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| Pop Culture The woman with one leg and a hairlip stood at the mouth of the alley, cockroaches running between the toes so indelicately shoved into her single red Chinese “fuck-me” pump. She waggled a rectangular box – a bulky VHS cassette case – in the murky neon-lit darkness. A man scuttled out from behind a dumpster that stank of rotten garlic. “Are you Chuck?” she asked, her voice harsh like gears grinding on a John Deere tractor. The man nodded weakly. He said: “I won’t do it. Not anymore. These pants… they uh, they ain’t coming off.” He sniffed the air like a feral weasel. “What’s that in your hand?” She waved the box again. “It’s a copy of Army of Darkness.” His eyes narrowed to a suspicious squint. “Oh. ‘Zat all?” “No,” she crooned after licking her chapped lips. “It’s the Japanese import. The Captain Supermarket version. With the alternate ending.” Frozen, the man began sobbing softly. He unbuckled his pants and let them drop into an oil-slick puddle. “Well, okay. J-just this one more t-time...” The Media Whore was open for business. *** Video Games THE XBOX 360 All right. Let's talk about the pearlescent three-sitty. First question right out of the gate: Is the 360 truly next-gen? For whatever reason, this seems to be a question bandied about on game sites, shows, and magazines. Is it honestly Xbox 2, or is it just Xbox 1.5? I can't see how anyone would mistake this for a minor update, not a whole new console revision. Oh, my slavering little funk junkies, this sonofabitch is next-gen, without a doubt. First, the graphics do not have a counterpart in quality right now. Nothing supports HD like the 360. Even a high-end PC can't get some of the graphics to look quite this nice. I played a demo of NBA Live or whatever the new basketball game is, and while playing I became unswervingly certain that I was not playing a game, but was actually controlling the puppeted souls of actual basketball players in some other mirror dimension. That shit has a simulator on each player just for sweat. It looks psychotically amazing, and played well, to boot. But it ain't all about the graphics. Wrap a turd in Saran Wrap and it'll be shiny, but it'll still be a turd. No, the 360 has other snidbits (snippets and tidbits, have you fuckers learned nothing from me?) that make it next-gen. The XBOX "dashboard" and how it allows you to use the system and connect to Live is freakin' sweet. We got our XBOX at 3:00 during the day, and didn't even consider opening an actual game until 5:00-5:30. There's a lot to do on that there dashboard, especially if you hook it up to Xbox Live. Right out of the box, I downloaded Penny Arcade icons and themes from Microsoft, which filled me with such glee it ejaculated from all of my orifices in a burst of rainbows and doves. I got to stream music and media from my PC, I got to play some little arcade/puzzle games (which sounds meager, but ends up being ludicrously amusing), you can download and watch movie trailers, play game demos, put on awesome music visualizers while your music plays, engage in Live chat, etcetera, etcetera. All shoveled together in a really straightforward visual manner. Microsoft would do well to emulate some of that in its next version of Windows, but who knows? Two problems, though, with all of this. First, The 360 streams to a Media Center PC. Yeah, ooh, one big fat sack of except. Except: you have to have Media Center 2005 installed on the PC. I do not have 2005. I have, what, 2003? So, I can't stream video to this asshole because I don't have the newest, shiniest version? Well, shit. Suck a cock, Microsoft. Plus, Windows Firewall wants to block access to the 360, despite it being "allowed" and all the proper ports open. So, that there is gumpy. It works; I can shut down the Windows Firewall and stream music to the 360 (which worked nicely) or check out pics and images from the PC on the HDTV (which was really nice, actually), but no video? And I can't do it without dropping the Firewall on this box? (Irony is, the laptop does not have this issue -- it goes back and forth between the 360 with no hitches, whilst Windows Firewall remains up. Fackers!) Sorry, Gates, I call bullshit on this bullshit. Second, the DVD player was a little stumpy out of the box. Now, straight up, I'll tell you it actually ended up not being the 360's problem, but for a while I thought the problem warranted a send-back of the machine. When playing a DVD movie, the sound is about a half-second behind the image. Uh, sucks. I figured out how to fix it -- and it's my receiver's fault, not the console's -- you merely have to power down the receiver and turn it back on while the movie is playing. Suddenly, it synchs. Fackers! But seriously, isn't it really all about the games? Sure, Xbox Live has been revamped to include all kinds of unified goodness, and the dashboard looks like ice cream on an angel's tit, and it all comes together in an explosion of high-definition glory. But in the end, kittens, this is a game console, and needs to act as such. So, let's talk game. We have four games out of the gate. Perfect Dark Zero is not the Halo-killer some people seem to think it is. That's not to say it's a bad game; to the contrary, it's a fun, dynamic FPS, and has a lot of little things going for it that separate it from the pack. The game supports a metric shitload of weapons, so far has a nice and interesting little story, and has smart-ass enemies. (For instance, when running by an object, an enemy might yell, "She's by the lightpost!" and sure as fuck, you're by the lightpost. Or, if you clip a dude in the arm, he'll fall backward yelling about his arm.) The game also looks crazy-good. Full 1080i resolution, it's shiny and bright and an orgy of love upon the eyes. One problem with that is, in designing the game, the designers seemed to believe that the future was covered in a thin veneer of reflective plastic. Every object from a porous brick to a leaf seems dipped in this Future Plastic, and that's sort of