8. Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz: 1/5

This is another easy place to start, because Super Monkey Ball is terrible. For your own sanity and wallet, do not even rent this game.

Super Monkey Ball has two game modes. The first is classic Monkey Ball, where you roll your crazy little monkey down a Marble Madness-esque course encased in a balloon. The only challenge is in trying to master the frustrating controls. Level design is boring, frustrating, or both.

They didn’t even make the Wii remote enjoyable to use in such an obvious avenue for motion sensitivity. The controls were fairly responsive, to the point of oversensitivity, but were not customizable. You have to hold the remote pointing toward the television, as opposed to sideways like an NES controller, which would make much more sense to me. It became uncomfortable after only two levels. On top of the discomfort, your wrist is just not designed to make quick movements in the manner they intend, which could even lead to RSI.

So, let’s ignore the first game mode. The second is even worse. Sad, really. It’s a collection of 50 minigames a la Wii Sports or Wii Play, though shorter, not replayable, and less fun in general. In fact, most of the games don’t even behave as the (briefly shown, opaque) instructions claim. Several don’t work at all. I can only remember two or three of the 50 minigames. My only guess is that the “monkey ball” portion was in development when an executive saw the success of minigame-style Wii titles and insisted on their inclusion. The result is truly painful.

9. Super Smash Bros. Brawl: 4.5/5

Great little fighter. I don’t think Brawl is as expansive as most other reviews say, but there is a lot of content. The main fighting mode is great. There are at least 40 characters and 50 levels, and with the level editor you can make interesting new ones. If you’re new to Super Smash Bros., you might be surprised to find that fights aren’t just melee combat. Levels come alive and present various obstacles throughout the fight. They’re also much larger than in most fighting games and present multiple areas and tiers for variety. Many aspects of the rules of combat can be adjusted to your liking. Some are serious, some for fun, like wearing a flower on your head or breathing fiery curry breath.

On top of standard combat, one of my favorite challenges is the Event mode. There are different events for single player and multiplayer, and there’s a good amount of variety in the goals. One mode involves killing 50 enemies in one loop around the course. Another involves beating all of the original Smash Bros. characters in one round. Another involves beating colored koopa troopas in a certain order. They’re challenging and they offer difficulty levels and trophies to keep you coming back.

There is a single player mode, called Subspace Emissary, but it feels… odd. It’s reminiscent of an old-school platformer with new graphics. Honestly, this is my only complaint about the game, and it’s why I can’t give a perfect 5/5 score. There just isn’t enough unique about this mode to keep my interest. It has its moments - I particularly like the Donkey Kong levels - but there are just as many annoying moments. You can’t pick your characters for a large portion of the mode, and you often get stuck with Pit. Since Pit is a new addition to Brawl, I can understand the reason for this, but he’s also not as polished as the returning characters and tends to annoy.

There are a few other mini-modes, like a coin-shooting game and sticker collection, but they’re not really worth discussing. Feel free to ignore them and enjoy the Brawl and Event modes, which really are classic. Recommended for almost anyone, though I’d strongly advise you play with a friend or three.

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How about fourteen Wii game reviews?!

1. Super Mario Galaxy: 5/5

This is an easy place to start because the game is delightful. It’s a true spiritual successor to Super Mario 64 and is every bit as fun to play.

The addictive elements are there - quick gameplay, content that’s always fresh, beautiful graphics, and intuitive controls. You can play for 10 minutes and feel a sense of accomplishment by getting a star, or you can play for hours and complete whole worlds.

The controls are intuitive, even in a vast 3d setting, and the levels are forgiving if you misstep. Motion controls are used just enough not to be cumbersome. You point at the screen with the remote to shoot projectiles, and shake the remote to spin Mario like a top, which is now one of the main gameplay mechanics.

The game design is classic Miyamoto. You never repeat the same puzzle twice. Each level feels like a new adventure. Visually, you can see the trend towards a younger audience that started way back with the Yoshi games on SNES , but it’s almost endearing. Plus, if you really don’t like the children’s stories, they’re entirely optional. You still get a great game. Highly recommended if you’ve ever liked a Mario title.

2. Warioware: Smooth Moves: 4/5

Reviews of Warioware have been polarized. Metacritic shows generally favorable reviews, but scores range from 56 to 100 and user reviews average 6.5. I assume this is because of the nature of the game - a sort of extreme version of the minigame trend we see with many Wii games.

