An Analysis of the X-Men Franchise
Posted by: Willow
Mikey and Willow, in preparation for the forthcoming X-Men 3 movie, conducted an academic study of the X-Men franchise. Focussing their analysis primarily on the overarching themes of the trilogy, they took copious notes in Mike's little black graph paper book. Willow used the book smarts gained from 18 years of education, while Mike relied on the street smarts that kept him alive in the army, and uh, on the streets.
Figure One (1) represents the 4 ways we see humans deal with the idea of a "mutant threat". It is interesting to note that at no time do we see any humans act unprompted in defense of mutant-kind. They protest against their existence, shoot them, beat them, pour mind control acid on the back of their necks, call them names, and generally seem to hate and fear them. Only after an awesome display of their power and documented proof of Col. Stryker's plan to exterminate all mutants does the President finally concede that perhaps humans and mutants can work together.
Figure Two (2) shows the much more varied responses of mutants to humans. These responses fall into three main categories, although the Hide/Run category does not seem to be sustainable, as evidenced by both Magneto and Prof. X recruiting from this pool to join their respective responses. In the case of Magneto, who lived through the Holocaust and has given up on humans, believing that mutants are superior and thus entitled to rule as the greater species. This is the opposite of Prof X., with his privileged and highly educated upbringing who believes that the enlightenment of humans remains a possibility and education is the slower but more sustainable answer to the problem.
Interestingly, this brings up parallels between the background of Mike and Willow. Willow, with her years of education and dedication to teaching and shaping young minds, and Mike and his belief that the only way to make change is to literally kill those that disagree with him. (He was in the Army you know. That changes a person.)
The conclusion is that the X-Men franchise, under the guidance of Director Bryan Singer, is cleverly designed liberal propaganda. As both Mike and Willow agree with Mr. Singer that "Liberal = Good" they have some concerns that X-Men 3 is being directed by none other than the worst Living Hollywood Director, Brett Ratner, a man who embodies many of the attributes that the X-Men movies warn us against. As proof of this we simply present the role of The Beast being played by the most pompous and arrogant actor (and major boner) Kelsey Grammer.
CASE CLOSED.
It's Called nerd.blog Now
Posted by: kmikeym
Well, we still love video games, but we also love a lot of other really nerdy things. I mean, it's not like I'm going to talk about my collectible spoons on my own blog (or my collection of business games). So in order to create a safe place to talk about our nerdy obsessions (including video games of course) we're expanding and redesigning this blog.
Look forward to lots of nerdy talk about comic books, turtles, video games, mac tips, and other obsessions. It's going to be fun to nerd out.
E3 2006 Notes
Posted by: j_john
I need to start off by declaring my complete bewilderment at Square-Enix for continuing to maintain a "no photos or video" policy. Just setting up a photo op of a Final Fantasy XII logo proved to be obnoxiously difficult. Come on, 95% of the exhibits allow and even encourage photography, and you still need to censor everyone's ability to share their interest and/or excitement in the products you're developing?! Lame.
Anyway, moving on to the company that has defined videogames for me for the past 20 years (and asked if I would like to take more photos of its awesome controller), Nintendo demoed their "revolutionary" Wii to the world, and my excitement and anticipation for the device has now been heightened to uncomfortable levels.
By now you've seen the remote controller a dozen times over, so I won't talk much about the obvious--but I will say that while watching the Super Mario Galaxy demo being played I thought to myself "hmmm, that doesn't really look that much better than Super Mario Sunshine for the Gamecube." Then it hit me--it didn't matter if it looked better, what mattered was if it played better, and surely it did, introducing entirely new play mechanics that just brought a smile to your face. Yep, I am officially convinced--the videogame revolution has begun.
Meanwhile, Sony thinks the world only wants something more powerful, and displayed their new PlayStation 3, with HD graphics and the same, decade-old controller, only this time it has basic motion sensor technology! Snore. Sure, the games looked real nice, especially the new Madden, but it felt too obvoius. The Metal Gear Solid 4 trailer caught my attention, but sadly there was no playable demo. Oh well, I know I'll buy a PS3 when it comes out, but there isn't nearly the same level of anticipation as the Wii--without a killer app I might even wait a bit and hope they lower the $600 price tag.
