From the Brow of Zeus

New Level Up RPG Podcast!

2009-07-05T14:10:00.001-07:00

Episode 07 - Bethesda Softworks

Good stuff. Me and Jake basically gab about how much sweeter Oblivion is than Fallout 3. Well, that's not how he puts it, exactly, but we agree that Oblivion's "hands off" approach to the main mission is preferable to Fallout 3's "find your Daddy" plot. It's Shenmue syndrome all over again.

But then again, I haven't even played Fallout 3 yet. First I have to beat Oblivion, then ride the train over to Bioware town and play Mass Effect.

Anyone notice how all the Xbox 360 RPGs are from major American companies? Bethesda, Bioware, Square Enix (okay, they're Japanese, but still HUGE), Microsoft. Until Final Fantasy VI, roleplaying games were never about having the best graphics. But these days, unless your hat is made of money, you can forget about making a next-gen RPG.

Free Ghostbusters Game Sound Effects

2009-06-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

To promote the new Ghostbusters game, they're giving away free Ghostbusters sound effects .wav files. There's a proton pack blast, a PKE meter, and two Marshmallow Man roars. Reminds me of 90s-era IRC, when everyone played their favorite/sound clips. I even had a Babylon 5 computer voice rigged up to my FTP program: "Transfer of data complete."

Oh man, I am such a nerd.

2009-06-26T12:31:00.000-07:00

There's a new Level Up - Video Game RPG Podcast online. This time it's about a subject dear to me: RPG Sidekicks. Yes, we cover all the delightful weirdos that have nothing better to do than find a brave young knight and his lady fair and then glom onto them for the rest of the game.

Episode 006: RPG Sidekicks
Warning: this is a we-hate-Yuffie zone. Yuffie fans, prepare your tear drop anime emoticons. ;_;

New Level Up RPG Podcast - MMORPGs Part 2: The Quickening

2009-06-13T12:51:00.001-07:00

Level Up - The Weekly Video Game RPG Podcast has been updated. We discuss our favorite MMORPG moments (Googleshng loses his pants, while I was lured into the woods by a creepy foreigner), recommend MMORPGs for beginners, and talk about the games we would, in no way, recommend for anyone other than ironic consumers and digital masochists. (Not that they aren't all in Second Life, anyway.) Plus, Silkenray totally spoils Forumwarz, and it's all good. All that and more more more, in! Episode 004 – MMORPGs Part 2.

The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull (or, There's No Such Thing As Bad Publicity)

2009-06-13T12:36:00.001-07:00

eMusic trials are fun. 50 mp3s, plus an audiobook? I'm there, dude.

The dirty trick is to hand pick singles or find albums with really low track counts. I love They Might Be Giants, but I'm not going to blow half my downloads on a single 23 song album.

So, there's this album called The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull. I previewed a track and immediately liked what I heard. Slow, heavy, southwestern rock, with no lyrics.

Let me put it this way: When you walk into a room, and everyone turns to see who's standing in the doorway, this is the kind of music you want playing.

Just out of curiosity, I checked out Amazon's reader reviews. Skimming down, the lowest review (3/5) I could find caught my eye:

"Sounds like a score to a post-apocalyptic western"

It just goes to show that however ambivalent or negative a review may be, it can still -- sometimes accidentally -- help people decide to buy the product. That "average" review sold me on it more than the five-star gushers. Any time I play this album for my friends, I'm introducing it as "post-apocolyptic western music."

Level Up - The Video Game RPG Podcast

2009-05-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

Hey, me and Googleshng started a video game RPG podcast when I wasn't even looking. In all the excitement, guess I forgot to mention it here.

Well, here I am, mentioning it:

Level Up - The Video Game RPG Podcast

Episode 001 is about the elements essential to RPGs. Any name for the topic is open to misinterpretation, from "Defining RPGs" (which could be taken as, yo dawg, we're DEFINING this shizzit) to "What is an RPG?" (which sounds like a question posted in alt.fan.final.fantasy around the launch of FF7), but we went with the latter.

And released just today, Episode 002 - PC vs. Console. It's not as controversial as some would like: There's no bareknuckle boxing, accusations of payola or insulting the other's ancestors. But I think, over all, we pretty much get it covered.

P.S. And yes, it is hard to get "Roleplaying game" and "Video game" in the title without sounding all redundant, but "Video Roleplaying Game" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Dane Cook & Louis CK: Preemptive Stand-up

2009-05-23T23:13:00.000-07:00

Dane Cook has been accused of ripping off jokes from fellow stand-up comedian Lewis CK (who you may remember from the Everything is Amazing, Nobody is Happy rant on Conan O'Brien).

Mr. Cook went so far as to tell my favorite Louis CK joke, the one about seeing a guy on a bike who's about to get into an accident and not having enough time to yell out a proper warning. (More details can be found in my upcoming docu-drama, The Cook, The Thief, His Jokes, Her Laughter.)

