Hideki Kamiya is a straight pimp. Having worked on Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, and now Bayonetta, the dude owns a large portion of my gaming soul. One of the more ridiculous and awesome things about Bayonetta is the list of shout-outs that the game has been giving to Capcom greats.

One of the most classic moments in awful dialogue was Dante’s “Flock off, feather face” in the middle of Devil May Cry. Whether it was intentionally campy action movie dialogue- which I think it was, or just awful script, it has been one of the sweeter moments in gaming. I had mentioned yesterday that one of Bayonetta’s moves called for “Flock off!”, but today? Yeah, playing through today right before a boss fight, Bayonetta drops the actual dialogue.

Flock off, feather face!

I did a little geek lap around my room.

Then, the character Rodin serves as a means to another awesome Capcom reference. Any douchebag who has played through Resident Evil 4 has uttered the line “Whadya buying?!” at least over Ventrillo like a nerd. Wait, that’s just me? There’s some shitty clerk in Resident Evil 4 who sells shit to Leon to help him in his mauling of zombies. And every time you hit up the dude, he’d be all “Whadya buyin? Whadya sellin’!” It became iconic across the game, to the point where friends who had just watched me play the game know about it.

Today, I went to Rodin, who serves as the same sort of vendor in Bayonetta as the aforementioned clerk did in Resident Evil 4, opens up a cinema with this for his dialogue:

Whadya buyin? I heard that in a game once.

This was me: !!!!!!!!!!!!

Bayonetta takes fanservice to unforeseen heights, perhaps only matched by the rimjob that Kojima gave fans for twenty hours in MGS4.

Well done.

Don’t know anything about photography — but I know this is a great photo. The image is equal parts sexy, haunting, and just damn cool. In a way, it reminds me of something out of a PT Anderson flick or some shit.

Oh yeah, +5 points for the Clark Kent glasses.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  [ source ]

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

Do you remember thinking that Walt was some awesome Mind Powers Guy back at the beginning of LOST? Yeah, me too. And now those days, like the days of yore when I didn’t wake up with creaky knees and the shakes from caffeine withdrawals, are gone. There was a time when the kid seemed super special, and figured to be an integral part of the show.

Now? Now he just seems to be around living on the real world, for Locke to go and visit. Like some sort of creepy bald child molester. You ever notice that Locke is playing the part of creepy older guy with a lot of guys? Both Boone and Walt seemed to be courted by Locke, and I don’t blame Michael for being like, dude, stay the fuck away from my kid.

The first time we got to see Walt’s awesome ability to manifest shit when he is pissed was when he conjured up a polar bear. And through the polar bear, LOST conjured up some of the worse CGI I had ever seen. My friend and I were watching it and we both turned to exactly and were like “Really? Wow.”

So let’s see. Walt is all pissed off and getting butthurt over his dumb dad Michael. And then all of a sudden through the forest comes some rampaging polar bear. Michael then does the obvious thing and gives his like eleven year-old kid a knife, which the son uses to stab the living shit out of our artic friend.

The implication at the time was that when Walt was angry, he could conjure up things, apparently from books and shit on his mind. You see, earlier in the episode, dude was reading a Spanish copy of Justice League of America with a polar kicking some ass. And then later in the episode, holy shit, a polar bear! I remember thinking, sweet. This kid has a Laser Brain or some shit, and maybe he’ll lift trees with them. And then Jean Grey and he will fight the Smoke Monster, and maybe the Island is just the Danger Room. I turned out being very, very wrong.

The same sort of creepy shit went down in a flashback in the same episode. Walt was straight chillin’, reading a book about birds. I know, not nearly as exciting as a Spanish copy of JLA, but what can you do. His Mom was probably a dick, and said something like “Don’t read those god damn books with the guys with the capes and the women with the big boobies, they’ll rot your brain!” She ended up dead, so what the fuck does she know! And I turned out fine, too! Sorry Walt’s Mom, fuck you!

Anyways, Walt wants to show his Mom and her boyfriend who was a choad incarnate the book. And they keep ignoring him, preferring to argue with Walt’s dad in front of him, scarring Walt irrevocably. I mean, you stuck this kid with a shitty book, the least you could do is pay attention and be encouraged when he wants to talk to you about it!

