This is a blog for Thumbmonkey's staff members to write about gaming, music, movies, the internet, what we've been up to lately, and whatever the heck else we want. Enjoy!
Tim Schafer is a genius. With point-and-click adventure classics like Grim Fandango and the Monkey Island games, as well as the much ignored 2005 action adventure Psychonauts, no man has been better known for funny, fun, addictive, and charming video games. It’s not often the games industry has a single man behind a game like so many films have directors, but Schafer is in a small group of people alongside Will Wright, Hideo Kojima, and Shigeru Miyamoto who are sole visionaries for gaming classics. His new game, Brutal Legend, is out soon, but the demo is available for Xbox Live Gold members until October 5th. And you need to download it.
Brutal Legend is a game all about heavy metal culture. If you were ever into heavy metal bands, especially in the 80s, this game is a tribute to it all. With environments ripped from Iron Maiden covers to characters voices by metal legends such as Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy, this game is not just a love letter to heavy metal culture, it’s a part of it. The game stars Jack Black as Eddie Riggs, a roadie for a terrible nu-metal band, as he gets thrust into an alternate dimension full of characters, enemies, bosses, and environments all inspired heavily by this culture.
The game stars Jack Black, someone who I can’t stand. Even as a performer on Mr. Show, one of the greatest sketch comedy shows of all time, he managed to annoy me to no end. On top of that I am someone who is strongly against the use of actors as voice actors in games and animation. And yet, somehow, Jack Black manages to do a fantastic job in this game. He’s quiet, down to Earth, friendly, and funny in this game. He’s not the loud and obnoxious Jack Black people are normally used to seeing. The writing, as well, is absolutely fantastic if the demo is any indication, with great jokes and dialog. Writing is very important to me in all mediums, and this game does a fantastic job.
I actually don't want to punch him.
The gameplay, of course, is what will make or break this experience, and it’s definitely there. While it’s not awesome or bringing anything new to the table, what’s there works great. Traditional hack ‘n’ slash gameplay domintaes a majority of the playtime, going back and forth between an axe and an axe. One of those axes is a guitar; the other, an axe. The actual axe slashes bad guys, whereas the guitar uses the power of rock to electrocute enemies. Doing the two together creates an earthquake that destroys enemies and the surrounding environment. The two used in conjunction create very satisfying combos.
There’s a bit of driving in here, too, with Eddie’s vehicle capable of running over dozens of bad guys at a time. It’s even used in the demo’s uninspired but artistically satisfying boss battle, as a way to remove the boss serpent’s giant fangs from the ground. But the best bit of driving comes just before the introduction of Eddie’s vehicle, where you drive a giant creature-ish vehicle down a hill made of skulls and bones. It gives you a look at the breahtaking scenery, something I couldn’t even come close to appreciating with my standard definition TV.
The demo gives you a solid feel for the game, and while it omits a demo of the strategy portion of the game that consists of Eddie overseeing an army to take on legions of foes, you get a great idea of how this game will be. The writing and character interactions are outstanding, the animation is Pixar-quality, the environments are wonderfully inspirted, and the gameplay, while, simple, should be able to stand the duration of the full game’s length.
Pop this demo up on your 360 while there’s still time, but if you can’t make up your mind even after that, this demo has proven to me that this game is a must-buy. Tim Schafer, you’ve done it again.
I am a huge dork for lolita. Now I’m not talking Nabokov (good book though), I mean Japanese street fashion. For any japanophile, lolita fashion is not anything new. But for the rest of you, you may have encountered some characters in game without realizing it and thought to yourself, “What the hell is she wearing?” (Ok, probably not….?)
Lolita fashion is based on aristocratic Victorian-era clothing, with lots of construction details — ruffles, bows, and other embellishments. Think of it as how you’d dress a porcelain doll. Within lolita fashion, there are many sub-categories, most notably EGL (Elegant Gothic Lolita) which is black and white and er, goth; Sweet Lolita, characterized by pastels and cuteness; and Classic Lolita, which is more subdued and sophisticated.
Some examples of Classic Lolita style clothing
Gothic lolita Super Dollfie collaboration with h. Naoto; Sweet lolita Dal collaboration with Angelic Pretty
I absolutely love that it is becoming prevalent enough to show up in more video games, but it still seems pretty confined to certain genres — mainly fighters, horror, and RPGs. Maybe it just seems that way because those are basically the genres I play (hmm…), but hey, I’m not going to argue about all my hobbies merging into a singular amazing super hobby of sorts!
