I know Metroid: Other M is coming out at the end of the month, and I’m excited, really! Even if Samus’ new voice actor is bland and monotone and even if the game’s focus on a more complex narrative is probably going to come off as overly serious, angst filled, and dumb. Still, it looks hecka fun to play! But, if given the option, I think I’d rather play this Metroid game instead:

Too bad it’s so hard to find any information on this ‘Minitroid’ game. Apparently it’s made by a Metroid fan with the moniker Tokinsom, who’s worked on previous Metroid fan games. Good luck finding out more than that!

This weekend NNFB will be at Matsuricon in Columbus Ohio. We’ll have a table in the artist ally right in front of the giant banner of Yorikiro. We’re also going to be in a ton of panels.

Panel Schedule

Friday
2PM – Webcomics 101
4PM – No Need for Bushido & White Noise
6PM – Sketch Battle
11PM – Avatar: The Last Airbender Panel You’ll Ever Need

Saturday
12PM – Photoshop Basics
3PM – Comicsplosion
11PM – How the Prequels Murdered Star Wars

Sunday
12PM – Writing: Storytelling, A How-to
1PM – Flash 101

This is, I think, highly entertaining.

I feel compelled to inform the public that the “Neon Dragon” has completed her third highly anticipated and long awaited instructional art book concerning the anatomy of dragons and dragon-esque creatures.  Titled Dragonart: Evolution, her newest book just hit store shelves. If you’re not familiar with Neondragon’s art, you can check out her DA gallery or her website. If you already love her art, and perhaps already own one of her previous books and are looking for a way to personalize your inevitable copy, she’s currently taking orders for signed copies of her book. She DOES do international shipping. Trust me, if you’re looking to reinforce your skills at fantasy creature creation, you can’t do much better than Neondragon’s Dragonart: Evolution. She’s put two books worth of artwork and instructional text into this third volume, so do yourself a favor and check it out!

I saw Inception over the weekend. My favorite part was that totally badass Tron Legacy trailer before the movie. Oh, not that I’m saying Inception wasn’t awesome. I loved the whole dreams within dreams concept, and events in layers above influencing layers below.  Still, the characters just didn’t jive with me. I liked them well enough, I guess, but I want a movie to make me really care about the cast! I want to laugh and cry with them, and really feel like I know them. Maybe this is why I’m not usually a fan of deep concept mystery-thrillers, where I’m just trying to piece together what’s going on the whole film. Usually the plot takes first priority to character likability. Still, although I think Inception could’ve used a bit more humor and character banter, not to mention better sound mixing since about 30% of the dialog I couldn’t even hear, it was a blast of a movie experience. It’s one of those movies where you talk about it hours after you see it because new ideas related to different scenes keep popping into your head.

Oh, but how bout that Tron Legacy? I would like it to be my new Star Wars, I think. Please, please, give me a new scifi film that immerses me like the original trilogy once did. I NEED THIS TO BE AMAZING. It certainly looks the part. I know this preview has been out for a while, but every time I see it, I like it more.

Let it be no surprise that I love fanmixes.  I mean, every time I end up there I find myself enraptured in a bout of uncontrolled hysterics.  Superfluous fanmixer Slogra has found it within himself to provide five of the more hilariously ludicrous fanmixes in recent memory.  Do yourself a favor and check those suckers out.  I especially like his Star Wars Prequels fanmix.

The action continues in the latest page of NNFB! Yori is done looking shocked and is going to get back to work.

The Fanmix section has some new pages by forumite Adam850. We love getting these things!

This is just a little too awesome to not post.

Maybe it’s sacrilege to say so, but MGS Peace Walker looks kind of lame. I have yet to see a single gameplay video that’s made me excited to play it. That’s not to say the story doesn’t look awesome. I love the Big Boss storyline, and if there’s any reason for me to play Peace Walker it’s the story. But the gameplay… Well, let me just give some examples of why I’m not impressed.

Mainly it’s the repetition. OH GODS, THE REPETITION! Any good MGS player knows that non lethal takedowns are always the most profitable. They land you special items and prizes, or, in the case of Portable Ops and Peace Walker, the opportunity to recruit soldiers into your ranks. Unfortunately, non-lethal takedowns in the MGS series consist of only a handful of options, such as shooting a tranq dart at a guy or running up to a soldier and throwing him to the ground, knocking him out. There are some variations on this, but these are the two easiest options and they’re not all that exhilarating to perform. So far, nearly every gameplay video I’ve seen for Peace Walker shows Snake running up to a guy, knocking him down, recruiting him, and then moving on to the next area. It looks like incredibly monotonous trial and error gameplay. Everything moves at a snail’s pace. I know we’ve been doing this since MGS 2 (MGS didn’t have tranq guns or dogtags), but, seriously, it’s gettin’ old.

Obviously you don’t HAVE to play the game like this, but it’s the encouraged form of play since it yields the greatest rewards. Yet there are clearly more enjoyable ways to perform non lethal KO’s in games. In Arkham Asylum, fifty percent of combat consisted of non-lethal takedowns without being spotted, and the other half was non-lethal takedowns while being assaulted by a large group of enemies. Snake, on the other hand, can only handle one enemy at a time when unarmed (unless it’s a cutscene, of course). Considering all the crap he has to go through to save the world from nuclear holocaust, doesn’t Snake deserve to be at least half as awesome as Batman? Heck, even Sam Fisher, whose stealth games were MORE monotonous than Snake’s, is now a lethal, fast paced action hero in Splinter Cell: Conviction. I love the stealth game genre, but these newer stealth games are making Snake’s older gameplay mechanics look very unappealing.

Boss battles are usually the most adrenaline pumping action segments of an MGS game, but I watched a couple videos of Snake fighting Peace Walker bosses, and they either show Snake just kind of standing there and shooting at the boss, or circle strafing the boss and trying not to get run over. Maybe this is because every boss encounter I’ve seen has either been a helicopter or some sort of tank, but they all seem to have impossibly huge health bars and no obvious weak points. I’m probably wrong on this, but all the videos make it look like there’s virtually no strategy to the bosses other than hoarding enough health items and ammo to stay alive long enough to chip-damage a boss to death. I mean, I’m PROBABLY wrong. There may be far more to the boss fights than I realize, but I see little fun to be had thus far.

I think I’m being overly critical of a yet unreleased game because I really want a reason to justify buying a PSP, but nothing has presented itself yet. Portable Ops almost had me, but I ended up playing it on a friend’s PSP, and found I didn’t like it nearly enough to buy a system for it. Now here comes Peace Walker, supposedly a console level MGS experience overseen by Kojima himself, and it really doesn’t look any more enjoyable to play than the rather dull Portable Ops. Maybe I should continue to wait for the elusive and ever speculated twin joystick PSP, or maybe Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep will win me over. Come on, Sony, give me a reason to buy your stupid portable gaming device!!

By buddy Peter H, creator of Angels 2200, made this nifty short film local film contest. He’s looking to get as many views on youtube as possible, so I’m helping him spam his video a bit. I loves me some time travel humor.

I’ve got a very big yet small favour to ask of each and every one of you. As you know, each year our team enters the 48hours film contest in New Zealand. This year, there’s an extra twist where the film with the most online views receives a bunch of iphones for their team.

So please watch our film. If you enjoy it, hey, go ahead and watch it again:) Then tell your friends to watch it. Spread the word far and wide, and receive my eternal gratitude.

- Peter H