Well, I just caught Louis CK's latest act, and it's genius. The entire thing is about what a big pathetic out of shape slob he is. Every joke is about his wretched body, inability to pass up a cinnamon roll, weighing as much as two people, etc.

When I pointed out that he was coming up with jokes Dane Cook couldn't possibly steal, my brother's face lit up and he said, "It's like Dane Cook is playing the, 'I'm going to copy you' game, and Lewis CK is saying, 'I'm an idiot! I'm dumb!'"

Trent Reznor on GTA: "Help me, I'm old and confused."

2009-05-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

Poor Trent Reznor. Seems like just yesterday he was nailing monkeys to crucifixes. Now his cataracts are so thick he's resorting to things like Twitter and random Grand Theft Auto accusations.

Bands (including Nirvana) tripped over themselves editing out words, changing album art, etc to meet Wal-Mart's standards of decency - because Wal-Mart sells a lot of records. NIN refused, and you'll notice a pretty empty NIN section at any Wal-Mart. My reasoning was this: I can understand if you want the moral posturing of not having any "indecent" material for sale - but you could literally turn around 180 degrees from where the NIN record would be and purchase the film "Scarface" completely uncensored, or buy a copy of Grand Theft Auto where you can be rewarded for beating up prostitutes.

Yes, and if you play NIN backwards, you hear the devil.

Look, I'm not saying there's no monetary gain for beating up prostitutes in GTA, but just like in 1950s crime movies, no bad deed goes unpunished. If you get caught robbing a hooker of her hard earned GP, every cop in the area will be after you. It's not like some 360 achievement or PS3 trophy is unlocked.

In real life, if you beat up a prostitute, she might have some money on her. Is this a reward? God's way of telling you to kill prostitutes? Or is it just a fact of life, sort of like vengeful pimps and assault and robbery charges?

Crime in GTA has its risks and its rewards, and going around saying that GTA rewards you for beating up prostitutes is about as accurate as chanting, "Crime doesn't pay" or "Winners don't use drugs."

Scary stories and other things

2009-04-23T15:00:00.000-07:00

With Herculean effort, I put the finishing touches on a story that took way too long to edit. I feel like that guy at the end of "The Raft", who swam to shore, looked back at the lake monster and screamed, "I beat you! I beat you!"

Granted, that was right before the flesh eating blob jumped out of the water and swallowed him whole. But for a second there, he was pretty dang happy.

Right now I'm editing a short story I originally wrote back in 2003. It's about a man who wakes up to a world that is somehow horribly changed. His girlfriend looks the same, and children still play in the streets -- albeit not quite as nicely as before. But now there's nothing reassuring about their smiles, and everyone around him has gone inexplicably hollow.

It's a fun story, short and scary, just the way Rita Perlman likes 'em.

"This is so bad it's almost good. "
"This is so bad it's gone past good and back to bad again."
- Ghost World.

As a confessed ironic consumer, I buy things that no one in their right mind would actually want. Today I picked up something that will no doubt send your heart fluttering, provided you're a teenage girl from 1987.

Kirk Cameron: Dream Guy. Tagline? "The Real Story of America's #1 Heartthrob!"

The look of surprise, then horror, and finally sorrow on people's faces when I show them the book is totally worth it.

I'll be back later with KIRK'S VITAL STATISTICS and, if you're nice, KIRK TRIVIA. But if you want KIRK'S WORDS OF WISDOM, you'll have to buy the damn book yourself.

Okay, I quit.

2009-04-22T07:49:00.001-07:00

Not much happening in the Rue Morgue

2009-04-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

Rock, Paper Shotgun has a fun rant about locked doors in video games:

Locked door, I hate you.

I hate the way you are resistant to knives, to guns, to sledgehammers, to rocket-propelled grenades, to weapons that rewrite the very laws of physics, to dark unearthly magic, to punches that can knock a man’s head clean off.

...

I hate the way I’m expected to give up trying to open you when I see the words “this door has been locked from the other side” or “this door opens elsewhere”, as though they’re a command from God himself.
...
I hate the way you so often lead to nowhere, how you are nothing more than decoration for a wall.

Locked doors that are only for decoration always remind me of this one episode of Murder She Wrote. Angela Lansbury was hired as a consultant for a new virtual reality video game (it’s the 90s, yo!) and she chided the developers for lining a hallway with useless locked doors.

"People will always assume that locked doors lead to something special. You can’t just fill your world with locked doors and then not put anything behind them!"

Modern developers could learn a lot from Angela Lansbury.

Epic Fail: Top 10 Games to Play When You're Bored

2009-04-14T12:42:00.000-07:00

Gamer's Discord just ran an article called Top 10 Games to Play When You're Bored.