Personally, I like minigames, whether standalone or baked into full games. They give you an opportunity to try different things at a rapid pace. Warioware takes this to the extreme with just about the shortest games imaginable - 3 to 5 seconds on average. It gives you just enough time to get a sense of what’s going on, then you immediately have to solve the puzzle by moving the remote in whatever seems like the correct way. There are so many microgames that they built a full game on 3-5 second experiences. Sure, it won’t last you as long as Super Mario Galaxy, but it’s the type of game you can return to many times because you definitely won’t remember all of the challenges.

The games are based on a set of controller styles, such as “The Elephant,” which involves you holding the remote straight out from your nose like a trunk, or “The Waiter,” where you balance the remote flat on the palm of your hand. You have to change styles very quickly between microgames , particularly near the end of the game where you’re only given a second or two to change posture. This keeps the energy high and keeps the strange looks coming.

The game was challenging enough to stay interesting for the 3-4 hours it took to beat. (This does not include any time going back and replaying the games.) For the most part, the controls worked as expected, though there were one or two games (out of around 100) that I couldn’t figure out. Recommended if you like minigames and have a sense of humor.

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1. Get a thinner wallet.
2. Carry your wallet in a front pocket. (Or in a European carry-all)
3. Both.

And boy have I got the answer for you. Enter the SlimSlimmy wallet by Koyono. As the name implies, it’s very thin, and it’s designed to be carried in your front pocket.

There are no money clips to waste space. There are no picture holders. There are no tri-fold wallet wings. There is not one tench of an ounce more material than is required to carry your essentials. There are just three slots into which you tuck your valuables.

It makes you reconsider what you take with you every day. That’s a good thing.

Consider what’s in your wallet right now. Do you have any receipts? Any credit cards you haven’t used in a while? More than one credit card, for that matter? Any pictures? Any coupons? Any hard candy? How is any of this helping you in the daily grind?

It’s not helping you one bit. What it is doing, however, is putting your spine off kilter. You may not notice it, but your spine is slightly curved because you’re sitting on a big hunk of leather with half your ass. It’s not good for you. In fact, the American Chiropractic Association says that wallets can cause back pain if kept in the back pocket.

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Essentially, he says that Wal-Mart’s pricing on a single flat-panel TV in the Christmas season has fundamentally and permanently changed the landscape of the electronics market as a whole. A no-name TV, specifically a 42″ Viore, was priced at $988. A similar Panasonic was priced at $1294. Other retailers couldn’t match these prices - or didn’t want to - as their prices had been nearly double that for some time.

Cleary, this was an evil act. I mean, come on, retailers are going out of business.

The fallout is evident: After closing 70 stores in February, Circuit City Stores on Mar. 28 laid off 3,400 employees and put its 800 Canadian stores on the block. Tweeter Home Entertainment Group, the high-end home entertainment store, is shuttering 49 of its 153 stores and dismissed 650 workers. Dallas-based CompUSA is closing 126 of its 229 stores, and regional retailer Rex Stores is boarding up dozens of outlets, as well as selling 94 of its 211 stores. […] Circuit City shares have fallen 24%, to $18.76, since the end of November, when the price war started. In the same period, Tweeter’s shares declined 32%, to $1.72, near a 52-week low, and Best Buy’s stock is down 9%, to $48.73. Shares of Rex Stores have been flat, down 0.7%, to $16.98. […] The carnage has one phrase written all over it: the “Wal-Mart effect.”

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It came to me in a similar fashion that it now comes to you; as an unobtrusive note on an unassuming webpage. Now, I have a few passions in life. Among them are (not listed in any particular order) interior design, organization, the new house I just purchased, and food. Seeing as how this little gem encompassed all four, I snatched it up.

Before you dismiss what I am about to say because the closest you get to cooking is watching Iron Chef or you saw the words “interior design” and you figure this is most likely some chick-thing, allow me to present the book’s most curious premise: It was written by a man who grew up on a sailboat, and learned to work in a kitchen the size of an outhouse. So discard all that was learned from snobby haute cuisine shows on Food TV or distressed you by reading Bon Appetit magazines, and sit down with a quick read that Rachel Ray probably wishes she had come up with. The book isn’t for the stuck up foodie or the socialite and their extravagant dinner parties, it’s for people who live in real homes and need to eat.

