Mariokart

I liked Mariokart DS. It was fun, exciting, had great multiplayer, and was one of my first Nintendo DS games.

Now, several years later, Mariokart Wii comes along, toting everyone's favorite motion gimmick with the addition of a hunk of plastic shaped like a steering wheel for an electric gokart designed for six year olds that travels slower than just walking.

After swiftly giving up on the motion based hunk of crap that was the wiimote I downgraded to the Game Cube controller, and found it to be a much more enjoyable experience. It's got to say something about game and console design when using a controller from a previous generation means you beat the person using the fancy new technology designed a half a decade later hand over fist.

Leaving aside the game developers' insistence on using the newest Nintendo gimmick, the game is relatively fun. The controls on the Game Cube Controller are fluid and responsive, and the graphics are as decent as the Wii can get. So now you might be getting the assumption that I like Mariokart Wii. That's about as right as me saying that I like a bible thumping democrat. There are elements I like, and other elements that I just CAN'T STAND.

Full fledged races are one of those things. The game relies 95% on being lucky enough to get a red shell at the right time and 5% on being half decent at racing games. I have had repeated scenarios where I am ten miles in the lead of the race, and suddenly some asshat in last place gets a blue shell and shoots it at me, causing my bike to spin about and causing me to flail my arms around helplessly as every racer and their mother finishes the race.

Now that we're on the subject of bikes, I'd like to stay on it for a moment. I like the bikes, and I think they're great addition. But now that I have bikes, I can't imagine ever wanting to ever go back to karts, because bikes are far superior in the forementioned 5% where you actually race. This also completely alienates me from ever playing any other Mariokart game other than Mariokart Wii, because every time I try to get anywhere in a kart playing Mariokart DS, I slam into the nearest wall because I look funny at the drift button.

Another thing that I can't stand aboot Mariokart Wii is the level design. The people who created Wario's Mine and Rainbow Road and half of the other maps must have been shooting heroin while popping antidepressants with a barrel of wine while clubbing themselves over the head with a bat covered in an IQ destroying virus. The over emphasis on being lucky enough to not have the malevolent god of that track decide that it would be hilarious for you to be crushed by an unnecessary weight placed in an otherwise empty location is completely mind boggling. What were they thinking? Did they think it was FUN to fall into a pit fifty times in a row while the entire population of the Nintendo Universe races past, effortlessly bouncing across the ten mile expanse of two centimeter wide platforms?

Which brings up the question of, WHY THE HELL ARE THEY RACING THROUGH THESE PLACES? There is no plot to this game, unless the plot is watching me destroy my Wii in frustration. These people are hurling banana peels and shells that somehow can tell the difference between first place and second place and fly and picking up boxes that cause you to become a huge bullet for NO REASON.

Webcomics

I hope you didn't blink at all while you were staring at my awesome picture.

I like webcomics. Because they're free comic books. YEY

Here's a list of webcomics I check regularly:
The Order of the Stick - http://www.giantitp.com/Comics.html
Thinkin' Lincoln - http://www.thinkin-lincoln.com/
The Slackers - http://theslackerz.com/
Penny Arcade - http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/
The Warehouse - http://www.warehousecomic.com/
Cyanide and Happiness - http://www.explosm.net/
El Goonish Shive - http://www.egscomics.com/
Digitial Unrest - http://digitalunrestcomic.com/index.php
Dueling Analogs - http://www.duelinganalogs.com/
Ctrl-Alt-Del - http://cad-comic.com/comic.php
Buttersafe - http://buttersafe.com/
Questionable Content - http://questionablecontent.net/
xkcd - http://xkcd.com/
Weregeek - http://www.weregeek.com/
Amazing Super Powers - http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/
Thingpart - http://www.jsayers.com/thingpart/thingpart.html
VG Cats - http://www.vgcats.com/comics/
Subnormality - http://www.viruscomix.com/subnormality.html
2P Start - http://www.2pstart.com/


And that's only half of the ones I used to read. I won't list the ones I lost interest in. ;)

So I recommend them all to look into. But, why the hell would I put them on my blog if I didn't recommend them? I mean, srsly, gyz.

