ironSoap

Before I start babbling about video games again, I feel compelled to mention that I went to the Giants game last night and despite their sad, sad loss to the previously slumping Chicago Cubs, it was a nice night to watch a ballgame. We had killer seats about 30 rows back right off of first base (which in Pac Bell SBC AT&T Park is three rows under the second deck so we weren’t in great position for foul ball retrieval) and it was a pleasant evening, weather-wise.

Of course seeing the Giants game meant missing the Sharks play, so Nik watched the game for me (although they played some highlights on the JumboTron during the seventh-inning stretch and the old guy sitting in front of us kept giving score updates). The triple overtime loss was disappointing, but they had won six games in a row and were bound to come back to earth eventually. I’m glad that Toskala was as sharp as can be expected but I’m starting to get a little concerned with the Sharks relative lack of offense. They’ve played over four and half games against these chumps now and they’ve only managed to get six pucks in the net? Come on, where’s the love? If the Sharks manage to get past Edmonton and end up playing the Ducks, they’re going to need a lot more than two goals per game to beat those guys.

You Didn’t Think I’d Stop Talking About E3, Did You?

So more as a follow-up to yesterday’s discussion of my plans for the “Next Generation” of console gaming than anything else, I present Exhibit A and Exhibit B for why I was on the right track about thinking Sony’s PS3 was the weakest of all offerings. Peter Moore even points out that by the time all three systems are launched you’ll probably be able to get both the 360 and Wii for the price of the PS3.

Of course I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony either rethinks their pricing strategy based on that fact or does more incremental price drops (for example instead of waiting a year or so until there is enough production cost saving to warrant a $50 or $100 price dip, they do a $20 price slash every four or five months).

I also find it interesting that everyone was so wound up after Nintendo announced the Wii name but like three days later they were showing off the system’s capabilities and letting people give it a shot and now you can’t find anyone still whining about the name, it’s all “Ooh, check out Mario! Whoa, did you hear that Solid Snake is in Super Smash Brothers?”

Also, add one more notch in the Rope of Resistance that I figuratively dangle from trying to resist the urge to buy a 360. That notch is cut by the emerging details of Bioware’s new game Mass Effect. Good gravy that looks (and sounds) sweet.

If you are to believe the proselytizing around the Nets, Sony hasn’t really come out as a strong contender in theis generation’s console wars. Someone pointed out that Sony has had shoddy showings in the past at events such as E3 but when they needed to bring it, it was sufficiently broughten. Still, based on sheer textual giddiness you can say that Nintendo has captured the Webosphere’s imagination although it’s hard to fault Microsoft for not generating a slew of buzz since, aside from Halo 3, it’s not like they have a gangload of first party titles people were really hoping to hear about.

I’m just saying I don’t know that you could compete with details and playable demos of new Zelda, Metroid and Mario games.

Of specific note is Ubisoft director Clint Hocking’s Sony-directed diss where he accuses Sony of playing the “me too” game and irritating developers with their focus on the technology drive.

To an extent I see what he’s saying and a lot of people, especially Nintendo, are bagging on the press for ever-better graphics but the problem with that grousing is that graphics do need to get better at some point. You can talk all you want about gameplay and while it is the most important part to a game’s overall enjoyment, no one who plays games at a level at all above casual can resist marvelling at a really great-looking game. Resident Evil 4 got loads of acclaim because of it’s much-needed improvements to the control scheme but without the slick visuals no one would have even considered offering up the coveted Game of the Year awards if it had looked like, say, Indigo Prophecy (oh, how I love to rag on that game).

Which is not to say I dislike Nintendo’s strategy of doing more reasonable tech upgrades and trying to balance the horsepower advances with the price point (something Sony obviously doesn’t care about), but to blast Sony for pushing their whiz-bang specs and harping on HD is a little silly when they’ve been getting gripes for the last year and a half for falling behind the XBox in terms of system potential. It’s almost like they can’t win with some people. Which is probably the case.

I mentioned yesterday that I wasn’t sold on the directional sensitivity thing for games and I’m still not. In fact I was less enthused about The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess when I heard it was Wii-only (which turned out to be false and supposedly it will be a GameCube/Wii crossover title) and as much as I like Metroid Prime, I’m a bit disappointed to see that you have to do the Wiimote thing to make it work. I guess I was still kinda hoping for a few of these games to stick with the old school. Obviously I haven’t tried any of these so I’m basing my reaction on pure conjecture but I was more excited to hear that Resident Evil 5 was going to be available for the XBox 360 than I was to hear that there was about to be a Wii-itized RE.