Boredom. It can strike even the most hardcore gamer. It happens to the best of us - sitting on the couch, staring at the consoles and gaming pc, pondering which game to play. Shooter? Racing? MMO? Strategy? Whatever the choice, it’s got to be a good one, promising hours of entertainment and replay value.

It's an awkward premise -- games to play when you're bored, as opposed to, you know, when you're actively involved in something. But I think I get what he's saying. Sure-bet games that might have flown under the radar, solid titles that don't spring instantly into the mind of the average gamer.

Maybe I'll find some undiscovered gem I haven't heard about, that's been keeping other gamers entertained for years now. Right?

...wrong.

Left 4 Dead
Halo 3
Empire: Total War
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Killzone 2
World of Warcraft
Gears of War 2
Fallout 3
Warhawk
Burnout Paradise

Woah, really? World of Warcraft? I haven't heard of that one. Halo 3? What's that? Hey, Killzone 2, is that a game to play when I am bored?

Yes, they all have good replay value, but they're also completely mainstream. These are the games people are already playing. Where are the puzzle games? Like classic arcade titles, puzzle games are perfect for drop-in-and-out gameplay. They pass the time without getting you involved in a winding narrative. There's rarely a save system, so you don't worry about "making progress." Like a mugger dressed like a clown who just won the lotto, they're fun and they demand nothing from you.

Why isn't Tetris on the list? Tetris is cool. Show me a gamer who doesn't like the occasional game of Tetris and I'll show you a dirty android who just failed the Voigt-Kampff test.

It seems like he just took a list of the the best selling games or most popular games right now and ran with it. The only remote surprise is Warhawk, a PS3 release game that slipped under the radar due to janky Six-Axis controls.

He might as well have called this article, "Top 10 Games."

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 looks washed out

2009-04-11T19:08:00.000-07:00

I'm really bothered by the washed out colors in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2. The first game had characters as bright and vibrant as their comic counterparts, but the sequel's faded art design is downright ugly.

If you want to make a game look serious, simply washing out the colors isn't going to do the job. It's just as hard to take a six foot muscle bound "hero" dressed head to toe in ass-hugging red spandex seriously regardless of whether he's vibrant Daredevil or washed out Daredevil.

The faded costumes come off as self-conscious and rather desperate. Especially when you take a look at the latest Daredevil comic, which manages to dress Daredevil in blood-red attire AND look like it was written for mature audiences.

Plus, there's bound to be serious issues with the gameplay. Like Dungeon & Dragon: Heroes taught us, when you make your characters the same colors as the background (in D&D's case, brown), it starts to look like a game starring brightly colored Froot Loops.

Colored rings highlighting player characters may be handy for multiplayer games, but when all you can see is the rings, because the characters themselves blend in with the washed out techno-hallways they're fighting in, there's a serious problem with the art design.

Now back to your regularly scheduled grumbling

2009-04-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

After a couple of weeks dealing with the various problems you have to deal with when unexpectedly changing web hosts, things are finally back to normal.

We've now got daily lookalikes going on at VideogameLookalikes.com, so be there or be Square-Enix.

Will critics ever accept video game spoofs?

2009-03-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard is the latest video game spoof to be critically panned for including very types of cliches that it parodies. Or as Gamespy put it, Eat Lead "points out some of the worst parts of gaming by example."

But if Bart Simpson whines about jumping puzzles during a jumping puzzle is that an automatic failure?

Ironic imitation is central to parodies. Without it, you'd only be left with word-play, slap-stick, and other hyphenated forms of humor. And yet time and time again, titles which spoof cliche game mechanics are hit with the same complaint:

The Simpsons (360/PS3) review by Game Informer:
"The biggest problem is illustrated through one of the game’s funniest features: the cliché. As you jump and punch your way through each mission, you will encounter hackneyed video game traditions like giant saw blades and pressure pads. Then the Comic Book Guy pops up and calls attention to the blatant unoriginality of these devices (“Ah, the crate. As seen in everything.”). While this almost always gets a laugh, pointing out clichés doesn’t make them any more fun to play." [Link]

My World My Way (DS) review by Game Informer:
"Tongue-in-cheek attempts to lampoon the RPG genre are littered about, but they fizzle out in the face of the game’s design; just because a game pokes fun at its own generic quests and characters doesn’t change the fact that players have to deal with them. A chuckle here and there doesn’t make up for hours of tedium." [Link]

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard comments by Robert Ashley on the Gamers With Jobs podcast:
"...they take you into a tutorial, and the guy makes all these snide comments like, 'oh god, another tutorial.' It's like, yeah, but you're doing a tutorial. Making all kinds of snarkey remarks about your own game is kind of ridiculous." [Link]

When Spaceballs mocked Star Wars' scrolling yellow title sequence, they kind of had to have one of their own. It was exaggerated, sure, but it's there. The whole first scene is a classic example of comedic excess. They ridiculed Star Wars' long, quasi-pornographic shots of ships flying through space by giving you the longest, most exaggerated flyby in sci-fi history. And it worked, not because they were making fun of something their movie didn't have, but because they were making fun of something they had in excess.