I also check four movie sites regularly:
Smosh - http://www.smosh.com/
Cinemassacre/AVGN - http://www.cinemassacre.com/new/
Zero Punctuation - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation
Weebl's Stuff - http://www.weebls-stuff.com/


Yeeeeup. there ya go. I might actually critique each of those individually. But mebbe not. If I do, it'll be screenshoteriffic! :D

Last thing. Here are the two blogs I read:

B(labber)log - http://phailpants.blogspot.com/
//Commented - http://miky.comyr.com/

Call of Duty 4

I like Call of Duty 4. A lot. Probably more than is healthy.
I sleep with its CD case.
I'm passing a bill to marry software.
I've signed it forty four trillion times in my blood.

Just kidding. I'm not that obsessed. And you believed me. HA! Ha ha haaaa.... Stupid blog reader. No, I'm kidding! Please keep reading!
Ha! You thought I cared! Ha ha haaaa.... Stupid blog reader. No, I kid. I kid. (That's a double negative! :D)

But I do like it. I play the multiplayer daily, and I beat the Single Player in about 2 days. But I didn't skip school to play it or anything. The story was actually really short.

It seems like a lot of video games are like that these days. I feel that games such as Halo 2&3 and COD4 have really short story modes. Is this because I play them obsessively? You might say that, you jerk. But I don't. Apparently the focus is on the multiplayer, which makes a little sense, but cutting out hours of game play kind of alienates people without Xbox Live.

Here's a funneh picture. STARE AT IT UNTIL MY NEXT BLOG POST COMES AROUND.

