Faux News: Video Game Sex

I think this video pretty much speaks for itself. Fox News shows again and again why it's a bad idea to have a news source that fails to be objective. Everything about this "report" or "debate" or whatever you want to call it is misinformation charged with group think and school yard bullying. They invite one person who actually knows what's going on and do nothing but bash him and not let him get a word in.

I don't even really care about the game in question, Mass Effect, but it's the way that Fox News handles itself while pretending to be a serious news network that makes my blood boil. First of all Mass Effect's sex scenes are hardly the "full frontal nudity" that Fox News would like everyone to believe it is. They act like the game, which is a sci-fi space opera role-playing game revolves around the sex while most players will get through the game without even running into it.

There are a few things that really jump out at me with this video. The first is that they really never even consider opinions that are against their own. None of them have played the game or even understand video games (Mass Effect never objectifies women and in fact you can play as one). They believe that the video game market is still solely dominated by adolescent males which is untrue as more females are getting into video games and other generations, like mine for instance, who grew up with them are still playing them. They completely ignore the child-lock out feature of the X-Box 360 which will prevent children from playing mature rated games, and they also ignore the ESRB ratings completely. Why is it that we let rated R movies get away with horrible depraved things but when a video game has a M rating, one which means nobody under 17 should be playing, all of a sudden that rating doesn't mean anything?

The most cutting line comes at the end when there's a halfway intelligent comment about how at the end of the day it's the parent's responsibility to prevent their children from playing games that will be harmful for them, which is answered with, "Unfortunately." So there you go. Conservatives have admitted on live TV to being bad, lazy parents.

God forbid if these people ever found out what would happen if their children typed the word "tits" into Goolge Image Search.

Giant Robot Review: Tetsujin 28 (2004)

Giant robots started as alien threats or destructive weapons in pulp science fiction stories. This all changed in the sixties with Mitsuteru Yokoyama's Tetsujin 28 (literally Iron Man 28). In the West most people would more readily recognize the name of this robot as "Gigantor." This time the robot wasn't the villain, but a super hero, controlled by a young boy who worked to defeat evil robots and other various threats to peace. Thus Tetsujin 28 launched the genre we all know as giant, super robots.

In 2004 a 26 episode series was produced in the same vein as the original series. Unlike the 80's remake that I know and love which was more of a re-imagining of the original, this series would stick close to the original manga, and use all of the admittedly dated original designs and the original story. When Tetsujin 28 was originally brought to the States as Gigantor, the story was completely changed since it involved a post WWII Japan and didn't really show the West in a positive light.
The new Tetsujin 28 series makes it across the ocean in an era where we all have the Internet so you can't lie to us and we live in a culture where censorship isn't quite as prevalent as it used to be. As such it's untouched and in its original form. The story takes place in 1955, the end of American occupation and the start of Japan's rising new economy. It's interesting to watch this show simply because you're watching post WWII Japan from their perspective and you meet all sorts of characters with different ideologies about the war, and the new era of peace. Interestingly enough though, you never hear the word "atomic bomb" muttered even once though the bombings of Tokyo play a role in the story.

That post war theme is at the core of Tetsujin 28. The early episodes deal with Tetsujin's sudden appearance which explains how it was a secret Japanese weapon developed for use against the United States before the end of the war. At the same time new dastardly secrets and immorally created weapons of mass destruction are uncovered and while people debate over whether Tetsujin is an anachronistic weapon no longer needed in the current Japanese society or a tool that can help Japan's rise, it's put to use to put Japan's other dark secrets of WWII back to rest. The debate of what a weapon is, and if weapons can be used for good or evil purposes is also a major part of the story, and you get the feeling that they're probably talking about the atom bomb here. Japan is portrayed as a nation confused about it's identity, its place in the word, and it's people are justifiably afraid of weapons that could bring even more pain to their defeated country.
The hero is Shotaro Kaneda who is forced to control Tetsujin, the creation of a father that he never knew. Shotaro is portrayed as maybe a bit too perfect in terms of personality as he's a "genius boy detective." He is however, fallible, and makes rash decisions that a young and confused boy his age would make. Tetsujin is practically defeated as many times as he succeeds and Shotoro is locked in a constant moral struggle over whether Tetsujin should be used in combat at all. One thing he becomes certain about is that weapon or not, Tetsujin is the only thing that's left of his family. The supporting characters and villains are all excellent as well, constantly shifting sides and motives as situations change and battles are won and lost. The series is directed by Yasuhiro Imagawa who is also responsible for the anime classic Giant Robo which itself is nothing more but a gigantic tribute to Mitsuteru Yokoyama's creations, including Tetsujin 28. As such anime fans who have seen Giant Robo will see a lot of familiar faces in this, like the pink jacket and fedora wearing Kenji Murasame. The show moves at a decisively slower pace than Giant Robo, but much of the same melodramatic tone and insane plot twists that made Giant Robo so popular is present here. In fact you'll probably have a few deja vu moments in this if you've seen Giant Robo.

