id Software vs. Valve Corp.

This is a discussion I've had on a few occasions. Which is the better company: id or Valve? I know a lot of idiots will jump in at this point with "Bungie lol!" If this is you, please put the controller down before you manage to swallow and choke on it.

Rather than waste my time with a series of fruitless forum posts, I'll agglomerate my vast knowledge of the subject here for the world to see. After all, the whole world tends to visit this site on a daily basis, and twice on Sundays to celebrate the sabbath.

Act I: A Brief History of Time

id Software was founded in 1991 and is known for the Commander Keen, Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake series of video games. id is also responsible for creating the first-person shooter genre as we know it.

The two key figures in the early days were John Carmack and John Romero. Carmack is, in my opinion (which makes it fact), the game industry's leading programmer and continues to be a driving force behind game software technology. Romero, on the other hand, was forced to resign for being an insufferable douche and went on to form Ion Storm, the company that created Daikatana. May he burn in Hell.

id is currently working on the id Tech 5 game engine, which is being used for their latest game, Rage: a first-person shooter/racing game developed under John Carmack.



Valve was formed in 1996 by Mike Harrington and Gabe Newell, a.k.a. Jabba the Hutt. They are responsible for the Half-Life series and... that's it. Before 2004, the only game they had ever released themselves was Half-Life in 1998, developed using id's Quake engine. So it took them two years to make one game on pre-built technology, and another six years to release the sequel. They sure are off to a great start.

Other games released under the Valve label include Team Fortress, Counter Strike and Left 4 Dead, all of which started as mod projects by independent teams that were subsequently bought up by Valve.

Currently, Valve is working on releasing episodic content to prolong the lifespan of Half-Life 2 and probably looking for other small, independent teams with cool projects to buy.

Act II: Wherein a Point is Drawn

id has almost always been at the forefront of PC gaming technology. Many of the earliest first-person shooters were built on licensed id-developed game engines and, for years, id Tech 3—the engine powering Quake III Arena—was the standard of the modding community. Today, Rage is currently being developed cross-platform for PC, Mac, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 with little to no disparity between versions. This makes id Tech 5 the most portable engine ever created.

Half-Life 2 is built on Valve's proprietary Source engine and maintained by Steam, their digital distribution and (failed) DRM device. Source is their pride and joy, being lauded as one of the most versatile game engines ever developed. In reality, it amounts to nothing more than an over-glorified physics engine with antiquated streaming capabilities. Half-Life 2 is the only game released in the last decade that I'm aware of that has to pause mid-level, every 20 in-game meters or so, to load the next section. By contrast, Dungeon Siege, which was released two years prior to H-L2, is capable of streaming the entire game world after a single load upon the game's start. Even Morrowind had better streaming capabilities than Source.



id's single stumbling point was with their Tech 4 engine and the release of Doom 3. While able to match the physics rendering capabilities of the Source engine and having better graphics and streaming capabilities, id Tech 4 has been largely forgotten. Being too much a horror game and having too little focus on multiplayer gameplay, Doom 3 didn't have the mass market appeal of Half-Life 2. This left the Source engine in a favourable position to take the lead in the modding community.

But I still don't like Valve. They continue to ride the success of the Half-Life series, now pushing out episodic content for Half-Life 2 about once per year. Except the point of episodic content is to release smaller packages more frequently and for a lower price. What Valve is essentially doing is proving that they're too lazy/sloppy to keep to a development schedule.

Act III: Let's Wrap This Up and Go Home

In order to put on the appearance of productivity, Valve has to buy up independent developers and adopt their projects into the Valve-brand family of games. Every game outside of the Half-Life series that they have released—including Team Fortress, which started as a Quake mod—has been the result of purchasing outside developers.



While Valve has been buying ideas and trying desperately to extend the life of Half-Life 2 and the Source engine, id has been hard at work on the next generation of game technology. The two most recent id-branded games on PC, Quake IV and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, were admittedly made by outside developers (Raven Software and Splash Damage, respectively), but that doesn't mean that the people at id have been sitting on their asses. Quake Wars uses id's MegaTexture technology, which is a precursor to what is being used for Rage and id Tech 5. Even id's handheld and mobile phone games (Doom RPG and Orcs & Elves), developed by Fountainhead Entertainment, were created using a new game engine built by John Carmack.

