A chip off the old (Lego) block

Back in June, for Father's Day (Bedelia), Anna and Heidi got me Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga for the Wii. I had heard about it and seen it advertised in various places. My friend Matt assured me that it was a good game to play with kids Anna's age, mostly because it is more cooperative than it is competitive. And truthfully, who can resist seeing one of the defining movie series of our generation played out before you in Lego blocks?

So they picked it up - $49.99 in June of 2008. Of course, it is $19.99 at Target right now, but when I think of the hours that Anna and I have spent playing the game, I think that it has been worth more than 30 dollars. She loves it, and what's better, she has really learned a lot about the Star Wars mythology via this game. The game is clever, easy to play for the most part (although there are some places that just stump the hell out of you) and seeing those classic scenes made up of Legos is just a blast.

Anyway, last night, we took Super Mario Galaxy (which I think Anna is going to be getting for Christmas - it was the second time we had rented it) back to Hastings. I wasn't sure I was going to rent anything else but there was Lego Batman: The Videogame, which I had seen the trailer for and had been very interested in. Basically, it is the same premise as Lego Star Wars, only this time, you're playing with the classic Batman characters from the comic books. Anna thought that sounded like fun and so did I.

We were not disappointed. It is harder than Lego Star Wars, but I think a lot of that is the learning curve. We are used to characters that wield light sabers, blasters and use The Force. No such thing here, obviously. We're still getting the hang of the Batarang (and keep forgetting about being able to use it in sticky spots.) Overall, it suffers a little bit because you are not playing through something that is practically a part of our generational DNA, but it is colorful and funny and will definitely be replayable. Right now, we're playing cooperatively as Batman and Robin (for some reason, I ALWAYS have to be Robin,) but you can also play levels as one of many different villains. I can't wait to play the villain levels, but that will probably require us to purchase the game as I don't see us getting that far by next Saturday.



Ultimately, what I love about these games is the time I get to spend solving puzzles with my daughter, even though sometimes we get very frustrated (sometimes with each other.) The cartoony level of violence is appropriate for someone her age - there is no blood, only people made of Legos shattering apart. No, it is not the cure for cancer or world peace, but it is fun and something Anna and I can enjoy together.

Larger than life

No, this will NOT be a post about the Backstreet Boys song of the same name.

Heidi has been stuck in revision hell for the last week, coming out of her office mostly just to refill her coffee cup (except when she takes the thermos up and then we don't see her for hours!), leaving Anna and me to mostly fend for ourselves. This is nothing new. I've experienced this countless times before, usually in October/November when she was getting a maunscript ready for the Golden Heart. We know that it happens, and we also know that it reaches an end. But since she has been in her own world (literally), Anna and I decided to go see what kind of trouble we could get up to.

That involved us going out to Family Video and renting a Wii game that I have been intrigued with in theory, but wanted to try before I plunked down the money for it. It's Rampage: Total Destruction (warning: sound pretty much instantaneously.) It is basically an update of the 1986 arcade game Rampage, which has you controlling monsters of various forms, knocking down buildings, eating people, etc. My sister and I played a PC port of this constantly probably 15 years ago so I have a lot of fond memories of the original game. Anna and I also played an emulation of the original game for a while a couple years ago. Whenever the monster ate a person, she laughed uproariously. So when I saw that it was available for the Wii with souped up graphics and up to 30 (!) unlockable monsters, we had to give it a go.

We did find it, picked it up for $3.50 (for 5 nights, no less) and then hit Dairy Queen on the way home. We shared one of their cotton candy Blizzards (which, amazingly, had no calories or fat) and then headed home to play.

It's pretty cool to be able to play this game in three dimensions, and the ability to play through real live cities has been fun. But it still suffers from the problem that the original game had: it is repetitive as hell! Destroy all the buildings, move on to the next block. That is not to say that it is not fun, I just don't see it having a super long shelf life. Anna and I have a blast playing it, though. It's especially entertaining to hear her say "Dad, I'm gonna go find some more people to eat!" And as I mentioned before, you're not limited to the original George the Gorilla, Lizzie the Lizard and Ralph the Wolf. There's a giant chicken, a giant ram, a cyclops, a shark, etc. They all do pretty much the same thing so the differences are more or less cosmetic.

Like I said, Anna and I have fun playing it, but it's certainly not worth full price. I found it on Amazon Sellers for 13 bucks and that is still just a little more than I am willing to pay for it. If I could get it for 10 bucks including shipping, then they might have a deal. Instead, we'll just play the hell out of it until Thursday when it's due back.

And in keeping with the giant, mutated animals theme, I finally sat down and watched my Netflix that had been sitting on top of the TV for at least a week. Eight Legged Freaks is a giant spider movie from several years back that has been hanging out in the top 10 of my Netflix queue for ages, but always getting bumped back by other, sexier movies. I was so pleasantly surprised by this. It is a B-movie, there's no doubt about it, but what a heck of B-movie it was.

Basic premise is toxic waste spills into a local stream in Prosperity, AZ and it mutates the spiders (just the spiders?) to gigantic arachnids. I was expecting some pretty bad effects, but surprisingly, they were excellent. There were a few times when the CG-ness of the spiders was apparent, but mostly, I was just so overwhelmed by the sheer number of the spiders that I didn't pay attention to that much.

At only 99 minutes, it was certainly not a huge time sink, and it was very enjoyable to boot. Here's one of the better sequences.



An enjoyable weekend, that's for sure. Now it's time to get ready for work.