Oh my stars and garters! Hold on to your shorts... because Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Pass. This Saturday & Sunday was declared "SteetPass Weekend" by Nintendo. "StreetPass" allows you to have limited interaction with other Nintendo 3DS users you happen to pass on the street when you both have your 3DS sleeping in your pocket. But you can also interact with users via "StreetPass Relay Points." Visit a Relay Point (at places like McDonalds and Starbucks) and you can have limited interaction with the last six users to have been there. However... during "Street Pass Weekend" the six users you interact with are randomly pulled from Relay Points around the world! This is kind of nifty, because you'll get the chance to meet Mii characters you'd likely otherwise never meet. Very cool, and I tried my best to make the most of it. Sadly, countries in South America (plus Mexico!) I got don't have maps in my 3DS, which is kind of crappy. Why is that? I'll have to see if there's a way to download them.
• Theft? My first stop on a dreaded shopping run today was at Costco to pick up some things for my grandmother. Once I had unloaded her purchases into my trunk, I wheeled my cart across the parking lot to return it. As I was walking back to my car... I SAW A WOMAN TRYING TO BUMP MY TRUNK OPEN! It took me a second to process what I was seeing, but I finally managed to say "HEY! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM MY CAR BEFORE YOU GET FUCKING SHOT!" (it's an easy threat to make here in Redneckistan, because most people are packing). She said "Oh! I thought this was my car!" and awkwardly scrambled off. Which was so, so stupid. It was painfully obvious that she watched me load my trunk, then tried to break in and steal stuff the minute I walked away. I'm not shocked that there are people out there breaking into cars... it's just how brazen they are about it. I was right there!
• Mickey Dees. I stopped at McDonalds for "StreetPass Weekend" and to get some fries and a Hi-C Orange Drink. After I got my food and was headed to a table, I ran across a group of people talking in the aisle, completely blocking it. I said "excuse me" and tried to get by, only to have them completely ignore me... THEN MOVE TO BLOCK ME FURTHER. Which was apparently high-larious to them. Rather than unleash a string of expletives in the middle of a kid-friendly restaurant, I decided to backtrack and go around them. What IS it with people? These were not some punk kids... these were adults! Adults still living in high school, apparently. I weep for the future.
• Starbucks. Another "StreetPass Weekend" stop... and this time I decided to order up some yummy peppermint cocoa, since I don't drink coffee. I ordered a "medium" and got a "grande" which looks like it's actually a large? What I apparently wanted was a "tall" which is a step up from a "small" and two steps down from a "venti." But since the "small" is not actually on the menu, everything shifts up a size. Starbucks is confusing. I think they up-size their sizes so they can trick unsuspecting people into paying big money for more beverage than they need. My cocoa cost FOUR DOLLARS!! Which is crazy. I can get blown for that kind of money! I guess now I know why Starbucks racks up billions in profits every year. I would have been happier with a 20¢ packet of Swiss Miss and a cup of boiling water from my microwave.
• StarBIGbucks. SERIOUSLY?!? FOUR DOLLARS for a cup of cocoa?
• Home Despot. Before I left for Wenatchee, I checked the hours of all the stores I needed to visit so I could form a plan of attack. Home Depot had the latest closing time of 8:00, so I put it last on my list because I have to return an item. I arrived in plenty of time, walking up to their front doors at 6:05pm. Only to find it wouldn't open. I doubled-checked the hours on the door and, sure enough, they don't close until 8:00. So I try pushing on the door to see if it will open... it refused to budge. So I triple-check the hours. And then... then... I happen to notice another sign all the way across the door from the hours...
This one says "Fuck you... but we're closing at 6:00 today! Sorry for the inconvenience! Oh... and Happy Holidays, SUCKER!" Except, no, they're not really sorry or else they would have put it on their website so their customers wouldn't waste their time. As I was taking the above photos, a woman came up to the door and I had to tell her the bad news. "But... I came all the way from Quincy!" Yikes. That's a 45-minute drive. If I had traveled all that way, I would have burned the mutha down. I can only hope that the reason they closed early was for something important... and not some kind of lame company Christmas party or something.