At this point I’m thinking that as soon as a couple of killer games hit the 360 library (and they’re already pretty close since PGR3, Call of Duty 2, Perfect Dark Zero, Halo 3 and StarCraft Ghost all seem or look like the sort of thing I’d be into) I’ll wait for the first price dip to pick one up. After that I’ll have to try a few of these Wii titles and see how they stand up to the test drive to decide if I want to risk another console purchase that may be for first-party titles alone. The PS3 is going to be one of those things that I buy only if the number of must-play games for it reaches a critical mass and it’s price point has gotten much more reasonable.

Actually writing that paragraph above kind of surprised me since up until this very moment I was thinking that this generation I might stick with more of a one or two console decision rather than trying to juggle all three of the major players but I sort of assumed I would run with the PS3 as my primary choice.

It sort of comes down to my experience in the last/most recent gen where I ended up with all three systems. On one hand I probably got the most overall enjoyment out of the GameCube, that was due to the quality of games I played for that system. But it is probably worthwhile to note that while I either liked or pretty much loved about 95% of the games I played on the GC, I only actually played about a dozen titles on the system. 11 out of 12 doesn’t sound quite as impressive as the percentile equivalent. I enjoyed the XBox probably the second most, but I played a lot more clunkers on that system. Then again, I played a lot more games. I probably dropped 35-40 games into the black behemoth and liked maybe as many as 20. Of course a lot of the fun came from XBox Live which I still believe is a huge selling point for the XBox and allowed even some mediocre games (Mechassault, Full Spectrum Warrior) to have sufficient enjoyment due mostly to the online play. The PS2 got probably as much attention as the ‘Box if not more (35-50 games played) which may have been because I had it longer, but I enjoyed a lot fewer of the games. I don’t know if that was just a matter of quantity or what, but I did note that some of the games I had really high hopes for didn’t pan out (Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 2/3, Silent Hill 2) from my perspective so maybe there is something to be said for the Sony hype machine?

Still, if I had to live without one of the previous gen systems it would probably have been the XBox despite the fact that it pretty much took over my gaming attention in the last couple of years there. If I had only gotten one system I think I would have been the happiest with the PS2 (which is why I bought that one first). It only follows then that my inclination was to figure the PS3 as my best bet. But somehow it dropped to last on my list and I think that has something to do with the fact that it’s hard to compare what Nintendo is doing this time ’round with the others, leaving MS and Sony to pretty much duke it out for the median gamers’ attention. Overall I may not be a huge fan of either company, but while I aspire to have as much choice as possible I feel somewhat compelled to reward the XBox franchise for their overall better execution last time and what I feel is the better strategy going forward.

It’s E3 time and my interest in video games has begun to creep, ever so slowly, back into the realm of significance. You might have noticed, but I’m just making it easy on you by saying it outright. Anyway the point is that with all the news related to gaming flying around the Webs for the next week or so don’t be surpised to hear me yammering on about it for some time.

No, that’s not a threat. A warning, maybe? I’m not sure where you stand on the topic. Wherever it is, you might want to sit instead. Your comfort does concern me, regardless of how my writing skills may make that seem.

Anyway so Sony announced that they were ripping off taking a page from Nintendo and doing the motion-sensitive thing with their new controllers. Also, or perhaps as a result of, they have removed the “Shock” portion from their Dual Shock moniker and cut out the vibration feature.

This is a disturbing development to me. I admit that when the “Rumble Pak” feature for the N64 first appeared, I was unimpressed. It seemed excessively gimmicky at the time and I didn’t understand what the point was. Since then it has become fairly standard and I have to admit that it’s become a pretty integral part of most modern gaming experiences. Sure I can live without it: The Gamecube doesn’t have such a feature by default (at all? I never bothered to find out; I’m certainly not married enough to rumblin’ to go out and purchase something to give me the capability) but it has been done extremely well in some cases.

I remember the first time I played Silent Hill and your life gauge was given a tactile sense by putting a heartbeat-style thump in the feedback when you were low on health. Of course, it has been done poorly: I hate to keep harping on Indigo Prophecy but buzzing the vibration when your character picks up a bottle from a table? Huh? Lame. Still, well-designed force feedback can add to a game’s atmosphere, offer game status info without HUD elements and improve a game’s immersive qualities. So I’m not too happy to see it disappear from these newer controllers.

