Nintendo for doing this, it's the logical and money saving thing to do. (How else do you expect them to work?) But! Doesn't that mean they should be able to pump these things out more frequently? Then again, I don't think they're too concerned. What was the last prolific game released on the Virtual Console? Super Metroid? Wasn't that in August? I suppose Harvest Moon was in February though...

Either way, I'm convinced that Nintendo is only motivated by money right now. That's why they don't announce games until two months before they come out. Did you even know that Mario Kart was coming to the Wii in April until a month or so ago? No. But now you do and they've saved millions on advertising and hype by being so damn secretive. Great strategy, dicks. To me that's another reason not to buy a Wii if I have no idea what I'm investing in. Sure, there are certainties like Mario and Zelda, but other than that, you're going to be twiddling your thumbs with nothing to do.

Also, what's with the complete neglect of the DS? You've got Professor Layton and Ninja Gaiden. Can you name any other recent DS games? Nope. You can't, because they don't exist because Nintendo is seemingly focused solely on the Wii.

Crafting a playlist

Instead of doing important things like getting enrolled for summer school out of the way, I decided to make a mix CD for work tomorrow. Knowing who I'll work with, I've tried to create something that he'll enjoy as well.

Now, I started off with Patrick Wolf's The Magic Posistion because it's light and upbeat -- it might bring a laugh as well. So, even now the strategy is to start high energy and fade into mellow. From there we go to VHS or Beta's Night On Fire and then Hot Chip's Ready For the Floor. That seemed like a logical step to me and so far it flows quite well.

Fading from "dancier" material to more organic material involved putting the Arcade Fire's Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) and Neighborhood #2 (Laika) into the mix. From there comes possibly the best transitional songs in the whole playlist: the Black Kids' I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You then Band of Horses' The General Specific and then on to Yeasayer's 2080. I think they meld quite well.

From there, we go to a trickier bit where I want to start getting mellow and then back to dancier things before going all out mellow. We've got Neutral Milk Hotel's The King of Carrot Flowers Part 1 going into Soul Meets Body by Death Cab for Cutie and then into Swimming Pools by Thao with the Get Down Stay Down. Then comes the energy boost: Elias and the Wizzkids' The Dance. If I haven't created a good mood work at work with the song, then all is lost.

From there it's Pink Squares by I Was a Cub Scout and then I Want U by the Billie Burke Estate. Hopefully that last one doesn't get misconstrued...

And now we're at the bit where I'm having a bit of trouble. This part isn't wholly finalized yet -- I wanted to include some Pixies and the Smiths, but I'm not sure if they'll make the cut. As much as I love Monkey Gone to Heaven, it doesn't really have a place here. What Do You Think Will Happen next by Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett) has to be included, however. So do my last four songs: Expectations by Belle & Sebastian; So Nice, So Smart by Kimya Dawson and Out of Gas and Dramamine by Modest Mouse. I think the fade out to noise in Dramamine will be the perfect way to end the disc. And besides, including songs from the Juno soundtrack is very timely.

So now I'm toying around with the Silver Jews, Islands, Feist and Rilo Kiley among others. You can't say that I didn't put some thought into it -- after all, if I'm going to make work pleasant, I've got to have a strategy.

Now maybe I should work on getting school sorted out...


Edit: The song that tied it all together was A.M. 180 by Granddaddy. It's the song that plays in 28 Days Later when they're all looting the grocery store. I put it in between the Juno crowd and Modest Mouse. It's magical.

Boll's Balls

So, you probably heard about the petition to get Uwe Boll to stop making terrible videogame movies. Well, Mr. Boll had a response to that...


The only genius in the whole fucking business? Hmm. All right, sir. If you say so. You're entitled to your opinion. I will admit that I've never seen one of your movies, but I also plan to never watch one because I can guess with good reason that they are all as terrible as people say they are.