Gothic fighter characters Ninon Beart (King of Fighters) and Rachel Alucard (BlazBlue)
Characters from Shadow Hearts, Growlanser, and No More Heroes
Lolitas tend to be associated with creepy gore, horror, and general violence in video games, and with good reason. Maybe it is partly due to the association with visual kei bands, partly because horror movies and creepy dolls and gore are what many lolitas actually enjoy, but also because of what I think of as a Japanese cultural fascination with the juxtaposition of violent and cute, that brings to mind the work of Junko Mizuno and Takashi Murakami. And the game Deathsmiles:
I kid you not, this is an R-Type style kill-everything shooter game.
So for anyone still reading this, there is a very fun Make-A-Loli creator-game-thing on artist Claire Belton’s website. It is very very very easy to spend time clicking away at all the different objects in the room and coming up with your own seemingly endless designs. This is by far the most fun and cute one of these that I’ve seen, and it is totally worth checking out even if you don’t think you’d like it!!
I made this one yaaaaaay
For actual info about lolita fashion, I recommend wikipedia, but I personally found out about EGL through my love for visual kei, a Japanese genre of rock music with a strong emphasis on the visual style of the band — usually androgynous make-up and elaborate goth-punk fashion, like if you mixed vampire movies and kabuki with 80’s glam-rock, and sometimes pirates and/or clowns. Most bands have one member who looks especially female, like Mana, who back in the days of Malice Mizer, really popularized lolita fashion along with the band. Mana even has his own line of lolita brand clothing, which causes some devoted EGLs to froth at the mouth with glee.
Mana (ex-Malice Mizer), creator of Moi-Meme-Moitie
So Scribblenauts is every bit as amazing as I’d hoped. Frustrating, sure, and controls like death, but the amount of stuff you can do is mind-bending. So much hilarity to be had, whether it’s through mistakes or your own genius. So here are the 10 best moments I’ve either had myself or witnessed others having.
10. Making a room full of internet memes
9. Spawning a ton of characters and turning them all into frogs with wands
8. Riding a dragon as it fights another dragon in the sky
7. Nuking a crowded area
6. Putting a baby into an oven and cooking it
5. Watching a werewolf turn into a human if you spawn it during the daytime
4. Using a rocketship to fly off a ramp, but instead killing everyone below accidentally
3. Watching a tornado fight another tornado
2. Swordfighting against your clone on a volcano in space
1. Watching God annihilate anything in his path, only to get beaten up by a knight
Yeah everyone should probably go and buy this game right now.
“Did you ever have a job that you hated and worked real hard at? A long, hard day of work. Finally you get to go home, get in bed, close your eyes. And immediately you wake up and realize… that the whole day at work had been a dream. It’s bad enough that you sell your waking life for minimum wage, but now they get your dreams for free.”
This quote is from the movie Waking Life, one of my all time favorites. If you’ve experienced this, or any other kind of unpleasant dream (and i’m betting you have), you likely know how depressing it can feel. It’s real emotion resulting from an “unreal” experience. In many cases, we react to our dreams the same way that we do to real-life situations. We might wake up feeling especially happy, hopeful, determined or let down. When we come to the realization that our emotion exists only because of a dream, we make the effort to immediately alter our emotional state. This is because we come “back to reality” and reason tells us that the feeling is now void.
Our brains are largely unaware of the difference between dream scenarios, and real-life scenarios. This is what makes it possible for people to become so terrified in their sleep that they can scream, flail their legs in attempt to run, punch and kick, and even wet the bed out of fear. Basically, it explains all of those dreams you’ve had throughout your life that you absolutely swear on your life were real. Your brain thinks it was real.
This is where lucid dreaming comes into play. If your brain thinks your dreams are real, why should you not soak up as much of the potential delightfulness of your dream world, as you do in your waking world?
“You got to be able to ask yourself, “Hey, man, is this a dream?” Most people never ask themselves that… when they’re awake or especially when they’re asleep. Seems like everyone’s sleep walking through their waking state… or wake walking through their dreams. Either way they’re not gonna get much out of it.” – Waking Life
From Wikipedia: “A lucid dream is a dream in which the sleeper is aware that he or she is dreaming. When the dreamer is lucid, he or she can actively participate in and often manipulate the imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can seem extremely real and vivid depending on a person’s level of self-awareness during the lucid dream.”
Most people have experienced an episode of “going lucid” during a dream at least once or twice, without even consciously attempting to do so. Achieving a state of lucidity intentionally, however, can be difficult. But, it is possible, and very worth the effort.
