TMNT: THE MOVIE GAME

With a new Turtles movie in theaters, you just knew they’d release a video game tie-in to milk the franchise for even more cash. But is it worth buying? Read our review of the PC version of Ubisoft’s TMNT for more details.  (3/31/07)

So, following my haiku “review” of TMNT and extended comments here in the blog, here is a fairly lengthy review of the PC version of the game based on the movie. I don’t have a lot to add, as I’ve included just about everything that I wanted to say in the actual review — but yeah, read that. And if you’re interested in giving the game a try, you can download the PC demo from Ubisoft’s game site! The page is admittedly pretty confusing to navigate (I never did find that interactive comic book thing it mentioned, unless they meant to suggest that the entire site is the comic), but there should be a button towards the lower right-hand corner that will let you grab the demo. It’s got an eight-minute time-limit (which is kind of silly, seeing as how you can get fairly far into the level and would only need an additional minute or three to complete it altogether), but I guess Ubisoft did that to trick players into thinking that the level is longer and thereby conceal the overall brevity of the game. Shame on you, Ubisoft.

As always, comments are encouraged and appreciated. 🙂

…how difficult it was for me to get those columns on the front page to line up in both Firefox and IE7. Making matters worse, I have a strong feeling that they look completely broken in IE6. 🙁

At any rate, you can now summon the Foot Clan to search the text of the article blurbs for you! Give it a try and let me know what you think.

A Crayon Haiku #63!

Well, the latest TMNT film is finally here! Alas, for us at Scary-Crayon, it’s something of a disappointment. We’ve summed up our thoughts in A Crayon Haiku #63, but see the attendant blog post for a fuller assessment.  (3/25/07)

A Crayon Haiku #62!

A Crayon Haiku #62 marks the writing debut of Grimlock, who has composed a haiku about the rather unfortunate state in which he appears in this short piece. Curse those Autobots and their poor leadership skills!  (3/25/07)

Yeah, it’s not much, but here’s a bit of filler to tide you over until the next update: A Crayon Haiku #62 and A Crayon Haiku #63. The first of these is a reference to “Desertion of the Dinobots” from season 2 of the original Transformers cartoon, but the picture itself was taken while Grimlock was drying after I applied some clear nail polish to his hip joints. Good stuff.

As for the second, I’ll doubtless have a Hot Flash (or whatever I decide to call the comics following #100; do feel free to weigh in on that) or two about the new TMNT movie, but — for the moment — suffice it to say that I was kind of disappointed with it. I mean, I wasn’t expecting Welles’ The Trial, but given all of the OMGZ BEST TURTLES MOVIE EVER type fan reviews, I was expecting it to at least live up to that descriptor. It totally doesn’t. It comes nowhere near the level of the first movie. For all of its preachiness about family and brotherly love, it fails to actually illustrate these concepts in a manner even remotely on par with the many great moments of the first film. (For a look at some of those moments, see our 2004 Father’s Day tribute to Splinter.) And while after seeing the movie I’d determined that it was at least better than TMNT II, my re-watching of those earlier flicks yesterday has forced me to recant that statement.

Yes, this new movie looked better and had a slightly more serious tone than the early films, but those films are easily superior in terms of plot, direction, and characterization — particularly where the villains are concerned. TMNT II is definitely inferior to the first movie, but it still introduced Tokka and Rahzar and Super Shredder (who’s really just Shredder mutated, but still) and gave them enough characterization for them to be memorable characters. By comparison, Karai and the stone generals in the new film were barely even mentioned by name, such that if I didn’t already know who they were I’d be reduced to calling them “that Foot chick” and “those rock dudes”. And whereas the first two films had decent enough (if simple) storylines and direction that, at the very least, wasn’t distracting, TMNT 2007 felt rushed and made little sense at times. (Why the heck did Leo have such a problem with the Nightwatcher, seeing as how he was pretty much doing the same thing they did when they battled the Foot and defeated the Shredder? How did these giant monsters show up in NYC without anyone noticing? Since when was April a badass ninja skilled enough to go toe to toe with freaking Karai? Would a mask-wearing mutant turtle really criticize his brother for “dressing up like it’s Halloween?” I could go on.) I don’t think it was a terrible movie, and TMNT fans will want to check it out for the fantastic battle between Leo and Raph, but I found the flick on the whole to be highly unsatisfying. Animation aside, it was only slightly better than one of the ho-hum filler episodes from the 2K3 cartoon series. 🙁

