The registration for the Penny-Arcade Expo has gone up, and I’m in. Last year I had a great time, and I believe Ms. Kerry G is also in. I don’t know who else might want to come, but at least some of us are going to brave the madness.

I played the Darkness, and liked it.

Hm. Where do I go from here?

OK. It’s a FPS that has been occasionally loved and hated, and certainly mocked, and that’s all well and good, but I liked it and here’s why:

First, it had a pretty good story. Even though it took me two months of intermittent playing to get through, I could figure out and keep in mind what the overall plot was. Nothing revolutionary, but still solid. Coupled with this was some really good voice acting. They spent some money to get good people to take on the personalities in this game, and it pays off. I especially liked Mike Patton as the Darkness; his voice while clear, is blemished, rough and very disturbing.

Second; the gameplay was pretty solid. Controls were easy, doing things was kept fairly intuitive, and the number of powers that don’t do anything for you vs ones that do is pretty good (2 of 8). Plus, it’s fun eating the hearts of your enemies. Never got tired of it. I realize this may say more about me than anything else, but what the hell. I’m also the same guy who has yet to tire of picking pockets in the Sly Cooper series, so obviously I have a malevolent streak that should probably be medicated.

The game was pretty good about giving me scenes where I could just run in and blaze away (always fun) or had to step back a little and try and approach things more tactically. The enemies weren’t utterly stupid, and the amount of time I had to spend trying to figure out ‘what next’ was kept to a minimum. The visuals were good, especially when dealing with NPCs who would give you min-games, but more on the mini games in a minute.

One thing I didn’t like about the game was the interface: figuring out your health, or how much ammo you had at any given time wasn’t all that clear. There would be times when I found myself firing an empty gun b/c I didn’t know that the left pistol was running out of bullets. Gauging my health was a bit easier-the screen would go red-but, as a personal preference I like to know really explicitly what condition I’m in.

One real plus about The Darkness was the selection of mini-games and collectibles. These things never felt forced; rather they were ‘events’ you could choose to do or not do. If you did them, you’d get a scrap of paper to call a phone number on, and while that did occasionally get tedious, you could listen to a creepy/funny/both message on the phone, or just skip the cutscene entirely, expediting your progress. The bonuses were the kind of thing I expected (video clips on the making of, project art) and some I didn’t (entire comic books in digital form), but most importantly: they didn’t feel like random shit. They were well integrated into the world I was playing in, and even served to enhance it, from talking to old ladies who wanted to see if you could dodge trains, to other gangsters who wanted you to take care of a neighborhood problem for them.

I’m a bit torn on the ending. While it was visceral and fun, the developers took some of the action out of the hands of the player, and that’s pretty much always a no-no. When they did put me back in the action, I was given this storytelling moment that seemed to offer a choice I was hoping I could get out of it-and I couldn’t. This makes sense from a storytelling aspect, (you’re on a vengeance quest throughout the entire game) and makes for a reasonably satisfying ending (as well as the possibility for a glorious sequel) but I couldn’t help but think that it needed to be executed better.

Nonetheless; my overall opinion of the game is quite positive.

That’s a vast difference from my experience with Eternal Sonata. This game wants to be a ‘gamers first RPG’, and executes some of these things well; button mashing fight scenes that keep you going, a simple but interesting way to change your power ups (your powers change if you’re in light or shadow), a brightly colored world with very pretty things to look at, and at least at first, a fairly pedantic, if just a little strange storyline.

And then it all goes to shit. The button mashing becomes this frantic event that after hours and hours of playing gives me carpal tunnel. The level design is utterly fucked up; I couldn’t easily find my way, nor get back to something I had missed, because they don’t offer any maps. The fight scenes are set up in such a way that you can lose track of your characters in relationship to your enemies onscreen, and end up spending half your time not even hitting them, despite pushing on that X button like a 5 year old trying to get his last quarter back from that fucking Coke machine that stole it, and the storyline goes off the rails like the Exxon Valdez on crack.