Walt, feelin’ the Dark Side of the Force conjures up a sweet ass dead bird on their porch. They hear a righteous thunk, and then go out to investigate.

Oh damn! No wonder Walt’s Mom’s boyfriend was so up in arms! You don’t sign on to take on a Demonic Step-Child! A dead bird all stinking up his porch, probably ruining his property value.

So there we go again, Walt has sweet mind powers! He conjures up both a nasty rotting bird and a sweet ass polar bear when he gets pissed off, though it seems like he doesn’t know how he is doing it, or if he is doing it. So I watch the episode, and I’m stoked. Sweet, some supernatural sci-fi shit! And just to push it home that he’s special, the Others decide to kidnap his ass. Why else would they want some little snot? LASER BRAIN. A bunch of creepy people are vying for the love of little Walter, and who ends up getting it? No one!

Because he damn disappears off the show.

All I ever hear about is how they ended up writing Walt off the show because they knew he was going to hit puberty and grow a ton of inches and get acne. So…why did they ever give him ridiculously sweet mind powers in the first place? And don’t fucking tell me he didn’t have them!

They ended up parlaying the polar bear’s appearance into a sweet idea. I mean, having the bears spin the wheel so when the Island jumps, they’re transported, die, and leave no evidence? Fucking awesome. But clearly they weren’t there in that first episode for that reason. Don’t give me it! I’ll shank you. And then there’s the dead bird. The boy was special, a male Carrie or some shit!

And now? Fare thee well, Walt. He left the Island, but his astral ass has appeared a few times. Including one time when Jin was taking a shit, and Walt was like “Locke!” and Jin got all worried and shit harder, and Walt was like “Fuck, I teleported to the wrong place, my bad. Sorry about that, looking for Locke.” Aside from that though, not much.

Who knows though, with the last season coming and all. Maybe they rebooted time, and Walt will be back with everyone else. I wouldn’t be surprised. That’s the pain in the ass about commenting on a show that you know is just going to blow your mind out your puckered rectum, any predictions or certainties you have, are probably wrong.

[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

Starting this week, the entire Marvel Universe is going to be under Siege (2)!!!

Not to be outdone by the super-mega-wowie event of their distinguished competition, Marvel Comics has launched Siege. In a nutshell, this four-part miniseries follows Norman Osborn’s attempt to  conquer Asgard and maintain his position of power. But since Asgard is Thor’s home (and everyone loves a hunky blonde), ass-kickings are guaranteed to fly off of the panels.

And from nearly every promotion I’ve seen for Siege, the end result promises to be the reuniting of Tony Stark/Steve Rogers/Thor, a trio that (apparently) haven’t been BFFs for seven some-odd years. Although my inner cynic is telling me that such a move is counter-productive to character development and innovative storytelling, I can’t help but fall for it. I’ve seen a lot of different Avengers teams since I starting re-reading comic books back in 2004, but I’ve yet to see the lineup. I’m ready.

Potential outcomes aside, Siege #1 is a  solid start to the limited series. In the current day and age of comic book events that have prerequisite crossovers & tie-ins, the scripting of Brian Marvel Bendis is quite appreciated.  Through the course of seven pages, Bendis introduces the reader to an Asgardian named Volstagg, makes the reader care about him, and then pisses on these sympathies by having Loki and Osborn victimize the poor bastard. Ostensibly, a fan can pick up Siege without having read all of the Dark Reign titles and fully understand what the fuck is going on.

So while this first issue mostly consists of set-up and exposition that I already knew, I have to applaud the execution. Bendis walks the line, both providing context for those just jumping in while also tantalizing the diehards with appetizers of the battles for which we’ve been waiting.  Siege #1 blows up a football stadium, allows Ares to hesitatingly call Osborn’s troops to arms, launches fighter jets at a floating Asgard, beats down Thor, and shows us a certain all-American more pissed than he’s looked in years.

