The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

I should preface this post by stating I’m not a fan of cell shading.
I have several small problems with this game, mostly dealing with how link is a meek looking little boy and the overall feel of the game has been “cute-ified”. That being said, it is a fantastic game. It is smooth beyond all belief, not to hard, but also not pandering. I had to have help with the beginning of the game transitioning from Ocarina’s rather simple puzzles to this games slightly more involved was a trick (I would never have guessed to try to burn down wooden blockades with a fire torch, it just seemed to… forward). Further review should follow as I’m still in the middle of playing through it.

Cooking Mama

Well the first word of the title drew me in without playing it whatsoever. Basically a collection of “mini-games” concerning food, but not the usual definition of “mini-game”: each “mini-game” is a technique for cooking, such as chopping, de-scaling, kneading, adding ingredients in proper order, and other of the ilk. It uses proper ingredients for an international menu, just without measurements, so no actually copying of recipes can be done.
The game is definitely fun, but its not something for a sit down marathon of playing, and the designers know it, so each recipe is its own beast which you can try, not needing to play for more than five minutes at a time if you so choose.

Mario Strikers Charged

Nintendo did a great service leaving "soccer" out of the title in America, I'm just surprised to learn the PAL version has football in the title as this game has absolutely no soccer/football in it.

The Dark Knight

Masterful. Epic in scope and delivery. I’m not going to break it down in any means as you should experience it for yourself firsthand. Heath Ledger is the best villain I have ever seen, truly expressing the persona of the (ret-conned) Joker. Absolutely blows Hannibal Lecter away. Christian Bale also delivers on the best Batman, his striking portrayal of the gradual change into the true “schizophrenic” that is Batman and his alter ego Bruce Wayne.

Howl's Moving Castle

Entertaining, creative, and funny, but definitely not Miyazaki’s best. Billy Crystal definitely steals the show with his Calcifer. Perhaps my problem was seeing Spirited Away first, as this one seems like a shadow that masterpiece.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

The classic and the best of the Zeldas deserved another play through, and so we did; sort of a speed run with nothing too extraneous, just the necessities for completion. The tone and pitch of this game is excellent, balancing the sun and mirth of the child Link with the dire times of old Link. There are several decision the programmers made that still leave you scratching your head in confusion such as the Great Fairy’s outfit and screaming entry (which is currently my text tone, lovely looks on faces that one evokes). The ending, of course, leaves something to be desired, but if you’re playing a Zelda game, or damn near any cartridge game for that matter, for the ending or story then you’re doing it wrong.

Jeepers Creepers

There are movies that have no explanation for their contents; they simply go forward without needing to explain the mechanism or background for the story. The two easiest examples of this that come to mind are Cube and Colverfield to some degree. In Cube, the characters wake up in the cube and its never explained what it is or why it is. This works because A) it’s a good movie, will made and cohesive and B) because is a character study.
Jeepers Creepers somehow attempts to do this and fails horribly. A creature is going around killing the inhabitants of a small town trying to get to the Apple ad guy Justin Long, and when he finally does get his prey that’s it, end of the show. It is a statement to the low quality of the movie that my first inclination as to why there is no exposition of the reason behind the killer was because they forgot to put it in, not because it was an artistic choice.

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

Quick preface to this one, after Link's blew our collective minds we've been scouring for every Wii light-gun game we can find, our only requirement being co-op.
So Umbrella Chronicles starts out super promising, great great graphics (for the Wii at least), good play mechanics, classic Resident Evil characters and locations. Everything is plodding along really well, until we hit the context commands. Now I don't know if there's a proper term for this, but that's what I dubbed it, contextual commands. Think God of War's ogres, where a button will flash on the screen and you have to press it, followed by several others, in order to save yourself of kill the beastie. Fast forward to Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles. Context commands have become a little more common in games, so its not surprising to see them, and I honestly don't mind them and almost like them, they provide a more visceral interaction with an enemy or environment because its pre-programmed, but you're still required to do your part. Well the big problem with Umbrella Chronicles becomes blazingly apparent at this little hiccup: both players share the main screen and one health bar, it is not split screen which is exactly right for a light-gun game, so when a beastie is charging you for some big attack, and you have to do a context command to dodge it, both players have to do their independent commands properly and at exactly the same time. Bullshit!
Now this is not too big of a deal on its own, yeah yeah you don't ever get it right and you always take the hit, but hey, we're two decent players so we're not getting our asses handed to us, we can take it. And we do, take the hit, keep on shooting, beat the level. No problemo.
That's until we clear an area of beasties, and head out a door (its a on-the-rails so no choice there) and are greeted by a giant mass of pipes, some kind of boiler system?, surrounding you starting to burst and catch fire, and you much nail your context commands to clear through it. Well as stated before nailing the context commands simultaneously just isn't going to happen, so death. And where was the last check point? Literally 2 rooms before the exploding boiler. Fast forward about 8 - 10 tries, and we're just done. It's not going to happen. So we decide to take advantage of one of Umbrella Chronicles excellent features, drop in drop out game play! Yeah! Play through that area with 1 player, nail the context command, hit the next checkpoint, drop second player back in and keep on maiming. Oh, but wait, you can't drop in and out at check points, only between levels. Screwed.
We ended up having to create another save, play through everything we already had, get to that level, play through it one player, beat it, then have 2p join back in.
That's some serious dumbfuckery right there.