I review all of my iPhone Apps

Here's a quick review of all of the applications I currently have on my iPhone.
Text: What it was meant to be. It lacks picture sending and text forwarding, though, so that's a little disappointing. 4/5
Calendar: Pretty intuitive, goes into infinity as far as I can tell. The option for repeating events is nice, but I think some holidays should be pre-added, like Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years, etc. 5/5
Photos: Shows all downloaded images and taken pictures. The Slideshow option is an interesting touch, but it's unintuitive with management of picture folders. (You can't make them or delete them without the help of a computer.) 3/5
Camera: Decent quality, but even though it registers that a picture was taken sideways, it will save it as a portrait photo in Photos, which is annoying. 4/5
Settings: Pretty self-explanitory, but not all apps have settings, when it seems they should. 5/5
YouTube: Up to par with internet speeds for the iPhone, it lacks some of the features that Youtube has though, like "More From". 4/5
Stocks: Pretty intuitive if you follow stocks, but it seems to be sort of silly to have pre-programmed in. It should be downloadable. 5/5
Weather: It tells you the weather. Yay. 5/5
Clock: A nice little app. It has world clocks, alarms, stopwatch, and timer. Very nice. 5/5
Calculator: Pretty cool. Turning the phone to landscape gets you more complex actions such as cos, sin, tan, square roots, and a bunch more stuff that I never use. A graphing calculator would be nice, because as of right now, there aren't any decent ones for sale. 5/5
Notes: A nice little app to write whatever in. The option of emailing the notes is nice. 5/5
Maps: I rarely use this app, but from what I have, it is excellent. It's relatively fast, and it has tons of options to calculate distances and travel time. 5/5
App Store: It lets you download more apps. 5/5
iTunes: It lets you access iTunes. It seems like it should be combined with the App Store, though. 4/5
Contacts: Good organizing, very useful. My one complaint is that it should save what you've written so far in a contact if you exit before finishing. It's annoying to retype phone numbers and addresses. 4/5
Wikipanion: A very good application for looking up things on Wikipedia. It hides graphs and large images and gives you the option to view them, which is excellent for speed. It also is very intuitive with working between it and the Safari app. 5/5
Dice Bag: An app that rolls dice. It has a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, percentiles, 3 d6's, and 4d6's with one removed (Useful for creating D&D characters.) The randomness of the dice rolls have been called into question in comments for it, but it seems pretty good to me. 5/5
Units: An app that converts measurements and such. Has a lot of choices. 5/5
Translator: A decent translator app. I think it accesses Google translator or something. It has serious gaps in its vocabulary, though. 4/5
Google Earth: An app that emulates Google Earth. It's pretty slow, but pretty neat too. It's got a lot of options. 4/5
Dots Free: A good iteration of the popular Kids-menu past-time. Allows Two player or one player, or zero player (You watch it play itself)! The AI is moronic, though. 4/5
FourFree: Connect Four. Has the same playing choices as Dots Free. The AI is excellent. 5/5
Checkers: Has same player choices as the previous two. AI is decent. 5/5
Scribble: An interesting drawing app for the iPhone. It has a very limited choice of colors, but you can take photos from the Photos app. 4/5
Topple: A fun stacking game. You stack the blocks with the touch screen, and tilt the iPhone to keep the pieces balanced. 5/5
Tap Tap Revenge: Like Guitar Hero, but for the iPhone. Has a large library of free downloadable songs, and it takes advantage of the accelerometer with directional notes at points. 5/5
Cube Runner: A fun app with simplistic graphics. You endlessly go forward, dodging randomly placed cubes the whole way. Apparently it has downloadable map sets. 5/5
Shazam: One of the most popular apps for the iPhone. It listens to music and tells you what it is. It seems to work about 60% of the time for me. It'd be cool if you could sing or hum a tune and it would give you a list of possibilities. 4/5
Quickvoice: A sound recording app. It's extremely quiet, and you can't connect it to the computer. Of course, it's the free version. 3/5
Backgrounds: A large, regularly updated gallery of images sized for use as your iPhone wallpaper. Very cool. 5/5
Echo: "Simon" for the iPhone. That's it. It lacks options. It would be nice to have it speed up. 3/5
Zippo Lighter: An app that shows a lighter. Tilting the phone changes the direction of the flame, and holding it upside down or touching the flame makes the phone vibrate. It has a large-ish selection of designs for the lighter. The flame is pretty low quality, though. 4/5
PapiJump: An app where you endlessly climb up a tunnel by jumping from platform to platform. Highscores are held on the internet, so it redirects you to the Safari app to submit scores. Needs a high score list for just your iPhone. 4/5
Tunnel: Just like the Calculator game. Tilt the phone to navigate through the endless tunnel. The simple graphics are pleasing, and the high-score system is relatively intuitive. 4/5
Crossbones: A pirate themed matching game. I got it when it was free, now it's $2.99. Pretty fun, with good AI. You get a new hand by shaking the iPhone, which is really annoying when playing it in a vehicle. I wouldn't pay for it, though. 4/5
Trace: A platforming game where you draw a path through the level. Sort of unappealing graphics, poor hit detection. The controls are in a tiny bar at the bottom, which makes it very hard to react quickly without missing. Low replayability. 2/5
DuckDuck: A game where you bring different colored ducks to whirlpools matching their color by tilting the phone. Appealing graphics, but it gets retarded when there's twenty ducks on the screen and you're trying to navigate them around. It has a lot of options for the design of the pond and weather. 4.5/5
BubbleWrap: An app where you pop as many bubbles in bubble wrap as you can in 45 seconds. As soon as it ends, it goes to the highscore screen, which has ads all over it, so you accidentally hit one, which redirects you to the App-Store. You lose the highscore when this happens. Needs alternative game modes. 3/5
Darts: A poor dart shooting app. The AI is idiotic and easy on the hardest setting. 2/5
Ultim(ate Coun)tdoun: An interesting app where players hold onto a portion of the screen as the timer quickly counts down towards zero. The player closest to zero without going into the negatives wins. It needs different game modes, maybe AI, and the name needs to be shortened so it isn't "Ultim...tdoun" on the menu. 4/5
iShoot: A fun artillery-tank game where you buy weapons and fire them at other players. It has a large list of maps and weapons, and the game modes are customizable to take out certain maps, change tank health, change the economy, add or take out weapons, etc. Very polished off. 5/5
FallingBalls: A silly game where you dodge circles of varying sizes as they bounce across the screen. Good use of the accelerometer, and good hiscores. It's also very cool that they only put in ads between games. My only complaint is that it won't let you restart until all of the balls have bounced off the screen, so it's annoying when you die and a ball slowly makes its way across the screen. 4/5
Frotz: A poor choice of names for an app (look it up on Wikipedia, NSFW). It's got nothing to do with its namesake, though. It has a list of text-based RPG's and a lot of downloadable ones from the interwebs. 4/5
Brick FREE: A breakout game with powerups. I'm considering buying the full version. 4/5
Tap Tap (Revenge 2): A "Sequel" To Tap Tap Revenge. It's got better graphics and different songs, but is the same game at heart. It seems to crash often, though. The high-score system is pretty nice, and there seems to be a community behind it. 4.5/5
SpawnLite: An app where you watch a bunch of color-shifting lines swim about the screen. You can direct them by touching the screen, and make them explode into a ton of lines by double tapping the screen. 4/5
Bix Lite: A pretty fun game where you trap or avoid balls bouncing around by hurrying across the screen and filling it in so it's a certain percentage full. I'm considering buying the full version. 4/5
geoDefense: A tower defense game with vector graphics. It's pretty fun, and it has special towers that suck up shrapnel from destroyed enemies and use it to power up it's fellow towers. It's pretty difficult. 5/5
Pocket God: A fun game where you torture a bunch of cute islanders on an... island (INO,RITE?) It's updated every 8 or 9 days for free, which is cool. You can check out their blog at pocketgod.blogspot.com 5/5
FlightControl: A fun game where you direct different flying vehicles to their respective areas. you have to make sure they don't crash. It's actually pretty stimulating. 5/5
Textfree Lite: An app that gives you free texts. The texts are sent to a server or something and then forwarded to the intended receiver. The lite version gives you a 15 text a day limit. It'd be better if it would redirect reply texts to the text app, but it can't be everything. I'm actually confused how it can be economical, but then again, a text only takes a couple of cents to send (despite arguments from my friends.) 5/5
Mines Free: A Minesweeper game. Pretty fun, but the free version is Mehish, with only two sizes. The graphics also don't look like minesweeper, and are kind of unappealing.
Skype: A decent emulation of skype. It's pretty slow, but it's pretty cool for what I use it for. It's got pretty good quality for sound. Most people who complained about it were using it to call non-skype users, but isn't that what a cell-phone is for? A good skype app. 5/5
Phone: The cell phone portion. It's got different tabs for your contact list, your favorites, the numpad, and recent stuff. Just what it should be. 5/5
Mail: Checks your Email. It randomly doesn't receive some emails, which is really annoying, but it checks multiple email addresses, which is cool. 5/5
Safari: Internet. Very cool. It's got history and bookmarks, but it needs an orientation lock, because I often like to read stuff on the internet while I'm lying down. 5/5
iPod: The iPod portion, obviously. Decent sound quality, and good video quality. One problem is that all of my album pictures were overwritten with pictures for downloaded podcasts when I connected my phone to the computer, but that's a one time thing. 5/5

