The Man in Blak
-
Content count
2223 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by The Man in Blak
-
-
Currently on the clock: Gert T
Can pick at any time
bps21
Porter (x2)
-
I can't see any good coming from focusing the next movie on an Iron Man rip-off with a flaming sword and assassin brainwashing from the Secret Order of Saint Dumas Or Whatever, even if he's revealed to be the long-lost captain of the Enterprise-D.
-
You're correct, it is still a Sony exclusive in Japan. As I mentioned above, it's not about Microsoft "winning" Square-Enix altogether - it's about expanding the business relationship they have for future efforts. FFXIII gives Microsoft a great opportunity to showcase how well a major Square game can do on their platform. If the game does exceptionally well in NA and EU, then Square may have more of a reason to work with Microsoft globally, which would be a major boost to Microsoft (especially considering how far behind they are in Japan).
-
The blister on Kerry Wood’s right index finger is likely to send him to the disabled list for the 12th time in his career.“We’re coming to the point where we’re going to have to come to a conclusion about what to do,” manager Lou Piniella said Sunday.
Wood hasn’t pitched since July 11, so the Cubs can backdate him on the DL to July 12, meaning he can return Sunday against Florida at Wrigley Field. That means Carlos Marmol will assume the closer’s role in Arizona and for most of the four-game series against the Marlins. Marmol pitched a perfect ninth Sunday with a seven-run lead after being booed at Wrigley Field last week when he blew a five-run lead in the ninth inning.
“It’d be nice if that day didn’t happen, but that’s life,” Marmol said. “Every day is a different day.”
Do Cubs fans expect Marmol to be perfect every time out? “I think so,” he said. “Last time I was there they were booing me. I don’t know why.”
-
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas (Xbox 360)
-
All right, it's been a week since the last vote was cast, so here are the results:
Edwin MacPhisto - 14 (2 first place votes)
The Man in Blak - 10 (2 first place votes)
Milky - 10 (1 first place vote)
TheOriginalOrangeGoblin - 9 (3 first place votes)
Tzar Lysergic - 9 (2 first place votes)
Mr. Slim Citrus - 5 (1 first place vote)
The Sperm - 4
bps21 - 4
Ravenbomb - 3 (1 first place vote)
RHR - 2
incandescent - 1
Even with my disqualification of the third-place tie vote with Cowboy Numbers, Edwin wins this one pretty handily, gaining the most points by appearing on the most ballots. Pretty startling that a collection with two Bon Jovi selections and an Eagles live album managed to pick up more first place votes than anybody else in the draft.
-
Not only that, but they appear to be completely oblivious to the fact that they're playing on the rails while a freight train called "disk space issues" is screaming down the tracks; both of their major alternative selling points to consumers (Virtual Console) as well as third-party developers (easier digital distribution through WiiWare) are going to be completely gridlocked by this time next year without some kind of hard drive peripheral intervention.Only geeks and otaku care about that.
The rest can just clear out their "fridge" to make more room. It's still tied to your console, you'll have to just wait to download the crap again or move it onto an SD card and move it back, which isn't too much faster.
The solution is staring them in the face--make games bootable from SD cards. However, they probably see PSP issues and are worried. VC already has been effectively hacked with the WAD Injector trick.
I agree that their paranoia towards SD card loading is kind of silly, considering the current hackery in play (also worth mentioning: the Twilight Princess hack). But I disagree that it's completely a geek and otaku concern because the limited space provides a major roadblock for WiiWare developers, who will likely be reluctant to load up on any significant kind of game content due to the itty-bitty living space; that would seem to limit the distribution channel to gimmickry (Major League Eating!) and mini-game-worthy spew and, given that they're already competing against a lineup of various console classics, why would any developer (indie or otherwise) want to take the risk vs. developing for XBLA?
Considering that Nintendo was the first to enter the market with this imperfect tech, and that tech still surpasses any of the competitor's offerings by a long shot, I'm willing to give them a longer leash for this kind of hardware update, as long as it's positioned and priced accordingly. (As you mentioned, the new WiiSports is a perfect avenue for this.)First to enter the market? Do you mean with Power Glove or U-Force, or more recently--where Sony introduced the EyeToy but never did anything with it other than make it a peripheral with a handful of games?
