scattered comments

– I don’t know where my phone is, again. Don’t call me!

I won’t pick up anyway, I screen all my calls because I’m hilariously insane and you probably don’t have my number. But I thought you needed to know.

– X-Men Legends 2 mid-game: I’m in Act 3, having just shut down the power plant. Yay. I haven’t unlocked any of the three ?s yet, though I’ve picked up both parts so far.

Hitting X X O should not be so hard to do, but it’s somehow impossible for me to get it to work in the X-Men games, and now that I’m running into ludicrous opponents who expect me to do just that, it’s tremendously annoying. Their own pop up moves throw off the timing, but the bigger problem is my own teammates getting in the way; the combo doesn’t work from behind, and it’s sometimes impossible to get the bad guy to focus on you. I eventually just dumped the rest of my team, used Rouge to slow the guy, and did the combo twelve times till it actually worked. What a pain.

They really powered down Wolverine in this game as compared to the last; at level 23, I’ve just now barely got his health regeneration up to a rate where it’s actually useful instead of a novelty. But other people are better and it’s interesting to work with the different powers (even if they keep wanting to auto assign lame status effecting specials instead of offensive moves.)

I assume Scarlet Witch is playable character instead of her brother despite Quicksilver actually being on an X-team at one point (even if he wouldn’t wear the uniform!) because they thought of a billion ways for Wanda to use her powers in cool video game ways and “running really fast” doesn’t immediately translate into this sort of format. But it could be she threatened to turn the video game into a line spanning crossover which would be pointless and suck, and they made the right decision. Definite possibility.

The one person who really mystifies me – well, there’s the whole “Iron Man? wha?” thing but that’s so random it’s fine – is Sunfire’s inclusion. It took me a while to figure out exactly who’s side he was supposed to be on – given a new outfit, his usual personality (actually not seen yet), and the way they’re telling the stories in the games, they could fit him in with Magneto’s group fine – and it eventually occurred to me he was supposed to be the replacement token Asian for Jubilee in this game. Which got me to thinking about token Asian X-Men and which ones I liked…

* Jubilee: Thumbs Up. Part of this is because my first (or something close to that) exposure to the X-Men was the cartoon, and she had no idea what was going on and neither did I, so we could relate. Also, I knew people who were exactly like Jubilee except for the mutant firework powers, and she’d act exactly how they’d act if they had mutant firework powers.

This has nothing do with anything but I’m convinced that whoever wrote her most recent appearance read the GenX book (where she was last a regular) and prosperously got her confused with Husk, since she was definitely heading in a direction where she’d end up running politically active websites and Jubilee was certainly not. That last cameo appearance wasn’t even consistent with the cameo from two weeks prior; it was just a random character shift that I’m forgetting happened right after I end this sentence.

* Sunfire: Thumbs Up. Though I think there was probably a twenty year period where every appearance started with him being a jerk, built to him coming to an understanding with his temporary partners, had him leave on better terms, and was back to being a jerk the next time. That’s sorta awesome – he knew who he was and he wasn’t changing. And now he’s – dead? not dead? dead but part of Rouge? dead but alive in future timelines? Probably a jerk.

* Sunpyre: Thumbs Down. What the heck was with that issue, anyway? Was the remit “do everything you can to make this look like a Big Event, but know that we’re going to ignore and reverse anything you do”? Admirable job! Years later, some intern must’ve been working on a list of established characters who can be killed off without anyone whenever they need a cheap death, and must’ve gone boinkers when they found out Sunfire had a sister he seemingly has never met – that’s a gimmie. I’m not good at comparing faked time spans between TV shows and comic books, but did Fraiser go longer without mentioning to the gang at Cheers that he had a sibling who was exactly like him than Sunfire did with the X-Men? One of the two has to have the record.

* Xorn and Xorn and possibly Xorn but certainly not Magento unless maybe it was: Thumbs up, then down, then up, then down, then down again. Call me when your story makes sense again. HINT!!!: That’ll be never.

* Thunderbird II: Thumbs down. No personality, no character expect being the rookie and then not being the rookie, with the name of the Dead X-Men (who I guess may or may not be dead now – boy is he going to be ticked! unless he dies again). They couldn’t spend the half second to think of an actual Indian name instead of just overtones? It’s not his fault he was written to be uninteresting – I was willing to like him – but he was and I don’t care.

* Psylocke and Kwannon: Thumbs down. One wasn’t around long anyway, one’s kinda just incidentally Asian and I really don’t care much about either.

That’s it, that’s the list? There’s others who’ve hung out around with the X-Men but I think these are the only one who were actually in the group (and I really can’t think of one I care much about to squeeze them in here.)

Back to the game…

I meant to half heartedly complain about not even a token mention of Angel in the first game – I didn’t even see a weapon named after him – because he’s one of the original five and all, even if they had like three ideas for him since he turned blue (and one was “unturn him blue”) – but what they’ve had him doing here is perfectly acceptable.

– TK essentially trading his excellent radio show for long bus trips and doing a late night football game I don’t/won’t care about unless it effects my fantasy team seems like a bad deal for me, but I’m sure he’ll say something that’ll cause a mildly hilarious controversy and that’ll be somewhat redeeming.

– You know it’s time to move on when all the places you eat lunch at know you and your order by heart. They all weirdly like me because I’m an easy order, but now I’ve decided that it’s a bit creepy when fast food places know you by order.

– Let’s look at the Figure 4 Daily standings

Justin Shapiro: 2
Joe Gagne: 2 (I think?)
thecubsfan: 1

I’m not saying, I’m just saying. Plus I think I told Hobbes one night I was retiring from radio gigs to go out on a high note, though I may have just been bored. I thought Justin was highly enjoyable yesterday, even if he would’ve lost Tough Enough. I figure he would’ve ended up wrestling Kid Kash and announcing on Velocity, but that’s just my guess.

The revelation, and I may have said this before, is that Bryan Alvarez is actually really good at this radio interviewing thing. That’s not supposed to be a knock – it’s just most of the radio shows who send their own show notes to all the sites each week read like things I would never ever want to listen, and on the occasion I’ve actually tried, I quickly figured out I should’ve stuck with the never ever concept. Bryan’s shows sound like you’re just eavesdropping on conversations rather than a forced interview. Maybe it’s because he’s done in a hundred times by now, maybe it’s because he goes (purposefully or not) the TK route of having on a lot of people who discuss things regularly rather than wrestlers/fighters themselves (who aren’t usually as good discussers), maybe I’m just biased? It just seems quasi-professional, which is another backhanded compliment and I really should stop.

I think I’m giving up on the MMA guest shows, just because I can’t manage to care the slightest bit about MMA shows and wouldn’t bother with them if I weren’t getting them with all the other shows. No offense to the people who do them, and I figure the same is true with a lot more people on the occasion I talk about lucha.

* I’m thinking about going to the SHIMMER show this weekend, and I actually believe the show’s going to be good, but I don’t if I’ll actually go. I mean, I definitely go if it was in my basement and I could stop watching to play video games whenever I’d like, but I think laziness is going to overpower me actually doing anything.

* I’m psyching myself out on doing lucha recaps and it’s killing me. I’d expound on that pointlessly more, but I see the bell’s about to ring and I’m out of time.