mikeszekely

Yes. 1000 times yes.

A good create-a-fighter is nice, but Namco's last couple of fighters haven't really given us much to do with our created fighters, nor much to do at all except pick a character, run through a couple of fights, and watch a weak ending movie. It's like they figure that we should be happy shell out $60 for the most basic of modes, just because we have the ability to play online now... except that like I already said, I don't want to play online because I don't have the time to invest in mastering fighting games anymore. Is it too much to ask that the games be either cheaper, or have a more compelling single-player component? I mean, what ever happened to Weapon Master Mode? That's what kept me playing Soul Calibur II longer than any other fighter (save maybe DoA2 Hardcore, but I'm a sucker for unlockables). To re-frame my rant another way, as a fan of past Tekkens, I probably will get Tekken 6 at some point. Just not the $60 point.

The one element "Idol Talk" and "Pink Monsoon" really have in common is that they could both potentially pass for Madonna songs. Beyond that, I'm not hearing a ton of similarity. I mean, I really like "Idol Talk" (probably my second favorite Mac Plus song), but "Pink Monsoon" is quite possibly the worst song I've ever heard May'n sing.

When I went to get mine, there was a whole pallet of them right in the middle of the aisle. When I went back a few days later for something totally unrelated, they were completely gone.

Um... If that's not mention enough, then I'd like to go on record as saying that it's definitely the best episode after the mid season break. In fact, only "Fishsticks" and "The Ring" have been funnier this entire season.

It actually is. I'd go so far as to suggest that it might be the game of the year, although that might have as much to do with the number of triple-A titles delayed until 2010 as with the quality of the game itself. Long story short, though, it's a great game. Probably not. As much as I played the crap out of Tekken 2, 3, and Tekken Tag, I barely touched Tekken 4 or 5. Likewise, I played the crap out of Soul Calibur 2, but I didn't care much for 3 or 4. I'm just not into fighting games as much as I used to be. Probably because I don't have friends coming over to play them like before, and I don't have the time to invest in them to make playing online any fun (I still have a perfect record in Street Fighter IV... which is to say, I've never won a match online).

What? Are you serious? This episode had to have been my least favorite from Season 13 so far. Yeah, wrestling has become a big soap opera smut-fest. It was back when I watched it in high school... and I'm almost 30 now. This episode is at least 10 years too late, and take away the re-using of the "took his job" joke, the real-wrestling-looks-gay joke, and the "fake-wresting-is-really-fake" joke there was nothing to this episode. Nothing. I swear Monday rolled around, Matt and Trey hadn't figured out what to do an episode about, watched Raw, realized they hadn't made fun of the WWE yet, shat something out in 20 minutes and called it a day. Butters as a pimp was WAAAAAAY funnier than this episode, and that's not even comparing it to recent classics like "Fishsticks", "Major Boobage", "Over Logging" or "Eek a Penis!"

I'm not normally inclined to like pop tarts, but there's something about the blending of musical styles combined with her total lack of sanity that I find strangely entertaining.

Lady Gaga.

I was more into the whole Fire Bomber thing back in the day, when Macross 7 was still kind of fresh on fansubbed VHS tapes. At the time, I tried to track down some Humming Bird and some of Chie's solo stuff, but aside from Humming Bird's 1*2*3 and Unsweet albums, I was largely unsuccessful. That's not going to stop me from weighing in with my opinion, though. As someone who grew up on 70's and 80's rock, Macross 7 had the most appealing soundtrack I'd ever encountered in anime. In general, I don't collect anime soundtracks, because I don't usually care for pop music. Macross has had catchier music than most animes, and when I was in college and had more disposable income and an burning desire for all things Macross I collected all the Macross soundtracks I could find (all pre-Zero). But it seemed like I only really enjoyed Fire Bomber. With that in mind, I think the stuff on Let's Fire!! and Second Fire!! is a little over-produced, and the stuff they recorded as Humming Bird (at least on the two albums I had) was a little raw. Dynamite Fire!! was probably my favorite because it was a little cleaner than their Humming Bird stuff, but it sounded less commercial and more like Humming Bird. I think I'm going to give Re.Fire!! a try.

