Angie and I have spent a bit of time playing the new Wii Sports Resort lately and really have fun with it.  Since Angie’s post, we’ve noticed a lot of searches coming in from people trying to find the “vacation house” or “vacation home.”  We were intrigued since this was something we hadn’t seen in the game, and we don’t normally look up these kinds of things online (unless we’re really stuck).

So when we discovered the location of this mysterious “vacation home,” we figured the least we could do is share the information.  If you don’t want to hear about our Wahu Island getaway, go back to your spreadsheets and other documents now.

Wii Sports Resort has a section called Air Sports that features such games as Skydiving, Dogfight and our personal favorite (today, anyway) Island Flyover.  In the flyover, you can tour all the areas of the island where the other games take place.  It’s really something to see, and a fun bit of programming on the part of the developers.  Aside from sightseeing, you can spend your time shooting balloons out of peoples’ hands or finding points of interest (80 in all) with options of flying during the day, evening or night.  Once you’ve found all the points of  interest, you’ll be rewarded with your own Wahu Island dwelling.  The house is located on the private island where the information block happens to point out that “a house here would have an amazing view.”  For the completist, the fun doesn’t end there, as you’ll also be rewarded for shooting all white balloons (held by the island’s Miis) and finding every point of interest during all three day parts.

Good luck finding your own island paradise!  Don’t forget to write.

Thursday night, July 30th, Christy and I went to the Face 2 Face tour of Billy Joel and Elton John at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. This is cool for two reasons: 1) neither of us had been to Citizens Bank Park before (not being baseball fans of any caliber) and 2) we were going to see a show with arguably the two biggest and best piano men in rock and roll history. I had been worried earlier in the week, as Billy Joel had been struck with the flu, forcing the cancellation of two dates in upstate NY. Elton was well, but the design of the sets, with both men playing on each other’s songs at the front and back of the show, made it next to impossible for it just to become an Elton John show. So, I worried that Billy would not be well for Philadelphia. No cancellation notices came through, so we went.

Citizens Bank Park is nice. I don’t need to tell the rest of the MLD crew that. They already know, being Philadelphia Phillies fans. It’s so nice, I actually wondered about going to games there in the future, and sitting in the 400s (which is where our tickets were, above home plate, directly across from the stage), so that if I get bored with farming (whoops, I mean BASEBALL) I can look out on a really impressive view of Philadelphia proper, and thrill to the fact that I don’t have to be in Camden to see that view. Oh… wait, this is a concert review. Right…

Elton and Billy have done this sort of package thing before, and I attended, back in 96 when it was the Heart and Soul tour. There was fire, there was gusto, there was two men who still had full heads of hair, and a Veterans Stadium jam-packed with fans all the way to the 700 level. Fast forward to now, and only Elton still has hair (plugs/hair transplants for Reg, still going strong, and looking good!), and… well, it was sort of a repeat of that 13 years-in-the-past concert, with a few notable exceptions: Billy has no hair to speak of now, except of the facial variety, Billy’s longtime drummer, Liberty DeVitto was NOT on this tour, and Elton… just didn’t seem into it. That’s okay, most of the stadium didn’t seem really into it, either. Whether it was because it was still daylight through the entire Elton John set, or he was dreading having to play the only songs Philadelphia seems to know from his catalog (which are, for the record: Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting, Crocodile Rock, Rocket Man, Don’t Let The Sun Go Down on Me, I’m Still Standing and, yes, Philadelphia Freedom), Elton played a solid, professional and very distant set.