Valve has been content to glorify the Source engine as some sort of software prodigy, letting it stagnate and become obsolete while John Carmack continues to isolate himself in hotel rooms where he can work on new software technology in peace. Therefore, I conclude that Gabe Newell is a big, fat douche and John Carmack is the winner of my heart.

CONTINUE READING

REVIEW: Call of Duty: World at War

I hate WWII games. I hated them before it was cool to hate them because they're uninspired and boring. Yet here I am, reviewing the fifth game in the Call of Duty series, subtitled World at War. This means that I must have actually spent money on it, which in turn means that I have either lost all self respect, or there has been a tremendous shift in the cosmic aether.

Keep in mind, I'm talking about the Wii version here. If it were for any other console, I wouldn't have bothered. First-person shooters are uninteresting enough as is, but setting one during the Second World War is about as monotonous and lazy as you can get. But on Wii, even the worst concept can be saved by the best first-person control scheme ever invented.

The controls are pretty much the high point of World at War. It's still a WWII game, and not even a very good one. The levels are poorly designed and too short, and constantly jumping back and forth between the game's two protagonists destroys any emotional attachment I might have had for either of them. It's like the developers all had Attention Deficit Disorder, became bored every six seconds and jumped onto each next section before finishing the last.

The game's graphics, while exemplary for the Wii, are so indistinguishable that you really can't be blamed for accidentally killing your own squad mates on occasion. The game will blame you, however, and will enjoy every moment of doing so, pissing in your eyeballs and laughing at you as you're forced to restart at the last checkpoint.



The game is also fairly difficult, even on the easier settings, so you can multiply the number of times you will have to reload by about a million. This wouldn't be so bad if the checkpoints were more evenly spaced, but they aren't, which means you'll be working your way through the same sections over and over again until you finally get it right. This is the sort of trial-and-error gameplay that should have died out with the Genesis.

It's not all bad, though. I already mentioned the graphics and controls, which are both better than what you'll typically find on the Wii. The multiplayer setup is also better than most others on the system, both online and off. You still need to exchange Friend Codes if you want to play online with actual friends, but the random match selection works well enough if you don't care to juggle a hundred different twelve-digit combinations. I thought the system-specific Wii code was supposed to eliminate this problem, but I was apparently overoptimistic.

The offline coop mode is really a lot of fun. Rather than splitting the screen in half and effectively using twice the system resources, it's set up so that Player One controls the camera and movement while Player Two gets to play through like a classic, on-rails shooter. Some have dubbed this the Girlfriend Mode, but this is a misnomer because most gamers don't have girlfriends. I'm one of the few exceptions because of my sculpted ass and winning personality.

Despite these few good points and my generally favourable disposition toward World at War, I can't help but feel that Wii owners would have been better off if we were given a port of Modern Warfare instead. World War II is just too overdone to continue fostering good, original games. But since this is pretty much the only non-casual game coming out for Wii this season (unless you're dead set on calling Animal Crossing: City Folk a core title), I'd recommend picking it up just so that you don't die of boredom.

To sum things up in a clever analogy, Call of Duty: World at War is a lot like a classy whore: it's never going to amount to much, but for the right price it'll let you have some fun with it before rendering you unconscious and stealing your kidney.

CONTINUE READING

SATAM: A Sharkwork Orange

Eek! The Cat premiered on the totally awesome Fox Kids Saturday Morning block, which also featured shows like X-Men, The Tick and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Clearly, this was the Golden Age of Saturday mornings.

In "A Sharkwork Orange," Eek's fat girlfriend takes a brief moment away from eating to do what all fat people do when they're not stuffing their faces: bitch about everything. She tells Eek that his sharkdog, Sharky, needs sensitivity training, so he takes Sharky to see a moose.

It sounds messed up because it is, and that's why I liked this show.

CONTINUE READING

RPGS don’t know how to be hard.

Benoit Busque figures he’ll write this now that the fourth one is just a hop skip away from doing this all over again (And he will love every minute).

