Wii Sports Resort or Wii Resort?

I finally got around to installing The Orange Box and am currently waiting for what seems like five hours of updates to download, so I figured I could do something somewhat constructive with this time and write one of the handful of blog posts I thought of, went “that’d be a good idea!” and promptly got around to never actually writing.

Today’s culprit actually isn’t the new (as of two weeks ago – shush) Wii Sports Resort, but more so for the peripheral that’s presumably making more people buy the damn game than would have otherwise: the Wii MotionPlus. Personally, I only bought Wii Sports Resort because apparently Wii owners need to get the MotionPlus peripherals to fulfill the broken promises Nintendo made when they revealed the Revolution controller (remember that? Nostalgia sucks!), but does it? It’s hard to tell. The device of course, works easily enough. Just pry the MotionPlus out of the giant dildo Nintendo seems to think people want to keep their Wiimotes in, clip in into place at the bottom of the controller, and bam! Two and a half years and $40 per controller later, the Wiimote almost works like it was promised to when it was revealed four years ago!

Almost. The game starts with an unnecessarily lengthy and unskippable instructional video explaining how to clip the MotionPlus on to the controller (pro tip: at the bottom), then goes into a sky diving minigame, which, honestly, really does showcase just how well the peripheral can make the controller work. You can twist and tilt the controller and watch your Mii and the encasing transparent shell of a Wiimote twist in 1:1, and it actually works. Then you get to the rest of the games and see where the obvious issue is. Naturally, although the MotionPlus can make the remote work like it’s supposed to, it’s prey to the games that use it. Admittedly, I haven’t played everything in the game yet, but most of the minigames don’t really feel like they’re making the most of the technology.

This is where I start to complain against Wii Sports Resort itself. Despite all the sports and modes for each sport crammed into it, everything feels exceptionally shallow. It’s easy to get bored of the game because even the best games in the pack do very little beyond feeble attempts to cover up their monotony. So far, my personal favorite game is swordplay, and it comes with three modes: a one-on-one duel, an accuracy competition, and, the closest thing Resort has to any sort of adventure mode, something most easily compared to a rail shooter, except you’re swinging a sword at a swarm of Miis that all seem to have it in for you or something, possibly (because you keep crashing into them during the flight simulator mini-game). I played the one-on-one matches to pro level, and didn’t play many beyond that, did the accuracy one once, and have played the adventure-y one to the point where the levels you unlock are just the old ones in reverse. While this is pretty entertaining a shows some potential for an actual adventure game where you run around swinging a sword in 1:1, the actual presentation here gets pretty stale once you unlock the 10 almost carbon-copy levels and realize the game’s pulling a Mario Kart on you after that.

The same combination of hinted potential but lacking depth carries through in every other minigame. Although there are plenty of modes to unlock and Achievements Stamps to get for pulling off different flavours of feats from simple to tedious, it doesn’t feel like there’s any real incentive to do so beyond the fact that it’s there.

Now, just because you can’t get very far with some, the games themselves are… okay, they’re hit and miss. Like I said before, swordplay is wonderful, and archery (though a little buggy with its 1:1) and table tennis are great as well. Bowling’s exactly the same as it was in Wii Sports, except there’s an automatic option included for people who found the “let go of B” concept too challenging, and I’d assume golf’s largely the same, though I haven’t actually checked yet. Wakeboarding is all right, but, again, stale, and easy to tire of whenever it proves more frustrating than fun. I can’t get Frisbee mode to work at all, but then again, I can’t throw a Frisbee at all in real life, so for all I know, it could be perfect. I briefly checked out air sports today and was actually pleasantly surprised, as I was initially with canoeing until I quickly realized that, having actually taken a canoeing lesson a couple years ago, paddling actually leaves some to be desired, and the actual modes it gives you to play with (so far) are a joke. I’ve yet to touch power cruising and cycling, because, well, cycling looks stupid and, like I said, the game’s so shallow that despite the amusing mechanics of gameplay, it doesn’t take long to turn it off.

Basically, although the game and MotionPlus are supposed to revitalize the Wii experience, the whole thing actually feels more like Nintendo resting on its laurels. It took me a while to get talked into pre-ordering the game at all, because I’m still fairly unconvinced that MotionPlus is even going to go anywhere. The Wiimote by itself was, although not perfect, still vastly underutilized, and I doubt that MotionPlus will go too far to move the system past its “waggle to win” reputation. In so many words, we can maybe expect the next Zelda game to finally utilize the system okay enough, but far and few games between will probably actually use the damn thing to create that immersive experience people frothed at the mouth over when we saw the Revolution controller so many casual gamers ago.

Whoever Comes Up With The Best Name For This Post Doesn’t Win a Free iPhone!

Well, kids, my laptop finally came yesterday, and I’m toying the idea with writing a post about it since it’s a popular-ish model (Dell Studio 15), but I haven’t really used it for anything since I’m still waiting for someone who understands our secure wireless network to hook me up (figuratively) so I can do anything with it, so, yeah, no real news yet on that front! In other news, I’ve been kind of busy/not feeling like blogging, and I don’t really have much to say today either, but I’m trying to update more frequently and my short story’s been sitting on top of the blog since Monday, so I’ll work on a few tidbits for you guys.