• Ten. The latest meme? "10 Books That Have Stayed with You." Not the "best books you've ever read'... but instead books that have stuck with you for one reason or another. Interesting. That's a very different thing then, isn't it? My picks...
Bah! Just as I finished this list, a dozen more books popped into my head. I guess I love books way too much.
• MIKE HUCKABEE: AGENT OF SATAN!!! And so there I was, running through my Facebook timeline, enjoying all the funtime activities of my friends, when I run across an ad for Governor Mike Huckabee's FREE Bible Story Cartoons DVD! I love Bible stories! I love cartoons! I even love DVDs (even though I buy everything digital now-a-days)! So I was absolutely going to claim my freebie! And then, just as I was going to comment my appreciation to the Governor, I saw that the number of comments left before me was 666... THE MARK OF THE BEAST!
ZOMG! CLEARLY THIS IS A SIGN FROM GOD WARNING ME THAT MIKE HUCKABEE IS AN AGENT OF SATAN! S-A-T-A-N-!!! Mike Huckabee must be indoctrinating children into the devil's army with these DVDs! And clearly he is an agent of SATAN since he charges $5 shipping and handling for this "free" DVD... and, as if that weren't proof enough of his allegiance to Hell, anybody ordering the "free" DVD is automatically enrolled in a subscription for even more devil-indocrinating DVDs... at $12 plus $5 shipping and handling! Praise be that I saw the sign that God provided me and was able to steer clear of this evil, EVIL minion of The Dark Lord!
Oh... wait a second... I've actually READ THE BIBLE! And The Bible clearly states that interpreting something as a "sign from God" is AN ABOMINATION TO THE LORD! It says so right there in Deuteronomy! And Leviticus! And a dozen other places in scripture! What was I thinking? I guess I must just get caught up in all these evil sorcerers like PAT ROBERTSON and MICHELE BACHMANN who are constantly seeing "signs from God" that support their evil, godless plans to tempt people into the service of SATAN!
So, my apologies, Governor. Turns out you're just an unscrupulous businessman who tricks people into buying your shitty DVDs. You're not an agent of SATAN after all! OR ARE YOU?!? Using "free" DVDs to scam people into buying your crap certainly SOUNDS like something the devil would orchestrate... hmmm?
Annnnd... I'm shootin' blanks. Until next week!
Don't give another thought to your impending doom... because Bullet Sunday starts now...
• Einstein. You know how somebody comes out with a product you just love, so you buy and buy and buy... fully expecting to get sick of it, but all that happens is you end up loving it more? That was me when it came to Kraft "Bagel-fuls." These delicious bits of amazing are pre-cooked bagels wrapped around cream cheese (and other fillings) then frozen. You keep them in your refrigerator, then pop them in your toaster when you have a bagel craving. The brilliant part? The outside is deliciously crispy while the cream cheese stays cool. Truly an amazing product, and I ate them constantly...
Until they were discontinued. I couldn't find them anywhere.
Then, like a miracle, Bagel-fuls mysteriously reappeared in my grocer's freezer... but now they're branded as coming from Einstein Bros. Bagels. Regardless, they're the same thing and taste as amazing as ever. Now everybody needs to go to their local grocery store and buy every box so that they don't get discontinued again. Thanks!
• LEGO. At long last, the follow-up to LEGO
If you've played any of the LEGO video games before, this is pretty much more of the same... but with some nice upgrades in play mechanics and graphics. For the most part, it's an amazing game that's just as good as
IMPORTANT... I should note that the reviews for the Nintendo 3DS version of LEGO Marvel Superheroes are really bad. I bought a copy because I love LEGO on the go gaming... but I returned it unopened the minute the reviews started pouring in. This is really sad given the quality of other 3DS LEGO games (save Lord of the Rungs, which is a rare exception), and I wonder how something like this happens given how great Batman 2 was. Oh well. Money saved and all that.
