I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Visited my family and my new in-laws for Turkey Day and had an extremely relaxing time. I got my brother a Go board for his birthday (along with the excellent Mario & Luigi ). Todd and I played once, but my Dad and I played four or five games, all very close. Go is such an amazing game. Bessie and Todd played a few hours of Mario Kart: Double Dash! . I wasn't impressed with the game when I saw it in May at E3, and I'm still not impressed with the single player, the cooperative play makes it feel really fresh. (The two players ride on the same kart; one drives and the other uses the items and helps out with powerslides.) It's no Halo coop, but it requires enough communication and synchronization to make it really feel like you're racing together. It was a great way to spend time with my side of the family. Visiting my in-laws was quite a treat as well. Mrs. Yang always tries to stuff me with the sheer volume of food she prepares, and I always oblige beca...

Master and Commander is fantastic. Directed by the Truman Show's Peter Wier , it's a period fiction piece about a British ship and it's brave crew engaging a larger, faster Napolean galleon that hunts them like a phantom. Think Das Boot with sunlight, humor, and movie-star charisma. I actually enjoy the movie more than the German classic. M&C is a thinking guy's action movie. The film is beautifully shot, visual poetry of 19th century sea vessels and the men that sailed them. The cast is fantastic, especially the two leads, Russel Crowe and Paul Bettany as the ship's captain and doctor, respectively. The sea battles are logical and visceral. Unlike most war movies, the scenes between the battles are no less captivating. Master and Commander is of my favorite movies released this year, along with Lost in Translation .

Amazon ran a sale about a week ago on Neo Geo Pocket Colors - a handheld system by SNK that was launched around the time Pokemon became a household word. The system went unnoticed while Nintendo's pocket monsters took the world by storm, but SNK singlehandedly released a large number of quality games for their system - the majority well made miniaturized versions of their established arcade frachises. While the selection had an overly generous portion of fighting games, the console's library has only a few stinkers in the lot; a sharp contrast to the quality needle in the haystack of licensed mediocrity that is the Game Boy library. Had Pokemon never hit it big, Neo Geo is one of the few handhelds that had a chance to survive against Nintendo's Game Boy systems. The System The NGPC is a nice piece of hardware. The screen is one of the best reflective screens I've seen, easily better than the original GBA screen. In terms of hardware horsepower, it is abo...

I'm a big fan of Nintendo's Intelligent Systems ; who wouldn't be after Paper Mario , Mario Kart Super Circuit , Advance Wars 1 and 2 ? Their latest game is Fire Emblem , a long running series in Japan making its first English debut. Comparisons to Advance Wars are inevitable - turn-based strategy game, grid map, and little groups of units battling it out. At the first play, it may feel too similar to some gamers, but differences emerge making Fire Emblem a completely separate interpretation of how to make a tactical strategy game. The RPG elements included in Fire Emblem provide depth and character without sacrificing simplicity. Characters only use one type of weapon and no armor. When characters reach a certain skill level, they can advance to a new class (i.e. knights to paladins) which allows the character to use another type of weapons, further extending their usefulness. The weapon types follow a rock-paper-scissors approach, or in this case, swords-lances-ax...

Jellis sent me the link to KidRobot a few days ago and I've been checking it out. I'm not a big action figure guy (they're just geek-dolls, really), but this special ape dude (*cough cough* DEATHMONKEY *cough*) caught my eye and hasn't left my mind since. I want him for my office. I think he's awesome.

After reading such positive reviews , it was my geeky duty to go see Matrix Revolutions bearing as low of expectations as one could take. In that regard, it was better than I anticipated - it was no Waterworld, but not much better. As dozens of other reviews attest, the proceedings lack any human emotion, the viewer is completely detached from any of the characters, and the Wachowski brothers ( siblings ?) expect us to subsist off of heavy handed, half-baked religious symbolism, that through all the crosses, the buddas, and pronouncements of belief when what is stated is neither unique nor interesting. And don't go in expecting closure either, or to leave with any fewer questions than you walked into the theater with. One thing is resolved - that I'll watch the fourth movie in the Matrix series when it runs on TBS. I will say that the battle for Zion was far more impressive and enjoyable than I anticipated - usually battles that involve a bazillion enemies leave me cold a...

I played my first game of Go tonight against Bessie. I work for a game company and have spent (or wasted) a great portion of my life playing all sorts of games, but I was uniquely awed by the subtlety and beauty of this Chinese masterpiece. Simple rules. Timeless asthetics. Fathomless depth. When I spend my money and time filling my life with typical video and board games, I sometimes question how selfish and empty gaming is. Games can be a more viceral fantasy reality than any type of fiction because they're first person experiences. Games can be about making someone feel smarter, more talented, stronger, and/or more powerful for some fleeting moment before they return to their less exceptional reality. Besides a small (mostly synthetic) ego boost, games don't really add people's lives; they rarely enlighten the player about themselves or the confusing real world. For some reason, Go was different. Maybe the sharp contrast of quality makes me think Go is more ...