It's Early

And I'm tired, but I must say this: the Wii is awesome. I was able to play a few games of bowling and tennis with my daughter last night and we had a lot of fun. I can't wait to see what else this system holds for us.

Look at that face!

This is a picture of our daughter Camryn from our last ultrasound. I was pretty amazed when I saw this on the monitor and even more amazed the tech captured it for us. You can see pretty much her entire face, including those chubby cheeks and little nose! She was taking a nap and looked so peaceful. I can't wait to see her again in March!

Spike Video Game Awards

Last night brought us the Spike Video Game awards. This year's event was hosted by Samuel L. Jackson, and was held in Las Vegas. Yes, there truly is an award show for everything!

Now, when I think about video games, Samuel L. Jackson and Spike TV are the first things that come to mind, right? Of course, it makes perfect sense! And while we're at it, we'll have a performance from Kid Rock and appearances from Tila Tequila, Steve-O, UFC fighters and Ralphie the comedian. Don't forget the body painted babes that also served to reveal the winners of each category with the name of the game painted across their bodies. All of this just screams hardcore gaming doesn't it?

I consider myself a gamer, even though I don't get as many hours in as I used to and don't get to play every new system the day it comes out. But as a self-respecting gamer I really can't see how these "awards" are good for the gaming industry, except to give the Grand Theft Auto crowd more brainless drivel to soak up. The whole thing gives the impression that all gamers are horny 15-22 year old males that play Tony Hawk 4 while chugging a Bud Lite. After all of the years that video-gaming languished with the status of something only geeks and nerds enjoyed, I had hoped any mainstream attention it received would be more positive than the tripe Spike is producing. Maybe I'm over-reacting but I feel crap like these Spike awards do more harm than good for the video game industry and just serve to fuel the far right critics who are already convinced that your Xbox and Playstation are gateways to Hell.

I suppose the real absurdity is having an award show for video games in the first place. I don't think you can neatly categorize and judge the truly great games out there and then say "yep, this one is the best!". How do you judge, let's say, first-person shooters? Just based on the genre you'd have to include Half-Life 2, Halo 3, Call of Duty 4 and Bioshock. Sure, they're all first-person, but the gameplay and style of each is completely different. And how will you judge them? Base it on graphics? Controls? Story? Difficulty? Personally I see video games the same as I see artwork, and they really can't be judged as the "best" when the content is so subjective.

I guess the ironic thing about these awards is they actually chose some pretty good games. BioShock won game of the year (wouldn't have been my choice), and other gems like Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, Super Mario Galaxy, CoD4 and The Orange Box all won awards. I'm sure they were excited to receive their awards from such gaming notables as Tia Carrere, Criss Angel and Don King.

(yes that was sarcasm!)

Street Fighter IV

Today the first glimpse of in-games images from Street Fighter IV were made available. I had been following the hi-res makeovers that Udon Crew had been doing for Street Fighter II HD Remix over at Deviant Art. The majority of their redesigns were amazingly faithful to the original game graphics and added a great amount of detail to each character. Having seen how much life they breathed into my beloved Street Fighter characters made me very hopeful for a true sequel to Street Fighter III, which was released almost 10 years ago.

Well today we get the following screenshot from SFIV:


Although the graphics are clearly "next-gen" (and I truly hate that word) this just doesn't scream Street Fighter to me. I has none of the character of SFII and it's siblings and there isn't any of the 2D pixel magic in the background either. Capcom claims that although the game is rendered with polygons the gameplay is 2D. So in essence they are doing something similar to Street Fighter EX, which I thought was a spectacularly crappy game.

Granted, this is the first shot of the game to be released and I haven't seen any of the other stages or characters yet. But based on this I don't get any impression of the 2D gaming goodness that I grew up with. This looks more like Virtua Fighter or Tekken to me and I could never stand those games. Hopefully some gameplay videos will surface soon, but until then color me unimpressed.

