Run through the media

With the campaign wound down (a full update on that in a couple of weeks, no worries), I've been able to take in some media of late. Thought I'd give you folks the quick versions...

Borrowed a couple of Wii titles to give 'em a try. Rayman Raving Rabbids looks amazingly dumb. Dumb, however, turned out to be surprisingly fun.

Your character - the duckish Rayman, apparently some sort of franchise character himself - is kidnapped along with his good friend Globox by the rabbids. Taken far underground, Rayman has to make his way through a series of mini-games in order to free himself and his friend. You play five mini games a "day" and work your way to freedom, changing the enmity of the rabbids game by game into eventual near-worship.

To complete the game and win your freedom, you have to make it successfully through about eleven days of mini games in ten or so different styles. Many of the styles - the dance game, shoot-'em-up, warthog racing - appear numerous times, and some of the others make a second appearance here and there. The recurring games come back with enough variety and changes, however, that they seem more familiar and challenging than they do repetitive.

Throughout the mini games, Rayman interacts with the rabbids through the use of the Wii in fairly innovative ways: finding and smacking a rabbid singing out of key in the choir, closing the door to the rabbids in beach outhouses, milking the rabbids' cow, timing a jump rope chain while jumping with the nunchuck, shaking in rhythm to the beat of a discoed-up "La Bamba". Both The Girl and I had our favorite games (mine was the shooting - only shooting plungers as it's very much a kid-friendly game - and the warthog racing, hers were the dancing stages), and there was certainly enough variety that we could each enjoy different parts of the game while being challenged throughout.

There are both story - day by day, working through each of the game - and party modes. We went through the day-by-day, eventually freeing ourselves after an obsessive bit of gameplay. From there, the game simply ends with a lengthy credit sequence that turned out to be much more of a disappointment that we had hoped for. In the story mode, all games are single-player. In the party mode, however, the game takes a much different tone, allowing you to play any game in any order and with up to four players. Some of the four-players versions worked much better than others - the warthog racing was particularly fun as a pair - and the game feels like it could really shine in a party setting.

For simple, one-person gameplay, the game can be a bit straight forward and closed-ended. As a group activity - the exact thing that Wii seems made for - this could be great fun. Certainly worth a check out - as is the game website which has clips of the rabbids and their hilarious antics.

Other reviews can be found over at metacritic. And clips of the between game entertainment can be found at YouTube.

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The other game that we borrowed was Zack & Wiki, an adventure/puzzle game in which you hunt through fifteen or twenty different stages, each time trying to get to a treasure chest with another piece of the treasure. Each stage opens with an overview of the whole stage map, hinting at what puzzles you will have to overcome. From there, you use the Wii remote to hunt through the stage and click on different aspects on screen. The secret to getting to the treasure chest is to go to the right places and click on the right things - picking up and using various objects - in just the correct order. Hints and replays are available - for an escalating in-game cost.

The Girl loves the game, taking lots of time to work through some of the puzzles and running through the early, easier ones with fair quickness. She enjoys the mystery and challenge of finding why each item exists in the stage and how each item has to be used in the course of the stage clearing.

I couldn't stand the game. The initial stages were very straight forward and easy to solve, and the later stages quickly passed my frustration level and sent me directly to one of the many full walkthroughs available online.

The animation style is very cartoony and the voice work is straight out of Japaname with most characters sounding like Pokemon and uttering sounds rather than words. Within and between the stages players are treated to click-through animations that move the story along but just seemed to be time-consuming to me.

The best part of the game is the innovative use of the Wii remote to accomplish various tasks as part of the games - pointing and turning as a key, holding up to open an umbrella, pulling back as a lever, and many more.

The game is very well-crafted, beginning easily and using simple instructions and increasing difficulty levels to ready players for the later levels.

I couldn't stand it - but I have a very, very low frustration level for games (or even stages) that provide no instructions and require you to just click around and try things until they work.

The Girl loves the game because she enjoys that very type of game.

You know yourself.

You more like me or The Girl?

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Three discs have hit the player of late - none of which merit much more than a whole-hearted meh:

The album Punch from The Punch Brothers...the fiddler from Nickel Creek has headed out on his own and put together a band. Oddly enough, their first disc is heavy on fiddle - who woulda guessed that the drummer's new band would feature drum solos?

It's okay, but it's drifts a bit much for my tastes and has been rightfully described as bluegrass emo. A hearty meh...

Then there's the second newest release from The Mountain Goats Get Lonely. There isn't a single song of the dozen or so that grabbed me on the first listen through...or the second or third...

Mostly, I didn't get any connection with the disc. I don't know that I looked into the lyrics as much as most of the reviewers I found, did, but I tend to lean more toward a sound of the song first before hearing the words themselves.

And I won't be hearing this disc again anytime soon. I second that e-meh-tion.

And then there's the sound track to Roll Bounce, something I picked up because of the nice 70's groove of the flick. Sadly, the groove didn't keep through the soundtrack for me. Instead, I got 70's classics re-recorded with a combination of new and old artists - Jamiriquoi with Earth, Wind, & Fire...Michelle Williams covering Al Green..."Boogie Oogie Oogie" redone by Brooke Valentine with a hip hop crew worth of guests.

This one didn't even merit a meh.

I give it a single m and move on...

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Only two comics of late, and one was a repeat read.

Fantastic Four: The End stunk.

Alan Davis's art has driven me nuts for years - since he worked on the Outsiders. I really can't stand his artwork, and this six=part miniseries's attempts to include pretty much every Marvel superhero (and half the Fantastic Four villians - all of whom happened to have chosen this very moment in future time to hatch their final, deadly, earth-controlling plot) all of whom appear to have not aged more than a couple of years in the hundreds of years since (ahem, Deus Ex Machina alert) the Methuselah Treatment has magically allowed all of them - and pretty much all of humanity - to live like forever without aging I guess.

It's dumb.

Don't read it.

Instead, read Hulk: House of M. It's an enjoyable read that doesn't take itself too heavily. As an imaginary storyline, but it's kinda fun. There are a few jokes here and there, and it's a good, quick read.