Penny Arcade

The situation depicted in today’s strip isn’t confined to this Tomb Raider, or any previous Tomb Raiding excursion, which was one of the things that recommended it conceptually.  That said, it’s especially present here, with that combination of incredibly high graphical fidelity and physics puzzles that make the brain flip and roll inside the skull.

After a few hours scouring optional tombs and dealing with the omnipresent issue of muhfuckas, your mental apparatus is on fucking fire.  I’ve described this aspect of mind preparation alongside our Professor Layton strip as trying to cultivate a headspace like a model garage.  Those puzzles don’t tend to have the scale of a Tomb Raider, though - you might freewheel some, but you’re mostly looking at a very specific puzzle in an environment designed for you to solve that puzzle.  You know when you’re doing one.  Here, occasionally determining where the puzzle is is part of it.  You just have to open up your head sometimes, and see what falls in.

I will occasionally see a puzzle in Tomb Raider that reminds me of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, which (if you are wondering) is the best possible thing.  I won’t spoil the specific puzzle we were thinking of - it’s the one right after you get Helgumund’s hammer from Jrorf.  Hereafter truncated to GoL, Guardian of Light was one of the best cooperative games I’ve ever played - it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played without any qualifiers, in fact.  When they said that GoL had inspired their multiplayer, I felt my face flush; she clearly has a crew with her in the game.  It’s not hard to get from there to a kind of gritty Maniac Mansion + Gunplay, where we broaden at once the types of puzzles and the type of experience we can have.  That’s the sort of thing I would buy a “season pass” for.  What you do instead is shoot strangers in multiplayer arenas, which is about as far from Guardian of Light as it is possible to get.

We were talking with Robert yesterday about what Kickstarter is as opposed to what people think it is as opposed to what people use it for, and a Kickstarter to make a Veronica Mars movie was so timely that I had to mention it.  Is this what it’s for?  If the result is an actual, real Veronica Mars movie, then I don’t give a shit.

(CW)TB out.

remember me when

We try to avoid all talk of politics here on PA. In general it’s because neither of us is an especially political person, but also we want you to be able to come and laugh at our video game jokes regardless of who you voted for. The exception I guess is when video games end up mixing with politics and we feel like commenting.

Well video games are in the crosshairs once again. I honestly thought we were past all this garbage about games causing kids to shoot up their schools but the NRA seems to think that the real problem is violent vidjima games like Mortal Kombat and Splatterhouse (yes splatterhouse). Seriously at least get some new games guys. Anyway, making violent games, or any kind of game really is very obviously a first amendment issue. So to hear politicians say that we need more restrictions on the first amendment without even taking a look at the second seems strange to us. I’ve heard people say that without the second amendment we wouldn’t have the first and I think that’s probably true. I guess I feel like most gamers are in favor of making sure violent games are not played by children and we can all agree that more parents need to pay attention to what their kids are playing, but it seems like we can’t have any sort of dialogue about guns. I think both amendments are pretty important and it would be nice if we could talk about all the things that might cause gun violence, including actual guns.

Anyway, we made a strip about this awhile back that seemed to resonate with some of you. The reason I’m bringing it up now is that Kiko has turned that sentiment into a T-Shirt.

So If that’s the sort of statement you want to wear on yourself you can get it in the PA store.

-Gabe out

Strip Search episode 4 is up and we have our very first elimination.

Now you can see the real structure of Strip Search. Each day is comprised of a “social challenge”. Something goofy and hopefully fun that lets the artists get to know each other a little better. Then a real challenge based on some element of the Webcomics business that results in two artists going up for elimination. Finally you have Tycho and I observing/bothering the artists as they create cartoons and finally sending one of them home.

Hopefully now that you’ve seen an entire day you have a better idea of just what Strip Search is all about. Let us know what you think in the comments or using #stripsearch on Twitter.

-Gabe out