Game Play: Flower (PSN)

What gets me about Flower, the latest from Jenova "flOw" Chen (and naturally, a lot of other people), is the etymology of it all. To describe Flower, you'd need to talk about flOw, Rez, Flight Simulator and Pac-Man. And I don't even know how much that would cover it all.

Flower isn't so much fun as relaxing, so toss some Katamari Damarcy in there too for that "virtual stressball" thing. There's some logic and the most thinly cut concept of puzzle solving, but mostly in that "the rules takes some figuring out" Chen kind of way.

Which, for the record, is why I won't compare this game to Linger In Shadows - although others might. Flower actually does have a ruleset and a pretty standard concept of game mechanics, whereas Linger often seemed to hope you'd just mash buttons until the scene moved in the right direction. Linger might occupy its own interesting corner as part of the demoscene, but I wouldn't put it too close to Flower in a Venn diagram.

The only bad part of Flower is that it is kind of short. You can get through the main portion in a night, no problem. Course, I think we still have an unlock to do by going back through and completing more of the original levels. I don't know if we'll ever play Flower to that extent, but even playing it last night makes the $10 price tag seem pretty worthwhile.

TV Watch: Dollhouse

The Dollhouse premiere was a pretty by the numbers send up, with some Whedonesque flair. The real beauty of this show is the setup, so there isn't going to be much meat in the first episode. Eliza seems extremely capable of pulling off what could be a nightmare for an actress - potentially playing a different character for every episode while also having to keep the baseline glassy persona of "Echo" to heart. The first part of the show made me a bit worried that most of echo's persona would come out as a brazen brunette who might be just as likely to drink under the table as kiss you, which isn't potentially much of a stretch for Dukshu - but the episode showed the range was there, which keeps the core of the show intact.

While not ideal for the performer, Whedon has created a beautiful concept for the writers. They can inject nearly any plot or character and fit Echo into it, while also milking the various portions of the Dollhouse itself for material. Seeing what Whedon can do with a spaceship, some crime and a couple stowaways - I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.

Nintendo's Massive Fail

The Girl is playing Animal Crossing: City Folk as I write this - watering some flowers and bouncing around. Our mortgage is half a millions now, but at least we have a basement.

At this very moment, Big Brother might be playing it as well. We've had some weird disconnect with exchanging friend codes all week long. We have no real way of knowing. We've got a cherry tree and our animals have been complaining about meeting people. Even more annoying, it seems our citizens know he's added our friend code, because they've mentioned him by name. The animals in the game can acknowledge him, but we cannot.

This is in despite of the fact that we've already played together on other games. Our Wiis know each other. We have each other's Miis.

City Folk is a game that constantly reminds you it wants to play online. I don't mean that in some subtle way, I mean the game actually asks you every time you play about why you don't have more friends you could be playing with.

But we're not. And I can't think of a single good reason why. Nintendo has just completely drop the ball here, and they've essentially dropped the ball when it comes to social networking and online multiplayer for the entire system.

They may be rolling in cash from selling more Wii Fits than a fruit stand sells fruit in the desert, but just because I have a Fit and Big Bro has Fit doesn't mean that we know what the hell the either is doing with it.

Compare this to the PlayStation 3 (or, I'm sure, the 360 to even larger degree). I've compared game play with other people just by looking at their trophies. If someone comes online, I can know about it even if I'm in the middle of a game. I've bounced around LittleBigPlanet with complete strangers on more than one occasion. It's as easy as selecting "Play Online" instead of "Play By Myself".

What's the name of Nintendo's console? It's the Wii, intentionally designed to invoke the imagery of playing in a group. But the only time that has really happened is some nights of bowling. Hell, I have a better sense of community from PlayStation Home than I do from any Wii Channel. The Animal Crossing commercials are all about playing online with people miles and miles away.

But it's just branding, just like the Wii itself. Yeah, I know I've complained about this before.

But I think it bears repeating.

Your Friendly Reminder: Dollhouse and Terminator

Whedon fans might stay home tonight. You've got new Terminator and the premiere of Joss' latest, Dollhouse.

Pride And Prejudice And Zombies

First heard of this on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me during the "Stump the Listener" portion:

Few challenges, however, are as unusual as the latest foe facing Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice – a plague of the undead sent to reduce the picturesque villages of Longbourn and Meryton to smouldering ruins.

Hollywood studios are bidding to turn a radical reworking of Austen’s most popular book, now called Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a parody to be published in April, into a blockbuster movie.

Desperate for new ideas, studio chiefs hope “P&P&Z” will mark the bloody birth of a feral offspring of classic British literature: “monster-lit”.

-- Jane Austen's Bennet girls go zombie slaying

That it may be made into a movie, however, is new to me. Oh Darcy, I may have just swooned.