How is this any different than Bart Simpson cracking wise about his own extended jump sequences? Hey, if the joke flops, it flops. Say you didn't find it funny. But poking fun at cliches by including them is a staple of parodies.

Here's another example: This clip from UHF, with Weird Al Yankovic spoofing Rambo.

Weird Al spoofed Sylvester Stalone's one-man army by exaggerating Rambo's every ridiculous aspect. Another option would have been for Rambo to settle his differences peacefully, challenging the enemy to a quiet game of chess. That'd have worked too, but instead Yankovic had Rambo blowing up a bajillion bad guys -- imitating, including, pointing out how ridiculous Rambo gets by example.

Now, I don't think high challenge and comedy go hand in hand. If you're going to throw a lot of jumping puzzles or endless waves of enemies at the player in the spirit of parody, don't make things too hard, or they'll be too busy chucking the controller in frustration to laugh about it. Keep things breezy, keep it fun. Imitate, but never frustrate.

Gaming has yet to have its own Princess Bride or Shaun of the Dead, satires that transcend the genre they're poking fun at. Give it time; the medium is young. But in the meantime, don't cripple the genre by panning hilarious games for daring to parody cliche gameplay.

One of my favorite takes on video game spoofs comes from Gamespy's review of Eat Lead:

"The purpose of parody is to comment on a topic, by means of humorous or satiric imitation, and Eat Lead manages to pull this off admirably. I enjoyed playing this game, not because it was a very good shooter, but because it made me think (and laugh) about the other games I play. " [Link]

No one is going to mistake Airplane! for a fine disaster movie, or Spaceballs for a science fiction classic, but they sure were funny. Gamespy makes no excuses for Matt Hazard's cliched gameplay but concedes that, yeah, maybe the cliches were there for a reason.

Free Magic: The Gathering Deck

2009-03-18T22:53:00.000-07:00

That get your attention?

Click here to claim your free M:TG cards! While supplies last! Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery! Offer not available in Phyrexia.

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard

2009-03-07T14:00:00.000-08:00

Matt Hazard is back! The 80s video game hero has returned from retirement in the aptly named Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard. This third-person shooter, voiced by Arrested Development's Will Arnett and Neil Patrick Harris, just might be the best Matt Hazard game yet.

What's that? You've never heard of Matt Hazard? Well there's a good reason for that: Hazard's entire twenty year history is a hoax.

Vicious Cycle Software did a great job photoshopping everything from NES side-scrollers to the Wolfenstein-esque Matt Hazard 3D and Haz-Mat Carts, a super-deformed kiddy racing game.

There's just one problem: They totally botched the character design.

Hazard is supposed to be an action/adventure anachronism; a relic from the era of pixels and powerups. So why the hell does he look like every other buff bald space marine in body armor out there?

I could paste Matt Hazard on the Gears of War 2 box and no one would notice. You couldn't do that with Duke Nukem. If you did, people would think Duke Nukem Forever was finally coming out and then a mob of 30 year olds would scream for your blood.

"Have you ever wondered what it's like to be a real life video game hero from the 1980s?"

- Eat Lead trailer.

Let's examine everything wrong with ol' ~~Jet Brody~~ ~~John Sheppard~~ Matt Hazard's character design:

Sci-Fi Football Flak Jacket: Body armor? Please. In the 80s, people had a total disregard for personal safety. Rambo took on the entire Vietnamese army and the only thing covering his chest was a high caliber bullet bandolier. That's right, his only protection from bullets was more bullets. If he had taken a direct hit to the chest, he would have exploded.
Bald head: No self-respecting 80s action hero was bald. Even Bruce Willis had hair back then. I dare you to name a bald star of an 80s action game other than Karnov. They either had mullets or jungle hair. End of story.
Matt Hazard has absoloutely nothing in common with an 80s video game hero: Look, do I really have to list every conceptually flawed detail? In the 80s, action-movie-style game characters fell into one of two categories: Blue Jeans Brawlers and Jungle Rambo Warriors. Blue Jeans Brawlers favored white wife-beaters, dark shades and inexplicable forms of American kung-fu. Jungle Rambo Warriors preferred headbands and chainguns.

Left: A Blue Jeans Brawler. Center: Jungle Rambo Warriors. Right: A rare cross-breed of the two from the early 90s.

So why make Matt Hazard look so contemporary when he's supposed to be a classic?