• Kermit. I admit that I am not a big fan of the post-Henson Muppets... but holy cow does this look like fun...
Count me in!
• LAIKA. Speaking of fun... the stop-motion animated film ParaNorman was on sale for Halloween and I had heard good things about it, so I grabbed it. For reasons unknown, I only got around to watching it now. It's absolutely beautiful. Between this and films like Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, stop-motion-animation just keeps blowing me away. Bravo LAIKA Studios...
Interestingly enough, this cartoon was considered "controversial" when it was released because one of the lead characters ends up being gay. I kept waiting for the kid-inappropriate graphic gay sex scene, but it never came. All I saw was one quick throw-away joke about a character's sexuality at the end, and that was it. So, apparently, just the fact that gay people are acknowledged to exist in a cartoon is enough to spark controversy. The only thing controversial to me is that idiots who find this controversial n the year 2013.
• Hunger. And, while we're on the subject of movies... THIS has to be the funniest movie review I've ever seen...
The Onion strikes again! When it comes to The Funny, they consistently knock it out of the park.
And... another Bullet Sunday slides into the sweet abyss.
I fully admit that I have -zero- interest in the new generation "PlayStation 4" and "Xbox One" video game consoles. Mostly because the previous generation "PlayStation 3" and "Xbox 360" were already so far past what I expect in a video game that they're practically wasted on me. So long as I can play the latest LEGO games, I don't really need the insane speed and graphics that modern systems are capable of. Yes. I'm just that old.
So when I read these articles expressing disappointment with the graphics capabilities of the latest consoles, a lot of eye-rolling ensues. Just 30 years ago when I got my first gaming system... the Atari 2600... here is what I had by way of graphics compared to what is available today.
Racing THEN vs. NOW...
Basketball THEN vs. NOW...
Air Combat THEN vs. NOW...
Adventure THEN vs. NOW...
For heaven's sake... our dragon looked like a duck. A DUCK! And your on-screen persona was a frickin' DOT running around!
So, yes, cry me a river over how the PS4's superior graphics degrade when upscaled to HD resolution... or how the Xbox One skimped on pixels to create too much artifacting. I am all ears. Just let me get out this tiny, tiny violin here...
And can you imagine what the next next-generation consoles will be capable of?
I suppose we're just ten or twenty years from getting holodecks. Somebody wake me up when that happens.
Don't go getting yourself blinded by the Super Moon... because Bullet Sunday starts now...
• Animal! I've been too busy to spend much time playing it, but Animal Crossing: New Leaf was released for the Nintendo 3DS. It's pretty much the exact same game as Animal Crossing, Animal Crossing: Wild World, and Animal Crossing: City Folk. Basically you run around catching fish, hunting bugs, harvesting fruit, collecting seashells, and other tasks... all so you can earn money to buy cool stuff for you and your house. Except this time the little character you take control of is mistaken for the mayor, so you have other responsibilities as well. It's fun and all... but if you've played any of the other games in the series, you've pretty much played this one...
That being said, it's still an entertaining way to kill some time each day. And the 3-D effects are done very well, which makes it visually interesting as well. If you've never played Animal Crossing before, this would be a good place to start. If you have? Well, if you didn't tire of it before, you probably won't mind playing it again.
• Twikies! And so Hostess has a new owner and is going to start distributing their snack-cakes once again come mid-July. This will mean nothing to me... unless they decide to at least try to have the appearance of healthy ingredients by eliminating the LARD from their products...
A switch to vegetable oil would mean that I can start eating Ding Dongs again after 23 years of avoiding them like the plague. And it might give them a fighting chance of surviving in a slightly more health conscience world where parents are not wanting to feed their kids LARD.
• Devious! I could never get into Desperate Housewives because it didn't really go anywhere and wasn't a very entertaining ride. Now creator Marc Cherry has come up with his next television distraction... Devious Maids. The cast is really good, so I had high hopes that this time it would be worth watching...