I’m also unhappy about this new directional sensor approach to games. I’m not discounting it outright because it’s something I’d need to try (recall that I more or less discounted the DS’ touchscreen thing but I’ve obviously changed my tune in that regard) but I find it hard to believe that this is something that’s going to really make gaming more fun. It’s interesting, sure, but do we really want to be standing in front of the TV waving our arms around and gesticulating wildly trying to rescue the princess or whatever? Because I’m kind of thinking no, not really. I’m sure things like EyeToy and other physically interactive control mechanisms have a certain novelty appeal, but I think it’s pretty obvious that it is just a novelty or else we’d be seeing the next Metal Gear Solid use the EyeToy or tilt controls and I really don’t see that happening. I’m kind of with Microsoft on this one in thinking that it’s interesting, but not really the way to go.

Especially for Sony. I can see Nintendo pulling it off because they’ve always been about making things that are just fun regardless of how hard core they may be. But Sony really only excels when it comes to catering to the baseline gamer crowd and I’m guessing this isn’t part of why that demographic is looking forward to the PS3.

Also, pricing the PS3 at $599 for the decent configuration… ouch. Especially since fairly logical rumors abound that around the time the PS3 is hitting shelves the XBox 360 will dip down to around $399 or $450 for the non-Core (ie non-nerfed) system, that means consumers will be presented with gift giving options of either the “good” PS3 for six bills or the “good” 360 for $150-200 less. Oh and don’t forget the PS2 rarity fiasco which we all should fully expect to be par for the console-launch course which means you’ll probably actually be able to find 360s. And one more thing: Launch titles are generally bootypants so the 360 should be sitting pretty come November.

Brief Hockey Interlude

I want to take a quick second to say that I’m tired of the officiating in the playoffs this year. They’ve gotten so much back-patting from the media and I honestly can’t tell if these pundits are watching the same games I am. They were supposed to call the games the same way they did all year, right? Ha. They have swallowed their whistles and are letting things go right and left; the difference is that they’re letting them go disproportionately.

Edmonton is a bunch of dirty cheaters. I said it. Those guys hook and paw and act like whiney babies all night long. They get a handful of penalties called and the announcers are like “those officials sure are taking care of business this year!” Sure. The Sharks are getting away with a few as well but we’re talking about the difference between getting away with a minor holding the stick call versus getting away with attempted murder on Milan Michalek (which should have been a five-minute major if not an ejection).

I mean come on, Ekman gets a 2-minute sit for not hearing a whistle and as a response he gets a pile driver from a tag team and they only get a two-minute roughing call? What? Unreal.

But I have to say, that penalty kill was astounding. I totally jinxed it afterward by mocking Edmonton mercilessly (I think I said something about grandmothers that could have scored in that situation) and they responded by laying down on Toskala’s leg and cheapshotting it in the net, but whatever. We still won.

I do think the Sharks need to just open up the hurt on these sissies and do an eight-goal whipping tomorrow night in Edmonton or something just to show them what losers they really are because I don’t like anyone the Sharks have to play but I forgot what it was like to have utter contempt for an opponent until now.

Man, I love the playoffs.

Interesting article over on Wired about video game boss fights. I think my favorite bosses are probably the ones who taunt you openly. Best boss fight of all time has to be Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid, though. The worst boss of all time is the beast from Resident Evil: Code Veronica who cannot be killed and you have to run in terror from. One or perhaps two hits is all it takes it to kill you and it is literally luck that keeps you alive. Both HB and I gave up on this game after being slain by this stupid, stupid “boss” forty bajillion times over and finally giving up for mental health considerations. Neither of us have ever actually finished the game as a result.

On an only semi-related subject as I was sort of browsing around Wikipedia reading about video game bosses, I started thinking about older games that I never got around to playing but often wish I did. Games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time which everybody says is the best Zelda (or the best game) ever. They even have a version I think for the Gamecube that I’m just too lazy to track down.

Which got me thinking about games I wish would be either remade or re-released for current systems as ports because I would like to give them a shot sometime.

