“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

Where the hell did that statement ever come from?  Who was having a hard time skinning their cat only to have a friend come along with the knowledge of numerous other ways to “git ‘er done”?  What are the various ways to skin a cat?

These are the questions that enquiring minds want to know.  Well, these are the questions I want to know after the statement somehow found its way into a conversation today at work.

A quick internet search hasn’t really helped.  From what I’ve seen, it could have originated from multiple ways to skin a cat-fish or it is just the bastardization, over time, of a statement about skinning some other animal.  The endeavor wasn’t a total waste of time however.  I now have a new replacement saying for the cat one, I just need a good opportunity to use it:

“There are more ways of killing a dog than choking him with pudding.”  - Some guy on the internet (so it must be true)

So today is the big day.  Madden ‘09 arrives.  Incorrect cover and all.  Yay.

It should be noted, that I despise the Madden football games.

Madden hasn’t been good since Madden ‘92 on the Sega Genesis.  When number 35 for the Bears (Neil Anderson) was unstoppable and number 84 for Kansas City (Willie Davis) was the fastest receiver in the game.  My friend Joe and I played ridiculous amounts of that game.  Then the ‘93 version came out, and while it wasn’t horrible, it wasn’t as good as it’s predecessor.

I hadn’t played a Madden game again until the ‘03 release on the original Xbox.  Unfortunately, at that time I already had a taste of the football glory that was the 2K series.  The 2K3 game blew Madden (and Microsoft’s own football attempt) out of the water.  The animation was better, the gameplay was better, and the presentation was better.  Madden was simply living off it’s reputation.

The 2K series would later become the ESPN series, but continued to be the superior game despite the fact that Madden continued to be the most popular.  With ESPN 2K5 however, they decided to price the game to a point that even the die hard Madden fanboy’s couldn’t resist, $19.95 vs the standard game cost of $49.99.  That game would be the last great football game ever made.  Following that season, EA signed an exclusive contract with the NFL which allowed Madden to be the only game with actual NFL players and teams.

Since then, Madden has been putting out what equates to Madden ‘03 with newer rosters.  As opposed to the new rosters the games could update to anyway.  Awesome.

During the drive down to Florida, I was able to catch up on a paperback book a friend of mine had lent me, Iron Man: Beneath the Armor.  The book is more or less a history of the Iron Man comic, but aside from that, it also includes a bit of the history of Marvel Comics itself.

One of the non Iron Man things I found most interesting was Stan Lee’s secret to his naming convention for hero alter ego’s.  Apparently, if Stan had actually been the one to come up with Tony Stark’s name, he would have ended up with a name like Sam Stark.

Stan revealed that he has a thing about the first and last names starting with the same letter.  With names like Peter Parker, Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Stephen Strange, Matt Murdock, and Bruce Banner how were we to catch on?  His thinking was that he was less likely to forget a characters name this way.

Well, I found it interesting at least.  Now whenever I see a name like that, I’ll be thinking it’s a Stan Lee name.

On an Iron Man related note.  Having read the history of Iron Man and what has happened to him in the comics since I stopped reading them, I miss Bob Layton and David Michelinie even more now.  They were the ones working on the comic when I first got into Iron Man and those truely were the glory days.  Some of the story lines have just gone plain stupid.  However, I do like what Adi Granov has done with the armor in recent years (his designs were the basis of the movie armor).

Doh.  Vacation’s over.  Back to work and real life on Tuesday.

As much as I dislike the sun, the sand, the ocean, the sea critters, the sun.  We really did have a good time in Florida.  Nothing quite like coming home and complaining that it’s too hot. =P

The (kid’s) grandparents rented an uber van for the drive down.  An in-dash DVD player and satelite radio made the drive about as pleasant as possible.  My sister and her family followed us down to Destin.

We stayed in a  beach house, in a gated community, that was right across the street from the beach, thanks to one of my step dad’s clients letting us use it for the week.  The weather was probably about as good as I could hope.  Not too much sun, overcast on a couple of days, and never too much rain to keep us from doing anything.

We spent most of the time on the beach with the kids, building sand castles that would promptly be smashed by Ethan and my neice, or hunting for jelly fish.  We spent some time at The Track so the kids could ride on the kiddie rides and play minature golf, but my neice, the youngest of the bunch was the only one brave enough to actually ride any of the “scary” rides.  The last full day we were there, we went on an air boat tour (you know, the flat bottom boat things with the big fan in the back?) that was alot of fun.

We’re back home now though.  Our animals all survived without us.  Photos can be found here.

Yeah, I’m an Achievement whore.  I guess it’s the RPG geek in me.  Achievements are like quests or gear or gold and they can be just as addictive to obtain as any other phat lewtz.  The competitive side of me is a sucker for em as well.  What better way of determining whom is better than whom than with arbitrary numbers?

Despite the brilliance of the Achievement concept, some developers appear to put as much thought into their implementation as someone who’s trying to write their name on the ground with their own feces.  Here is my attempt at enlightening those responsible for these fecal accidents:

• Time spent != challenging.  I’m all for Achievements that are so frustrating to complete that you end up despising every moment you are working for them.  *cough* Little Rocket Man.  *cough* Mile High Club.  At least once you finally earn them, you feel you actually accomplished something few others could.  However, Achievements that are “difficult” only because they require some ridiculous amount time to “achieve” only serve to quantify how sad our gaming lives really are.  We don’t need that.

• Single player achievements should be possible to complete in one play through.  Multiple playthrough’s to find some odd, hidden item in a level is one thing.  Multiple playthrough’s because you have to complete the game on each difficulty level, indepedantly, is another.  Yes, Devil May Cry, you may lick my balls.