Wow. That was long. Obviously, this isn't an encompassing view of iPhone apps, cuz I delete the sucky ones. But there's my short opinion on all of my iPhone applications. I could delve into each one and give an individual blog post for most of them, but would you really want to read all of that? I didn't think so.

The Nintendo Wii

I own a Playstation 2, an Xbox 360, and a Nintendo Wii. The Xbox 360 is my favorite console. I've had the PS2 for a half of a decade, and it's been my only console for that time. I've probably got more than forty games for it.

So, in between, is the Wii. I've got about the same sized library for my Wii as I do for my Xbox (About 6 or 7). I've got to say, the only game on the Wii that's really stellar in my eyes is Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Mario Kart Wii's bikes are a great addition, but the new maps are retarded at the best times, and there are too many power ups. Twilight Princess was fun for a while, but the Halo Series, Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, Left 4 Dead, and I find that even Phantom Hourglass have it beat. Metroid Prime 3 is interesting, but it's sort of tried-and-true. There's nothing that really makes it stand out as a better video game than others. Warioware: Smooth Moves is relatively fun, but I prefer Touched! for the DS better.

I've sort of dragged this on, but my point is that the Wii is the inferior of the next generation consoles. It relies too much on the gimmick movement based controls that aren't even that precise.

Grenades

I hate grenades. Grenades in First Person Shooters are the most retarded things ever to be come up with. I imagine people hate them in real life as well, but I can't speak for them, since I've never actually been in a war zone.

Grenades suck. People always use grenades in FPS games, and just keep throwing them in the spawn locations. And when they don't grenade spam your spawns, they're throwing them at random. Grenades are totally up to luck. There's no skill involved with throwing a grenade. You are not a good gamer because you luck out by throwing a grenade over a wall and somehow have it land on me.

One other thing, and this doesn't frustrate me as much as I find it interesting. I find it funny how somebody who can't spell the word "the" can have the top score in a video game match.