• Resident Evil 2: Okay, I actually played this but it was a rental and I didn’t even get 25% of the way through. I tried to go back and play it on the Gamecube re-release but the graphics are so 1997 it was painful. It’s a shame because most of the series’ storyline (at least in terms of understanding the subsequent game plots) stem from this game. If anything needed the remake/facelift treatment, it would be this game. Maybe even a DS port would allow me to get over my graphic snobbery enough to push through.
• System Shock series: Adventure-style games that people swear scared the heck out of them. Count me in.
• Maniac Mansion/Sam and Max/Grim Fandango/Monkey Island: Lucasarts used to put out stellar PC games. I mean, I guess, because people are pretty hyperactive about them still to this day. So much so that they have a mechanism to allow them to be played on modern hardware. I never played any of them but they sure looked interesting and if they were available again (without hoops; I’m way too lazy for hoops) I’d definitely pick them up.
• Final Fantasy VII: Okay, I actually played this game. A lot. But I think I’ve explained before that I never finished and it still bugs me that I didn’t to this day. Of course now the graphics look dated but since it was the last FF game that was actually playable, I would sure love to see a facelift on this puppy. And please, like a re-released, sexified new PS3 version wouldn’t sell 200 bogrillion copies in half an hour. If you don’t believe me, are we reading the same Internet?
• Honorable Mention for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, because I could probably pick it up cheap and play it on the backward compatible PS2 but am too dim to actually do so. Plus it wouldn’t suffer from the RE2 issues because it’s 2D sprite-based and so it probably looks pretty good. In fact, maybe I’ll do that. Yeah.

Weekend Bulletin:

• I went ahead and put in a pre-order for my DS Lite. I don’t care what you say, that thing is smooth and I mean, c’mon: New Super Mario Brothers and new Secret of Mana game? You just don’t know.
• As a matter of fact, for a system I once derided as something I didn’t really see the point of there are just so many games I want to play for it, I’m not sure where to begin. Aside from the above mentioned Mario Bros. and Children of Mana, there’s also the new 3D-ized Final Fantasy III (no, not FFVI, the real III); some sort of Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest, whatever) where you play as a blue slime (I know, right?); the non-optional Mario Kart DS; Metroid Prime: Hunters; Age of Empires (turn-based!); Advance Wars: Dual Strike (more turn-based strategy joy!); Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow… that’s not even talking about my weird desire to check out the girl-targeted Princess Peach platformer nor the Resident Evil remake and oh hey, did I forget to mention the puzzle games? Yeah, Tetris DS, Meteos, Puyo Pop Fever and Bust-a-Move DS. Considering how hard it has been to come up with games I want to play for the systems I have at the moment (recall that I went back and played an old game over again because pickin’s have been so slim) a wealth of options is a blessing.
• The Sharks won last night and for some weird reason they play again tonight for game two. I also caught some of the Ducks/Avalanche game yesterday afternoon and I have to say that Bryzgalov isn’t some lucky Duck. I mean, he’s pretty impressive. The side-to-side glove stop robbery on Alex Tanguay’s open net gambit was flat out brilliant. But the Ducks in general made the Avs look silly. In fact, considering how much the Sharks owned the Oilers in the second period, making them look pretty silly for not even coming up with a shot on goal for over ten minutes, I’m just about set to see a Ducks/Sharks Western Conferenece Finals.
• Also? They play Pennywise at the Pond when the Ducks score a goal. That’s just cool. I mean, I don’t like the Ducks (I’m not allowed, see… I’m a Sharks fan), but I’m only saying they impressed me and I want to see the Sharks beat them to make it to the Cup series.
• First things first, the Sharks need to finish off Edmonton. I liked that Marleau’s line was still cookin’ and the top line played well, but I need to see Cheechoo beat some of these chump goalies. I mean, Roloson? Seriously? Seriously?
• Gin and HB picked up RAZRs over the weekend and after stuffing ourselves with barbequed ribs and chicken while cheering the Sharks to victory yesterday evening I showed them how to transfer files from their iMac to their phones via bluetooth. They expressed that I might be a genius which is patently and provably false but I had to forgive them because the beauty of bluetooth has been known to spawn uncontrollable fits of hyperbole in the past.
• I caught an episode of a show I’ve been meaning to watch for weeks now called Deadliest Catch about Alaskan Crab fishermen. It’s pretty much as good as I had hoped and if you have a chance you might want to check it out. Those dudes are pretty hardcore. What else are you going to watch? Desperate Housewives?
• What I wonder is whether the camera crews have to be as crazy as the fishermen to stand out there on those boats filming while they haul in those big crab traps. I guess it isn’t as bad as having to do the work but I still don’t think I’d be too cool with waiting for a wall of freezing Alaskan water to hit me in the face so I can get a shot of freezing Alaskan water hitting someone else, just in case the footage might make it in the show.
• My iPod is starting to go south on me. The headphone jack is dirty and has poor connections now so it hisses, gets quiet and crackles when the jack gets twisted around or even nuged the wrong way. Plus it resets itself probably once every two or three hours of use and holds about half the battery charge it once did. Granted I’ve used and abused the heck out of the thing for two years so I’m not making any quality comments here, I’m just saying it may be time to start saving up for a new one.
• So we’re going shopping tonight before the game to look for a new couch and possibly some sort of book storage unit. Our old couch was one of the first things we bought when we got married six and a half years ago and it was a cool couch back then: Two reclining seats, leather, pull-down center console with built-in heat and massage features plus cup holders and flip-up armrests with remote control storage. Fast forward to the present. As a state-of-the-art sofa it fails. As a comfrotable place to sit, it fails. As an attractive centerpiece to our living room, it fails on about sixteen levels. So it’s gotta go. I’d rather be spending the money on, say, an HD TV set, but even I can see the logic that having a super sweet TV wouldn’t matter if you didn’t want to sit in front of it.
• The bookcase situation has gotten pretty dire, itself. Nik and I are both readers and, perhaps more pointedly, avid book collectors. We have about six bookshelves already stacked and stuffed with hundreds of books plus there are about six or seven other places around the house where books sit piled on top of each other. I originally thought I could just put some cinder blocks and plywood together but then I remembered that our apartment floor is not level and slanted surfaces and cinder blocks on the second floor… I mean, what could go wrong? Also, I remembered that I’m married and not living in a fraternity house so, you know, yeah, right.

