TNT will be seen tomorrow night, most likely, as I will have returned from a magical evening of Kaiju Big Battel. Danger may happen.
Archive for February, 2007
TNT: Keep an eye out for ya, Stingray
February 14, 2007What are ya playin?: People have been complaining about the drought of Wii games in the first two months of the year. To that, I say one of two things; stop playing so many videogames, or start playing older games. Anyone who expects a system in its first 6 months to have a nonstop arsenal of games is just silly. Instead of complaining about the lack of Wii games, do what I do; look back in time. Look for some of the great games you missed out on. Here’s a suggestion. Grim Fandango. A great game that you probably never played because you were busy with your Starcrafts and Halflifes and your psalms and your John 3:16s.
Anyway, I’m fighting the drought by catching up. I printed out my much-talked-about Queue, and it’s chock full of games I barely started, never opened, or still haven’t bought. Games like Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Earthbound, Secret of Mana, Disgaea, Dragon Quest VIII and Full Throttle. 14 games in all; that’s enough to keep me busy for at least three months. So even though there aren’t many games that interest me until Smash Bros Brawl and Mario Galaxy (unless Sonic and the Secret Rings bucks the trend with recent Sonic games and somehow ends up being good), I’ve got plenty to catch up on. And if you say you’ve beaten every game you ever wanted to, then I can only say that you need to stretch out your gameplay time. And play Misadventures of Tron Bonne, because I bet you never played that one. But I’ll wax on that game eventually.
What are ya watchin?: I caught the majority of Wonder Showzen Season 2 the other day. What an amazing show. It’s either too smart for me, or I’m just thinking too much about it. But a truly excellent show. I generally dislike uninhibited randomness, because I look at it as almost lazy. But there just seems to be a method to all of its madness, something that I’ll never be able to figure out, nor could I ever produce something like it. Of course, sometimes it’s hard to wax poetic on a show that prominently features dead bodies decomposing, explosions of placenta, a puppet with an exposed brain, angry pedestrians, a cartoon diagram of menstruation, and a kid with Downes syndrome in its opening. But hey, that’s why they make the shows. So I can try to overanalyze them and fail miserably.
Now Surfing on the Intertron: You know, I love Kotaku. It’s a great site constantly updated with news of both the significant and obscure variety. I also love Deadspin. They’re probably the two sites I check more often than just about anything (other than my e-mail). I think the Gawker engine is great, primarily because commenting was on an invitation/audition basis. Keyword there is “was”. Even though trash like me was able to get a commenting account through the goodness of the great Will Leitch, who also later provided me with my magical 2,000 hits in 24 hours, it still disappoints me what kind of garbage is allowed to comment. I like being part of an exclusive club.
The reason for my whining is something that happened yesterday. Mega64 released their long-lost Red Steel promo video.
I liked it. I thought it was funny. I tend to like just about anything Mega64 does, so that makes me a slightly biased source, but still. I think it was funny. If someone disagrees, that’s their right. But I usually prefer when they at least state their opinions intelligently. For instance, one commenter claimed “If they had tried that crap here in NYC, they’d have been stone cold dead by the end of this video, and everybody would have cheered. End of story. What a couple of annoying twats.” This guy seems like a cool dude. He’s from New York, so he knows all about life on the streets. And he’s confident, too. “End of story”. I mean, I can’t really say anything about that, can I? The very next commenter says “I bet those guys have never gotten laid.” I should mention his name is kenshin001. This is a person who loves Kenshin so much that he not only named his screenname after it, he had to make sure he was the very first, and numbered himself not 1, not 01, but 001. Either that, or he wishes that Kenshin was a 00 Agent, but since he was around in the samurai days, that means he has to be 001. I mean, who could come before him? Now, I can’t make fun of this guy too much. I’ve gone by many nerdy screen names, including nge_akuma (NGE standing for Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Akuma being that awesome shotokan karate master who was in like half of Eva. Remember?), shoryuken_justice (the prototype for 140.85 that never even got beyond the front page), samsanov316 (a short Russian hockey player’s name misspelled with a 316 added, although that was intentionally done because it was silly, not because I’m a loser), and DukeDavis, the main character of an NES PowerGlove game who wears tight yellow short shorts. But at least I never accused anyone of never getting laid. And besides, have you seen Derrick lately? I’d totally go gay for him.
