Look, I’ve become pretty anti motion-controls. I bought into it in 2006, because let’s be honest: the Wii had remarkable potential. However, nearly my entire Wii library consists of games released in that year between November 2006 and November 2007. In 2008 I bought an Xbox 360 and never looked back.

I thought motion controls pretty much ran their course. But then the next year (2009) you upped the ante with Motion Plus. True 1:1 motion. Neat. Now such a thing still wasn’t enough to convince me motion controls were all that important or superior to the good old fashioned, reliable, tried and true, traditional controller. But then now I’ve played Skyward Sword for 7 hours and I’ve started to come around again.

Don’t celebrate just yet: I still think it’s shit. I would pay obscene amounts of money just to play a Zelda game without having to move. When I play a video game, I want to sit in my chair so long, and so still, that I start to fuse with it. But I would be a lot more on board if you weren’t going in completely the wrong direction with implementation.

You, Nintendo, on the other side of the coin, have become pretty anti traditional-controls. So much so that you write off anything a simple button press could do, with shaking. Shake the Wii remote to make Donkey Kong pound the ground! Shake the Wii remote to make Mario spin! Shake the Wii remote to make Link roll! Shake the Wii remote to do this, to do that!

Shaking isn’t a miracle of motion controls. Shaking does NOT add any value to gameplay. You know what adds value to gameplay? The fact that I can swing my sword around and Link does the same, and the direction in which I attack a Deku Baba actually makes a difference. That I can control the new Beetle item piloting it through the air by tilting the Wii remote, or get air with my Loftwing by flapping it. Hell, the fact that I don’t even need the sensor bar is pretty cool, despite the fact that now I need to constantly babysit the Wii Remote Plus’s calibration. (This. Sucks.)

Combining these admittedly awesome moves with a button press for everything else would be the perfect marriage between traditional and motion controls. But you don’t seem to want any of that. Screw cohesion.

My faith isn’t exactly reassured when I read this article last night where Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma basically says they could never go back to button control. That makes me sad not only as a Zelda fan, and former Nintendo fan (yes, former), but as a traditional gamer.

With you it’s motion controls all the way, or nothing. That’s a pretty dangerous position to take, Nintendo. The keyboard didn’t go away because of the mouse. We need all these technologies to come together, because together the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

You, Nintendo, should be the one company showing the rest how to achieve synergy.

I drove for a bit, enjoying the fact that I was driving in the rain (because I’m strange like that), and as I rounded a corner, I heard an unexpected ”bang!” noise behind my car. I’m used to hearing unexpected noises and not being able to explain them, so I said “what the fuck was that” aloud, thought about it for a few seconds, concluded that my brain made up the noise, and I kept driving.

After driving for 15 minutes or so, I stopped into Wal-Mart to do my super late-night shopping, which is nice because there’s almost nobody there and there are no lines at check-out. I wandered around in there for about an hour, as per usual, drove home, brought in the groceries, put them away… and froze when I saw the vacant spot on my desk where the keyboard should have been.

“I just did something monumentally stupid, didn’t I?” I said aloud.

It didn’t take much to connect the dots. The loud “bang!” noise I’d heard while I was driving was the sound of the keyboard sliding off the roof of my car and hitting the pavement.

So I spent several minutes yelling and cursing and waving my fists and generally calling myself a moron. It’s a $50 keyboard; I have a bit of an attachment to it. Plus, I’m pretty sure that when I put the keyboard on the roof of my car, I chuckled to myself about all of the people I’ve seen that have driven away with stuff on top of their cars… so that didn’t make it sting any less.

When I settled down, the ol’ logical brain started to kick in and reassure me. ”OK, I know exactly where it is, so that’s the biggest problem solved. Only four more potential problems: 1) Someone found it and picked it up, 2) It’s been sitting in the rain for over an hour now, so it might be corroded and useless, 3) Someone could have ran over it, 4) It’s very likely broken just from hitting the ground. As far as #1 goes, it’s really late at night, so odds are nobody has even seen it yet. #2? It probably hasn’t been long enough to corrode, and plus, water’s only a major issue if there’s electricity going throgh it when it gets wet, and it’s obviously not plugged into anything. #3 is possible, but again, it’s really late at night, and the road it fell off on is very under-traveled. #4 is highly possible, but there’s the remote chance that it might not be broken.” So, adding all those up, I realized that the keyboard might still be there, it might still be ok, and that a half-hour round-trip is certainly worth $50. So I hopped in the car and drove all the way back to where I heard the “bang!”.