And finally, regarding the site’s ongoing redesign, here’s a question concerning the search: how do you feel about the highlighted words? Like, if you enter a search query, the page outputs with your terms highlighted (I liked purple, though it’s possible for me to change the color). Search terms are also highlighted for visitors coming in from engines like Google and Yahoo. Admittedly, I’m not sure how I feel about it — on the one hand, it could be helpful to people, but on the other hand (at least in my case), I find highlighted words to be kind of annoying when I visit a page, since I’d typically just use the “Find” dialogue to locate them myself. And seeing as how readers would still have to do this if the search brought them to an article (because those lie outside of the WordPress database and therefore outside the scope of the Search Hilite plugin), the highlighting wouldn’t necessarily be all that helpful anyway.

Speaking of searches, I’m planning to add a search box to the category content pages as well. Owing to the point above, it wouldn’t let you search the fulltext of articles, but you would be able to search the blurbs. However, this could be even more useful for locating relevant articles. For example, if you search for “Donatello”, you won’t get all of the pieces in which I simply mention his name, but you’ll get the ones in which he features prominently enough to warrant a mention in the blurb. So yeah, that’s on the horizon too.

And eventually there will be new articles!

I just made a few updates to the sidebar. They’ve thrown the alignment off on the main page, but as I’ll likely be adding more links and perhaps other stuff to the sidebar and the main and content pages in the near future, I’m not in a terrible hurry to get that taken care of. I mean, the columns are misaligned (and necessarily so) on all of the category archive pages.

And I guess my question at the end of the previous post kind of got overshadowed by the “insults” and death threats and whatnot, so feel free to post a response here regarding the nominal state of Dusty Plastic HELL comics in the near future. All for now — ja!

A Crayon Haiku #61!

Those wacky exterminators are popping up everywhere — apparently even in the homes of people too fat to actually walk to the store to purchase them! See A Crayon Haiku #61 and the attendant blog entry for details.  (3/15/07)

Aaaand here’s another quickie — A Crayon Haiku #61! I probably should have done something related to THE IDES OF MARCH (hope nothing unfortunate befell you, btw), but I caught the tail end of this show on TLC last night and just had to post this. I mean, I know this is obviously a serious psychological problem for these people, but I find it hard to feel sorry for people who get so fucking fat that they are unable to walk or even get out of their beds and still continue to shovel in excess of 9,000 calories into their mouths on a daily basis. When this one 600-pound cow — whose daily diet includes something like four large meals and multiple snacks that include an entire one-pound bag of M&Ms — saw what she eats in a day laid out on a table and commented that seeing it all like this really makes her think twice, I got angry. As if barely being able to walk because one’s knees are unable to support your fatness isn’t enough to get one to think twice! Shit, I’d be thinking twice about my eating habits if my weight got to 150 pounds, let alone four times that amount. These people should simply be exterminated.