The animation style as mentioned before is a retro art design taken straight from the original from the 60's. I've heard a lot of complaints about this, but it's beautifully animated, and personally I prefer the cartoony old-style of anime to the generic look of today's shows. If you don't like the retro look then this will be a problem for you, but for me it's one of the reasons I wanted to see this series. Giant Robo has the same look, though it's not animated quite as well as that even though it's several years newer. They weren't trying to go over the top and I think they did a good job of keeping the classic integrity of the original.
The opening story arcs really set things up for things to come, with the first half of the show dealing with the secrets and tragedies from the war that are still lurking around, threatening to slow or stop the progress of post war Japan. The second half of the show deals with new threats, outside influence and competing economies with groups that threaten to reignite war, or possibly destroy the entire world itself with Japan's most secret of WWII weapons. The show lags a bit in the middle, with filler episodes that both introduce and kill a baddie in one half-hour. The show picks up again at the end and relentlessly throws drama onto poor Shotatro, perhaps a little too thickly. After that the plot twists and bends until it builds up to the final encounter, and the ultimate fate of Tetsujin.

If you're here for mindless giant robot action, there are better places to look. The action that we do get is excellent and well animated, but the action sequences are few and far between compared to some other shows. Tetsujin 28 is also from a time before robots had all sorts of powerful and exciting weapons so lots of hands on metal crunching is involved. The robots are also all admittedly ridiculous looking, including Tetsujin, but that's part of the charm especially when you consider these robots are being built in 1955 and they should look ridiculous.
It's not the greatest anime ever, but if you were a fan of Giant Robo you should find a lot to like here. It's a fitting tribute to the original boy and his robot show that was the basis of inspiration for an incalculable amount of fiction including things like the absolutely excellent Iron Giant. It's so important that Akira, one of the most important manga and anime works ever is basically one giant homage to Tetsujin 28. If you were ever wondering about the origin of giant robots but you find the old show a bit too corny to stomach this might be a good show to look at. The story that hooks you with its lovable characters, twisting plot line, and post WWII drama from the perspective of Japan was enough to keep me watching and the giant robots and science fiction themes just wound up being a nice bonus.

Even though it's slow at times I think this is a real A-list anime that everybody has overlooked because they want their shows with the generic mass produced modern look that made anime popular here in the United States, or maybe they just thought this was another generic mecha show. I think if it would've been shown on TV here that it probably would've gotten a cult following like The Big O. Either way it was enjoyable enough for me to marathon all day and even though I don't think it's as good as or as important as its predecessor, Giant Robo, the new Tetsujin 28 is a fitting tribute to its late creator, and a look at historical aspects of Japan that you don't often hear about, or want to hear about, here in the United States.

I give it an 8.5 out of 10

NES Classics Volume 1: The Super Mario Bros. Trilogy

So now that my Generation NEX is here, and I've got to tell you this beauty is leaps and bounds over the Yobo FC Game Console in both style and game compatibility, I've decided it's time to start talking about a few NES games. To get things started, instead of discussing one game, why not talk about the system's three star titles. That's right, the portly princess saving plumber and his 8-bit trilogy of Super Mario Bros. I won't review these per-se because of nostalgia goggles, and despite the fact that all I'm about to say has been said before, I'd like to talk a little about each game in the series that both Nintendo and Mario household names.


Super Mario Bros.

In the video game industry there's a lot of arguing over which games are the best examples of certain genres or which games are the most important or influential. One thing you won't hear argued is that Super Mario Bros. is simultaneously one of the greatest games and the most influential game ever created.

