« March 2008 | Main | May 2008 »
Due to some things and whatnot, this site is on vacation for a certain unspecified length of time. Sorry. Banditos! will be back soon with more lies, games, and words. Until then, here are a few older posts which people liked.
Touching Letters From Adorable Children
Harry Potter Has Many Feelings
Run and/or Gun (Finally playing TR: Anniversary, it's brilliant)
I can't avoid mentioning this rumor for another second. It's all over the gamy news sites. It may have been debunked already. I don't care.
This photo is a leaked scan of the upcoming issue of Famitsu, credited to JapaneseGIRL on Court-Records.net, the most comprehensive and entertaining Phoenix Wright/Apollo Justice fan site out there. I believe the rumor (or let's say, as-yet-unsubstantiated fact) originates on this blog. It is that Capcom, which has been teasing something like this for a while, will announce a new game called Gyakuten Kenji/Turnabout Prosecutor, starring Edgeworth and Gumshoe.
It's a third person point and click adventure for the DS, with crime scene investigation and prosecution and, as previously mentioned, starring Edgeworth. (And Gumshoe!) As the star, I can only assume that Edgeworth will be in this game a lot. Third person means more Edgeworth on my little screens. Point and click means I can make him run across the screen all day long. Tap one part of the screen and he runs over there and investigates a little. Tap another and he runs all the way back and starts prosecutin' up a storm! Take that! A whole game's worth of Edgeworth!
I don't often say "squee." I feel it's unbecoming. But, however,
squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Is Eidos Montreal working on a new Thief game? Eurogamer put together some clues and came up yesterday with a very definite "perhaps." I've posted a screen shot from Thief 4 right here. It's right there, hiding in plain sight. What, you can't see it? Ha ha! I snatch your golden goblet, and I escape into the night! It's my goblet now. Goblet keepers.
When I played Thief for the first time, it really got into my head. When I walked my dog at night, I tried to stay within the shadows. If I saw people walking through a room it seemed as if they were on "patrol" and I half-consciously memorized their patterns. I also had some really odd dreams in those days, because in case you didn't know, every Thief game has one very, very frightening level. Just one. The other levels are merely suspenseful, although very, very suspenseful.
According to Eurogamer,
Thief is a stealth-action title set in a gritty world that's a cross between the late middle ages and Victorian eras. It sees players creeping around and killing people by using their environment to cloak their approach and dump bodies down sewer hatches.
which is laughably untrue. The game is not about killing people, it's about sneaking behind them and hiding in shadows when they turn around. I have no idea where they got the bit about dropping bodies into sewers. Thief sees players dousing torches to create shadows, walking on carpets to mask their footsteps, causing distractions, and leaning out of hidden alcoves to pick a guard's pocket. Most of the damn game is just waiting. The main game mechanic is sitting quietly and attentively. If today's school kids played Thief, there would be much less ADHD, although admittedly, there would be many more pickpockets. But damn it, they'd be focused pickpockets.
I need a burner. Are you using that burner? I'm cooking food. It's here, in a pan. Uncooked.
That's your burner? Whatever, I'm easy. Can I use that other burner?
No? Can I use that one than?
What about that one?
Well, what about that one? Yes, I know that's the first burner. I thought maybe you had finished with it while I was asking about the other ones. I need a burner.
Maybe I haven't been clear. I'm trying to make food. In order to make food, I need to cook it. If I don't cook it, it's not food, it's just ingredients. Cooking requires heat, which comes from a burner, etc. It gets a little technical but the upshot is that those things, in front of you? I need one. Move.
We're not here to talk about your pan. This is about the burner under the pan. Focus.
Listen to me! We don't have much time! If you're cold you should put on a sweater, and if you like looking at fire, Hanukkah is coming up and it's just a huge damn festival of lights. But right now - look at me! - I need a burner, and you, for some perverse reason, insist on standing between my food and its rightful burner. You just burner blocked me. Not cool.
You know I wouldn't ask for myself. This is about the food. It really, really wants to be cooked, on a burner. Look at it, you can tell. Oh please, make its wishes come true!
Let's play a game. I'm going to close my eyes, and when I open them, you will have freed up a burner. Here we go. My eyes are closed. Is the burner free? I'm going to open my eyes ...
Yay! A burner! Finally. See? Now I shall cook. That wasn't so hard, was it?
What do you mean, you spat in my food?
Bonus link: Microwave tips! You can put metal in one.
I was reading a review on a well-known, mainstream game site and stopped short at this sentence:
The graphics are easily a few years out of date but it somehow still works because the lab is a rundown place that time has forgotten so not having first-rate graphics isn't that big of a deal.
Beautiful. Clunky, way too long, and the best part is that all those words add up to absolutely nothing. Game reviews always mention graphics but almost never provide specific images. "A few years out of date." Can't you just picture that? However, it still works because as we all know, once time forgets a laboratory, the actual surfaces and lighting effects start to look antiquated. Did you ever see a lab from, say, 1986? You know, those old EGA laboratories, which had only 16 colors.
Don't worry, unspecified game reviewer, I'll fix your sentence! How? By changing it from "games journalism" (which is so befuddled that in some circles I have been called a games journalist - that's how woefully fucked "games journalism" is) to the much more respectable form of literary journalism!
As I wander, lonely as a cloud full of sighs, through the dilapidated remains of this laboratory of my childhood, I am suddenly and quietly felled by a overwhelming wave of sympathy and respect for the simple beauty of those poorly rendered 8-bit beakers; I finally understand - understand! - the uncomplaining way they watch me pass each day, how their quotidian ritual of sitting immobile and not being affected by lighting, physics, or anti-aliasing perfectly mirrors the laboratory's "take me as I am" philosophy (no "good graphics" or "bad graphics," just "graphics") which has led to it, the noble laboratory, accepting me, an insightful outsider, as one of its own ... which, in turn, is why I finally, at last, at long last, feel at home here, with the shitty looking beakers, and the fugly pipettes.
Now your sentence is beautiful, and what's more, it's longer. Longer is always better! That is the sentiment which was rapturously expressed, last night, by your mom.
It's the Internet's only holiday, but we don't celebrate it here. This site is all lies anyway, so it would be redundant. To professional liars, April Fool's Day is amateur hour. I stayed home yesterday and deveined shrimp all day. I used a paring knife rather than a deveiner, while constantly yelling "April Fool's!" The shrimp thought it was hilarious. That's how a true professional fools it up, April-style.
Yes, I fall for April Fool's gags on occasion, not because I'm gullible, but because I trust other people. People who are obviously lying. Is that so wrong? Last year I saw a guy on the street with a cute dog, and asked if I could pet him. (The dog.) "Pet him? You can have him!" I got all the way to the corner before the extend-a-leash yanked me back to reality. April Fool's! Joke's on you, buddy, because in the short time I was holding your dog, I gave him worms.
Just clicking around yesterday, I saw a couple of good April Fool's jokes, including Gmail's Custom Time and Feminist Gamer's Pokémon ring. I like the sub-jokes in Gmail's joke and I really like the second photo in Feminist Gamer's piece. I've been playing a lot of Brawl and have learned to hate that chubby, cheerfully psychotic lightning mouse. Pika! Pika! Why won't he pika-die? Squirtle, he's a good sort. I'm on the fence about Charmander and the whole Char crew.
I can't believe I just wrote a sentence that began, "I'm on the fence about Charmander." I've gone beyond April Fool's into April Barely Coherent's.