Not so good. Activision has the money to throw around and get the big names, but they can't seem to get a crew on a music game that's as good as Harmonix. And I'm not sure how much fun the controller will be. It doesn't look fun. I'm not sure how closely it mimics real DJ-ing, but I suppose that there was a reason why I'd always dreamed of being a rock star and not a DJ.

Although I seem to be a minority, I'm not. Yep. I'm going to pick up the Lego Rock Band, too. At least when I get tired of it I can import the songs into Rock Band 2.

I don't think you have to get the Collector's Edition. I was told any edition would do, and from what I'm hearing the code for it will actually be shipped with every retail copy of the game. Sorry, no clue. But I usually play Bioware's games twice; once as a "bad" guy, and once as a "good" girl. The Blood Dragon Armor is definitely going on my guy.

I haven't tried the DA:O character creator. I did go to Gamestop and pay off my reservation. I want that Blood Dragon Armor that carries over into Mass Effect 2!

I didn't have the Papa John's coupon. There's only one in my area, and I tried to order a pizza from them once... after being on hold for half hour, the kid that finally answered hung up on me.

In other news, I went to CD Warehouse today. I'm not sure how many areas they're in, so for those of you that don't know they started as a place to buy and sell used CDs, but they've branched into games and DVDs too. I managed to find Uncharted 2 for $39.99 there, plus I had a $10 off coupon. Score!

I heard that Wal-Mart has a "big screen" edition for the Blu-Ray with the extra IMAX footage. Went down to check it out, and I was surprised that they only want $19.98 for it.

Okay, cartridges could get mighty expensive. Nintendo's use of cartridges on the N64 is one of the things that hurt them back in the late 90's. But this debate got started because I complained that ZOE2, fun while it lasted, was too short to justify the price tag. Which was $50. Issues of the costs of other games are largely irrelevant, although the majority of disc-based games since the debut of the original PlayStation have been $50, with $60 games popping up on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The other issue that was brought up was rewards for speed runs through games. My counterpoint is that being encourage to run through a game as fast as you can is an incentive to replay a game that probably took you a lot longer than that to play through the first time. It's not really the same thing as taking your time and enjoying a game, only for it to be over in under 3 hours. You can justify that kind of crap in a $15 Xbox Live Arcade/PlayStation Network game, but I think when you do that in a $50 retail game, especially after claiming that it's twice as long as the previous one, I think Konami owes me $25.

Really weird. What kind of shipping did you pick? I picked the cheapest one, through the regular mail. It took awhile, but I did eventually get it.

Yeah, they did do that. And I don't have a problem with a game rewarding you for completing it in a certain short period of time, because that's incentive to replay it. You have to play a game several times before you'd be good enough to do it in the time limit (normally). I know it took me a lot longer than that to finish RE2 (closer to 8 hours). Likewise, I can finish Megaman 2 from start to finish in about a half hour, but I can promise you that it took me longer than that to finish one level my first time playing it. But when you open a brand new $50 game and finish it in under three hours on your first try (I replayed it without saving in about an hour and a half later, for the record), I'm sorry, you're just not getting your money's worth.

Their TF Wiki page?

Man! I actually stopped at my local TRU for the first time is probably over a month to check on those, but they didn't have them.

Skystalker shoots lasers out of the drone camera thingy on his forehead (or face... damned if I can tell from the pics). Mindwipe shoots lasers out of a similar panel on his forehead. Problem solved.

It better be longer than the last one! When people were saying that ZOE 2 would be twice as long as the original, I was expecting 6-8 hours since the first one took me just under 4 hours. I was pretty pissed when I finished ZOE 2 in about 2 hours and 45 minutes.

They combine at all? That's freaking awesome!