Super Mario Bros. was probably the first example of a modern video game that was designed to be fun instead of eating quarters or frustrating the player. The controls were finely tweaked (very few NES games managed to duplicate the sublime play control of the Super Mario games) and there was a sense of purpose to what you were doing. The gameplay was deceptively simplistic at first: jump on your enemies and get to the end of the level. Surprisingly, controlling Mario turned out to be inexplicably fun and the more you explored the deeper the game became. That simple "save the princess" plot meant a lot back in the day, because unlike most games at the time there was a goal, an ending, you could actually beat it instead of being faced with a "game over" screen.

The enemies were all recognizable instead of just random jumbles of pixels. Just about everyone knows what a Koopa or a Goomba is. How many video games have had minor enemies that have become that well known? The power ups were another new concept that gave the player something to work for. The difficulty is a near perfect balance and the game can be beaten simply with enough practice. Secrets scattered throughout the game kept people playing to try new things and get through levels in different ways. To this day I can still return to the game and have fun playing it despite the fact that I've beaten it more times than I care to remember and I've been playing it since before I was sapient.

Though they don't look like much today the graphics were also a huge leap over what we were used to seeing. It was amazing at the time to look at something in a video game and immediately know what it is. I haven't even mentioned the simple music which is still catchy and recognizable today, perfectly designed to keep looping without the player getting annoyed with it.

Super Mario Bros. inspired countless sequels and spin offs, thousands of clones, and did several things for the first time that video games are still doing today. It brought video gaming back from the dead after the crash in 1984 while completely changing the way we looked at and played video games, starting a trend that would make them a part of our every day lives. Hats off to you, Super Mario Bros. You are truly a work of genius.

Super Mario Bros. 2

Super Mario Bros. 2 is the black sheep of the trilogy, like any trilogy be it video games or movies there's always the awkward one that's love it or hate it. There's a damn good reason for this in the case of Mario 2 as just about everyone who's ever played a Mario game already knows, Mario 2 was not the "original" Super Mario Bros. 2 though its place in the Mario canon has become solidified as the official one.

The original Super Mario Bros. 2 is what America received on the SNES Super Mario All Stars compilation as The Lost Levels though it can now be obtained in its NES form for the first time ever in the Western world via the Wii Virtual Console. The Lost Levels or rather the Japanese Mario 2 uses the same basic graphics with a few tweaks to the sprites from the first game. The major difference to Mario 1 is that it amps up the difficulty to an insane degree. Rumors say that we didn't receive that game because it was either "too difficult" for Western gamers or it was "too similar" to the first game and it would've disappointed fans who were seeing the NES pulling off more and more impressive tricks. Don't get me wrong, despite it's difficulty it's a great game, and in reality the 8-bit story of Super Mario is a quadrilogy instead of a trilogy.

The Super Mario Bros. 2 that we got started as a Nintendo platformer called Doki Doki Panic. Everyone's heard the story by now so let me cut it short by just saying Nintendo swapped out the sprites and gameplay elements for Mario ones, tweaked and improved the gameplay, and slapped the Super Mario Bros. name on it. This lazy move was completely unnoticed by NES owners who welcomed the sequel to one of the greatest games ever with open arms. Rumors about the original Super Mario Bros. 2 surfaced as a playground legend until it landed on Western shores for the SNES. It's amazing when you think about it because with the Internet today you'd never be able to get away with something like this now.

The first thing you noticed about the game was it's graphics. They're a major face lift over the original and I'm certain that's one of the reasons Nintendo chose to remake Doki Doki Panic in Mario's image. The second thing you'll notice is you have a choice of four characters, the brothers of Mario and Luigi of course, Toad of the mushroom people, and even the Princess herself. They all have different jumping abilities (Mario is the same as always, Luigi flails his legs to stay in the air longer, Toad can't jump worth shit, and the Princess is the most unbalanced character in the game because she can float for a short period of time) and different levels of strength (how fast they can pick things up).

When you get into the game, jumping on the enemies doesn't kill them, it doesn't even phase them, they'll just keep right on walking. You have to pick them up and throw them at other enemies to kill them. You can also pull radishes and other weapons from the ground to chuck at your opponents. All of Mario's familiar enemies are gone in this game, replaced by Doki Doki Panic's cast of baddies and instead of power ups you find mushrooms behind doors that you create with some kind of potion (don't ask me) that add to your life bar, another first in the Mario series. When you're down to one life you shrink like in other Mario games, though unlike in other Mario games being small is just a graphical thing and has no distinct advantage.