I’ve watched a bunch of movies lately, partly because I’ve been sick but I’ve also just slipped into one of those moods. I mostly wanted to ruminate on horror movies but I realize that the number of people interested in such a subject is probably 1/32 the number of people who actually read this site which means roughly -25 people. So before I start talking to less than nobody, I should point out a movie that does not involve teenagers being stabbed in the spleen with a crowbar or whatever. I’m talking about “An Unfinished Life” with Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lopez.

I realize I kind of have to sell this movie because for one thing it has J.Lo in it which I fully understand would turn some people off to it right away but if you can forget all the Jenny From the Block–Bennifer–”Gigli”–Tabloid stuff for a second you might recall that she first hit a lot of people’s radars with a fine performance in a pretty good movie called “Out of Sight.” So regardless of anything else she can, when she bothers to, actually act. For another thing it’s a very low-key, quiet sort of movie that I can best describe as old-fashioned. There’s not a lot of high intensity happening here, the performances don’t involve people channeling dead celebrities and the most action you get is a short scene of an old man kicking a domestic abuser around a bit. It’s not even your average emotional drama where they play the tearjerker card half a dozen times to get the wimmin folk to break out the hankies.

And yet, it’s absorbing and it’s subtly funny and a bit touching but most of all it’s entertaining and—how’s this for a shock—when it’s over you just might feel better than you did before you started watching. I’m not guaranteeing you’ll love it, I’m just saying you might want to give it a shot because you might be surprised, pleasantly, like I was.

Okay, now let’s talk about movies with axe murders.

The Decline of Horror

There was a time when I would have gone as far as to say I was a fan of horror movies. Somewhere between my youthful fear of pretty much everything and my adult cynicism for everything else I absorbed cheesy slasher flicks and serials with a pretty impressive appetite. Part of it is that I really like special effects. Of course my favorite special effects are more of the Sci-Fi variety with spaceships and robotic warmachines but SF movies are usually expensive and tend to be event pictures which really don’t get made that often. But I like make-up effects, too, and since latex suits and red corn syrup are cheap, lots of horror movies get made. Special effects geeks have to either get used to droughts of new material to pore over, learn to live with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Segal or learn to appreciate horror movies.

The other part is that I think scary stuff is fun. The psychology of horror fans has been discussed a lot since people started paying to get frightened and it usually comes down to something like “we’d rather do it voluntarily in a way we know isn’t truly dangerous” and/or “the adrenaline rush from fear is addicting in a similar way to the pain of eating spicy food.” Whatever it is that makes people like to be safely frightened, count me among their number.