Anyway, the one that took the cake was the very first comment. “I would’ve grabbed my Real Steel sword, ran into the fray, and stuck each one of these idiots.” This was the only one I felt the need to respond to. I said “I think the more important thing here is that h8GWB owns a Real Steel sword. Where did you get it, a medieval fair? And why are you posting on this site? Shouldn’t you be feeding your pet snake?” I really don’t have anything against people with swords in their home. My best friend has two, one of which has a broken hilt because he hit a tree really hard with it. I also have nothing against snake owners. I know someone with a snake. It’s a lovely snake. But you figure someone with a real steel sword who brags about how badly he wants to stab people in a video probably just HAS to own a pet snake and look forward to medieval fairs so he can buy new swords, right? I mean, this kid probably loves fake weapons, doesn’t he?
His response is
“I was not under the impression that owning a metal sword gained me exclusive access to be in the medieval social group. I merely capitalized Real Steel as an obvious pun on Red Steel. Also, I had just been looking up airsoft guns.
It’s a chinese straight sword, btw. I guessed that would be implied by my avatar, but apparantly not.”
Fuck. I just got served. Although I guess the airsoft thing makes perfect sense. And he is quite the wordsmith. Real Steel? Touche. He’s made worm’s meat of me. This kid should start a blog. He can talk about his interactions with people on the internet, and he can average 4 hits a day, too. He would be a true rival. As for the second part, I should mention that his avatar is this.
So, as you can clearly see, he was talking about a Chinese straight sword. And no, if you’re seeing a picture of a chick’s ass, the image hasn’t changed since this post. Here’s his profile if you don’t believe me, since I’m sure you’re still very interested in this whole story. He even has a deviantart page, although I couldn’t track down a picture of him. I’m pretty sure he looks like this, though.
Anyway, long story short, I apologize for not being able to gather his type of sword by a chick’s ass, and he declares victory by announcing “I think that me and the rest of you Kotakites are on such different levels that it might be wise not to respond to the next few comments.”
Keep an eye out for ya, stingray.
Yeah. See ya!
TNT: Objection!
February 7, 2007In football: It’s fitting that I finish the season on such an embarassing note, having talked so much proverbial trash and being met, once again, with failure. My failures to pick a Colts game correctly are well-documented. 126-132-9 is the final tally for the season.
As for the game, a few thoughts.
- The Bears defense wasn’t stellar, but to limit that offense to 29 points when they’re on the field for almost 40 minutes is pretty damn good. Sure, they could’ve played better in some spots, but a lot of those atrocious breakdowns in coverage have to at least be partially attributed to fatigue.
- My pick for Devin Hester as MVP was spot-on for the first 10 seconds of the game. Then the Colts got smart and stopped kicking it to him.
- The Bears’ game plan going in looked like it was to keep it close with the defense, move the ball and kill time with the runningbacks, then have Grossman make only the safe, easy plays; no forcing anything, no crazy deep balls or anything like that. The problem was, Cedric Benson got hurt early, meaning Jones had to carry the team on his own, and he just wasn’t enough. As a result, Grossman had to make plays, and its hard to make plays when you’re fumbling the snap and tripping over yourself. When that happens, you have to make deep passes. And when Grossman had to do that, he just tossed up lame floaters that were pick city. And as a result of both facets of offense collapsing, the defense couldn’t save the day. Just a tough day all around.
- Rhodes should’ve been the MVP. Manning made the passes, but Rhodes ate up the clock and kept the defense on the field. Addai was impressive too, both his running and his catches. Manning was good, but he shouldn’t have been MVP.
What are ya playin?: I just finished Phoenix Wright: Justice for All, but I should be able to write about that at length later on this week. Maybe. Now that my DS is free, I’m resuming Final Fantasy V. It’s funny with RPGs; normally the turn-based, leveling up thing isn’t really my preference, but I still don’t mind it because usually the stories themselves are great and it’s almost more like reading a good book; a foreign feeling to me, since I normally hate books. Rarely do I play an RPG where I really dislike the gameplay, but for the most part, the turn-based thing is just something I live with. Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was a refreshing break from that, because even though each mission was almost exactly alike, the leveling system and jobs and skills and everything was really fun; and because there were only two mandatory characters, I felt like I had raised the other party members on my own time and almost felt a strange connection to them. I felt guilty about benching some guys in favor of newer, better party members, and wanted to give everyone equal playing time. I felt like a high school basketball coach or something.
