I guess everybody knows that BioShock is awesome by now. If not... Get on the fuckin' train man. I'm not really into shooters, but there's so much to love about BioShock that there's no way I could skip it. The funny thing is that for the longest time I just kept ignoring the hype around it, and a week before the thing launched I decided to give the demo a shot. It kind of goes without saying that the demo really sold me on it.
Most people just keep going on and on about how great the story is, but for me, it's all about the atmoshpere. Honestly, I love playing scary games, even if they're kinda bad in the gameplay department (except for Clock Tower 3, that was just awful), but BioShock is fun to play as well, especially given the fact that you can search like everything for items, and there are roughly seventy billion character upgrades of various sorts to collect. Incase you weren't aware, I love to collect things in video games. One of the other less-mentioned things I like is that the harder achievements are challenging but not frustratingly difficult to earn, as they would be in oh, let's say Crackdown. I really don't even know what else to say. It's a game you totally have to play. If I can't convince you, read this review. It should do the trick. Made me want to buy the game a second time.
Oh! And also make sure to grab the soundtrack as well. It's free!
I have uploaded a new article for your reading pleasure. Well, actually it's more about the pictures than the words, so it's classified under Pseudo-Articles. There's another one like that coming soon, so stay tuned, I guess. As for now, I've got a comic to draw and a BioShock to play, so I'm out.
(Also, incase anyone got the wrong impression, that last post ended in a joke.)
Last Friday, it was revealed (sort of) that Princess Peach would be returning for the next Super Smash Bros game. That was kind of obvious, but there is a more interesting topic here!
Just look at the detail on that dress! Sure, it's nothing compared to some of the visuals you might get on the 360, but it's still a step up from Peach's Melee model. A HUGE step up. But I know that the real question on everyone's minds lies beneath the fancy dress:
Will her panties be remodeled as nicely too?
Now, I know that in the spirit of choosing a band I like for each Band of the Month feature, I generally end up recommending the band at the end. I guess this time it's a bit different. I want to invest all my energies into recommending the Pink Spiders right now, before I type anything else. Seriously. Here's their MySpace page, go there and listen to "Easy Way Out" and tell me you didn't get up and start air guitaring like the world was going to end. But yeah. Now go out and buy Teenage Graffiti because it's like the single best album ever... released in 2006. It's amazing though.
The first time the Spiders and I came in contact was on a regular ol' day. It was like a week before (the now totally gay) Pandora started denying their service to Canadians. I was just listening to it in the background, and suddenly "Easy Way Out" came on and I practically jumped on the computer desk wailing on my air guitar and singing along even though I had no idea what the words were.
I may be exaggerating a bit, but that's of little importance.
The thing to note is that right then and there I knew I had to listen to more of The Pink Spiders, and wasn't I pleasantly surprised to find that they were good for more than one balls-to-the-wall rockout song. Their eponymous first album was easy enough to get my hands on, and I wasn't going to complain about it, because it's a pretty slick package. Plenty of great songs, mostly powerpop with some great rock 'n' roll influence, and most of them are good driving songs too. Their second album, Teenage Graffiti was a lot harder to secure, and when I did notice it, I was hesitant to pay the asking price because a third of the disc is recycled from the first album. Big mistake. All the retreads are cleaned up and rerecorded, and sound even better than ever. The fresh songs are completely kickass too. Most notable are "Adalae" which I want to describe as vaudevillian, even though I'm not sure if it's the right word to use, and "Hey Jane" which is right near the top of my list of greatest ballads ever.
But seriously. I cannot see how anyone couldn't like this band. The songs are just so damn catchy, and practically demand that you sing along. You've gotta be pretty closed off to not be able to enjoy what is pure ecstacy condensed into musical form. Again with the exaggerating, but I really want to sell this band, man! If even one presons starts listening to the Pink Spiders because I told them to, then the world will be a better place.
