I don't think it's too bad a spoiler to say that the new Pokemon game - the new Pokemon game, for God's sake - asks questions about the franchise itself at a fundamental level. Yeah, it does it in way which tracks with the continuum of Pokemania, and as robust as its core mechanism is, these games must make themselves available to the young. Even so, it's rare. It's a rare game that has the pluck to question its own thesis even while it is actively enslaving you with same.

When I was writing it, this is what I kept thinking about:  all the times in DA where you pull back out of a combat to some kind of dialogue sequence, often one that had some humor in it, and everybody is joking, even though they are covered from head to toe in fucking blood.

PAX East is only a week away. Despite the much larger venue, it looks like we will once again be looking at a sold out event. There’s only 150 Friday badges left and about 400 Sunday. These will be gone before the show though, so don’t expect to walk in and buy a pass. If you want to go, get you tickets now.

PAX East grows ever nearer, it's super near right now, and our dutiful JavaScript clock is returning a value that seems almost impossible. Maybe it is impossible. Maybe each of my fingers is an undulating shrimp! It's a world of possibilities. It's also a world of challenges unique to my psychological profile.

PA reader Michael just sent me this and I thought it was awesome. The lava "juice" is my favorite part.

Time to start practicing Omeganauts! 

Your choice of Pokemon games mostly comes down to whether or not you want Reshiram or Zekrom. Clearly, Zekrom is the right choice. Even more than usual, though, the whole experience actually comes from having access to someone playing the opposite cart.

Why yes, we do have more.  Glory and honor to Kid Can Drive! 

It was an act of will to keep from cocking my head at the Beastly trailer, which Gabriel queued up while laughing through his nose. Eventually I had to use my hands to maintain a neutral orientation, but then the urge to knit a scornful brow nudged its way through and everything fell apart. Ugly has received a significant downgrade, or perhaps an upgrade; maybe it depends on what you're trying to determine.

Gabriel was trying to tell me about his Smurf Town, and how many Smurfs were there, or something. I was given to understand that there were "hella" Smurfs, almost perpetually "up in." I also learned that, like most freemium lures which writhe and flash on the hook, it has a potentially brutal microtransactional backend whose thorny roots grow into its very heart. Apparently, these "Smurfberries" make your Smurfs work their asses off, stay up real late, war with androgynous Shadow Men, and avoid mirrors.

I've been reading Jane McGonigal's Reality Is Broken, and some of the things she says track very closely with the way things work in my own sphere. I am trained - intensely trained - to fail and select retry, that is to say, to iterate, and I can't tell you how much that conditioning helps when you're trying to teach someone to do something when they have no cultural frame of reference, a low threshold for frustration, and an annoying tendency to repeat every Goddamned thing you say in a sing-song, munchkin-like register.

I certainly appreciate everyone sending me tips on gaining weight and building muscle. Tycho’s story was from a few years ago though and I really don’t have that problem anymore. I wish I could say that I committed to a daily exercise routine or something but that’s not the case.

It's crucial to abuse Gabriel lest he get airs, to make him chase phantoms and spirits, to ride his anguish, howling like a pirate in the rigging. Real-Life Gabriel had the exact opposite of the typical problem, though, and I would have thought it was the opposite of a problem at all (that is to say, great!) if I hadn't seen it for myself: he thought he didn't have enough weight.

There is new Penny Arcade Television today, a Fourth Panel, one which describes the writing process for the strip entitled "A New World Record."  We had to remove it briefly and replace it because it contained actual pornography.  Also, I thought this week's Ledo and Ix struck an especially nice tone.

It's very hard to tell how long a fighting game will be a going proposition around here. Soulcalibur IV is still played almost daily by Keek and Robert, typically beginning at 4:30, and that game is three and a half years old. That said, I'm not entirely sure it's really about Soulcalibur anymore.