And then, JUST AS I MADE THAT VERY REMARK, they cut to this other fatass who had the nerve to be sitting there with a bowl of food on his naked chest — apparently he’d gotten too fat and sloppy to even wear clothes, so they just draped a bedsheet over his lower half — and I noticed something. At first I thought that perhaps I was developing my own serious psychological problem, because there was no way that this dude could’ve had a Dalek sitting behind his fat ass. I rewinded and watched the segment again to make sure. Then I paused and took a screencap. There was no mistaking it. A DALEK. And it’s from the new Doctor Who series, so it’s not as if he acquired it as a younger lad when he was thin enough to actually walk to the store. It’s possible that he was thin enough to purchase it in 2005/6, since apparently these people eat so much that they can legitimately gain 50+ pounds in a single month, but I’m guessing that he was immobile when that Dalek came into his possession. Somehow, a bastard so fat that he cannot even leave his bed acquired a Dalek. A remote-controlled Dalek, too — you can see the controller right next to it. The fucking toy is more mobile than he is. And yet he sits there, NAKED, talking about food and eating on camera. Disgusting.

Okey-doke, all for now. Seeya next time, when (hopefully) I will have an actual article for you! If not, maybe another Hot Flash. Actually, seeing as how there are tons of Hot Flashes and hardly any “legitimate” Dusty Plastic HELL episodes, I’m thinking of just merging them — which is to say maybe discontinuing the “Hot Flash” line after #100 and just calling them all Dusty Plastic HELL. Heck, I could even start up a new edition called Dusty Plastic HELL v2 or something. I’d probably come up with special names for the special, lengthier comics that actually tell a story (a la the Halloween and New Year’s editions), but yeah. So my question is this: would you a) welcome this change, b) actively oppose this change, or c) not care either way because the content would still be pretty much exactly the same? Lemme know, with reasons if applicable.

And do feel free to continue to share feedback concerning the revised layout! The IE6 display problem should be fixed now, so hopefully everything is working well with that. Ja! 🙂

EDIT: Apparently, according to some folks I know, wider shots revealed that fatty actually had MULTIPLE Daleks in his room. In fact, if you look really closely at the blue and red controller thing next to the Dalek’s gold remote, you can see a miniature Dalek in front of it! Fatty sure likes Daleks, but he should have them confiscated for being such a fucking pig. He doesn’t deserve them. 🙁

Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #98!

The Daleks return to Scary-Crayon in Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #98, in which a restaurant comment card asks the question: what would a Dalek do if it owned a zpizza establishment? I think you know the answer.  (3/14/07)

So, as promised, here’s that new (short) Hot Flash! For those of you who’ve never heard of zpizza — and don’t feel bad; I’d never heard of it until I went there — it’s a pizza chain restaurant that was rated as having something like the best pizza in the DC area. It kinda reminded me of the pizza one would find at a joint in a college town or at a trendy bistro (read: “authentic” pizza), which is to say that you’ll definitely enjoy it if you consider yourself to be a pizza connoisseur or balk at the idea of ordering delivery from Dominoes. But me? I’d personally rather have a slice of the good ol’ cheap Pizza Hut ‘za. I heart Pizza Hut.

Anyway, zpizza had these cards that I guess I should have filled out and left with them, but I thought the prompt was funny and would make for a good quickie comic so yep yep here we are. 🙂

Also, on the same day, we swung by another restaurant by the name of Cheeburger Cheeburger. You might not think too much of a place that misspells the name of its flagship menu item (twice), but the onion rings that I got there were absolutely fantastic. I hear that the burgers are pretty good too, but I couldn’t tell you about that since I do not eat beef. They put your picture on the wall if you eat an entire one-pound burger in one sitting (half-pounders for kids), which I guess would have seemed cool to me back in the day. Now, though, I’d just feel embarrassed.

This from the guy who photographed himself eating Pup Corn.

Anyway, that does it for this post — again, comments are encouraged, and (per my comments in the previous entry) do let me know what you think of the updated layout! Ja, minna-san.

The updated layout — at least for the most part — should be running smoothly now. I’m still planning to make some changes to the sidebar (new links/link buttons, updated WP/plugin information, and maybe move the copyright info there as well, etc.) and of course change the main page footer. At present it says “Back to… Scary-Crayon” but technically, being on the main page (or anywhere on the site, really, but let’s not nitpick), you are already there! I also plan to add a lot more to the about page, with more info about ME (like you care, right?), slightly more informative blurbs about what you’ll find in each of the sections, and maybe submission guidelines or something like that. None of these changes will happen TOMORROW, mind you — I think I will take a week or so vacation from layout crap before returning to the fold — but they are on the horizon.