The only recent, innovative thing Nintendo had done with motion controls was their "disruption" strategy. The Wii Remote isn't a peripheral, it *is* the controller. It was going to be a GC peripheral until Nintendo decided to base their new system around it. Although honestly the Wii isn't much stronger than a GC, and everyone knows it.
I was referring more to the "disruption" strategy, rather than the actual tech itself, as there are obvious (and very unfortunate) precursors to the Wiimote in the motion controller field; my point is that the Wiimote is the first inclusion of that motion control functionality as base requirements for a console and, as I understand it, the Wii MotionPlus seems to be an enhancement of that motion sensing capability, rather than a brand new peripheral altogether.
Point of comparison to consider: Sony's eventual integration of the Dual Shock into the PS1 SKU.Power of better comparison: virtually every other update to a controller introduced ever besides that. Now, Wii Sports 2 will be marketed as a must-have and Motion Plus will be probably available in some other fashion, but it's amusing how Nintendo's motion control is garbage and they're charging you to upgrade. It's a "we fucked up, here, pay for our mistakes" type of solution. Then again, Sony is still selling Dual Shock 3s. However, charging people extra for a peripheral is the complete opposite of disruption. The DS was disruptive, and heck the original Xbox's hard drive was disruptive. However, if you can't count on everyone to have it, it's going to limit the potential for use.
Once again, maybe it would be useful to get more technical details about how the new motion data is being recorded from the MotionPlus, but it appears to be supplementing the existing motion sensory capabilities (rather than replacing them with something new), so it should not require special effort and/or new APIs for the developers to use for it. If the new MotionPlus data isn't accessible to the programmers through the same means as the conventional motion sensory data, then I'll gladly reverse course on this one.
There's obviously no innovation in the game content itself, but I see this as a major boon to the genre at large, as it enters the market as the first music/rhythm game that isn't handcuffed to stupid instrument peripherals that are completely useless for virtually every other game on the console.Well, there's Wii Samba de Amigo (which will be released first), but the Wii owners who bought Guitar Hero 3 and will be buying Rock Band are probably not concerned so much about the instrument peripherals, and will probably gladly accept that over some lame waggling to Nintendo music.
Truth be told, Nintendo probably views this more as their chance to pander to mainstream non-gaming press than they do to actually offer/announce anything new to enthusiasts. Get used to the notion, because it's what Matt Cassamassabobassarolesina and Chris Kohler and others are going to say. I really want them to be right about it, too.
I'm personally concerned about the instrument peripherals because I think it's one of the most banal gaming trends in years, Rock Band's remarkable gameplay be damned. As for the game itself, it is different enough from those other games (since we're dealing with a symphony) to be distinctive; the presumed lack of DLC (hey, there's that disk space issue again) would seem to be a buzzkill, but I'm reserving judgment on the "lame waggling" at this point until I can see more. Call me an optimist.
Still, the most exciting Wii-related news it a port that was announced in Famitsu, IMO. Yay, Dead Rising with readable text!Yeah, as I said, a limp showing overall for them. Animal Crossing, in particular, seems like a major miscalculation; does anybody really view that as a AAA title? Really? There are people foaming at the mouth for any kind of halfway-decent FPS on that system, just because of the controls - how can they completely overlook that opportunity?
Final Fantasy XIII is only on 360 in North America and Europe. Given that it's still also on PS3, I doubt that'd be much of an incentive for the Japanese to go with the Xbox.I didn't say that an upheaval of the Japanese market was on the horizon - I'm just saying that snagging FFXIII gets their foot in the door with Square for future efforts. Take a look at GTA4: Microsoft went above and beyond to market GTA4 as an XBox 360 title, so much so that it almost seemed like an afterthought for the console series that it originally called home (Playstation). If MS can implement a similar strategy for FFXIII, then maybe they can win some loyalty from Square and Japanese developers to push their products worldwide with them, rather than stay in any kind of exclusivity with Sony.
-
He flat out calls the movie possibly the greatest since ROTK. That's some high praise.There's so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin.
Here's the actual quote, just to clarify:
perhaps the most impressive mainstream entertainment experience since 2003's The Return of the King.By framing it as a "mainstream entertainment experience", he separates it from the various dramas, art-house films, etc.