Billy Joel on the other hand, started out slow, and I feared the show would suck completely. I mean, the man HAD just come off 72 hours of doctor-ordered rest from a bout with the flu. Angry Young Man felt more like Tired Old Geezer in the way Billy played it, but cripes, only one song later, during Big Shot, Billy hit his stride. His between song banter hadn’t changed too much since last I’d seen him live at the Wachovia center, though he did keep it fresh for the CBP. He also gave a shout out to his daugther, Alexa Ray Joel, who was going to be playing her own show at the Tin Angel, the night after. He looked really proud to have his daughter “continue in the family business”. Even though he seemed to be just hanging on in some of his songs, Billy kicked out the piano jams with his band. It was almost a disappointment when Elton John came back for some more dueling pianos action at the end, but lo and behold, Elton finally looked like he was ENJOYING himself at the end of the concert. Go figure!

A couple of weird notes:

• Two “ain’t gonna see the sunny side of 45” blondes behind us at the show, with their obnoxious kids, kept yakking their way through most of Elton John’s set, sending the one gal’s husband repeatedly for beers. The kids themselves gave us such eloquent food for thought as this: “This song is SOOO long!” and after only one song into Elton John’s set, “All these songs sound the same.” My favorite of these mooks, though, is this brilliant line, from the blond-headed mullet wearing kid with the Phillies shirt on: “This is SOOO not the studio version. This is DEFINITELY the live version of this song.” Really? At a concert, which is LIVE, there’s the LIVE version? You don’t say, Aristotle?!

• During the last part of the show, when EJ rejoined Billy on stage, Billy had a fly swatter in his hand, that he was beating himself with, while playing one handed, and would get up from the piano during songs and walk away for bits. Antibiotics a little strong, Billy?

• Christy and I got lost searching for our car, and walked through all the surrounding parking lots, until I remembered the movable landmark of a Winnebago, which finally led us back to our car after about 30 minutes of searching. I can only chalk this up to my training with ComedySportzPhilly, and call it a callback.

Even after all this time, I still love Billy Joel. Even after being knocked down by the flu, the man can still get up and give a rock-n-roll show worth your ticket price. Tell your grandparents to try that on for size!

End verdicts: Elton John: dislike. Billy Joel: like! Mook morons behind us: dislike! View of the city: like! Sitting at the ballpark watching rock and roll with my wife: like!

Overall: Like!

Yours truly,

Lydonlistens

Those little Miis are back!  And they’re just as adorable as ever in Wii Sports Resort.  This time you get to see your Nintendo-ified self in vacation gear as part of 12 sports with sub-games featured for each (the full list of sports is below).

Wii Sports Resort is one of the Wii games featuring/requiring the new Wii MotionPlus technology (Tiger Woods is another notable).  While the idea is neat, it can be incredibly frustrating when the sensor won’t calibrate between games and it’s clearly been losing its signal at times.  Another downside is that the accessory costs $20 separately, although one is included with the game for $50 (a far cry from the Wii Play bundled with the Wii Remote, but this is a far superior game).  You still need to spend the money on a second one if you want to take advantage of most of the multiplayer games.

At first the game didn’t seem as physically intense (we play for keeps) as Wii Sports, but after two nights I’m pretty sore.  Pete and I both really like the 3-point Shoot Out in Basketball and Archery, but we’ve easily spent the most time on the Swordplay game Speed Slice and Wakeboarding.  We also took a few Cycling tours around the island.  Much like a real bike ride around a volcanic island, it’s exhausting.

I do not like any of the Frisbee® games or the Aerial Dog Fight (much as she hated the Super Monkey Ball version, Monkey Dog Fight).  I really just hate them because I’m terrible at them (but my feelings may change once my shoulder recovers).  I think this may have lead to Pete enjoying them more.  I did enjoy the Swordplay Duel even though I did not perform well.  This has also not diminished my desire to be a contestant on American Gladiators.

The Bowling is essentially the same as the Wii Sports version, and I imagine the Golf is too.  A one-hundred pin, 10-frame game has been added though so it’s not a total rehash.  The Archery and Table Tennis have been pulled from Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, but the Wii MotionPlus adds a new element to the gameplay making it a bit more fun and challenging.