Sadly, after watching the first episode, it seems as though it's just going to be more of the same. Somebody's been murdered and everybody has secrets. I'm guessing they're just going to dance around everything for years until the show is so senseless and boring that they get canceled and have to slop together some answers. Again. No thanks.
• Equality! Here's hoping that the highest court in the land remembers what America is all about in the weeks ahead...
If nothing else, we could finally tell the equality opponents to take their ridiculous "arguments" against freedom and just shut up already. Though the parodies of their faux pain over something that doesn't even affect them are almost too good to give up...
Yeah, definitely going to miss that.
• Shiiiiiiiiit! I don't even know what to say about this...
People be crazy. People be crazy.
Annnnd... it's going to be a long week.
Better switch to decaffeinated... because Bullet Sunday starts now...
• Gamer. I am most definitely not what you would call a "hard core gamer." I just like to play an occasional video game when I can find time, and am just as likely to be playing LEGO Batman as I am Call of Duty: Black Ops. That being said, I do own The Big Three consoles (Wii, PS3, Xbox 360) along with a Nintendo 3DS-XL, so maybe "casual gamer" isn't the best description for me either. In any event, both Sony and Microsoft have now unveiled their next generation console plans with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, respectively...
Right now, I'm probably a bit more excited for the new PS4. Probably because it doesn't try to add on all the computing and multimedia bullshit, and has Sony solely focusing on the gaming experience. Microsoft, on the other hand, feels distracted by trying to sell you television shows and making you dick around with Windows 8 (which I loathe). And then there's Nintendo's Wii-U, which I just can't seem to get excited about. So I guess time will tell which direction I end up going. Though a part of me wonders if I'm just done with console gaming, so maybe I won't invest in any of them.
• Arrested! Netflix has unleashed the much-anticipated Season 4 of Arrested Development, seven years after it was canceled by FOX. I enjoyed the original episodes, even though they often-times seemed quirky for quirky's sake, but had mixed feelings about the show being resurrected...
The first two episodes were pretty unremarkable. But the third was better... and I just started the fourth, which is better still. So who knows? By the time I get to episode fifteen, maybe it will surpass everything that came before. All I do know is that watching the revival has me now wanting to re-watch the original, which I haven't done in years.
• Square! Square brought affordable, convenient credit card transactions to the masses. Now they're taking on PayPal with Square Cash, which allows you to send funds via email. It's currently in beta and "invitation only," but you can bet your ass I'll be signing up the minute it's available. I fucking hate PayPal after they STOLE MY MONEY with absolutely no explanation, and if there's any company that has a hope of breaking PayPal's monopoly on online payments, it's Square. It's about time.
• Assemble? I was pretty excited that Marvel had new cartoon coming out called Avengers Assemble! After the absolute genius that was Joss Whedon's The Avengers movie, it was bound to be awesome, right?
• Scouts. And so the Boy Scouts have finally taken a step in the right direction and are no longer kicking out their members just because they're gay. I always thought it was shitty how a kid can join Scouting when he's too young to even know what "sexuality" is... only to be kicked out on his ass once he grows up and discovers he's gay. Yeah, private organizations can have whatever bigoted policies they want, but this kind of discrimination towards kids is pretty douchey. Especially when the BSA gets support from public funds, which they shouldn't be if they're being exclusionary anyway.
Annnnnd... I'm spent.
You'd think I'd be tired of blogging after ten years, but obviously I'm a glutton for punishment... because Bullet Sunday starts now...
• Blogiversary! And it really has been ten years since this iteration of Blogography began. I bought the domain in March of 2002 and farted around with a hand-coded blog for a year. But then I ended up deleting it and starting over on April 28th, 2003. I managed to salvage a few old entries so, technically, Blogography began on April 18th, but I prefer thinking of the 28th as my blogiversary because that's when Apple's iTunes Music Store debuted as well. In any event, I should probably be celebrating that I made it this long...