I was playing Crackdown into the wee hours of the morning last night, and it was probably the best thing I've done all week. Near the end, I decided to go to the marketplace to snag some additional game content, and then when I was done playing, I revisited because it was Wednesday and new things come in on Wednesday. Now I don't usually keep up with Marketplace updates, but this was a great day to check it out for two very important reasons.
The first thing I saw was new junk for Guitar Hero 2. Another new song pack fro the first game? NO! Better! Three completely new songs! Now THIS is why I shelled out the $90+ dollars for the 360 version of the game. And they're great songs too! ...Well, I like them. They're all songs from My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade. "Teenagers" and "Famous Last Words" are two of my favourite songs from the album, but they're second-set songs at best (read: eeeeasy). "This Is How I Disappear" on the other hand, is respectably difficult, and while I personally would have rather had "House of Wolves" it's still a fantastic track for Guitar Hero. In summation, if you hate MCR and love Guitar Hero, you're boned. Har har har. Good times for me.
Less in keeping with the good times, but still significant to me, we finally get a Beautiful Katamari demo. I've watched the trailer like... well, just the one time I guess, but I've still been itichin' to get my hand on summa dat Beautiful Katamoori. On the downside, it's a pretty short, bare-bones demo. Oh well, at least it's something to quell the itch to roll until November or whenever the game is supposed to come out. Or, you know, I could go back and actually finish the other three games, but the PS2 games are both just collection headaches now, and the PSP Katamari is annoying, so I don't think so.
Oh, and something about Metroid Prime 3... Uh... that Aurora video is cool, but I guess the entire rest of the internet came to the same conclusion like two days ago. Prime 3 is going to kick some serious ass though. And it's coming soon! Hooray!
Ryan is back! Oh, right. I went on vacation for the long weekend. I have many items and foods and other stuff to talk about! Maybe I'll sum them all up at once in... an article? Naw. I never write those things anymore. We'll see.
The best thing of all, is that this morning I woke up to a pulsing blue light. It was my Wii, and Nintendo was informing me of a firmware update. It didn't seem to do much, but by gum it's awesome!
Look! The Wii can now tell time!
I'm just curious why it didn't do this from the beginning. It seems kind of obvious. Anyway, even though I've got like three clocks in my room (I like to know the time), I've been pining for a clock on the Wii since I got the damn thing, so this makes me happy. Also, they redid the Wii Shop, and it's a little prettier and somewhat more functional now. There's still room for improvement *coughXboxLiveMarketplacecough* but I guess it's pretty good for what it is. No good Virtual Console games this week though, which is a bummer. But it's okay, I don't need any new VC games, as I'm still not even halfway through Paper Mario.
Okay, so Picross DS came out yesterday. Ummm, you can pretty much consider me dead now, because after this post, I think that's probably what I'm going to be doing until I die of Picross overdose.
But seriously, it's... decent. Playing against people online is a blast, and the fact that they're going to be offering downloadable puzzles each week (Free no less. Take a hint, Guitar Hero) is killer. As for the game itself? Well, frankly the touch screen is fun for a bit, but ends up being more annoying than anything, so it's good that they didn't remove the ability to play with the buttons. The fact that you have to tap an icon to switch between your chisel and X marker is a pain, and zooming is annoying as all fuck, so yeah, playing with buttons is the way to go. I really enjoy the board themes though, those make me happy. There's an apple theme, and instead of just poking squares, it's like you're exploding little square apples, and it even makes an appropriate noise. I also enjoy the grass theme. If I could carve a picross into my front yard, I would probably demand to mow the lawn.
So all in all, it's a great game, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes logic puzzle games. It's simple, but incredibly fun. The only real downside is that there's no time limit on the regular stages like I'm used to (I've played through Mario's Super Picross alone like 4 times), so you can't actually lose a puzzle. It's probably a plus for some people, but I like the thrill of working against the clock, as opposed to just trying to get the best time possible.
In other news: A Tales of Symphonia sequel? On Wii? You may remember that I think quite highly of Tales of Symphonia, so you can imagine that this might be very big news for me. In fact, it is. I'm crapping my pants in sheer excitement right now.