Tomb Raider: Anniversary is a stand alone game or an expansion pack for Tomb Raider: Legend available for all platforms. It was released on GameFly months ago, along side some promotional Lara Croft cartoons showcasing how the franchise would be reimagined under different creative minds, and has finally made its way to consoles.

Anniversary is an update of the original Tomb Raider game, which came out ten years ago to much critical praise and financial success. It’s especially interesting because after the creator of the franchise, Toby Gard, left the studio working on Lara Croft’s adventures to pursue his own ventures, the Tomb Raider games went south. They became more and more derivative of the original, and unimpressive when held against other games that came after, like Metal Gear Solid. After the final flop of Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (no shit, that was the title), Toby Gard was handed back the franchise. His first hit out of the gate, Tomb Raider: Legend, was the most successful and highly praised Tomb Raider game since his original. I was really curious what he was going to do in remaking his original game.

Unfortunately, Anniversary was a horrible, horrible mistake. It is essentially a 1997 game with a 2006 engine. It’s really beautiful, and the updated environments will put a big geek smile on any veteran Croft fan’s face. But the original puzzles weren’t designed very well by today’s standards, and no effort has been made to improve them. It’s like putting new graphics on Battle Toads and expecting people to flip out over it again. To make things worse, there are a lot of clipping errors and physics detection problems in the engine, so jumping right through a wall and grabbing its ledge from inside of it, as weird as that sounds, isn’t uncommon.

From her breast enhancement in Tomb Raider II, breast reduction in Tomb Raider III, and breast reenhancement and lift in the following games, Lara’s character has been pretty flexible in her appearance and personality. Whereas she came off as a cold hearted bitch in Tomb Raider: Legend, the depth of her character in Anniversary is that she’s a woman who can beat up men. This is definitely the simple, original Lara Croft, with a few minor enhancements, and no dramatic complications save a few mommy/daddy issues.

She has Angelina Jolie’s lips and Madonna’s accent. Her body has been very carefully modelled, and while she still has her trademark curves, they’re actually really believable this time around. For example, her boobs are large, but look as if they’re fitting naturally into an athlete’s training bra, instead of just hanging out there as two perfect, weightless orbs that are immune to friction. Her hair also moves very nicely in its braid, and her muscles feel like they have weight and tensil strength during the various animations. If she wasn’t hopping around like Mario, this would be a pretty amazing and realistic climbing around on crap simulator.

In addition to the graphical upgrade, she also probably looks better than she did in Legend because this is a prequel, so she’s younger and perkier at this point in her life. Lara Croft has been aging in real time throughout the sequels since her debut, and is canonically in her mid-thirties right now. This is really admirable, because a lot of other video game hotties stay in the early twenties in American titles and in their mid-teens for Japanese games forever, unless they get killed off. Better writing would also help, but this gives a lot more weight to the character to know that she’s mortal like the rest of us.

Here’s hoping the next original Tomb Raider game will live up to Legend. This one didn’t, but it’s a very forgivable title. It’s not so much a stand alone game, as it is a cheap, quick expansion that will make fans of the first Tomb Raider very happy.

Every few months, I get the bug to surround myself with people who say things like "Huzzah!" and address me as, "Young master." Around these times, I know I can find a decent renaissance faire, just as a junkie will find a dealer no matter what town he moves to in order to start his life over. However, in this highly populated area that I’m living in, stinking with geeks for its snobby masses to oppress and ridicule until they need tech support for their c’yeeeeeeell phone, the nearest chance I’ll have to cosplay it up is a five hour dinner in January. Which sounds like it will be awesome. But still, I need more than this distant, kick ass crap.

Any members of the SCA, lend me your wallets, and then tell me if you had good times and were surrounded by huge bosoms. This is looking really sexy, but I have only heard little murmurs that the group is fun on top of a few weeping shouts that it’s bureaucracy for theatrical gays. I could run naked through some suburban woods chatting up squirrels about how the solstice is going…

…yeah, let’s make that happen, OR: I could start a LARP group, start recruiting at the local Dairy Queen, and slowly yet surely usurp Kindergarten Cop as the King of Kahleefornya with my virgin army.