And there it sat, completely undisturbed, in the middle of the street.

I picked it up and brought it into my car for inspection. It had some nasty road rash on one side where it hit, but overall, looking at it right side up, it was still in excellent condition – not even any keys had popped out. It had landed key-side down, meaning mostly just the back of it was wet – the keys were protected. As I was inspecting it, another car drove by. Hoping that it was still ok, I drove home, telling myself over and over “you’re a lucky bastard”.

By the time I got back to it, it had been sitting in the rain for nearly two hours, and nothing had happened to it. If it had happened during the day, someone surely would’ve heard the “bang!”, and they surely would’ve come to investigate, saw a really nice keyboard, and said “mine!” And if I’d gotten there just 15 seconds later, that car that drove by might’ve ran over it. It is, after all, a black keyboard, and was sitting on a black street, in the middle of the night. I only saw it because I was looking for it.

So when I got home, I turned it upside down, and put a fan on it overnight to dry it out. Does it still work? Well, I typed this post on it. Somehow, a vertical drop from five feet at thirty miles an hour didn’t kill it, and neither did two hours in the rain. It seems that they DO make them like they used to.

So, now you know why I’m a moron, and why I’m a lucky bastard. I fully expect the universe to compensate for this good fortune proportionately, which, by my figures, means I should get hit on the head by a meteorite any day now.

Nope!

I managed to install Leopard on my iMac G4 and it runs just as smoothly as the latest version of Tiger. How did I do it? I found a list of steps elsewhere on the internets that I’ve refined and will share here.

Step 1: Create a Leopard DVD Disk Image

I imaged my retail copy of Leopard using Apple’s own Disk Utility that comes with OS X. I had read to do this, and I did it, but I suspect you may get away with skipping this step. If you want to be safe, go ahead and create an image.

Step 2: Find a USB Stick

If you have a USB stick, great. My iMac G4 only has a CD-ROM drive, so I can’t use the Leopard DVD. In fact, like the previous step, you may be able to skip this if your computer has a DVD-ROM. However, these are the steps I took, and it’s pretty cool to boot off a USB, so you can still do this if only for the fun of it.

What you’ll want to do is format your USB stick and make sure you put an Apple Partition Map on it by going into the formatting options. Presumably this enables the USB stick to boot.

Step 3: The Terminal

After I formatted my USB stick, I was then instructed to enable owners on it. I’m not entirely sure this is necessary, but it’s painless to do. Better safe than sorry.

Open the Terminal and enter the following command: sudo vsdbutil -a /Volumes/device

You may be required to enter a root password.

Step 4: The Clone!

Again, if your computer has a DVD-ROM and you have a copy of Leopard, these steps up until now may not be neccesary. Otherwise, the next step here is to clone that image you made (or clone the DVD directly) onto the USB stick.

I was made aware of some software called Carbon Copy Cloner which is free to use. It’s also pretty straightforward to use. Just make sure you check the option to erase destination files on the USB stick before cloning.

Step 5: The Moment of Truth

Whatever your intended method has been so far, this is where it all comes together. Put your DVD in your DVD-ROM, or your USB stick in a port, and reboot your Mac. Keep the Control+Option+O+F keys all firmly pressed until you enter the Open Firmware screen.

The point here is to trick Leopard’s installer into thinking your computer is a 867 MHz or faster machine. Also, if booting from USB, it’s entirely possible that your Mac doesn’t natively boot from USB… but it is capable.

These are the commands I entered:

dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int ” clock-frequency” property
boot usb1/disk:3,\\:tbxi

If you’re going to attempt booting from a DVD, you won’t need to enter that third command. That just forces the Mac to boot from USB… you won’t want that. usb1 may not work for you, either. It depends on which USB port you’re booting from. It could be usb0, usb2, etc. Keep that in mind.