I could understand if this bland baldy was the ass-end of some heartwarming character arc. Early Hancock trailers only showed Will Smith as a bum, even though he cleans up his act later in the movie, because that's what set it apart. They could have done the same with Matt Hazard: start him out looking like he stepped off the claymation cover of an early Nintendo Power, then show him adapt to today's market by shaving his head and bulking up on body armor. That might have worked. But according to the Eat Lead mythos, Matt Hazard is, was, and always will be a bald headed body armored space marine. They even faked the pictures to prove it.

Maybe by designing a character so utterly modern and lacking appeal -- I'm looking at you, Jet Brody -- they were trying to suggest Matt Hazard was the template on which all football-shoulders-space-marines are based upon, crediting him with single-handedly kicking off the Bald Person Shooter (BPS) genre back in the 80s.

Or maybe I'm giving them too much credit.

Comedy games are always a tough sell; they rarely score over a six or a seven even from the most generous of publications. Their only hope for success is to appeal to people with a sense of humor, who can forgive technical flaws as long as the jokes are good enough. So why market Eat Lead to die-hard Gears of War junkies, the kind of guys who become enraged when their favorite FPS scores a 9.4 rather than the 9.5? Matt Hazard's appearance alienates fans of quirky comedy games by trying to appeal to the sort of review-aggregating, Mountain Dew Game Fuel chugging, over achieving gamers who wouldn't play anything that scores less than a 7, let alone buy it.

But I'm not ready to give up on this game just yet. Look past the obvious flaws and Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard actually looks like a pretty neat game. Neil Patrick "Doogie" Harris M.D. and Arrested Development's Will Arnett are naturals, and one gag in particular caught my eye:

One of the bosses you face is Altos Tratus, a white-haired Japanese RPG character from the Penultimate Illusion series. He's turn-based (even though you move in real time) and communicates via blue text box, which Matt Hazard has to press to advance. When Altos Tratus casts a heal spell, you can snipe the floating green hearts before they touch him and restore his health. You can even keep an eye on Altos' on-screen MP meter to figure out when his next attack will come and which it will be. They took a funny gag and made a memorable boss battle out of it. Pretty damn good.

Eat Lead may have its flaws -- some of which I've just listed in meticulous detail -- but if the rest of the game is half that clever, I'll pick it up when it hits the bargain bins.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4: The Next Generation - Movies So Bad They HAD To Reboot the Series

2009-02-24T11:45:00.000-08:00

Renée Zellweger? Matthew McConaughey? If Hostel is considered torture porn, then Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation is torture romantic comedy.

Oddly enough, the limp-wristed Leatherface was not carried over in the reboot.

Click here to read Texas Chainsaw Massacre 4: The Next Generation.

Die Another Day: Movies So Bad They HAD to Reboot the Series

2009-02-17T18:40:00.000-08:00

Here's the first of a new line of articles I'm writing over at Bucket Bros called Movies So Bad They HAD to Reboot the Series: Die Another Day.

I'd quote a line from the article, but a picture says a thousand words. Let's just say I'm really, really mean to Halle Berry and leave it at that.

Download Free Video Game Soundtracks Legally

2009-02-06T09:49:00.000-08:00

Video game soundtracks used to exist only in the anime-postered realms those obsessed or wealthy enough to import them from Japan. Now they're being given away for free. Below is a list of video game soundtracks you can download legally, without Johnny Law busting down your door.

Note: This is very much a work in process, so come back for more and leave comments if you see I've missed anything.

Warcraft 3 | Added 2009-05-19 (New!)
Blizzard released sixteen MP3s from the Warcraft 3 Soundtrack.

Stargunner Soundtrack | Added 2009-05-19 (New!)
"Originally when released, the Stargunner CD had CD audio on it which could be played in a regular CD player, or the game could read said audio tracks in the game. We are releasing the music in mp3 format for you to enjoy."

Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay Soundtrack | Added 2009-05-19 (New!)
To promote the Vin Diesel vehicle, Vivendi Universal Games released the Escape From Butcher Bay soundtrack on their website.

Warhammer: Dawn of War 2 Soundtrack | Added 2009-05-19 (New!)
The sounds... of war!

Children of the Nile Soundtrack | Added 2009-05-19 (New!)
Here's something different: An Egyptian-themed soundtrack from Tilted Mill Entertainment, makers of Hinterland.

Men of Valor (New!)
"Inon Zur conducted and recorded his score for Men Of Valor with Hollywood A-List musicians on the Eastwood Scoring Stage at Warner Bros. Studios, the world famous scoring stage named after Clint Eastwood."

Quest Studio's Sierra Adventure Games! | Added 2009-02-24
King's Quest. Space Quest. Quest for Glory. This site is a gold mine, a veritable national treasure of great game music. Fifty odd soundtracks are available as both midi and enhanced arrangements saved as .OGG or .MP3 files. And if you're the lazy type like me, they have downloadable soundtrack CD's with album art. Long live Quest Studios!