Meh, so lazy… getting tired just thinking about dealing with greasy people whining about "their" stats… must avoid having to hug fat manchild after he gets hit with a styrofoam sword too hard… just gonna join the SCA… In the meantime, there’s going to be either sexy or hilarious Morris dancers at a unitarian church on Saturday, and I’m going to be there. This is why I’m hawt.

Further adventures shall be documented with the cheapest, least skin pore revealing digital camera I can find in the trunk of my car. Good morrow, saucy plebs.

I’ve been awaiting Mass Effect for over a year now, and it’s finally out. It is a Bioware title, so it’s a purely story driven game, with combat put in as an afterthought. The writing is great, and the cast of voice actors hold their own for the most part. Especially great are Keith David as the captain of the Normandy, Seth Green as the brittle boned pilot of said ship, Lance Henriksen as a wry member of military brass and my other favorite Deanna, Marina Sirtis, as a 1,000 year old blue skinned alien with great cleavage that belongs to a species comprised of only females.

The game allows for a huge amount of exploration, as you literally have about thirty solar systems to check out whenever you want to. Some of them have civilizations and cities, others are just fun to roam around in your tank. If you want to play the game for sixty hours, bumming around, helping out the galaxy and collecting mineral samples, you can. If you stick to the main story, it’s probably going to be about ten hours to finish the game.

The character development is a lot of fun, but doesn’t stray too far from previous Bioware titles. Some previous stories and ideas from Knights of the Old Republic have been reused with some characters, but the writing has definitely improved overall. How much each character effects the story is up to you, and you’re even given a choice as to which members of your party live and die in some circumstances. There are also four romance quests – man and woman, woman and man, woman and female alien, man and female alien, plus an option to have casual sex with a female alien consort. The scenes are short and aren’t explicit, but they definitely are erotic.

The complicated plot and high brow writing, mixed with the mature sexual themes and mild violence, cement Mass Effect as a very adult game. I’d never imagine letting my girl’s little sister play this game, or even watch me play it, so yes, I’m enjoying it a lot by myself. The story is concerned with the end of the universe, how politics can get in the way of our best interests, and why some people choose to betray their humanity. The main character, Commander Shepherd, is completely customizable, and since the gamer can choose what to say during any conversation, can range in personality from Jack Bauer on a bad day to Luke Skywalker in Empire. The commander’s sex and facial appearance are also modifiable when rolling the character, and even his/her background can be laid out by the player. The sex and background has a significant impact on how the game progresses, and opens up new paths and subplots to explore throughout the game. Some small things change if you choose to be a male colonist who survived a massacre, than if you choose to be an Earth born woman who has a reputation for being ruthless on the battlefield, but its noticeable and very cool.

No two games will be the same, and adding to that is the depth of the class system. You can either gun through the game as a soldier, manipulate the laws of physics as a biotic, concern yourself with technology and let your friends do the fighting as an engineer, or pick a hybrid character. All of the classes are a lot of fun, but I’m a run and gun guy, so I liked being a soldier the best.

All in all, Mass Effect was worth the wait. An expansion pack is coming out some time next year, and two more sequels and another expansion pack will be coming after that. The game plays out like a great 1980s movie, and I can’t wait to see what comes next. Much like Wolverine, Michael Ironside and maple syrup, Mass Effect is a triumph of Canucklehead imagination, and is worth sixty bucks.

Ahem:

I saw it and you didn’t, sucker. Ha ha ha ha, haaa ha, na na na na na, na naaaaa; pbbbbbbbbbbbt.

It was really great to have an hour and ten minutes of new Futurama for my eyeballs to look at. It was like finding a letter your puppy wrote to you before it died. The gnashing of teeth at the beginning about Fox canceling the show was kind of meh, but I knew the rest was going to be good from the second Hermes got decapitated.

