Monday, March 30, 2009

Wanted

One girlfriend who can make things like this:



Non-smoker preferred
Canadian nationality a plus
Interested please email Mister Bones at address included in profile

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Infinite Playlist - Prom Queen


Just to prove that I'm not all metal, all the time, here's a song from one of those funny dressing rap artists that the kids love so much. Sure, the song is actually more metal than rap, but still. It's Lil' Wayne, so therefore it fits into the category of "the hip hop" (which is what us old folks call it).

I found this track while downloading some random Wayne stuff on LimeWire the other day, and had no idea whatsoever that it was a new song from his upcoming album The "Rebirth". I absolutely love this song, in fact it's on repeat as I type this.

Here's Prom Queen, listen and enjoy!


Prom Queen - Lil Wayne

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Putting in Work


This morning, I killed over 1500 zombies before 8am. I do this shit like it's my job, people.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Out of Touch


Think you're old and out of touch? Today I was asked by a girl if I thought she had "DSL", and I wondered why she didn't know what kind of internet connection she had. When did it happen to me guys? Why must I be so old?

Monday, March 23, 2009

Introducing.....



..which is my superhero name, according to the Hero Factory which Jim was kind enough to link from his blog here.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Mister Bones' Top 5

Ok I know I said that I would probably do a "Top 5 Worst Games that Everybody Else Loved" list next, and that's still coming, but I was reading about Dead Rising 2 in the new Game Informer and they listed a few things that they would like to see in the sequel. I would imagine that I've spent more time playing Dead Rising than anyone who writes for that magazine, and to be honest I found their list to be a bit boring, so I thought "Hey, I could come up with 5 things better than that", and here we are.


Top 5 Things I Want to See in Dead Rising 2


5. Upgradeable vehicles and weapons - If I find a school bus parked outside somewhere, why can't I get my blowtorch on and throw some scrap metal over the windows, some barbed wire around the doors, add some spikes to the front for ramming purposes, etc. Similarly, if I decide I want to fashion some sort of weapon from a baseball bat, some nails, and a tether ball that should be up to me. Let me get all MacGuyver up in that bitch.

4. More places to go - The mall will always be a staple of zombie fiction, so the fact that Dead Rising took place all in one location was forgivable. Having the sequel set in a casino? Fuck that. Give me a city to run around in! Sure there would be buildings that you could enter for saving purposes, or to loot for supplies, weapons, or ammo but have it to where if you stay in one any one place for too long the zombies would figure out where you were and trap you there, thus spelling your certain doom. Think Grand Theft Auto IV, only with 100% less living hookers, and 100% more zombie hookers.



3. Less psychos, more zombie variety - The psychos were cool in Dead Rising I guess, and to be fair there was a decent amount of variety amongst the living dead appearance-wise, but why not throw in a couple of boss fights with some more intelligent forms of zombies? Did you see Dawn of the Dead, or especially Land of the Dead? Romero had zombies that could both remember, and to a certain extent learn. Land even had zombies using machine guns, and if Romero says a zombie can do it, then a zombie can do it.

2. Co-op - Ah, Dead Rising's most unforgivable sin. You mean to tell me that I get to play this game where I'm stuck inside a mall that's both infested and surrounded by zombies, I can use pretty much anything I want as a weapon, and this is a single player only game? Dude. Dead Rising practically screams for co-op. It's certainly not like it couldn't be done, Crackdown anyone? Co-op is becoming more and more of a necessity for games with multiplayer, so I'm really hoping for some confirmation on this for DR2. Two players would be good, four to eight would be orgasmic.

1. Frank motherfucking West - He's covered wars, yanno? Forget this blond haired, Big Bird yellow Columbia winter coat wearing, dirt bike riding bitch in the screen shots. I want grizzled ex-war photo journalist Frank West to bust some zombie skulls with. Anybody who played the first game knows, Frank is the man. Plain and simple. All others will pale in comparison.