Ghost Squad: Arcade Gold

Welcome to Ghost Squad, the re-release of a classic arcade light-gun shooter on the Wii. On the surface this game doesn't seem to be very much of anything, just 3 stages that you play through with a branch or 2 thrown in. However, after your first play through, you get a glimpse of the full flowchart of the levels optional parts, most of which you haven't unlocked yet, and you watch your character level up, get promoted, and unlock new guns and outfits. Now the outfits are purely for show, and I don't believe the character level does anything outside of promote you and be the vehicle for unlockables, but the weapons are great. Well, some of them. The first one you unlock after your base machine-gun (with shot selector for single, 3 shot, or full-auto) is the shotgun, which brings all kinds of fun to the table, unfortunately it also brings a lot of dead hostages and unintentional friendly fire. The next few after the shotty were a couple pistols and a sniper rifle, all of which are usable to a certain extent, but also not. In the bulk of the levels you're just slaying hordes of terrorists, but in the later part of one level you're up against terrorists on jet-skis and in helicopters. Not fun with a pistol or sniper rifle if you don't get a perfect head shot immediately.
The upside was after those the SAW unlocked, which is just mayhem extraordinaire. No ammo on this puppy, and nothing but full auto, the only check to it is a heat gauge, so you have to make sure not to go full auto full out or you're toast.
I like this game, I bought this game, I play it a lot.

WarioWare: Smooth Moves

If you own a Wii, and have a couple friends, copious alcohol, and have never played this game, then i suggest you gather the friends, drink the booze, and fire up WarioWare: Smooth Moves. This game will do 2 things for you, number 1: provide you with somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 to 6 hours of fun game play that is easily shared amongst a group, and number 2: have you saying "what the fuck just happened?" more times than you thought you could in a fun game.
This one is truly and oddity, I had never played any of the WarioWare games before, so I was completely unprepared for what was to follow, and I highly suggest that you be the same way. Let everyone get together and experience this game anew at once, and I promise it'll be something you remember.

Link's Crossbow Training: Ummmm...hell yes?

Let's get one thing straight from the get go: this game is a tech demo for the Wii Zapper, no question. However, its a kick ass tech demo. This game started a fever amongst me throbbing veinies, arcadey light gun games are my current love. Starting out fresh in the game and doing horrible (although at the time you feel like a god), then starting to pick up the tricks and get the hang of how the score multiplier works, then you're onto swearing yourself stupid every time you miss 1 shot in a level where you take 100 or so. I believe it took us 2 days to get platinum on every level. Now I say that not really as a brag, but more as a testament to how much we played, and still play, this game.

Mario Kart Wii

Mario Kart has returned, and for this intrepid voyager, it has come the full 180 needed to make it a good game. I've never been a big fan of the Mario Kart series, sure I played the SNES one here and there at parties and sleepovers, but I just never really got into it. Now comes the motion controller steering and Ah-ha! we have a winner. One of the best things about Nintendo, and you'll see this echoed in later posts, is their built in sense of nostalgia. They realize that a lot of their games are now classics to us, and they give us nice nods in that direction, i.e. throwing a bunch of classic tracks from other past Mario Karts into the mix along with the brilliant new levels.
It does, of course, come with a certain amount of frustration built in: leading by half the track for the whole race and right before the finish line you get blue-shelled, then red shelled, which knocks you off the track and suddenly you're struggling to get 10th. Or Rainbow Road. The classic killer of hopes and dreams. Now I personally like the course, but I've heard enough "Fuck Rainbow Road!"s in my short time to get the general consensus.

The Year 2145: Flashlights are the rarest commodity in the universe

I liked the first 5 minutes. After that, it all went downhill. 100 years in the future, apparently there was some kind of international war over small light bulbs, leaving only powerful governments and their elite military units with flashlights. Since they are so rare, the flashlight can't be attached to the guns, rather it must be held gently in one hand. Except when you use it to bash a zombied/possessed person in the head multiple times. You can't hold a weapon and a light at the same time...right. I understand they wanted to make the game frightening, but castrating game play to do it is ridiculous.
My other main complaint is that there is no strategy involved in the game, its just straight reactionary shooting. You walk around a corner with your flashlight in your hand and start immediately getting blasted by a zombied/possessed guy with a shotgun, so you switch over to your gun and start to shoot, of course by this time you've already been shot 2-3 times, you blast him with whichever firearm and then repeat that process over and over. No thank you.

Do Ya Like Dags?

Guy Ritchie's piece de resistance, and possibly one of Brad Pitt's best acting efforts combine in this instantly classic Brit film. Of course this isn't my first time watching it, but since I've just started this thing I need to start somewhere, neh: So, I'll be reviewing and commenting on things as I experience them, not casting the looking glass backwards.
Back to Snatch. This movie spawned an incredible number of repeatable lines, not useful for everyday conversation mind you, but rather just great writing and delivery.
Still working our the kinks on how I'm going to do this, the one thing I know for sure is there will be no stars or any of that, just opinions. I'll figure it out as I go.
Simply put, if you haven't seen this movie, see it.