DMC4

       Now usually I try to avoid anything that starts with the initials DM. This holds particularly true for the Dave Mathews Band and the Department of Motor Vehicles; however, for some reason I felt strangely compelled to try out the demo for Devil May Cry 4. I don't know what it was, perhaps boredom.
       Amazingly enough though, the game seems solid for a fourth tier hack'n'slash. The combat was fun and intuitive, and made you feel like the ultimate bad ass, which is quite a feat considering how limited in scope your abilities are in the 10 minutes of game play you are allowed. The guns are pretty lame though, they hardly do any damage and you some how float in the air if you fire them. But what struck me as being the most spectacular aspect of the game was the architecture. It's just beautifully stunning the environments you're occupying. 
       The level design is really the only thing that stuck out to me though. Maybe it's because I haven't played but 10 minutes of the other games too, but it seemed like everything had been done before except now Dante has gone missing and you're some guy named Nero who looks exactly like Dante minus the red coat. Pretty lame.
       Still, it seems like something I'll have to rent upon its release just so I can admire how beautifully rendered the environments are. 

dig yourself

Great, TNV got pitchforked.

Whatever, bring on the backlash. Record that good needs to be heard and if it takes a corrupt hipster hype machine online music publication to get it to the masses so be it. Probably the only record in the past two years that actually matters.

why pokemon sucks

       So long story short today has been utterly excruciating. After I stumbled my way to the BA on 2 hours of sleep around 7:30 and after I finished stitching together photos manually for two hours for the recruitment books I was blessed with the kind of transcendent headache that completely numbs your entire perception of the world. 
       Needless to say I probably couldn't tell you what we talked about in Human Sexual Behavior or Principles of Advertising; but what I can tell you is that Jessie and James are far and away the least dynamic characters of any television show.
       This realization came to me as I attempted to eat my Chicken Club Quesadilla from Moes with a fork and was greeted with an explosion of chips to the face. This is a seemingly insignificant occurrence on the surface but if you probe deeper into the extended metaphor of life, this frontal assault by fried corn is representative of everything Pokemon has ever been.
       In the late 90s it was virtually impossible to be a kid and not get immersed in Pokemon culture; to paraphrase Colin Meloy, when the Pokemon came the Pokemon came hard. It was a completely unexpected import that went from a bizarre thing Japanese exchange students were obsessed with to pop culture phenomenon in a matter of days it seemed. You closed your eyes and when they opened again there were gameboy games, trading card games, stuffed animals, shirts and most importantly a cartoon.
       I remember very vividly the first episode of season one of Pokemon. I remember meeting Ash Ketchum and Professor Oak and watching him first leave Pallet Town on his coming of age quest to become the very best (that no one ever was). The first season of the television show followed the story of Pokemon Red and Blue pretty closely with the strange twist that Misty and Brock inexplicably decided to abandon their posts at the Gym to run around with a pompous little spiky haird dweeb, and it was all fun and games. This however would not have made for a very interesting television show, so they had to include the element of danger with the aptly named Team Rocket characters of Jessie and James who seem to exist in a perpetual state of failure and possess not but the singular ambition of capturing poor Ash's Pikachu.
       The fact that in every episode Team Rocket fail to capture this Pikachu would be something you could overlook if it only went on for one season, but as it stands Team Rocket have failed to capture Pikachu 520 times (look it up on wikipedia if you don't believe me). What is it about this Pikachu that's so special that these two halfwits and their talking cat just can't take a hint and give up already?
       This is perhaps the most frustrating thing about the Pokemon universe. I've not watched every episode of this show (how could I and still be a legitimately interesting person?) but I have seen probably more episodes than any 20 year old should admit, and at the end of each episode I have to ask myself "How is this still on television?"
       Everything changes from season to season, in the real world, and in Pokemon. It seems that with each new iteration of the series we get more and more pokemon added, and we're in a different world, but all of the characters are still the same. Brock, Ash, Team Rocket, Nurse Joy and Officer Jenny-- they're all still there and they're all still exactly as I left them back in 7th grade.
       Which brings me to the point of this little observation, which is that animated series always seem to exist in this weird world where there is no passage of time. Characters never age, event's never change the face of their world, and for the most part what happens from day to day has little to no impact on the state of affairs in next weeks episode. However, at the start of day one of Pokemon there were only 151 known species of Pokemon, as it stands in the Diamond and Pearl universe there are now 493.
       The only explanation I can think of for why the decades it would take to discover 342 species of animals never happened is that the writers think we're all still in comas because of "Dennō Senshi Porygon."
       In closing I think you all should probably steer clear of the show unless you'd like to play the drinking game we made to it my freshman year.