Watch FEAR Live Tomorrow, Friday the 13th

For those of us not lucky enough to win the FEAR 2 competition where you get whisked off to a secret location to frag the hell out of anyone, either because you weren't one of the eight selected or you don't live on the other side of the pond, you can watch it live tomorrow at http://www.whatisfearlive.com.

Kicks off at noon PST. Hope to have a review copy and a review henceforth soonish.

TV Watch: Lost, This Place Is Death

For me, this was quite possibly the best episode of the new bunch. The on/off island stories actually had something to do with each other and nearly everything about Jin and Locke was highly watchable. The scenes in the past with Danielle were pertinent and lacked that "clip show" feeling to them that some of the other time travel scenes have been burdened.

Faraday remains a person of interest, his mom apparently being some kind of keeper of the island and him trying to warn Charlotte not to die and all. Dollars to donuts he's the reason why she knew about the well, though I would put that under the "probably left unanswered" bucket of questions, in the grand scheme of things.

Was nice to see the smoke monster again, actually just the monsters in general on the island. Interesting to watch the "possessed" member of Crazy French Lady's crew talk about it as a security system, which Danielle would repeat years later. Odd, I thought, though, that the temple had Egyptian style glyphs on it.

Course, to bring it all together again - let us recall that one translation of the timer hieroglyphs was essentially "the underworld".

So maybe the place is death? Not that the Losties are necessarily dead, but maybe the island is a gate to something else.

I'd like to start a petition

To get Google to blacklist Experts Exchange. Maybe I'm alone on this - but it is insanely annoying to try and research questions only to get to a forum which requires a subscription before they'll show you anything. Do they have the answer? Do they not? Is it a boat? Maybe it's a boat!

I don't care if it's a yacht, I'm not paying a subscription so that I can find out what is behind door number two. The point is - these are invalid search results. They're not resulting in any useful information, they result in an ad for the Exchange. They're taking up extremely valuable space for other people with probably less evil SEO methods that might offer real answers.

Dear LittleBigPlanet: I was *this* close to giving up

I'm really, really not a fan of platformers. I put up with them back in the day when they were more or less the predominant life form in the gamingverse, but now I've got all sorts of options and so jumping from point to point in the dire hope that I don't fall so that I don't have to restart from another point, or worse - the very beginning - just isn't wildly appealing to me.

But some surprise me. I played through to nearly every star of Super Mario 64 and barely even noticed the time had passed. And quite honestly, LittleBigPlanet may be the best platformer ever made.

But it's still a platformer and hence when I spend twenty minutes or so jumping on a stupid a trampoline because is the only way to finish the level - it does suck the fun out a bit. This is a point nearly three-fourths the way through The Wedding Level, and it drove me insane.

For the record - you jump as the tramp is just going back up. Not before, or after - or your little sackperson will flail around like a monkey. Once you get the hang of it, it isn't that bad. But until then - it is insanely annoying.

So it was nearly a shelf moment, but I'm glad it wasn't. I've moved on from The Wedding already stumbled into some choice moments (like the dog with the lantern following you around). Was going through the creation tutorials before going to bed, hope to try them out some soon.

Color Me Skeptical: Sega's New Console

Sometimes I'll read something that just feels like a real head scratcher. This might turn into something of a series...

First is this assumption that a recent Sega trademark hails a new console. For one thing, I've seen where patent and trademark speculation get us - and it isn't pretty. For another, it ignores the fact that Dreamcast aside, Sega has a healthy interest in hardware - so another trademark has a far simpler explanation than the company re-entering the home market.

And what exactly would be gained by a Sega console? It's a fierce generation for competition, with Sony and Microsoft shelling out dollars left and right for control of assets. Sega would have to take a bloodbath in production, advertising and development costs to get a dent in at this point. Remember that Microsoft's ability to buy marketshare was a factor in the Dreamcast's fate to begin with, and now would not be any different.

So Sega would be out a truckload of cash to offer gamers ... anything new? It seems unlikely unless Sega has some kind of hardware trick, a la Wiimote, up its sleeve.

In general, though, I wouldn't wait around for something which would cost a ton during a global recession, especially when its unclear if gamers would even want it.

TV Watch, Lost, The Little Prince

This season is starting to feel off balanced to me, and I think I'm getting an impression as to why. I'm getting in line with the sentiment that the On Island scenes seem to out pace the Off Island scenes so much that episodes feel lopsided as a whole. The show has gone from flashbacks to flashforwards and now on to some kind of flashoffonisland tango thing. The first season of the show worked best when the flashbacks proved out some kind of poignant character development. The flashforwards worked best when they pieced together some kind of portion of the larger puzzle. The flashoffonisland tango parts just don't create any kind of synergy for the show.

I'd honestly vote for one full episode off island, one full episode off. As it is, the off island parts seem slow to me. Sayid's parts are keeping it interesting, and I think I am physically unable to dislike a scene with Hurley in it, but I can't help but think that fate as been so powerfully involved in this plot that legal tricks and tranq darts feel a little low brow.

