loonyblog.

Between work, Alice and my family visiting I’ve been hideously, embarrassingly busy lately, hence the lack of posts. There’s a laundry list of posts I still want to make (Ebert & Roper’s ended! They’re rebooting the Superman movies! etc, etc, etc) and hopefully I’ll get to some of that this week. But in the meantime, it has been a while since I’ve posted about any games I’ve been playing, and there are two I want to quickly comment on.

The first, is Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty, which I started and finished this week. Now, I love me some Ratchet & Clank. I think it’s one of those series that just gets it right. Yeah, they’re pretty much all the same, but the formula they’ve figured out for those games is spot-on, and if I have to play the same one over and over again, that’s just fine with me (provided they keep that same level of supreme polish). Quest for Booty is a really fun experience, but it’s ultimately just a tease. You get all the visual fidelity of a Ratchet & Clank game, and the magic is there in a lot of the gameplay, but while the key elements are there, there’s just no time to do anything with them.

Case in point: in Quest for Booty you get to collect gobs and gobs of bolts, but aside from two cases where you need bolts to proceed, there’s no opportunity to spend them. There are no gadgetron stations for ammo (instead you get full ammo when you respawn), and there’s only one opportunity to buy a new, optional weapon. And the weapons you have, you don’t get a whole lot of time to upgrade. It’s still very much Ratchet & Clank, but since the story is pretty much a footnote between Tools of Destruction and whatever game is coming next year, it’s all a little pointless. If you’re a big ol’ fan like me, be sure to check it out (if you haven’t already). But if you haven’t played Tools of Destruction, it’s probably a weird, out-of-context experience. Which is kind of a shame, I suppose, but at least we’re still getting a full game next fall.

The other game I’ve been playing lately is Too Human. Now, there’s been all kinds of mess talked about this game, and I don’t want to jump into that fray. I just want to go on record as saying that I dig this game. It’s weird. Very weird. It’s totally about cyber vikings, complete with Nidhogg, Helheim and Valkyries out the wazoo. But it’s also fun in a Lootenwank kind of way. I played through it from start to finish once already and I’m going back and playing through it a second time as a different class…and there really aren’t many games I’m willing to do that with. Granted, part of that is because the game is pretty short, and I felt like I really only understood the combat and loot systems towards the very end anyway…but that game is fun. It’s a little glitchy and very, very, very strange, but yeah, I dig it.

Oh, and Bionic Commando Rearmed? I’m not man enough for that game. Either that, or I should have bought it for PS3 instead of 360, because that is a game where a mushy d-pad is suicide.

Anyway, more nerdiness to come. And if not, keep an eye on my Twitter feed, since I have a tendency to update that more often than the blog these days.

Today marks ten years since loonygames went live. I won’t rehash here everything I wrote on loonygames.com already, but needless to say, it’s a surprising milestone.

Surprising largely because I can’t believe it’s been ten years, but also because I can’t think of too many sites that have been inactive for eight years that are still preserved the same way loonygames is. Which is sort of a shame, but then, that’s what the Wayback Machine is for, I suppose.

Anyway, if you’re a loonygames contributor or fan, join the Facebook group and post something. I’ll be sure to update that site again in another ten years.

Boy, ten years. Where did it all go?

WARNING: This post violates the rules.

I know I’ve done some major rule breaking on this site recently, but there’s been a lot of fun CivRev stuff to talk about. To that, I’d like to add today’s NYTimes review by Seth Schiesel, which is pretty favorable. Here’s an excerpt:

…Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution is an almost complete triumph. Melding formidable intellectual depth with an unintimidating, relatively easy-to-grasp graphical presentation, the new Civilization is by far the best strategy game to grace a living room console. This is a console game that history and social studies teachers should encourage their students to enjoy. This is a game that parents should want to play with their children. And this is a game that will then incite some parents to send their kids to bed so the old folks don’t have to share.

Needless to say, I agree.

Man, here’s some deeply sad news…as reported by Janice “GirlBomb” Erlbaum, Mark “JUDGECAL” Chamberlain has died.

I’m in shock. As I’m sure anyone who knew him even casually will tell you, Cal was one of the nicest and most fun people I’ve ever met. He was a geek with the soul of a punk rocker. A Billy Idol look-a-like who loved Judge Dredd. He was truly one of a kind.

He was also one of my early gateways into the gaming industry. My career can be directly traced back through those days at QuakeCast (and Shooters, our post-Quake QuakeCast).

Janice (who is a professional writer these days, with multiple books under her belt) wrote far more eloquently than I can on the subject. I heartily recommend reading her eulogy.

Rock on, JUDGECAL. You will be missed.

The trailer from the upcoming direct-to-DVD Wonder Woman animated movie that was shown at the San Diego con has been posted over at Yahoo! Movies. And you know what? It’s not bad. Not bad at all.

Not that I thought it was going to suck or anything…the DC animated movies so far have been largely pretty good…Superman/Doomsday was decent and New Frontier, while nowhere near as good as the source material, was pretty good too. Gotham Knight was pretty awful, but I don’t know who to blame for that, so the less said the better.

In any event, this looks pretty good. The voice cast isn’t bad…Keri Russell wouldn’t have been my first choice for Diana, but her one line in the trailer seems right on. Nathan Fillion should be a good Steve Trevor, and I’m totally on-board with Virginia Madsen and Alfred Molina as Hippolyta and Ares respectively.

It won’t be out until next year, but the director Lauren Montgomery has kept a semi-regular blog for a while (which I’ve been reading without ever realizing what she’s been working on), so hopefully more updates will show up there soon. Even if she doesn’t, it’s worth reading for the artwork she posts from time to time.

Anyway, with the live action movie dead in the water (until the next attempt, anyway), this is all the Wonder Woman we’re gonna get anytime soon, and that’s just fine with me…I still think Jessica Biel is the only person who can play the role (and she doesn’t want to do it).

Bandwidth leachers are on the prowl again…after all those RSS readers blew up the last time I tried to do something about this problem I decided to be nice and make my rules much less stringent…but apparently that just encourages more direct linking, so I’ve made it harder again.

Please do me a favor and post in the comments if you don’t see a lovely picture of Nicole Kidman below. If you instead see my redirect image, let me know where you’re viewing the site from and I’ll do something about it.