“Whale Sub” wins.

by SolitaryJohn

 

Yeah, the piece titled “Whale Sub” by “Backburner”, of Kongregate.com, won some Kongregate contest. I could give less of a rat’s ass about that. What I do care about, is how f*@#ing awesome this is.

http://jimsdrawingboard.blogspot.com/2009/07/whale-sub-or-little-sprezzatura.html

I’ve got it as desktop background on my 22′ Desktop screen, and GOD it looks impressive. Now I’ll go hide all of those annoying icons and folders.

God, I suck at painting.

This has suddenly made me come down with a case of “Kevin Syndrome”. Back earlier this year, Kevin and Bean called up some mountain-climbing kid. He was around 18, and had already climbed the highest peaks in all 7 continents. Kevin, after hearing all this, advised the kid to “slow down”. If he had done all this stuff in his youth, what would he do later? (Also, he was inadvertently making Kevin look bad.) “Backburner” makes me look bad.

Now I’ve got a strong urge to go paint. Like, NOW.

Picture time:

The whale is a sub. Ingenious, no? (Ingenuous too, in that it's such a childish depiction of fantasy. Suck on it, Joe. Suck on the Blue whale. The one that we nearly bought @ target for the "Adopt a Family" kid.)

PS: I’m pretty sure it was Kevin, not Bean, who got showed up.

Irvine’s Resident McDonald’s

Ha. It’s pretty cute. They’re giving away free samples nearly DAILY now – I got a decently sized mocha and a quarter-sandwich for free. Whaaaaat?

But I’m not here to comment on the freebies, or the service. (Although, this McDonald’s is so popular, they even have their own drive-thru parking lot area.) As I waited for my order today, I began checking out the interior decoration. Me da’ would be proud ;D

So, firstly – They plastered Ansel Adams prints on EVERY single free space they have. In total, there are 11 Prints hung on the walls – In corners, in between windows, etc. One or two would be OKAY, but 11′s a bit excessive – Even IF it’s for a place that was meant to be high-populated. 

Then there are the panes of fogged glass with flattened reeds preserved/sealed inside. These, I actually kind of like. They’re definitely not “avant-garde” or anything, but they serve their purpose well. They theme the interior slightly, and serve to give more privacy to customers. Also, if a man were to rob McDonald’s while wielding a gun, ninjas could hide behind the panes of glass and jump out at the offender. Thumbs up, McD, even though the panes are only one size, as if pulled from a “McDonald’s parts bin”, much like Ford and the way it plastered Ford parts onto Aston Martins and Jaguars. (Oh, pardon me. Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaguars was what I meant to say.)

The SEATS next – Aside from fixed rotating chairs, this McD’s comes equipped with hard plastic bench seats. Yes, they’re easy to clean, and I understand that. But why add hard plastic “cushions” onto those seats? They look horrible! They’re not too comfy either. 

 

So, all-in-all, this McD’s wins. Function over form is the prevalent theme here, but they still managed to add some nice touches.

Bunnies, reviewed.

For those of you who have yet to be enlightened, Bunni : How We First Met, @ www.bunnibunni.com is the brainchild of Andre Spierings and Daniel Cook – An insufferably adorable game reminiscent to Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon. The characters look like Animal Crossing characters, taken one step further down the Chibi path. And, oddly enough, for some reason - I love it. (Imagine that sentence as narrated by Jeremy Clarkson. It’s how it’s supposed to be interpreted.)

The game starts out with the PERFECT atmosphere. And I do mean perfect. You start off on a small island, alone – and being talked through the basics by a ghost. Birds sing in the distance, and a light music-box theme chimes through my tinny Macbook speakers. But that doesn’t matter – go get some earbuds. You set up your first “forest” and lumber mill, therefore initiating you into the game. After you hire a worker for the lumber mill, the ghost tells you that a terrible tragedy once befell the island, and that you’ll find more ghosts, plus a few more survivors that were saved/preserved via some mysterious means. 

So, here’s my thought on the initiation -

INITIATION: Nice. Mysterious enough, gives a semblance of depth, and a background story. 

 

Now, for the second part – the Development.

The game introduces more resource-management tasks for you, and also two “Girls”. Considering that you’re bunnies and all, I’d figured that you’d be going at it right off the bat. 

INSTEAD – The game takes a date-sim approach. You’ve got two girl bunnies. You do small things to make them happy. It’s kinda tedious. The resource-management aspect of the game grows considerably, also. Forests and hills sprawl across your islands, as bunnies and foxes hurry to and fro, gathering lumber and precious metals/gems. Tediousness starts to set in here, as the game loses its novelty. 

 

The final section : Ending

Ending gets kinda mediocre, partly due to the medium used to construct the characters – Not Flash, or a computer program, but portraying the characters as BUNNIES. Long story short? You pay alot, get married, game over. So what started out with an astoundingly deep exposition ends up short of expectations. 

 

All in all – Play it. For the premise. It’s good enough for the whole game.

 

NOTE: For some reason, this game strikes a chord with me. I like.

 

In-game screenshot. Why the hell did I just review a flash game?

Hairy Pawter and the Half-Breed Prince.

 

Yeah, the title of this post is ripped off from a “Big Dawgs” tee. 