Or committing myself to an insane asylum for keeping with it for this long. One or the other. Maybe both.
• Pot! Google's auto-complete is sure revealing. Guess it's a good thing it's legal here now...
• Chase! And so I bought the latest LEGO video game for Nintendo 3DS. It's called LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins...
It's frickin' adorable.
It's also one of the most frustrating pieces of shit excuses for a video game I've ever played.
Billed as a prequel to the police-themed LEGO City Undercover for the Wii U system, this is a scaled-down version of the massive "sandbox" world of the original, but squeezed to fit in a 3DS. Even so, it's still a huge world filled with puzzles to solve and nifty stuff to collect. Along the way you have missions to accomplish which move you through the story and introduce you to the various areas of LEGO City. All of which are beautifully rendered, and yours to explore as your alter-ego, undercover cop Chase McCain. In an effort to mix things up a bit, McCain can adopt different undercover "disguises," each of which grants him new and unique abilities. It's all very clever and can be a lot of fun... when you're not screaming curse words at the game for being so horrendously frustrating.
I've been playing LEGO video games for years. And there's one thing they can never get right... vehicle control. Any time you have to drive ANYTHING in ANY LEGO game, you're assured of shitty, frustrating, worthless controls. Forget trying to actually accomplish something, you're lucky just to keep the damn car on the road. And there's a lot of driving in LEGO City Undercover. As if that weren't bad enough, certain scenarios require precision acrobatics that are beyond frustrating and pretty much destroy the game. It's astounding how the game can be so forgiving in some areas, but ruthlessly unforgiving in others, and it's enough to drive you insane.
Ultimately, there's enough humor, fun, and surprises to make me glad I bought LEGO City Undercover: The Chase Begins, but I sure wish that somebody would tell developer Traveler's Tales that frustrating does not equal fun. FIX THE FUCKING DRIVING CONTROLS NEXT TIME, ASSHOLES!
• Repugnant! Some people are such huge pieces of hypocritical garbage that they're pretty much irredeemable. Despite my defending her in the past, Sarah Palin has totally crossed that line. She probably crossed it a long time ago, but this latest round of bullcrap is what got me to take serious notice. What a fucking useless shit-stain on the fabric of society.
• Fugly! Wondering for the hundredth time why in the hell the United States has some of the ugliest fucking money on the planet. Seriously, Yes, I've harped on this before, but the latest release for the $100 bill is the worst yet and near vomit-inducing...
I know that rampant counterfeiting has made it so that certain design compromises have to be made to implement security measures... but this is fucking ridiculous. As if it weren't bad enough that our currency isn't worth a shit, we have to be embarrassed with this ugly, amateurish excuse for "design" that looks like shit too. Why can't they hire an actual graphic designer for important stuff like this instead of letting somebody's kid at the US Mint slap it together in Microsoft Word. Your (hideous) tax dollars at work, people!
And now I'm going to go contemplate whether I can survive ten more years of blogging.
There's a grave disturbance in The Force, but never fear... because Bullet Sunday starts now...
• Rancor! My love of all things LEGO Star Wars is well documented. But LEGO has stepped it up a notch by releasing a new version of the cool Gamorrean Guards that I'm only just now seeing. As ugly as the old version was, this new version is cute as hell..
Photo from Warehouse 19, Sweden
Awwwww! You can get one in the "Rancor Pit" set, which conveniently interlocks with the Jabba's Palace set (how sweet is that?)...
Now that Disney owns Star Wars, I don't know how worried I should be about the license that LEGO had with LucasFilm to make awesome sets, video games, toys, and such. Since most of the cool stuff that's happening with Star Wars is coming from LEGO now-a-days, I hope that Disney is smart enough to keep a good thing going.
