One of the weirder things about acting as a charitable hub is that people are always giving you amazingly awesome things that you can’t keep. I put up a few shots late last week, and I’m here to tell you that they represent only a thin slice, thin, perhaps even monomolecular. Treasure is heaped so high here that navigating it has become treacherous. When I want to get to the kitchen, I tell people where I’m going so that a rescue might be forthcoming.
The statue that came into our possession is beyond description, the sort of artifact one might discover in some glimmering draconic hoard. Gabriel is going to try his damnedest to get his hands on it, with Kara in in the audience acting as his bidding proxy. I look forward to watching the bids rise, and rise, and rise again, until they begin to cause him physical pain.
- Similar to the Guitar Hero III demo that made the rounds on a coverdisc, it’s not terribly hard to obtain the Japanese demo of Resident Evil 5 - even without a Japanese Live account. I’ll leave the particulars of that up to you, if you’re interested. Prowling threads devoted to the topic, I read that Gears of War had influenced the game in a negative way, ruining it. Though they had no experience with the product themselves, and though acquiring such experience would be a trivial matter, the conversation moved forward as though the original poster were dispensing invincible truths from an oaken pulpit. If you are curious, it plays like Resident Evil 4 - except the Inventory Screen you once used to escape the game’s oppressive atmosphere is gone, replaced by a real-time menu that doesn’t let you escape shit. Moving and shooting is still a no go. Lethality is very high. And it’s clear they’ve taken an incredible gamble shifting to a start-to-finish, cooperative design.
I wrapped up RE4 in around twenty-five hours, and I wonder what kind of length they’re looking to deliver here. Very few co-operative games ask that kind of devotion from players. It’s understood that people want “co-op,” just as some generalized ethereal quantity, but I have the same questions here as I do about Dragon Quest IX. They want it, but do they want it in absolutely every genre? Does every genre even benefit? The demo was interesting, certainly - but I’m very curious about the overall arc of play. Its isolated setpieces left me starved for context.
- For those of you who enjoyed the D&D Podcasts, we’re recording another session on Thursday. Jim Darkmagic (of the New Hampshire Darkmagics), Binwin Bronzebottom, and Omin Dran of Acquisitions Incorporated make their return to the table, while William “Wil” Wheaton joins as the new hire, playing an unreleased class. Yes, that’s correct: we have a celebrity guest. This is the big Goddamned Leagues, people.
- Scott Kurtz is in town to play, to attend the charity dinner, and also just to work here in the office. We’ve all been heads down for about an hour, heavily invested in our individual spheres, and no-one has said a word. This is more or less my conception of heaven.
(CW)TB out.
