Santa and the Culling

I hate Christmas.

Let me clarify.

I hate retail Christmas.

I don't mind spending time in church, listening to carols, driving through neighborhoods to look at houses decked out in lights.  But I hate what retail has done to Christmas.  This coming from someone who isn't overly church-going.  I follow Christian tenants, encourage my children to do the same, but I don't attend church every week.  

Yesterday my family (my wife and after much prodding, all three children) tackled cleaning out kiddie toys in the basement.  The culling as my wife put it.  We aren't finished but we have gotten a huge swath of toys sorted, bagged, and processed (either for donation or garbage).  During the process there was much, "I want to keep that", "What was that from?", "Oh look it's the kid's first X", etc.  Along with those sentiments there were several tears shed by my youngest.  The tears could have been from her seeing part of her childhood being bagged up and given away, or from a bit of a cold that she is fighting.  Our society is very much a "give me what I want", "that's mine", self centered culture.  Mostly due to Television and the constant barrage of the cool new thing.  My family has fallen into that societal shift.  The evidence of that is currently in my basement where there are seven rubber tubs now empty of what used to be stuffed animals, dolls, play sets, etc.  I have three full 30 gallon sized garbage bags full of old toys ready for donation, a banquet table covered with play sets too big to fit into large garbage bags, and eight 15 gallon sized bags full of trash.  Why?  Seriously.  Why do we have so much crap?

Things to do without a PS3

I got home on Friday last week after a long day of work to find my PS3 no longer able to boot.  I went to boot up the console with one of my Dual Shock 3 controllers and heard the familiar beep and whirl of the fan and then a sharp beep beep and then nothing.  Huh.  So I pressed the power button again and nothing.  A flash of panic hit me.  I pressed the button again and saw the green light come on, the familiar fan whirling to life and then saw the green light flash yellow and then begin to blink slowly red.  Poof.  Gone.  Dead.  Just like that.  

Spider Man Shattered Impressions

Last night I posted two tweets after playing the new Beenox developed Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions.  They weren't exactly positive comments about the game.  I don't regret tweeting them but I got a polite DM today asking to clarify my comments.  Since it has been a long time since I've actually posted anything worthwhile here I figure I would expand on my experience with the game.

I haven't played any past solo Spider-Man games, but I have played X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, Marvel Ultimate Alliance and MUA 2 as well as forming my early years nose buried in too many Marvel comics to list.  I try to avoid reading too much about a game I want to play for fear of it skewing my feelings before getting to actually play, but I have skimmed one or two reviews to get the sense that SMSD has a lot of good but a few points that keep the game from being a game of year contender.

Little Big Planet 2

I feel a bit obliged to post the new trailer for Little Big Planet 2 from Media Molecule because I post the announcement trailer a few months ago and because I haven't posted anything else in a while. (Dreadful thing having a summer full of gaming and chasing kids around--joking of course)

All joking aside here is the latest trailer for LBP2, which gives us the impression that the new game won't just be a whole new game engine to learn and build our own levels from, but a full 50 new MM created games. How can you not like Sackboy?