No Viva La Volo

Hey Everybody, as Todd mentioned previously, there is a new contributor on board. As you may have guessed, that contributor is me. My name is Jeff. I'm a sophomore at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and am currently studying History. The Toddster and I go back and have quite a few stories together. We also played in the critically-acclaimed high school band, Scrumtrilescent. But enough of me. The time has come. Ladies and gentlemen, I now present you with, The Volo Auto Museum: A tale of anticipation, David Hasslehoff, and comical amounts of blood.
One Saturday afternoon, Todd, Ken, and I ventured to the North West suburb of Volo, Illinois. Ken, Todd's friend from Japan, was staying with Todd for a few weeks so we planned various tourist activities to give Ken a memorable experience of America. With Google Maps on our side, we were unstoppable.
The madness started before we even arrived at the auto museum. As we traveled northbound on Rand Rd, we encountered a n odd little intersection. We couldn't believe it when we passed by Rand and Old Rand Rd. At first, our reactions were, "huh, that's interesting, I guess they just got lazy with the road names but no big deal. " But then, things started to get crazy. Every few minutes, we traveled by yet another intersection of Rand and Old Rand Rd. In fact, during the trip, there was a total of five of the exact same intersections. On the Google map, all of the five yellow flags are separate intersections of Rand and Old Rand Rd. Our evidence leads us to this conclusion: Volo, IL contains some sort of black hole and Old Rand Rd. is a dark and mysterious apex of the universe.
We arrived at the auto museum confused and slightly shaken up but we managed. Ken, a huge fan of classic American muscle cars, was ready to begin sight-seeing. Not only does Volo contain hundreds of American roadsters, the museum has a section dedicated to Hollywood cars as well. We're talkin' about all the cars from tv and movies that everyone recognizes. We were graced by the presence of the Batcar, the Delorean (Back to the Future) and of course, the original KITT from Hasslehoff's 80's action-series Nightrider. But the fun doesn't stop here at the Volo Auto Museum!
Unfortunately, Volo also has a Military Adventure Museum. It's not as fun as it sounds. For example, the "Adventure" aspect is more of a haunted house. But instead of cheesy scare tactics and surprise monsters, you walk through a faux-warzone with tanks, soldiers, and annoyingly loud gunfire constantly ringing. Yep. Volo's got "Military Adventure" written all over it. And what could be better for the kids than walking by an exhibit depicting a medical unit in Vietnam? Better yet, the kids get to see a soldier with missing legs and another one with severe burns. In addition, education comes as an "unnoticed bonus" in the Combat Zone. Almost as bad as the Combat Zone was the artifacts museum. Not only do they collect cars in Volo, Il, but they also collect racist government propaganda from World War II! I knew we had to leave when we passed by the section with multiple anti-Japanese news clippings with racist depictions. There's nothing like visiting a country only to find out just how much their leaders used to hate your kind in the past. Poor ken...
After the Military Adventure Museum, we quickly made our way to the grossly overpriced gift-shop, the Mercantile Mall. Here, you could buy all the crappy antiques that flooded your grandparent's home, except for much more than they're worth. As we've learned from Volo before, there's always something for the kids. Inside the Mercantile Mall, there's a small videogame shop. Here, you can purchase an array of old games for ridiculously inflated prices. Old original GameBoy games for $25. For some reason, we all just knew it was time to cut our losses at the Volo Auto Museum.
On the way out on good 'ol Rand Rd, we spotted a mini-golf course. It looked fun, so we gave it a shot. Turns out, the course was sub-par (alright, that's the end of the puns, I swear). For all 18 holes, there was a simple way that each of them were built: lay some fake grass over cement, randomly place a stone on the grass, cut out a section of the grass (instead of sand-traps, there were cement-traps!) and finally, line the hole with bricks. Somehow, I managed to stub my toe on one of the bricks that lined the hole and I started bleeding all over the course. But all in all, it was still a successful trip to Volo, Il. Ken got to see his cars and Todd posed with KITT. Volo, Il is an interesting little place that seems to be stuck in the past and for the most part, I think I'll leave it there.

-Jeff

ULTIMATE FRISBEE VIDEO GAME...

IS A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT.

Today I was out at the mall shopping for DS games and Nagano Snatch playing cards when I happened across something incredible in the KB Toys Bargain Bin. That's right it's Original Frisbee Disc Sports: Ultimate and Golf. I was ecstatic. Me and so many of my kind have been waiting for ages for an Ultimate Frisbee video game, and for my newly-purchased DS, what luck!

It was all downhill from the title. I couldn't agree more with Gamezone.com's review of the product when they say, "Fans of Ultimate and Disc Golf should get a few minutes of enjoyment from this DS collection." I was so determined to like this game despite how shitty I knew it would be. I mean, I knew from the box the graphics were mediocre, and it was in a KB toys bargain bin, but I was determined to put all that aside because it was an Ultimate Frisbee game. A first. A trendsetter. Unfortunately, that just isn't enough. The game creates the illusion of fun until you know how to play, and then it's over. The game is 4v4, the only option is a single game against the same AI computer every time, no difficulty settings, no different teams, nothing. But wait, you can pick your 4-man team from an exhausting list of OVER 5 PLAYERS. That meaning 6 players, and they don't have names, but they do have races, which makes the skill distribution hilarious. The asian is a handler, the black guy is really fast, the white guy is balanced, the Indian guy plays good defense... Making fun of the game developer's racial stereotyping is probably the most fun you'll have with this game. BUT WAIT! You can play against a friend! But it's necessary that they buy this heinous cartridge too, so I'd recommend cutting your losses.

The gameplay is shitty. It attempts to combine the buttons and the stylus in a way that makes gameplay awkward rather than innovative. The top screen shows the heavily pixelated players running around while the touch screen is a bird's eye view of players running around. You need to use the arrows and buttons to run around and throw, but the stylus at the same time to run plays. There are three plays each for offense and defense, but on offense you can also have a player cut by clicking him on the touch-screen and tapping where you want him to go. Cool right? Hell no. As soon as you throw it, you take control of the cutter, and have to have him continue the cut manually if you correctly remember how far and which direction the throw is going. The touch screen shows you the final destination of the throw, but doesn't show you how fast it is going or how close it is. This has you looking sort of frantically between the two screens and makes it needlessly difficult to complete a pass. That being said, if you are lucky enough to reach the brightly colored destination marker, you only have to stand there and you will catch it. Sorry Defense. Speaking of Defense, it's stupid. You can only play defense by moving into the path of the disc and catching it, no layouts, no skying, no hand blocks or any kind of knocking it away from the person that you're guarding. All of this makes man defense basically useless. So the best idea is just to play zone and try to get lucky. Any turnover you achieve feels like luck rather than skill, so any success in this game is hollow. It's just not fun.

Now there's the golf aspect too, which I can tell is more faithful than Ultimate, but I'm really not one for golfing video games. I know it's frisbee golf, and it's sort of cool that you can kind of curve around stuff. But other than that it's just a basic golf game, there are no different kind of throws, and instead of different clubs you have different discs. There's slightly more depth to golf with 18 holes and a practice mode, but that's not why I bought the game, and from what I can tell, any golf game would be better.

So here's the thing. Despite just laying down a huge whomping on this game, I can guarantee you that I'm still going to play it a bunch more times, just hoping it will get better. I know it won't, but I really like Ultimate and this is all I have right now. So, if you really love Ultimate and want to play this game knowing full well it sucks, you can buy it here. And for only $8. It's definitely not worth more.