Honestly I missed the familiar foes and gameplay elements and when I was little this game confused me a bit because it's certainly not a Mario game. Still, Nintendo told me it was, and at the time I believed them. It's certainly not a bad game, though one wonders if it would've been popular if it was released in its original form and not as a Mario game. Since we never got the original Mario 2 on the NES, or the unaltered Doki Doki Panic while Japan got our Mario 2 as Super Mario USA I feel kind of ripped off. Despite all its weirdness (which is explained in the game's ending as Mario wakes up from a dream), this game gave us something new and kept the franchise rolling to its next, biggest, and brightest achievement.

Super Mario Bros. 3

While Mario 2 kept held us over, most of us preferred the original formula, and there were a lot of mixed feelings about the game. Nintendo was busy taking that original formula and fermenting it, making it stronger, bigger, and better. The result was Super Mario Bros. 3, and despite being an 8-bit game many video game aficionados still consider this to be the greatest title in the franchise, if not one of the greatest video games ever made.

Mario fans were back to jumping on familiar bad guys, meeting a few new ones, and collecting new power ups. And my god were their a lot of power ups. After the old-school fire flower there was the leaf that for some reason gave you racoon ears and a tail and allowed you to whip enemies and fly. The immense variety of different suits and other new goodies to play with gave the series more depth than ever before. The gameplay retained it's simplicity, but there was just so much to do and so many well hidden secrets to uncover that you could waste months finding it all.

The game introduced us to the concept of a world map that we'd see in future games in the series, it added mini-games to collect lives and power ups, it even let Mario and Luigi duke it out in a the battle arena from the original Mario Bros. arcade game. The levels were once again perfectly balanced, where as both of the Mario 2's difficulties were a bit menacing and not quite as fair. Anyone could play this game and have fun and with practice they could beat it.

I still remember the gossip circulating about where to find the warp whistles that allowed you to skip levels and the ability to don the Hammer Brother's suit and wield the power of one of Mario's most fearsome enemies. Yes, the time before the Internet was certainly a magical place filled with mystery and intrigue. There's just so much in this game that surprises you like the world where everything is gigantic or the slippery ice world. Every new world is unique and full of surprises, all with the same inexplicable addictive fun that the original game had. If I had to choose one game to be stranded on a desert island with, this would be the game, since somehow Nintendo cracked the secret formula for infinite replay value when they made this game.

I don't know what else to say, it's hard to describe exactly how perfect and polished this game is. Nintendo took everything that was good about Mario up until this point and magnified it by a thousand fold. Some people believe that Super Mario World for the SNES is the definitive title in the franchise, but the fact that many more people, including myself, consider 3 to be the best, as well as one of, if not the greatest platform game ever made is testament to how incredible the game is considering it's built on vastly inferior technology. Nintendo knew the NES inside and out when they made Mario 3 and they squeezed everything they could out of it. They made music and graphics that should've been impossible to make and paired it up with that classic, perfectly balanced Mario gameplay.

Super Mario Bros. 3 ended the 8-bit era for Mario, though it paved the way for many more classics to come. It proved that lightning could strike twice and helped solidify Nintendo as a major force in the video game industry.

Conclusion

There's not much else to say. The NES trilogy of Mario games will probably fade from memory as kids grow up on more modern video game systems, but it's indisputable that the currently growing industry owes a lot to these three games. I might sound a little too glowing here, and I'm even a Sega Genesis obsessive so it's not a love for Nintendo that guides these ravings. With New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS the old Mario formula keeps on trucking without showing its age, and I can still play through the old games without getting bored. These games are truly timeless and stand for everything that video gaming is today. Other games may have come before this franchise, and more impressive games may have come after it, but none of them innovated like it.

Stupid People Tricks: Chemtrail Conspiracy Theorists

I never heard of a "chemtrail" until a few weeks ago when some wackos were talking about them on a forum in one of Something Awful's "The Weekend Web" feature. It's a great feature in that it makes me angry and depressed just as much as it's absolutely hilarious because it features not only some of the most insane people that it's a wonder they can access the Internet, but entire forums full of people who agree with them.