And there ya go, the 5 things that if included would make Dead Rising 2 the single greatest thing that ever happened to gaming. Admittedly simply adding the co-op would go a long ways toward this goal all by itself, so everything else would just be icing on the cake.

I know some of you may have been expecting me to mention something about a better save system, but I'm one of those people who was never really bothered by the system in place in Dead Rising. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's not Frank's fault that you forgot to stop by one of the numerous bathrooms or safe rooms to get your save on ya slackers!

Next time I'll do the worst games list, I promise.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Agents of Atlas


I guess it's finally time I break the comic book post barrier here in the Batcave, and I'm shamed by the fact that my first one is going to be about a Marvel comic but some things just need to be said. First things first, I'm way behind on my reading. I mean way behind. Here lately I've been attempting to catch up on some things and I've been attempting to downsize the "needs to be read" pile.

I read a lot of buzz on the internet about Agents of Atlas, and like a sucker I emailed John and asked him to pull me the first issue and add it to my sub (which is significantly smaller being that I no longer work at the comic store). I actually had this replace Amazing Spider-man as my sole Marvel title all based on everybody's reviews of the first issue. Jeff Parker is apparently the best thing to ever happen to comics, and if you're not reading his stuff then you shouldn't be allowed to live or something, I don't know.

So the other day I actually sat down to read the first two issues. Folks this is hands down the most boring fucking comic book that includes a monkey, a space man, a robot, and a chick with fairie dust sprinkles floating around her at all times that I have ever read. Seriously is there nothing Marvel can't fuck up? How the hell do you write a boring comic with monkeys and robots on the same team? It's a fucking travesty.

Jeff Parker's supremely "awesome" Agents of Atlas has since been removed from my pull list. It probably holds the record for shortest tenure as it was only on there for a couple of days. So I've finally made good on my threats of dropping Marvel completely as of last week. I even took the issues of AoA back to the store and told John he could just have them. I've said it before a thousand times, but please, somebody tell me when Quesada is done ruining the Marvel Universe.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Record Setter


Well for those keeping up, he did it. Record win number 552 came against the Blackhawks last night by a 3-2 margin. Dude is so money.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Mastercard.... Grand Theft Auto IV style

Xbox Live subscription..... $49
Xbox 360..... $299
Copy of Grand Theft Auto IV..... $59
Playing chicken on a crotch rocket against Threels in a bus......


PRICELESS

Monday, March 16, 2009

New DS Fun!

It's been a while since I've shown my DS any love. It's not that I don't like the system, there have been some great games for it, but nothing lately that's really grabbed me. I tried to get into Moon but couldn't. I'm happy to report that there are now not only one, but three games that I've recently started, only one of which I was particularly excited about before actually playing.



A throw back to the Grand Theft Auto's of old, this game is just an absolute blast to play. Rockstar makes good use of the dual screen format, and the controls are rock solid. Pretty much everything you would expect from a GTA game is here, and Liberty City is still huge despite being on the small screen. Here's hoping that this will be the first GTA game I actually finish!





This one completely caught me off guard. I originally found it by browsing DS shooter reviews at IGN. It scored a 9, so I decided to check it out despite that fact that I was never a huge fan of the original. This game rock though, and hard. The gameplay is crazy fun, but it's the music that really makes the game. I normally don't even comment, or pay much attention really, to the music in games but it's so well done here that it really enhances the experience.





Being that I thoroughly enjoyed Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, I knew some day I'd be playing this one but I was in no real hurry to do so. Truth be told, I had planned on playing it on either the PSN or XBLA. But what the hell, free is free and if I end up liking it, I'll still buy it later. This one I'm not very far into yet though, only played the first couple of mission so far and I'm still not entirely sure I understand exactly what all is going on in the puzzles. I'm sure it will grow on me though.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Congrats Marty!