The writers are not manatees, and the background humor is alive and well. Cartman from South Park’s head has apparently made it into the same room as Charles de Gaulle’s, and there’s a great dig at Family Guy that you have to be on your toes to catch. The rest of the show’s more direct humor walks the line between Einstein, Curly from the Three Stooges, and Curly from the Harlem Globetrotters. My only complaint is that Bender’s Big Score was perhaps too self referential – I’ve seen every episode of Futurama multiple times because of the lack of budget/creativity at Cartoon Network, so I was constantly searching for syrup for my rofl. But anyone who doesn’t know who the hypnotoad is, or hasn’t seen the episode with Frye’s dog, Seymour, isn’t going to get as many laughs out of it. In being self referential, they also recycled a lot of schtick from the older episodes of the show.

I don’t have time to write a whole big thing about it, beyond what I wrote already, so here’s other great things about the movie in convenient list form.

– Narwhal subplot. How have those things not conquered us yet?
– Nude beach scene. Turns out Zoidberg is circumcised. Professor Farnsworth, not so much.
– Bender Bending Rodriguez. He’s great, and it’s like he’s in the whole thing!
– Lots of death. It’s the most simple solution to time paradoxes.
– Hanukkah Zombie/Kwanza Bot/Evil Robot Santa. There’s a delightful musical number between the three of them which almost seemed like it belonged in The Nightmare Before Christmas. It was beautiful and memorable, but that may be because of my strong feelings towards midgets.

Tell the boy to lay out your formal shorts, because Futurama is back.

Some new PS3 spots that aren’t totally freaky and disturbing are being cooked at SCEA. Great, it’s about damn time. In the spots, only two of the featured games are exclusives, Haze and Metal Gear Solid 4, but they’re both looking like they’re shaping up nicely, and the other games beef out the PS3’s roster nicely.

Metal Gear Solid 4 is either going to be Sony’s Halo, or the most disappointing flop of the past six years. It’s had a huge budget and has been in development for quite a long time, so fans of the franchise have high expectations – but the series’ staples that they’re waiting for tend to put off a large number of people. The Metal Gear Solid games before this had some pretty serious problems with color palettes, the control scheme, story pacing, level design and had some really tedious camera angles. What also hurts the franchise is that the games are really preachy, and the writing isn’t that sharp. The Metal Gear Solid games are essentially hyper emotional propaganda films, wherein characters break down in the middle of battle to ponder philosophy if mortally wounded. It will be interesting to see how Kojima took criticism of his other games, and whether or not the Japanese are still his primary target, since he’s going to be depending on success in larger markets to make back the huge amount of money Konami has spent on his game.

I’m really looking forward to Haze. It is being developed by the same people who made Perfect Dark and Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64, but they haven’t had a breakout hit in nearly a decade. They’ve made a lot of really competent shooters, but never attempted a serious game with a story and realistic graphics until now. Game length and innovation will make or break Haze, and I hope it turns out great.

Trading a knife for a finger: a tough call
Saying "ass" twice in a row is slightly less fun than Assassin’s Creed, and doing that is super fun. The story is about a 12th century assassin named Altiar who goes between Jerusalem, Damascus and Acre during the last crusade. Not so much a linear story as an elaborate parkour simulator, Jade Raymond’s bouncing, disemboweling baby boy is a great way to spend sixty bucks. The game is marred by a lot of repetitive tasks, and a really unnecessary subplot. The strongest point is the fluid animation system, which make transversing the city via thieves highway really exciting, and brings the more mundane actions of the civilians seem believable and alive. Altiar also makes Jason Bourne look like Ted Buckland when surrounded and forced to fight sword to sword, but it can be equally exciting running away from your pursuers by darting from roof to roof. Good times.

Yep, that’s Optimus.

John Who?
I finally sat down and finished Stranglehold, which feels like it came out twenty years ago. It’s an interactive John Woo film, which is great, except there are some really stinky old school cliches that cause eyeball rolls every once in a while. The puzzle design is really sadly tedious, and some of the gun battles leave you wondering when the Hell enemies are going to stop spawning. Chow Yun Fat does pull of a decent performance as Inspector Tequila, but story isn’t why we watch John Woo movies. The action can be really amazing, depending on how good you are at the game. But if you suck, the game sucks, so be good at it if you buy it.

Max Payne!