I just finished watching a documentary on "chemtrails" which are supposed to be what any normal, sane, person would know as contrails. Instead of just water vapor however they believe these "chemtrails" are are actually planes dumping chemicals into the atmosphere to either effect the weather, experiment with mind control, or just outright poison everybody.

The Discovery Channel documentary tried to be fair to both sides, but it was pretty harsh and did a great job of disproving everything the conspiracy theorists had to say while the theorists themselves only had the shape of the clouds and the number of "chemtrails" to back up their theories.

The shapes of contrails, of course, are dependent on the type of engine, the altitude of the plane, and the fluid-like conditions of our upper atmosphere. How long they last, or if contrails appear at all, all depend on these factors. Basically they were just looking for things that looked different and used that as their evidence. I'm sorry, not all things are uniform in our world. A Ford Model-T and a Lamborghini Diablo are going to operate as differently as an A-10 Warthog and a 747 Airliner. The atmospheric conditions 10,000 feet above the position of an airplane will be different than the conditions that plane is flying through. The conspiracy crowd isn't worried about this though, to them a plane is a plane and they all fly exactly the same way.

The mind control aspect doesn't make any sense because then they'd be mind controlled and they wouldn't be able to come up with these theories but I guess their tinfoil hats protect them. The weather modification thing is at least based in some real science. Contrails are basically artificial cirrus, created by jet engines forming ice crystals in the upper atmosphere thanks to the water vapor their engines leave behind. Cirrus clouds do contribute to global warming, but the problem isn't any worse than what SUVs are causing every day. The poisoning theories are also ridiculous, if the "new world order/Illuminati" existed and wanted to kill you then they would've done it already instead of tolerated you posting their "secrets" on your hideous Angelfire pages.

Conspiracy theorists aren't much different than the radical Christians I've already spoken about. They're both looking to be part of something big, something that makes them feel special and important. Thinking they know something dangerous and that they can be heroes by telling the world about it really has to inflate your ego and make you feel good. It's all a joke though, and the only reason they do it is because they have nothing else in their empty lives to feel good about. I don't want to blame this on the South or Middle America... but let's just say most of the "chemtrail" videos on Youtube have telling southern accents (and even some trailer parks). All these people have to do is cash their welfare checks and come up with dastardly theories about the government that spoon feeds them. To escape brainwashing all they do is brainwash themselves. In any case it's impossible to argue with these people since they can't trust science when they don't trust scientists (also comparable to Evangelicals) so I'll stop ranting now.

I'm glad that I've been born with the capability to use my brain and ignore these modern day superstitions.

Post-Christmas DS Games

So after getting The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for Christmas and two additional DS games with Christmas money I've been a little distracted lately. I thought I'd write some quick reviews of some of this holiday season's best portable offerings. The DS is one of my favorite video game platforms to come along in a very long time. It's affordable and intuitive and full of that often quoted Nintendo "innovation."

The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass

Like most Nintendo franchises Zelda and I have a pretty good relationship. I'm not a hardcore fan, and I've always preferred the sci-fi styling and open-ended nature of the Metroid series, but you have to recognize the brilliance that keeps Zelda one of the most cherished and longest running video game franchises out there.

Recent Zelda games have fallen into two camps. The serious, more realistic looking Zelda that started with N64's Ocarina of Time, and the stylized cartoon-ish Zelda that started with the Gamecube title Wind Waker which hearkens back to the days of simpler graphics. Phantom Hourglass is part of the latter bunch and it fits the portable nature of the DS just fine.

The game is controlled entirely by touch-screen which made a few people cringe at first but it works so well and offers so many innovative game-play elements that it nearly makes my head explode. Nintendo wanted to make an example to other developers with this game and they use every inch of the DS from the touch screen to the microphone, they even have one puzzle that's solved by closing the system. The game was designed by a few of the people who worked on the SNES classic A Link to the Past and it certainly shows. It's a brilliant meld of both classic and modern Zelda, feeling like an old-school game but with imaginative new puzzles and ways of using old tools via the touch screen.