I saw Public Enemies last night – Seriously, I was invited to a 10:10 showing. Man, haven’t seen a theater that empty since opening day for Land of the Lost. Zing. – and walked into the theater realizing that I actually had no idea what the movie was about, which is something I haven’t done in a while. Usually I know quite a bit about a movie if I’m going to the theater to see it, but I didn’t even know what the topic was, and I was just tired enough to revel in the modern, diluted sense of discovery, which was soon paid off handsomely as it is a movie about bank robbers, which, just in case you didn’t know, are easily the coolest kinds of robbers. It’s a very good movie, and it definitely keeps your attention throughout the whole thing. Johnny Depp’s acting is, per usual, brilliant, as was Marion Cotillard, although Christian Bale didn’t seem particularly into it. Also, since I can get away with making any kind of stupid complaint as long as I make it clear I actually like the movie, what should be the movie’s climax feels far more like a drawn out denoument, and, and this is easily the strangest complaint I think I’ll ever make about a movie, the cinematography and lighting seemed kind of unusual. Yep, that’s right internet, I just called a movie out on  cinematography! Look out, Rotten Tomatoes!

I’m not really sure why I get so interested whenever a new Final Fantasy game is released, since the only games I really liked in the series are the first one and the Tactics spin-offs, and I haven’t played any installments dated later than III. Still, I was kind of interested in the news about a new DS-exclusive Final Fantasy, until I read some of the actual details about it and realized it was pretty much the most underwhelming video game announcement I’ve ever read. For example, here’s a snippet of IGN’s summary of what we know about the plot:

“… you play as Brand, a character who’s just come of age and heads off to the castle to meet the king. There, he learns that the king’s daughter has been kidnapped by the Witch of the North, and he’s tasked with saving her.”

No. Way. That’s only the plot of every other fantasy ever made. I’m not talking about Final Fantasy, mind you, I’m talking about the genre. Don’t worry, it gets better:

“Going further in depth on the story, the magazine also got commentary from director Takashi Tokita, who said that the game’s theme is about the travels of an adventure”.

Uh huh. The theme of a video game is adventure… Groundbreaking!

“The game makes use of a turn-based battle system, requiring that players simply select a command … To execute cure and other spells, you simply touch one of these panels.”

“As one would expect of a classic RPG experience, this means random battles…”

Did this really need to be a four page magazine article? Is there anything this game does that RPGs haven’t been doing since the dawn of time? Oh, it’s probably too early to tell, certainly, but based on this “news”, for a game whose “overall goal … appears to be to fuse classic RPG gaming with the more modern tech offered by the DS”… how is this not just more of the same?

And just in case this post isn’t unfocused and helter skelter enough, I found this a few days ago and now understand why A Cappella is so damn popular.

My E3 Nintendo Thoughts That You Were Probably Dying To Hear, And Are Fortunately Only Kind Of Delayed! Yay!

Although I wanted to write up a sort of “Here’s What Nintendo Did At E3″ or “Yeah, We All Know About the new Metroid, But Here’s Some Stuff You Might Have Missed at E3″ or “Damn, Is This A Clever (And Short) Title For a Blog Post About Nintendo’s Activity At E3 Or What?” post since E3 actually happened a week or so ago, I simply haven’t felt like it at all. Like most of anything related to Nintendo as of the past console generation or two, it’s hard to get excited about much of it, and I’m not just saying that because I’m still bitter about Mother 3 not getting a North American release (I mean, there’s a patch now. It’s their loss.)

In typical Nintendo fashion, the biggest reveals that anyone cares about were hardly revealed at all, and even the ones nobody cares about weren’t spared the usual iron box of secrecy. Take a look at the announcements about Metroid: Other M, Super Mario Galaxy 2, and even the stupid Vitality sensor. That’s literally all we know about them. We saw a trailer for Metroid and Galaxy, but when asked how exactly the games are played, Nintendo quickly shut up. The video game industry have been doing this for forever, but it still feels kind of lame that we’re supposed to be all excited about these games, yet we know nothing about the actual, you know, game part.

Now, to be a complete hypocrite, man, I’m curious about the new Zelda. Yes, there’s a new Zelda for the Wii. Doesn’t that say something? The only thing we’ve seen about that game is a piece of concept art that was only shown behind closed doors to the select few. Regardless, as annoyed as I might be with Nintendo for any stupid reason (“Hey, they’re making a multiplayer side-scrolling Mario?” “Yeah! You can play as Mario, Luigi, other Toad, and other other Toad!” “What about… normal Toad?” “Hey! Vitality sensor!” “What?” “Metroid!” “Oooo…”), I’m fairly intrigued with this whole “not holding a sword” business:

Shigeru Miyamoto: Well, the story setting for this Zelda is, of course, in a completely different era and Link is older than he was previously. More approaching adulthood. There is one hint. Maybe from the art work you can see that he’s not holding a sword.

IGN: Has he lost his Master Sword?

Shigeru Miyamoto: [Laughing] I just wanted to make sure that you understand we are making it. That’s all I’m going to say on that subject.

More recently, Miyamoto has announced that the new Wii MotionPlus will be “required”. Given how MotionPlus basically just lets the Wii do what it was supposed to do was back when this thing was still called the Revolution (remember that?), this next Zelda had better be good. I’m not really worried about them experimenting with the series a little, since I was really hesitant about Phantom Hourglass’s touch controls, and I wound up putting more effort into that game than Twilight Princess, which I actually haven’t finished yet, not because it’s hard, but because I rarely feel like playing it. I’m certainly not saying it was bad, but when a series that good starts to feel a little stale, well, that’s where you gotta let Miyamoto do his thing. Which occasionally might be Nintendogs, but it’s all well and good!

