Wii are Corrupted

Ugh. This has to stop. With all of the excitement around Corruption and Brawl and other big-name games for Wii, I stopped to look at Metroid in particular. I’m not impressed.

While the gameplay does look good (the first two were already great), I admit, the game itself isn’t living up to what I expect. Twilight Princess, a launch title, had what I consider “next-gen” graphics. It harnessed the power of the Wii (though there’s not a lot, compared to the others), and delivered a rather stunningly advanced game. I was surprised by how un-cartoonish TP ended up. But Metroid…

The graphics haven’t gone anywhere. You compare Prime’s graphics to Corruption’s… it’s the same, almost. Sure, there are halos and glows and such… light effects. But the models haven’t evolved at all. It’s exactly where it was. I’m still going to get it, but I was hoping for a little more. Retro Studios, you disappoint me.

And then there comes the Metroid Preview Channel. New videos, only about a third of which are gameplay. Rather disappointing. And worst of all… no demo. I think many people expected the Wii online to match, or emulate, XBL. But so far, no luck. Only two games have online play (though several more have been announced). Aside from the Internet and Shop channels, there’s really no use. No demos have been put up. Nothing you really want to mess with.

Somebody, surprise me!

Fawning over Kubuntu

I just updated my Kubuntu installation to the latest version, Feisty Fawn. KDE 4 is just around the corner; Gusty is being tested as we speak. So I’ve decided to not miss a thing and update already.

I can’t name anything that wasn’t updated at some point during the process. Even the boot screen got an overhaul. But here are the main things that I picked out:

Amarok: As long as I’ve had it, it’s never had a major update. Until now. While I’m still behind by a version (current is 1.4.6, complete with Oxygen icons, and I use 1.4.5), lots of new stuff has come in. Most importantly, the team has built in support for MagnaTune, a Creative Commons music store. You can listen, and then buy albums/songs right from the program’s sidebar. Some bugfixes, obviously, too, but they’re pretty minor. I think.

Interface: There’s something new about the interface. I don’t exactly know what they did, but some stuff is a bit more shiney, the taskbar’s a bit more streamlined, etc. etc. The desktop’s cool, too. When you click on an icon, now, it kind of pops out and fades out fast, ending up with a pretty neat effect.

OpenOffice: Upgraded to 2.2. I don’t know why (Fawn’s kind of vague, I think), but it just looks and feels more integrated. It doesn’t look square and gray like your average GTK/Wine program does… it takes on the style now. The features are pretty much the same, though.

Anyway, just an update about my update.

Transformers

In case you didn’t hear, some genius took a picture of every single page the new Harry Potter book and made some torrents (two parts: up to page 495 and up to the end… the second one taken down :’( ). Other people who downloaded the two RARs ( < 100mb of images) posted several spoilers, one of which I unfortunately read, and can’t get that one line out of my head! Big leak… JK’s having all of the trucks shipping them outfitted with GPS trackers so this doesn’t happen again. But my main attraction today…. TRANSFORMERS! Yeah, so I just saw it yesterday… good movie. Review follows.

Great, great movie. When it first started running ads, and the first bits of news started popping up, I was just like everybody else… screaming “why?!” at the sky as loud as we could. So, first, they revive a series of toys going on a downward spiral… and then they create a movie for this new image… hiring Steven Speilburg and Michael Bay along the way! Hasbro had officially gone crazy. Except… then, the trailers started rolling in. And, well, they looked good. The critics began to filter into their pre-release screenings, and (impossible as it may sound) they liked it. Could Hasbro have pulled it off?

I’m here to tell you something. They pulled it off. And then some. (Not spoiling anything major) At one point in the movie, a shady goverment organization demonstrates the All Spark’s powers. They put a cell phone inside of a reinforced, bulletproof plexiglass box. All around the walls, there are claw marks and holes (solid sheet metal, by the way…). Zap the phone with the Spark’s radiation, and it comes alive. Unfolds, and starts shooting these cute (never thought I’d ever use this word in this context) missiles and chainguns, all shrunk down. Insta-transformer! But then it almost breaks the cube, and they zap it to death with… uh, who knows.

Great movie. They really did so well on the Autobot/Decepticon models… they move so incredibly fluidly, like they’re actually alive. Jumping up and half-transforming into a helicopter to take down a bunch of real ones, or going straight from plane to bot and swinging around part of the Hoover Dam… wow. And it’s almost believable, too… Unlike the original series and animated movie, they look like they’re real. Optimus’s trailer doesn’t just pop in and out. They are made of plates, instead of bending, growing, stretching metal… like they are organic, but can’t defy physics (too much).

Decepticons. You all know about how the original ones looked, right? Basically remodeled Autobots with a new paint job. Oh boy. Not here. These things are not the kind of thing you want to bump into in the middle of a well-lit field! I mean, everything about them was sharp, and screamed “kill kill kill” at you. check it out for yourself. And in the movie… wow. Take their original attitudes, stick ‘em in a psycho ward or federal prison for a few lifetimes, and then you get Michael Bay’s idea of one. These things are worth fighting, just so you don’t have to meet one again. Ever.

But to wrap it up… great movie. Up there with Die Hard 4.0.

4.5 out of 5
(Still no half star…)

On an alternate note, Transformers 2 was confirmed to be in the works, target release date being sometime 2009.

E3 (Nintendo Conference)

Yeah, so, after reading cipher’s opinion of the Nintendo conference (and posting my comment), I realized that I couldn’t just “not watch it.” I mean, this is the Nintendo press conference at E3! Yeah, I missed the live stream, but Gamespot still has all of the conferences up for viewing. So I’ve decided I’m going to watch them all. The Nintendo and Sony one today, Microsoft’s tomorrow.

First off, I just gotta say, wasn’t as big a let down as expected. Could’ve used a bit more, uh, interesting news, but whatever. It’s worth watching, as long as you skip the stupid “praise for the Wii” videos they show between announcement chunks. Anyway…

So, big news for Wii. Fifa ‘08 (definitely getting this) and NFL ‘08 are both confirmed online play. I don’t know about the gameplay, but at least they’re getting something done over there.

They also announced Mario Kart Wii (working title), which does away with the stupid “double dash” feature. A new “Wii Wheel” debuts with the game. And online? Yeah, it’s got online. Not just racing, of course. Remember battle mode? Yes, that is online too. And it’s got enough control schemes to be utilized by new players and vets alike.

Brawl’s biggest news, though, was the release date: December 3rd, 2007. I don’t know about the rest of you, but suddenly, I stopped caring about anything else at that point. Cue the fanboys! I just home GameStop or Play N Trade starts selling their pre-orders soon. Today would be nice.