Now for my favorite titles of E3 2006.
Nintendo Wii:
WarioWare, Mario, Zelda, and Metroid were all there and are must-haves, but 3rd party support was pretty sparse. Spongebob, Bomberman, and Sonic? Uhh, no thanks. I did have lots of fun playing TurboGrafx 16 "Bonk" on the virutal console section with the new, SuperNES meets-dual shock controller.
Nintendo DS:
The Grasshopper studios (Killer 7) development of Nintendo DS RPG Contact looked great (they use the screens to display two distinct art styles), as did the new Zelda DS title, although I never felt like waiting to play it firsthand.
The new Castlevania game looked like more of the same, and I think I may be nearing the end of my allegiance to the franchise.
PS2:
Okami looked beautifully artistic, but many titles were expected sequels that looked like more of the same. Rogue Galaxy had a beautiful art style from the developers of Dragon Quest 8, and I'll probably pick up God of War II just to play another 16:9, progressive scan game, but not much else on the horizon excited me.
PSP:
There was a video for the upcoming Silent Hill Origins, a new game exclusively for the PSP that I was pretty into. Might actually convince me to dust off the machine.
PS3:
As mentioned, the upcoming Metal Gear Solid 4 game looked fanatastic and could be the reason I eventually buy the console, but at this point I am unconvinced.
The Xbox360 had a few interesting titles, but it would be difficult to convince me to buy another console, and with the truly unique features on the upcoming Wii, I am content to wait it out.
E3 2006 Wrap Up
Posted by: kmikeym
I don't like the term "Casual Gamer". Casual gaming seems to be all the rage in the gaming industry, thankfully mostly focused on the waste of energy that is mobile games. But how is anyone supposed to get excited about, as wikipedia says, "games targeted at the mass audience, which are peculiar for their simple rules, engaging game design, require no time commitment or special skills from an end user." Hits can come out of this format, like Tetris, but overall it seems like game as distraction as opposed to game as experience. I don't want to be distracted.
Casual Games seemed to be everywhere at E3. Kentia Hall, the ugly stepchild of the main exhibit halls (filled with the many small international companies), was full of cheap kiosks selling casual games. Normally Kentia Hall is where you can count on finding a few gems of really creative (or at the very least amusing) games, but it seemed dominated by so many multi-player dragon battle quests and the tiny screens and simple gameplay of cell phones. Kentia Hall, other than the classic games display, was a disappointment.
We all loved the Wii. Nintendo created the first game system I have owned since the PS1 with the DS, and now they have done it again with the Wii. As we lined up to enter on the first day of the show, there was a huge crowd outside the doors and it seemed that literally everyone was talking about Nintendo. Before the doors opened we walked by the other main hall and there was no one lining up to see Microsoft or the big developers. Everyone wanted the Wii.
And it completely lived up to the hype. As we entered the Wii area there was a rotating pedestal showing off people playing the games. Hands waving, jumping, moving, pointing and clearly having a great time. Then we got to play. We got to play WarioWare. I think WarioWare proves the concept of the Wii better than any game.
But then I had a scary thought, "Is this casual gaming? Because I don't like casual games!"
The Wii, with it's unannounced but expected price range of $200, and its less gory and more "fun" titles (for the most part) seem like it's designed for calling your friends over and having fun. Even your non-gaming friends. Even, dare I say it, Jessica. And that seems like what "casual gaming" is all about at first. Except that when you start to play the Wii, and this is by far the first system where the word play is the best description of what you are doing, it's clearly an experience and not some distraction to kill time.
The Wii was the reason to go to E3. Well, that and laughs at the expense of the Playstation 3, or what I like to call SpiderPlayManSation. The PS3 is pretty easy to grasp, just imagine a giant sized PS2 that has better graphics. Yeah... that's about it. Oh wait, one more thing. The price of the PS3 is $600.00. You can buy a Wii, plus one for your friend and then an extra one in case you want to set up a give-away with a sweet prize package!