Memorable characters like the greedy and cowardly Linebeck and your over-eager fairy companion Celia don't hurt either. It's got a cute and funny story that doesn't take itself too seriously which helps break up the monotony between puzzles, and just about every part of this game is an intricate puzzle. Like most Zelda games it's chalked full of side-quests and secrets that will probably drag me back to playing it eventually. My only complaint is forcing you to revisit the starting temple several times and making you play it on a timer which was at times difficult and frustrating.

Still, this is by far the best hand-held game of the year and proof that the franchise isn't dead yet.

10 out of 10

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

When I first saw this, like a lot of people I laughed out loud. Call of Duty 4 for PC/PS3/X-Box 360 has been widely heralded as 2007's game of the year, and for good reason. The graphics are some of the best in any video game, ever. But the disturbing amount of realism doesn't end with how the game looks, but the voice acting, the way the guns function, the iron-sights, the artificial intelligence, the brilliant story and gut-twisting scripted sequences... all of this makes the game one of the greatest, most realistic war operas ever created. It doesn't leave you with a sense of glorifying war or violence, it leaves you with the shaken feeling that war is hell and something nobody should ever have to participate in. Call of Duty is a franchise that's been known for it's incredible WWII themed games and the fourth installment in a modern day setting with terrorists and crazed Russian nationals has been the kick in the pants that it really needed to put it over the top. Maybe it's because of the times we live in that make the game more topical and significant, but it certainly makes you feel like you're there with intense action while it rips out your heart and stomps on it with the grim reality of war.

The DS version doesn't quite have all that, but one thing is for certain, they made sure that they would strive for quality with the hand-held version and saw that it lived up to the Call of Duty name. All the intense action is there. The levels look good for the DS. The guns have their iron-sights. The scripted sequences are amazingly animated on such a tiny screen and really shocked and surprised me the first time through.

Instead of trying to replicate the entire experience of its big brother game it plays as sort of a side-story to the other versions of the game. You play as anonymous Marines and British SAS members that go on different supporting missions during the little secret war that you're fighting in. They managed to keep in little tidbits like the support missions where you're gunning off the top of a truck or in a helicopter, and they even managed to put in the high altitude level where you're the gunner in an AC-130, looking through a black and white radar scope and raining death from above to support your troops who are running around on the ground completing objectives. The variety keeps the game interesting and keeps you immersed the whole way through. The game also has a beautiful orchestral score and like its big brother, a load of voice acting with troops barking out orders and adding to the hectic action.

The AI isn't quite as advanced as the bigger brother version. Guys will still run out, duck behind objects, and toss grenades, they'll even pick them up and toss them back (you can toss them back too naturally, and you've also got flashbangs). For the most part though they'll just stand there and let you shoot at them. The hit detection is pretty good. If you shoot at the chest of your enemies you'll just be wasting bullets on their body armor, but a pop or two to the head will take them right down. Unlike the other versions of the game your allies are also dumb as shit, and except for a few rare occasions just stand around being useless.

The game was also criminally short and has no Wi-Fi online play, though it does have local multi-player which I'm looking forward to trying. I probably would've gotten bored if it were any longer though. As it stands the game shows just how well first-person shooters can be handled on the DS.

8 out of 10

Contra 4

In the history of video games, few titles evoke more swearing and admiration than the Contra series. This year is Contra's 20th anniversary and in celebration of that landmark, Konami has decided to give a little gift to its loyal fans. I've never personally been the biggest fan of the series but this is an important game and something that many people would've never thought possible in today's world of simple games designed so that anybody can beat them and move on with their lives. The appeal of Contra is you're going to have to have weeks, months, even years of practice until you memorize the levels master the delicate controls necessary to guide your one-hit-and-dead soldier through the perils of the Contra world.

Another reason this game is so important is because it's a direct follow-up to the SNES classic Contra 3: Alien Wars and it's the first traditional 2D contra game since the absolutely insane and absurdly hard Contra: Hard Corps on the Sega Genesis. This isn't surprising because the series isn't terribly popular in Japan and since I don't see too many muscular, American, machine-gun toting commandos staring in anime I don't have to ask why this is. In the West, Contra is viewed almost as a right of passage for the "hardcore" gamer, revered for its toughness and unforgiving level design. The bosses are brutal and insane and just about every moment of this game will have you screaming "You've gotta be kidding me, this is fucking impossible." Konami had an American team design the game and despite being only the second Contra to not come from Japan, the result is fantastic. The game looks great, the game-play is polished to a crystal shine, and the balance and level design is as perfect as Contra has ever gotten.