You know, earlier I was listening to 1UP Yours and this was discussed. Apparently, Boll makes all of his movies while he's on the phone to his investors and then goes out and gets hookers with Brett Ratner. So maybe he is a genius -- financially that is. That silly Dungeon Siege movie is renting like mad at work. But whatever, I've established that the general public has bad taste. See: the Wayans brothers "____ Movie"s.

Lost Odyssey impressions

I didn't have high hopes going into Lost Odyssey. I had played the Blue Dragon demo and while there where aspects that I liked (such as the crazy heavy metal boss song as sung by Deep Purple's Ian Gillan), nothing that I saw was particularly spectacular or new.

Still, I have hope for Mistwalker and Sakaguchi, because other than them and Square Enix, who's going to be making Japanese RPGs for the current consoles? Namco is supposed to be making a current gen Tales game, but I don't know if it's the good Tales team working on it (Symphonia, Abyss) or the lesser team (Legendia).

Like everyone else, I am fervently awaiting Final Fantasy XIII and the VII Remake (cross your fingers!), but other JRPG offerings are slim. I would have thought that White Knight Story would be out by now, but I haven't heard anything on it since the Tokyo Game Show a couple years ago. Then of course, there was the major news a while back about the next Dragon Quest game being made for the DS, so you have to wonder if other companies are moving that way as well.

In general, I just don't know if Japan has it in them anymore. I don't even know if they care. Look at the current console situation; it's the American console that is leading in terms of innovation and game output whereas the Japanese apparently think it's "rude" to have modern necessities such as voice chat and a friends list in your games.

So maybe they're all just concerned with their cell phones, I don't know. What I can tell you is that Lost Odyssey is decidedly "meh." It's a lot like Final Fantasy X, but everything is just turned down and more generic. For example, imagine the battle system from FFX. It's fun and fast and has a little Rock Paper Scissors to it. Now just take out all those little unique things and turn it into any other turn-based battle system that you've played a dozen times. That's basically the entire philosophy behind Lost Odyssey.

OK, now think about this: Blue Dragon does not have random battles. You can, for the most part, choose your battles just as you could in Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy XII. It's a good thing. Now, why does Lost Odyssey suddenly have them again? Really, I think it's time we moved on from that. You don't have to have the battles on the same screen as you do in Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy XII (although I would prefer it), you can have a single monster running around that represents an encounter as is the case with Dragon Quest VIII's unique monsters.

Now, the random battle thing has been discussed a lot. But Lost Odyssey does a ton of other things that are quite annoying in JRPGs. For a list of them, I would suggest this article on Games Radar. Lost Odyssey has almost all of these things in it.

One thing that is somewhat unusual though are these text-only dream sequences. They can be likened to a codex or a journal from any other game, but these are short stories that are accompanied by Nobuo Uematsu's music. At first, I thought they where a nice way to take a breather, but then they kept coming up at intervals where I just wanted to get to the action. Then there's the actual story which is just the same. There's hardly any back story or motivation to the main quest and that's probably why I find it so hard to give a damn when anything story related is going on. I just feel so detached from it all and so do the characters themselves.

Now, to be fair, Lost Odyssey is not a bad game at all. It's just nothing we haven't seen before. I just made it to the second disc today, and if I can complete it before GTA IV comes out, that's fine. But if not, it's no big loss either.

Zero Punctuation - April 16, 2008

This time Yahtzee goes after Condemned 2 while bringing up the major problem I had with Indigo Prophecy: before the word "mayan" was uttered, I was well on my way to declaring it one of my favorite games. But no, apparently videogames aren't allowed to have have stories with integrity. Instead of having a compelling and real story like you might find in cinema, they have to be fucked up with the supernatural so that you can be assured that you're playing a videogame and that they should never be taken seriously. But I digress...

I am the Sex Bob-Omb!

So what do you do when you can't use the internet? I didn't do much, but I did happen to read the first two volumes of Scott Pilgrim, and I must say: it is most excellent, Rufus.