I’ve stopped playing Persona 3. Don’t get me wrong, I love RPGs (Which has led to a certain degree of shoulder chaffing with another author on this website, but I do have to concede a point to the bastard, even if he suggested men of my taste carry certain unmanly heirs), especially ones where I can live out my past high school fantasies of banging whoever I want and running around at night shooting myself.

But in an effort to get my money’s worth out of essentially buying the same game twice (With that tacked on FES acronym, whatever the fuck that means), I decided I was going to challenge myself to complete the games hard setting. You figure that’s why the game has a hard mode. What I neglected though, is how a game that’s really about spreadsheet functions with massive assets (Read: Cartoon girls and their Tits, you retard) actually calculates difficulty. About the same way as a calculator. Fucking scientific notation.




You see that motherfucker? His name is Sleeping table. I don’t even know what the fuck that means, his name should be “I’m a fucking table with a face and I’m here to kick your ass”, but given the context of the game he’s likely some sort of religious figure to a cult of insomniac furniture makers from 1000 years ago. And just why is he a motherfucker? Just why am I writing an article about RPGs kicking my sculpted manly ass? In about 10 seconds that you can’t see because the picture is still, Table-face here is going to kill me with one move. Thanks Atlus, now I’ll never be able to save the world and continue screwing high school girls with big…eyes.

What pisses me off is this is not what I wanted when I said “Hard” mode. I wanted a challenge, not a game that pisses in my eyes and laughs at me in Japanese. This isn’t difficulty, this is numbers scaled up. This doesn’t demand I think, it demands I go back and plumb the depths of infinite enemies until I’m a high enough level that I don’t get my ass kicked in 10 seconds. The game has boiled every solution down into “Play longer”. What the hell guys? I’ve already slaved enough time to your little day calendar from Hell, I don’t need this Bullshit.

Don’t begin to cry foul with “Oh, you can’t handle difficult games!” I eat fucking Contra for breakfast (Right after your mom, to get the aftertaste of you out of my mouth). This isn’t difficulty. This is just scaling up numbers, the most artificial way to increase the amount of time I need to tolerate cartoon people telling me they leveled up (Way to break the fourth wall). The enemies haven’t got notably smarter, nor have any of their generic and easily discovered weaknesses changed, everything is just suddenly rape-tastic. The largest reason this feeds my frustration is because despite this being the “Hard” mode, there is only one thing that’s changed, and that’s all that differentiates “Hard” from “Normal”. Things hit your harder. It’s only Harder than normal difficulty the way a sledgehammer is harder than a rubber mallet. Playing a difficult setting in a RPG is really just an exercise in mashing your nuts with something bigger than you already were.

Written by Benoit Busque

CONTINUE READING

More Like The Force Un-Shit

If you thought that I never play games when they've just been released, you're wrong. I just don't get around to reviewing them until two months later. It's my way of balancing entertainment with being an insufferable ass.

I did buy Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for Wii on launch day, and I beat it about a month ago. I could have done a review at any point between now and then, but that would be so cliché. I like to savour a game, sucking on its delicious juices and then finally write a review when I get bored.

---

In The Force Unleashed, you get to play as angsty teen soldier of darkness, "Starkiller." I can't decide if he sounds like a hippy or just a douche bag, but it doesn't matter. I'm going to call him "Radical Al" instead. It's my review, I can call him whatever I want. (No, I'm not going to call him "Radic-Al." That's stupid.)

You don't start the game as our good friend, Al, though. You start out as Darth Vader wreaking havoc on the Wookiees' home planet, Teddy Bear Island. You can tell just by his walk, which is about as fast as a fat kid with hypothyroid at "I don't move very fast" camp, that Lord Vader is one cool mother-shut yo' mouth. He's a complicated man, but no one understands him but his woman.

After an excruciatingly slow walk through Vader's magical tree house, slaughtering Wookiees and all of the fine decor you see along the way, you'll at last reach the end of the level where... oh look... you have to kill some more Wookiees. Finish them off and you'll finally get to fight something that isn't covered in hair. You'll also get your first taste of how poorly lightsaber duels work in The Force Unleashed.






It's Jedi vs. Sith. In this corner: the Emperor's right-hand asthmatic, Darth Vader. In the other corner: a nameless Jedi who's going to get killed in about 3 minutes. Ready. FLAIL!







