Eternals!!!

Unfortunately, superhero icons saturate our society. I can read the better comics and say, "that's a good line of dialogue," or "interesting plot twist," but that's about it and so I generally prefer the more complex graphic novels.

The problem is that I'll come across this lovely dilemma of a small group of mutants that has to keep the peace between their more violent associates and the fearful humans and, yeah, that's the X-men. So? I'll read about Spidey's crazy villains and, you know, that's Doc Ock. That's how he operates. I'm used to these things.

But The Eternals had a 20-odd issue run 40 years ago. Without any modern reissues, restarts or continuations. I've never seen an Eternals film or played an Eternals game or worn an Eternals Halloween costume. Most people our age know practically nothing about them. And finally I understand what it means to come into contact, for the first time, with ideas so far beyond what I experience in real life that it takes my breath away. I understand why, when people who got into comics as kids describe them, they always talk about that sense of wonder.

I know several people who are in love with the classic superhero comics. And if you can find X-men amazing despite the fact that you already know what everyone's powers are, The Eternals aren't really any better. But for those of you who feel a little cold after reading about Genosha because, hey, it's not like we were surprised- read Gaiman's 7-issue starting point, and hope Marvel gives it to an author worthy of the material.

Games for Wii and other things

I've been renting games recently. It's not something I've regularly done for quite some time. I usually knew which games I wanted and bought them outright. But new games are expensive, especially when I can nearly clear a game in a three-day rental. Also, we still don't have internet (or phone) at the cabin, a subject I'll get into in later.

So! Wii!

Zelda: Twilight Princess! I had my reservations about the Wiimote, but it turns out it doesn't feel totally tacked on most of the time! The wolf sections are a lot of fun and actually felt new and exciting, but everything else is standard Zelda fare. Beautiful game to look at, but for the most part, you've played this game before.

Elebits was awesome for the first 17 levels or so. After that, it gets boring fast. Each level builds and expands in scope in a very similar way to Katamari Damacy, but unlike the latter, Elebits doesn't really know when to call it a day.

Wiimote functionality was decently thought out, though some actions are a little tough to master, notably opening doors. Overall, solid, easy to grasp controls, should be familiar to anyone whose played a PC FPS before. The training levels are mostly unnecessary. Mostly. Multiplayer is a little strange, as only one player at a time controls the camera on a shared screen.

I liked Elebits, but I don't intend to buy it.

Excite Truck! Fun, intuitive controls, decent variety of vehicles, limited variety in tracks. Instead of winning races, the game is focused on earning points during a race, which come from getting crazy air on a jump, doing tricks, smashing other trucks, dodging trees, etc., giving the game a stunt focus. Mostly, it's one point here, 5 points there, then a bonus 50 for getting first or whatever. It gets pretty challenging on the unlockable higher difficulty, sometimes frustratingly so.

My only real gripe is the low number of tracks. Partly, this is because there are five or six map sets from which the tracks are built. Tracks from the same map set are fairly different, but sometimes it doesn't really feel like it. Even accounting for this, there still aren't really that many tracks. Tons of unlockable trucks, but I really only used three or four of them.

Which reminds me! The trucks do handle quite a bit differently, and certain tracks are definitely more suited to certain trucks. I kind of liked this.

Definitely worth buying, but I probably won't because I'm poor.

Cooking Mama! Tons of fun, but a steep learning curve (due mostly to really crappy explanations of what you're expected to do) keeps it from being the awesome party game it could've been. Once you've got the hang of most of the techniques, the game is full of face-paced fun, but expect to be frustrated and feel cheated on occasion. A couple of the mini-games feel really rough and unfinished which, coupled with decidedly finicky and unforgiving controls, really kills the fun on occasion.

Overall, good game, worth a rental, but the controls really hold it back. I can see this working extremely well on the DS, however!

PS2 game!

Just started playing Okami yesterday, which is like Zelda, but less frustrating and with decent pacing. Okami's wolf is totally more fun than Zelda:TP. I did get ridiculously stuck with a plot trigger that I couldn't figure out, making my lack of home interbutts all the more painful, but I have them now. My main issue with Zelda has always been the silly, frustrating, little things you have to do before you can go out and kick some ass, but Okami seems so far to try and streamline that a bit.

PSOne game!

Replaying Xenogears again. Man, that's some corny dialogue! Why do I love it so?

PC game!

Dungeon Crawl, aka Crawl! I've never enjoyed dying so often so much. Think nethack, but less intimidating, at least with the totally awesome graphic tile mod. I started off playing as a Minotaur Fighter, then Minotaur Chaos Knight in the service of Xom, one of the games many gods. Xom is hilarious. She's completely chaotic, so that sometimes she'll give you a giant hammer of destruction and sometimes she'll throw you into the abyss because it amuses her to see you suffer. I'm currently playing as a Troll Berserker. They're slow and dumb, but they can hit things really, really hard and eat anything. Also, regeneration rocks.

The game has a lot of "oh shit" moments. Here's two of my favorites: