Not every man of the Belmont clan is constructed for proper vampire combat, as today's strip reveals. PS2's been busted, so I haven't had a chance to play this new one. I heard it was alright.

We had considered doing another Crimson Skies comic, but determined that we've probably said everything already. It really is remarkable and has no right being as good as it is. I would put last night's Flag Heist match on Windy City up against almost any other multiplayer game experience I've had. Picture eight planes flying through the rain, in a map that consists of the tops of skyscrapers that poke up through the cloud layer. "Jaunty" Jack Burton and SixSidedDie coming for the flag, Gabe and I on D as LCDXX and BreakmanX tried to come back with it. If you have Live, please give the game a try - shit, it comes with two free months of Live play, maybe you'd be sick of it by then anyhow. Who knows.

So, Crimson is the game I'm playing with other people. There's also a fair bit of Desert Combat going on. By my lonesome, I sometimes jump on to the Halo demo and try to figure out whether or not I like it. I don't have the performance issues that I often read about, at least not graphically, but the networking on that game is really, really variable. You can play on a server that makes you wonder what they were thinking even putting it out one minute and then get on something smooth that reminds you of late-night Xbox LANs on Blood Gulch. The ping doesn't seem to indicate shit. It would be like if the server browser had a column for "Mint" and then some servers had it and some servers didn't. Ping is like that in Halo PC. I have no idea what it is supposed to represent, and even if I did know I wouldn't know how to detect the presence of that quality in a first person shooter. It might be best to focus your time on dedicated servers, as you would in Battlefield, but there's never been a slot open on one of those since the demo was released.

My special, personal Tycho time is spent with Etherlords II, and even typing its name makes my heart pirouette. It's like being able to play the collectible card games that I crave without any of the guilt associated with harvesting healthy young livers to pay for them.

One last thing: Neil has cracked out a new version of his PAINT app, the Penny Arcade Internet Notification Tool. It has so many new features that if you used the old one or would simply like to know when we make posts, it's probably best for you just to go and get it. Gabe and I don't really synchronize our posting at all, so it's often the only way I know whether or not he's said something about Tracy Chapman.

(CW)TB out.

i got a plan to get us out of here