What’s the benefit? Well, my best answer to that is that the benefits are infinite. It all depends on how you, personally, define benefit. If you’ve always wanted to fly, you can train your dream-self to fly around all night long (and keep in mind that dream world time feels much longer than waking world time). If you’re a pyromaniac, you can set fire to anything you want without any repercussions what-so-ever. Want to walk on water? Make it happen.
Lucidity is best achieved calmly and naturally, so truly, the easiest way to learn how to lucid dream is simply to think about it often. Desire it, and eventually, it will happen. I’ve had good luck with keeping a dream journal in the past, too, which can be very important. If you have a lucid dream and forget it upon wakening, what’s the point?
I wish my local bakery would make bread this interesting. A plain loaf? Psh. A bloodied torso? Delicious!
The Bird and the Bee’s ode to David Lee Roth has an entertaining video: Diamond Dave. Oh Eric Wareheim, you’re silly.
Unusual canned foods? What’s so unusual about canned and roasted scorpions I ask?
I can’t say I’ve ever thought about what Miles Davis’ classic album “Kind of Blue” would sound like if it was ion 8-bit, but apparently someone else did. Warning: they want actual cash for the whole thing. The samples are well worth the visit though.
I bet your Orbs song isn’t half as annoying as mine. It made my dog actually howl. When you’re done creating chaos, check out a Flash game on the same site called Space Walker.
SPOILERS! All those who’ve not completed Fallout 3 please GTFO (or not – I don’t care).
So, guess who finished Fallout 3? Yeah, I did. All the way through the main quests, anyway. (I’m still working on some of the side quests.) Frankly, I thought the ending sucked. Don’t get me wrong, I am still thoroughly enjoying the game, but, really? I explode and/or die of radiation poisoning and that’s it? Sure, I love to feel all brave and heroic as much as the next person, but I was not having any of the whole sacrifice yourself for the good of future mankind crap. I wanna live!! Live, garsh darnit! I want to beat the crap out of Super Mutants for years and years to come! =(
But really though, the game ends, abruptly, and after not half as much of an exciting final quest as i’d expected (the giant robot does everything for you – can you say “wtf”?). Then, you’re left with nothing. Literally, as far as I am aware, nothing. You have to go back to a previous save point in order to continue playing the game. I know there are downloadable expansions, but i’m po’ and have not yet gotten to those. Anyway, my point is that the end was boring, and i’m not especially satisfied. Boo, Fallout 3, boo.
I’ve still got lots to do with the side quests and thankfully, i’d still consider myself to be a huge fan of the game overall. So… main storyline ending: dumb. Game all around: awesome.
I will continue to play until killing Deathclaws becomes all humdrum and such…
or Left 4 Dead 2 comes out. Which ever comes first.
I’m pretty late to the Dissidia party. I’m not even used to holding a PSP properly without cramping, I’ve only played the demo, and I’m failing miserably at it. But don’t get me wrong, I’m still very likely to buy this lovely piece of fan-service.
Ooooooh....
Aaaaah..... Guess who my favorite character is. Just guess. It's Cecil. No, really.
If there was ever a game I wished to be good at, it would have to be a Final Fantasy fighter — something the nerd in me has dreamed of (literally happily fallen asleep to the thought of it) since the early 90’s, because it would have clearly been the most awesome thing EVER. The official Dissidia site is pretty frakkin amazing to say the least, especially considering it is being met with almost 2 decades of, dare I say, fantasizing.
So about this demo. Either I will eternally suck at dealing with the game mechanics, or with enough stubborn practice I’ll eventually get the hang of it. Or *fingers crossed* it’s just a demo so maybe it doesn’t play exactly like the full game and I don’t have to go die in a fire.
I’m sure that the first thing anyone will notice is how gorgeous the game looks. All the swanky new character art, the backgrounds are actually pretty cool, and the in-game flow is surprisingly fast and smooth. But almost immediately, the camera movement and general holy-crap-3D-ness gave me the disheartening-sinking-lost feeling that I associate with the awkward flight missions of Drakengard and Drakengard 2.
Prepare to WTF at around 5:00. I love this game; I hated this mission.
I’m pretty embarassed to admit it, but I have a hard time following all the awesome once they really get going.
This is my biggest problem, and it’s probably just because I’m doing it wrong. The other is that I’m also totally pampered by the simplicity of 2D fighters, where you can not only easily keep track of your opponent but also mash buttons at a more natural and frantic pace (ie. when you want to punch, hit the punch button).