Needless to say, it wasn’t very frequently that I got really into an RPG’s gameplay like that. But here comes Final Fantasy V, and it’s a similar thing, but much stranger. Whereas Tactics Advance told a fun story with cool characters and a great setting, FF5 doesn’t have a very good story, nor does it do a great job of telling us that story. There’s not much direction on what to do or where to go, and there’s just some really confusing parts that happen without prior or further explanation. It’s just a frustrating game. However, the gameplay manages to save its life with the introduction of the job system. Unlike in Tactics, where you get a certain skill by equipping certain items, in FF5 you get job points after each battle, and you level up that job with said points and get a new skill for each level. There’s two big differences. One is that you don’t know what skill you’re going to get, so you could fight 100 battles to get 100 points and end up with a useless skill. The second is that you can only equip two skills at a time, with one skill being automatically chosen based on your class. So it makes some choices tough.
It’s a fun game, but there’s just so many contradictions within itself that prevent it from being truly memorable. The graphics are typical SNES Final Fantasy graphics, but the sprites are good and your character changes his look based on his job, which is neato. The backgrounds also are groovy. The music, on the other hand, isn’t very good, particularly the World Map theme, which gets really annoying pretty quickly. But it’s fun enough to keep me playing, and I suppose in the end, that’s all that matters.
What are ya watchin?: I’m wasn’t positive if Sarah Silverman was funny. I think it might’ve been a whole “I think she’s hot, and if I laugh at her jokes, the chances of me slamming with her increase .001%” line of thinking. Although from some of the stories I’ve read (from Silverman herself), the amount of dudes who’ve slammed with her over the last 10 years is kinda high. But anyway, I’m pretty sure she is funny now, because her new Comedy Central show is really funny. It’s kind of like a spiritual cousin to Stella, although I won’t put it on the same level yet, but the first episode was just plain funny all the way through. I hope they can keep it up.
Now Surfing on the Intertron: I’ve been a huge fan of Mega64 for the last year or so, and as I was waiting patiently for Version 3, they surprisingly announced a new show last week called “The Blacks”. I feel like an idiot now, but while watching the trailer it took me a while to figure out it wasn’t supposed to be serious. It’s a parody of the emo/goth horror action movies that have been prevalent over the last few years, like The Covenant, Underworld, and most recently, Blood and Chocolate, which might be the funniest name of a movie ever. And hey, check this out; YouTube embedding! Future!!! WOAOAAAAHH!!!
Pressing sports current event: 15 in a row. At least they’re making most of them close. So it’s not a total bummer for the kids. Still, I’d love it if Wally Sczerbiak found another team to suck for instead of us. He’s taking playing time away from Gerald Green and Allan Ray.
In my fantasies: I traded Miguel Cabrera for the 4th overall pick in the draft. It’s a 5-player keeper league, and I was gonna end up having to drop Adam Dunn, so now I can keep him. I’m regretting it a little, because I loved Miggy C and he certainly is a better player than Dunn or Matt Holliday, whom I’m also keeping. But that 4th pick should be pretty helpful. I hope.
Site notes: Back to the old colors! Yay! I might even figure out how to change the bullet icons next to each title.
Don’t Even Try to Beat my Hustle
February 4, 2007Super Bowl time. Last year, I picked the Seahawks, and even though they probably should’ve won that game, I was still pretty much wrong. But my pick last year was more based off of my rooting interest; I didn’t care about Jerome Bettis, I just didn’t want the Steelers to win another Super Bowl. I hated the fans, I hated the players, I hated the coach, I hated everything about them. Meanwhile, I had always been a little partial to teams like the Seahawks, they were one of those teams who were never horrible, just an average team over the last 20 years who consistently finished second or third in their division and promptly lost their wild card game if they made the playoffs. If they won, it’d be a nice little heartwarming story, and a city starved for a championship could’ve finally had something to celebrate.
Instead, the Steelers won, and Bettis retired and Steelers fans gloated all summer. Fortunately, Ben Roethlisberger got in a motorcycle accident, had his appendix removed, had a debilitating concussion, and then just plain sucked for the majority of his season, all in the course of about 6 months. It was wonderful. The Steelers didn’t sniff the playoffs. And even though the whole world was behind the Steelers in January, no one gave a shit about them after that.
Now we have the Indianapolis Colts. The team of destiny. The best quarterback in the game who will finally go from Marino to Montana tonight. The team that had come so close so many times, only to haveit snatched away from them, not unlike *gasp* the 2004 Red Sox.
