MadWorld is a dud world

If you’re looking for a bit of the ultraviolence you could do worse than MadWorld. You could also do much, much better.

In a society that has seen it all when it comes to violence, MadWorld is rather boring spectacle. Had this been released on the Playstation (numero uno I mean) and been made to compete for your hard-earned duckets against the likes of Mortal Kombat and Twisted Metal it could be considered horrifyingly brutal and therefore socially relevant. It’s unfortunate that it wasn’t because those two titles could be considered graphical peers, or very nearly. It would have lost to those two anyway because its single player only. But, this being 2010 and not 1995 the game is competing with such horrifyingly brutal titles as Manhunt and that came out seven years ago. Come to think of it the plot lines are similar, but that’s neither here nor there.

XKCD: Abandon all hope ye who enter

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

Well I’m not going to shout it across the room, come here. Little closer. Closer. Too close……closer. Ok, here it goes. I’m a nerd. There I said it. I posted it on the internet so you know it’s true.

Now that that’s off my chest I have some fabulous news for all of my fellow nerds. There is a comic wholeheartedly dedicated to our plight. XKCD is a physicist’s, mathematician’s, linguist’s, and a systems analyst’s comic all rick rolled into one. I will be the first to admit that I by no means get every reference in the comic, but reading through the archives with a Wikipedia tab close at hand is one of the single greatest pleasures I have had in the past year.

General Mish-Mash: Podcasting with poorly drawn Potatoes

General Mishmash is a REAL man's potato.

Stuff. You talk about it. Sometimes you wish other people talked about it too. Well, we are other people. Presenting the first Faceplant podcast, General Mish-Mash episode 1! We hit some of the hottest topics in the universe today, such as why hammocks are awesome. Seriously. But we also talk about how 3d games will be invading our lives and making them more….expensive? Speaking of expensive, Tophat freaks out and explains why Modern Warfare 2′s DLC is the devil and we’re all idiots. We also hit on some other big games such as Borderlands and Left 4 Dead 2, but really sink our teeth into what makes Mass Effect 2 great. And terrible. And also, kinda ehhh. With quick hits on game remakes, developers mailing it in, and many reasons why Enosh sucks, you can’t afford not to listen. Enjoy!  (The voice we referred to as “Peck” is actually “Tophat”.  Don’t ask.)

The stakes of remakes

What is it about remakes that we love so much?  Why can’t we just let something die?  It’s been an unexplained phenomenon for at least the past century, where it seems our culture wants nothing more than to take one of our beloved cultural icons and beat it with a stick, until it looks nothing like the original.

I always thought it went down like this:  somewhere there’s a large, open conference room stuffed full of old men in suits.  The old men have enormous white beards and eyebrows that look ready to rip a man’s face off.  They’re all wearing top hats and have monocles, and have been frantically discussing how to work the intercom without having someone walk outside to actually ask the secretary.  They are all over a hundred and fifteen years old.

Defeated, the men turn to their real job as presidents of entertainment, looking toward their, old gnarled CEO for guidance.  He clasps a cigar between his parchment thin lips and asks the question.