In our inaugural episode of the Giant Bombcast, Ryan and Jeff discuss delicious WoW-inspired energy drinks, the hidden depth in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the brilliant filmography of Mark Dacascos, and much more. Send any and all questions/drink recommendations/death threats to bombcast at giant bomb dot com!
Oh yeah, and I guess welcome to the arrow pointing down blog! It still doesn’t have any meaningful direction, and those holding their breath hoping it will are gonna go out like Michael Hutchence. Between you and me, this blog was born out of a frothy tincture of laziness and a need to fit in–my hosting service had a one-click install option for wordpress, and all my unemployed friends have been doin’ it. Since this is the first substantial post here, I wanted to get down a few fleeting thoughts.
Video games:
Been playing Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. The gameplay is unsurprisingly good, but Nintendo dropped the ball by changing the tone of the series from fun-time anime war-stuff to final-fantasy-serious war-stuff. The writing just isn’t insightful enough to address the horrors of war in a serious manner without coming off as pretentious, cheesy, and shallow. War is bad, we get it. Also, you’ll hear the same half-rock/half-military theme music for almost the entire duration of the game, and the only way to get it out is with a bullet.
Also been playing Burnout Paradise, though not nearly as much as Jeff or Rich. I like it the more I play it, but I can’t yet say that I love it. It’s got the hallmarks of a great Burnout game, with an incredible sense of speed and car crashes that verge on pornographic, and the open-world format-shift was entirely necessary, but I still feel like I have to make too many excuses and apologies for it. I guess some of my issues with Paradise come from my own expectations of what a Burnout game should be, and in some regards, I think it doesn’t quite deliver. For the record, Burnout 3: Takedown is still the best game in the series.
Not video games:
Brad Shoemaker pointed me towards ConjugalHarmony.com on Friday, and it has haunted my every waking moment since. I’m afraid I might be stepping into doofycrap territory here, but it’s fascinating to me how wildly one’s priorities can change once you’ve been locked up. These women cannot afford to be anything less than totally honest about themselves and their situations, which leads to some terrifyingly casual comments like this:
Convictions: I beat up this bitch cop with my bare knuckles and she died so I’m done for life. Lets chat!
Movies:
Went to a drive-in double-feature last night, my second in the past month or so. My girlfriend lives just a few miles from one of only maybe six drive-in theaters still in operation in California, and I’m grateful for it. I have fond memories of drive-ins from when I was very, very young, and even though it’s terribly run-down and it attracts a kind of sketchy crowd and is on the verge of being shut down, it’s still a novel experience.
The movies were Rambo and National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Rambo is an almost startlingly straightforward rescue flick that is really boring whenever someone isn’t being murdered in a horribly graphic way. National Treasure: Book of Secrets was probably better than the first National Treasure, but I’m finding Nic Cage’s hairline increasingly hard to look at, I feel embarrassed for Jon Voight running around like he’s Action Grandpa, and the conceit of the series–that all of America’s historical artifacts exist solely as elaborate clues for Nic Cage’s treasure hunt–is so ridiculous and stupid that it’s distracting.
So that’s all for now. Expect fitful and often meaningless posts from here on out.
DUMBDATE: Yeah, so ConjugalHarmony is probably fake, which only diminishes its awesomeness, but it does not eliminate it.
10. Rambo
9. The Specialist
8. Assassins
7. Driven
6. Rocky IV
5. Tango & Cash
4. Demolition Man
3. Cobra
2. Over the Top
1. Judge Dredd