New Jersey Devils goal tender Martin Brodeur tied Patrick Roy for all-time career wins tonight with 551. Now, I'm no Devils fan by any stretch of the imagination, but goalies are my favorite players in hockey, and I'll give respect where respect is due. Brodeur is a class act, and possibly the greatest net-minder ever. He should move past Roy into first place all by himself later this week.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Infinite Playlist - Seven Years


In case you haven't noticed, I tend to love bands that have both singy and screamy parts in their songs. Saosin is one of the better examples of this that I've come across recently thanks to my bud Mikey. This track is my favorite from them, "Seven Years" from their self-titled EP.


Saosin - Seven Years - Saosin

Friday, March 13, 2009

Happy Friday the 13th!


Two months in a row?! Unprecedented! Time to break out the Friday the 13th dvd box set again already, or if you haven't, head out to the theater and watch the new Friday. Or hell, even if you have, go see it again. Happy Friday the 13th everybody.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Zombie Nation


So there I was, innocently browsing the roms on my NESter DC disc looking for something to kill a few minutes with when I came across this game, Zombie Nation. "What's this? A zombie game on the NES?!", I thought. I wasted little time in booting it up. There are no words in the English dictionary that can accurately describe the horror that would follow.

I had planned on attempting to explain what little time I spent with this game originally, however thanks to Youtube, you can experience the wonder for yourselves. Warning though, once you watch this, you will never be able to un-watch it.



As you can clearly see, there are no zombies. There's only a fat flying Buddha head that spits some sort of weird fireballs at helicopters, tanks, and buildings. Trust me when I tell you that the video above runs approximately 2:45 seconds longer than I actually spent playing this piece of shit.

However, all that being said, while telling Threels at work today about this game, she decided to do some research on it, and came up with the following backstory from I Heart Chaos:

Some really evil guy named Darc Seed turns everyone into the US into zombies using some sort of magnetic ray somehow and he steals an ancient samurai sword, which really pisses off this dead samurai, who takes his disembodied head to America to get his damn sword back. Only you never see or kill a single zombie. You just destroy random aliens and bad guys and the Statue of Liberty and the Grand Canyon. Yes, really. So there's no zombies, but there is a nation, so they could have called the game Giant Orange Floating Undead Samurai Head Nation, but that's not as catchy as just throwing the word "zombie" in the title and being done with it.

And just like that, the game officially became awesome. I guess sometimes you just gotta have somebody break it down for you before you can really see the entertainment value right in front of you. Go figure.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Dreaming Again


Everybody remember Sega's little system that could? Well I count myself among it's fans, and to this day I love my Dreamcast dearly. I was extremely sad to see the system die at such a young age.

I suppose the two faults that would ultimately lead to the demise were that it was way ahead of it's time in terms of online console gaming, and the fact that it was just so easy to bootleg the games for it. I can remember spending hours in my apartment playing NHL 2K, House of the Dead, 18 Wheeler American Pro Trucker, Shenmue, and of course who could forget the game that brought us the one and only "Supa Brotha" song, Jet Grind Radio. The fact that I would eventually move on to the Xbox is even directly related to my love for the Dreamcast, as I originally only bought an Xbox to play Jet Set Radio Future.

Recently I've been revisiting some of the old classics for some reason. I still have Metal Gear Solid 4 to finish (almost done), and I have Killzone 2 waiting to be started, as well as Resident Evil 5 coming out Friday, but all that has been taking a back seat to 18 Wheeler, Daytona USA 2001, Power Stone, and Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Hell, I'm even thinking about restarting Skies of Arcadia, a game which I played so much that I would actually fall asleep with it running only to wake up on the couch and immediately begin playing again.

I've also been trying to convince others to pick up their own Dreamcasts, being that they can be found used online from around $45 and that's the deal of the century. Especially when you consider that every single game can be found to download easily online. Not to mention all the homebrew, and emulators.