An unforgivable misuse of Michael Ironside
TimeShift is an okay shooter, but its nothing special. Introducing a time manipulation gimmick to the fine art of shooting guys, it never really goes anywhere new and unexpected. Temporal anomalies are pretty much old hat, and should die where we left them – in Berman and Braga Star Trek episodes.

History’s greatest Canadian.

Unnnngh. It just doesn’t. get. any. easier. Sony has unleashed yet another weird, greasy advertisement for the PS3 upon a western market. What the Hell. I realize that commercials for orange juice in Europe feature topless lesbians making out, but where is SCEE going to stop? This bizarre sentiment that games don’t sell the console, but rather, effeminate men plucked out of a mock Berlin cabaret holding a magic bluray poodle will, is just mind boggling. The Playstation 3’s launch advertising failed, and that, along with a bunch of other bullheaded corporate moves, laid the groundwork for Sony to slide into last place and start losing massive amounts of cash. And yet they’re sticking with their original game plan.

The Playstation brand is about gaming, but the first thing they comment on in the advertisement, and the biggest aspect of the machine that they’ve been pushing for months, is the bluray player. Really?! I payed $500 for a high definition Talladega Nights player? Where’s the gameplay footage? Why not show people enjoying the sixaxis motion controls the way Nintendo shows people using the wiimote? With the gigantic storage space allowed on bluray discs, the better games on the PS3 are really cinematic, so why not have cinematic trailers? Because that North African immigrant cackling in the bubble bath and that screaming one eyed baby doll just aren’t selling me on Little Big Planet.

"Wow. Welcome to the jungle, baby."
"I missed you, too, sugar tits."
"Dated Mel Gibson joke, ten points. I can’t believe you’re back."
"Dear sweet crap in a bag, neither can I."
"I thought you were rotting in some Godforsaken state in the midwest."
"You mean Texas or Montana? Because Montana was really nice, actually."
"I thought the only way you’d come back here would be if you’d wandered across the border, minus a few kidneys."
"All I’m missing is some spinal fluid."
"And a spine."
"What’s a spine?"
"They keep books pretty."
"I already read what I’m interested in, the rest of the world’s literature can burn."
"That’s terrible. Things don’t change with you. You’re still dressing like a greaser that just stepped out of the Matrix."
"And I see you still think you can grow facial hair, Patches."
"I see you’re still blindly following the right wing."
"Moonbat cheap shot, five points. And I see you’re still blind on your right side. Two for flinching."
"Ow, ow."
"You know you’re the first one I’ve found since I left, Billy."
"Everybody left. Nobody wants to be here except for the people who aren’t here."
"You didn’t leave."
"I met a nice boy."
"Ew, that’s great, shut up."
"You’re going to meet him eventually. We’re coming over to your new place for Thanksgiving."
"You serious?"
"Yeah."
"You’re the only one of us that didn’t have a lisp."
"I’m breaking down stereotypical barriers."
"More like, you’re breaking down butt barriers. Ew, shit! I grossed myself out! You win, goddamn, you win."
"Ha! If you can’t top that, you have to make out with me."
"I can. Top that, I mean. Shit, I mean, look at this picture. I finally did the minstrel thing for Halloween."
"I don’t like where this conversation is going. Weird angle."
"I had to take it of myself, I had no back up, this was for me. I sang about my dear ol’ mammy in front of a crowd of shocked, SHOCKED freshmen at UCLA."
"You sent white men everywhere back sixty years. Surprised you lived."
"I was jogging as I sang. I had a great time, but all that fried chicken gave me a huge zit on my back."
"You have to dilute the grease in the chicken with the water in the watermelon."
"Check out blacker than thou. Anyway, those cholitos at the campus gave me a good idea for when it’s your turn."
"I don’t like this, it’s way too racist."
"It’s not racist if it’s retarded. Well, maybe it is, but who gives a damn?"
"Over the line. I don’t like where this conversation is going. Over the line."
"Next year, the noose you wear as a tie will be made out of hemp so you can smoke it afterwards."
"Huh. I do like where this conversation is going. To the bluntmobile!"
"You go, I’m heading home to listen to my neighbors’ car alarms until I fall asleep. The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home…"