I guess notebook batteries aren’t the only products to experience a recall, as the Razor E300 line of electric scooters have now been recalled by the manufacturer due to faulty welds on the handlebars which could end up with them snapping off. Doesn’t sound too good, eh, since you could end up with a rather nasty injury while riding one of these things. In the meantime, it would be wise to check with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission for futher details concerning this recall. It affects products with barcodes beginning in 100620-03 through -09 only, and there are currently approximately 20,000 of those around in the market.

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Filed under: Gaming

While there’s certainly no shortage of tennis racket-esque accessories available to make your Wii Tennis experience a tad more realistic, those looking for even more authenticity can will soon be able to turn to a familiar name for their fix, as racker-maker Prince has now announced that it’s making the jump into the Wiicessory business. According to IGN, Prince has teamed up with Qualtech Global to produce the rackets, which will be available in your choice of three colors and will apparently be exclusive to Circuit City (at least for the time being), where they’ll set you back $15 apiece. You’ll have to make do with your imagination for a little while longer though, as the rackets won’t be available until November 15th.

[Via Crave]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Previews, Demos, Hands-on

It’s difficult to play games in a language you don’t know. However, based on the nearly infinite well of RPG experience under our belts, we can make a few pretty obscure parallels to the recent demo of Agarest Senki that popped up on the Japanese PS Store this past week. If you’re unaware of the title, it’s a strategy RPG that harkens to the like of all those Nippon Ichi titles, except this one spans generations of characters that are born, fall in love, and breed according to your actions. It sounds fun on paper, but what happens in the demo is more confusing than biting into a donut to find it’s filled with salad.

The first parallel is obvious: this is a 3D strategy RPG with 2D sprites, so a comparison with the likes of Disgaea is inevitable. However, this title fails to keep in line with most normal SRPGs due to the strange battle phase interface. The first is the move phase, where every enemy and every ally character choose where to move — you don’t know where the enemy will move, because no movement is seen until you actually end the move phase. In addition to this, each character has a set of combo panels in a random formation around their character. If you move your other ally characters onto these panels, or link one character to another, to another in a chain, then these characters will be able to perform combination attacks at the same time during the attack phase. Granted one of the enemies is in range (you don’t have to be right next to an enemy to attack). The attack phase is different from most SRPGs in part because you don’t need to be right next to an enemy, but also because there’s no normal “attack” option — all of your moves cost a certain amount of points (if memory serves, AP), but even more special moves will cost SP as well. Rationing out your AP when chaining combos is key — you don’t necessarily want all your characters spending all their action points on one enemy when you could have destroyed all three that are in range. If you input the right moves between characters, you can create special combo attacks that are pretty fun to look at and exponentially more powerful. It’s confusing, it’s irritating, it doesn’t really work. Maybe because it’s in Japanese.

The second parallel we’ll make is only for those who’ve been in the SNES emulation scene for a long time and really like anime. If you ever played the SNES title Record of Lodoss War, you probably have no idea how this comparison is going to work. No, you aren’t switching bodies and there’s no world map. This is mostly in reference to the battles. Record of Lodoss War battles took place on a strange checkerboard-like map and Agarest Senki always seems to warp you to a strange checkerboard-like map for battles. Maybe it was just for the demo, but if we’re in the middle of a forest fighting a boss (later revealed as a friend), we’d like to actually fight in said forest. The graphics are smoothed PS2 graphics, so there really should be no problem doing this, but they didn’t. As we said, maybe this was just for the demo, but whatever. It was annoying.

Our final comparison comes from the old Sega Genesis days, back before Phantasy Star was an online game. When it was one of the best RPG franchises ever. Debatable, but we think so. Phantasy Star 3 was built around the premise of generational gameplay — you start as a prince who sets off to rescue a princess and meet another girl on the way. You choose who to marry, then you play as their offspring. Rinse and repeat. Each new generation explores new lands, which is exactly what Agarest Senki decided to emulate. It has generational gameplay. Each generation explores a new land. They took it a little farther than PS3, though, by adding in a hefty dating-sim slash decision-making formula to make it a little more difficult to woo the girl who will carry the seed of your loins. It’s a very cool concept, the generational gameplay, but this game just comes off a little … dirty about it. Incredibly scant clothing on the girls doesn’t help the notion this game may have started as something quite a bit darker. Still, the prospect of what kind of child you could create across three or so generations is astounding — there are dozens of combinations and that could be fun, just like Phantasy Star 3 was.

We’d love to explain the menu system, but it was in Japanese and we couldn’t really follow some of the stuff, though we can go into a little depth on the leveling up. Like in Shin Megami Tensei games, you are allotted some points to distribute to your stats when you gain a level. Each stat takes a certain number of points to increase, based on the character’s innate abilities (a magic user can increase intelligence easily, but it takes two or three times as many points to raise his/her strength). It’s a nice touch, one we’d like to see in more Japanese RPGs. Customizing the level up is excellent, if only because you can actually see what increased when you level (a convention many games have dropped for some reason).

That’s it for parallels. Now we just get to chat a bit about other parts of the game. The music is decent, though the battle tunes can get a little grating if you’re over your metal phase. We do applaud them for trying to make upbeat battle music, though. The world map is nice looking, as are the sprites and their animations. Nothing spectacular, nothing PlayStation 3 worthy, but not a bad attempt at smoothing out the 2D/3D SRPG. The one thing about this demo is its length — this sucker is long as hell, with two different parts of the game to play through. Even though it’s in Japanese, if you get burnt out on the game from the demo, that’s not a good sign.

Our final verdict — if this game doesn’t have a compelling story, there’s no reason to trudge through the rest of it. That’s if it gets localized outside of Japan. Since we generally don’t see Red Entertainment or Compile Heart games leaving Japan, we aren’t getting our hopes up. The generational gameplay is cool but approached in a dirty way, the battle system is way too ludicrous and awkward … there’s not a lot saving this game from the Pit of Mediocrity unless, as we said, the story is top notch. It probably isn’t.

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Sometimes you want to blog, read a book, channel surf, eat popcorn or play World of Warcraft and it is chilly in your home. It is hard to lie on the couch or in bed and play video games without your shoulders and upper body exposed to the elements. Well I found the solution: the Slanket, a blanket that wraps you up and you end up snugged like a toasty burrito in the middle of winter!
NB: Works especially well for Boston area!

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, RumorMonger, Remakes and Sequels

I know I’m not completely in the minority with this, but I have to admit first off that I loved Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. I really thought Jonathan Mostow did a great job delivering the action — obviously not close to as good as James Cameron would have done, but better than many others could have. When it was revealed that a fourth Terminator was in the works, I hoped Mostow would be rehired for the gig. But I guess he’s either doing something else (Swiss Family Robinson perhaps?) or for some reason he’s not welcome back. According to CHUD.com, his replacement on the franchise may be McG, who I find to be one of the most annoying guys working in Hollywood these days. Really, though, I just hate on the guy because of his stupid name. I guiltily kinda enjoyed his two Charlie’s Angels movies. Apparently, McG is currently in talks to take the helm of the sequel, for a pre-strike production start, but it isn’t for certain that he’ll get the job.

I’m sure many of you will probably be upset if McG officially signs on, even if you too just criticize him for his name. It could be the nail on the coffin for a lot of fans already nervous about the continuation of the storyline without any definite sign of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong, Nick Stahl, Claire Danes or anyone else who has previously starred in the series. From what we’ve so far heard, it seems part 4 will focus on the post-apocalyptic period involving the war between the machines and John Connor’s army. Everything else, regarding an Arnie cameo, or whatever, I’m still considering to be hearsay. Anyway, all I care about now is that at least Terminator 4 has been scripted by T3’s Michael Ferris and John D. Brancato, a duo I’m sure are well-enough-versed in the Terminator universe to make this next installment interesting and worth seeing.

