My Brain Wants to Play, But One Side Says “Nay”

Posted on February 21, 2016 by geelw

Oh, bother. I’ve been somewhat good for a while, trying to not explode into a sarcastic ball of caffeinated noise bouncing around the room ranting about all sorts of stuff. It’s hard to write about entertainment you like when the real world is becoming a lot less entertaining and a lot more unlikable. We may be in the process of having Max Shreck voted into office by a bunch of goggle-eyed TV-raised rubes who believe that well-clothed celebrity charlatan with the failed businesses who also took money from people who paid to attend a “university” with his name on it (just because it had his name on it) is someone who can “get the job done” and who just might get the job done. Well, if that “job” in question is traveling backwards in time to a few lousy places in history.

Ugh. Yep, here comes the Howling Man…

(Thanks, N0stril!)

Anyway, all that and more have been rattling around in my busy little head of late and that rattling is getting louder. While I deal with that noise, I’m going to be nice and stick to writing more about stuff I like primarily as a means of keeping me distracted while I deal with what’s turning into a weirder year than even I expected. Back in a bit – I have a ton of notes and press kits that I’ve been going over this past week to keep me busy, but I could use a nice adult beverage and an ear to bend.

The Violent Games Question Makes Me Want To Strangle Someone

Posted on August 18, 2015 by geelw

Ha and ha. Not really, but I am so tired of this nonsense getting regurgitated into news stories complete with clueless Joes and Janes on the street who come off as more ignorant than informed. If violent games make people violent, as someone who’s been playing them (as well as many others that aren’t violent) for decades, where’s my spot on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List? I’d say adults who beat their children and animals because they somehow think that they can comprehend yelling perfectly without being properly taught what right and wrong are would be bigger menaces to society than some kids who get their paws on games they’re too young to play.

THAT said, I’ll agree that some kids and adults with certain psychological issues can indeed be overstimulated by ANY form of violent OR even non-entertainment entertainment from music to movies to games. The recent APA study is flawed and like other studies that have attempted to directly (or indirectly, as the study finds “insufficient evidence” when all is said and done) link violent entertainment and violent behavior, makes claims the news media never really fact checks when it needs a hot story to grab some clicks. Ugh. Anyway, I’ll shut up now and get back to some actual work. I’d have posted my review of Dungeon Travelers 2 by now, but I’m waiting for the Vita USB cable I ordered to arrive. There are no blood and guts in that game at all, but it does have half-naked anime gals in it and my mind hasn’t been corrupted by that at all…

Back to the Future: What’s Old Is New Game News @E3 2015

Posted on June 16, 2015 by geelw

(thanks, magicalmotionmuseum!)

It’s a good news/bad news thing today. The good news: time travel DOES exist, ladies and gents. Final Fantasy VII is finally getting a remake for the PS4 and possibly PC. The Last Guardian is now a PS4 exclusive (as I predicted a while back) Shenmue 3 was announced yesterday evening at Sony’s E3 event as a surprising show-announced Kickstarter project for PS4 and was COMPLETELY funded in about twelve hours (breaking a Kickstarter record). Even King’s Quest and HITMAN are making comebacks (and sooner than you’d think).

Microsoft’s formerly forward-looking only Xbox One gets Xbox 360 backward compatibility and legendary developer Rare is releasing 30 of its classic arcade and console games for $30 in a crazy must-have bundle this August (exclusively for the console, of course). Between this and the return of DOOM, the acceptance of indie retro games as necessary for part of a console’s success and other interesting developments, it’s a huge win-win situation for gamers with a good deal of disposable income. And no, I didn’t forget Nintendo in all this. I’m just holding out for a separate post on their always nostalgic ways and means of getting loyal fans continually hooked in. Give me a bit of time on that as it’s still construction central here with more to come.