weird. It doesn't necessarily diminish the verisimilitude; looking at a brick, you still believe it's an actual brick, but you're left wondering why some mad future dictator demanded that all things be slathered with glistening goo. The game does suffer from some other issues besides this. For one, no jump. Let me say that again: no mothergoddamnbastard jump. Jump! Is a staple! Of FPS! It must be! It needs be! But these fuckers figured it was enough to ship a game without any ability to jump up on crap. No. Fuck you. Give me my jump. The second problem with the game -- and this is related to the first -- is that it's not Halo. My opinions of this will never change, no matter how much fun I have with PDZ. Project Gotham Racing 3: I don't like racing games. I don't understand racing games. I mean to say, I play them with all the ability of a one-handed monkey suffering massive brain trauma from a spinal cord injury. I slam into walls. Computer opponents race past me and urinate on my windshield. I rank like, nine out of a seven-person race; normally impossible, but not for someone who sucks as badly as I do. So, this game will not last too long in my collection, I think, but regardless of my general disdain for All Things Racing, this game has still managed to blow my panties off. The controls are tight, the car options are slick, and the graphics are staggering. Driving through Manhattan feels, no joke, like Manhattan. Once again, I feel that Microsoft has somehow tapped into an alternate universe -- not one composed of graphics but of actual tangible shit. Crazy. Another weirdly interesting feature of the game is "Gotham TV," where you click on it and it'll take you to a random race being performed on Xbox Live by actual dudes. You can watch a race n this dynamic camera setup that makes you feel like you're watching a movie. So, if you're into racing, this game is so for you, it hurts you. If you're not into racing, I still say rent this puppy, just to look at it. And to feel a little sad at your inability to do anything but thunk into a guardrail while Novice computer-controlled opponents drive circles around your pathetic self. Condemned: Criminal Origins is what happens when game developers decide you should experience events like those that happen in the movie Se7en first-hand. That is both a good and a horrible thing. Good because, they nail it. It's a serial killer game, first-person, that lets you track a serial killer with forensic tools and a flashlight. What's horrible about this is, uh, hunting a serial killer is scary. And because the graphics are scary realistic, that makes this game the scariest game ever produced. It's downright terrifying, and I don't say that lightly. It gave me bad dreams. It makes me jump and let out little drops of pee into my boxers. It's truly a tense, tense game. It has a lot of neat stuff, though. The forensics bit is good, adding in some adventure-level stuff into the game. The combat system is scary, because all throughout your hunt, the city is populated with (for some reason) a passel of crack-addicted vagrants. They mutter, they jump out at you, they press themselves up against frosted glass windows, they scream. Being stalked by crackheads is scary. You'd think it wouldn't be. Crackheads are funny, right? Not when they're collapsing your head with a length of pipe. And that leads me to the next piece of awesomeness that is this game: grabbing weapons off the wall. Pipes, lengths of board, shovels, axes, conduits, rebar, whatever. Grab it, and beat crackheads to death as they come for you, snarling and gibbering. Scary. And cool. So, this game gets a major recommendation. Only downside is, as I hear it, it's short. And, no multiplayer, but -- uhh, that might be a blessing. Not sure I want to play Crackmatch or Team Crackmatch or whatever the end result would be. Call of Duty 2 is the winner of all these games, though. The curious part is, it's not the prettiest belle of the ball: the graphics are on par with a high-end PC, though perhaps sharper. No, it's just a fucking awesome game. The enemy is smart, the game is like real war, the single player campaign is utterly engaging, and the multiplayer is freaking hot. It's magma-hot, it's Voltron-hot, it's the little girl from Poltergeist hot...! No, I don't know what means, and I know it's inappropriate, but you're just going to have to sit back and deal. I don't even have much to say except, if you decide to get the 360, make sure it comes with this game. Do it. Now. All of this accumulates to the fact that the system is next-gen, no doubt. Only thing about it is that the console doesn't have any exclusive killer-apps. In some ways, this is better than most console launches, because all the games are of a solid B+ quality -- and yet, it has no out-of-the-gate system sellers, y'know? (Plus, Oblivion gets pushed back to March? Fuck. Fuck! Fuckers! Gah.) Not much else to say. The PS3 has real competition, though I doubt it'll do poorly (and if it has good games, I'm likely to pick it up). But Sony has some worries on the horizon. They still don't have a unified multiplayer network like Microsoft. Some games -- Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid -- have suffered rumors of being ported to the XBOX as well. Blu-Ray DVD technology is either going to be a knock out of the park or a losing move; it can't be in the middle. So, we'll see. At the end of the day, the competition doesn't matter, because newsflash? You can own both. Is the 360 worth owning? Yes and no. It is if you have the extras. HD, surround-sound, broadband connection. If you don't have HD, then wait. Just wait. Don't get a 360 now, get it when the killer app you desire hits shelves. All right. Time to go shoot Nazis. Namaste, bitches. DVD If you're not watching Season One of Veronica Mars, then you're at least half-retarded. Movies The new Harry Potter movie is good, but not as good as the last two. Though better than the first. Or something. I dunno. |
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