Dungeons & Dragons Online | Added 2009-02-17

Know what inspired this article? A search for background music suitable for a role-play game. (Not that I actually have a pen & paper RPG I need music for, I just have... issues.) So it's only fitting that today I'm adding 21 free 'n legal tracks for Dungeons & Dragons Online. Those expecting the usual fantasy tripe need look no further than track 21, "Behold the Beholder," a boldly named song which sounds as if it was performed by Maynard G. Krebs (look it up).

Rare Soundtracks (ha-ha-ha!) | Added 2009-02-16
In addition to single-handedly keeping Nintendo alive through the mid-to-late 90s, Rare has released some awesome game soundtracks on their site. Everything from Kameo: Elements Of Power, Viva Piñata to classics like Jet Force Gemini and Conker's Bad Fur Day. You can even listen to everyone's favorite game, Grabbed By The Ghoulies.

Metal Arms: Glitch in the System | Added 2009-02-14
A rock-solid Ratchet and Clank type game with a likable main character wielding an arsenal of insano weapons and a multiplayer deathmatch that came close to rivaling Goldeneye 007. Too bad the name "Metal Arms" was so damn generic, people probably though it was a Metal Gear/Wild Arms spinoff, and so much of the game taking place in dark, dingy mines probably didn't help. Still, they were nice enough to release the soundtrack, which is filled with techno tunage.

The Longest Journey - The Complete Soundtrack
This was tied with Grim Fandango as the "last real adventure game." There are 32 tracks by composer Bjørn Arve Lagim and 4 by Tor Linløkken. (Two composers with names containing my favorite monophthongal close-mid front rounded vowel!) The music tends to be a wintery, isolated and slightly spooky movie score, but there's some variety thrown in there for good measure.

OC ReMix: Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Official Soundtrack
A group of video game music remixers actually worked with Capcom on this official soundtrack. The download is provided in both high quality MP3 and lossless FLAC.

Bully (eMusic account required)
I don't know much about it, because I let my eMusic trial expire after shrewdly downloading numerically favorable four-track fifty-minute New Age albums, but if it's anything like the game, it's probably great.

Auto Assault
Failed post-apocalyptic vehicular combat MMORPG. The game is gone, the soundtrack lives on.

World of Goo Soundtrack
Some tracks sound like Tim Burton is sneaking through your living room while Danny Elfman sprinkles skull-shaped candies on the carpet, others like a seedy, possibly haunted greasy spoon cafe, and then there's the Worms-esque silly marches. Very cool background noise. I'm going to play this when writing whimsy.

Time Crisis 4 tracks
And I quote: "This is the official collection fo songs from the soundtrack of Time Crisis 4 composed by Takeshi Miura for the arcade game. "

Bone Episode 1 & 2 Soundtracks
Telltale is sort of like Quintein Tarrintino, only instead of bringing back classic 70s exploitation flicks, they're single-handedly reviving the point-and-click adventure. Look, forget Tarrintino, just enjoy these thirteen tracks from Episode 1: Out From Boneville and ten from Episode 2: The Great Cow Race, along with notes from the composer. A Bone fan from their forums even made up a couple of printable CD sleeves!

Universe at War OST
Happy Holidays! Frank Klepacki was nice enough to release this three disc monster just in time for Christmas. I've never played Universe At War, but the title sounds pretty epic. And the soundtrack's pretty epic too, weighing in at approximately 42,000 tracks of pure techno warzone awesome.

The Spirit Engine Original Soundtrack
A freeware RPG with a freeware soundtrack! Who'da thunkit?

The Spirit Engine 2 - Selections
Full soundtrack's $16, but this album of "selections" is free. Consider it shareware soundtrack.

TimeSplitters 1-3 & Second Sight Original Soundtracks
Update: Good news! Free Radical's website is still online. That means you can grab the full soundtrack to TimeSplitters 2, Second Sight and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, complete with printable CD insert artwork (in both US and European versions)! Now that's classy as San Diego. Completionists might want to check out the slightly less than legal fan-made TimeSplitters MusicBox and TimeSplitters Game Music for a few missing tracks. (Or better yet, check out composer Graeme Norgate's page for bonus Blast Corps and Goldeneye 007 MP3s.)

Beyond Good & Evil - Official Soundtrack
Seriously? Beyond Good & Evil has a free soundtrack and no one ever told me about it? That's what I said, and that's probably what you're saying right now. So, we have that much in common. You doing anything later?

