Penny Arcade

Obviously, I have nothing to say regarding Gabriel’s recent struggle at EB other than to offer some helpful advice.  Lord knows I’m not the man to come to when your retail resolve falters, I just buy things - I can’t help it.  Even those ten dollar bins they have represent a danger to my finances that I can’t even begin to describe to you.

I had three games on my doorstep when I got home, review copies.  Maybe you’d like to know what I thought of them?   

Midtown Madness 3:  I have only brief experience with prior Midtown games, my own particular madness being of the Motocross variety.  So if they changed all the stuff people liked about it, or something, I am not the man who will redress your grievances.  Besides, I have my own grievances. 

There is quite a lot to do in the Single Player portion of the game, but I don’t know what earthly force would compel a person to do it.  I mean that.  It’s in there because “you have to have a single player game,” I understand why.  It is a roiling cauldron of poor voice acting and misery.  This is the thing:  This game does not, strictly speaking, need single player.  I know it’s expected, but if you play the multiplayer even one time I don’t know why you’d ever go back.  It’s not like they punish you as they do in many games, putting you on some forced march through single player drudgery to access some cool cars for multiplayer.  You can play with plenty of great vehicles right away, just jump online and check out one of the six gametypes.  There’s team based modes, free-for-all modes, all kinds of Goddamn modes.  We are partial to Tag or Capture the Gold around these parts.  Even better, you can join games dynamically, like we’d expect to on the PC.  It is a hell of a lot of fun.     

Brute Force:  It has received a fair bit of visual polish since I last saw it, and any issues that build had with HDTV resolutions are gone.  Other than that, it is precisely as I said last time I talked about it.  It looks good.  It is a pretty fun shoot-‘em up whose co-operative play keeps it from blending into the background with all the other pretty fun shoot-‘em up games.  If this fucker had Live play - and not just content download - this paragraph would read a lot different than it does. 

Inside Pitch 2003:  I traded it in for two copies of Tetris Worlds, so yeah.  I guess it’s pretty good.

(CW)TB out.

now you see what i’m up against

As you all hopefully know the Penny Arcade gaming day is this Monday at Lanwerx. We spent a couple hours last night working out the ladder for the big SC2 tournament that is scheduled to take place Monday evening at 6:00. This is a huge 64 player tourney and the logistics of it were pretty tough to manage. Earlier I had said it would be a double elimination tournament but as we began calculating the time required for that sort of event it became clear that we would be at Lanwerx until 3:00 in the damn morning. Seeing as they close at midnight this was not going to work. What we decided to do is make the tournament a single elimination tourney instead. I apologize if this ruins anyone’s birthday party. So here is how it’s gonna be set up:

The tournament proper will be held on two televisions. One will have a PS2 the other will have a Gamecube. If you actually like the GC controller you are welcome to use that otherwise we will have adapters so that you can use PS2 controllers.  You are also welcome to bring your own arcade sticks from home. There will be a 2 minute set up time before each match that you can use to configure your controller or set up your stick.

There will be a third big screen HDTV set up with an Xbox on it. You are welcome to play on this machine before your match to warm up or afterwards to uh…cool down.

From 11:00 in the morning until the tournament starts at 6:00 all three televisions will be open and free to play on. Tycho and I will be there all day so come down early. Remember, if you are playing in the tournament we would like for you to check in with us at 5:30 so we know your there. We have lots of people on the waiting list in case someone doesn’t show.

That’s about it, like I said we will be there all day playing PC games, Soul Calibur 2 and giving away cool PA stuff.  I talked to Tycho a little about it the other day and he made it clear that he would be spending the majority of his time seated at one of the 64 computers they have. He didn’t come right out and say it but I assume he’ll be playing videogames on it.

-Gabe out

That is a reasonable assumption.

(CW)TB

Now that the NDA is no longer hanging over my head I thought I would elaborate a bit on why I won’t be purchasing SWG right away.

I do not personally feel like SWG captures the look and feel of the Star Wars universe as well as I’d like it to.

I decided right away that I wanted to be a bounty hunter and so with blaster in hand I began working my way up that particular skill tree. This involved a lot of shooting of rats, bugs and crabs. At one point on Tatooine I was standing next to a mission terminal waiting for my turn to use it when I saw a large wookie run past me firing wildly over his shoulder as a tiny crab no bigger than a dinner plate chased him through town. How sad I thought to myself. I spent countless hours wandering the hillsides in search of new rats and crabs to shoot. Sometimes I would inadvertently stumble upon too large a rat and be forced to high tail it back to town. I placed my character in auto run and pointed him at the nearest town. As I sat there staring at my Trandoshan bounding across the uneven Tatooine landscape with some kind of super rat closing in on him I thought to myself “This is not how I want to play in the Star Wars Universe.” As I sat there watching this rat slowly gaining on my character my mind flashed back to a conversation I had with Tycho months and months ago.