But lately I’ve gotten tired of horror. More than tired really, I’ve gotten just about downright sick of it. And it isn’t that it started scaring me more or even that it started scaring me less (although that’s sort of true—I’ll make more sense in a minute) it’s that horror has changed in recent years. Horror isn’t horror anymore, movies that are billed as genre flicks are becoming almost exclusively murder pictures. And that’s the opposite of what I like about horror movies.

I think about it like this: Graphic gore doesn’t really bug me in movies. It’s all special effects. And like I said before, I like the special effects. The thing is, I want there to be at least a passing stab made at giving those effects some kind of context. I want them to be the climax of a building suspense. I want them to be shocking or frightening or something—anything except for what they’ve become which is numbing. I’m going to annoy some horror fans here and say that gore is not scary in and of itself. Gore without a sense of psychological fear is just… well, gross. And I’m going to take another stand and say that psychological fear wrought by putting some human villain behind the machete or scalpel or whatever is a different kind of horror than what I’m looking for.

Look, I know that people are sick and sadistic and twisted and capable of revoltingly unspeakable acts of cruelty against each other. I got it. If I need reminding, I can watch the nine o’clock news. So thanks but no thanks when it comes to movies whose only idea of what might be scary is some dude with a pitchfork or an axe. That’s not really all that scary, it’s just depressing. It’s also about as uncreative as you can get. As clear as I am on how stupidly evil people can be, I know everyone else is, too, including Mr. Screenwriter. So if that’s the best you can come up with: Spare me. Spare us.

Give me some supernatural terror. Give me Jason. Give me Freddy or zombies or ghosts or vampires or something. Come up with something new. Make a twist on something old. Bring me a giant mutant termite or a living doll or a rampaging possessed washing machine, anything. Let those things spatter fake blood all over your set and give you a reason to cast decapitated molds of your actor’s heads, but I can’t stand to watch another pointless murder shown without any hint of subtlety or even fun (quick hint: extra sadism does not equal fun) just to put another point on the make-up guys’ resume. Seriously. Count me out.

If you want to have a human killer, it’s called a mystery. Give me some suspense. Make me guess. Show me a character I can root for who is trying to figure out who it is or why they do it so they can stop it from happening. Don’t toss in some fourth-rate teen idol on the way to a career making bad Japanese soap commercials as a hapless stooge just running away for 45 minutes. If you want to do real horror then do it right, come up with a monster. Give me some camp, a little cheese and a few laughs. Make it fun and then turn off the lights and give me a creepy score as the pajama-clad heroine goes the wrong way up a flight of stairs.

Or do it good and give me some fiction I can sink my teeth into. Move me to the edge of my seat like in Alien. If you can’t write it well enough to suspend my disbelief then head back to community college and pick up your accounting degree ’cause this just ain’t your bag, man. Write me something scary, not something sad. Not something sick. I’m tired of it.

Okay, deep breath. Rant off. I feel better. Now maybe I should go work on that possessed washing machine story. Someone’s gotta show these idiots how it’s done.

My medicinally-slowed brain forgot the other reason I fired up the ol’ WP Editor: The Sharks.

So we now know that the Sharks are the top seed still standing in the West. You will note that this is the first time such a thing has transpired since the current playoff system was established where the four bottom seeds all upset the top. So the Sharks play Edmonton and the Ducks play Colorado. Edmonton isn’t a bad team by any stretch but they didn’t look too good against the Sharks a couple of months ago (which is the only thing from the regular season I tend to take into account since the Oilers beat San Jose their other three meetings, those were early in the year and two were in shootouts which are a non-factor in playoff games). I will be heavily disappointed if the Sharks don’t take care of business in five games or less.

Colorado/Anaheim? I have no idea. Anaheim beat a very sound Calgary team and they even made the Flames look pretty silly for a big chunk of last night’s game (the Flames went for like 13 minutes without a shot on goal… in their own building) so they have good momentum. But Colorado beat a pretty solid Dallas team quickly and have had a lot of rest (the Ducks get one whole day). I wouldn’t be surprised if it was another seven game series and I wouldn’t mind at all if the Ducks came out on top which would bring a weary Anaheim team into San Jose for an all-California Western Conference finals.