For some, the love for all things SEGA came from the Genesis, but I was always a SNES guy. My love for SEGA came from the Dreamcast, and I've always hoped that they would some day throw their hats back in the console ring. I'd put my pre-order money down the day the Dreamcast 2 was announced.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Mister Bones's Top 5

Simply because everyone loves lists! This is something I always thought about doing at the old blog, but never took the time since I had so many other comic-related regular posts. But being that I'm not really sticking to any sort of regular posting other than the Infinite Playlist so far this time, I figured I might give this a go.

For my first Top 5, I'm taking inspiration from Game Informer's "Top 50 Games of 2008" article from a couple of months ago which I just recently read through again. I played a lot of the games mentioned in their list, but there was one glaring omission that really bothered me that will rank pretty highly on my list.

Top 5 Games of 2008


5. Gears of War 2 - The follow-up to Epic's groundbreaking Gears of War promised to make everything bigger, badder, and better. I suppose it was bigger, the environments certainly seemed that way, and the battles were more epic in scope with tons of enemies on screen, but I'm not sure it was necessarily all that much better than the first. I enjoyed some of the little changes, and Horde mode was fun while it lasted, but I was a bit disappointed with the lack of "Oh shit!" moments that I was sure would be all over the place. Sure, the worm was cool and all, and the last couple of levels were really good, but getting there was down right boring at times. I realize this sounds really negative for what I'm calling one of my top 5 games of the year, but I really expected to be blown away by this game, and for it to be the Game of the Year. Still, for a year with so many great games, number 5 ain't bad.

4. Left 4 Dead - This one honestly surprised me. I hoped it would be good, but never truly expected it to blow up as big as it did. I figured I would play it, probably my brother, and not too many other folks. It's amazing to me that an idea as simple as "we'll have this co-op fps with zombies attacking everybody" could have taken this long to happen, and the popularity to be as enormous. The fact that there really is little content on the disc speaks to the pure fun of running around blasting zombies back to hell with your buds. Unfortunately for me, almost all of my fun was had running around with the A.I. as my internet connection has kept me from online gaming since early December. However, my love for the undead knows no bounds, and if it's the AI that I must play with, then play with AI I shall. I'm patiently waiting for some decent DLC in the form of new campaigns and possibly a new survivor or two.

3. Resistance 2 - Speaking of bigger, badder, and better, Resistance 2 boasted all of the above and actually managed to deliver and then some. The campaign was full of memorable moments (the theater in Chicago!), the Chimera brought out the big guns and hardly ever let Hale catch his breath, and every boss fight was a blast to play. Insomniac didn't stop with a kick-ass campaign though, they included a 60 player competetive multiplayer mode, and an even better 8 player online co-op mode (which ended up eating most of my time with the game). The co-op was basically a second campaign which ran parallel to Nathan's story from single player, and was just a blast when you actually had players that were working together. I absolutely loved every part of this game, especially the 1950's America overrun by alien invaders setting. Quality all around, and easily one of the best reasons to own a PS3 so far.

2. Silent Hill Homecoming - This is the one left missing from Game Informer's list, and I can't imagine why when something like "Midnight Club" made the list. There are few instances in gaming that get me as excited as a chance to journey back to my favorite fictional town, Slient Hill. Homecoming borrowed a bit more from the movie than actual previous games, and the story centered more around Shepherd's Glen and it's connection to Silent Hill, than Silent Hill itself, but everything else that we've come to know and love from the series was represented well. There was fog, creepy nurses, sirens, and not a lot of ammo scattered about. Standout scenes for me included the Police Station, Alex's first return to this childhood home, and the hospital scene. The puzzles were toned down a bit and there was more of a focus on combat this time around with some genuinely creepy, tought to kill enemies. For me though, Silent Hill is always more about the story, and I thoroughly enjoyed Alex's. Another welcome entry into the Silent Hill mythos.