The on island parts seem to be earnestly building to something. My only real complaint is that parts feel more clip show than time travel. And honestly, I must have microslept there a moment because the outrigger escape made very little sense to me.

So in general, this was mostly another bridge episode - but I'm hopeful that the next episode will reveal enough about Crazy French Lady's adventure that it will pay off in the end.

Game Play: Savage Moon (PSN Exclusive)

Savage Moon has managed to occupy quite a bit of my relatively sparse free time of late. It's a tower defense game and for the most part holds all the trappings of that genre, which isn't always my favorite, together in the kind of bundle you'd expect.

I really like the setting, this isn't some cutesy defense game ... you're blowing up space bugs. You will probably turn down the volume on this game at least once. I like that when I'm dropping a row of mortar towers - I feel like I'm really destroying some stuff. There are some very pretty explosions to be had.

The tutorial levels will trick you into thinking that the game is easier than it really is - expect to get your ass kicked early. I fumbled through a few levels, then thought I had really mastered the game and ... am now getting my ass kicked again. If the normal game isn't challenge enough, there is also a vengeance mode where the waves never stop and you're just out to last as long as possible.

As a tangential thought - is it me or are tower defense games the evolutionary leftover of the old school god games? I feel like there's a bit of Populous here, like where it turned right after a night of passion with Starcraft.

Anyway, highly recommend especially for fans of the genre.

Movie Watch: Slumdog Millionaire

Largely, Slumdog Millionaire lives up to the hype. It's a fun little drama that doesn't shy away from the occasional scene that will instill a wince into the audience.

The biggest triumph from the movie is its ability to play at the heartstrings without feeling like a Hollywood movie. If anything, Boyle brings his distinct touch to the film which gives a unique air. The movie isn't Hollywood, it's not Bollywood - even though it certainly lifts aspects of each.

As an aside, Danny Boyle is a damn impressive director. Anyone who can bring us Millions (which if you enjoy Slumdog, I highly recommend), 28 Days Later and this film is about as versatile as you can get. He's certainly on my "I'd watch anything he makes" list.

If there's any critique of the movie, it is that it is a slow ride to a rather predictable ending. That's a shallow problem all and all though, since the ride is interesting, at times poignant and often a joy to watch (or wince).

Highly recommend. Soundtrack is pretty good too...

For the record, this is why I left web forums

There are 63 IGN reader reviews of Killzone 2 at the time of this writing. Right now the average is 7.2, but that's more of a mathematical sum of the flaming platform war going on there, especially since the game doesn't come out until the end of the month.

Game Play: Penny Arcade Adventures, Episode 1

I feel like a dissenter in a sea of fans, but I'm not coming down on a terribly positive side for this game. I'll probably poke at it some more this week, but it is in danger of being shelved after just a few hours of play.

The humor is of course, present - these are funny guys after all. Hothead has done a good job of translating the 2D style of their comic into a 3D world as well. This isn't some cheap rollout to cash in on Penny Arcade's considerable fame.

That said, there are several nuisances which add up quickly. There's little stuff, like "New Game" consistently being the default even after you've played a few times. More annoying is the sketchy method of running into objects to interact with them, which comprises a decent amount of the gameplay and yet you'll find yourself dancing around objects routinely. It's not super annoying, not a crime against nature or anything - but when it happens over and over again, and your reward is just some pithy description of a tack ... it wears a little thin.

Combat is what's really killing me. True confession, I've never been a big Final Fantasy fan, but I don't think that's the fault here. There's something about the interface which is just more work than play. You're watching the status of your action buttons to see when you can attack, but you're also supposed to be watching your opponents to see if you're supposed to be blocking since the game falls prey to the "turn based isn't good enough" philosophy of role-playing and everything occurs in quasi-real time. So while I'm squinting at Tycho's inventory to see if I have any bandages left, I'm trying to block with another and ... damn, I think I might have just healed an enemy. It's like a combat system for people with ADD. The best part of the combat, using minigames for powered up attacks, is reserved for those patient enough to wait to be beat on for it to be available, generally only to fail and get partial damage on it anyway. Not really a reward worth the effort.

And speaking of enemies, I might not have anything against mimes and robots in general - but I don't exactly get why I walked right over a pair of robots when I was by myself with a rake, but three of them wiped out my entire party in a heartbeat last night. The production values are fine - but, seriously ... enough with the damn robots. If you're going to throw two enemies at me of clearly differing difficulty - throw two enemies of me that look like they're clearly different. After the like tenth robot battle, it's one thing to be a little dull - but why be confusing too?

Part of me wants to like this game for its humor and charm. For a moment there, I was reminded of Anachronox , but no longer. And I can get the humor and charm for free from the web comic without having to bump around a suitcase so that I can open it and get killed by a lousy interface and a couple of robots.