Nitpickery: The Avengers

Hey y'all.  Guess what?  I actually saw a movie on the day it came out.  I never do that.  I'm usually that pretend to wait for the dollar theater but end up forgetting about it until it comes on Netflix sort of person.  And I'm a cheapskate.  But it was my birthday, so I wanted to go see a movie.

I had a really good birthday, actually.  I got free fancy tea, put in an application for a new job, and had one of those "baconator" sandwiches from Wendy's.  Yummers.  Oh wait, I forgot, I have leftover cake.  Be right back!

...

Okay, cake acquired.  Movie review time.

Katamari Damacy New Ideas

Hey y'all.  Hm.  I was just watching a bunch of let's plays on youtube of Katamari games.  It turns out there's a crap ton of them.  I've watched Katamari Damacy (the only one I've actually played), We Love Katamari, and Katamari Forever.  The first is excellent, and the second brings in a lot of originality -- though the second one lost points with me because it made it look like humans actually like it when the Prince rolls a katamari.  If you're being rolled up into a ball and turned into a star, I doubt you'd like it.  Then the second game makes up those lost points by its ending credits sequence.

The general plot of the game is that the King of all Cosmos has gotten like...drunk or something, and has accidentally destroyed all the stars in the sky and also the moon.  His teeny tiny son, the Prince of all Cosmos, has to go roll up all the Earth items he can to make new stars.  Basically all the games go on this model, though the cause of the loss of stars varies somewhat per game.   The point of all the games is to create more stars and planets out of random stuff on Earth.

These are great games.  You'd be surprised, but it is.  What with gathering up a bunch of random objects (mainly weird Japanese stuff), the King's random and derogatory quotes, ridiculous music, and the ability to roll up people, cars, and even buildings and giant squid as you get bigger, this game can be ridiculously addictive.

But the problem with the game is, it's pretty simple.  Even fans of the game have to admit that it's pretty repetitive, and if you have one of the better games, there's usually no need  to get another unless you're really obsessed.  So that's why Katamari needs some new ideas!

How to Doom your Sequel 2: Dark Seed

Hey y'all.  I didn't think this was going to be a continuing thing, but I've been watching let's plays of the Dark Seed games, and it's like the developers of their second game really didn't want their sequel to work out.  It's like they did almost everything possible to make sure the game was weird and you hated the main character.  Normally I'm not a horror fan, as most horror these days is all gore and no scare.  However, the Dark Seed games are so cheesy hilarious, I figured I might check them out.

The first game was actually pretty decent.  It centers around professional writer Mike Dawson, who has just bought a really creepy house, for some inexplicable reason.  His first night there, he dreams that an alien baby has been implanted in his head.  From the headaches Mike experiences every morning, you figure the dream was real.  This is a horror game, after all.

So Mike has to do several things and claim several seemingly insignificant items to enter the dark world, a place more or less parallel to the normal world, only creepier and nastier.  From here, he has to find a way to stop the ancients, an alien race, from using the baby in his head to take over both worlds -- because apparently, while creepy, the normal darkworlders are just....well, normal.  One of them, a disembodied head, is the person who sends Mike dreams every night and helps him win the game.

There are several problems with this game.  First of all, it is very, very difficult.  Without a walkthrough, you will find yourself dying several times.  And because you don't pick up a specific object, or don't complete a task fast enough, you can easily get yourself into an unwinnable state without even realizing it.  Also, every time you die, the game forces you to go back to the beginning, including watching the scene of Mike getting a baby implanted in his head again.  Save early, save often.

But overall the game itself was pretty good.  Not the best thing in the world, but it was a great start to a potentially rewarding franchise.  If the second game hadn't happened, anyway.