Borderlands 2 still looks pretty cool

A new trailer for Borderlands 2 hit the intertubes today. It really caught my attention for a couple different reasons. First off I'm looking for a new game. I'm halfway through skyrim and I'm totally burnt out on it. At first all the side missions are great but now it feels like the whole game is side missions and there's no real plot. For a game of the year candidate I'm actually surprised at how many people I've run into that also game up on the game before they beat it. I tried jumping back on the Battlefield 3 train but EA messed up their servers and it's hard to find a game that doesn't last over an hour and is jacked up by a bunch of wacky rules.

Also I got home from my soccer game tonight at 11pm and it was still 79 degrees in the house. The basement (where the xbox is) is a good 10 degrees cooler so either I can keep looking for riddler trophies in Arkham City or I can sweat my balls off watching Big Brother and 90210 reruns.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Borderlands 2 looks pretty cool.

Please Marvel, Not NOW!

5 reasons Marvel NOW! is a terrible idea.

Reason number 6. It's made me not want to collect comics anymore. If you haven't heard already, Marvel NOW! is some ponzi scheme of Marvel's to attract new readers by doing a soft reboot of some of their core titles.

I'm old and I'm poor and I just can't afford to pick up 20-25 comics a month anymore. Marvel has all these events every year and too many of their story lines are tied together with other books. You can't just pick up a comic and read it anymore, you have to get like 5 other titles just to know what's happening. This new launch is also supposed to tie in with their digital line, which I didn't even know was a real thing. I just can't do it anymore. Next trip to the shop I'm going to cut my list to 5-7 books and wash my hands of all this nonsense. I'll still pick up a couple books I really enjoy like Scalped and Batman and Amazing Spider-Man, but I'm done with the multiple Avengers titles and X-Men teams A-F.

Of course It's not all bad news, I have about 4,000 comics sitting in a closet that would really like to be read a second time.

Call of Duty to get more Black Opier (sp?)

You know the deal, another year means another Call of Duty game. This November will see the return of the Black Ops universe. A couple years ago Black Ops set itself apart from the Modern Warfare series by placing you in the 60s, but the sequel looks like it's headed back to the future.

The trailer looks pretty good, but there's a part of me that sort of wonders why call it Black Ops at all if it's barely tied to the first game? Modern Warfare already takes place in the near future, why have another series take place in a slightly different near future? I guess I'm just a fuddy duddy that way. Its a Call of Duty world, I'm just living in it.

George Lucas is amazing with names

"my next project is about the tuskegee airmen"
Topless Robot had a nice post about the new Star Tours ride at Disneyland. For whatever reason it really riled my nerd feathers. The ride itself sounds pretty cool (except for the Jar Jar cameo), what really got me worked up with this quote from an Imagineer about how they needed George Lucas's help in naming a character.

Apparently one of the new characters is a "spokesbot" voiced by veteran actress Allison Janney. Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald explains her name: "we couldn't think of anything and knew George [Lucas] was amazing with names. When we told him actress Allison Janney was doing the voiceover work, he instantly said, 'Aly San San.'"

I imagine Lucas was lighting a cigar with a 1,000 dollar bill while he said "Aly San San". Then he rode off on a golden chariot pulled by centaurs. Man he is amazing with names.

Valve "Probably" hates me

yawn
Video game journalist (really?) Geoff Keighley did a big story on Portal 2 the other day that was released as an iPad ap (really?) and in it Valve honcho Gabe Newell had something interesting to say.

"Portal 2 will probably be Valve's last game with an isolated single-player experience".. What this all means is something Newell is still trying to figure out."

via kotaku

Now if this really is true, and not some throwaway line in a puff piece about Portal 2 that barely anyone is going to stop playing Portal 2 long enough to download and read, it sucks. Valve has made a lot of great single player games. Ok, Valve has made like 3 great single player games. But they were really really great single player games. Half Life and Half Life 2 are my favorite computer games of all time right next to Ultima IV and Bejeweled Blitz. I really hope they're not ditching single player games to work on co-op games exclusively.

Maybe I'm old, or maybe I'm just socially maladjusted but I don't really get what's so great about Co-op games. I like playing video games with my friends and all, but why play with them when I can play against them? I mean how many humans does it take to beat my xbox 360 anyway? Besides I have a kid these days. You know how many xbox live friends really want to play Halo with me between the hours of 10-11pm on Friday and 7-9am on Sundays? One, his name is Hugh Jankles and I have no idea how he got on my buddies list.

4/20 is stupid

It took less than a month but I found something more annoying than April Fools day, April 20th. You see on April fools day all the blogs I like to read take a break from their regularly scheduled programing to post a bunch of asinine stories that are supposed to either be funny or fool me somehow. It pretty much makes surfing the web unbearable for a whole day. I mean what else am I supposed to do instead of work? go outside? I don't think so.

Of course April 1st might as well be the day before Comic-con when compared to 4/20. Hey great, you smoke weed. That totally makes you awesome and not annoying at all. No please, tell me more about how Coachella used to be all about the music..