And in all honesty, I can’t remember anything else that I wanted to talk about from E3. I don’t follow Sony and Microsoft, not owning any systems from either of them (although I wish I did just for that Beatles game. I watched the videos of that in action, and talk about your heart going boom when you cross that (figurative) room!), and, as you might have guessed, I don’t remember a whole lot of offerings from Nintendo that really grabbed my interest (at least not yet. Who knows? Maybe when we see the actual game parts!), except IGN’s been raving a bit about Scribblenauts, and I’ve watched some of the gameplay, but I’m not sold quite yet. I like the general idea, but based on the levels they showed us, if the levels don’t use the concept well, that’s going to ruin the whole thing. Watching the E3 walkthrough (yes, the “God on a skateboard with a shotgun” walkthrough), it seems like the idea is better suited for a sandbox game than a generic “collect the star-shaped-not-a-star-to-progress” game. And if there really is “nothing you can’t do” to solve the puzzle, then how is the game going to present any challenge? How can you have a difficulty curve when you can do anything conceivable, say, God on a skateboard with a shotgun, to do something that could be done just as easily (or at all) with a simple axe? Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty cool that you can supposedly do “literally anything”, but I don’t think we’ve quite seen the point of it yet.

And I suppose that’s all I can think to talk about. Whoop.

EDIT: Once again, I had an idea of what I wanted to do and Yahtzee did it better. As is life.

The Procrastinator’s Rant: Centennial Edition

It’s a sign of the times, folks. The Procrastinator’s Rant is officially one year old. Or, rather, it was about a week ago, since I miscounted, thus ruining my idea to do a combined one-year-old/100th-post super post of awesome to celebrate. So it’s just my 100th post, not both that and the one year mark. I know. Lame.

Although on the other hand, this frees me up to do something else. For whatever reason, hitting that 100th post just doesn’t strike me as as big a deal as the one year mark, so I don’t have much interest in making a grand spectacle of all that happened during Procrastinator’s Rant’s first year or making a grand thank you, the latter because I do that in every other post anyway, because I’m thrilled people are actually reading the words I put on the internet. Really, on a serious note, given how a little over a year ago my only real outlet for my thoughts and humor was just whenever I hung out with my friends, the fact that there are actually people from California to Wisconsin, Illinois to Ohio, and more who not only read what I have to say, but do so willingly for entertainment is still pretty thrilling, and I of course need to thank everybody who does for doing so, and these are just people I specifically know about. During the first three months of Procrastinator’s Rant, I got 400 hits, which I now get on a monthly basis, and that’s not counting that day I got stumbled and got 600 hits overnight for that post about AP Biology ruining Pokemon.

And last, but not least, within that first year, I’ve become Google approved:

Yes. When you search for my blog on google, it is the first thing that comes up. Tight.

Anyway, like I said maybe two paragraphs ago, the fact that I totally didn’t spend any time on this post revelling in how eventful the blog’s first year was frees me up for a feature I’ve wanted to do for a while, and the 100th post seems like as good a place as any, since it’s sort of like that aforementioned thank you to everybody who made this possible, but in a different manner.

In other words, I’m going through and making fun of all the bizarre ways people have found this blog.

WordPress lets you see who referred to and what search terms led people to your blog, and although most of the time you’ll get fairly normal searches like, say, “Procrastinator’s Rant”, sometimes you get the unusual, the interesting, and the fairly unsettling. So I’m going to share these with you, the reader, and since most of the time they definitely did not get what they were looking for, I’m going to fix that and offer up the top five right here! Think of it as giving the fans what they want!

How else would I mark this milestone? Really?

1) Procrastinator Poem/Jokes About Procrastinators/How To Tell If You’re A Procrastinator/What Does The Word Procrastinator Mean?

First, let’s start with the only slightly misled. They were searching for something about procrastinators, and technically they got it, although my blog doesn’t really have a single thing to do with that. I already made fun of the “How To Tell If You’re A Procrastinator” guy, but the rest are newer to me.

Technically speaking all the poems on my blog would qualify as procrastinator poems, since I was almost certainly supposed to be doing something else whilst writing them, but if you want a poem strictly about procrastinators, here’s a limerick:

There once was a man from the equator,

A notorious procrastinator,

Who decided to wait

And postpone ‘til late

On that literature essay that’s due tomorrow and totally going to kill your grade if you don’t do a good job on it oh snap. Ator.

And, um… a joke about procrastinators…:

How many procrastinators does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

None, because a procrastinator is one who needlessly defers the performance of anything, especially out of habitual carelessness or laziness, so they probably wouldn’t be very well suited for actually carrying out the task.

Oh, hey! Two birds with one stone there! Moving on!

2) Watchmen Joke

This one actually had me fairly confused for a while, because it’s been pulling in a lot of hits, especially since I didn’t remember any actual jokes from the movie, aside from how silly Malin Akerman’s acting was (zing). So I actually, believe it or not, had to google this one to see what people could possibly be trying to find, since I doubt there’s such a high demand for knock knock jokes about The Watchmen.

