Video gaming: L4D2, Borderlands and Recessions.

So yeah, L4D2 happened. It’s awesome. If I need to say more, you clearly do not read this site enough.

Borderlands is a loot-whoring masterpiece. I cannot put it more clearly. This game ripped my arm open, found the same vein that I had blown out with years of Diablo 2 playing, revitalized it, and pumped it full of a new, equally delicious blend of addictiveness. Also, monsters with vagoos for mouths. Awesome.

Let’s speak about how our current state of economic fuckery has helped, if not the gaming industry as a whole, my experience with it. People started swapping more used games, and indeed selling them outright for cheap. As such, I acquired Batman, Borderlands, and a few other titles for far less than I would have, and in that lovely time in which they’re fresh and new and the hype machine hasn’t forgotten about them. This also gave me time to catch up on my backlog of JRPGs, because I hate myself.

Movies: Zombies, yo!

So Zombieland was also awesome. If Woody Harrelson going mental on a zombie with a pair of hedge clippers doesn’t give you a thrill deep inside, you are dead inside, sir. And Woody Harrelson is going to go mental on you with some sort of garden tool.

Like Fido and other, Britishier movies before it, Zombieland takes a classic genre (the teen road trip self-discovery movie) and fills it full of zombie goodness like the cream filling injected into a twinkie (the artificially-flavored pastry, not the pornographic image). It shows us that somewhere out there, someone in Hollywood gets us. We don’t want 90 minutes of splosions, or people in furry suits murdering space marines (Ok, admittedly both of those sound wicked awesome on paper, but bear with me), we want the same nonsense we’ve wanted for the last decade, but full of flesh-eating mutants.

Make it so!

Books

Ok, so Jim Butcher has been writing well before 2009, but I’m going to talk about him now, so deal.

In addition to having a totally metal name, Butcher writes hard-boiled detective fiction in which the detective is a wizard, and kills supernatural evil with fire. Also guns, but usually fire.

Imagine Harry Potter, grown up, bitter, living paycheck to paycheck (oh, and he also accidently ‘splodes anything electronic he comes within 10 feet of). Instead of the grand plotting and investigating, he spends 20 minutes kicking the bajeezus out of Snape, then Hadoukens the big bad guy. With fire.

It’s delightful.

He’s also written a fantasy series about how the one person without magical talent in the world essentially becomes a medievel Batman. Only with more face-murdering. These things deserve perusal. Of the highest order.

Overall (this pretty much means websites)

Beyond that, I have a few favoritest things to throw down.

www.Cracked.com: It may not be the best internet writing. It may not be the cleanest. It is my favorite morning outlet for poop jokes and screaming obscenity this year.

www.Hulu.com: I gave up cable just over a year ago. Occasionally when I jones for bad TV and watch instantly doesn’t slake my thirst, this comes to the rescue. It also enough bad anime to choke a horse that eats other horses on a routine basis (and as such does not choke often).

The Robot Panic Community on XBLA. From the friendly seething emnity DJ and I have for one another, to Moe’s constant jump from apathy to frenzied rage, to Tiggermango and Apoch’s cheerful acceptance of my jerkassness, to Skreesha’s continuing polite laughter, to BNerdy and the like who give me things they know I will never appreciate, and to everyone else who dies a little inside as I’m inflicted upon them in a L4D2 room, I love you guys. Part of the reason I don’t pay attention to the console hype and competition is it simply does not matter to me anymore. The community I hang out with is on XBLA. When that moves, so shall I. You all have made my L4D2 games hilarious, Borderlands fun(ner), and bad movies hysterical.

And as I said last year. My avatar violates your avatar in the night. In every way imaginable.

Toodles!

Recently I received a Kindle as an early Christmas gift. Given last week’s talk of e-readers and comic books (and John’s inexplicable urge to put anything I write on this website), I thought I’d give you some impressions.

Overall: The new Kindle is about as thick as a cheap pocket calculator and roughly the size of a larger paperback. For an easy reference based on this audience, roughly the length and width of the paperback zombie survival guide. The viewable screen is about 2/3s of that, meaning you can get as much on a page as you would with a cheap paperback. A large version is available, which has more buttons and such, but that’s about all I got on it.

Cases are available, but I’ve had mine bouncing around in my manpurse with a netbook and a number of notebooks, power adapters, etc. and it’s held up just fine. The screen is slightly recessed from the outside casing, meaning that something is much more likely to come against the white plastic case or (relatively scratch resistant) metallic backing. Overall the device is pleasing to the eye and inoffensive, which is what you want from something you’re going to stare at for hours. I got a number of impressed comments while reading in line.

The USB cable with power outlet dongle is also slim and easy to store. Kindle can charge off the wall socket or your PC. I let the power adapter live on my nightstand because I never really plan on merging my Kindle and PC.
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