GAMES
TECMO BOWL: KICKOFF

Blame my backlog for me doing a post-season review of a football title, but any old-school sports gamer worth his salt will tell you that Tecmo Bowl is a timeless football franchise.

The original Tecmo Bowl and the sequels that followed set a benchmark for eight and 16-bit arcade-style football video games.  It’s a shame that the recent update Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff doesn’t do the same, but it’s a solid game nonetheless.

In essence, Kickoff is a remake of the Super Nintendo version of Tecmo Super Bowl with added stylus controls.  For that reason, the game doesn’t push the DS in any way, but the old-school graphics will make you feel like 1987 all over again.

While you can run plays using the directional pad, the stylus works better for nearly every task.  In fact, stylus control is a benefit when it comes to selecting receivers and trying to change which player to control on the DS’ small screen.

Tecmo Bowl doesn’t have an NFL license, but the included teams are well-balanced.  You can also improve your players’ attributes by winning more games in season mode and winning the Tecmo Bowl itself.

What other game includes an imaginary team called the Los Angeles Supercocks?  No, I’m not making that up and, yes, they are referring to roosters.
Sure, you can rename your teams and players, but what fun would that be?
Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff is available for the Nintendo DS for $29.99.  -Korey Hughes
http://www.tecmogames.com

COMICS
THE LAGOON
by Lilly Carre, $14.99, Fantagraphics

I had some pretty big hopes for Lilly Carre’s second full length graphic novel, THE LAGOON. In indy comix circles the book has been touted as a hot thang. Does it hold up under the weight of expectation? Um, sorta? Carre’s cartooning is purely excellent, evolving nicely from her earlier work and pulling you into a world of vividly drawn characters and lush environments. She tells the story of a family living by a swamp, haunted (or blessed?) by the siren song of the swamp’s monstrous denizen. There is a nice balance between whimsy and dread, which is a space I sure do like to inhabit. But upon completion, giving the book some careful consideration, it doesn’t stick to the ribs as much as I’d hoped. We never really get to know the family that well, so we don’t really care about their fates. This is a solid second effort, and I look forward to seeing how Carre progresses as an artist. I hope next time around she breathes as much life into the chracters as she does her linework.  -Patrick Godfrey

Brought to you by Velocity Comics
904 West Broad St. http://www.velocitycomics.com

Picks of the Week

MUSIC
Middle Cyclone
Neko Case / ANTI-
Okay, let’s just talk about that cover for a moment: do you see that? It’s the lovely Ms. Case, threateningly wielding a sword whilst riding atop the hood of a 1968 Mercury Cougar. REPEAT: neko case is about to fuck your shit up from atop the hood of a 1968 mercury cougar! With a sword! The album art alone is enough to instantly catapult this disc to my Top 10 list of ’09, and I haven’t even taken off the shrinkwrap yet. Ladies and gentleman, I don’t need to listen to the music to tell you that this is excellent stuff, because there is a picture of neko case on top of a car wielding a sword. Qed.

All the Plans
Starsailor / EMI
Jesus, it’s Starsailor. I can’t stand Starsailor. They’re emblematic of a frightening pattern in British rock post-OK COMPUTER, wherein every band produced by our once-proud neighbors across the sea ends up sounding like a sackless bunch of twats who’re too busy blowing each other to remember what true rock and roll is like. This is staggeringly boring and formulaic stuff, akin to watching NASCAR without the booze—it’s just a bunch of musicians driving around in goddamn circles, and we’re all left hoping that they’ll eventually drive themselves into the ground.

Invaders Must Die
The Prodigy / Cooking Vinyl
Ah. Smells like high school. Hey, look—I’ll be the first to admit that I still occasionally rock FAT OF THE LAND to this day, which was a fun blast of punk-infused Big Beat goodness. But the new disc sounds almost exactly like the same old shit they were serving up a decade ago—mindlessly brutal with neither subtlety nor grace, buried under synths that sounded new and fresh when they were on Madden ’98. The album is a goddamn cliché in nearly every way.

MOVIE
Ashes of Time Redux
Wong Kar Wai / Sony Pictures
Most of us know Wong Kar Wai as a chronicler of urban loneliness, a true artist that has captured the dichotomy of being young and desperately alone in a city teeming with other people. So this odd little gem sticks out like a sore thumb in his otherwise pristine filmography. Having Wong at the helm of a Wuxia epic is like hiring Jean Luc Godard to direct the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie; it’s terribly disconcerting, and doesn’t make for great film, even if it is an interesting watch. For fans only, those new to Wong should probably pick up Fallen Angels.

BOOK
Every Man Dies Alone
Hans Fallada / Melville House
It’s a literary crime that it took over 50 years for someone to translate this novel into English. Fallada’s final novel is, without a doubt, one of the finest testaments to the darkest years of the 20th century. Fallada breathlessly weaves a tale of a failed German resistance movement in-between startlingly touching depictions of the lives affected, directly and indirectly, by the war itself. It is in every way the perfect depiction of the hope inherent in the idea of the futile gesture, and the often unknowable human cost behind ostensibly arbitrary decisions.  – jacob lee