Tycho had talked me into playing my first MMORPG and I told him that if he ever did that again I’d kick him right in his cream and crackers. After an hour or so of hitting spiders with a bat I was ready to write off the entire genre. He said “What about Star Wars Galaxies?” At the time I told him that Galaxies would be different because it was Star Wars. “It’s not like they’re gonna make you spend hours hitting Wamprats with a stick.” Oh irony, thou art a harsh mistress.

The more I think about it the more I think that there may very well be nothing wrong with Star Wars Galaxies. This just isn’t my kind of game. I think I’m just better off getting my Star Wars fix from games like Jedi Knight and Rogue Squadron. Maybe some day a developer will combine all the best stuff from games like X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter and Jedi Knight into one game that doesn’t involve the poking of rats with sticks. Essentially my fantasy has not changed. I still want to play in a fully realized Star Wars universe. I want to fly a ship I own through space smuggling goods and outrunning Imperials. I want to land that ship on the planet of my choosing and do battle with storm troopers and rival smugglers. I want an action game because the Star Wars movies to me are action movies. That’s why I never liked the Star Wars RTS bullshit. Star Wars for me is not about running around Naboo shooting bugs in order to build up my blaster XP. It is about adventure and I don’t feel like SWG delivers that.

Even after you’ve reached a level where you can take on larger adversaries the battles still aren’t any fun. You click on the thing you want to shoot and then you select from your menu of different attacks. There is no strategy required. You simply choose your best attack and cue it up a couple of times and then wait while your guy shoots the target. If the target comes after you just run away until it stops chasing you and then turn around and repeat the steps above. Stirring Star Wars music plays during a battle and is intended to make the event seem more epic I suppose. The classic arrangement blaring as you take pot shots at a lizard who seems oblivious to your attacks just makes an already absurd situation all the more laughable.

I’m not gonna go into any of the technical problems I had playing the game as those don’t really matter to me. I have no doubt in my mind that all the technical issues I had with the game will be ironed out within the first couple of months. Do I think that people who purchase the game when it first comes out will be paying to beta test it? Absolutely.  I also believe that this is no different than any other PC game. The fact is that we as gamers have allowed game companies to do it for years. We have created a world in which it is okay to deliver a game to market that is broken. We have proven time and time again that we will pay good money for toys that do not work. To complain that another game is coming out earlier than it should is pointless. It should be fucking assumed by now that a company will force it’s developers to ship a game before they think it’s ready. This is not news, this is par for the fucking course.

What I’ve decided is that the problem is not with SWG. I believe they have succeeded in creating exactly what they set out to make, a Star Wars MMORPG. The problem is that what they made is not the sort of game I like to play and that’s not a bad thing for anyone but me.

-Gabe out

Last week I ran a poll in the forum to see what videogame character I would draw for this month’s club PA gift. Wolverine ended up winning and I just finished my drawing of him yesterday. Here is a little peek at it.

If you would like to get the full image suitable for use as a wallpaper just join Club PA this month. It is because of Club PA and our advertisers that Tycho and I are able to continue doing this PA thing.  So I’d like to take a minute and say thank you to our sponsors and our club members this month, we really appreciate your support. Rockstar, Cheapass Games, Bethesda, and Moonpod all deserve your support. If you would be so kind as to give their ads a little clickeroo we here at the Arcade would certainly appreciate it.

On a side note if you haven’t played Diceland from Cheapass games you are doing yourself a huge disservice. I highly recommend you drive to your local game store immediately and purchase a pack. I myself am particularly hooked on the space series. Essentially you construct an armada from paper dice, each die representing a different ship in your fleet. These individual ships all have their own stats and special abilities which are clearly marked on the dice. You and a friend or friends (we found the game surprisingly balanced with five players!) then do battle against one another by rolling your dice onto a game table representing the vast reaches of space.

I’ll bring a couple packs with me on Monday to the gaming day. If anyone is interested in checking it out I’ll have plenty of dice to make a few sets. I’d be happy to teach anyone interested in learning how to play. If you already have your own dice bring them with.

-Gabe out

Just when you though I hadn’t been an asshole for a while.

I don’t know if you have seen this Friendster thing yet but it’s pretty cool. It is basically a big network of people and it shows you how many other people you are connected too via your friends. Sort of like a big six degrees of separation game. For example through the three friends I currently have on friendster I am connected to just over 4,000 other people. Click on anyone of their pictures and it will tell you their profile and how it is that you’re connected to them. You know Bob who knows Jim who knows Frank who knows Jeff, that sort of thing. Anyway, I was browsing through my “personal network” this morning, shocked at the sorts of people I have connections too. I suppose the purpose of all this is to make meaningful connections with other human beings. I just like to laugh at them though.

my name is justin, i’m the warrior in the midst of stagnancy. i like documenting. i like blue skies and silence.

WOW! I’m a warrior in the midst of stagnancy too! We have so much in common. We should go think of stuff to be sad about together.

I’m a Mac user.

Oh, well that explains it.

I HATE LIARS!

Best of all, she’s single! Better get to her before her inner demons do.

-Gabe out

When you sent me that Friendster request yesterday, I assumed it was one of those mails produced by a virus.

(CW)TB