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Drama, Casting, Universal, Fandom, Newsstand

We’ve heard rumors for quite some time now, but it seems there is truth behind them: Vin Diesel and Paul Walker have officially bottomed out. Well, their careers cars have, that is. According to The Hollywood Reporter, both actors are in negotiations to reunite on the big screen for a fourth installment in the popular Fast and the Furious franchise. But wait, it gets better — check out HR’s description of the premise: “The story line is being kept under wraps, but fast cars are involved.” Gee, ya think? Justin Lin, who directed Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift will once again step behind the camera for part four, while Chris Morgan returns to write the script. Neil Moritz and Diesel will produce.

All we know at this time is that shooting will take place this spring in Los Angeles, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. Folks should remember how Diesel showed up for a cameo at the end of Tokyo Drift, and since fans went apesh*t over his appearance, the actor was convinced he had at least one more race in him. Walker, on the other hand, showed up in 2 Fast 2 Furious, but did not return for part three. And since I barely even remember the first film, I’m not exactly sure where each character is at (story-wise) heading into this fourth flick. But I trust fans of the series will be pretty stoked to hear this news. Currently, there’s no word on a release date or further additions to the cast.

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Filed under: Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Paramount, Fandom, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Images

If you’ve never been on a movie set, they always hire a guy to stand around and snap endless amounts of still photos while the filming goes on. Those pics are then sorted through later, for publicity purposes. Well, it’s now been confirmed that the still photographer on the Indy 4 set was totally robbed of 2,500 photos from the production and the thieves are still at large* with the loot. A publicist for Paramount confirmed to Jeff Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere that the thievery took place, but contradicted an earlier rumor that there had been an actual break-in at the offices of Paramount Pictures. Apparently, the thieves took the photographer’s hard-drive somewhere away from the set, and Paramount is claiming that they know the culprits have contacted online outlets trying to sell the photos. For their part, they’ve called in the FBI.

How hard could it possibly be to track down the thieves? I wasn’t contacted by these guys, but anyone who was can and should give them up to the feds. I’m not going to name any names, but not long ago a certain outlet was specifically boasting of having seen “pictures” of Cate Blanchett in her Soviet villain garb, with black hair, boots and a sword tucked into her belt. This outlet didn’t dare post those photos, choosing instead to just describe them and credit them to an anonymous person snapping pictures on set. And now Jeff Wells is confirming that the stolen haul of photos includes snaps of “Cate Blanchett in full villain mode.” Hmmm … I don’t think the FBI will need to send in Mulder and Scully to get to the bottom of this one.

*See, I told you — they caught the guy, according to IESB, before this story could even be published. The FBI put together a quick sting operation between some unnamed online journalist and the thief, and pounced on the guy at a seedy hotel in L.A. Apparently the theft was more extensive than originally thought — the film’s script was also possibly up for sale, it seems.

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Filed under: Science, Fish, Newspapers

We’ve all heard the warnings that pregnant women should steer clear of fish because of mercury concerns. The FDA recommends that pregnant and breast feeding women eat no more than 12 ounces of fish a week. Most of my pregnant friends have heeded that advice, giving up tilapia, salmon and trout almost entirely until their children are weened. However, the Washington Post reported today that a group of scientists from both the public and private sectors are planning to announce that they believe that pregnant women should eat AT LEAST 12 ounces of fish per week.

The issue comes down to mercury concerns verses nutrients in fish being excellent for brain development. Since the FDA issued the fish warning, mothers and mothers-to-be have dropped their fish intake to the point where they are no longer getting enough of the Omega-3 oils that are so helpful for baby development and the prevention of postpartum depression. So, what’s the answer? At the present time, it’s murky at best.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Samsung’s pair of uber designed Armani and Serenata cellphones were caught out on the town in a European paparazzi twist-up last night. Don’t worry, we won’t distract you from your vanity by running down the specs again. We will, however, swing open the stall door to more glamour than you can shake a rolled-up Benjamin at. Just click the read links for your fix. Go ahead, everybody’s doing it.

[Thanks, Aniki]

Read — Samsung Armani
Read — Samsung / B&O F310 Serenata

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Latest news is Bollywood, actors Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan were spotted together in a Delhi Bar last week. Recently they were rumors that Kareena and long time boyfriend were splitting because Shahid had problem with Kareena Getting close to Saif. Since the news of their break-up started Kareena and Saif are spotted together […]

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