-
In my opinion, it looks like Microsoft emerges as the clear winner from E3 2008; they got their foot in the door with a major player in the Japanese market (FFXIII), provided a major expansion to their multimedia capabilities (the Netflix integration), and also managed to host the most promising game of the show (Fallout 3). If they can continue to push out more diversity in their library, they could very well overtake the Wii because Nintendo appears to have completely fallen asleep at the wheel.
I don't harbor as much vitriol for the Big N as Andrew does, but I think E3 comes across as a major disappointment for them. It's like they've decided to stop caring conventional games entirely, which is probably an acceptable direction for their first-party developers (since they've pretty much blown their IP load already, save for Kid Icarus), but not so warm-and-fuzzy when you consider that a port of an XBox 360 game from two years ago is the high point of their third party gaming revelations. Not only that, but they appear to be completely oblivious to the fact that they're playing on the rails while a freight train called "disc space issues" is screaming down the tracks; both of their major alternative selling points to consumers (Virtual Console) as well as third-party developers (easier digital distribution through WiiWare) are going to be completely gridlocked by this time next year without some kind of hard drive peripheral intervention.
That being said, there are a couple of things that I think they did right:
9:40 Wii MotionPlus is shown, which is a peripheral that attaches to the bottom of the Wii Mote. This helps calculate your wrist movements more accurately.Translation: a peripheral that is designed to fix the Wiimote's absolute dog**** motion detection, which was hardly worthy of being called a finished product.
Yet again, Nintendo fixes their imperfect tech's mistakes, and passes the buck to you, the consumer.
Considering that Nintendo was the first to enter the market with this imperfect tech, and that tech still surpasses any of the competitor's offerings by a long shot, I'm willing to give them a longer leash for this kind of hardware update, as long as it's positioned and priced accordingly. (As you mentioned, the new WiiSports is a perfect avenue for this.)
Point of comparison to consider: Sony's eventual integration of the Dual Shock into the PS1 SKU.
9:55 Wii Music is announced. Shigeru Miyamoto approaches the stage using the Wii Mote to play the onscreen saxophone. Someone is also using a combination of the Wii Fit board and Wii Mote to play the drums in the background. The balance board is used to push the drum pedals while the Wii Mote strikes the symbols. A large group of people then come out, select their instrument, and continue to play the Super Mario Brothers theme song.Nintendo's innovation knows no bounds!!
There's obviously no innovation in the game content itself, but I see this as a major boon to the genre at large, as it enters the market as the first music/rhythm game that isn't handcuffed to stupid instrument peripherals that are completely useless for virtually every other game on the console.
-
Yeah, this will probably be remembered as The Uggla Game for a while. I'm not sure that he deserved the third error, as that hop would probably have eaten up any second baseman in the league, but he had enough bobbles and stroke-inducing moments for other routine plays to make up for that umpiring transgression. Not only that, but he looked completely out of his depth at the plate.
As for the actual game itself, it was definitely great, but it's was a major buzzkill to see a crappy throw at home end it. Hart didn't get anything on that throw; it pulled McCann off the line and allowed Morneau, who runs like a crippled hippo trapped in a swimming pool full of cement, to reach home unscathed.
Not sure what else the NL can really do to win this damn thing, short of hiring a team of ninjas or having Lawrence Taylor set up the AL with hookers the night before the big game.
-
On the clock: Youth N Asia (since 8:17 am CT)
Can pick at any time:
foleyfanforever88
-
Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence (PS2)
-
Final Fantasy XII (PS2)
-
You're not completely alone; I like FFX well enough, but the stifling linearity and Tidus (who might very well be the most obnoxious FF protagonist ever in retrospect, decent storyline be damned) are major killjoys that have severely dampened what enthusiasm I once held for the game.
-
I still don't buy the Cards as legit contenders, but if they absolutely feel they must make a move, Burnett is probably not going to cost any team a lot.The Cardinals are in a really weird space this year. After starting out white hot, they've been playing around .500 ball for the last month or so, but they've been achieving that mark against some really good teams (taking two of three from Boston in Fenway, for example) without their best players (Pujols, Wainwright, Molina, Ankiel).
With those guys returning to the fold with other guys coming off of rehab (Mulder, Carpenter, Clement), it looks like they would be in position to make a little bit of noise down the stretch, but they really have too many needs (leadoff hitter, corner OF bat, middle infielder) to really break through. And, given that they're stockpiling their quality prospects like Colby Rasmus and Jaime Garcia for next season, they don't really have any quality trade chits available to use in addressing those needs through trade.