So I think I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities. One being The Comedian’s tearful realization that life’s a joke (and if that’s what was being searched for, well… that’s the joke! Life! =D ), and the other was Rorschach’s, well, joke:

“Heard a joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, ‘Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up.’ Man bursts into tears. Says, ‘But, doctor… I am Pagliacci.’ Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains. Fade to black.”

Hahaha!

And then on that third possibility you actually were looking for a joke about The Watchmen:

How many Watchmen does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Depends. The Comedian will screw anything that moves, Dr. Manhattan will make as many of himself as said screwing requires, and Nite Owl and Silk Spectre will do so in an awkward, lengthy, slow-motion scene that takes place in a flying submarine or something.

Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains. Fade to black.

3 )Magikarp When I Evolve/Making Fun of Magikarp/Magikarp DUR/Badass Magikarp

For whatever reason, people love coming to Procrastinator’s Rant for all their Magikarp-mocking needs. Well, what’s that all about? Really, we’ve all known Magikarp’s sucked for at least ten years, and we’re perfectly aware that he’s going to evolve into Gyarados, so clearly people are more than willing to put up with it. And how come nobody gives Goldeen any crap for being useless in Super Smash Bros.? It doesn’t do or evolve into anything useful there, how come it gets off the hook?

Who am I kidding? Magikarp jokes!

How many Magikarp does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Water Pokemon are weak to electricity! THAT’S A TERRIBLE IDEA!

4) Earthbound Haiku

Again, there’s two things people could be searching for. There actually is a haiku in Earthbound, which serve as Everdread’s last words after he falls out the building (spoiler):

But if you’re actually looking for a haiku about Earthbound, well… I’m sure I can think of one:

Funny and charming

Together on our journey

Ness Ness Ness Ness Ness…

And here’s a joke!

How many Nintendo of America executives does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Who knows? They’re too busy screwing over Earthbound/Mother fans!

5) Starmen.net Jerks/Starmen.net Sucks

Okay, seriously? Why are so many people searching for this? What did Starmen.net ever do to you? Those guys have been keeping the Earthbound/Mother cult fanbase alive for easily a decade, since Nintendo of America clearly has no desire to do so. Really? Did they steal your lunch money and call you fat or something? They seem like pretty nice fellows over there. I have nothing against them, and it’s kind of weird how all these searches lead to my blog…

So… that’s basically it! Although I’m sure this will be wildly unpopular amongst my raging fans, there really isn’t much material to make a joke about that last one.

Bah:

How many Starmen does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

I don’t know, but it takes like a kajillion before you find the Sword of Kings because only one out of every 128 have them and IT TAKES FOREVER!

And Biology Continues To Ruin Pokemon For Me

In what I’m going to loosely refer to as celebration of the somewhat recent release of the new Pokemon Platinum (which I’m not actually playing, but I have friends who are and, about ten years later, it’s still fun to go out of your way to watch people play this game) and in not celebration of the sooner than expected AP Biology exam (start cramming, kids!), here’s another inevitable way that getting older sucks:

I forget what exactly we were talking about and what brought it up, but for some reason, Pokemon was mentioned in my AP Bio class a few weeks ago, and my teacher, of course, couldn’t resist instantly ruining twenty-three childhoods by pointing out that, oh so technically, what happens in Pokemon isn’t evolution. In reality, evolution is more along the lines of the genetic composition of a population changing over time than it is leveling up and shapeshifting into a more badass Pokemon in a flash of light. What happens in Pokemon is actually much closer to mutation than it is evolution, since it reflects a change in an individual, although since every “species” of Pokemon follows the same process (i.e., all Abras become Kadabras at level 16), it’s probably even closer to what would be Pokemon puberty…

So that got me thinking. More often than not, science gets the shaft in video games and movies and the like, but because of a nice little something called “suspension of disbelief”, we tend not to care unless it gets way too obvious that not matter how hard you try, a car can’t magically break the rules of gravity and drive from rooftop to rooftop. Pokemon doesn’t really have any realism going for it, but as we’ve already seen with the evolution screw up, that doesn’t stop it from trying. And failing. And ruining little kids’ understanding of things like evolution before they even take a bio class. So like I was saying, that got me thinking. How else did they destory biology?

Let me count the ways.

Let’s take a look at the most obvious mistake: the different kinds of Pokemon. You know, all the different thingamajigs you needed to buy two copies of the same game to find each and every one of because the smartest Pokemon expert in the world doesn’t keep his own data on anything.  Where it’s pretty obvious that they were dying to say “species” but couldn’t, because that would just screw way too much with biology. Here’s why. In most cases it’s vaguely legit. As anyone who ever played the first five minutes of the original game can tell you, there are plenty of Pidgeys and Ratatas and stuff to keep the species alive. But (only looking at the first game, mind you), we encounter some issues, specifically with the Legendary Pokemon. Those bird things. And how about Eevee? Or what about the only two Snorlax in the game? In the real world, these are what you call critically endangered species. Which begs another question. Why doesn’t anybody find it odd that some ten-year old kid is wandering around with critically endangered species… and forcing them to do battle? Shouldn’t somebody have stepped up by now and thought that maybe they should be in a zoo or something? Maybe get some scientists to breed them and save the species? It might be doable for the Snorlax, I mean there’s two of them, but the others are kind of screwed. Although that might not be the ideal situation either, since, again, the best Pokemon scientist we know of had the last remaining organisms of three species of Pokemon not found anywhere else in the world and presumably gone extinct in the wild… and gave them away to kids to combat other Pokemon with.

