Kapow! Oof! Bam!

We haven't even picked up the new Lego Indiana Jones video game yet, and now I see Lego BATMAN is coming out in September! Turn my blog music off at the bottom of the page and then click play on this trailer:

Aside: Of course, before we can play Lego anything, we need to get our X-Box fixed. We got the "three blinking red lights of death" that all the X-Boxes have been experiencing. I was pleased to read that X-Box will repair this problem even if your X-Box is out of warranty. I called the repair number and they sent me a box via UPS. All I had to do was open the box, put my X-Box in, tape it shut (they even provided the tape!) and slap on the return UPS shipping label. Hopefully it comes back quick.

Getting back to video game reviews...

One of the reasons Lego Star Wars was such a big hit in our house was that it's very easy to control and it's very forgiving of mistakes. You may not get ALL the bonus features or the top score if you aren't playing it with the precision of an experienced hand, but small children can play and have fun and progress through the basic story line without dying and starting over at the beginning. If your character does "die" then you just pick up right where you left off.

A new game we found for the Wii that YB really likes is the Go Diego Go! Safari Rescue. Like Lego Star Wars, Safari Rescue is very forgiving. It won't let you jump off any cliffs or into any danger. When you paddle your boat on the river, you're supposed to dodge the alligators and hippos, but if you bump into them, they just say, "That's okay, Diego" and you keep moving along.

Before this, YB hasn't played much Wii because he doesn't really have the motor skills or understanding of the controls to do much besides play Wii Boxing. In addition to being a forgiving of mistakes type of game, Safari Rescue really helps YB understand the Wii motions by the little orange window in the lower left hand corner of the screen that shows him how to hold the controller and what direction to move it. YB just has to immitate the motion of the character in the orange window and it guides him through each stage of the game.

YB in his cockpit playing Safari Rescue.
(Notice the little orange character in the
lower left corner showing him how to
move the controller.)

A couple of other cool things worth checking out:

My Dad sent me a couple of pretty cool videos this week. The first one (click here) is of a local newspaper reporter riding in a Blue Angels F/A-18 and passing out multiple times. It's pretty funny to watch. The second one (click here) is a Natioanal Geographic special on USS TEXAS (SSN-775). It's pretty long (45 minutes), but it's fairly well done. I like how the oxygen generator is "revolutionary" as if it was something NEW built JUST for the TEXAS. Actually, we've been using oxygen generators on our submarines for decades, but... It's still a pretty cool show.