Zubaz are back!

In sad news I have heard rumors (::cough:: Swifty) that Brawl online play is totally bad and laggy as hell. These rumors make me sad! Should I still get off my ass and buy a copy? Discuss!

Every morning, like many people, I wake up and dress myself, take a shot of Malört to really shake off the veil of slumber, and take the train downtown to my job. Occasionally I’ll have a book to read during the half-hour it takes to get to work, but most of the time, if I can find a seat, I waste some time with my DS. As a result, I’ve learned some valuable lessons about portable media, and I’d really like to be contacted by RedOctane as soon as possible so that I can help them avoid the yawning maw of bankruptcy — or, if maybe I have one shot of Malört too many, a personal visit from a very drunk and bewildered yours truly — now that I know what they’re planning to do with Guitar Hero: On Tour.

The Lesson Of The Old Weird Lady
A few weeks ago, while taking the morning inbound train, I noticed a woman in her fifties sitting next to me, clutching an iPod Video and bug-eyed goggling at its little screen. You see that sort of thing, you sort of have to see what’s going on, right? So I give a little sideways glance at the screen and LO AND BEHOLD: WEIRD SLUTTY ANIME! She was watching some weird slutty anime! With balloon-tittied high-school panty witches stickfighting a dick wizard! So now I’m bug-eyed goggling too, except now the lady sees what I’m doing and sort of grumpily rotates away from me to watch her jizz battle cartoon in private. Now it’s awkward for everyone! I broke the social contract by snooping on her media, and she broke the social contract by watching Dickgirl Neko Neko Scissorkick. LESSON LEARNED: It is inappropriate to knowingly watch sexy videos on the train.

The Lesson Of The Tall Weird Dude (Who Is Me)
THIS VERY MORNING I was on the train playing my Nintendo Dual-Screen Lite Entertainment Platform, all squished up against a dude and another dude, playing the new Ace Attorney game, when suddenly the line of questioning turned to the subject of: Panties! I let out a little chuckle, because haw haw, girl underwear, there’s a vagina in there probably. BUT THEN REALIZATION STRUCK: I was in public, blithely manipulating a device to digitally experience a tale of women’s underwear. Push button; receive panties. I remembered the anime woman from yestermonth and, sweating, looked to my left. And of course!, the guy to my left is looking directly at the DS (a picture-in-picture illustration of the panties in question cheerily adorning the corner of the top screen) and making this sort of horror-smirk, to wit, “Ugh, what I am seeing is so retarded that the mook who is doing this on the train is setting off all my schadenfreude receptors.” The shrill bespectacled section of my brain got all het up and angrily prepared a defense (”THIS SERIES ACTUALLY PROVIDES A RICH AND REWARDING GAMEPLAY EXPERIENCE, I WILL HAVE YOU KNOW”) but I just sort of shrunk and huddled over, because 8:45 in the morning is not a great time to get into a debate over the relative merits of tiny computer panties. LESSON LEARNED: It is difficult to reconcile the excellence of the gaming medium with the stupid bullshit it keeps dragging with it.

So What Is The Point Of All This
If you’re out in public and you are fiddling with an expensive piece of electronics, people are going to look at you. That is human nature and you can bank on it. With this in mind, it stands to reason that, to save yourself potential shame, you might reserve the lion’s share of your handheld purchases for games you can actually play in public. Soooo…..given all that: Why the fuck did Activision decide to lash Guitar Hero DS to a giant plastic carapace that resembles nothing so closely as a fucking GRIPMASTER?

But the fun doesn’t stop there, oh no! Check out this horrifying fucking commercial for it!

Apparently, in order to get the most out of our GUITAR HERO DS experience, we have to hold the console upright with our left hand, gripping the tiny buttons on the plastic Guitar Hero Brand shroud, and strum a picture of a guitar with a plastic Guitar Hero Brand pick, while somehow keeping an eye on the other tiny screen, where all the notes are. Plus, according to some previews, you will occasionally have to drop the pick mid-song to sign autographs with the stylus, or blow into the microphone to put out stray pyrotechnics.

WHICH MEANS:

You either look like a total jackass in public, or you’re doing all of this at home, where your REAL copy of Guitar Hero is. WHICH OF THESE REALITIES SOUNDS LESS TERRIBLE??? The answer is that neither of them do, and that I hope there aren’t enough eight year olds with DSes to justify having published this game in the first place because this is basically the opposite of what I want out of my stupid expensive childish hobby. Also what is up with that girl’s stupid leopard-print sleeves. Also also what is up with that dude constantly leaning towards her awkwardly like “HA Ha ha yeah look at this…ha ha!!” because he obviously has a huge awkward boner over her and it is being telegraphed directly through this commercial and I am NOT HAPPY about it.

I still haven’t beaten Persona 3, Persona 3 FES hasn’t even shipped yet, and here we are with a 17 minute trailer for Persona 4 (coming out for PS2, thank christ):

I’m totally fuckin’ excited about this game, considering how rock-solid P3 was, but watching the trailer made me remember how incredibly ANIME GAME this series is. I sort of want to go eat a deep-fried corn dog and get a blowjob at a county fair just to feel more American.

(Also, is it just me, or does the main character look EXACTLY like Blur’s Graham Coxon? If you fuse the right Personas, do you get the dancing milk carton?)

BREAKING: I was wrong about Final Fantasy VIII; it’s actually pretty rad. More to come!

HINT: If you pick “I’ll lie…I must…live…” you get to see Squall talk about flowers! Who needs Moombas? Seriously, this dungeon is not that hard.

I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about casual games lately, first because they’re turning my favorite book-turned-movie into one (I’m worried), and second because when you need to grade papers, write a thesis, and find a job, it is usually a good idea to pretend to be a constantly evolving orb. I don’t think I have any grand delusions that I have something particularly unusual to SAY about this style of gaming; nor do I assume that today’s offering is going to blow the genre out of the water (pirate joke).

But I do know that Iron Dukes is fun, funny, beautifully drawn, and well-designed … and they haven’t even finished the rest of the levels yet! In Iron Dukes, you are the captain of a pirate ship, and your job is to manage three scalawags, who you conscript in their skivvies and outfit from scratch. The way you outfit them determines their stats, each of which relates to their ability to Fight, Dive, or Sail (the stat for Sailing is called Saltiness!), which are of course the game’s three minigames. Navigate the sea of minigames, beat the boss, and move on to the next level… you know the drill. If PopCap’s Typer Shark told Monkey Island-style jokes, let you level up, and involved quick clicking rather than a shut-in’s typing temerity, you’d have Iron Dukes. Or you DO have Iron Dukes. Here it is! Look how it starts out with some angry Ahab staring at you! Look how charmingly concerned your little sailors are about your orders! Look how you can totally equip an adorable fish in your Hand to increase your diving skill! Look how things blow up when you defeat them!

This game tickles all of my casual gaming pleasure centers - it is adorable, challenging without being prohibitively difficult, and as easy to walk away from when the need arises as it is to play for hours. Go give these guys a lot of clicks so that they finish the damn thing. My thesis is due in a couple months and I’m going to need to weather some more fake storms before I sail into my real ones.