You have just beaten your first boss. Congratulations. Do you feel like you accomplished anything? No? Good. Let's continue.

So it turns out that the Jedi you just killed has a son, our old friend Radical Al. Conjuring the essence of Michael Jackson that lives deep within all black men, Vader takes the kid with him back to his ranch... err, Star Destroyer.

Holy shit I'm bored! Let's just skip the rest of the story, okay? I'm going to talk about the graphics for a while.

The Force Unleashed doesn't look bad, per se. It just doesn't look that good. Like your girlfriend, it can be considered "average," or "barely tolerable," or "a whore." There are much better looking games on Wii. No More Heroes, Battalion Wars II, Metroid Prime 3 and, yes, even that loathsomely awkward little bitch, Super Mario Galaxy all look pretty damn good beside The Force Unleashed. It has it's moments, but I'm too shallow to care.

"But, Mr. O'Matic, that's not what Wii games are about! They're supposed to be about the gameplay, you incredibly well-hung jackal!"

Ah, too true. Too true. You have earned your dinner tonight, dear reader. For where would a game be without gameplay? On television, of course, trying to sell you Shamwows.


Controlling the Force in TFU is a lot like a handjob. It takes a lot of effort to get it to agree to anything, but then things start moving and she's working the shaft, maybe even enjoying it a little. You talk dirty to her, call her names like "daddy's little bitch," or "Jonathon." And then her mom walks in and calls the cops.

Lightsaber combat isn't totally useless, contrary to what you may have heard. It's just mostly useless. There's no skill involved here, kids, so grab yourself a horribly deadly sword of pure energy and have at 'er. Swing your arm in any direction you want because it doesn't matter. As long as the glowy end of the sword touches the bad guy, it'll make him fall down... and then evaporate into glowing blue spheres that can be used as currency. Ah, the wonders of the future! I hope their families don't ask to see the body.

Lightsaber fights between two Jedi are a bit different, as you have witnessed previously. Why are your attacks being blocked? How are you managing to block your opponents attacks? These are questions that only the Game Master knows.


In conclusion, The Force Unleashed is comparable to a redneck girl at a country bar: she might look alright if you've been drinking, but don't try to make her do anything too complicated or you'll realize just how inbred and retarded she really is. Then you'll wonder just what the fuck you're doing in a country bar in the first place, and then go play with the pinball machine in the corner until your friends decide to leave. You don't have any quarters, but you'll fiddle with it anyway because you're a tool.

CONTINUE READING

My Joyous Romp Through Hell: The Doom Marine's Story

Everyone knows the story of Doom: a lone marine saves the world from the legions of Hell, kicking ass all the way back to Earth. But who among us can say they know what really happened up there at the UAC facility? Today, the Doom Marine is here to recount his grisly tale as only he can.

---

I was stationed on Mars for six weeks before all Hell literally broke loose. Yes, I'm using the word appropriately: Hell had literally gotten loose and was making a terrible mess of everything. They're still trying to clean up the labs on Phobos, and have you ever tried getting Hell stains out of Kevlar?

I don't know what the UAC scientists were initially working on up there—probably some sort of pill to make old guys grow hair out of their boners or something—, but they managed to stumble upon teleportation technology instead. Now, if I had suddenly discovered a portal between Mars' two moons, you can sure bet I wouldn't go dicking around with it. I like to keep my molecules where I can see them, and I don't need to come out the other side with my head on backward or six asses or something.

But those scientists just love to dick around. They probably thought the teleporters would give them some kind of super-boners. What is it with scientists and boners, anyway? They're all trying to make your grandpa harder than a walrus so that he can continue to have wrinkled sex with your grandmother. There's a reason why men go limp when they get old: that shit is gross.

Anyway, we got the call from Phobos that demons from Hell had started coming out of the portals, and of course we thought they were kidding. They were probably just getting us back after we used the company laser to etch "Phobos is for Homos" in giant letters on Mars' surface. That one was Kevin's idea. Frickin' genius.

We realized they weren't kidding around when we saw a guy over the video feed getting raped and eaten—at the same time—by a shaved gorilla with horns. Yeah, I guess Hell really was running amok up there. Meanwhile, Mars' other moon, Deimos, just up and vanished. Explain that, you goddamn science bastards.

