DrawCast Tonight at 7pm EST

Hey it’s that thing we like to do sometimes! And it’s tonight. Tag any questions or drawing suggestions on twitter with a #DrawCast.  As always I will embed the live feed into tumblr… well Caldwell will, and then I’ll reblog it.

GamerNode Review: Metroid: The Other M

Metroid: Other M is a dangerous game to write about. It will, and is already, creating a divide among Metroid and Nintendo fans. Some will enjoy the story-focused presentation and its heavy emphasis on action, while others will decry its departure from a moody, exploration-focused adventure. Is it worth all the interest? Has Team Ninja created a worthy Metroid experience, or have they created a Team Ninja action game, with Metroid clothing? The answer is a bit of both.

From the earliest trailers, Team Ninja made it clear that Other M was not Metroid Prime. The first time the game was shown, we saw Samus leaping from enemy to enemy like a certain sword-carrying Ninja. We learned that along with a new set of moves, Samus had also discovered a voice, a past, and a group of friends. Nintendo fans’ eyes darted left to right nervously, while longtime Metroid fans were already angry.

The early outrage, is not entirely unnecessary. The focus on story was ultimately a bad choice, and giving Samus a voice changes the character. She is no longer the silent symbol of empowered videogame feminism, she is just a bounty hunter with a somewhat troubled past. That is not to imply that the story is all bad. Real things happen, with personal and emotional consequences, and there are a few twists, but in the end it just wasn’t worth all the mediocre voice acting and fancy cutscenes. When Samus’ story is a silent, lonely journey into the belly of an alien underworld, we leave with fuller appreciation for the journey she embarked on.

The other big change in Other M is the combat and gameplay perspective. It’s a sort of cross between Super Metroid, and Metroid Prime. It works for the most part in creating a compelling modern action experience with nostalgia imbued throughout. At its strongest, the game feels like a Super Metroid update when we view Samus from the side. At its worst it is still a damn fun game.

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Taking 5: Ping

You’ve seen it.  You have access to it. And you’ve used it (maybe).  Well, I’ve used it, or tried anyway.

Ariel Waldman said on her tiwtter:

I kept an open mind for a couple days, but now I feel confident in saying that Ping is really not well thought out on multiple fronts.

And on this week’s Engadget podcasat Josh Topolsky said:

Imagine if Facebook started right now and you were aware of it.  Like, 500 million people knew what Facebook was and they launched it, like, today.

I think that is the best way to describe it.  It’s this huge system and framework with no content.  It’s almost the way I would describe Places as compared to Foursquare. And I tried, really. I did. Before I wrote this… review(?)… of the service I wanted to do everything that you could do.

I found friends, I followed artists, I liked a bunch of albums and even wrote a review.  The problem is, I couldn’t really find enough people to follow.  Because it’s so new some of my favorite artists aren’t on there or my friends who have good taste in music aren’t on there because (a) they don’t use the iTunes Store to buy music because of services like Emusic (b) they have a large libraries of music and therefore already have ways of discovering new artists.

Now if you are on an album page in iTunes, it will tell you which of your friends have also purchased that album.  Which is cool, but it’s mining that data from your iTunes purchase history and doesn’t let you mark which albums you’ve have purchased from other services, or uploaded from CD’s… the way you had to do it before 2004.

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