Anyways, I went to go see HP6 yesterday night. I ended up having to catch the last movie due to a series of screw-ups that left me without tickets at the wrong theater. I snuck into Transformers 2 to catch a couple glimpses before my movie started. Ehhh, wasn’t as cool as the first one, even with the Stingray and the Camaro Z28 concept. That happens to sequels… that happens. (Oh, by the way – I read off Jalopnik.com that Michael Bay, Pasadena Art Center alumnus and executive producer of Transformers, made Megan Fox wash his shiny red Ferrari in a bikini as a part of the movie audition. He taped it, too. Pffft… dirty old man. Show me the tape, yo.)

BACK ON TRACK: As a youngster, back when the first couple of Harry Potter movies came out, I was MASSIVELY disappointed. I had wanted to see the book transcribed from paper onto the silver screen, and was severely disappointed when I saw that numerous scenes had been cut out. Years later, after the books were already done and over with – Snape died, some Weasly twin died, Dumbledore died (OMG), Remus and Tonks died, Harry had kids (OMG again), Harry freakin’ named his son Albus Severus Potter (OOOOOH MAH %@$#ING GOD) – Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince came out into theaters. Since I myself, like Harry Potter, had already moved on in life, it was shocking to see that Harry could still hold the stage. Even though the limelight has been cast on a horrible (IMO) series called “The Twilight Saga”, Hogwarts still hasn’t lost it’s cool. So, this time, I viewed the movie through virgin eyes. My horrible memory hindered my full recollection of the book in its entirety; therefore, I couldn’t be nitpicky anymore about divergence from the book. 

My thoughts? This director’s good. The cinematography is, (Pardon my poor use of Brit-speak), “Excellent!”. (Hmm… Brilliant might’ve worked there also.) Ellen Degeneres and Hugh Laurie (House) had an American vs. British slang match on Ellen’s show once. I found it when looking up British accents. As it turns out, the only British slang I truly “know” is “Cocktease”, and even that’s pulled from “The Venture Brothers”.

BACK ON TRACK AGAIN! Cinematography was great, yeah, mmhm, ‘kay. Check. Next up, I reeeeally like the Pensieve transitions. The smoky ink-diffusing-through-water effects made the memories seem far more like memories than when the Pensieve was first used in HP3. Another cool scene: when Dumbledore waves his wand and re-assembles the house Slughorn tore apart. That scene was BA. So was the scene where Dumbledore flings flames around and then parts them like Noah. (FYI, BA=Bad***) Overall, I’d say that this is a GRRREAT! movie, although momentum is lost towards the end. For one, the Horcrux-retrieval scene wasn’t scary enough… I’d liked to have seen more of the zombies. Another point: The movie shows Malfoy working on the vanishing cabinet, leading up to the smuggling of Death Eaters into Hogwarts. I liked it much more, when JK Rowling tossed that curveball at us. It was as bit… TOO predictable in the movie. 

Awesomest Part: Beginning sequence, flying through London from a Death Eater’s perspective. Awh hell yeah. The Burrow (The Weasly’s house) is now situated in a much more scenic spot, also… Before it gets burnt down. Who knew wavy grass could be so pretty?

Parting thoughts: Good movie. By the gods, though! Whatever happened to kiddy-bowlcut-Harry from the first movie?! Y’know what I’d like to see?

This:

 

Badassitude maxed?

 

Marching through this:

 

Be scared, kids.

Pseudo-Jedi w/o all the chivalrous crap + Scary wizard place with seemingly frightening inhabitants?

awh AWH HELL YEAH.

We play Maplestory.

Maplestory. You’ve probably all heard of this game. It’s a worldwide sensation, having garnered over 92 million players worldwide.

NINETY-TWO MILLION. 92,000,000. World of Warcraft only has 11 million.

Now that you have  a grasp on the astounding SIZE of this game, I’d like to retell some of my Maplean escapades.

1. I’ve played for just past Three and a half years. Joe’s played for about two months.

2. I’ve bought over 200$ of NX. (Still not a LOT)

3. My grades have been affected by Maplestory.

4. I’ve cybered for mesos. =D

5. I’m still playing.

 

So, yes, Maplestory has its ups and downs. It truly IS a great game. I believe that Maplestory’s success lies PURELY in the 2-D aspect of the game. Wizet has also succeeded in making the game NOT feel like a game. In my (partially biased) opinion, I believe that the game cannot be fully experienced if oneself plays the game like a GAME. The 2-D screen tends to bring all other players closer, creating a more intimate feel, as compared to other 3-D MMORPG’s. Intimacy, and a simpler viewport are the two KEY advantages 2-D has over 3-D. Some might argue that 3-D provides a more realistic experience. That is absolutely correct. However, details are not shown as clearly as on the 2-D screen. In Maplestory, the characters are always (somewhat) facing you. The larger-than-normal heads result in Chibi characters that manage to be just as “cool” as they are “cute”. Large Heads= Large Faces, and when paired with Maplestory’s collection quirky, expressive facial expressions (accessed via F1-F7), result in a interactive way to communicate. (Note that Wizet MADE the game, but different companies worldwide publish them)

The game, itself, is rather user-friendly. Controls are simple: Movement is governed by the arrow keys, with other hotkeys available for skills. The game progresses in difficulty though, towards the higher levels. The risk of death constantly looms over players, trying to level up. Bosses are usually long, tedious affairs requiring large masses of players to participate. There’s a shell of a story behind Maplestory. The “older” areas have a less engaging story, whilst the newer places, like Magatia, have some rather interesting plotlines, revealed through quests. Magatia is the favorite “area” of yours truly, followed by Crimsonwood Keep. When it all boils down, however, Maplestory isn’t a game to me. It’s just another communication medium. A fancied-out “Instant Messenger”. That’s why it’s so great.