Dead Space Extraction is yet another “on-rails” Wii shooter game. The Wii, with its pointer controls, is the perfect platform for these kinds of games. House of the Dead: Overkill is probably the best in this genre and, coming from that arcade-tastic game to this, Extraction will take a bit of getting used to. For one thing, the controls don’t quite work with the Wii zapper as it was meant to be used. In addition to your basic shooting and changing weapons, you can use a beam to grab power-ups and items. That means you’ll need to get to those buttons on top of the Wiimote during the frantic firefights. Also, there’s a bit too much spaztic controller waggling for my tastes. However, in lieu of a point-based arcade game, you get a pretty engaging story-based game with lot of dialogue and character development and, when you are finally allowed to shoot stuff, the shooting mechanics are pretty solid.
This weekend the family dragged me to a scarecrow building contest. This is a contest intended to allow kids to be creative and show off their stuff as budding young artists. Of course, my wife decided it would be a great opportunity to kick some underaged-art-noob butt. Pictured here is her winning entry in the category “most likely to scare a crow.”
Nova is checking out the new wave neon streets in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Nova’s personal goal: don’t punch anyone and avoid the cops… and chase the roller skating guy in pink shorts.
This is probably only the second record ever made of instrumental surf music devoted to the hobby of slot car racing. The first was the 1965 classic, The Go Sound of the Slots by the Revells. As usual, the production quality is absolute crap but the schtick quality is top-notch. For the most part these are surf standards with slot car noises and the occasional slot car terminology vocal line. A handy glossary is provided in liner notes in case you don’t know what a turn marshall or flutter finger is.
Cutesy ukulele pop from Japan. Half the songs are just the two girls, their ukes and some sweet vocal harmonies. The rest of the songs are more fleshed-out with a full honky-tonk backing band.
Peter Thomas’ arrangements live somewhere between the wacky space-age pop of Esquivel and the brassy action movie scores of John Barry. Here is a collection of his soundtrack music from various German television show from the 60s. I love the crazy sound effects and vocal instrumentation. This is some swinging stuff. A really great CD!
After the first three rousing volumes of the Song of Fire and Ice series, this book is a huge disappointment. I get that it’s really only half of book four in the series, but even if you set aside the fact that it focuses on way too much on new characters and points of view (as a reader, I really only want to hear about the Stark kids and maybe Tyrion), the character arcs really don’t seem to go anywhere. I am assuming the book is more of a set up for future events and I may grow to care about the Martells and Ironmen. I may like this volume better when I’ve read the follow-up.
After more than a dozen years of maintaining a personal Web site, I have finally decided to monetize this thing (well, okay, that doesn’t count the Google ads in the sidebar, but those barely earn any money anyways). I have gone through my gallery and enabled a PayPal shopping cart system to take orders for my art. Currently, there are about twelve prints for sale. So, start shopping now!
I had thought that this was the conclusion of the entire Song of Fire and Ice series, but aparently this is book three of seven. In any event, the story picks up right where A Clash of Kings ended and then proceeds to barrel forward with a renewed energy that seemed to be missing in the second book. The main story is nowhere near done, but many of the characters finally seem to reach a major goal/pay-off in the end. Onward into A Feast for Crows!
Not quite as gripping as the first book in the series, but Martin maintains much of the same level of quality throughout this second novel. I guess I am am just disappointed that many of the story lines do not reach a satisfying resolution. A Storm of Swords eventually makes up for that shortcoming.