Linger in Darkness
If you want your kid to grow up to be a successful composer, bet name him Wojciech. Dracula's killer soundtrack was by Wojciech Kilar, and now a new Wojciech, Wojciech Golczewski, is taking the world by storm with his Linger in Darkness soundtrack. No, not literally. That'd be crazy. He'd require a storm-making machine or something, and a reall big one. Thank goodness he's happy with figurative storms, or we'd all be doomed. Linger in Darkness's soundtrack is sort of like an instrumental from NIN's The Fragile mixed with violiny action music. A bonus track from Plastic's "Into the Pink" soundtrack makes this 30MB download worth it.

Note: Before finishing this article, I did one last search and found out IGN had the exact same idea just one month ago. Luckily, there's very little overlap, so head over there and check them out for more guilt-free soundtracks.

Mount & Blade 75% off -- $7.50! -- on Steam

2009-01-24T13:35:00.000-08:00

Steam has a 75% weekend discount on Mount & Blade.

Mount & Blade was my Game of the Year for 2008. Here's what I had to say about it on Out of Eight:

There's a scene in Ghostbusters where Peter Venkman says, "I guess they just don't make them like they used to." "No!" Ray snaps. "Nobody ever made them like this!" That quote kept playing through my head as I clocked in hour after hour of Mount&Blade. As much as it has in common with classics like Darklands, Elite and Sid Meier's Pirates! (don't blame me for the exclamation mark, blame Sid), Mount&Blade is very much its own thing. The scope of this game is amazing. It hearkens back to games of the yesteryear, when, free of things like hundred man high-rez art teams and Hollywood screenwriters, RPGs were as vast and limitless as modern titles are minutely detailed.

And riding into battle on a horse and bashing in a few hundred heads is pretty fun, too.

The full review can be found here. Or, if you don't need convincing, make like a Steampunk and pick up an amazing game for under $10.

Videogame Lookalikes, Bob Villa & Titular Movie Theme Songs

2009-01-18T19:09:00.001-08:00

I updated Videogame Lookalikes, a once-in-a-blue-moon scenario so sporadic I figured it was worth a mention just to give you groovy RSS-addicts a heads up.

Enjoy Bob Villa, in all his bearded glory.

Ever notice how home improvement shows used to be, you know, about improving your home? Now all HGTV plays are desperate "flip your house" series. People only fix up a house if they're going to sell it. Used to be you could tune in to PBS and learn how to build a pine chair that'd last twenty years. Now it's about salvaging some junk couch from a hospice shop in order to trick people into thinking you have a nice living room long enough to flee with their money before they think to check inside the walls for hobo corpses.

Now the good news: I've decided Titular Movie Theme Songs may well be my sleeper hit. It's certainly the project that pops up most often in my head. MST3K is pretty well covered, but as far as I know, I'm the only one out there doing Titular Movie Theme Songs ("The title is in the lyrics!")

Yeah, the name may suck, so I figure I'll shorten it a little: TitMo TheOngs.

Or as Xerox suggested, drop the "O": TitMo ThOngs.

Yeah.

Rest in Peace, EGM

2009-01-08T21:55:00.000-08:00

As you may have heard by now, Electronic Gaming Monthly has been canceled, and 1Up was bought by UGO. The January 2009 issue with Wolverine on the cover will be EGM's last. Even though I saw it coming, I'm still in a semi-state of shock. Pretty soon I'll snap out of it and write up a little retrospective, plucking favorite issues from my ever growing magazine vault. But for now I just want to say how much I'm going to miss the magazine.

Fast Dial: Beware Firefox Add-on Updates

2009-01-06T14:02:00.000-08:00

If you're a Firefox user, you're used to seeing Add-on update notices when you load your fine, foxy browser. Keeping add-ons up to date has grown considerably easier over the years, simplified to a single helpful tool tip in the lower right hand corner, gently asking if you'd like to update while massaging your scalp and feet.

The process is completely painless, unless of course something goes wrong, horribly wrong, in which case the process is more akin to a Kathe Koja Cypher process, an ordeal which leaves you with nothing more than a puss-encrusted black hole in your palm and a deteriorating mind which is slowly and inexorably drawn to the darkest abyss.

Or, even worse, totally screws up your Firefox settings.

Fast Dial 2.15 is one such update.

Inspired by Opera's Speed Dial start page -- and by that I mean it totally rips off one of the last few features the Moz development team hasn't quite gotten around to ripping off yet -- Fast Dial offers a highly configurable grid of thumbnails that point to your favorite sites. It's a great "I'm Bored, What Now?" way to web browse, and damn sexy too.

I had mine all tricked out with custom screenshots of various updates that, for one reason or another, made me happy. Rock, Paper, Shotgun's front page article on a possible sequel to Syndicate, etc. The new update did away with all that, but what it takes with one hand, it gives with the other, shoving unwanted "features" down my throat.

The whole point of a Speed Dial start page is that it's highly personal, giving the user quick access to their favorite sites. So of course, they pushed down half of my favorites and replaced them with links to strange websites I'd never heard of. They also added a new search engine

Spyware? Nagware? Adware? Yeah, more like be-ware. This was done without warning.