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Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been watching a bit more television than I normally do, and I have come to the conclusion that, due to the unbelievable amount of television channels available to the average consumer, networks are desperate for a hit show that will bring good ratings. And I stress the word “desperate”. Over the last few weeks, Spike TV has been heavily promoting their latest creation, Blade the Series. I didn’t want to completely discount the series without watching it first, after all, Joss Whedon recreated Buffy the Vampire Slayer into something above and beyond the comedic-cheese movie that was originally released, and became a huge hit.

It’s a good thing I didn’t go into this with a lot of expectations. We begin the show with the obligatory credits, where it is revealed that our anti-hero is played by a stocky guy with the nickname “Sticky”. Well I’m sorry, Spike TV, but I can’t take any guy seriously whose nickname is “Sticky”. It isn’t very tough, and it brings to mind that someone’s been spending too much time with his one-eyed trouser snake.

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Sennheiser HD580 headphones

I’ve had a set of these for a few years now and have been nothing but impressed. Music is perfectly clear and full, and has a rich tone that can’t be explained if you’ve only used crappy earbuds or cheapo headphones. There’s a true soundstage - close your eyes and you can position every element of the performance as if you were there. I couldn’t class myself as an audiophile yet, but my HD580’s produce some of the best sound I’ve ever heard. Don’t expect them to block any outside noise, though.

The HD580 is the baby brother to Sennheiser’s HD600 and, more recently, the HD650. That’s a pretty good family to be in, I’d say. All three have a 300 ohm impedance. If you don’t know an ohm from an amp, impedance measures the resistance to your music that the headphones provide. The higher the impedance, the more power your music player needs to put out. For comparison, most earbuds have around a 16 ohm impedance. If you’re going to use real headphones like the HD580’s with a tiny portable mp3 player, you’ll need a headphone amp. (Some mp3 players have a decent output and can put out enough power themselves, but don’t count on it unless you’ve checked.)

That said, the retail price on these bad boys is $200 - $250, though you can get them at most stores for $150. If you’re serious about your music and have a decent source, I’d say it’s worth every penny.

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Be aware that because this is a rolling archive, if you don’t download them by the end of the week, they will be gone and you’ll have to wait until they rotate through the entire series again.

Here at Halffull, we don’t have a section for other websites that you can link to. Of course, any time I ask redshift to add something to the menu bar, it is met with a steely-eyed glare that says, “You want to make this site look particularly ugly, don’t you?” Of course I don’t but it’s up to our site Nazi to make sure this website looks as clean as possible, in the same way that it’s up to me to ask for eighty million changes. (Speaking of which, what happened to previewing a comment before posting? Huh?) But what can I say? Redshift is an internet-snob and wants to make us as un-blog-like as possible. Besides, most of my posts (especially the news updates) are filled with links anyway.

Due to the barrage of spam we usually get, it’s really hard for me to look through the logs and figure out if we’re being linked or not, since 95% of what is listed is pr0n spam. Either that, or redshift and hulk are lying to me when they say they haven’t been signing halffull up at wwwdotbig-boobs-cheerleaders-kinkymidget-pr0ndotcom. I think they’re lying. You see, I’m addicted to the site stats. I analyze them critically. I make excel charts and bring them to Halffull meetings. And when we dip below 250 visits a day, I freak out. For the past week, our viewings have dipped a bit. I’m not sure where everyone’s gone, but you’re freaking me out, dudes. Is it me? Do I smell? Maybe it’s hulk - I swear that we take him out back and hose him down once in a while. It helps keep the rabid foam around his mouth down to a minimum. Plus, it keeps him going with fresh rants. Never stale, that’s our motto.

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Let’s recap. There was a Making the Band 1, but King Peen had nothing to do with it. In fact, I barely even remember this show. If I am correct, someone auditioned a bunch of guys and made a boy band. It was a horrible flop. Not that I’m complaining; this boy band sucked and disappeared just as quickly as they had come in.

Perhaps this reality show had great ratings, and that’s what gave someone the bright idea for a Puff Daddy version of the show. Maybe it was even something from Diddy’s own mind. I don’t know, but P. Diddy’s Making the Band was born.

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