The Itch

I feel like I'm getting that itch again. It's that itch to create something, to break out the pencils and sketch or design. Every so often it hits me, I feel like I'm spinning my wheels and just need to get the ideas and impulses out of my head and onto paper. If I were a better writer I'd have a few stories to work on as well but plotting has never been my strong suit.

The main problem with this urge is that I'm terribly out of practice. All of the ideas floating around my head turn into rigorous tests of patience as I try to get them down on paper. Perhaps if I'd have kept up with drawing over the years it wouldn't be so frustrating to get back into "shape", but unfortunately I've let myself go. Like any other physical skill, drawing skill deteriorates without practice and I just don't seem to have the time to sketch and experiment like I used to.

What I should probably do is take 30 minutes at home or lunch and just free form sketch. It takes time to get the eye talking to the hand but some short practice each day will help. I know this itch is just going to get worse until I can satisfy it, and that's not going to happen until I stop sucking at drawing!

Semi-Heroic

A few thoughts on last night's episode of Heroes:

Mohinder still appears to be aiding the company, but apparently only to destroy the virus. If this is really the only reason he brought Noah back remains to be seen.
Adam may turn out to be a good villain yet. But despite his intentions he still doesn't come across as very menacing. I wonder if Hiro will actually kill him.
Peter is extremely naive, to the point where it's almost unbelievable. And despite being the most powerful hero, he still stands around with that dumb look on his face and lets everyone he comes in contact with lead him around on a leash. Get it together Peter!
Niki, Micah and Monica are a complete waste of time at this stage of the story. They are contributing absolutely nothing to the show and merely serve to irritate me and take valuable screen time away from the other heroes.
Hiro is impulsive, but at least he takes action. His charge at Peter truly shows his character. I can't wait for an epic battle with Adam.
Sylar is still a badass, even without powers. I have a feeling that the more he manipulates and kills those around him, the more his powers are beginning to come back to him. He's also killed off one half of the Whiny Twins, which scores him bonus badass points in my book.
I'm surprised Victoria Pratt ended up being so insignificant. Sure, she knew the location of Shanti 138, but so did Bob, Kaito and probably Angela. It also appears that she didn't have any powers at all, but was merely a top player in the Company before calling it quits.

So we have one more episode left in this current story arc, and most likely the last episode for this season. There still seems to be a lot of loose ends and too much is unexplained. Is Sylar going to blackmail Mohinder into restoring his powers? Will Hiro kill Adam? Will Niki be cured? What deal does Noah make to rejoin his family? Will Ando join the action or be completely left behind? Will Maya turn on Sylar once she discovers her brother is dead? I hope we'll get answers to most of these questions before Heroes signs off.

Terminator's Salvation?

The Terminator movies have always been in my top 10 favorite movies of all time. T2 is simply one of the best movies ever, hands down, no doubt about it. T3 wasn't as good but still held the action to a pretty high standard. There is also a new series slated to hit Fox next year, The Sarah Connor Chronicles starring Summer Glau from Firefly and Lena Headey from 300. I have high hopes for this show but knowing Fox it'll get canceled about 5 episodes in.

However, these movies and shows aren't the reason for my post today. There is a new Terminator sequel in the works, called Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. Now the title had me a bit worried, and the fact that McG is directing didn't fill me with warm and fuzzies either. Today, however, a very good piece of news was released: Christian Bale has been cast as John Connor. This fills me with much joy and happiness since Mr. Bale singlehandedly saved the Batman franchise and is just an all around great actor. Not to mention this may enable the producers to put together a much better cast than we had for T3. I'll be watching this production very closely now and hoping for a triumphant return for the Terminator franchise.

Kids are Great

So last weekend we were having a discussion with our eight-year-old daughter about school. It was one of those "what do you want to be when you grow up" type talks and we were explaining how college works. We were discussing the different types of schools and that I had almost taken up graphic design at an art college when Cori made the following observation:

"When I grow up I would rather go to Art college instead of Smart college."

If only I had been able to rationalize the difference between choosing graphic design and psychology like my daughter, I would probably be in a much different place today. Gotta love kids, they say the darnedest things!