1. Dead Space - Yep, game of the year as far as I'm concerned. If nothing else, I will remember 2008 as the year of the resurgence of the Survival Horror genre. It wasn't all about sequels though, and while I fully expected to enjoy Dead Space, I had no idea just how much I would end up loving this game. I remember reading the Game Informer article a year before the game released, it looked good, sounded even better, and the game officially went on my radar. Then the prequel comic from Wildstorm hit with art from Ben Templesmith (so of course I had to read it). I fell in love with the story of the Ishimura and it's inhabitants. The game finally hit, and everything was even better than I'd hoped. The controls were rock solid, the atmosphere and lighting were amazing, and when the necromorphs finally attacked, the combat was fast, bloody, and satisfyingly gruesome on a level that most games never come close to achieving. The weapons all performed differently, and were all not only useful, but fun to eviscerate enemies with. Speaking of enemies, Jesus! These were some of the nastiest looking baddies I've ever seen in any medium, with a bit of a nod to John Carpenter's The Thing mixed in with something straight from the imagination of Clive Barker, and that's some high praise indeed. There weren't many, but the boss encounters were amazing, with some titanic sized monsters that required a bit of thinking to get past. The story itself was the only minor complaint that I read in most reviews, but from the comic, to the animated movie, to the game I thought it all blended well together. I'm assuming that EA is planning on making this a franchise, I genuinely hope so. I can't wait for another one.

And there it is, my top 5 from last year. Honorable mentions go to NHL 09, The World Ends With You, Lego Batman, and Metal Gear Solid 4 (which was only omitted because I haven't finished it yet and I was only going to include games I had finished in the list).

I'm thinking for my next Top 5 I may go with my top 5 "worst games that everybody else loved from 2008" or something like that. I can think of 5 off the top of my head right now that I just couldn't get into, and they sit unfinished on my shelf as I type this.

Anyway hope you enjoyed my list, and of course feel free to agree or disagree, or even share your own top 5 in the comments.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Infinite Playlist - Death of a Hater


After a couple of rock/metal/however the fuck you want to label it songs, I thought I'd return to the wicked shit. Boondox is the best thing to come out of Psychopathic Records since Blaze ya Dead Home started tearing it up back in the day. His second full album, Krimson Creek absolutely blows his Psy debut record away, and this is the best track on the album, "Death of a Hater".

The thing about this track that really gets me is, no matter how much Boondox rips this shit up, he's still outdone by the incomparable Jamie Madrox (of Twiztid fame). I've talked about this guy before, he's a lyrical genius with some serious flow, and has the ability to steal an entire album with only one verse. This song is a prime example of this, and is probably one of Madrox's best verses of all time. Listen around the 1:30 mark for it.


Death Of A Hater (Feat. Jamie Madrox) - Boondox

Bonus! Even though he doesn't stop by here, I want to give an extra special birthday shout-out to my brother, the venerable Reverend GreggtheUndead. Happy Birthday ninja! Drink a couple for me.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Deadly new Super-Virus Attacks!


On Monday night this week, I fell victim to some new form of Super-Virus that could only have been spawned somewhere deep in the bowels of the evil Umbrella Corporation's secret underground lair.

It attacked seemingly from nowhere, catching me completely off-guard and subjecting me to frequent blackouts, extreme nausea and severe headaches. As always, I think of you, dear readers, first and I managed to get a picture of the shape this horrendous ordeal left me in before my final comatose-like sleep that would eventually lead to my start down the path to recovery. I must warn you though, this image is graphic.



Worry not though, I've started to pull through, and can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel today. I managed to make it through work for the first time since Monday, and while I'm still not brave enough to try food, I am holding down most liquids. Yes, friends I'm finally on the road to recovery and ready to begin wasting your precious time here at the old blog again. Do your best to contain your excitement, and for the love of all this is holy, avoid this potentially deadly virus at all costs.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Snow Day!

Ok this will just be a quick photo post to show off my little ones yet again. It's snowing today in Alabama, which is rare to say the least, so I had to get them out in it.