Back to evolution. As most people know, the driving force of evolution is natural selection, that a population of organisms can change over  generations if individuals having certain heritable traits leave more offspring than other individuals. In other words, if you’re better at stuff, you’ll survive. In other other words, the weak die. In other other other words, WHY IS MAGIKARP NOT EXTINCT?

If a species has no traits that help it survive, it has no evolutionary advantage and it dies. Now, this might actually make sense since Magikarp evolves in Gyarados, which pretty much just kills things, but since Magikarp are still in existence, the species didn’t really evolve, now did it?

Anyway, that’s enough for now. Remember kids, if you take Pokemon too literally, not only will people think you’re weird, but you’ll also fail biology.

Aforementioned Procrastinator’s Best/Worst of 2008: In All Its Properly Skewered and Debatably Relevant Glory

As much as I would like to do one of those predictable Top Ten things for 2008, I really don’t do enough to have a particularly meaningful one, nor would it really be of any significance, since I doubt your average Bartholomew would really care how I feel about the year’s best music, games, shows,  and whatnot.  (Note: not that there’s anything wrong with “average Joe” so much as “Joe” being overused as a name synonymous with the common man, and no, this isn’t a shot at “Joe six-pack” or anything else from the “Oh God are they over yet?” elections. I have a friend named Joe who I’d struggle define even remotely as “common.” I saw the man front-flip through the chains on either side of a swing. Um… back to my point?)

So instead I’m going to take a page from Zero Punctuation and make a filler-y Year in Review that’s basically all about my blog. I mean, you’re caring enough to read my blog, so I’m assuming that’s pretty much what you’re here for. So it’s only fitting that this blog’s version of a Best of is the Best of whatever happened on this thing I added to my hobbies some months ago. Revel in the nostalgia! So without further ado, the best and worst of The Procrastinator’s Rant in its first year, 2008. Excerpts from my favorite and least favorite posts, and some themes built around them.

Best Title: Japanese Scientists Invent Magic!

There was no other way I could explain this one, which I tried to do in the article, and halfway through writing it and realizing I could only sort of explain the science behind it, basically said “well, let’s just go link to youtube…” (A favorite method of mine… SHHH! TELL NO ONE!)

My favorite part of the report is that the team is already talking about using the technology for video games. That’s progress, right there. Seriously though, think about how cool this could be for a pet simulator or something… although if it’s anything like Nintendogs, it’ll probably just lead to everybody punching the air in front of them if the voice recognition still can’t figure out the difference between “sit” and “beg” and, actually, just about anything else… So maybe not a pet simulator then…

Worst Title: Nananananananana Nananananananana Batman!

I think I’ve figured out why nobody read my Dark Knight review…

Going into the theater, I had pretty high hopes, since I consider Batman Begins one of the best superhero (or really, really rich hero, as the case may be) movies ever made …

Honorable Mention – Most “Look At My Awesome Vocabulary, Guys!” Title: Trying to Avoid Saying Something Like “Lost is Getting Lost” or Some Similar Platitude

Clearly I’m moving up in the world of blogging… before I know it Terry O’Quinn will comment on this post with “Yeah, I know, man! Locke was in the coffin! How weird is that?!”

…And how weird is it when a show introduces a time-machine and it’s still old-hat?

Best “People Are Noticing My Blog!” Moment: Maldroid Sans Smoke and Mirrors – Not Bad!

Maldroid themselves commented on my review of their debut album? I’m invincible!…

Worst “People Are Noticing My Blog!” Moment: 123456 Pokemon!

…or… not… This doesn’t have to be my most viewed post by an embarrassingly large number… Please check out a post I actually wrote something in!

And as an added bonus, you can download the song for free from his website! Now you can listen to it on your iPod when you run around a lake in gym class. Like I totally haven’t done.

Honorable Mention – Most “I’m Probably Not Offering Much Incentive For People To Notice My Blog, Am I?” Moment: Excerpt From a Real Conversation I Had on Facebook

At the time, I thought it was… okay,  “funny” isn’t the right word in that context either…

…in the pilot episode of Macguyver, that “rocket thruster” thing was just stupid. He could have just jumped off the cliff and it would have accomplished the same thing.

Best Words of Wisdom: Ah, Irony

According to the stats page, someone found my blog today by searching for “How to tell if you’re a procrastinator.” Well, I don’t actually talk about procrastinating in my blog and it’s just part of the name, but I feel like helping out anyway:

If you’re taking the time to google “How to tell if you’re a procrastinator”, you’re a procrastinator.

Worst Words of Wisdom: Haiku 5

question. answer? no!

i need more karma practice.

is it cake time yet?

This is also a good candidate for worst haiku ever written ever, but in my defense that was the point.

Honorable Mention – Best Words of Wisdom About Words of Wisdom: Avatar: The Last Hurrah

And this is a complaint not just against Avatar but against television and movies in general, don’t use voice altering effects that make everything as unclear as Power Ranger’s Zordon! Really, when Aang asked for the lion turtle’s help and it answered, it could have recited the theme song to Fresh Prince and I wouldn’t have noticed, it was so unintelligible. It really kind of takes away from the effect when the dialogue basically sounds like:

“I need your help, lion turtle! I need to save the world by killing the Fire Lord, but I’ve been told not to kill people! What should I do?”