Out East the opposite came to pass where the top four seeds did as expected and since I don’t follow Eastern teams that much you can apply liberal sodium to my predictions but don’t be surprised to see the Senators continue their playoff choking ways and bow out to the Sabres and I fully expect the Devils to make short work of Carolina. San Jose/Buffalo for the Cup? Yes, please.

Also the finalists for the NHL hardware were announced today. The Sharks have a few possibilities: Thornton for the Hart (MVP) and Pearson (Peer-voted Best Player) trophies and Marleau for the Lady Byng (Best Sportsmanship). Considering how rare it has been for San Jose players to even be considered for prestigious awards like this in the past, I think it’s pretty cool regardless of the outcome.

Still, I think the Thornton/Jagr race for the Hart trophy is an exact 50-50 toss up. I might have been able to make a case for Thornton over Jagr until New York’s meltdown in the postseason once Jagr got hurt and proved once and for all what he meant to that team. The Pearson will probably go to whomever doesn’t get the Hart so call those a wash. As for the Lady Byng, Marleau had 86 points and 26 penalty minutes while Datsyuk from Detroit had 87 points to 22 minutes in the box. Brad Richards from Tampa Bay had 91 points to 32 PIMs. I don’t know how the winner of the Byng is determined but mathematically speaking Datsuyk ought to win with a slightly better points to PIMs ratio than Patty.

Back to the playoffs, the best article I’ve read about the upcoming Oliers/Sharks series is the one on NHL.com, but the thing I think they missed is that San Jose will take Edmonton down provided Toskala is better than Manny Legace was for Detroit. The Sharks will score on Roloson, and Edmonton doesn’t have very many terrifying offensive weapons. They try to make up for this with a balanced, consistent attack across all their lines but as long as the young Sharks blueliners don’t make idiot mistakes and Vesa stays sharp, it should be too much for the eight seed to handle.

I’ve spent the last couple of days suffering through some sort of bizarre springtime cold/flu thing which has been not just uncomfortable but put me far behind in terms of work and other things that need to get done. And I’m still not much better than I was yesterday, but I’ve dumped my workload on my co-workers enough this week that guilt alone dragged me out of bed and into rush hour traffic.

Of course it hasn’t been all bad. I played my way through Resident Evil 4 for a second time since after finishing Indigo Prophecy I was disappointed enough with the last 2/3rds of it that I needed to remind myself how video games can be, you know, good. Not that RE4 is flawless, but on a general comparison scale we’re talking about a stack of fifty dollar bills versus a bit of lint culled from one’s bellybutton.

The strange thing about that is I hardly ever play through games twice. Especially if I went all the way to the end the first time ’round. And you know, I wouldn’t be opposed to doing again. Part of the fun is that the game is roughly 6,000 times easier each time through since you keep all your weapons and money from the previous completion which in my case means I have fully upgraded shotguns, sniper rifles and .357 Magnums plus ample cash to burn on rocket launchers pretty much whenever. All of that means that the tough bad guys are, uh, not so much. The comedy of the week came when I wandered into a cave-like area and the game went to a cutscene of a vicious-looking baddie leaping down from a platform weilding a chainsaw that I just knew was going to be aimed at my neck. Normally these guys take several shots from the most powerful of guns, but as he approached me all Texas Massacre-style, I put one lone round into his shoulder and just happened to spin him off the cliff in a pirouette of anticlimax.

Comedy gold. Or, possibly the DayQuil. Take your pick.

Anyway, I didn’t stop by to ramble about games I beat a year ago, I actually came to express my enthusiasm for the announcement regarding the DS Lite. I had heard since the Lite was essentially flying off the shelves in Japan that NOA might take that as a sign that they had sorely underestimated the profit potential of the device and would introduce it to us with a price tag in the $200 neighborhood. That caused some consternation because as much as I’m eager to try some of these games I’m thinking that $200 goes a long way toward an XBox 360 or a Playstation 3. Heck, that’s even a pretty nifty dent in the price of a decent games-playing PC. But Nintendo proves once again that they really understand the handheld market and offer this tasty treat for a mere $129.

I have nothing but rampant speculation to back this up but I’m thinking the original DS will dip to $99 and by Christmas you will be able to snare one for $79 or so. Not sure why you’d want one of those clunkers, but to each his own.

Also, I’d like to point out that this is my favorite picture of Joel to date. Sleepy nephews are awesomely adorable.