Malik
(9/21/09)
This was one interesting
weekend. I mean the Huskies beat the number 3 USC team in a damned
good game. Ok...to put it more realistically, the Huskies beat USC
in one amazing 4th quarter. The end of the game was something that
showed the Huskies are finally under good leadership. I mean the
most obvious thing about the final drive that gave the Huskies the
lead on a field goal with only a couple seconds to go was how the
clock was managed in the best fashion possible.
I wish I could say the same good things about the Seahawks.
However, when you see Tatupu, Wilson, and Hasselbeck all leave the
game injured, something is not going right. Of course, with
Hasselbeck it was obvious where the problems came from. He decided
to ignore that he is a glass QB and instead ran the ball when he
couldn't find an open receiver. That was bad...but he ended the play
with a dive to gain some extra yards, in theory. In reality, as soon
as he started to dive, you knew where he was going...to the
sidelines in pain.
At least it's, for now,
only bruised ribs. I expected his back to, once again, be destroyed.
However, this just gives him another chance, maybe next week, to act
like he's not made of glass and to get a more major of injury. Way
to go Matt...you are Superman in your eyes, but you're still fragile
in the eyes of the world and you need to knock this shit off before
we repeat last season. At least his not-complete-injury didn't add
another bad mark to a game that was just bad on all fronts.
Gore is a decent runner.
However, if he's playing the Seahawks, he becomes the best runner
ever seen in the NFL. I mean this was the first game anyone has had
two 75+ yard TD runs in a single game in the last 12 years. I can't
say I'm surprised that Gore did it when he can pick apart the
Seahawk defense like it's a Jr. Varsity team he's playing against.
Next week hopefully
going to turn around things after this horrible loss. However, if
the injuries keep piling on, who knows what will happen? Actually,
we all know. If the injuries keep coming in, then we're just going
to see another year like last season for the Seahawks; a season of
pain on and off the field.
To shift gears, I played
through every level of Katamari Forever. I'm not done by any means,
but I'm feeling a bit jaded to this game from the first level. I
mean there's only a few new levels on this game. Most of the levels
are revisions of previous levels. You have around a dozen levels
from both We Love Katamari and Beautiful Katamari. Then you have a
couple of levels from the original Katamari Damacy. You only really
have a few new stages, and one was played out due to being on the
demo (the watering level).
The other problem with
the game is that it just brought so little new to the table. There
is a great new mode (drive) which adds some new life to the game,
and a new move (jumping). There's even two new item pickups that are
pretty fun (the two hearts to suck in things around you), but it's
mostly the same stuff you've seen before. It's all feeling quite
dated and old when you pay $50 for a new game and get so little new
to show for it. It would be like paying full price for a new car,
but all you get is your old beater car with a new coat of paint.
I am having some fun,
but not as much as any previous Katamari game has given. That's
saying something since Beautiful Katamari required paid DLC, to
unlock content on the disk, to complete all tasks. I'd rather have
that than so little that's new. Plus, one big selling point was how
you can change the textures of the world (including wood grain
textures), but I've yet to find a single one of those features after
finishing all levels in normal mode and most of them in drive mode.
Drive is the only
addition to really take me in a fun new direction so far. It's like
normal Katamari, but on speed. You move about three times faster and
have less control. It makes the standard "get big" levels really fun
and rapid, but makes the selective levels (like the only get a
single cow or bear of the best size possible) into a whole new level
of challenge. I wish drive was not the only real new addition to
enjoy in this game, but with only three or so new levels, you can
only find novel enjoyment in so few of places.
Malik |