“BWAAAAAAA! GWAAAAAAAA! WA WA WA WAAAAAAAA! GLURRRRRRRRRGH!”

“Thanks, lion turtle!”

Stop doing that!

Best “In Which I Rip On Nintendo”: Nintendo’s New DSi’d-rather-not

This is probably the most scathing post I’ve ever written… although I still think it’s pretty funny.

Two years later, Nintendo releases the Game Boy Advance SP, which not only has a much more aesthetically appealing folding design, but comes with the long-rumored, never-seen (except on anything but a Nintendo product) backlit screen! With Nintendo embracing Thomas Edison’s scientific breakthrough a mere 220-ish years after its initial discovery, this was certainly an upgrade worth having, no? I mean, come on, it’s the future! Then another two years later, even though the DS was already on shelves released a year before, Nintendo released the Game Boy Micro, which was yet another redesign of the Game Boy Advance, except Holy iPod Generation, Batman! that thing was tiny! So forget the fact that there are three separate systems (four if you count the GBA player for the Gamecube) that can play these games, you can probably fit like five of these things in your back pocket!

Moving on past the GBA innovation, Nintendo released its next handheld, the dual-screen, touch-screen, Nintendo DS in 2004, a system so much more advanced it launched with a port of a seven year old Mario game! And Ping Pals! And then Nintendogs came out about a year later! Seriously, tons of potential right here!

But once again, Nintendo’s two-year cycles of ADD kick in and in 2006 they release the Nintendo DS lite, a redesign of the system with brighter screens, bigger styli, smaller size, fewer calories, and Atkins Diet approved! This was reportedly pretty awesome, because now you could play all those awesome DS games with a system that suddenly realized it was kinda sorta a little important to try to look pretty cool too.

Worst “In Which I Rip on Nintendo”: A Prelude to a Denouncement

Also in which I write an introduction to a post I never get around to caring to write. Let’s just… move on…

Honorable Mention – In Which I Seriously Drop the Ball on Ripping on Nintendo

Yeah, I never wrote a post about the Mother 3 translation patch. To sum it up, Mother 3, and the Earthbound/Mother series it’s part of, is Nintendo’s big “screw you” to the States. The patch was a “screw you” right back. The series is incredibly underrated, and some of the best games ever made. They’re funny, they’re moving, they’re simply beautiful, and Nintendo has ignored America’s pleas for a translation and release anywhere but in Japan. Despite the fact that basically everybody knows Ness because of Super Smash Bros. and they could very easily re-release Earthbound on the Virtual Console at little to no financial risk, they’ve refused to. In doing so, Nintendo hasn’t given America a chance to show revived interest in the series, so they didn’t translate Mother 3. So the fans did it themselves. Nyah!

Best Filler Post: Why I Don’t Play Minesweeper

I hate that game.

Also, one of the most hilarious comments I’ve ever gotten.

Worst Filler Post: Excerpt From a Real Conversation I Had on Facebook

Just ignore this…

Honorable Mention – Best “This Isn’t A Filler Post?” Post: Haiku 6

I like this one.

let’s go blow bubbles

like survivor’s guilt except

nothing has happened

Best Search That Led Someone to Procrastinator’s Rant: guitar hero character customization serj

Serj in Guitar Hero… that… that game would be glorious… Although I don’t think I actually talked about this..

Also, someone else searched for “I hate Word 2007″. I hear you, man…

Worst Search That Led Someone to Procrastinator’s Rant: starmen.net sucks

False!

Honorable Mention – Most WTF Search That Led Someone to Procrastinator’s Rant: spore creature sex

o.O

I know I never talked about that…

Best Post of 2008: My Wall-E Review

This is still my favorite post I’ve written. I stray from the topic a little, but that’s what makes this fun.

The mere fact that Madagascar is evidently good enough to warrant a sequel is a truly terrifying notion. Even more terrifying is that this means that as far as animated pictures go, it’s supposedly one of the best. Really now? Wasn’t that movie mostly a kid-friendly rave scene fueled by that “I Like to Move It” song for what had to be around 50 minutes, which must have led to an epidemic of people’s ears bleeding?

So, I think those are the highlights of 2008, in terms of this little area of the interblag. If you think I’ve missed anything, well, I’m flattered you like my blog so much! I look forward to entertaining everybody and hopefully doing a better job of it in 2009! Happy New Year!

Also, I totally thought it already was 2009. Imagine my surprise.

Okay, Seriously?

I mean two things by this post’s title.

First of all, my post about Neil Cicierega’s 123456 Pokemon has become my most viewed post ever in very little time, and shows no signs of slowing down. Seriously? It’s passed a post titled “Japanese Scientists Invent Magic!” and my Wall-E review. You know, things I actually wrote. How is it that I can post an inane YouTube music video and make a joke about it, and that becomes bigger than things I actually put effort into? As much as I’d like to just attribute the oddity to the wonder that is Neil Ciciergea, I’m pretty sure this says more about blogging, the internet, and media in general.

I’m not doing the Song That’s Been Stuck in my Head of the Week anymore. Not just because I’m kind of annoyed with how that’s become my most viewed post and it doesn’t really say anything (although I’m glad I could lead so many people to the mp3), but because I have so little time, it’s become one of the only things I actually post on my blog, and that kind of cheapens the experience. So until I become less crazy busy and can actually update this thing somewhat consistently again, I don’t think I’m doing Song of the Week for a while.

(This also serves as an apology to anybody who actually reads this thing with some regularity for not updating ever anymore. Semi-kind-of-hiatus-but-not-really?)

And for the second thing I meant by my title, that was my reaction to today’s Ctrl-Alt-Del. This is a post I’ve been meaning to do sometime, so here I go. My friend and I were talking about webcomics the other day and briefly touched Ctrl-Alt-Del. Today’s comic is actually a good example of what has become my main gripe with the comic: this was horrendously anticlimactic. This recent storyline has actually been pretty emotional, but has been cheapened by Buckley’s inability to actually write a decent narrative. Ethan runs into Lilah at the airport finding the conflict magically resolved within a day? “Unexpected, hilarious, and extremely satisfying” in what way, exactly? Unexpected like how the storyline resolved itself immediately after the plot twist? Hilarious in how lame it is? Extremely satisfying in how… it isn’t? Like, at all?

This isn’t a recent problem with Ctrl-Alt-Del. Take a look at the controversial miscarriage storyline the strip tried last summer. Personally, I didn’t see a problem with the topic, I can respect a writer or an artist trying to tackle a serious matter and trying to make a moving and emotional story, even if it’s not something they usually do. Which is, of course, exactly what Tim Buckley failed to do. After, I kid you not, three strips that dealt with the tragedy in a serious and surprisingly emotional manner, Buckley went right back to the jokes. That number works regardless of whether or not you count the strips that aren’t part of the storyline. Also, the second strip after the last of this was nothing more than a poster with four of the strip’s other characters killing each other. Also also, once Buckley got back to the storyline with the normal characters, he started making jokes in the last panel again. Buckley failed to handle a serious topic with any sort of tact, and while he could have proven his critics wrong, he proved them right all too quickly.

So what am I getting at? Basically, the only reason why I’m still reading Ctrl-Alt-Del is the same reason why I watched the last season of That 70’s Show and my family is still watching Smallville. We sort of remember it being good a while ago, but now we’re mostly just watching because we’ve stuck with it this long, so we might as well.

Nintendo’s New DSi’d-rather-not

Nintendo has this nastly little habit of redesigning its handheld consoles every few years or so, yet unlike Apple’s similar practice of making only very subtle changes to its iPod lineup every year, Nintendo manages to do this in a way that makes their new devices seem like essential upgrades.

Let’s go back to 2001 for a moment. Nintendo releases the Game Boy Advance, a 32-bit handheld video game console unlike. It was pretty awesome. Two years later, Nintendo releases the Game Boy Advance SP, which noy only has a much more aesthetically appealing folding design, but comes with the long-rumored, never-seen (except on anything but a Nintendo product) backlit screen! With Nintendo embracing Thomas Edison’s scientific breakthrough a mere 220-ish years after its initial discovery, this was certainly an upgrade worth having, no? I mean, come on, it’s the future! Then another two years later, even though the DS was already on shelves released a year before, Nintendo released the Game Boy Micro, which was yet another redesign of the Game Boy Advance, except Holy iPod Generation, Batman! that thing was tiny! So forget the fact that there are three separate systems (four if you count the GBA player for the Gamecube) that can play these games, you can probably fit like five of these things in your back pocket!

Moving on past the GBA innovation, Nintendo released its next handheld, the dual-screen, touch-screen, Nintendo DS in 2004, a system so much more advanced it launched with a port of a seven year old Mario game! And Ping Pals! And then Nintendogs came out about a year later! Seriously, tons of potential right here!

But once again, Nintendo’s two-year cycles of ADD kick in and in 2006 they release the Nintendo DS lite, a redesign of the system with brighter screens, bigger styli, smaller size, fewer calories, and Atkins Diet approved! This was reportedly pretty awesome, because now you could play all those awesome DS games with a system that suddenly realized it was kinda sorta a little important to try to look pretty cool too.

Just last week, Nintendo continued its pattern of making itself obsolete every two years by announcing yet another redesign of the Nintendo DS, the DSiPod Touch at the Nintendo Conference with an announcement that went something like this:

Fanboy: “Why, surely there isn’t that much room for improvement! How could Nintendo possibly top itself again?”

Nintendo: “Fear not, kind fellows! For the new DSi is 12% thinner than the DS lite!”

Fanboy: “So it ain’t so! Now we can fit more Nintendo products in our pockets!”

Nintedo: “And you’ll have too, because we’ve removed the GBA slot!”

Fanboy: “Shock and awe!”

Nintendo: “And that’s not all! The DSi also has two .3 megapixel cameras (and that’s not a typo!) and an SD card slot so you can view pictures and listen to AAC music files (only!)”

Fanboy: “It’s a technological marvel!”

Nintendo: “It also has a built-in web browser, internal flash memory, and its own online store!”

Fanboy: “The innovation is blowing my mind! When does it come out in the United States?”

Nintendo: “Next April, after the holiday season, because we still can’t make up our mind on whether we want to actually try to make money or not!”

Fanboy: “Hooray!”

Whoo.

Seriously, I can understand Nintendo’s philosophy behind this, in that it didn’t set out to make the DSi the best MP3 player or web browser (which it did very well, by the way), but simply to add extra features to the DSi. Well, that’d be nice, if these additions weren’t so gimmicky. The two cameras (one facing forward, one facing the user) aren’t a terrible idea, but the camera qualities sure are, and how the closed unit looks uglier than the DS lite because of the eyesore-tastic camera location. The larger screens are nice and the web browser could actually be a little tempting (I admit it would be nice for those times where I want to check something on the internet in the middle of the night and I don’t want to wait for anything that can do so to turn on), as are the flash memory and possibilities with an online store with $8, $5, $2, and free games, but overall, the additions don’t make for a very convincing package.