• Infinity! Speaking of Disney... they unveiled their mysterious "Project Toy Box" gaming universe at long last. And it's not anything quite like anybody expected. Called Disney Infinity, it copies the whole Skylanders concept from Activision where players collect real-life toys and play with them inside a video game. The result is somewhat... muddy. In order to have characters from all kinds of different animated styles plus live-action characters be able to interact with any semblance of sanity, a brand new common "Disney Aesthetic" has been created. In some cases it's very good (characters from The Incredibles look great)... in some cases it's a pleasant surprise (characters from the Pirates of the Caribbean films look pretty cool in their animated form)... and in some cases it's pretty bad (my beloved Sully from Monsters. Inc. looks like shit). Overall, I guess I'm just "meh" over the whole idea...
©Disney and ©Disney/Pixar
©Disney and ©Disney/Pixar
Where things may become interesting is when Disney starts leveraging more of their vast array of properties and licenses. They've got LucasFilm, which means you could theoretically have Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker playing along with Captain Jack Sparrow and Perry the Platypus. They also have Marvel Comics, which means Spider-Man, Iron Man, Thor, and the entire Marvel Universe may eventually drop in. They've got all the various Disney Channel properties available... which means we could finally get that Hannah Montana vs. Darth Vader deathmatch battle we've all been dreaming about...
And don't forget all the Buena Vista movie characters and ABC Television characters that Disney has in their pocket. With that in mind, you can see where Disney's gaming universe might become something monstrous and huge.
I'm not sure that it's something I'm going to buy into... especially since Mickey Mouse isn't even available yet... but I will be following Disney Infinity with no small amount of interest.
• Ads! I hate television commercials. Partly because they interrupt the shows I'm watching... but mostly because they're all annoying, stupid, and just plain suck. Which is why when a GOOD television commercial comes along, I nearly die of shock. It's so rare that this happens... especially outside of the Super Bowl... that I feel compelled to congratulate the people responsible. The latest commercial I'm loving is this very clever ad from TD Ameritrade...
Clever. And smart. And effective, if theirs is a service you're looking for.
• LIES! I really hate Subway® because of their Subway® Sandwich SpokesWhore, Jared Fogle®. And now I find out that they LIE about the size of their shitty sandwiches! It's probably been happening for years, but somebody finally called them on it...
Footlong® Photo by Matt Corby
And Subway's® lame response? "With regards to the size of the bread and calling it a footlong®, 'SUBWAY FOOTLONG®' is a registered trademark as a descriptive name for the sub sold in Subway® Restaurants and not intended to be a measurement of length." This is despite the fact that in their annoying commercials there are people holding their hands up to indicate that a "Footlong®" is INDEED a unit of measure that's a foot long (as noted by BuzzFeed)...
I wish there was some way that Jared Fogle could be blamed for this scandal so he could be brought to trial and sentenced to death. Justice has been denied us long enough!
• Stream! I don't know how it is that I've never heard of "Can I Stream.it?" before, but what a frickin' amazing service! You type in a movie or TV show, and it will tell you if you can rent it, buy it, stream it, or otherwise get it over the internet from a variety of services (including the iTunes Store and Amazon)... or even purchase it on DVD or Blu-Ray. As if that weren't enough? If it's not available, Can I Stream.it? will even notify you when it's released in the format you choose...
How handy is that? If you're looking to fill in your digital library or find out if something you want to see is available for rental, "Can I Stream.it?" is worth checking out!
And that's all she wrote for Bullet Sunday. This week. Don't worry... Bullet Sunday will be back next week. I promise. So don't leave angry comments... or threatening comments... or weepy comments... Bullet Sunday is still going strong, never fear! See you at next week's Bullet Sunday for sure. Totally.
I'm a bit of a video game whore, even though I rarely have time to play them. But that hasn't stopped me from acquiring a plethora of gaming hardware over the years, including the Atari 2600, Microvision, Nintendo NES, ColecoVision, Atari 7800, Nintendo GameBoy, Atari Lynx & Lynx II, Sony PlayStation, Nintendo GameBoy Color, Nintendo GameBoy Advance, Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo DS, Nintendo DS Lite, Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, and the Sony PlayStation 3.