Now that last criticism might just be a cultural thing. There are storytelling conventions that change culturally, and have a foreigner looking at them going, ‘huh’? But holy crap I was just floored with how little I understood and how poorly everything was resolved at the end. And because of this, I felt like I’d just wasted a whole lot of time with a mediocre game, wanting to see how it ended and ending up having it flip me off.

So no.

The following is a short list of useful tools, that just might help you be more productive while blogging, working, and playing. The best part is that all of these tools are free for the taking:

Programs:

• GIMP – If you don’t absolutely require Photoshop, this image editor is for you
• FastStone ImageViewer – Great for image file conversion
• UnFREEz – Create GIF animations

Web-Based Utilities:

• GuerrillaMail – Get an anonymous short-term email account
• TinyURL – Convert any convoluted URL into something “tiny”
• YouSendIt – Send any file (up to 100MB) over the Internet without using email

Palm Programs:

• Converter – Fantastic measurement converter
• ChemTable – Periodic Table handy for those chemistry questions
• CryptoPad – Encrypt any files on your Palm Pilot

For the complete list, please refer to my blog, @ the Library!

This was shown in schools in the 90s, but alas, I’m too old to have had the privilege.

·1· Blonde Redhead (23 and Misery is a Butterfly are in transit. I heart Amazon.com)

·2· Guitar Hero (Five Stars of Fun! – Just played this for the first time. tag=essential)

·3· Heatmiser / Mic City Sons (recently rediscovered – I was iffy on this when it came out in 1996 but played it on repeat most of the 2 weeks before Memorial Day)

·4· Wilco / Sky Blue Sky (New sounds from one of my all-time faves. I’ve started to fall for it.)

·5· DM (My goodest friend visited this last weekend, I’m very grateful to know him.)

·6· The National / Boxer (Whoa! I didn’t get into their Alligator LP  much, I need to listen to it again.) [Playing Portland 6/28 & Seattle 6/29; I might be there.]

476,000-195,000

That’s the massive sales advantage the Nintendo Wii enjoys over the PS3 right now.

Suck it, Sony.

When I was 13 and still a dedicated little Reaganite Cold Warrior, one of my favorite NES games was Ice Hockey… Not Blades of Steel (which had its own charms), but plain old Ice Hockey. Sure, better hockey video games would come along (like NHL 94), but Ice Hockey was the first game where you could kick Russkie ass on the NES… Plus, it was just plain fun go at it with your other pimply, squeaky-voiced friends… It was four on four, and the players were either skinny, fat, or reasonably toned. I always played as Canada back then and used four skinny dudes because they reminded me of my favorite player: Gretzky. My friend Greg’s favorite player was Mario Lemieux, who he thought was Swedish (thus he always played as Sweden)..
One of the funnest parts of the game was overtime… in which each team had to pull its goalie, and scores would get ridiculous really fast, like 30-28. Anyway, the game is out on the Wii’s virtual console, and if you played it back in the day it will smack you like slap shot to your dome, baby… Also, I think it’s pretty cool that two of the six teams in the game are from countries that no longer exist..

You guessed it: I’ve come down with a case of “Wii elbow” from playing Wii Sports a little too zealously. Boo freakin’ hoo, huh?

If I’ve got a sore shoulder, wrist and elbow, but at least I fake-bowled a 246, snagged a few power stars in Super Mario 64, won a race in Excite Truck and herded some goats on Zelda…

The Wii keeps track of how long you play each game, and the total amount of time you play each day. Anyone want to guess how long I was playing today?

I make no secret of my devotion to Indianapolis Colts Tight End, Dallas Clark. Rooster Teeth Productions, the makers of Red vs. Blue, have similar feelings for the man and made a kick ass take on the EA sports Madden 07 Dallas Clark commercial. It’s way better than the original, in my totally unbiased opinion.

What is even more freaky, however, is that in the Colts 45-21 win over the Eagles on Sunday, a similar fate befell the real Clark. Late in the second quarter, he was injured on a clean tackle by Sean Considine. The Colts are notoriously quiet about players’ injuries, but the early report is that he may return this season. 

Say what you will about the Madden curse and I know it only applies to those pictured on the cover of the game, but I wish EA wouldn’t use their freaky voodoo powers on Colts players.