The basic premise of the comic is that Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old slacker who's in a band called Sex Bob-Omb (already awesome because of the Super Mario Bros. reference). He soon falls in love with an Amazon.ca delivery girl (yes, it takes place in Canada) and as a result, if he wishes to continue dating her, he must fight her seven evil ex-boyfriends.

So it's wacky and it's funny and it's filled with videogame references as well as alternative and indie music references. In short, this comic plays my heart like a fiddle. Normally, I have a distaste for anime, and while this is certainly not "real" anime, it does have some of the out-there contraptions of the genre embedded within it. However, wheres I find them annoying in anime, here they are genuinely charming and entertaining.

Basically, imagine FLCL set in Canada and with the sci-fi turned all the way down and add a dash of Craig Thompson's Blankets, then you'll get the basic picture of what Scott Pilgrim is all about. And for someone like me who gets and enjoys the references, it feels like I'm reading something written by a friend. So really, all I can say is that Scott Pilgrim is a breath of fresh air. I was already feeling burnt out on Batman and was quickly growing bored with the Walking Dead, so for me, this rejuvenated my interest for comics once again. Highly recommended.

(What's also exciting is that Michael Cera will be starring in the upcoming movie adaptation by Edgar Wright (the man behind Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz). So, get in on it early to avoid being called a trend follower.)

Back in the saddle

I didn't have an internet connection for the past two days (thanks Comcast!) and prior to that, I was sick with a cold. So appy-polly-loggies to the few people who read this.

I did have a few reviews planned... Drafts for Lars and the Real Girl and There Will Be Blood exist, but I didn't have the motivation to finish them at the time. Also, expect a review for Guillermo Del Toro's The Orphanage since I just picked that up...

I've also been playing Lost Odyssey on the 360. I'll have some impressions on that as well.

Anyway, let's see if I can get some content generated.

Gangs: Do it for the kids

Via digg, Parents Fight Over Which Gang Their Toddler Should Join. Just as it was once Montagues versus Capulets, now it's Crips versus Westside Ballers.

But who knows? Maybe the couple's child will one day be the uniting force between the two rival factions and at last the two gangs can start focusing on the one thing that's most important: family values.

Darwin Awards, anyone?

Cloverfield Review

Cloverfield seemed like it had a lot of hype. It started with that motion sickness-inducing trailer that showed before Transformers last summer. Nothing was really revealed -- not even a title. So a lot of nerds where spraying their shorts, but I wasn't impressed. I didn't even really want to watch the movie, but I had a cold and I needed something to do.

Cloverfield is really like having your own "frat bro," but instead of him commenting on the movie while you're watching it, he's actually in the movie commenting about what's going on or what happened thirty seconds ago. "Hey, remember that time that thing almost got us and then you whacked it with that pipe? ... What was up with that?" (Sadly, that's not too far from paraphrasing an actual quote from the movie.)

The "dude's" name is Hud, as in Heads Up Display. (If you've ever played a first-person videogame, you know what this is.) He plays the part of the camera man in the movie. He's not very bright, he's very irritating and he has a crush on a bitchy girl that clearly has no interest in him, but being that he's naive and with the mental capacity of crayfish, he just keeps trying to get her to notice him. I would hate to think what would have happened in the movie where the two allowed to be left together in a room drunkenly trying to converse, because this is exactly what Hud's dialogue would sound like: "Hey! Have you ever, like, thought about the universe and stuff?" Then he attempts a keg stand.

Hud is also a puppy starved for attention. He's constantly trying to get his friend Rob to notice him. "Hey Rob! ... Rob! ... Rob! ... Hey! Look at this!" Rob himself isn't much better than Hud. Thankfully, he talks far less, but he's also irritatingly moody. He's upset because a girl that he likes and had sex with once (Beth) is trapped in her apartment and he decides to forgo relative safety so that he can go save her. Also tagging along for the rescue is a token ethnic girl who is unimportant and that bitchy girl that Hud has a thing for. It's kind of hard to warm up to these whiny yuppies, so it makes the movie all the worse.