Dissidia is structured so differently from what I automatically associate with a fighter; it has such similar-but-different button commands that I am at this point still confused, like if I move the analog to the left while holding R+O, it does something entirely different instead of just doing the same thing, but to the left. But to evade and actually move to the left, hold R+X and blah blah blah….this is going to take me some time to get used to, also for just doing it wrong. I think when I was envisioning an FF fighting game so many years ago, it was back when everything was more like this:
This I can handle.
Of course, while I may still play River City Ransom (which can be surprisingly fun when you treat it as a 2D fighter), I have a feeling that just wouldn’t do for 2009. For now, I can only hope that I haven’t gotten too old to play my personal ultimate fantasy game now that it’s finally here! (Ignore the horrible puns in that last sentence…they weren’t even intentional…I’d better get some sleep.)
Okami for the PS2 is one of the system’s best titles, right up there with Shadow of the Colossus, the Metal Gear Solid games, and the God of War games. A beautiful cel-shaded game about Japanese mythology featuring Zelda-inspired gameplay, it blew the minds of every single person that played it in 2006. Unfortunately, Clover Studios, the company who developed the game, went bankrupt shortly after the title’s release. But somehow, through the grace of the video game gods, there is a sequel coming out for the DS in 2010. And the main character is the most ADORABLE THING EVER. Check out its reveal scan in the latest Famitsu:
I WANT TO EAT THIS PUPPY
So this is basically confirmed to be the greatest game of 2010. Look at it! Its name is Chibiterasu, and it’s tiny and adorable. It takes place a few months after the original game, and features the same celestial brush techniques as the original. These techniques allowed you to pause the game and use a paintbrush to draw on and manipulate the environment. But with the DS and its stylus, it’s going to be a lot more natural and fun.
The game looks absolutely beautiful and should hopefully be out at some point next year. A trailer featuring small clips of gameplay footage was revealed yesterday, and it looks to be just as amazing as the PS2 original. The original took me around 45 hours to beat, so hopefully everyone will get dozens of hours of incredible gameplay on their DS come 2010.
I would rather spend my time navigating the Wasteland than doing most other things I can think of. What can I say? I’m in love. Being a first-timer to the Fallout series, and shooters in general (with the exception of L4D) is certainly not doing me any favors. I often panic when approached by enemies, my aim is terrible, I don’t carry enough ammo, and I die… a lot. Nevertheless, i’m learnin’!
To give you a feel for what i’m accustomed to, here are a few of the games i’ve enjoyed over the last few months: Sims 3, Spore, Left 4 Dead, Super Paper Mario, Bully: Scholarship Edition & Rock Band 2. Seeing a bit of a theme there? Lazy games for a lazy girl. Left 4 Dead requires a bit of on-your-toes-ness but I wasn’t even all that great at it. I just love zombies.
Here are a few things i’ve learned about Fallout 3 thus far:
- The game is HUGE! Holy-crap huge. I think you could probably wander forever and continue to find things you’d previously missed. It’s amazing.
- The enemies in the game are awesome. I mean, I hate them, but they’re awesome. There’s a wide array of different mutants, creatures, ghouls and humans who seem to thoroughly enjoy pickin’ on you. Because you created your character to be such a handsome devil, right?
- Just like in real life, KARMA matters. Maybe you don’t believe in that sort of thing, but perhaps you should start. =) From Wikipedia: “Beyond acting as flavor for the game’s events, karma can have tangible effects to the player, primarily affecting the game’s ending. Other effects include altered dialogue with NPCs, or unique reactions from other characters.” I can really appreciate this about the game. It truly gives you the freedom to be whatever kind of character you wish.
- This is the first video game i’ve ever played that makes me jump, out of fear, a lot. What it comes down to is this: Post-Apocalyptic Washington DC is dead quiet unless you find yourself in a battle zone or are amidst a populated area (of which there are few), and giant creatures pouncing on you from behind while it’s been near-silent for the last ten minutes is freaky. Very freaky.
- There’s a whole lot to be done. The storyline is just the beginning. There are 17 side quests in addition to the 14 main quests, so suffice it to say, this game is not especially short, and it is definitely never lacking in action. Did I mention there are DLC add-on quests, too? I haven’t even looked into those yet. Too much to do!
- Liam Neeson plays the voice of the player character’s Dad in the game, and Ron Perlman is the narrator. Oh silly.
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