In the art department, Oliver Coipel’s stellar pencils are deftly rounded out by Mark Morales’ inks. Maybe I’m paying too much attention, but I love the way Morales approaches the visages of the more nefarious characters; the eyes of Obsborn, Loki and the Sentry are all shrouded in darkness as they stare right at the reader. Completing the book’s art is colorist Laura Martin, who continues to impress just as she did for all ten years of the glorious Planetary.

Maybe I’m just thinking wishfully, but something tells me that Siege is going to reinstate some sort of status quo in the 616. Therefore, I’d recommend the series not only to regular comics-readers but also to onetime fans hoping to get back in the game.

So in spite of the occasional shit-talking I do about comic events, I stand behind Siege #1.

[PS — Apologies for using the same picture for Images & Words as Caffeine Powered rocked for Variant Covers for the second week in a row. My bad.]

Perhaps the best way to describe the insanity that is Bayonetta is this: there was a moment this morning when I was frantically mashing on the X button on my 360 controller, while using my free hand to pound a two-liter of Diet Mountain Dew. On screen, an enormous demon dog type-thing was munching an enemy of mine. You see, it informed me to smash on the X button to make the battle CLIMAX. Following the encounter, Bayonetta moans, and upon receiving a Platinum Award at the end of the battle, you catch a cheap shot of her ass.

In other words, this game was created with me in mind. It’s utterly ludicrous. The action scenes are over-the-top slow-motion wank fests. The characters beyond wacky, and for some reason Bayonetta is always sucking on a lollipop, or finding a way to flash a glimpse at her leather covered crotch. It is hyper sexuality done to the zillionth degree, baked in a stew of genital-engorging character designs and frenetic action. Did I mention it was awesome?

I’m only on Chapter 4, but I figured I should post these impressions. Since I have been jacking off this game for roughly seventeen months, and I figure people are like, “Hey Ian, you sicko. Are you too busy masturbating to give us any sort of impressions?” Well, here you go. As a brief aside, I was going to type “Rubbing your man-clit”, but that just sounds so awful. Even for me.

Yeah, I’m completely fucked up on caffeine, and using Flash-like powers to try and jump into the future at the moment. What it looks like? Me running really fast into my wall, while my Nana screams at the loud and confusing noises. The cats look on at me with embarassment, wishing they could communicate in Human Talk to tell me what a dumb ass I am.

Fans of Kamiya, there’s some pretty rad fanservice for you. If you’re geeks for Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe, you’ll appreciate this. Bayonetta not only utters the words “Flock off”, in reference to the best line in gaming since “Jill, here’s a lockpick. It might be handy if you, the master of unlocking, take it with you”, from Resident Evil. Also a Kamiya game. And if Viewtiful Joe is your thing, Bayonetta, while hurtling through the air on some piece of decimated street, drops “Dancing a-go-go.”

Awesome. Well, there you have it. If I don’t die from a burst heart-organ, or from fapping myself into a friction-burn-induced-immolation, I’ll write something up upon completing it.

[click the picture for a high-res version]

Over at Slashfilm they passed on a couple of LOST promos that have the gang posing like Jesus and his B-Boy posse from the famous Last Supper painting. Slash also mentions that a bunch of other television shows have done it, but I don’t love none of them more than Battlestar Galactica. It is fitting then, that my two favorite shows wank one another off.

And take a good luck at who is rocking the Jesus of the table, Locke! But wait, did he really come back from the dead? Or was his broken, bald, scarred, dumb body simply possessed by Facob, or Jacob’s enemy, or whatever you want to call him? Who the hell knows! I’m ready though. This shit is getting real. My pants are getting tight. I got a pencil, a pad of paper, and my DVR. I’m cracking the code. THE CODE.

Head over to Slashfilm for high-res versions of the promo. And commence fawning, fapping, and anxious awaiting.

At first blush, I have absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on in this picture. Let’s take a good look. We have a giant robot looking thing, that seems like something out of Gurren Lagann, fighting some sort of dog-snake-thing. It would be pretty sick if you got to pilot mechs in Final Fantasy XIII. But instead, you’re driving a motorcycle, that is actually Shiva. It doesn’t make any sense to me at this point, and every time I try to watch a video of the combat system I just walk away confused but excited.