When we got to the Phobos lab, I was told to stay behind and "guard the hangar." As if anything was going to happen there. I knew they were still peeved about Scrabble night: I just play the letters I'm given, you know? I got the last laugh, though, since they were all torn apart by Hell spawn. But that also meant that I had to be the one to go in and save the day. Triple-word scores can be both a blessing and a curse sometimes.

Now, I want to say to whoever designed that place, what the Hell man? Why do you need so many hidden rooms and switches in a goddamn laboratory? Come to think of it, why the hell would you need shotguns and rocket launchers for that matter? Not that I'm complaining about that last part, but the place was an architectural nightmare. Honest to God, I needed to find a red key to open a gate in order to flick a switch that opened a passage in another room. How is that effective design? It's worse than putting a vertical bar on a door that says "push"!



I just can't get over how shitty this place was designed. Compared to elevators that only drop when you stand thirty feet away from them, and then having to sprint to catch them before they leave, killing demons is a piece of cake. I would rather face one of those 20-foot ass-holes with goat legs and rocket launchers for arms than have to solve another goddamn switch puzzle.

Actually, it almost seemed like the monsters were having as much trouble getting through that place as I was. I unlocked one room using a red skull (no kidding) and found a shit-ton of the bastards just standing there totally bewildered. I swear, we could have just left them in that lab and they never would have found their way out. Problem solved, universe saved.

The things weren't really that smart, so I don't know what the big deal was. After I had opened that last door, one of them started screaming and hurled a ball of green fire at me. That missed and hit another guy, who turned around and started throwing his own shit back at the first guy. Then another one was hit in the crossfire and soon enough they were all tearing each other apart. Eventually, one of the dumber ones accidentally hit the 20-foot-goat-legged-motherfucker in the back, so then he started firing off rockets at everything in the room. I slowly backed out the door and let it close in front of me, then when I came back later I saw that only one of the bastards was left. He was standing around, staring blankly as if he had no idea as to the shit storm that had just gone down. So I pulled out the chainsaw I had found earlier—another invaluable tool used for science, no doubt—and made a meaty little puddle out of him.

That was what I enjoyed the most about my time on Phobos. The therapist that I'm required to see says that I have "serious, deep-rooted psychological issues stemming from my childhood." I don't know about that, but I do love turning demons into mangled heaps of dead flesh. Or watching them explode. Or melt. Or get ripped apart by my chainsaw's blades. I like to think of it as art: my shotgun is the brush and the walls are my canvas. Blood is paint, obviously, and little chunks of flesh are like glitter. I probably won't be able to sell it any old people at a craft fair, though, since all they want to do is get boners and screw.

CONTINUE READING

The 23 best horror games according to the mentally challenged

In the spirit of Hallowe'en, someone who is too unimportant for me to bother discerning the identify of has written an article entitled "The 23 Best Horror Games." Then they went ahead and posted their compendium of shit on-line (hyphenated to show how classy of a character I am) for the world to see.

GamePro, while admittedly featuring adequate taste in horror, still sucks when it comes to things like facts and accuracy. Take, for instance, number fourteen on their list: "Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of Earth." Can you spot the first glaring error? The absence of the word "the" before "Earth" makes the game's title sound like it was conceived by a retard. Give the folks at Headfirst Productions a little respect and at least get the name of the game right, you ass-hats.

They go on to cite the game's relation to H.P. Lovecraft's story, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." This is accurate, but completely disregards the other stories drawn upon as source material; such as ... you know ... "The Call of Cthulhu," as well as "The Shadow Out of Time," which plays a crucial role in the game's subplot. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go read a book (if you even can).

In the short paragraph dedicated to Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, they arbitrarily decide to compare it to Cyan's classic point-and-click adventure, Myst. "How?" and "Why?" are the only words that should be coming to mind right now. They don't even offer any reason for the comparison, as if we're all supposed to just get it.

"Myst with guns, less puzzles, and placed into H.P.Lovecraft's [sic] short novel The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is, let's see ... carry the one ... nothing like Myst! What they have just said is that there are absolutely no similarities, unless you count the vague "adventure" label that can be slapped onto both games.