Even worse, they added a half-dozen strange toolbars to the top of the browser, stealing away viewing space and replacing it with weird features that Web Developer can do better while wasting far less space. (I already had Web Developer installed, so I'm not sure whether the bars were created by the new Fast Dial, or just that it messed with Web Developer's settings and caused it to spawn ten new toolbars.)

The problem is there's no way to undo an update. You can't "roll back" to an earlier version when something goes terribly wrong. You can uninstall (but it won't be a clean uninstall, all the settings left intact) and reinstall, but you can't get back your settings prior to the pan-galactic gargle baster update.

So, there we have it, a longwinded and useless rant, courtesy of Blogger. The add-on's page is now flooded with angry one-star reviews, akin to Spore's DRM debacle.

It wouldn't have bothered me except my start page was basically an Xbox achievements page of cool updates for my favorite sites. I can redo all the colors and links, but the Pokemon Snap screenshots of memorable updates from my favorite sites are history.

I've since switched to Speed Dial, an even less imaginatively named Firefox add-on that also rips off Opera's Speed Dial feature. I hate the widecreen thumbnails and not being able to give it an orange-on-black theme like Fast Dial, but at least it doesn't take a huge sputtering crap all over my browser, forget to flush and call it an "update".

John Leguizamo is the Best Part of Any Movie

2008-12-18T14:11:00.000-08:00

The other day I was watching Arabian Nights and it hit me: John Leguizamo is pretty much the best part of any movie he's ever been involved in.

Leguizamo got his break in Super Mario Bros. (1993), a film that left me disappointed at age 12, but has aged remarkably well. Leguizamo did a fine job playing Luigi Mario. He was fresh and cocky and did much to soften harsh reality that Mario Mario, a fat middle-aged Italian, was not very impressive in the flesh. As kids, we watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit for the rabbit, not Bob Hoskins. Here, John Leguizamo was the rabbit.

Romeo + Juliet? That just don't add up. You had prettyboy Leonardo DiCaprio, uglygirl Claire Danes, a lot of crappy editing, and Mercutio, played by Link from the Matrix sequels, wearing a goatee and red lipstick. Take it from Limahl, facial hair and lipstick doesn't match. The only reason to watch this film is to see the sneering Leguizamo bust out a custom .45 and (spoiler alert) jab Mercutio in the side with a shard of broken glass. Even then, you can probably just find it on YouTube.

In the shameless The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert ripoff To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995), John Leguizamo is the only one of the three drag queens who could maybe pass as a woman. Sorry, Patrick Swayze (Vida Boheme) and Wesley Snipes (Noxeema Jackson?), but when Eddie Murphy hankers for a tranny, he's definitely going to pass you guys up for John "Legs" Leguizamo.

M. Night Shyamalan's disaster pic The Happening (2008) cast John Leguizamo as Julian, Mark Wahlberg's geeky co-worker. This $60 million dollar budget self-professed "B-Movie" had some major problems in the acting department. Wahlberg did his best wooden Jeff Goldblum impression and tried to convence someone -- anyone -- that he was smart enough to graduate high school, let alone teach. Zooey Deschanel stared at the camera in what could only have been either a wide-eyed, drug-induced stupor or a state of shock brought on by reading the script. But Leguizamo acted like a perfectly Average Joe worried that he'd lose his daughter to killer wind, or trees, or a lack of love and human understanding, or whatever the hell Shyamalan was trying to scare us with in that one. (When I first heard his next picture was going to be about killer trees, I imagined an army of rampaging Ents. Talk about a missed opportunity!)

Prior to SMB, Leguizamo played such parts as Boy in Alley Out for Justice (1991) and Guess My Nationality Guy in Puerto Rican Mambo (Not a Musical) (1992). I'm not sure if either of those movies actually exist, but you can bet John Leguizamo was the best part about them if they do.

He was almost unrecognizable in Spawn (1997), playing Violator, a sadistic little clown who looked more like Danny DiVito than a lanky Colombian. And of course there's Arabian Nights, the Hallmark miniseries in which he stole the show as both the Genie of the Lamp and the Genie of the Ring.

The list goes on.

John Leguizamo's scene-stealing past may come as a surprise to you. I admit, until my Arabian Nights revelation, I didn't consciously like Leguizamo very much, outside of his bi-polar starring role in The Pest (1997). But now, I'm a John Leguizamo fan, man. Even if you aren't convinced that Leguizamo is the best part of any movie he's been in, I dare you to find a movie in which his presence proved detrimental.

Ironically, the only thing he's done which I didn't like was his creepy stand up comedy. I suppose in a weird way it makes sense: Stand up comedy would be like kryptonite to a guy like John Leguizamo. How can he possibly steal the show when he's the only one on stage?