But you know what? I don’t like the Colts. Just like I’m sure Yankee fans didn’t just start going “No, I hope the Sox win it, they deserve it” after the ‘04 ALCS, I don’t want the Colts to win it. Sports are so much more fun with someone like Manning or A-Rod; a guy you can marvel at his stats and be afraid of whenever he’s facing your team, but you can always have something to make fun of them about. Last years Divisional playoff game between the Steelers and Colts was a fantastic game to watch. I wasn’t quite sure who I was rooting for, but if both of them could somehow lose at the same time, I’d be happy. But anyway, Mannig gets stuffed and sacked the entire game. Can’t get anything going. The Steelers are running out the clock, and Bettis is charging towards the end zone. And the motherfucker fumbles it. Nick Harper picks it up, and there’s nothing in front of him but green. Well, there’s also some blue, because of the walls and the endzone. And Harper starts running with it.
And for no apparent reason, the motherfucker cuts right. Right in front of Ben Roethlisberger, who manages to dive and stretch and get a piece of his ankle to trip him up. An easy win, gone, right there. Now, they can still win; it just won’t be easy. So they drive down the field to about the 30. 46 yard field goal, not too hard, right? Motherfucker misses it. And the look on Manning’s face is priceless. Even though he had sucked the entire game and was getting his ass rammed by Steeler linemen and linebackers and wild-haired safeties, in that one second, all his blame is focused on seven men. Five of whom are his offensive line, one of whom is Harper, and the last of whom is Vanderjagt.
That meek little smile that he gave, the same exact smile Joe Lo Truglio gives in Wet Hot American Summer after Ken Marino outruns him on foot against his motorcycle, that was why I disliked Peyton Manning. I didn’t hate him. I just disliked him. I hated much more the attention he got and the hype he was always allowed, although in the end, I appreciated it even more every time he crashed and burned.
With all that said, I’m picking the Bears tonight. For two reasons; one, as outlined in unnecessary detail above, I absolutely love seeing Peyton Manning lose a big game, particularly the ones where everyone thinks he’s finally going to do it. In 2004, everyone thought he could finally win in Foxboro because he had set that touchdown record and the Pats secondary was a combination of bruised and shitty. Of course, he’s held without a touchdown. When everyone doubts him, he seems to come through, like the last three games against the Pats (although, to be fair, the majority of national experts picked the Colts to win two weeks ago). But when they just award him the game before the ball’s even kicked off, he’s done.
Reason number two is much more practical. I think the Bears are better equipped to handle the Colts. Now, you can say that “a good defense doesn’t always win, look at two weeks ago, the Pats had a great defense”. And you’re probably right, except that great defense couldn’t stay on the field because of fatigue brought on by a week’s worth of the flu. The Bears have had no such flu and have most of their stars healthy. It’s a completely different story. There’s one other thing that stands out in this game: Devin Hester. The Colts almost lost two weeks ago because Ellis Hobbs kept getting the Pats in great field position after every kickoff. It doesn’t matter how bad your quarterback can be, if you only give him 50 yards to drive every series instead of 80, things are gonna be a lot easier for him. And Hester isn’t exactly Ellis Hobbs, here. He’s much, much better. He’s probably the best in the game right now, at least since Dante Hall’s mysterious disappearance from relevance a few years ago.
I think a lot of things point towards the Bears; they have some of the best linebackers in the game who are fast enough to cover Addai and Rhodes (the Pats linebackers are great instinctual players, but they’re starting to get pretty slow), they’ve got two recievers who can draw coverage from eachother in Berrian and Muhammad, the latter of whom we know can step it up for the Super Bowl. And Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson are a damn solid combination to have in the backfield. Meanwhile, the Indy defense finally stopped Tom Brady… after giving up 34 points.
The game, as everyone’s been saying, will come down to Grossman. I think the Bears are aware of this, and will make their gameplan (for the first half, anyway) as conservative and safe as possible to protect him. They’ll avoid risky plays and go for a lot of draws with the running game until the time is right to throw it.
There’s one last thing, as well. No one’s saying much about Chicago’s secondary, primarily because they aren’t perfect, but solid nonetheless. But the biggest help to a secondary is a great pass rush, and the Bears’ strength is their front seven. Pressure on the quarterback leads to stupid mistakes. And we all know Peyton loves to make stupid mistakes when everyone’s counting on him.
CHICAGO (+7) over Indianapolis
Bears 27 Colts 23
MVP Devin Hester