By GamePro's infallible logic, CoC:DCotE (hehe, "CoC") also shares uncanny similarities to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and 7th Level's The Great Word Adventure, featuring the voice talent of Howie Mandel.

Next, in the biggest bitch-slap to H.P. Lovecraft they can muster, they attack the game's "lack of action." Now, I'm going to throw this out there for everyone involved in the horror entertainment industry: action ruins horror. When did "horror" become synonymous with "action" in the first place? The minute you throw guns and explosions in there, you lose all sense of fear, apprehension and anxiety (not to mention credibility). Who cares what's behind the next door if you can just blow its head off?

Horror isn't about gore and violence; it's about scaring people, and that usually works best when done psychologically. This is why the Silent Hill series (up until and including The Room) has been so effective. It's what you don't see in those games that scares you the most, or having to run instead of fight.

Ever play Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines? A game so awesome that it has two subtitles, denoted by both a colon and a hyphen (and is also conspicuously absent from GamePro's list). I am a man amongst men, capable of dismantling cars and log cabins with my teeth, yet even I was terrified while going through VtMB's haunted house section. It was slow, maze-like and featured very little in the way of things that could actually hurt you. Horrifying!

Beyond Call of Cthulhu, the authors of the list make other idiotic remarks such as Dead Space "Literally turning the Resident Evil 4 formula on its head." Really? It literally did that?
One of the best instances of unfettered stupid was when they told readers to "Play this one with the lights off." Who ever knew that the best way to experience a horror game would be in the dark?

They evidently didn't even try when writing the paragraph on Silent Hill 2, as it's riddled with grammatical mistakes that would make a third-grade student shit himself in anger. Someone obviously just ran the article through spell check and called it a day. I can't even make sense out of this section, so I'm going to assume it's the authors' admission of inadequacy both in journalism and in bed. Oooh, snap!

In closing, video game journalism is comprised 99% of moronic ass-holes who make up percentages. The remaining percentage is for incredibly handsome ass-holes who make up percentages.

CONTINUE READING

Bulk and Skull: A Tribute to Angel Grove's Bad Boys

It's time for yet another exciting instalment of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Super Special Feature + (the "plus" stands for polygamy), now in Technicolour!

Bulk and Skull: two classically misunderstood Angel Grove High School students—products of an uncaring environment who have been ostracized for their social defects. Never before has anyone bothered to take a closer look into the lives of these troubled teens. But here at the 34th Dimension, we're in it for the children.

Join me as I delve deep into the lives of two of America's most well-known bullies and try to unravel the mystery of their pasts.

Farkas "Bulk" Bulkmeier

Even from an early age, Farkas (known as simply "Bulk" to his friends and gang-mates) had built up a reputation as a hard-assed bully. Indeed, many a dork and nerd were mocked in his first few, short years. But buried deep beneath that rough, flabby exterior beat the heart of tragedy.

Born to parents Roseanne Barr and Biff from Back to the Future, Bulk was never accepted by his peers as a result of his weight and overwhelming odour, which classmates described as "like a turd covered in pee." When his parents divorced, Bulk ran away from home and moved in with his aunt who owned a lot of cats. Thus began the first step in his journey toward becoming an Angel Grove bully—for behind every juvenile tyrant, there is a crazy woman and a couch soaked in cat urine.

It was at this point that Bulk would meet the friend who would change his life forever...

Eugene "Skull" Skullovitch

Skull lived next door to Bulk and his aunt with his adoptive parents, Allyson and Brian Skullovitch, and his extended family consisting of his grandmother, a group of travelling accountants and a Bengal tiger named Steve.

Skull was severely retarded and could only communicate through repeating sounds and a high-pitched squeal akin to laughter. When Bulk met this young boy, he made a bet with a rich entrepreneur that he could turn him into a proper gentleman in the course of a fortnight. He failed, but the two of them became inseparable friends.



When they began their tenure at Angel Grove High School, Bulk and Skull were already 21 and 19, respectively. There they encountered Jason Scott, Billy Cranston, Zack Taylor, Trini Kwan and Amy Jo Johnson: the teens who would become the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Determined to gain acceptance in their new high school environment, Bulk and Skull tried desperately to win over the Rangers' affections. However, their first efforts were met with harsh derision. It began as simply as going up to introduce themselves, but Bulk's severe halitosis and Skull's inability to form sentences instantly put off the group.