The DSi is region locked. Its battery life is shot (3-4 hours on highest brightness setting). The online store’s point system uses the same points cards as the Wii’s online store does, but the points themselves are not interchangable between the two stores. The exclusion of MP3 compatability makes the music player nearly useless.

The problem I see with the new DSi is that for every new feature it adds, some of which I admit are pretty fancy, they manage to feel somewhat underwhelming (like the .3 MP cameras). I have no doubt that the online store has tons of potential (and missed potential, just like the Wii’s online store) and that Nintendo will think of great uses for the cameras, which begs the question of just how shafted are those people with DS systems sans camera. Not to mention that the cameras just make the system look ugly now.

I’m still using my original DS I got about a month after launch. I didn’t upgrade to the DS lite, and don’t see myself upgrading to the DSi either. If the new features sound good to you though, then I have no doubt that the DSi would be a nice investment. For me, I’m having a hard time even caring.

Well, I Just Returned Spore

Well, it’s a good thing I didn’t open the box yet. As I wrote in a post a week or two ago, I knew that Spore’s SecuROM software limited the number of installs on your computer, which has actually recently been upped to something along the lines of unlimited installs on five computers and a deauthorize option, which I’d be much more okay with. So I bought the game, and then learned about the lawsuit (you can read a PDF of the filed complaint). Here’s some of my favorite parts:

“What purchasers are not told is that, included in the purchase, installation, and operation of Spore is a second, undisclosed program … Consumers are given no control, rights, or options over SecuROM….

“Electronic Arts intentionally did not disclose to any such purchasers that the Spore game disk also possessed a second, hidden program which secretly installed to the command and control center of the computer (Ring 0, or the Kernel), and surreptitiously operated, overseeing function and operation on the computer, preventing the computer from operating under certain circumstances and/or disrupting hardware options. …”

So, basically, SecuROM installs itself on the root level of your computer, allows itself to do anything with your computer, runs constantly (including when the game isn’t running), draining computer resources. As I understand it, it’s also somewhat poorly coded, and has led to horror stories about it crashing people’s computers, which has even happened to a friend of mine. To be fair, I know two people who purchased Spore and only the one has experienced any computer trouble after installation, but I don’t see why a legit customer has to be subjected to these risks in the first place.

The guys at Penny Arcade have already written up an essay concerning the whole issue, reaching pretty much the same conclusion I have: There is none. Realistically, how noticable are SecuROM and the whole five installs deal to the average consumer? I won’t pretend I know much anything about computers, so would I really notice the presence of SecuROM, provided it doesn’t crash my computer? But what if it does crash my computer? EA doesn’t seem to admit that this will happen, but I’ve read plenty of accounts and it’s happened to a friend of mine. Again, I don’t see why a legit customer has to even be exposed to these risks. It makes me pretty happy I haven’t played a computer game since Riven (which is way too hard!)

Some Spore SecuROM Scenarios

Only a mini-rant today, since I’m pretty busy, but this has been bugging me all day. I just recently found out about Spore’s SecuROM malware software, and I’m incredibly annoyed. The software was included to try to prevent piracy of the game by limiting the number of installs to three. In theory, this means you can install the game on three different computers. In reality, this means your computer can crash three times, and then you’re locked out. I see absolutely no reason why this software had to be included. EA couldn’t honestly have believed that this would crack down on piracy, and as any idiot could tell you, the inclusion of SecuROM on the disk would actually drive more people to download the game illegally. This includes those people who do buy games legally (how dare they not want a legit purchase to muck up their computer with malware?). And what do you know? It has. Spore is fast on its way to becoming the most pirated game in history. It’s even getting torn to shreds on amazon.com over this. This was simply a terrible idea that does nothing but hurt those people who actually buy the game legitimately. Call me crazy, but I’d think one would want to hang on to those guys…

Even better, Jeff Brown, vice president of corporate communications at EA, has described EA’s SecuROM DRM as “standard for the industry” and has cited Apple’s practice of only allowing downloaded music to be played on three devices. Well, talk about apples and oranges! There’s a huge difference between paying 99 cents for a song and at least $50 for a computer game! Not to mention that if your iPod crashes or (hypothetically) gets upgraded, that doesn’t count as one of your three devices. Simply put, EA is trying to justify an unreasonable software practice by comparing apples to oranges. Riiiight…

So, with that out of the way, I have a scenario for anyone who can help me out. Let’s assume I’m dong everything legally:

I’m going to buy a copy of Spore and install it on one of my family’s computers. Then when I get my laptop and go off to college next year, I’m installing it on that and taking it with me. Does this mean that that particular DVD of the game will only have one install left on it? Does my family need to buy another copy of the game if they wish to keep playing it after I leave with it? If they decide to buy a second copy of the game, would SecuROM let that copy work with the previously installed data, or would they have to use up an install on that disk, effectively using three out of six installs to get the game to work on two computers? Would their saved data still be there?

If anyone understands SecuROM and whatnot well enough to answer these questions, I thank you in advance. I’ll thank you again too when you tell me, but just to keep you motivated.