Now, the bad news: In reality time travel DOESN’T exist at all. With all those new games coming (and this post doesn’t count the VR games invasion happening soon), no one will actually any free time to play them all unless their Doctor has a certain “timey-wimey” prescription that allows them to have their fun and return to reality not having missed much sleep or even a day of work. Oh well…

Snake No Longer Solid: Kojima, Konami Part Ways

Posted on March 20, 2015 by geelw

A cryptic tweet and some rumblings from the business side of things later and it looks as if Hideo Kojima/Kojima Productions and Konami are breaking up at least in terms of the Metal Gear Solid franchise. Gamers and industry folk are all going “!” at this news as they speculate on the reasons for the rift turned split. I’ll save the guesswork for deciphering the facts to come later on, but Konami is pushing forward in that way big corporations that own assorted IP tend to do. They’ve removed Kojima’s name from the marketing materials for Metal Gear Solid: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and is currently looking for a team to help create a new Metal Gear Solid series. As lousy as that news is to many core MGS fans, you’d best believe applicants will be jockeying for the opportunity of a lifetime… Continue reading →

Nintendo Goes Mobile With DeNA: It’s The End of an Era, The Beginning of Another

Posted on March 17, 2015 by geelw

EDIT! The funny thing is, I just re-read (or more precisely, completed reading) an article on this and it seems that Nintendo IS in total creative control on the developement front with their mobile lineup. DeNA is helping out with the behind the scenes backend production stuff. This bodes well for anyone concerned that Nintendo is shifting their licenses to a company that will slap a pay wall around any fun and sap wallets on a regular basis. My mistake! Oops. Well, let’s see what’s coming when it arrives, right? Right.

Yikes, what a big fat news item to wake up to. Anyway, it was pretty much a given that this sort of thing would happen (particularly if you read a few industry sites over the last year or so and started putting pieces of news together), but what does it all mean at the end of the day for longtime fans? More games to play and on platforms they never expected to see them on, most likely. Now, I’m sure Nintendo didn’t “sell out” their franchises to DeNA (or GungHo Online for that matter, see previous post). And I’m sure they’ll have final say in what gets out there. I do know that DeNA’s games, while criticized for their pay walls, happen to do well at getting people to play them and some of the more popular ones emulate gameplay elements found in Nintendo’s Pokemon series (which was created for them by GameFreak). Anyway, I’m just not going to say a peep more about this deal until I see what games are coming and how they’ll get to the fans. I know the most die-hard loyalists don’t want to see the words “free to play” attached to anything Nintendo does. But the sad thing is, this seems to be the wave of the future (yuck) and an unavoidable means of reliable revenue. Ah well…

Club Nintendo Bites The Dust (Soon). Replacement Parts Available (Later).

Posted on January 21, 2015 by geelw

While I personally haven’t taken much advantage of Club Nintendo rewards other than to nab a few downloads, the end of a relatively brief era is approaching as Nintendo winds the program down in favor of a new (and to be announced) loyalty system. Six years may be dog years in terms of the internet, but as usual, Japan got the best goodies while North America’s rewards were more along the acceptable to “Hey, that’s REALLY awesome!” set of points for stuff “freebies”.

That said, I’ll take what the company says about killing off the club and replacing it with something newer and shinier at face value as well as claim my free copy of Flipnote Studio 3D in February 2015. It’s too bad that freebie isn’t Wii U compatible, though. I could see a lot of people who don’t use a 3DS or even a 3DS XL because of the screen size maybe wanting to try out the image creation software and play around with it on a bigger screen. Ah well. RIP, Club Nintendo!

On Sony: Oh, Baloney!

Posted on December 15, 2014 by geelw

Someone asked me last week what I thought about the recent Sony hack (allegedly from North Korean hackers upset about an upcoming movie) and I told him I’d have to get back to him on that because I wasn’t following the story at all. Well, I wasted a half hour looking it up and can safely say a hearty “Who Cares?” springs to mind.