With any luck, the machine will boot the installer, and it will be none the wiser. The only problem you may encounter is the slow speed at which it installs. On my 700 MHz iMac G4, it took just under 4 hours. Worth it, though!

If you’re feeling this creative and oxygen deprived, all you have to do is grab a piece of paper, write some stuff, and fold it so only the last line is visible. Grab a friend or a stranger and have them continue it!

Space

     One day I went to space, but it was out of order and shut down for maintenance because the doohickey had lodged in his anus. Space anus is the worst because gravity cannot hold it together. Suddenly, I knew the only thing that would work would be a potato. But not any old potato would do. Only a golden potato with an anus was acceptable. This way, it would take over the lodged item in its own anus and not feel pain. It was a brilliant idea, but my brain had other ideas. I died from an aneurysm just as I finished writing this senten

Cat

My cat’s anus suddenly erupted in a violent display of poo and hair, I scarcely had time to react! I gathered my senses as quickly as I could and took her to the vet. When I got there, I tried to tell the vet what was wrong, but he wouldn’t listen! Instead, he assumed I was the animal and that my cat was my owner.
     “How could this be?” I asked myself aloud. “What does this mean?” Before the vet could answer, my cat disembowelled him! As this day had not been any weirder, my cat started to speak.
     ”Yes, it is I, your cat, speaking for the first time!”
     Well, that was it. I don’t know why, but what was said made me VERY ANGRY! So angry, in fact, that I sprouted claws. Very sharp claws. I jammed them into the vet’s eyes and his dead body reanimated with life.
     ”B… b… brains! Must eat cat brains!”
     The vet shuffled towards my cat with those crazy new eyes fixed on its furry, delicious head. The cat was frozen. She could not believe what was happening. She started this day by violently blowing out her insides and it seems her day might end the same way.
     She was OK with that. It was a long day. She was ready for the end. nShe closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then it happened.
     The cat entered into this sort of “Feral Koala Mode” that it had learned on the internet and began violently eviscerating the zombie vet, finishing him off for good. He was finally a dead pile of human scraps… except for his remaining brain.
     The cat ate it and suddenly went back in time! She reappeared the very moment she started shitting everywhere.

• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
• Half-Life 2: Episode One
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
• Assassin’s Creed
• BioShock
• Half-Life 2: Episode Two
• Portal
• Mass Effect
• Metroid Prime 3
• Grand Theft Auto IV
• Mirror’s Edge
• Fallout 3
• Assassin’s Creed 2
• Borderlands
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Mass Effect 2
• Minecraft
• Red Dead Redemption
• Portal 2
• L.A. Noire

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but if there is any game you see here that you haven’t played yet and you’re considering Duke Nukem Forever, I would suggest one of these first. Even then, there’s a whole lot of upcoming games I’m excited about that I would also recommend first, such as: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Batman: Arkham City, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, and Rage in 2011; Mass Effect 3, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, the new Tomb Raider, and BioShock Infinite in 2012. Also possibly coming out in 2012 is Doom 4, which we should hopefully hear about in a couple months this Quakecon.

If you don’t want to read any more, the short of this review is I’m basically playing Red Dead Redemption now. This was a game I got last year and never really played much of it. I’ve only put in 7 hours so far, but those 7 hours have been uninterrupted fun. Which is more than I can say for Duke Nukem Forever.

Let me make a few things clear. I never bought the criticisms everybody had before the game came out, and despite my utter hatred for the game now, I still don’t buy those criticisms. Graphics, regenerative health, and a 2-weapon limit are pretty poor excuses to dislike a game. It’s funny, really, because many people after having played Duke Nukem Forever blame these exact things. I haven’t read one complaint yet about what finally pushed me over the edge.

Bullshit difficulty.

I played the game on the easiest setting. Now, I don’t suck at video games; on my first play through them I like to be comfortable. There’s no shame in playing on easy if you just want to have fun, but Duke Nukem Forever doesn’t even give you that option.

