Penny Arcade

The very moment winners were been announced at the Cartoonist’s Choice Awards, we immediately regretted having rejected our nominations.  Then we remembered that, wait, we were Cartoonists, right?  Why couldn’t we Choose?  An award, I mean?

The more I think about whether Warcraft III is a worthy successor the less I care if it is or not.  The unit limits that keep everything skirmishy are very much to my liking, I prefer it for real-time games, but it’s clear that’s going to be a sticking point for many people - as far as I’m concerned, Warcraft is dead, long live Warcraft.  I’ve never been happier with it, especially since they’ve dropped the pretense and virtually made a Warhammer Fantasy RTS.  I don’t need to go into the particulars, like I was going to - you either know what I’m talking about or don’t care.  Either way, let’s evolve this shit.  Blizzard, listen up.  You have the license and the power to do this.  Warcraft Legions.  Stay with me, here.  I’m talking about Turn-Based strategy.  Since Games Workshop is making some kind of Massively Multiplayer thing with their tabletop wargame, you might as well swoop in and eat their lunch. 

Come on!  I know you’ve got it in you!  Balance armies online with the resource system you have in place, or try a “slots” system, akin to the inventory in your Diablo games, where units of differing potency take up more virtual “room.”  You could also use a point system as Warhammer or Bungie’s brilliant Myth did, I could honestly care less - that’s really not the focus.  Utilize a “shot clock” to keep the pace up, like Moonbase Commander.  Move Turn-Based combat forward by allowing the group selections, teaming, and powerful interfaces that have been pioneered in RTS.  Add gigantic units, strange and wond’rous to behold, devices that could never be balanced properly in real time but could serve a host of fascinating functions.  Warcraft III is largely the correct technology already, and the ability to construct compelling battlegrounds is a perfect fit for Warhammer fans, for whom terrain is a critical part of the experience.  Create unique win conditions and cooperative multiplayer experiences that go beyond existing (God help me) paradigms.  Anybody could do it, but you could do it right.

Human beings frequently write in with interesting commentary on x, where x equals the things we have on the site.  Ordinarily I secret these rare moments of personal interaction away and appreciate them at my leisure, but I thought you might enjoy a couple of these recent ones.  I commented Monday last how the world seemed to be constructed of tiny OICWs, suggesting that this terrible weapon would ignite Armageddon.  Interesting mails from a Marine in support of it and Joe Rusek taking the con side decorated my mind’s foyer.  On Friday’s spiders, goats, and horrors from the lab discussion, one Deborah Lonrau wrote in to soothe my fears, and maybe yours. 

So, Monkey and I are up in our local E to the B, trying to get some credit for shit, when I see a bunch of games I’ve never heard of before all released and on the cheap.  What the fuck is Zoocube?  How about Rock Manager, which seems really intriguing, thanks a lot Sweden?  Or Hero X, which I had heard about, but I had no idea it was out already?  The last two I mentioned there are twenty bucks per, so it’s not like it would take some big investment to find out, but between Neverwinter, Warcraft, and Army: Operations I don’t have the time even at a price that sweet.  Yeah, I know Army: Ops was pretty rough out the gate.  I’ll talk about it Wednesday if they haven’t figured it out by then. 

(CW)TB out.

the creatures jumped the barricades

Monkey asked me my impressions of Warcraft III over the weekend for whatever reason and my reply was something along the lines of

Iron Chef Batjew!: It’s WARCRAFT.

Iron Chef Batjew: In 3D.

Now before you get all in a huff and start mailing me to tell me how stupid I am about not realizing how much more fantastic this game is than Warcraft II, about how much more to it there is that I’m obviously too retarded not to see, I’d just like to say It’s WARCRAFT.

In 3D.

That’s not a bad thing.  But for me, it’s not really a good thing either.  This series sort of reminds me of Street Fighter now, in that this latest installment has now become Warcraft Alpha.  The graphics are better, there are more characters and now there’s a new elements to it like Super Bars and flaming uppercuts.  It’s also like Street Fighter in that I wouldn’t want to play it with strangers because all strangers ever do is log on to Battlenet and act like fucking assholes exploiting one of the races with some cheap tactics that have already been discovered, that bleed all the fun out of the game for anyone who isn’t a fucking asshole.

Speaking of EB, I did some trade-ins myself yesterday and picked up a copy of Sky|Gunner.  I was playing it for a few hours last night and so far I’m really impressed.  After the sad, sad tale of Dropship, I was hesitant to even consider purchasing anything that even resembled a flying, shooting thing on the PS2, but they had it running on one of their demo machines and I just stood there for a few minutes and watched some spastic 7 year old kid mash buttons for 5 minutes and it still looked cool.  I was thinking, “Hey, I’m about as good at these games as a spastic 7 year old… this is a game for me!”  So that was that.  It’s not really a flight sim, but more of a 3D shooter that’s a ton of fun.  The thing that really entertains me about it is your character is always looking at what you’re attacking.  That just seems like a really novel concept for me.  As much as I love to keep turning and turning, trying to follow that big arrow on my screen to where my enemy is, I think I like this better.  The ship designs are also really great too.  I know it’s hard to tell by looking at the back of the box, but this is a really great game.  Rent it, see I’m right and then buy it.

I just wanted to make a quick update. I was out of town all last week so I am way behind on my e-mail. I know that by the end of last week messages were just bouncing back to people. I will try and catch up this week. Just wanted to let you all know I’m not dead.

Whenever I am away from the computer for a week I always get this feeling like I am missing all these big events. Last Thursday I gave Tycho a call in the hopes that he could bring me up to speed on what was going on. Unfortunately I forgot that he is a complete asshole. Keep in mind this is a roaming call on my cell phone, which means I am being charged approximately $300 a second for the privilege of this conversation. “So what’s the big news this week? I asked. He says, “All the companies that used to make video games stopped making video games and now we have all new companies making video games.” This is the kind of bullshit I have to put up with on a daily basis.

-Gabe out