So far I've only talked about the characters in the movie. "Isn't Cloverfield supposed to be a monster movie like Godzilla?" you ask. Yes it is -- but just barely. The promotional team behind Cloverfield may have tried to hide the identity of the monster from the public to build suspense, but really, it's fairly generic and unimpressive. Imagine drawing a fleshy, spider-like monster in your high school Trapper Keeper. I'd wager that what you draw is far more badass and worthy of being made into Judas Priest album cover than what the Cloverfield team came up with.

In the end, Cloverfield is a movie that had no business being made. Have you seen The Blair Witch Project? Have you seen Godzilla? Then you know almost exactly what Cloverfield is like. It is not in the least original or interesting, which is probably why the ad campaign was so damn mysterious. So how do you get people to go and see a movie they've already seen? Don't tell them shit, that's how. Thanks, Cloverfield ad team. You played us all for suckers.

Overall Grade:
D+

This is a song by a gay guy...

Rickrolling may have went away as a fad a month or so ago, but I still enjoy music arranged in Mario Paint.

It's a scientifict fact that Superman is boring

I don't care for Superman and this article sums up almost every single point as to why. One major thing they left out is that as just a personality, Superman is boring too. Would you want to hang out with the guy? Either as Clark Kent or as Superman? No way. He's probably just going to look inside your lungs and tell you that you're going to die of cancer before he flies away.

I give Superman shit, but I really thought that Red Son was fantastic. It was the first time I actually liked Lex Luthor... But that's another thing: Superman's villains are dull. Who isn't tired of seeing Lex Luthor in those movies? Brainiac would be a much welcome change. After that, you've got what? That little midget guy whose name you have to say backwards? Mister Mxyzptlk? Great.

So there you go. I'm an unabashed Batman fan. I'm biased and I don't care. Bring on The Dark Knight!

Zero Punctuation - April 9, 2008

It's Wednesday and Yahtzee's talkin' No More Heroes:


Even though it's a rare game that Yahtzee likes, I think I'll be staying away from it. I'm surprised that he didn't mention that in order to save you have to take a shit in your bathroom. ... I'm not making that up.

TED Talks - Al Gore March 2008

Found on digg, Al Gore gives a new slideshow on global warming at a TED conference:


The least you can say of the man is that he's a charismatic speaker.

New Fallout 3 screens

I was scanning NeoGAF for some news and I find out that a German PC mag has 15 new screenshots of Fallout 3. To the best of my knowledge, these are the first screenshots of Dogmeat (this one is especially Mad Max looking). I'm also pretty fond of this gruesome pic of our Vault Dweller shooting the leg off a Super Mutant.

I wonder if Bethesda will take the time to make different ghoul models at various stages of decay? That'd be fantastic, because the ones they're showing now are a bit far gone and zombie-like for my tastes. It's probably likely that these are the only models they're willing to show right now though.

Shit's lookin' hot! Can't wait.

Comedic Internet Duos

After a friend recommended Clark and Michael after seeing Juno a while back, I became more interested in the idea of IPTV. Revision3 has me covered as far as tech and geek culture, but finding good comedy is a bit harder.

Again, thanks to PopSiren, I've been checking out Jake and Amir.


Then as far as comedic clips go, Funny Or Die and Super Deluxe aren't bad -- and apparently, Jake and Amir hale from College Humor, but those sites are pretty well known. Anyone have any suggestions for stuff that might be a little more "below the radar"?

Cubicle Ninjas

I'm watching the latest Pop Siren when they bring up a story from Reuters which talks about a 16-year-old Japanese boy becoming a pen spinning champion...

Apparently, this is the place where these people consort. Some crazy stuff. I wonder what percentage of them are drummers?

Some people try to master the silliest things...