Even on easy, the weakest enemies in the game can take your health down to 0 in one shot. So imagine what a boss fight is like! And that’s exactly what ended this game for me. Minor boss spoilers ahead. Skip the next two paragraphs if you like.

I probably made it about three quarters into the game. I don’t know exactly. I made it to the Octabrain King, whenever that happens in the game. Moments before you encounter it, you’re on this lift which has a few panels to duck behind, and a little control booth. This lift starts moving, and suddenly the Octabrain King emerges in front of it and starts attacking. This in itself wouldn’t be so hard, except Octabrains also spawn and start attacking.

Even if you’ve played Duke Nukem 3D, you’ll know these enemies were pretty tough then, and they’re no different now. So not only do you have to deal with their attacks, you have to deal with their King. With only a certain amount of health, and a weapon that deals splash damage (because bosses can only be defeated with explosive weapons).

Fuck me.

So if you can imagine this scenario in your head, you can see how someone might not last long. As I said, even on easy, the weakest of enemies can knock you down pretty good. I should add that this wasn’t the first time I encountered this kind of difficulty spike, only that it was the last straw in a game that seemed to constantly do this from the beginning.

I don’t even want to waste more time on this game by reviewing it. I’m done.

I’ve mostly forgotten about the Wii U already, though. Instead, I continue to be pumped about the games that are coming out in the next two years. In a few days, Duke Nukem Forever is out in North America. It was already out on store shelves two days ago internationally, and unfortunately it’s receiving pretty unanimous negative reviews. I decided today to no longer let that get to me. I want to enjoy it, but a lot of opinions have me questioning my pre-order. Oh well, I never expected it to be awesome, but I’m still excited to play it. I don’t know; I’ll post back here later this week with my thoughts on it.

I’m a pretty forgiving person (usually; see: Wii U, haha), so my review will likely be positive.

Rage has been pushed back a month. I really want this game, but I never considered pre-ordering it. I still don’t. I’m short on money as it is, and it was already too close to Skyrim. Now it’s even closer. The wackiest part is they’re both Bethesda products. I don’t blame any company not wanting to go against Skyrim (I have no evidence, but I suspect Mass Effect 3 and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, among others, were delayed for that reason), but despite Bethesda owning both Skyrim and Rage, most gamers can still only buy one of those first. They must be confident.

Of course, Skyrim: the only thing I’m probably the most excited about this year (and that’s even counting Zelda, of which I’m most a fan of). The footage from E3 was incredible. Probably the most interesting thing I saw was how they’re incorporating Fallout 3-style perk trees, which are in the form of constellations. Wild!

(“Wild” is a word I’ve been saying a lot this week).

I haven’t kept up with any information on Skyward Sword. I almost don’t want to. I know it’s coming out this holiday, and I think I’ll let my knowledge remain with that fact only. To be blunt, at this point Zelda is about the only tether left that’s connecting me to Nintendo. I think I’ll keep that tether in as best condition as I can ;)

“Three days later” is a pretty vague Simpsons reference.

I’ve been reading a lot of reaction to the Wii U on the internets and I’ve actually been quite surprised. Back in 2006, when I think the Wii was properly unveiled that E3, it seemed like an amazing time to be a gamer. The possibilities of the Wii remote seemed unimaginable, yet endless. Nintendo made motion feel like the next logical step.

However, as the years went on, the way I ultimately ended up feeling about the Wii seemed to be the opinion of a large number of people: Nintendo forgot us. In this craze of trying to get Mom and Grandma into video games, with “casual” games that didn’t require a lot of investment on the part of the player, it felt like Nintendo had abandoned those of us who thrive on “hardcore” 70-100+ hour experiences. And third parties were providing no better content.

I said I was “quite surprised” about the reaction of the Wii U. It seemed pretty conclusive that most people felt motion controls were a terrible idea and that the Wii “had no games.” I feel the same way about Kinect as I do about the Wii.