And, of course, there were a bunch of computers capable of playing games tossed in there (most notably by Atari and Apple) plus a bunch of dedicated handhelds like Mattel Electronic Football and Electronic Poker. Oh... and my iPhone/iPad, which has all kinds of games on them.
And, for a while there, it looked as though my gaming future was going to be the iPhone/iPad.
But the lack of a dedicated control pad make for a crappy experience. And the lack of LEGO titles meant that the games I most wanted to play weren't available.
Enter the Nintendo 3DS XL...
I had played around with the original 3DS, but the 3D screen gave me a headache. I had read that the new "90% bigger screens" of the XL version was easier to view properly, so I decided to give it a shot.
And it's pretty awesome.
The 3D really looks great and, on the larger screen, is much easier to see... though the resolution is kinda low and chunky. The only problem with the glasses-free 3D technology is that you have to hold the hardware a specific distance from your face and look at it straight-on for the best effect. Start looking at the screen at more than a couple degrees off-angle and the screen will darken and eventually go all blurry. At first, this was a problem for me, but now I seem to instinctually hold it properly, so it's not a problem at all.
Having dedicated controls is what makes a hand-held video game superior than a mobile phone for gaming, and Nintendo has quite an assortment. The buttons on the shoulders and right-hand side are pretty standard. As is the D-pad on the left. But above the D-pad is the "Circle Pad." It is glorious. So smooth and precise that gameplay is much improved. A lot of people complained that Nintendo should have put another Circle Pad on the right-hand side (rather than doing so with a clunky add-on) and I have to agree. That would make shooter games a dream to play on the 3DS XL. Oh well.
Both of Nintendo's 3D units have a lot of features outside of gaming... most of them kind of lame, overly-complex, and unnecessary, to be honest. There's "Spot-Pass" and "Street-Pass" for exchanging data with Nintendo, your friends, and even random strangers you pass on the street. There's Mii creation functionality taken from the Wii to make an avatar of yourself. There's an e-shop for buying games and apps. There's internet connectivity and friend codes for playing games with friends over the web. There's a sound editor of some kind. It goes on and on. I will probably use very little of this stuff. I just want to play games.
There's also a crappy, grainy, low-res 3D camera on the back (plus an equally shitty front-facing 2D camera) which can read QR codes. I can't show you what the photos look like without having you look at the 3DS's full-color 3D screen, but I can have Photoshop break out the MPO 3D image file into a cheesy red/blue 3D thing for your to look at...
Get out your 3D glasses! Note how the further back you go, the more the image skews to create the 3D effect.
The camera also saves out a non-3D JPEG image that you can look at on any computer or other device capable of displaying JPEGs. But the quality is so bad, why would you want to?
I guess if you needed a camera in an emergency and your phone wasn't handy, this would be better than nothing. But not by much. Since Nintendo saves the photos to a standard SD memory card they are easy to transfer, so I guess there's that.
I'll probably review the 3D games I bought later on, once I've had time to play them a little more... but I am compelled to mention that my main reason for buying this handheld in the first place was the abundance of LEGO games available...
Sure, they're not very challenging. But they are a lot of fun. Except for the Lord of the Rings game. The battle system is really flawed, which makes playing it more of a chore than fun. Especially for casual, on-the-go pick-up gaming. Unfortunately the 3DS LEGO games don't have all the features of their console counterparts, which means there's less to do. But, on the other hand, you can take it with you.
Nintendo being Nintendo, there's a bunch of great Nintendo-themed games featuring popular characters and properties like Mario, Professor Layton, Link, Nintendogs, Pilotwings, Mario Kart, and the like. No Kirby or Pokemon yet though, which is kind of alarming. Still, a library plenty packed with quality games that people want to play.