Someone Still Loves You

I was listening to music earlier and I found out that I had two covers of Under Pressure in my library. The first I listened to was by Keane and was mostly true to the original arrangement. Now, there's nothing wrong with that -- some people think you have to radically change everything whenever you cover a song, but a lot of times it's better left untouched. I mean, would you want to hear an electronica version of Imagine?

Next I listened to a cover by Xiu Xiu, which offered strange, cacophonous saxophone over their unique arrangement. It was perhaps more in the "spirit" of the song, but that's not the point. That's not why I'm writing this.

I'm writing this because hearing those two songs instilled in me a great desire to watch Queen perform at Live Aid. Now, normally when I hear Bohemian Rhapsody on the radio, I change the channel. Not because I don't like the song, it's because it's overplayed, and when something is overplayed, it loses its power. So, I try to preserve that power for a later date when I will be reminded just how amazing the song is.

Such is the case with the Live Aid, which is perhaps the most amazingly wonderful performance I have ever seen from any band, let alone Queen. It is so intense and at times I feel overwhelmed -- almost moved to tears. So Freddie, Brian, Roger and John, I salute you. Thanks for making this world all the more beautiful.

Walk Hard Review

I'm quite tired of movie studios trying to attach films like these to movies like The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad. Films like Walk Hard -- they're little, red-headed bastard children. I mean, just because Judd Apatow is a producer and has a writing credit on a movie, does that really make it his? I don't think so.

Looking at the box for this movie, it's emblazoned right there on the top above the title: "From the guy who brought you Knocked Up and Superbad." I think there is a distinct difference in quality from when Judd Apatow produces a movie and when he directs it. You can see it almost immediately -- just looking at the trailer for Drillbit Taylor, you can tell it's one that he's a producer on.

So Walk Hard shares a number of similarities with Apatow's other movies. First of all, there's the cast. You see a lot of Office cast members (Jenna Fischer, Ed Helms, Craig Robinson), SNL alumni (Tim Meadows, Chris Parnell) as well as numerous other people that pop-up all over other Apatow films (Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Jane Lynch, Martin Starr, Harold Ramis). So it should have that going for it right? They're all hilarious in other places, but here... Not so much.

Penis.

That was kind of random, wasn't it? It is in Walk Hard too. Expect male full frontal nudity for no reason. That's also kind of why this movie was made: for no reason. I think they thought at one point they could turn Walk The Line into a comedy and then immediately forgot that that's what they where doing about a quarter of a way through the script. I mean, there were some moments where I laughed and I still appreciate the Tim Meadows marijuana bit...


But unfortunately, that's probably the best part of the movie and it happens only about 15 minutes or so into it with another hour and 45 minutes to go before it's all over (I watched "The Unbearably Long, Self-Indulgent Director's Cut" by the way (that's actually what they're calling it, I'm not making that up)). The rest of the jokes I laughed at mostly because of how ridiculously stupid they where. This movie probably has far more in common with Blades of Glory than it does with any of Judd Apatow's movie.

So please... Stop saying that such and such film is from the people behind Knocked Up or Superbad. It makes them look bad too when you attach their names to this kind of lesser movie. Now, let's hope Forgetting Sarah Marshall or The Pineapple Express will make up for this.

Overall Grade:
D

More Mythos

While consuming as much info on Mythos as I can, I found a brief character class intro:


The "brodeo" also discussed Mythos on the latest GFW Radio podcast. Aside from the usual shenanigans and tangents that the crew is known for, some interesting things were revealed about the game such as the loot system.

Normally, in a Diablo-type game, it's a rush between two or more characters to click on the good loot as fast as possible. In Mythos, each monster drops things that only that individual players can see. So if Player A and Player B kill a monster, the loot that Player A sees is entirely different from the loot that Player B sees. I think it's kind of neat, it also heavily encourages trading.

On the other hand, being of a specific character class, you might not think to pick up something that could be helpful to another class. But I think on the whole, it's probably a good idea.

Korean Drummer Steals the Show

Found this on digg as well. The dude was born to play some slut-banging metal.