With Nintendo’s conference this year, it’s like we’ve gone back to 2006 and we were just shown the Wii remote again. And rather than a collective “huh?” there seems to be a collective “NINTENDO WINS E3!” My problem is that Nintendo hasn’t addressed anything. They said they had listened to us, and admittedly there were games shown that highlighted Nintendo’s new commitment to third parties (game footage that was from Xbox and PS3 versions, by the way). But I didn’t see any games. I saw a controller. I saw a conference dedicated entirely to a controller. Nintendo didn’t talk hardware, and they didn’t talk games.

That’s where they lost me.

I feel like a lot of our problems with Nintendo lately is that they just aren’t offering the kind of content on their system that we want. And that’s why I’m entirely unimpressed with the Wii U right now, and its controller. I don’t give a shit about this controller. I want to see games.

Why should I care about Arkham City on Wii U when I’ve already decided to buy it for Xbox 360? Any of the big-name third party titles that come out on it, I’m going to want for the 360. They’re going to be a year old by the time they’re on Wii U anyway. So what reason do I have to want a Wii U? As far as I’m concerned, Nintendo didn’t show me any. As far as third parties go, I feel it’s “too little too late.”

Can you see how I’m feeling this is just a repeat of the Wii?

Here’s where I stand as a gamer. Right now my largest collection of games span two systems. The largest and still undefeated is the GameCube at a total of 37. The other is my Xbox 360 collection standing at a total of 27, with an additional 13 already released games and games still yet to come out that I have my eyes on. My Wii collection stands at 9, which is clearly less than the 13 Xbox titles I’ve still yet to buy.

You can see where I started having a problem with Nintendo, and the Wii U hasn’t addressed any of my concerns.

So why do I care so much? I grew up Nintendo. The first video game I ever laid my young eyes on was Super Mario Bros. There might as well have been an NES in the womb with me. NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, GameBoy, GameBoy Pocket, GameBoy Color, GBA, GBA SP, GBA Micro, DS Phat, DS Lite… I owned them all.

Ultimately the Wii became the first Nintendo system I stopped giving a shit about, and the Wii U will be the first Nintendo system in a long time that I likely won’t be getting on launch day.

Mind you, in Nintendo’s defense, I believe there’s one more E3 left to go until this system is released by the end of 2012. But I think they got it backwards. E3 2005 was all about Revolution, E3 2006 was all about the Wii remote. The controller was the last thing they hyped. I don’t feel they have the right priorities. On any system, I don’t care about the controller. Why is the controller such a big deal? I feel like they might have this really awesome sports car, and they spent the entirety of their time circle jerking over the steering wheel.

That doesn’t exactly inspire me. I see the potential the Wii U controller has, but the Wii didn’t exactly reach its potential either.

All they’re going to do is drive this sports car at 20 MPH.

God believer: God does exist, because you can’t prove that he doesn’t.

Me: You’re both wrong. You can’t use a lack of evidence to prove anything. Also, you’re both stupid. Shut up.

If you were Frued you might be right, incidentally.

Moving on, there’s one missed opportunity that always comes to my mind. A game I always, without doubt, believe the Wii was invented for. Luigi’s Mansion 2.

You might look at the title of this post and make the connection. You might not. But luckily for you, Mr. Unobservant, connecting these dots is why we’re here. In 2007 Valve released Portal as an experiment bundled with the hotly anticipated Team Fortress 2, and the equally as anticipated Half-Life 2: Episode Two. Portal ultimately stole the show and walked away with being one of 2007′s Games of the Year. The quiet word from Valve’s mouth before Portal was released that, basically, if the game did okay they would consider a sequel.

Sequel it is! with Portal 2 on the way in a matter of months as of this writing.

Admittedly, Luigi’s Mansion is no Portal. It had the distinction of being a launch title for the GameCube, an honored thing for sure, but it never came close to Portal’s runaway success and explosive fandom and oft repeated quoting (to the eventual annoyance of all of Internetland). Regardless, I believe there’s no doubting how important Luigi’s Mansion 2 would be. Luigi’s Mansion could be described, perhaps unfairly, as a tech demo. A showpiece of the GameCube’s graphical prowess. A demo with limited gameplay, and short length, but undoubtedly FUN.

Does that sound like another game? Maybe? A game that begins with P and ends with ortal?

If you were thinking Paraplégiques Kombat des Mortal, you’re incorrect.