So they'll probably stand pat, make a very dramatic push at the end for the WC slot, and come up short with ~85 wins.
-
1. Edwin MacPhisto - It would be pretty weird if I didn't pick him first, considering how much we stepped on each other throughout the draft. He's got a little more 90's gangsta rap and Prince than I would prefer, but he's also got a handful of albums that I covet above anything else that anybody else selected here and, truthfully, a few of my own selections as well.
2. The Sperm - Ended up having a much better list than it originally seemed in the earlier rounds. He's got my favorite albums from the Velvets and Zeppelin, along with Exile on Main Street and The Bends. Good stuff.
3. Agent of Oblivion - Just barely edges Ravenbomb, by virtue of the jazz, Isis, and (surprisingly) the Aphex Twin album, which I really dig.
Honorable shoutouts to Ravenbomb, who really should have picked Rocks instead of Toys in the Attic, and Milky, who managed to stab out an essential block of 60's and 70's stuff amidst a whirlwind of gonzo rap, death metal, and other various absurdities.
-
I don't understand this trade at all for Oakland. Chad Gaudin, by himself, is probably better than anybody else that the A's are getting in this deal. Throwing in Harden makes this a mid-season laugher on par with Pittsburgh handing Chicago the NL Central in 2003.
-
I definitely considered Homogenic, but I think Bjork is a little too divisive for something like this. For every one or two people that really dig her stuff, there always seems to be three of four people that either can't stand the lyrical tics or can't stand the over-orchestration of the music.
-
Yeah, you hit some of the ones I had in mind. The short list I had goes something like this (in no particular order):
The Beatles - Rubber Soul
The Rolling Stones - Beggars Banquet
Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain...
John Coltrane - Giant Steps
David Bowie - "Heroes"
Belle and Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister
Jay-Z - The Blueprint
Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx
Pixies - Doolittle
Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
Ornette Coleman - The Shape Of Jazz To Come
Brian Eno - Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)
Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Soundgarden - Superunknown
Motorhead - Ace of Spades
Outkast - Stankonia
Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children
Nirvana - Nevermind
Arcade Fire - Funeral
Death - Human
-
At this point, let's just fill the rest of VX's draft with REO Speedwagon albums, finalize this thing and put it up to a public vote for the best selection.
All voters must rank their top three favorite collections, 1-2-3, with a first-place vote getting three points, second-place vote getting two points, and a third place vote getting one points. All draft participants are disqualified from voting for their own collection and ties are resolved by greater number of first place votes, then second place votes, etc.
Any objections?
-
Charlotte was a GREAT NBA city before George Shinn decided that he was going to extort the city to build him a new arena, and started screwing the team and the city over when they wouldn't cave in. They earned the privilege of another NBA team, it's just that between the way that Shinn left town and the fact that the Bobcats aren't any good, people don't seem to want to come back out to support them.Seattle was a GREAT NBA city before a cadre of carpetbagging fuckheads decided that they were going to extort the city to build them a new arena, and started screwing the team and the city over when they wouldn't cave in. They earned the privilege of another NBA team, it's just that between the way that the CofCFs left town and the fact that the Not-Quite-Supersonics aren't any good, people don't seem to want to come back out to support them.This is what's going to happen, at best. For all of Bud Selig's failings, he never allowed bad ideas like the Northern Virginia Astros and Winston-Salem Twins to happen, while Stern has been overseeing a shuffle of mediocrity through this decade.
And given Selig's push for contraction (which served to further enable Pohlad's continual griping about the Metrodome) from a few years ago, I don't think the absence of the Winston-Salem Twins was from a lack of trying either.
-
Given the impending dominance and resurgence of the Cubs and Brewers, respectively, I think it's a fine time to re-introduce the Mark Mulder drinking game. TLR is nothing if not a master of timing.
-
Baseball Stars (NES)
-
Silent Hill 2 (PS2)
E3 2008
in Video Games
Posted · Report reply
Yeah, I should have clarified, since I don't really consider FFXI to be part of the series. FFXIII is a much stronger statement than porting their MMORPG over two years later to drum up subscribers, IMO.