Zero Punctuation - April 2, 2008

The best part of waking up on Wednesday is finding a new review by the beloved Yahtzee. This week: Army of Two.

White Trash Charms Japan

Just saw this on digg: Lost In Translation - English Interpreted.

From the digg description: "One of my favorite things about traveling is seeing how English is used, or misused. Apparently I'm not alone. Most of these seem to be from Asian countries, however there are a few from other parts of the world that are just as hilarious. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did."


There's also some of those anti-smoking ads from Japan that I'm so fond of.

Blizzard has a sense of humor

My earlier post says I hate April Fool's Day. Well, that's still true, but I kind of like Blizzard's silly little World of Warcraft announcements since they don't cause any panic and they're clearly just for fun.

First, the new bard class which happens to utilize a Guitar Hero interface. That one was fairly good, but I like their other announcement quite a bit more: World of Warcraft: The Molten Core for consoles. The trailer is what really sells it.

I don't know if this is a jab at consoles or what. I mean, Blizzard is not known for making graphically intense games, so I don't know why they couldn't port WoW over to consoles. (Not that I really want them to -- I tried a 10 day trial and was thoroughly unimpressed with the game. I have no idea why it is so popular.)

Now, how about working on and announcing Diablo III, Blizzard?

Paul Gilbert shreds on bass too

While playing Mr. Big's Addicted To That Rush on tour last year, Paul's guitar apparently malfunctions and he takes to playing the bass. All in all, it's a pretty cool clip aside from that. (Also, probably the best Paul has sounded in a while thanks to his new Marshalls.)

I'll still skip the pirate parts...

Courtesy of Boing Boing: Charles Shulz's Peanuts as Watchmen characters:

Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love Me Do

Courtesy of Boing Boing: Runnin' With the Beatles:


This is pretty interesting. Two of my favorite bands sloshing around to make something that's actually coherent... Strange, yet compelling.

I hate April Fool's Day

Check out IGN's April Fool's Day joke: Legend of Zelda The Movie. Even though it's a joke, it still gave me a terrible feeling. Please, quit making videogame movies. I'm not going to watch them, because they're all terrible. I'm also not going to watch them because they can taint blissful feelings of nostalgia.

But Hollywood won't listen and it's because the masses have terrible taste in movies -- I should know, I work for a video chain. I cringe each time some one comments that Super Hero Movie looks hilarious. (And they say that a lot -- I also hate it when they ask if we have Snow Buddies in, but that's an unrelated feeling of dread...)

I will, however, make an exception for videogame movies if they're all sweded:

Loot Withdrawal Syndrome

Lately, my friend and I have been replaying Diablo II. He's playing a Sorceress and I'm playing an Amazon for the 1000th time. It's all right, but it's wearing thin -- I've just done this all way too many times before. I want something fresh, but still want the core experience of Diablo. A new expansion pack is out of the question, so what's a boy to do?

After listening to a recent 1UP Yours podcast, I became interested in a game called Mythos. Was this the game that Flagship Studios had hoped to create in the first place with Hellgate: London? Now, I feign no real knowledge of Hellgate: London, but the general consensus seems to be kind of negative.

So I check out some videos on YouTube and I liked what I saw. Mythos certainly evokes Diablo while also borrowing some elements from WoW (the quest reward system and character generation in particular). Games like Titan Quest also fill this niche, but Mythos might just have that certain extra "something" that will make it special.

However, I did some more research and find out that the game is only in closed beta right now. Poo. The official website says that they hope to begin an open beta phase soon, but who knows how long ago the about page was last updated.

While reading up on it, I found out that one of the creators also made a Diablo-style game called Fate for Wild Tangent. I went ahead and downloaded it and was pleasantly surprised. While it doesn't have a ton of depth (Diablo can't really claim that it does either), it is a nice little diversion. I particularly like the canine companion.

So that's where I am right now. Just hoping to fill my free time until Grand Theft Auto IV is released on the 29th.