The box has a disclaimer regarding the ratings for online interactions, but it’s unclear if there’s an online component to the game from what we’ve played.  The game compels me to enjoy a cocktail while playing Table Tennis and I want our next vacation to be somewhere we can learn to Wakeboard.

Wii Sports Resort features:

Swordplay
Wake Boarding
Frisbee®
Archery
Basketball
Table Tennis
Golf
Bowling
Power Cruising (wave runner)
Canoeing
Cycling
Air Sports (aerial combat!)

This week not only saw the release of Marvel’s Incredible Hulk #600 but Amazing Spider-Man #600 as well.  It looks like I made a poor decision in what to read on Wednesday (especially considering I only had time to read one book).  While Hulk #600 had more problems than I care to recall, Amazing #600 was truly amazing. Featuring a massive 104 pages of new material, this book was well worth its $4.99 price tag.

The feature story by Dan Slott and John Romita Jr. told a tale of a frail and aging Doctor Octopus trying to leave his legacy to the world.  Of course, this was a gift the people of New York were wishing they could return as it all goes wrong and chaos ensues.  Set against the back drop of Aunt May’s wedding to John Jameson Sr. (J. Jonah Jameson’s father) Spider-Man has even more motivation to save the day.  This is a great story for an anniversary issue as it has an epic quality to it while being very much set in current Spidey continuity.  Some plotlines are wrapped up and a number of new ones are set in motion.  The artwork is top notch and it’s the kind of story that could have been spread over three regular sized issues.

The rest of the book consists of short stories including: Spider-Man’s trip to a psychiatrist by Stan Lee and Marcos Martin, and a museum by Zeb Wells and Derec Donovan; a couple of touching stories featuring Uncle Ben by Mark Waid and Colleen Doran, and Aunt May by Marc Guggenheim and Mitch Breitweiser; “If I Was Spider-Man” by Bob Gale and Mario Alberti where some kids in a playground daydream about what it would be like to be Spidey; and a final story featuring Madame Web sets things in motion for the Spidey event the Gauntlet continuing throughout the year in Amazing Spider-Man.  Between the pages of each of these stories are series of “Spider-Man covers you’ll never see” that were good for a laugh.

All in all, I can’t say enough good things about this book.  I’m reading Amazing Spider-Man on a regular basis and this was really satisfying both as an issue that fits right into ongoing events and as an event itself.

I’m really only writing this because I’m so surprised at Pete’s review and the fact that he seemed to follow Blackest Night as well as he did. I’m a guy who has been reading DC comics for close to 20 years and the level of continuity featured in this issue was ridiculous. To fully understand the continuity references in this issue you basically should be familiar with the following:
– Identity Crisis
– Green Lantern since the Rebirth mini-series.
– Green Lantern Corps since before the Sinestro Corps storyline.
– Infinite Crisis
– 52
– Final Crisis
– Final Crisis: Legions of 3 Worlds (Which still hasn’t finished being published)
– Geoff Johns’ Superman stories
– Geoff Johns’ Hawkman reincarnation stories
– Probably Flash Rebirth

To me that’s crazy excessive and I read virtually all of it! Beyond that the issue barely touches on the War of Light which the Green Lantern titles have been building up to as a prelude to Blackest Night.

Also, how concerned are we supposed to be about the fate of the Hawks? They just died in Final Crisis a few months ago, but that has clearly been since retconned.

Pete wanted to know why this is all happening now. I guess this is indeed part of the mystery, but what we’re seeing is the fulfillment of an ancient prophesy regarding the Blackest Night. You’d know that if you had read all of the above prerequisites.

I think this story will end up being interesting and exciting due to Johns’ involvement with it. But the first issue certainly wasn’t what I expected.

My biggest concern right now comes from seeing pictures of the Blackest Night Aquaman action figure, who is all zombied up but has perfectly combed hair. Please tell me our zombie heroes are not going to have perfect hair as a means of identification since they’re not wearing their traditional costumes!

Zombies do not use hair gel.