It's loaded with extra unlockable content including a challenge mode, a Contra museum that pays homage to the previous games, and even emulated versions of the original NES classics, Contra and Super-C. I don't often say this about modern games (with the possible, but not certain exception of Metroid Prime) but Contra 4 is the probably the best Contra game ever made. It may be designed for a niche audience but it's nice to see something like this can still be made in 2007. This is the only game on my list today that I haven't beaten yet and it'll probably be a long, long time until I do and that's what Contra is all about.

9 out of 10

HD vs. Blu-Ray: The Great "Who Cares?" War.

What better topic is there to discuss on Christmas Eve than something many greedy boys and girls will find under their trees this year. An HD-DVD player or a Blu-Ray DVD player. Both are expensive status symbols that have absolutely no real use.

Maybe even more so than the argument over which new video game console to buy people are causing drama all over the Internet about these overpriced cup holders. To be honest I don't know much about either of them. I don't know the numbers and statistics and which one is truly better or truly worse. No, what I know is that they're both ridiculous.

Now I'm used to people arguing about graphics when it comes to things like video games, that's always been a driving force in the industry. Movies however, I cannot comprehend. This "High-Definition" resolution is a load of shit. A good LCD TV with normal definition looks perfectly fine to me. I'm even satisfied with an old CRT and a VCR cassette. I'll admit the jump from cassette to DVD was a much needed one, but now we're just picking nits.

For the price you'll pay for a sharper image it's absolutely ridiculous. It's just a scam by the movie industry to make addicted movie nuts buy their entire DVD collections all over again. The thing is I wouldn't even mind this new format if they put the memory to good use. They can fit entire season, hell in some cases entire shows, onto a single disk, eliminating the need for huge box sets. But no, instead they uncompress the video and audio and one movie fits on a disk again. Fuck the marginally higher quality, fuck several thousand dollar home theaters. I just want to see the movie. I just want copies of my favorite TV shows that won't take up by whole shelf and cost $200.

And trust me, there's a lot of people out there who would agree. Why else would movie piracy be so rampant? Those people are obviously not worried about picture quality now are they? You get what you pay for I guess but in this case you're not getting a hell of a lot more.

DVDs still control the majority of the market, and I don't expect that to change any time soon. Almost every modern movie that would be better served viewed in HD has been a terrible movie anyway, so what's the point? There's so many things in the world that we can be working at to make better, and movie viewing shouldn't be one of them. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, or it might get broken really fast.

But I digress, I suppose it's just my personal opinion that these movies seriously don't look better enough to warrant ever wanting to bother with an upgrade. If you absolutely HAVE to see Optimus prime in HD then don't let my angry rant stop you. It's your money. Go keep up with the Jones's or the rest of the Internet might laugh at you for falling behind.

LOL I LUV BIBLE

I hate to make another political post this soon but I just watched Mitt Romney's speech on religion and it has me furious.

He's trying to pretend he's a new age JFK though now it looks like his campaign is more about religion than ever before as he continues to suck the cock of Evangelicals, desperately trying to latch on to their votes. Attention Mitt Romney: I don't hate you because you're a Mormon I hate you because you're a dick.

He was giving a speech in front of mostly family and friends who of course applauded and gave him standing ovations like it was some kind of canned laughter on a sitcom. He's just so fake and plastic that it hurts. He's like that arrogant president in any generic Hollywood movie that causes the downfall of the nation.

None of this is what really pissed me off though. He says that we need to bring "religion back into the public domain" and that there's "a new religion of secularism" and that those people "are wrong." Way to attack voters Romney. You preach tolerance for all religions except for people who don't practice religion. I guess you figure they're all democrats and won't be voting for you anyway. Still calling any block of voters "wrong" is one of the stupidest things he could've said when he was up there trying to prove that religion won't affect his decisions as president. All I got from this speech was that religion will be a major factor in all of his decisions as president and secular people should start searching for a new country.

I don't understand what the America we're living in is anymore. It's like the middle ages and we're in the middle of the crusades. What's next? A return to radical puritanism? Religion is the cause of just about every armed conflict this generation has had to endure. Religion was an important tool in creating civilizations but we're past that now. We're a nation of laws not gods, not magic, not superstition.