What will happen tomorrow, though (or later today, since it is after midnight), is the posting of a new (short) Hot Flash — so I will see you then! And let me know if you encounter any snags with the new layout, as it is entirely possible that in my hasty coding I left a colon out here or a question mark out there. Even if you don’t find any problems, though, I am quite interested in hearing your thoughts! 🙂

Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #97!

The Transformers return to Scary-Crayon in Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #97! The Decepticons may be trouble, Hasbro, but that shouldn’t be taken literally concerning certain characters’ action figure designs.  (3/8/07)

And, as promised, here is Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #97! Having gone off on a crazy Transformers kick as of late, I picked up a Titanium Soundwave figure this past weekend — and I’ve gotta say that if he’s the norm for the line, he’ll likely be the last Titanium I ever buy. I’m not sure whether the heaviness of the metal, bad design, or poor quality control are to blame (read: all of the above), but the guy could barely stand up on his own out of the box. See, his transformation involves the legs collapsing into themselves and folding up to his sides, but I guess his weight made them want to collapse into themselves at any given time — and coupled with the weirdness of the way that the legs attach to the body, that made poor Soundwave one incredibly unstable dude. Hence the title of today’s comic, as I had to disassemble his legs and pretty much slather the parts with clear nail polish in order to get him to stand upright for the comic, let alone hold any more involved poses. I’m fairly pleased with how he turned out, though — the fix was so effective that I was moved to remove my Classics Starscream’s slightly loose wings and give the hinges a coat of nail polish as well. Expect to see him in future comics. 🙂

Anyway, dig Soundwave’s newfound posability! I don’t think he’s worth the $16 I paid for him — whether even a fixed version is worth that much is debatable, but certainly no standard-sized figure that requires additional homemade tweaking should cost so much — but now that he’s been improved he will more than serve my purposes for future Transformers toy comics. Get down, Soundwave!

I thought the colored pics looked kinda neat (and Soundblaster-esque to boot)! That does it for this update, then — see you next time, minna-san. And remember, your input regarding the layout changes mentioned in the previous post will be appreciated in the meantime. 🙂

A Crayon Haiku #60!

Those shady people who try to take advantage of hapless citizens via e-mail strike again in A Crayon Haiku #60. Where is Jessica when we need her to rip these bastards in half? Yes, I dig the “Heroes” references.  (3/7/07)

I should have a new Hot Flash up sometime tomorrow, but here’s A Crayon Haiku #60 in the meantime. I’m mainly posting it now to test out the new WordPress generated content pages, which are LIVE… except for the Miscellaneous category. See, in the updated (but mostly the same) layout, the contents of the standing Misc. category are actually going to be divided among three separate ones — the standard Misc. one with new groupings for game reviews and writing pieces (short stories, writing guides, commentaries not explicitly tied to any other medium, etc.). I’ve already got them organized appropriately in the WP database, but until the new navigation header is ready I’m keeping them hidden.

Speaking of the new navigation header — since you asked so nicely — here’s a preview image that may or may not reflect part of the finished version. At present I’m thinking I’ll have this navigation text as part of the header with the site’s name and more characters (including a new drawing of the Crayon Critter!) to the right, but who knows. I’m also toying with the idea of tossing in some random elements — likely a speech bubble with text that changes based on a random number, but possibly even changing characters. The latter one’s particularly unlikely (at least until alpha channel png files are more widely supported), but we’ll see. Anyway, assuming all goes well, see you tomorrow with a new Hot Flash!

P.S. What do you think is a good number of features to show on the content archive pages? I currently have it set at a maximum of 18 blurbs per page (Misc. section presently excluded, of course), but I’m thinking maybe slightly more (or less) could work. Thoughts?