The graphics were freakishly good, but I have never heard a person complain about the realism of the look of a game. Better looking versions of the same old games just isn't that exciting unless you love your Madden franchise. The PS3, or SpiderPlayManStation, is just an expensive delivery vehicle for the same old XBOX games and a few exclusive graphics. It's like instead of selling your VW Rabbit and buying a new car you just put the glossy frame of an SUV over it. In a lot of ways it's not actually an improvement of the previous version.
One of my favorite parts of E3 is the booths that are not selling games, but whole countries. We call these booths the "Countries Pimping Their Development Potential" and they include the pretty decent UK booth and Canada booths, the very entertaining and wacky Korea booth (highlighting such games as Diet Queen and Coinstack), and the mind-boggling dull Scotland booth, which consisted of a large booth of old women reading magazines and maybe a brochure or two set out.
The entire XBOX 360 booth/section was a strange mild redesign of previous years and seemed to even have the same games. This is probably because all the games for XBOX seem to be a sequel or clone of another game. Refreshingly, the game Viva Pinata looked quite compelling, but was not a playable demo and seemed to be designed for the kids. I was interested in a GTA3-like clone which was multiplayer and also superhero based. And I think the lead character in Dead Rising is a photographer, though I'm sure he gets to shoot a lot of people too.
I didn't get close enough to see what console it was on, but I did see a giant Garfield banner which seemed to be a game based on the direct-to-video sequel to one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It was probably just a cell phone game. It seems there is big money in cell phone games, which is too bad as they are all terrible. I played a round of Pac-Man Bowling and scored an easy 189, but any thrill in my score was diminished by my complete boredom. Paris Hilton made on appearance on the day after we were there to promote copies of her new cell phone game. There are almost too many jokes I could make about that, so I'll just leave it alone. And one of Cabel's favorite games was the game "Coinstack" in the Korea booth, where you have to stack coins as high as possible.
Speaking of cell phone games, I can't believe that Nokia and N-Gage were back for another year of abuse. They have now transitioned the N-Gage from hardware into software that allows you play games on Nokia phones. Sort of their gaming platform for mobile phones. The only conclusion we could come up with is that N-Gage must be some high level Nokia executive's pet project because common sense would tell you to stop wasting money on this project.
Probably the most confusing game of the entire show was Desperate Housewives, which seemed to operate like The Sims and also have some plot elements in it. It seems like someone didn't do their demographics homework on this one. Not to say that all games should appeal to twelve year old boys, but will the people who watch Desperate Housewives be interested in a videogame version? Will the game draw in new viewers from gamers? It doesn't seem likely. But, at the same time, I do sort of want to play it.
The other games I am excited about playing are all on different machines. On the Wii, where every game is fun to play, I am excited about Music Orchestra, where you get to be the conductor. I have my fingers crossed that this is not just a DDR style rhythm game, but one where your actions actually control the sounds the orchestra makes.
On the PSP of all places there is the game WTF, which stands for Work Time Fun (working title) and is a series of mini-games like sorting chickens and chopping wood. It's funny, repetitive, and business based. This might be the only game for PSP I ever buy (and no, I do not own a PSP).
Yakuza, with a title that ensures it will sell to angry tweens, sold me when I saw it has a crane game aspect! It looks a lot like my old favorite Shenmue, which many considered a snooze-fest. Walking around, collecting weird things, asking people about sailors, and letting the game slowly unfold in painfully slow near-real time.
Overall this was a very exciting E3. Initially it seemed like the Hollywood invasion of videogames was crushing out the fun innovative titles, but that is just the perception because the giant game companies have giant booths. There will always be amazing crazy games being made and sometimes they will become a huge success (Katamari) and sometimes they will fail (Odama), but you do have to seek them out. Thankfully the Wii is going to make every game fun and innovative and crazy. I'm really excited about the future of video games.
See my E3 photos here.