Overall, I'm fairly impressed. More than anything else, the Nintendo 3DS Xl is fun, which is kind of the point of video games. If you have the original 3DS, it's probably debatable whether it's worth the $200 price tag to upgrade so quickly (though the bigger screens are SO nice). But if you own any other previous-generation handheld, the 3DS XL is worth checking out.
I worked from the moment I got up at 7:00am to this very minute where I've climbed into bed at midnight. I am so hopelessly behind that I should be working still, but there's a limit as to how long you can stare at a computer screen without going crazy. Though I did take off a half-hour for dinner and an hour to go Gold Brick hunting in LEGO Batman 2... so there's that. I probably shouldn't have wasted time with a video game, but flying around Gotham City as little LEGO Superman is too amazing to pass up...
And every time you take off for the sky, that brilliant John Williams theme song from Superman: The Movie starts playing, which is awesome in twenty different directions.
Here's hoping LEGO Batman 3 is not far off, because it will be very interesting to see how they plan on topping this game.
And now I should probably at least try and get some sleep. Tomorrow is going to be another insane day.
I love LEGO. I love comic books. I love video games. And I really, really love Batman. So when you find something that combines all these wonderful things into a single product, you'd pretty much assume that it was the most awesome thing every made. You'd almost be correct.
LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes is the sequel to one of my favorite games of all time, LEGO Batman: The Videogame. Unsurprisingly, the company behind the magic, Traveler's Tales, has attempted to make it a bigger, badder, better sequel in every way. They mostly succeed because of two things... 1) The game is huge, and has the entirety of Gotham City available as an open-world zone, and 2) Batman & Robin are joined by a bunch of other heroes from throughout the DC Universe. The end-result is far from perfect, but so much fun that it's easy to overlook the flaws...
And speaking of flaws, I might as well get the bad news out of the way...
First of all, there isn't much new here. If you've played the LEGO Star Wars games, LEGO Indiana Jones games, LEGO Harry Potter games, LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean games, or the previous LEGO Batman... you've played this. But you already knew that would be the case.
Secondly, the "driving" levels are still just as pointless, shitty, and impossible to control as ever. Why Traveler's Tales ignores the criticism from, well, everybody, when it comes to the sloppy controls, redundant gameplay, and overall frustration on every LEGO driving game they've made is a complete mystery to me.
Third, the new "open-world" that allows you to explore a sprawling Gotham City is a fantastic addition to the game (especially when you are flying above it all as Superman!)... but navigating it is a hellish ordeal because there's no HUD or mini-map or decent navigation tool to help you get around. I have no clue whatsoever as to why Traveler's Tales ignored this basic video game staple, but it's an oversight that seriously undermines the fun to be had.
Putting all that aside, there's some new stuff that's kind of cool...
In addition to the "open-world" that I can't shut up about, Batman and Robin each get a new specialty suits, which is always cool, but the addition of characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, and others, mix up the game even more. That's beyond cool.
As expected, the stories are funny, the visuals are fantastic, the levels are nicely designed, and the puzzles are really well done. What was unexpected was the characters talk! No longer reduced to pantomime for communication, the LEGO mini-figs have entirely new appeal now that they can actually talk. Bonus? The voice talent they got was perfect.
But the biggest improvement? I didn't find myself falling off things nearly as often as I did in previous LEGO video games. I still have nightmares of dying again and again and again as I tried to jump from platform to stupid platform with the insane precision required in LEGO Star Wars, so this is a welcome relief.
Everything else is pretty much more of the same as all the other LEGO games. Team-play is still available so you and a friend can battle together. You still have to button-mash your way through redundant combat as you solve puzzles. You still have to collect LEGO studs, red bricks, gold bricks, and other stuff so you can unlock characters and features. You still can't really die. And once you finish all the levels, you still have untold hours of gameplay left as you obsess over collecting every last prize and achievement to be found by replaying levels as different characters.
Needless to say, I love it.
Next up? LEGO Lord of the Rings... I can't possibly imagine how awesome that game will be.
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