I’d bet you a whole penny that EVERY entertainment company on the planet is stocked with executives behaving badly who say nasty things about people they know, don’t know or don’t care about after they leave their sight. Big deal. The fact that news organizations are bending over backwards to churn out daily updates on who said what about whom and how “bad” it all is in mind-blowing to me because it’s not only OLD news, it’s something anyone and everyone (who’s not a bald-faced liar) has done to someone else they’ve worked for or with… Continue reading →

Random Art: Monday’s Not as Manic, But a Bit Chuggy…

Posted on November 24, 2014 by geelw

Hmmm. Things are moving NOW with the internet up here, but for about an hour or two it was slow and annoying. I had to reset my computer to make sure things weren’t mucking up on this end (they weren’t), but now things are mostly okay. The crazy news of the day is NYC is supposed to be transforming 10,000 former pay phone locations into public wi-fi hubs, which is stupendous news. Well, if you live in the wealthier areas of the city and its outer boroughs, that is. According to the New York Daily News, some poor neighborhoods (which have MORE people in them, by the way) getting these extremely helpful solutions are getting kneecapped slower service on their kiosks, a bad thing if you consider access to information comes in handy for less educated people who need to be up on things. Granted, it’s up to those communities to put a foot down and demand the same service the hipsters get, but we’ll see what happens when these stations start rolling out.

Anyway, the ~~lady~~, er, tree sketch above came from my head while I was waiting for the service here to kick back in. “Ar my seams straight?” Yeah, they’re fine, ma’am. Okay, now that things are back to “normal”, I need to get back to work!

Eh, You May As Well FAKE Scare Yourself to Death This Weekend…

Posted on October 3, 2014 by geelw

(Thanks, Sleaze-O-Rama!)

Let’s see now… this week, no, most of the last few months have been absolutely annoying and in you sit in front of the TV news for more than five minutes, terrifying. Woo hoo. Anyway, not that ignorance is bliss or anything, but sometimes it’s just good to drop everything and chill (your spine) out with something fake, stupid and scary to counteract something real, stupid and scary. Or you can go serious and scary – it’s your move. I’m probably going to watch ALIEN again at some point just to prepare for Alien Isolation on Tuesday. I was thinking about watching more disease-related stuff like Outbreak, Contagion, The Andromeda Strain, Scream and Scream Again or Coma, but a friend’s mother just went through some surgery today and I didn’t want my choice to see out of place for any reason.

Well, fake panic is always a good diversion, right? Sooooo… PANIC!

(Thanks, Horror Theater Video!)

There’s also some stupid ongoing game industry nonsense kicked up by fools for no other reason than a weird political agenda that’s seeped into things and has boiled over into weirdness and ugly stuff, but I’ve only wasted about a half hour of my life reading up on the basics and it’s pretty much garbage and fake outrage that’s gone way overboard because of a select, vocal class of internet idiot. Blech, and make mine a double, bartender. Anyway, go catch something primal scary or extremely silly this weekend, say away from the news (or internet if need be) and just ENJOY the hell out of this weekend, folks.

Not A Slow Day, But A Busy One…

Posted on May 14, 2014 by geelw

Don’t think the lack of updates today means I’m snoozing. I was up and about most of the day looking at stuff including the best bicycles I’ve ever seen and an upcoming machine that changes air into drinking water (SCIENCE!). More on those later.

And yeah, yeah, I do KNOW that Microsoft dropped the price of the Xbox One by $100 by dropping Kinect, but it’s a weird and bad thing to do. First of all, they spent SO much time last year telling everyone multiple times how important Kinect was to their console/entertainment center/surveillance device/space heater, but all of a sudden, it’s NOT so important as to now be an option? Weird. I still don’t want one unless I never need to connect online and can play EVERY game off a disc. But I guess at this point, all I need to do is ask nicely or act cranky and get mad on a message board and the company will bend over backwards to give me a custom console experience like no other. Yeah, surrrrrre.

Back in a bit. As in tomorrow.