• Take it easy on multiplayer Achievements.  If you have the remote inkling that your game is teh suck, don’t penalize the random person who picks up the game a year or two down the road only to find he’s the only one playing it online.  The time spent complaint also applies here to a number of online Achievements.  Gears of War + 10,000 online kills = seriously?

• Don’t outsmart your own game.  If you’re gonna hide shit throughout a level, don’t allow a player to accidentally progress to the next area while at the same time locking them out of the previous area.  Punishing people for a lack of clairvoyance only serves to grant them the clairvoyance to avoid your future games.  Kung Fu Panda, you’re kung fu is weak.

I could probably go on forever here, but then I might convince myself that these Achievements are even more pointless than I already know they are, so I’ll just leave it at these last few thoughts.  Well implimented Achievements can add value to the worst of games just as bad Achievements can add frustration to the best of games.  If you are going to err, err on the side of less suck.  No one will hate your game because the Achievements were too easy.

Having now seen The Dark Knight a second time, I guess I won’t have to turn in my Iron Man fan-club card just yet.

The Dark Knight is still a great movie, but it loses quite a bit of it’s intensity when you see it a second time and know what happens next.  With the highs and lows of the roller coaster gone, it becomes just another ride.  The Joker alone nearly makes up for it, but the-Joker-to-long-ass-movie ratio just isn’t good enough.

Overall, I give Iron Man the nod over Batman because it’s just more fun to watch and stays that way every time you see it.  Robert Downey’s performance nearly matches Ledger’s and there are barely any scenes where he isn’t in Iron Man.

For the record, my top comic book movies:

1. Iron Man
2. The Dark Knight
3. X2
4. Spider-Man 2
5. Batman Begins

It only took 40 some odd years, but Cesar has finally been dethroned.  It’s just a shame we’ll never see this new Joker again.

I actually went into the Dark Knight flick thinking there was no way it could live up to the hype thats been building up over both the movie itself and Ledger’s performance.  Stuff like “on par with the Godfather”, “as good a sequel as Empire Strikes Back”, and “Oscar worthy performance”.  After seeing it however, all those statements don’t seem quite so far fetched.

It really is an awesome movie and Ledger’s Joker almost single handedly makes it so.  Ledger was to the Joker what Daniel Day-Lewis was to Daniel Plainview.

I’m not yet ready to say I liked it better than Iron Man, but I’m having a hard time saying I didn’t.

Due to artistic differences, me and my Rock Band band have been forced to part ways.  I wanted to take the Rock Band band into strange new directions while they just wanted to play Rock Band.  Since they were just dragging me down anyway, I’ve started my solo career.  I think there may have been a little bit of shenanigans going on anyway as they have now replaced me with my supervisor.

Or…the less amusing, reality based version of the story…

It just so happens that the Rock Band competition my department is holding has been scheduled right in the middle of my upcoming trip to Florida.  Not only am I now out of the running for the prizes, which we surely would have won.  I supposed I’m gonna have to break down, give Dave back his stuff, and buy my own copy of the game and equipment.

Sadface.

That is, unless you are a Sony or Nintendo fanboy.  Since I don’t own either a wii or a PS3, that makes me an Xbox fanboy.  For those of you like me, the winner, it’s we.

The big 3 console vendors have each had their E3 moment in the sun and one thing was clear, Microsoft has deep pockets.  Nintendo had little, if any, things to shake a wii stick at.  Sony is trying hard to catch up to Xbox Live and boy, the PS2 is sure doing well.  Microsoft on the other hand, dropped all sorts of bombs.  Some of which probably caused Sony to drop some bombs as well.  Mostly of the F variety.

The first shot was the news of previously exclusive Playstation developer Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIII coming to the Xbox.  Not really sure if I care much about that since I’ve never played an FF game, but it’s still a huge blow to Sony.  If MS would get their heads out of their asses and release a Blu Ray addon for the Xbox they would crush the PS3 for good.

The second shot was the official announcement of the Netflix streaming movie collection becoming available through the Xbox to Netflix subscribers.  While the news itself is something thats been rumored for awhile, it was also something most expected to see on both platforms.  The news here is that it appears to be an Xbox exclusive deal.

The third big Xbox announcement was the news of a dashboard update and this new avatar concept.  From what I’ve seen so far, they can keep em.  I’ll take the current blade system and my gamerpic.  The proposed new interface looks underwhelmingly unispired and the avatars look like bad mi clones.

Overall, I’m still glad I have an Xbox, even despite it’s hardware deficiencies (when compared to a PS3).  Hopefully some worthwhile game news will continue to come out of E3 the rest of the week.  Meanwhile, the Bungie countdown continues to work towards 7/16/08 07:07:07 GMT.  Please be something other than Halo 4…

[Update] Bah.  The Bungie reveal was squashed by Microsoft.

It’s probably a bad thing if, when you are driving down the road, you see the painted lines and your mind is trying to figure out how to play them on a Rock Band guitar.  Not quite as bad, but equally sad, as when any song you hear is now being broken down into various green, red, yellow, blue ( + orange if you’re leet) color combination’s.

Hi, my name is Brian and I’m a Rock Band addict.

What do you call it when you are doing air guitar of a Rock Band guitar?  Besides the obvious things like sad, pathetic, or a cry for help?

On a mostly unrelated, although probably eventually related when more Rock Band 2 info comes out, note.  If you are a gaming freak like myself, but just came out of cryogenic stasis, E3 is this week.  For the unaware, E3 is like a week long Christmas for gamers.  Except instead of presents you get information about things which may or may not ever come out.  Ok, bad analogy.  Think of something awesome.  Now trust me when I say E3 is like whatever it is you just thought about.

Hopefully E3 will help remove the sad face I’ll be having once I return Rock Band to my friend Dave on Monday.