"He smelled like cheese wrapped in bacon, and the other one just repeated what the fat guy said and then started shrieking," said Amy Jo Johnson, the original Pink Ranger, during an exclusive interview with the 34th Dimension. While talking to Bulk afterward, he rebutted: "CheeseBacon is one of my aunt's favourite recipes. It's not just food; it can be used for other things like soap and toothpaste. It's like a delicious Swiss army knife."

Bulk and Skull were not so quick to give up their efforts. For several seasons, and in a classic example of a desperate cry for attention, they would put on demonstrations to try and impress the other Angel Grove students. This was usually followed by their inevitable failure, and the ensuing public humiliation eventually forced Bulk into a crippling depression.

Faced with his best friend's degenerating state, Skull did the unthinkable: he began thinking. Of a plan, specifically. However, the only thing he could think of was cowboys, so he and Bulk moved to Nevada and became ranch hands. Later they would star alongside Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen in the blockbuster film, "How the West Was Fun."



Today, Bulk and Skull have come a long way. Having overcome his depression through the aid of his friend and the use of several prescription drugs, Bulk now lives in California teaching school kids how to stand up to bullies, and works part-time on Hollywood sets as a stunt double for Burt Reynolds' moustache.

"Life can really throw you around. You'll never really know where you might end up, but thankfully things have turned out okay for me," exclaimed Bulk. "If it weren't for my friend, Skull.... I don't even want to think where I might be today. I owe him a lot."

So what has become of Skull? Since their days at the ranch, he has become a top-earning California lawyer, defending clients such as Michael Jackson, Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie. He is still retarded.



And so ends our look into the lives of Bulk and Skull, the Angel Grove bad boys. If you take anything away from what we have discussed here, let it be this: fat and retarded kids are here for our amusement. When they do something stupid or for attention, make fun of them for it. It's what the Power Rangers would do!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

CONTINUE READING

Go see City of Ember

City of Ember is the first movie this year since The Dark Knight that I've been able to describe as "not shit." Actually, one might say that it was quite good, but I'm a sucker for anything with Bill Murray in it. (I even forced myself to sit through more than half of Lost in Translation.)

The movie is based on the book of the same name, which I have never read so don't ask me to do a comparative review. I hate people who compare movies to their corresponding novels. Tom Bombadil wasn't in The Lord of the Rings, now get over it already. I'm more interested in the merit of the film itself, and City of Ember can certainly stand up on its own.

In short, the film is about the end of the world. It's never revealed exactly what has happened, but all of the human survivors have been living in an underground city ("Ember") for the last 200 years: a totally arbitrary number decided to be the point at which it is safe to return to the surface. However, somewhere along the line and in one of the greatest face-palm moments in history, somebody lost the instructions that tell everyone how to get out of the city. This conjures up memories of being told by tech support to "RTFM," only to realize that I threw it out with the box. Goddamn toasters, why must you be so complicated!?

The city, having been built only to last through the 200 years, is falling apart. The generator that powers all of Ember is failing and will soon leave everyone in total darkness. Enter our two protagonists: Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway) and Lina Mayfleet (Saoirse Ronan), who are, of course, the two unlikely heroes who will rise up to save the city and unravel the conspiracy permeating the highest levels of government. Ooh, intriguing!




Surprisingly, Doon and Lina prove to be quite endearing as characters. I usually can't stand kids' movies because the pubescent heroes are always snot-nosed brats (let's not harken back to the disappointment that was Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events). These kids have real personality; they're flawed, and not just in the tragic hero sense. There's more than hubris working against them. Really, their greatest shortcoming—and, in turn, their greatest attraction—is that they're still kids (don't take that in any sort of paedophilic sense). They're overly trusting, curious and subject to the rulings of adults. It also helps that Treadaway and Ronan are capable of delivering a good performance. They were actually more convincing than Bill Murray as the mayor of Ember, who just hasn't had a role suited to him since The Life Aquatic. I think it was the beard.