There is some sort of epic clash going on here, and someone is driving something. I think it’s probably the hot chick with the red hair from a prior installment of WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN THIS FINAL FANTASY XIII SCREENSHOT, but I could be wrong. The battle system seems so kinetic and over the top it is going to gel perfectly with my caffeine addiction, and utter lack of attention span. Oh pretty numbers, and attacks, and deduction of hit points!

HIT POINTS!!!

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

You guys probably don’t remember Artz, do you? That’s because you’re dicks. No, he’s not gorgeous, even though he has a sweet beard. In fact, he was sort of downright pathetic. In a lovable sort of way, of course. And if you do remember him, it’s probably because he blew himself up with a righteous stick of dynamite. A thundering boom of oblieration, sending chunks of his own dumb ass into the air, landing on everyone around him. Kaboom! A blast of appreciable proportions, that sent that son of a bitch Locke onto his ass.

Artz was just a lonely dude who wanted to come on a sweet adventure with the cool kids of the Island. He was a chemistry teacher at some shitty high school. I bet the kids drew pictures of him in his chemistry class, and they always made those funny odor lines around his armpits and had him saying things like:

You fucking kids, how many times do I have to tell you that salt is NaCl! You’re never going to get anywhere, I’m fat!

Deep down inside though, he seems like a lovable guy who just wanted to have some fun. Hated by his wife, he was probably absolutely stoked to be on the Island.

Whether you remember it or not, Artz served as a conduit for all the complaints from dickheads who can’t suspend disbelief. You know, the guys who were like, what about the other survivors! It is so improbable that they’d just let these eight people run around saving the world while the rest of them hung out with Bernard and like, played grab ass.

It’s great that the Brigade of Dorks and Philosophy Nerds that write LOST decided to address it through Artz. Using our boy Mr. Chemistry Teacher, they threw all the geeks who spend their days talking about implausbility in shows that feature Smoke Monsters a bone and shit. Here, we won’t ignore it, we’ll talk about it. Using a squishy dork to wear the mask of the complaint.

While Jack and That Chick With the Linebacker Shoulders and Locke rummaged around in the Black Rock for dynamite to blow up the Hatch, Artz and Hurley shot the shit. Realizing that they’re both fat, lovable losers, Artz felt a really deep connection with Hugo, though that’s because he didn’t realize Hurley was batshit insane and communicated with dead people. He probably thought that he was just a better placement in the crash away from being in Hugo’s place! You see, there’s only room for one fat unsexy person in a clique, and he thought it was just chance that Hugo got to snag it. But uh, that’s probably also what he thought because he didn’t realize Hugo was part of DESTINY or something. It was during this opining that he launched into his classic dialogue on the whole “situation“.

Hugo was all ignoring him, and probably thinking about pizza-covered spaghetti, when Artz says:

Am I boring you? You know what, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m not cool enough to be part of your merry little band of adventurers. I know a clique when I see one, I teach high school, pally. You know you people think you’re the only ones on this island doing anything of value. I got news for you, there are 40 other survivors of this plane crash, and we are all people too.

Pretty great. And then he mentions how Kate gets all the sweetest wreckage to build her shelter, and how Jin only catches food for the cool kids, and then he calls Hurley out for being a fat ass and having lost no weight on the Island. Mind you, addressing another complaint of nerdbombers who hyper fixate on pointless details on a show filled with fantasy.

And then? Then they blow him the fuck up! Artz seized his moment in the spotlight, screaming about dynamite breathing, and stuff that I don’t remember, because he was a chemistry teacher. Finally the fat dork’s time to shine. And while he is bragging, ka-pow. Later Artz, it has been real. They blow up the manifestation of all the grief given towards the implausibility of the show. See you later fat griping nerd! It’s pretty stellar, and when it happened I jumped because I’m a little nancy.

What follows is fantastic, though sort of odd. Not one of the Cool Kids gives a flying fuck! It’s the only time in the show when a death is addressed without any sort of seriousness. The dude is reduced to gut-cinders, and the rest of the gang just giggle! Yeah, it is sort of fucked up, but it fits with the guy’s whole premise. A big bloated conglomeration of complaints that the writers don’t care about, that are then addressed, and blown up, as the characters laugh at the character.