PokeCrunk

       Mix a tall drink of your choosing and sit down to watch the 3:00 poke-hour that Cartoon Network shows every day. Every time a Pokemon you don't know the name of is shown on screen, drink. 
       It's pretty simple, but who knows? Maybe you'll actually get some value from the show after a round or two.

Halo 3

       There comes a time in everyone's life, and I mean that in the most cliché way possible, when you just have to break down and do "the popular thing." To preface this statement I should probably have intimated to you all that I'm a fan of going against the mold, so to speak. I've never really followed the mainstream trends in anything, and it's led to what I would consider a pretty swell life so far. But there are some hurdles that it's just impossible to jump over when you're trying to live the Ugly American Dream, and for me that hurdle was Halo 3.
       Halo 3 is by far the ultimate consumer, mainstream first person shooter. Nothing video game in recent years comes to mind as being more of a draw for the general population than this one, and I must admit that I too have felt the sting. So I caved. I actually went out and bought an XBox 360 so that I could play this game (and Viva Piñata). And how do I feel about this?
       Awesome.
       Halo 3 really is about the best console first person shooter I've ever played. Nothing will ever take the 'best ever' title away from Unreal Tournament (though I've yet to play UT3) and I'm fine with that, but I was pretty sure I would never let anything take the console glory away from Perfect Dark, but who am I kidding? The only enjoyable aspect of First Person Shooters is the multiplayer, and if you can show me a console game (don't give me this Call of Duty 4 bullshit, modern shooters are super lame) that has done multiplayer better than Halo 3, please enlighten me.
       I think the reason that Halo 3 resonates with me so well is that it really does foster a team dynamic, without being overly forceful about it, like for instance Counter Strike, while still allowing for a variety of play experiences. Don't get me wrong, the team dynamic of Team Fortress 2 is definitely stronger, but if you're playing a ranked double team match and your teammate is just running around underneath snowbound with an assault rifle, you and his diatribe is going to be rather colourful. 
       And while I applaud this universal, un-ending desire to win, and not just win but to dominate the other team, I can't help but feel like this is perhaps the one flaw with Halo 3. The reason I don't like Halo 3 is because of how many little kids I end up playing with, and how they generally respond to me as a player. It seems every game I am greeted by a very effeminate sounding boy saying something like "I'm gonna smoke your ass," and it really scares me. If little children are starting to think like that when playing Halo 3, then it's only a matter of time until they move onto Call of Duty 4, and once placed in that modern combat world they'll start to get that kind of attitude to the enemies portrayed in it: i.e. the middle east.
       And I really don't mean to get on a soapbox about this, 'cause fuck your politics and fuck my politics, no one has it all figured out. But if Halo 3 is breeding a generation of soldiers who want to invade Iran, then I'm going to have to reverse my position and call it the worst console game of all time, and I really don't want to do that.

enter the dragon

      Playing videogames has been something that I feel I've been doing all of my life. My mom was really into them, and I grew up playing Stampeed to death on her Atari 2600. This probably had a profound effect on me, as I eventually decided at the young ages of 5 that I wanted to be a cattle roper.
      What happened to that kid?
      Seriously though, the 'profound effect' that I was talking about probably came from the game Manhole that we had for our second computer. The game was essentially a point and click adventure game where you just ran around trying to not get burned by a dragon or drinken by a giant rabbit.
      So it was that moment, when I first hopped in that miniature boat and road down into a coffee cup and heard the hare cry out "Oh my, there's a tiny boat in my tea cup" that I knew I'd be with them to the end.
       And I pretty much have been. I was an avid Master System player in my elementary school days, and then evolved to a N64 for middle. PS2 for highschool, and in college I've switched to XBox. I've been with all the companies and I've experienced the greats that all have to offer; but the experiences that will stay with me the most were my first ones with Lucas Arts.
      After playing The Secret of Monkey Island I was sucked into the world of adventure games, and I've been there ever since. Some of the greatest games ever made came out in that golden era. Loom, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max; no videogame developer has ever come close to the story writing capabilities of that team.
      And through the years on every system I tend to be drawn to these adventure games. I remember getting sucked into Ico when I first got my PS2. I remember an unhealthy addiction to trying to beat Cosmic Space Head on the Master System. There were the countless times I played through Ocarina of Time on the N64.

      And I've completly run out of steam, this is probably the worst blog entry ever.