So these kids are running around the city, trying to piece together the clues that will show them the way out. It's really a movie for fans of the classic puzzle-adventure. If you grew up playing Myst or Syberia, the pacing and quasi-steam punk style of the film are bound to suck you in. The creature design is pretty good as well, from the adorable moth the size of a large cat, to the horribly grotesque, mutated mole-crossed-with-a-sea-anemone. You get the clear sense that there was some sort of nuclear apocalypse that occurred, which created this fantastical bestiary and helps to piece together the untold aspects of the story.

But this review isn't all about praise; in fact, there were a couple of things that I... well, I just didn't quite care for them that much. For one, the whole puzzle aspect was seriously underplayed. I wasn't expecting the sort of clue hunt that you'd get from Resident Evil (the games, not the movies), but it definitely could have been accentuated a bit more. Second, the ending was a bit abrupt and totally ignored the majority of the minor characters. Did Sul survive? What about the annoying choir lady? I like to assume that she was eaten by the rat-urchin thing.

It's a lighthearted flick, obviously meant as a family film, so it's not going to be held up as high art or win any awards. But it's a really good adventure in a day and age where such films (and games) are of a dying breed—unless there are plenty of explosions and slow-mo gun fights to go along with it. So grab your kids or wife/girlfriend and enjoy it while it lasts. It'll likely be the last you will see in a long time, because Hollywood is stupid.

ARBITRARY REVIEW SCORE
1053
Incandescent Light Bulbs

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Nintendo says "Sorry." Can we all move on now?

Nintendo sucked at E3. We all know this, but some people refuse to let it go; as though the rapture were upon us and Nintendo, the only entity capable of rescuing us, was at home rolling in piles of money. But that's only half true.

So now Nintendo has held their own media summit to pay their recompense. A lot happened at the show, so I'm not going to cover all of it. This isn't a gaming news blog—I'll point you in the direction of GoNintendo for that purpose. Instead, I'm only going to cover the most important issues, i.e. the ones I care about.

Nintendo Wants Your Money

Allow me first to discuss the DSi. I don't like it. Why? Because I can guarantee that, in the future, every DS game will be designed to its specifications, rendering your old DS or DS Lite useless. How do you play a game that requires two touch screens if you only have one? You can't, unless you happen to be a conjurer of the forces of the netherworld. But seeing as how we can't all be Tom Cruise, most of us are going to have to suffer.

The DSi isn't just a new model of DS. It's more like a brand new system with backward compatibility, which initially made me wonder why they didn't take the opportunity to upgrade the internal hardware for better processing speed and graphics rendering. Then I remembered that Nintendo loves money too much. Regardless, my point is that if you want to play any new DS games in the future, you will have to buy a DSi. Sucks to be us, fellow cheap bastards.

At Least High Voltage Cares

Next up, we have a new trailer for The Conduit. Shh! It's starting now....



Sorry, I just have something in my eye.... Don't look at me!

What Once Was Old is New Again... With Waggle

Another cause for excitement is the announcement of the "Play on Wii" series, which is a bunch of GameCube games that are being remade with Wii controls. The only three to concern yourselves with at this point are Pikmin, Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. The original Metroid Prime is still the best in the series, and one of the best games of all time according to 100% of the handsome people who write about video games on the Internet. Combine it with the best FPS controls ever designed for a console and Nintendo may as well be bottling up happiness and selling it for $50 a piece.

There were a lot of other games announced for both the DS and Wii, but most were crap, so I won't even bother mentioning them. Like I said, you can find a comprehensive list, videos and screenshots at pretty much any gaming news site. This post is purely for the sake of my own indulgement.

OMG Splooge!

I have saved the best for last: Spider-Man: Web of Shadows for the DS. So far, the only site I've found with any information or media is Destructoid, and their coverage of the game can be found here.

What they have done is essentially taken Spider-Man and thrown him into a Metroid or Castlevania game. So, instead of progressing along a linear path, you're encouraged to explore the environment using all of Spider-Man's trademark abilities, gather power-ups and defeat bosses to unlock new areas (all from a 2-D, side-scrolling perspective). After watching the trailer on Destructoid, I wouldn't be surprised if you were to go through a second puberty (or, if you haven't hit your first pubescent period yet, you'll no doubt go through two at once, and then six more for good measure.)

I think that makes up for Nintendo's shitty presentation at E3, so can you all stop whining now?

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