Just like, I’m sure the writers laugh at the complaints.

Cool kids, what a pack of dicks.

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

One of the forgotten things about LOST was the really interesting moral dilemma they brought up back in Season One. What moral dilemma, you ask? Well, it’s no other than this: when is it cool to make the sexual intercourse time with your sister? Yeah, I know. It’s a tricky, tricky situation. Boone banged the hell out of his hot sister, Shannon. It all happened off screen, but I’ve read some fan fiction, and while it isn’t exactly canonical, it’s pretty hawt, trust me.

Let’s examine the situation here. Boone’s mom and Shannon’s dad got married when the two will-be-awkward-lovers were just kids. Already, I mean, they aren’t bursting out of the same wombs! And furthermore, they don’t have the same last names! Boone Carlyle, Shannon Rutherford. I mean, you wouldn’t even know they’re quasi-related, just from being introduced to them!

Continuing, there’s also the fact that Shannon’s dad is totally pushing daisies. That’s right people looking for reasons that their behavior as acceptable, Mr. Rutherford is fucking mortis, man.

So they’re not blood-related, and the union that made them even tenuously related has been severed. By death. Never to be rekindled, unless Boone’s mom is a necrophiliac. Which would be pretty interesting, but I doubt that they’re going to delve into that in the finale season since they’ll be busy answering and not answering everything.

LOST is a smart show, man. What an interesting question they pose to the viewer: are you ashamed or completely okay with the burning sensation of love and the terse nature of your underloins as they become engorged with blood when you see Boone and Shannon make out in some dingy Australian hotel room? And as an aside, it is so obvious they didn’t film the episode in Australia, there’s not one fucking kangaroo in the shot! I’ve been to Outback Steakhouse, I know Australia. They should have ponied up the cash for it. Cheap bastards.

Me? I’m okay with it! It is a bit awkward, since you know that they pretended to be brother and sister for a while. But I mean, come on! I appreciate the issue you have raised, LOST writers, but it seems quite obvious. Two siblings, only by marriage, after the marriage has been destroyed by the scythe of the Reaper, are completely okay to bone. I mean, stop being such prudes! This is 2010. There are people painting each other in fluids on the internet, and we’re going to get up in airs about this? Oh puh-lease!

Let the two love birds have their fun. Of course, after they finally make sweet, sort of bizarre love, Shannon tells him that they’re going to just pretend like it didn’t happen when they get home. What a bitch she is, even if she is probably being properly practical. I mean, as much as I am for free love and shit, they can’t really thrive in a world that isn’t filled with liberal, lawless, godless heathens like me.

“Oh yeah, this is my wife. How did we meet? Well, we were taking baths together before our pubic regions had been activated by the Hand of Hormones. Yeah, step-siblings. And then, like, her Dad died, and we were both lonely, and here we are! What do you mean stay away from your children? Don’t fucking judge us! Love knows no bounds, and laughs at conceptions perpetuated by contemporary social power structures!”

Boone and Shannon’s screwing was a pretty good picture of what LOST was in Season One. As Pepsibones Krueger pointed out while talking to me, “At that point the show was a drama exploring people’s lives, with a little Sci-Fi thrown in”, which sums it up better than I could have. It’s interesting to see an episode like this, where it is centered around Boone and his incestuous Messiah Complex. Which makes me wonder, can it be a Messiah Complex when the whole reason you’re saving that person is because you were smuggling panties out of their bedroom when you were thirteen and confused?

I’m not sure.

But I mean, what were these two characters around for? Every one else on the show seems to hold some sort of amazing, important connection to the Island and they were like beckoned there by the hand of Jacob or whatever. These two? Who the fuck knows. Did they die because they weren’t important? Or were they never made important in future episodes because they were killed off? Or more than likely, were the writers just wanting to write an episode with a sweet ass moral dilemma?

Bayonetta’s here. She’s really here. She’s in my room. She’s mine! Stay the fuck away, Kenobi! And oh, I’m ready. To uh, play the game. Yup.