The Nappy Cat Chronicles

Jason Bourne gets hunted for the third in the Bourne Ultimatum beginning August 17, 2007. Yahoo! has the teaser trailer.

Test your hearing with ultrasonic ringtones. Surprisingly, I can hear all levels but 22.4kHz.

Since 2005, Maxis has been showcasing their surefire PC hit Spore. Spore consists of 6 stages of societal creation:

1. Tide Pool Phase: Fight with other creatures and consume them to adjust the form and abilities of your creature. It’s survival of the fittest at the most microscopic level.
2. Creature Phase: Venture onto land and help your creature learn and evolve with forays away from your nest. The only way to grow is by taking chances!
3. Tribal Phase: Instead of controlling an individual creature, you are now caring for an entire tribe. Give them tools and guide their interactions as you upgrade their state of existence.
4. City Phase: Bring your creatures’ race into a new golden era by building up the technology, architecture, and infrastructure of their city.
5. Civilization Phase: Once your city is established, your creatures begin seeking out and interacting with other cultures. Make contact with an olive branch or a war cry. The goal for your creatures is to conquer the planet.
6. Space Phase: The time has come to move on to other worlds in your solar system. Make contact, colonize, or terraform, then venture further to find other solar systems. A ‘mission’ structure provides new goals in your quest for galactic dominance.

Here’s a 35 minute sneak peak:

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories for PS2 is the second installment in the City Stories series and is second to San Andreas in terms of series advancement and depth. Just like in almost every previous installment, you are a gangster who’s doing it for his family. Your brother, Lance Vance, is a completely annoying compulsive liar who enjoys snorting other people’s cocaine. His bad habits gets you and him in plenty of trouble. But he isn’t entirely useless. During a few missions Lance functions as your wingman (though he can only shoot straight when your helicopter is level). So, unlike Liberty City Stories, you get to hang with your brother and fly planes and helicopters. In fact, there are fire and ambulatory helicopter missions.

The most salient improvement is the night driving. Unlike its predecessors, during the night hours there are few cars on the roadways and even fewer pedestrians. This makes unimpeded speeding a very digital possibility. It’s also very possible to get a few wanted levels at night and not get your business rudely interrupted by suicidal cops. During the daytime, however, there is still a ridiculous number of cop patrols and random sidewalk wankers.

The largest addition to the series is the ability to build an empire. The process of empire building includes destroying the car parked in front of the marked buildings, killing all of the gang members who appear, and purchasing the property. There are a variety of crime types your buildings can avail you to and every type has a series of mini-missions you need to complete. Although these mini-missions are not easy and usually entail running from the cops, SWAT teams, and/or rival gang members, the time and effort are worthwhile. The larger your empire and the more mini-missions you complete, the larger your stream of daily cash.

Weaponry and bullet proof vehicles are no longer relegated to Easter egg-type status. After you shoot and spend your way to a complete empire, the vehicles that spawn in front of your buildings become bullet proof. I cannot overstate how convenient this is. Not only are they fast, they can actually withstand the barrage of bullets you can dish out from the minigun you purchased at the nearby mall.

The main storyline accounts for only around 30% of the total gameplay. Your other duties include racing, completing the shooting range challenges, taxiing, ambulancing, firefighting, policing, boating, popping balloons, stealing cars for the impound lot, and all the miscellaneous hootenanny that has come to define the Grand Theft Auto series. Taken alone, the storyline leaves a lot to be desired. It’s a rehash but the overall gameplay takes this installment to the next level and, if it’s an indication of what’s to come, Grand Theft Auto IV is going to make men weep.

This is exactly what I do with my women:

“It’s the kind of thing that goes straight into your subconscious,” said Raye, who was determined to find out where all the other billboards were, so she could make sure her 11-year-old daughter would be spared the horrific imagery.

“The message is that this is what you do with women,” Cain said. “You kidnap then, you confine them, you torture them and you kill them.”

Peter Wilkes, a Lionsgate executive, told me the studio had nothing to do with the ads that bear its name. Lionsgate partnered with After Dark Films. So I talked to Courtney Solomon, who runs After Dark. He said the billboards were a mistake. That ad was one of 50 or 60 concepts under consideration, he said, and before any were approved, this one ended up at a printing plant and up on billboards in L.A., as well as on New York taxicabs.

“To be honest with you, I don’t know where the confusion happened and who’s responsible,” Solomon said.

I’m having trouble believing that two movie studios had not a clue that ads for their movie would be all over Los Angeles and New York, but Solomon said he ordered them all taken down after he received the first complaint and drove to see one of the billboards. He said he knew of at least 10 complaints forwarded to him by Lionsgate.

The billboards should all be down by Tuesday, Solomon said, carping a bit about how much it would cost him to have the ads removed. He apologized to those who were offended and said he hoped people don’t get the wrong idea about “Captivity.” It’s not a slasher movie, he said. “It’s about something that happens to 850,000 people in this country a year.”

I told him I was unaware of 850,000 people being abducted, tortured with cables stuck up their noses and murdered.

“This movie is about a story of what happened to one person who is abducted,” he said.

I guess that means there could be 849,999 sequels.

Can’t wait.

The horrible advertisements posted here without permission: