Superbad= SuperAMAZING

I was initially drawn to Superbad (as I am with most movies) by the previews, which touted it as being “from the guy who brought you The 40 Year Old Virgin and Talladega Nights.” The anonymity factor is part of a growing trend: I’ve noticed that a lot of trailers these days never tell us who the ‘Guy’ is. I’d failed to check out Talladega Nights, but I had seen The 40 Year Old Virgin and thought that was damned funny. So I worked Superbad into my modest budget and made plans to see it as soon as my schedule allowed.

Looking back now, I can’t help but wonder why I wasn’t the first in line on opening night. Superbad is not only the funniest movie I’ve seen all year, it’s the funniest I’ve seen in several years, possibly six or seven, or over a decade. It is the defining ‘Losers Trying to Get Laid’ picture of our generation, and in an age where a dozen of those are opening every week, that’s saying an awful lot.

Manhunt 2 Has Dismembered Limbs Stitched Back on, Face Reattached, Organs Replaced

Well. That didn’t take long.

After only two months of controversy and uncertainty over its fate, “Manhunt 2″ has been reevaluated by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and given a new “Mature” (M) rating. If you’ll recall, the game faced a firing squad and was thought to have had its corpse devoured by cannibals back in June, when the ESRB slapped it with a garroting “Adults Only” (AO) marker. That rating meant all major retailers would refuse to carry it and The Big Three wouldn’t license it for play on their consoles. The release date was pushed back to sometime in 2008.

With the new rating, “Manhunt 2″ is now set for release on October 31, 2007. That’s Halloween, for those of you who didn’t know. Although it’s cleared for distribution in the US, there’s still no word on whether it will escape the breaking wheel in the UK. Take-Two Interactive is currently appealing the BBFC’s decision not to rate the game.

There’s one question I’ve been turning over in my mind since this story broke: is the objectionable content truly gone? Or did Take-Two/Rockstar simply stow it away inside the code? We all know their track record of not being honest about these things, and it certainly didn’t take them long to do that trimming.

Kids These Days…

You know what a sure sign is that you’re getting up there in age? When you start bitching and complaining about the way things “used to be.”

Case in point: When the above video clip was posted on POETV yesterday, I had a very sincere old man moment. I couldn’t help but shake my head in sorrow at this sorry-ass new generation of kids. Sure, the issue was over video games and not “responsibility” or “drugs” or “the Depression”, but still, I’m feeling rather elderly at the moment.

Watch that thing. These brats have no idea what it’s like to play a real game. Back when I was young, they were a hell of a lot harder You didn’t have frequent autosave points or multiple hits for your characters. The most you ever got was a password at the end of the level, or a handful of continues if you lost all your lives. And once those continues were used up, you had to start the game all over again, REGARDLESS of how far you’d gotten.

The reason Bobby Hill and his friend up there are so shocked that “Super Mario Bros.” is tough is because they’re used to having their hands held. All the post-SNES games they’ve played have offered them easy cakewalks. I swear if this kid tried posting an online ‘review’ of “Contra”, his head would explode.

And another thing: slow the hell down, Excitebike Boy. In an old game like SMB1, it’s not a wise idea to trying blazing through levels at breakneck speed, unless you’re a speedrunner who knows where everything is. You two might as well close your eyes and turn the controller sideways with how reckless you’re playing.

This isn’t the only video the kid has posted. If you go to his Youtube profile (which I’m not linking to) you’ll find tons of videos of him screaming, cursing, and making a general ass out of himself. Evidently his parents never explained the concept of ‘future employers’.

Feedback on “The Worst Game of All Time”- From the Publisher!

I’m not going to exaggerate or embellish the truth. I am but a humble man residing on a very large web. I’m well-aware that Quad’s Corner is not a very popular place on the internet right now. Whenever I post an update, I do so with the knowledge that it’s probably not going to be read by many people. This is a small blog and I rarely receive visitors or get comments.

… Until now. It seems my previous post caught the eye of someone I wasn’t expecting. The publishers of the ill-conceived “Where’s Waldo” on the NES, Bethesda Softworks, heard about my review of their old game. And they read it. And they responded.

The Worst Game of All Time

When asked what the worst video game of all time is, most people are quick to read off a short list of commonly scorned titles. Superman 64. The Matrix. That Mortal Kombat Gameboy Advance cartridge.

Well, they’re all wrong. The worst game of all time is Where’s Waldo? for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It’s so horrible that it made the inside of your NES corrode and rot when it hit the contacts. It’s so astoundingly terrible that it was responsible for fourteen plagues, ninety murderous rampages, and one forgettable children’s cartoon show. It’s so undeniably and marrow-tearing AWFUL that several future filmmakers played it and went insane.

Resident Evil 5: Stranger in a Tank

So, the trailers for Resident Evil 5 have been out for a while now. They’ve received a lot of feedback, look gorgeous, and have been accused of being racist. Yeah, Chris sure has his hands full fighting all those black people…

This isn’t about that, though. What I want to talk about shows up at the end of the trailers– after all the carnage and real-time footage is over, there’s approximately three seconds where we see what appears to be a woman floating around in a tank. She opens her eyes and looks into the camera before the video cuts off.

The identity of this character has been the subject of much debate. Some gamers say it’s Alexia. Others say it’s Jill or Rebecca (how!?) . But most people (myself included) are sold on the idea that it’s none other than Sherry Birkin, Resident Evil 2’s trademark annoying child.

The case for the tank girl being Sherry is pretty strong, I think. When you consider the fact that she’s been held captive by Albert Wesker since the aftermath of RE2 (due to the whole G-virus debacle, no doubt) you realize that an entire plot thread has been ignored by the series for the last ten years. In RE4 it was revealed that Weskman was involved in some nefarious plot to revive Umbrella and take over the world, but we got jipped on specific details. It’s about bloody time we found out what he’s’s been up to, and I have no doubt that Sherry plays a big part in what it is.

And who else has blond hair and blue eyes?

There’s plenty of room for argument. If it’s not Sherry, then hopefully somebody we’ve already met in the series. It would suck mightily if Capcom made us wait until 2009 and then revealed that it was a totally new character.

Grand Theft Auto IV Delayed- Bad News For Sony?

Hot on the bloody stumps of Manhunt 2’s behavioral readjustment, Take-Two Interactive announced Thursday that Grand Theft Auto IV– originally scheduled for release in October of this year– has been pushed back to an early 2008 release.

Obviously, this doesn’t bode well for the company. Delaying two major titles is more than enough to blast a festering wound through Take-Two’s profits. It doesn’t take an expert to understand the repercussions of such actions.

My concern is with Sony, specifically the Playstation 3. It’s been out for almost a year now, but has lagged far behind the Xbox 360 and Wii due to its repellent price tag and lousy software lineup. It was my belief that GTAIV would be the title that saw a big turnaround for the console.

But what’s going to happen now? With GTAIV delayed (until at least February) the PS3 will have to remain useless for a little while longer, a big pile of expensive parts appealing only to computer enthusiasts. The ultimate fate of the system is still undetermined (I’m still reluctant to label it a ‘failure’) but time is running short.

Of course gamers also had the option of playing it on the Xbox 360… if they could get it to WORK, right guys?